Tim Murphy - Christodora

In the wee hours at the Christodora, Ardit, the Albanian doorman, tends to doze before the tiny TV in his room in the basement, so M-Dreem enters a sepulchral lobby, falls into a blissful nod once again with his right hand on the button of the elevator, and rouses himself from it a good two minutes after the elevator arrives, just long enough to hit the sixth-floor button. When the doors open on that floor, he feels a strong weight pulling him down toward the hallway carpet just outside the elevator, just another short, um, reverie, but he manages to shamble his way down the hall. Fumbling in his pocket for keys, he slowly registers he’s lost them — just when the apartment door swings open to reveal, in a nightgown, Millimom. That is what he most often calls his Female Parental, a smirking hybrid name.

She turns forty next year and betrays the first lines emerging on her forehead and in the corners of her eyes — the beautiful, dark, perpetually anxious, and beleaguered eyes of Millimom. And now those pained eyes are burning with five A.M., been-waiting-up-all-night pain. He sees her New Yorker and big ceramic tea mug on the dining-room table in the apartment’s dark recesses.

She steps back from the door, scrutinizing him head to toe. “Where have you been?” she asks in a half-whisper, trying not to wake Jared-dad in the room beyond.

Stepping inside, he makes his best effort to open his eyes wide, stand up straight, smile with a sort of no-big-deal, nonchalant air of apology. “Sorry I’m so late, Mom. There was a graduation party.”

“I’d think that if you’re going to party till dawn, you could at least give me a call.” She sounds not so much angry as baffled and hurt.

“I know, I meant to, I just got caught up in the excitement and the flow.”

“Couldn’t you have just texted?”

Now their eyes are in the mother-son deathlock. He resists the urge to scratch his upper body, which is crawling with itches. Then he caves and lightly scratches his rib cage, where the itching is the worst.

Milly’s nose wrinkles. “You smell like vomit,” she says. “You’ve been drinking.”

He exhales with relief. “I did drink a little,” he says. “It was graduation night.”

She crumples back, frowning. “I just wish you had called. Dad and I left you a message this afternoon congratulating you on your last day.”

“I know, I—” he begins. Then his stomach seizes and he brushes past her and into the bathroom, where he locks the door just in time to stick his head in the toilet and puke again.

“Mateo,” he hears Millimom call from the other side of the door, “are you all right?” But even the puking felt good, and now that it’s over, he feels especially good. Another hazy wave comes over him, just as he hears his name again, Mateo, on the other side of the door, but this time in Jared’s deeper, sharper tone. He’ll get up in a moment, he thinks. But for right now he curls up with his head on the ledge of the toilet, and before he knows it, he’s nodding on 04/14/1984 again, purring away.

What if they could ban smoking in all city restaurants and bars? Surely anyone would say it was a crazy idea — New York thrived on smoking, it was a city of smokers, in and out of the bars, in offices and walk-ups, the sidewalks alive with bobbing Marlboros and Virginia Slims and Newports in the neurotic, fearful hands of people in Armani and tracksuits — but what if, what if?

The thought kept nipping deliciously at the edge of Ava’s other thoughts— gotta make a dentist appointment; gotta stop at Balducci’s and buy coffee and brie; oh, shit, gotta make a dentist appointment for Emmy (her endearment of the abbreviation M.) — as she dressed for work that morning, with Sam off already for his run around the reservoir, and Emmy already being walked to school by Francelle. What if she became the health commissioner who banned smoking in restaurants and bars in the first big city in America? It could happen by ’86, ’87, she thought. First, nab the top spot, then start a public campaign, get Koch’s support — she could make her big mark by the time she was forty-three, forty-four. People would say she was crazy, but if you didn’t think big thoughts, how could you make anything happen? Isn’t that where big change began, with big, bold thoughts? Women, particularly, needed to have more big thoughts, she believed, recalling all the theory books about women and health she’d read in grad school, suddenly wanting to reread them all, just to reconnect, just to refresh.

She was having so many thoughts! How would she get them all down on paper into proposals, outlines, workable flowcharts? She needed to invent a system to catch all these ideas: the public programs, the public-private partnerships, the synergies, even just ways Renny could run the department better. She needed to enlist the help of that intern from Columbia whom Renny was sending her way, the one he probably plucked because he was Puerto Rican, just like Renny. Renny isn’t so bad! she found herself thinking, though she usually hated the man — well, no, okay, not hated, chafed under the man. . her boss, for God’s sake! But Renny could be funny! And warm! All his “ay coños!” when he was fed up with red tape and the bullshit stonewalling and inertia out of Koch’s office. She was going to reach out to Renny today somehow, touch his arm, set up a lunch date — once she had some of those ideas down on paper!

In the mirror, she examined her hair, her clothes. She tore off her jacket and the metallic-gray blouse with the bow tie and pulled out the purple silk shell with the deep scoop neck, put on a gold chain over it. Why did she always separate day and night clothes? Why couldn’t she bring just a little bit of luster into that drab office? She picked out a slightly higher pair of heels, grabbed her brush and the hairspray, and made her hair a little bigger and looser, bumping up the black feathers on either side. A darker lip gloss. Work was more fun this way! Goal number one for today, Wednesday, May 6: Have fun! Do the work, but have fun!

Sam came in, sweaty, once she was downstairs, nibbling a piece of toast — she wasn’t very hungry; so much for the all-natural peanut butter she’d usually smear on it — downing a quick cup of coffee, and going over memos for meetings later that day (the infant mortality rate summit in early July, the herpes thing, the problem with the restaurants in Chinatown). He was her hunky Brooklyn boy, her strong-jawed, dark curly-haired Elliott Gould, her lawyer man with the soul of an artist. She was surprised, and pleased, by the surge of attraction she felt for him at 8:14 A.M. — a time they were usually both so busy getting themselves and Emmy out of the house they barely managed a good-bye peck on the cheek.

“Come here, you big sweaty lug,” she said, putting down her papers, slouching back, and parting her legs. Which led her to another thought: She wasn’t a girl from Queens anymore; she was an Upper East Side woman! She’d made it! She never really thought about that!

Sam looked at her funny, but intrigued. “I thought you didn’t like me sweaty. Especially when you’re all pulled together for work.”

She stood up, kicking off her shoes. “Things change,” she said, aiming to sound smoky.

His eyes narrowed at her — a little dumbfounded? A smidge concerned? Then a smile of gratitude bloomed. “No bullshitting me, Aves?”

She shook her head slowly, reaching for him, pulling off his sweaty old Cardozo Law T-shirt. She wasn’t bullshitting. Oh my God, her work clothes were coming off! This was happening — suddenly they were on the kitchen floor. “Holy shit, Aves!” exclaimed Sam. “What the fuck!”