Bruce Bauman - Broken Sleep

At the corner of 9th and B we stopped in front of the Christodora. A miniskyscraper built in the ’20s, it had fallen into a shambled shell of itself — like me, now. After a fire, the city had it condemned. It got a makeover later, in the ’90s, with the “whitey-fication”—that’s what Nathaniel called gentrification. I often snuck around the boards and yellow tape and foraged inside, peeling off the blue-and-white wallpaper with its images of St. Christine and collecting ornaments for ready-mades and collages.

“Let’s go in.” I stuck a finger through the belt loop of Nathaniel’s pants and tugged at him. We stepped over two grizzled fellows with their bottles of Thunderbird couched between their legs, sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder in the doorway. The ground-floor rooms were shooting galleries lit by candles. The higher you climbed, the emptier it got. A few rooms were lit by the sudden flash of hash pipes. Light from streetlamps flickered through the cracked windows. We climbed the staircase to the ninth floor and found an empty room with a view of the East River and Brooklyn to one side and the World Trade Center to the other. We made love, which, this time, was dreamy. He understood the pleasure of my pleasure in being multiorgasmic. After, I climbed onto the sill facing south toward the river and the Statue of Liberty. The sky, a mix of Wolf Man — movie blue-blackness and low, foamy white clouds with a peekaboo moon imbued the city with an eerie tranquility. Nathaniel squeezed me against his chest.

“I want to go with you. I don’t want you to disappear on me for another five years. I’ll even skip my show.” He smiled almost sardonically. “What? Are you living with someone? I don’t care.”

“No, no one else. It’s been impossible for me to keep up a relationship. I’ve had to move and I can’t tell the truth to anyone”

“I already know the truth, and I’m my own movable fiesta.”

“Salome.” He bowed his head. “If the Feds make a deal, I hope to get some time with my mom and then it’s off to prison. If not, it’s back into hiding. It’s the opposite of your razzmatazz New York life. No readings or openings. If you dress like this,” he teased, “ you might get arrested.”

“I can do it. I can. It’d be good for Alchemy, too. You have to meet him. You’ll love him.” I could tell he was thinking, You can’t and why would you … for me?

“You’ll see. I can do it!” Suddenly, I began to tear up. He thought I believed he didn’t want me to come with him, but no, I was overtaken by a moment of clairvoyance. Over the next few days I needed to spend whatever time I could with him.

He wouldn’t divulge where he was staying, but we rendezvoused the next day and went to the Met with Alchemy. As we strolled into the Impressionist room, these two teenage girls ran up to Alchemy. One of them ran her fingers over the smooth skin of his perfect face and practically undressed him with her gaze. Nathaniel whispered, “Is it always like this?”

“Yes.” I didn’t think much of it. Little girls, women, old queens — they all wanted to fuck him. No one ever said it aloud, but I could always smell lust in all its pleasant and nefarious variations. Incidentally, or maybe not so incidentally, the Collier Layne psychvoyeurs have often gone shrink-style ballistic (no yelling allowed) at my blasé attitude toward sex. Though they’ve tried to conceal it, a few of them almost popped their penis out of their pants when I elaborated on some of my salacious anecdotes.

The next day Nathaniel took us to the baseball game at Shea Stadium. Alchemy’s first. He was so excited. I drew pictures of the field and drank beer that tasted like vinegar. On the subway ride home, Nathaniel gave us — mainly me — his fulmination on why standing up for the national anthem was some form of collective brainwashing. It irked him that he had stood up, against his principles, because he couldn’t afford to be singled out. The born explainer needed to explain to someone. He smelled like my dad’s old leather-bound encyclopedia when he got on one of his unending explain-the-world ragas.

We got off the subway at 23rd Street. Alchemy and I were going back to the Chelsea and Nathaniel to wherever he was holing up for the night. Alchemy reached up and hugged Nathaniel, and I thought, Hilda is always telling me Alchemy needs a man around. Maybe she’s right .

We arranged to meet the next day at Fanelli’s in SoHo before going to see my new work. The opening was the following Saturday.

Alchemy and I walked blissfully cross-town to the Chelsea. The desk clerk handed me a note in an envelope from the firm of Bickley & Schuster. “Be at my home at 11 A.M. Urgent.”

This was a first for Billy Jr. All of my previous interactions, and those of Dad and Hilda, had been with Bicks Sr. I wasn’t one bit anxious. It’d been a few years since I’d seen Greta at the bistro, and I thought maybe she’d discovered a dose of grandmotherly devotion and desired to see Alchemy. So I took him with me.

Billy Jr., his wife, Lorraine, and their ten-year-old son, William Bickley III (sweet kid, Billy the Third) all lived in the same building as Bicks Sr., on 64th Street off Central Park West. Right around the corner from the West Side Y, a notorious gay pickup spot, and probably where Bickley Sr. did his queenly business. Billy Jr.’s apartment was, like so many Upper East and West Side digs, Town & Country austere, immaculate. Beneath the tasteful furniture and accoutrements, I sensated the encrusted scum of immorality.

“Thank you for coming on such short notice.” The lilt in Billy Jr.’s voice betrayed his real sentiment, which was, “Take a cyanide pill, why don’t you?” He led me down the hall and we stopped outside two closed doors.

“Lorraine,” he called out to his wife, “come fetch the boy and have Marcella prepare some milk and cookies for him.” Lorraine was a thin woman ten, fifteen years younger than Jr. She reached for Alchemy’s hand. “He’s adorable.” Alchemy eyed her with some suspicion. I bent over and whispered in his ear, “It’s fine. Don’t let them take you out of the apartment without me.”

Billy Jr. opened the doors. We entered a study with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on three walls and, on the fourth, a bank of windows and a brick fireplace. He pointed to two peppermint-green-and-white striped divans. I kneeled on the left divan, leaned my arms on the seatback, and took in the expansive view of Central Park. This Philistine, I’m sure, never appreciated its beauty.

He lit a cigarette and asked if I wanted one. I declined. He remained standing.

“ Junior , where is your father?” He was about fifty then and moved with the audacity of a once healthy frat boy gone soft and paunchy. He was a homicider. His putridity contaminated anyone close to him.

“My father is turning seventy-five soon. He’s semiretired to the family compound in Palm Beach. It is out of deference to his wishes that I am speaking to you.”

Despite or maybe because of the visceral indecency of his work, I never felt like Bickley Sr. judged me beyond the difficulties my existence caused him and his “client.” But Billy Jr. considered himself superior to me.

“Junior, you smell like you have a question.” His question had the offensive odor of rotten eggs. “So what is it?”

“Why did you bring the boy?”

“I thought you were the boy.”

“Don’t be snide, Salome. I know all about you.”

“You think you know me. All you know is what’s in some crackpot file that I’m not even allowed to read.” We glared at each other. “And if you mean my son, Alchemy, Greta’s grandson, I thought perhaps she wanted to see him.”