swimming in a glass tank behind the bar at the Coral
Room
in West Chelsea. I go with her, watch her hair fan
out in
tentacles when she front flips. On her breaks, in a
toga of
cheap towels, she drinks Stella from the bottle & I
stare
at little beads of water perched in fine hairs above
her lip.
After her shift one night, up on Alice's roof, I'm
tallying
poses. We are snapshot ready & fade cool into our
technicolor backdrop—everything jagged and
jeweled.
It is the beginning of summer in New York; the
clocks
have gone blank. We smooth out our clothes & walk
to work, drinking cold-pressed coffees from Atlas on
2nd Avenue. The air isn't thick yet. We're dirtier
than the
powdered groomed girls off to Goldman Sachs, but
preppy against the punks eating donuts in front of
Trash &
Vaudeville, holding on to what's left of St. Mark's
for dear life.
It's a feigned last stand: each of us, these days,
has an exit
strategy, rehearsed & crouched around our ears. The
warm
stillness, too, is posturing. The clouds pull apart,
roll low & away.
Nathalie went from pajamas & ponytail to lipsticked
sophisticate
in less than 20 minutes,
waiting every morning on the front porch for Fabien.
Thierry, slick, spun German techno and '80s Britpop
at the discotheque,
carried his vinyl in black briefcases.
Sitting on the stone overpass, Florence imagined
Paris, smoked
miniature cigarettes—Capris?—sketched
dress fashions, Chanel logo tattooed on her wrist.
Melanie, sweet songbird with political parents.
Daydreamer in sea villa.
Her brother Julien, brooding, budding expatriate.
Tried to woo American
girls with moped, love letters,
intensité français.
Strange Audrey, recluse in mountain outskirts,
banned from nightclubs
due to turtlenecks, unkempt eyebrows,
chic snobbery.
& Peter, report card all Cs, quaint English learned
from old movies,
plastic-sleeved wallet photo of Mickey
Rourke, prayer card
for dead twin sister. Clouded brown eyes wide,
westward.
She pushes her i.d. toward me, a photo with a
different face, California
in blue bold. A few months before sixteen,
before the photographer came
to the house & arranged her clumps of curls just
so; the birthday that
found her gowned & blacked out for the doctor
who specialized in this
sort of thing; her mother nodding bedside; the
therapist who gave her
a pat on the back & a packet of Skittles; the
days she spent dark, hand
to new bones. I take in the idea: second version
of self. It has nothing to do
with you she says & snatches the license
back. This happened to me.
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