Alexander & the Women

1. & 2.

She was a teacher who brought American students to Europe, where she acted as their instructor and tour guide. She spoke English nearly flawlessly with a slight but noticeable accent. We met each other one morning in a Northern European city I was visiting during a school holiday, and we ended up spending that entire day together. She offered to let me stay in the flat she was renting, and I accepted. We were both free and unengaged, and we spent our days walking down the cold streets with our coats buttoned up, stopping off in the cafes for a smoke or visiting little shops and boutiques. The city was a famous one—historic and drab, with a language something like English.

She was rich—her father was a shrewd businessman, wealthy even by her country’s standards—and she had all the impetuous, flighty selfishness her security afforded her. And yet I never tired of her, and even now I grow lonesome when I remember her clipped, uneven gait, as if she were lugging some invisible burden. We discussed books and films and played slow games of chess, and the days slid into nights.

One of the last nights before I was due to leave the city we went walking together along a narrow canal. She was wearing a coarsely textured greenish coat that went down to her knees. We moved swiftly through the cold air, past the glitter of lights reflecting off slow-moving water. I knew we probably wouldn’t see each other again for a long time (if ever), though we had agreed to keep in touch. She had vague plans to visit the some of the major cities in the United States sometime in next couple years. She stopped off in front of a building, walked up a set of stairs, and disappeared.

I knew I should have followed her, but I didn’t, and she didn’t come back out to look for me. I stood facing away from the building, watching the patches of light as they broke against the canal’s greasy surface. Across the way, framed by a window, I saw the shape of a woman. Her room was dimly lit, but I could make out her silhouette, and I saw that she wasn’t wearing a blouse, just a brassiere. She sat in a chair, gazing out her window. She didn’t see me, and I watched her with my hands balled in my coat pocket, not wanting her to see me. I didn’t go over to her—better her than my erstwhile companion—I just watched, feeling colder and colder, chilled to the core by the wind blowing through the streets of that sad, ugly city.

3.

She gave me a parting gift—an undershirt that belonged to her husband, with whom I was acquainted. I understood perfectly well that she and I would probably never see each other again, though neither of us said so explicitly.

Soon I would be gone, and all I would have of her would be the undershirt, a single photograph I had taken, and a couple items I had stolen from her while she slept. I keep those items on a bookshelf now and rarely look at them. Sometimes I’m tempted to just throw them out. I can’t bring myself to look at the photograph, either—I’m too ashamed. I was wrong to have taken it.

4.

The building had scaffolding veiling its entire facade. The framework was made of green metal pipes bolted to each other at right and 45 degree angles, with a wooden platform on the second floor. I was dressed from head to toe in black—a black button-down, cheap black slacks, black leather shoes with the heels worn down at an angle. Though it was past midnight, people were still walking on the sidewalks, and I loitered until I was sure that my climbing the scaffolding would attract the minimum possible attention.

I pulled myself up and up and weaseled through a small gap between the platform and the building. I hauled myself onto a dirty ledge. It was suddenly dark—the street was lit under the scaffolding, but not above it. I clapped my hands and picked my way across the platform to one of the glossy black fire escapes. I walked up the steps and crouched by a third floor window. Through the window, a woman was sitting on a gray sofa. She had just taken a shower—her hair was wet and she was wearing a towel wrapped up, in the feminine way, under her armpits. She didn’t notice me—I didn’t want her to just yet. I watched her, planning my next move. I knew she was alone in the apartment: she lived with a man, but he wasn’t home now. I waited a moment longer, reached out, and touched the glass.

4.6 Alexander Visits Texas

1.

Once I was staying at a motel somewhere in Texas (even then I didn’t know the town’s name) and I woke up with a man standing at the foot of my bed, telling me that the police might be coming but I didn’t need to worry about it. When the police come I should just be cool. Scant specifics were provided, and I was too exhausted and grumpy to ask for clarification. After a short vague panic I resigned myself to whatever fate I would meet and put a pillow over my head so he wouldn’t bother me anymore. That was years ago.

