Getaway

"...But I was out to enjoy the sights,

There was the Bow'ry ablaze with lights;

I had one of the Devil's own nights!

I'll never go there anymore!"

                - 'The Bowery', P. Gaunt & C. Hoyt, 1891

Squeezed out of the club by inches and onto the sidewalk. There had to be more elegant ways of exiting the Bowery Electric.

My ears pinged. A flat, metallic tang of vodka soured my tongue. I hadn’t eaten in any adequate way. The drinks thudded in my stomach louder than they should have.

A mean gloss lay over lights and faces and I felt my teeth rub drily against lips thin from lack of water. I pulled my shirt back into place, it had twisted around while I elbowed through the mob. I felt grateful to be outside. Still it’d be hard to walk this off and come out crisp, no guarantees.

July choked the avenue. Ten pm and the air was thick but mostly fresh. I filled my lungs with it. I willed my head to clear. If possible, to brighten. There was a night off to enjoy and my only obligation, a friend’s fundraiser at Bowery Electric, had been met. After chatting in polite screams, she had teetered off in designer stilts through a crevice between shoulders. I was glad to donate but talking to her over the bass line was like flirting underwater.

On the sidewalk the blue door of the club clanged behind me. The steel, brick and mortar served like a ribcage and muffled the untiring pulse within.

It was a getaway night.

A night off and nowhere to be and no one to meet. Being somewhere new and slightly off-limits. You got away with it. It’s tastier that way. When the unfolding story leads you.

I live for the getaway.

Stretching off in either direction was the Bowery. I had never really roamed it. Around and through, but never along.

I rubbed my face and breathed the haze away. Hands in pockets, I started walking.

From old pictures I'd seen, there used to be twin canopies of steel and thunder above, as north and southbound El trains blocked the sun below and rattled the windows up high. Those images showed a latticework of ugly beauty I wished I'd known. So I stared up and imagined them. It sobered me a bit.

Eyelevel to my left was a coffee shop patio with fenced-in seating. From there Apple logos glowed on laptops, hovering in the dark like creamy grey fireflies. That struck me.

I'd seen the name ‘Bowery’ itself cause either a shudder or a wistful sigh from those who’d known it. Sometimes a twist of both as the happy-bad years drifted through their eyes, with stories of junkies and murders and stripped cars on cinder blocks and absent police and phone booths that reeked of piss and above all the fast and thrilling genesis of great music. To hear them tell it the Bowery was so authentic, it'd kill you. And now that was gone, and wasn't that a goddamn shame, they said.

If there had always been badness in its bones, the Bowery had since purged the marrow clean, and flushed the flavor away with it. Hell of a trade-off.

I kept walking. Crowds were pressed into sticky clumps by the July fist. Weave around the crowds. Push through the haze.

Two or three blocks north, maybe less, and I stopped beneath a luminous clock face.

It hung from the black iron and beveled glass awning of an old train station in Europe. The awning cast wide shelter from off a russet brick front and twin glass doors frosted with the letters ‘BH’. Alongside the entrance was a row of red cruiser bicycles with white rim tires and wire baskets in front. They shined and were all stationed in a row and at the same tilt. Flanking the glass doors were a pair of cylindrical lanterns, ornate metal, Spanish Moroccan. There was an ebb and tide of purposeful walks through the entrance of The Bowery Hotel.

I stood there. Why was I resisting the strong pull inside? There was a story in there. The scent of it wafted out the doors. Still I dug in my heels and wondered why.

It was plain. I couldn’t justify the expense. Numbers are stubborn things.

It pained me to boil it down so crudely. No one filing in or out of the hotel seemed weighted with that thought.

“Excuse me?”

A slight, singsong girl’s voice from behind me, clear and amused. Her tone seemed to peer around to pull me face front.

She was a short brunette with only a toehold in her early twenties. Her figure was obscured somewhat by a strapless black summer dress, a sack dress with a drawstring just above her breasts. It ended at mid-thigh and she wore simple sandals. The legs were strong. I had a feeling she was proud of her legs, had almost a boy’s stance, was a good runner and swimmer, but maybe worried they were meaty if she crossed them. I brought my eyes back up with a speed that made it too obvious and felt like a tool. I said hello through a grin.

“So you might think I’m weird...” She half-rolled her eyes and throat-laughed and expected me to defuse.

“I doubt it. I have a high threshold,” I said, defusing.

Her unpainted mouth crooked up. “Oh, really?”

“But don’t let me stop you from trying,” I said.

“Ha. So I’m sure you’ve got plans? Or friends…”

“A few. You’d like them.”

She laughed and rocked on her toes.

