Joseph McElroy - Women and Men

The storefront hasn’t moved. Grace is nowhere else but here. And Jimmy Banks worked out of here and still does part-time, she knows so he can cover himself and his bike in case mom and the social worker compare notes and determine he’s nuts or a Mongolian hard-on and force early retirement on him and that giant jaw of his, so poor little cock he can’t quite go public. Yet here they really are, the old couple, still together after a century, and she hails them.

"Oh we are ready to begin again," old lady calls, and a broom comes sailing end over end out of the third-floor window of the building downstreet just missing a hill of fruit-and-vegetable trash part of the Korean landscape at the end of a row of garbage cans; a high-chair follows, vegetable to vegetable, thank God baby not in it, and lands on the hill.

"I came," says Grace, with tears in her eyes, as if she weren’t in fear.

"We could see that," said the grizzled old growler-man kindly reporting a fact worth reporting.

"That silly pair, where are they?" the old girl lamented, so beautiful in lavender dress showing beneath old gray coat with animal fur at top.

"I’ll go in and see," said Grace.

She wanted to bless the old lady, the mole on her jaw, the darkish eyebrows, the prominent nose, a woman maybe not mad or senile after all, just eccentric visionary like a million women whose visions don’t get cared for.

The interior is weird. A gypsy bullshit side. And a counter with small file drawer and telephone and coffee container over there. Senora Wing in gold and red and black sitting at a round table with a sign on it saying "Senora Wing." At the counter a guy who must be Turnstein: vain about all that piled kinky hair shaped like a second head. A man with weight of worlds still untapped on his broad, jammed shoulders, he’ll have a hunch before he’s forty, having been over forty since he was a pube to his mom’s dictator-martyr. But also an inset bunk area where these utterly juicy and fascinating androgynes — great Goddess, Grace would like to be nude with them, their coming awake there, they love each other, what is this window-performance shit? Grace is not still out on the sidewalk where high chairs rain down on Korean fruit-and-vegetable landscapes but she would like to be there with the old lady and gentleman, figuring what’s their trip, what’s going on, such a live pair; something going there, for sure, and she almost needs their story but Rima’s bullshit is like a problem at the bank that, you know, won’t go away, though when will the rug guys return? and thank God the men’s workshop’s tonight.

Turnstein’s hopeless in the flick of the big eyes everywhere. The dumbly, accidentally sculpturesque detouring line of fluorescent light overhead turns this story away under the table or into Grace’s head, she’s aware of her blue peacoat and her purple sweatpants and high alligator boots. Is this place real, and she’s got things to do. And who cares a shit if Rima exposes Grace for a sex-fiend therapist-without-antiobiotic-conceptual portfolio, and yet:

"Yes?" says Senora Wing, looking her up and down, especially down.

"Yeah," Grace says, waiting to get equality by sitting down across from this heavy-duty bull-mother who gets Grace into contact but where’s that wholeheartedness you need in war and love, and the Goddess, where’s she? Grace knows she’s into a tricky transaction if not dreadlocked to the ultimate stranglehold. A broad-shouldered man with stud-gray hair should walk in here now, but won’t — but where’s he froml, he’ll come to her, he is in this someplace, and the Santee character, not big but aura-affirmative, something long-distance about that dude, the fringe jacket, get it off him tonight, he might not just be inside: so, is a very large number being done on her for bucks, for expose city? for some higher power? — but all she ever wanted (poor little Gracie!) was… a blank that cuts in like before, and she’s kidding self (though not Body-Self) kidding herself she knew just what she wanted with workshop celebrity cum taking economic and spiritual responsibility for her life.

wing: I knew you would co’m. What is yr name?

grace: Are you a sister?

wing: Yr name, madam?

grace: Grace Kimball. Are you a sister, dear?

wing: We find out. Cross my palm with your forearm.

grace: (Doing so, so she leans close to Wing) Hey, far out: cross-limb communication. What’s going on, Wing?

wing: You came from the West, some years ago, and you are looking for something.

grace: What can it be?

wing: Your friendship vein is your strong suit. You have many women friends from many lands. They tell you their lives. This can be risky for you. You are looking for something they have not told you.

grace: You are looking for something they have not told you. You have a sister. So you are one.

wing: (Smiling grimly — definitely not non-orgasmic, but . .) No, Madam Kimball, you are looking for something they have not yet told you.

grace: No, you are, but you’re getting mad and I’m your client. Tell me more, Senora. We’re sisters somewhere down the road.

wing: You have a gentleman coming to see you soon who knows people you know, and you must beware of him because if you let him in on your knowledge of a person from across the water that you know, he may use this so that others will come down on you very hard.

grace: Is that a promise, honey?

wing: (Seriously ignoring Grace s implicit acknowledgment of threat) You came from the West with Indian blood in your veins. You have a father who have a problem. Your mother plays musical instrument. You worry ‘bout her. You had a dark man in your life and he went away someplace I am not sure — change arm (points to Grace* s other forearm, which Wing now receives in her palm) —Long Island, he lives there now, I think — never mind. There is another man but he is married to a woman you know and you hear about him but you need to hear more, because he is in danger and you could help him if you get his wife to tell if he is planning a trip—

grace: (Humorously) With me?

wing: (Seemingly uninterrupted) —and if you help him you help yourself because you have a career and it is at the turning point, it can go either way, you can get into big money—

grace: (Laughing) Never!

wing: (Seemingly uninterrupted) —or into trouble. I see a bicycle racing through the rush hour and instead of a rider there is a blank space, no rider but the bike is racing through the City of Manhattan and it is looking for you where you should be — now no arms but heads (she leans way forward over the table) —

grace: Eyeball to eyeball, far out! (leans to press forehead)

wing: There is another man, he is your age, he is the right age for you—

grace: A traveling man from Saudi Arabia?

wing: (Seemingly uninterrupted) I feel him coming here between us; he may visit you, he may not; he is close, I can feel it—

grace: Is he clothed?

wing: He is well-dressed. I don’ know where he is coming from.

grace: Prison?

wing: Who would that be, Grace?

grace: Or out of a theater? I can’t quite tell.

wing: Someone from prison? I feel that you were in prison, there’s somebody there that doesn’t understand you like I do and you can be in danger if you go to prison again.

grace: Got a workshop date there in a week if they don’t cancel it.

wing: You need information from a foreign lady about the possible trip of her husband and I see that when you receive this information you must not tell it to anyone especially one who will come to see you tonight.