2. 

My phone rings and I wander into a bedroom. Maria-Elisa seems upset and isn’t making very much sense. She says the police might be there when I come back.

3.

The perpetrator is crouched on the stoop, peering through the window and shouting something like, “Give me the fucking key” when I roll up with Mithun. I get out and mosey past like I’m on my way elsewhere. When I’m out of sight of the man, Mithun pulls up next to me and rolls down the window. I look over my shoulder and saunter to the window, resting my elbows on the edge. He offers to drive around with me a bit until the coast is clear. I decline.

Maria-Elisa cracks open the side door and I slip in before she slams it shut and pulls the bolt. She shoves me into her bedroom, closing the door behind us. I’m juggling two six packs. She’s like, “Hide that shit.” I stuff one into a hamper and cover it with a sweatshirt. I push the other one behind the hamper, partially under a nightstand or cabinet.

4.

Basically out of nowhere, the woman looks me in the eye and says, “Your friend is very handsome.” She’s referring to me. She’s sitting on an armchair upholstered in a reddish tapestry depicting unicorns. I’m slouching on a loveseat across from her, wearing a teal nylon taffeta windbreaker I bought at Brooklyn Flea for $3. The appropriate response to compliments of that kind from strangers is “Thank you,” which is what I say. “He’s really handsome,” she says, still staring me in the eye. I’m like, “Gosh, thanks.” She says, “You’re really handsome. Look at you. You’re really cute.” I laugh and say, “Wow, thanks.” I don’t look at her eight-year-old. I basically don’t look at anyone.

Apparently she tried the same tack with Chris a few months back, when Maria was standing right there. For Maria, that had been the last straw.

5.

The woman wanders into another room as if lost in thought. There is a half-full beer on a table that has cartoony art (including a winking Sailor Moon) drawn on it in with magic marker. She regards the beer, picks it up, and slurps it down in three gulps, as if she were at a bar and all her friends were getting up to leave.

Her husband has stopped hollering by now, but we’re keeping the house in lock-down until the police arrive. I nurse fantasies of a sudden panic as he smashes a window.

6.

Maria-Elisa has a small pink device that looks something like a computer charger. It has a node you stick to an object, and that object becomes a resonant speaker. We got the coffee table to play KTRU. “Isn’t that cool!” she says. “You could stick it to anything!” She hands it to the kid, who is obviously charmed in an oblique, lackluster way. The entire night, this is the closest I see him to being pleased. He reminds me of a student cautiously enjoying a classroom demonstration. He tries to stick the node to a beer bottle cap, but that doesn’t work very well. Maria hands him something, possibly a lamp.

The other experiment we have is a tall hexagonal glass that Maria-Elisa fills with a mixture of milk and dish soap. The idea is that drops of food coloring will swirl, which they do. We affix the speaker to the glass and turn on some bass-heavy music, but the vibration doesn’t have a substantial effect on the green drops of food coloring, which fan out a bit and stop.

The mother has collapsed on an armchair and is swinging from defiant to maudlin and back, over and over and over. Just as the kid is about to get distracted, she starts up again. “It’s my fucking house!” she mutters. “I’m going. I’m going. It’s my fucking house! I gotta go.” She’ll lean forward and brace her hands on the chair’s arms. Then we’d have to talk her out of it. “I really just don’t think that’s a very good idea. Come on, the police should be here any minute. Hey, what if we stick it to a pot!”

7.

Maria and Chris start singing “Happy Birthday,” but neither really commits. I join in sheepishly toward the end, so ashamed I could melt. It falls completely flat. Maria saves the day by breaking into a rousing joke. “You look like a gorilla and smell like one too!” Both the kid and the mother think this is funny—the woman starts to reminisce in very vague terms.

