Andrea Dworkin - Ice And Fire

returns: drinks for tomorrow night. I return: speed for tomorrow. We are bankers, saving up, past our immediate needs.

She returns: some money toward the rent. She walks around

the room, her hips very, very tough. The cigarette dangles.

The music plays. Friends drop in and visit. She gets a glint in

her eye: disappears: comes back to buy a round of coffees,

some cake, some sandwiches.

Outside it is crowded, dark, hot, the sticky wet of the city

air. The streets are overrun with tourists. The tourist joints are

flowing over. They come to see this life.

Too hot to hang out on a stoop: so we go to the West

Village to a bright pink coffeehouse, especially on weekends,

rich tourists, rich hippie types, and then, at the end, when only

the scum is left hovering in doorways, just plain punks who

wanna fuck.

N returns: she orders a milkshake, sodas, buys cigarettes.

Poor R is going to join us for a cup of coffee: and someone

N has met on the street, A. He is not tall, not short, thin but

not noticeably, nice face but nothing special, intense big brown

eyes, Brazilian. He is street stuff, not the idle rich, but with

manners. There is polite conversation all around. Poor R considers this a formal date with N. A is there to meet me, to win my approval, because he is N ’s new friend, picked up on the

street but she likes him or I wouldn’t be meeting him now.

The walls are pink and dirty. The air conditioning is not

doing so good. The place is crowded. There is only money for

coffee: we have coffee: and coffee: and coffee. N and poor R

disappear, round the corner a block away to R ’s apartment: a

date. A and I talk. It is working out. He has a lot to say. I

don’t mind listening. It is a sad story. Something about how he

was a dancer and in love with a beautiful virgin in Brazil but

her parents oppose their marriage and so he goes on tour and

is in an accident and loses his hand and has punctures all over

his body. He only has one hand. Then about his months in the

hospital and how he couldn’t work anymore as a dancer and

how the girl left him because he was maimed and how he was

arrested for something he didn’t do and ran away from the

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country altogether and became a fugitive because he couldn’t

make anyone believe him, it was a murder he was wanted for.

He was an artful storyteller because this story took nearly

four hours to tell. I cried. His accent was thick. He spoke

softly and deliberately. He didn’t live around here. He lived

around Times Square. Yeah he had some women out working

for him: old girlfriends but no one he was living with now: but

with N it was different. She comes back without poor R but

loaded with money: poor R got two-timed again: and we drink

coffee and eat and have more coffee and we talk there in the

pink coffeehouse, the jukebox gone quiet. Outside the streets

are emptying, it is nearly dawn. I go to the storefront alone,

thinking about pimps, nervous.*

A sits in the coffeehouse wearing a coat, as if cold. He hides

his arm. It is shrivelled at the elbow. He has tremendous poli-

tesse and dignity. He is not handsome and not not handsome.

He has some gentleness. He smokes like N, like me, cigarettes

one after another, but he holds them longer in his one hand.

He does things slowly: sits very still: slightly stooped: black

hair straight and framing his face in a kind of modified pageboy for boys. His lips are thick but not particularly sensual.

He has watery eyes. His skin is an ochre color. He wears dark

colors. He is intelligent, well-spoken: soft-spoken. When N

and poor R leave he doesn’t blink or flinch or react: he is

harmonious with how we do things: he imposes nothing: he

has a sense of courtesy not unlike N ’s: he seems removed from

physical violence but he can’t be. I watch every muscle move,

trying to figure it out. He can’t be. N comes back and orders

food for us. Poor R manages a stunning ignorance: she has

gone on a date with her lover, just like other girls on a Friday

night. N had left her some hours before, I could see by the

volume of food and the new packs of cigarettes and the new

rounds of coffee. Actual loose dollars are taken out in a

rumpled pile. N gives me some money and some grass and

some cigarettes before she goes off with A. I walk home alone

in the dawn, the streets nearly empty now, the heat beginning

to build for the new day: thinking about pimps: a bit disturbed.

*

6z

N and A are now officially friends and lovers. This means it

isn’t for money. This means he visits us both and talks. This

means we listen to music together. This means he and N go off

alone for whole nights.

He is concerned about us, down in this violent neighborhood. He is concerned about us, so poor, and for what? We should be making real money after all, not small change for

drinks and pukey drugs. We should have enough to finish our

film. He is quiet, gentle, concerned. He is worried for us. He

doesn’t think we are quite safe down here.

He seems to adore N. He is nice to me. He is a good friend.

He brings presents now and then, something nice, a bottle of

wine, like a person.

At night we roam together sometimes: meet his friends at

some late-night joint: the jukebox plays Billie, and we sit while

he talks to his friends, sometimes about us, we can’t understand, especially to one of his friends, a Latino, dark-haired, big moustache, long hair, machismo. They buy us food. We

meet here late at night. A is who we are with. No one asks us

anything. Sometimes he tells us to play something on the

jukebox. He gets us something to eat. It is friendly and not

friendly. It is tense. What are we there for? The men look at

us: make remarks we don’t understand. They play music and

smoke and stare at us. It is ominous. I don’t want to be turned

over to them. It seems possible. There is an edge somewhere.

A sits there polite as ever, our friend. N seems to trust him. He

sits and watches too. The blues vibrate from the machine. The

room is tiny. There are two or three tables against a wall

where we sit. A sits on the outside of the tables, we are blocked

in against the wall, the men stand around. There are a lot of

them, all crowded in, and then spilling over to the sidewalk.

Billie keeps us company while the men stare and do business.

We are quiet.

*

A’s best friend doesn’t say much. He never talks directly to

either of us. N sleeps with both of them by now. She says they

have quite a routine. She says the puncture marks on A’s body

are holes that go right through his skin. Sometimes she does

their laundry or stays with them a few days.

*

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