The police finally arrive, two or so hours after the first call was placed. A lady cop asks questions and points the flashlight beam at the woman’s face. The woman is plastered and not making much sense. The cop directs questions to the child, who is standing next to his mother in the doorway. We discover that it’s not the kid’s actual birthday. His family celebrates it in January because on the date of his actual birthday his father left them. It’s also up to him to describe the dispute: the husband bullied and shoved his wife outside and pushed her into a car; she knocked her head on the bumper.

The cop tells the woman to stay in the house and lock the doors. There is no sign of the husband outside: the police will search. The woman goes out anyway, and the lady cop shouts at her to go back inside and lock the door. When the door is closed, the woman calls the cop a bitch.

Later, Maria is livid. Apparently this is a thing: when the police arrive for a domestic disturbance call and find a drunk victim, they are much less accommodating. “I told her! I told her! Why’d we let her have that goddamn beer?”

8.

The entire night is spent negotiating the line between bearing witness and exploitative voyeurism (a line you might be negotiating now, as you read this). I’m taking mental notes constantly; this might make it in the novel. I spend a couple hours practicing a low-affect, dead-eyed, non-agentive bearing.

9.

The kid goes berserk and shoves his mother into a table. She is so drunk by now as to be totally useless. He’s screaming things like, “Mama, you’re drunk,” and “Do you WANT him to hurt you?!” We’re like, “What the fuck,” but don’t intervene. He keeps pushing her, bracing himself at an angle and keeping his head low. He doesn’t mean to knock her over, just to keep her away from the door. She’s sloppy and stumbles, jostling the beer bottles and almost knocking them over, but not quite. The kid is hysterical. Maria and I walk into another room.

10.

She’s finally passed out on the sofa. The kid, who is awake, cuddles with her. We’re outside smoking and standing with our weight on one leg. A Technicolor, life-sized papier-mâché monstrosity called “Hair Fantasy” is leaning against the side stoop. It was brought home from an art installation. I had run out to meet Mark when he rolled up, intending to explain the situation to him (which I did). As we stand around by Hair Fantasy, he imitates me to comic effect: catching his breath as if he is about to begin talking, then staring into middle space, then catching his breath as if he is about to begin talking, then staring into middle space, maybe five times in quick succession.

11.

At long last the woman’s sister rolls up on a three-wheel bicycle. She shakes the woman awake and bullies her quite viciously before sending her home. The sister takes the kid to spend the night at her place.

Rid of them, we booze until past 3am. This has been all told a two to three hour ordeal. I fall asleep on the couch, wearing my lumberjack PJs that were a gift from a friend’s mother. It’s still dark when a knock on the door wakes me. I’m naked from the waist up, so I pull my windbreaker on and zip it up to the clavicle. The woman is standing outside and seems sober. “Is my son in there?” I gather my mental energies and say, very slowly, “He was taken by your sister last night and is staying with her.” She thanks me and walks away. I bolt the door and shed the jacket, careful not to knock against the table as I shuffle around my luggage to the sofa.

The next morning I wake up at 8 or 8:30 and can’t get back to sleep. I empty beer bottles into the sink four at a time and put the empties into a brown grocery bag for recycling. I do some of the dishes as well.

12.

That night, Maria and I are in an apartment by Rice, visiting with an old friend and some of her friends. We basically tell the whole story to three people, who are all sitting on a sofa across from us. When we are finished, one of the listeners takes a poll: what ethnicity or, like, race did they think this woman was? The way Maria and I had told it, it had been ambiguous. He points to his friend.

“I was thinking Hispanic.”

“White.”

“Okay, see, I thought she was black. So which was it?”

Maria gives a clever answer, and everybody laughs. We go play Settlers of Catan, and my team wins.

13.

The next night J_____ is over. She tells us about a composition written by a Rice professor (“like the whitest guy ever”) that she once had to perform. The first movement was called “Prayer,” or something. The second was called “Holocaust.” The last was called “Klezmer,” and at the very end all the musicians were supposed to clap their hands and say, in unison, “Opa” or some equally Eastern-European-sounding exclamation (I can’t for the life of me remember what the exact word was).

“I literally almost walked out,” she said, looking over her shoulder. “I was so pissed.”