“As in you’re meeting people and so you probably can’t, but…”

“…But?”

“…BUT,” she giggled, “We were wondering if you’d like to join us for a glass of wine?”

I paused and kept the smile and let my eyes travel, fast.

Her hands were clasped behind her back as good girls do on the fronts of cereal boxes and it pulled the black cotton of the dress tighter. She wasn’t wearing a bra and her breasts were full and young and heavy, the cleavage not rolling out but down. Eyes up, boy.

“…We?,” I asked.

“OH,” she laughed again at herself. For the third time. Then she jerked a thumb over her shoulder, a slim bracelet spinning up her forearm. “’We’ being my uncle and myself. We’re sitting right over there. See?”

Over her left shoulder she made fast eye contact with a man seated at a table, so I resumed.

The skin was pale enough to be burned at Thanksgiving. Her chocolate brown hair was parted at the center, bobbed at the jaw line and needle-straight. A ladybug barrette of colored glass was tucked neatly into the left side of her high forehead.

“Wait,” I said, “You… you just said your uncle, right?”

She mm-hmmed as her grey-green eyes fired with an odd light and her grin swelled her cheeks. She was a little cherubic, if that angel had slipped off the cloud and hit her head.

I was suddenly certain she wore no underwear at all. I was unsure how I knew. The timing of that thought was poor, but manageable.

She smiled at my smiling.

“So. How ‘bout it?” she dared.

She was familiar though I’d never seen her before.

“I’ve gotta say…” I started.

That was it. She was one of those ambling college girls you see in the park when everyone else is at work, and she’s on the cusp of discovery. There’s a shine of health, a bravado and a fragility, and a madness. They are delicious and one of the best bad ideas the city has to offer.

“Sounds like fun,” I said. “Lead the way.”

“Really?,” she sang.

“You knew it was a safe bet.”

She tilted her head. “Why’s that?”

“You didn’t send your uncle over to invite me. By the way, I’m Eric.”

I extended my hand and she met it and told me her name.

I’ll call her Cali.

She spun on me with a flare and the low, rapid jostle from under the dress told me I was right. Cali turned to make sure I was following. She needn’t have bothered.

She said, “We’re sitting over here.”

Cali led me over to the sidewalk terrace of the hotel’s restaurant, Gemma. The brick ended and became slick, pea green tile. The awning was striped brown and cream. On the fabric’s front, the name was stamped in gold block letters. Behind its scalloped trim, amber bare bulbs glowed wanly. Down from the balcony wound long arms of wisteria.

The portals into Gemma were so large as to make almost the entire place open-air. Waiters in starched white aprons over black pants glided in and out, and had the appraising look of surgeons.

Cali and I arrived at the scuffed wooden table. She wheeled around it and retook her spot. She looked a little triumphant.

A man in his late forties was seated sideways to the table, ankle propped on his knee, with one arm resting on the surface and fingertips at the stem of a glass of chilled white wine. In the other hand he thumbed an iPhone. He was fixed on it. He also knew we were there without looking, a flick of the eyes and a tiny curl at the corner of his mouth.

Everything visible about him was polished and precise. What he permitted you to see was enviable. He was handsome and fit and wore his age well, with the heft of experience and none of the sag. His posture in the chair had just enough slouch to be carefree, the bearing of a man who only skims the bill before signing.

The haircut was summer short and classic, brushed aside with fingers, with metal filings in the chestnut brown. His face was the graceful aging of an Ivy League heartbreaker. Even-featured and naturally tanned, with light white lines at the corners of the eyes, he was the sort of former track star that weary wives murmur over at college reunions. Whoever tailored his dark, short-sleeved button down knew his craft, as it managed to mold and hang in equal measure. Khaki shorts, leather flip-flops and the too-busy face of an Omega watch completed the catalog appeal.

I sat down. He looked up from his phone and managed an easy grin with a little vague surprise in it. I wasn’t buying.

We shook hands across the table. A flash faster than a finger snap went between them.  She leaned back in her chair with elbows resting on the wooden arms and fingers laced. The air purred. Something older than my presence at this table was there, then gone.

Cali introduced us.

I’ll call him Uncle Gula.

“Happy you could join us, Eric,” he said, laying his iPhone on the table.

“It’s a little out of the blue, I’ll admit, but thanks for the invite.”

“Give my lovely niece here credit for that,” he nodded at her, “She spotted you standing there and just had to have you.”

Smiles can be pointed. I was looking at one.

“I can’t say I blame her, but you know how impulsive college girls can be,” he added.

Uncle Gula grinned. His energy revved quietly. From my left I felt her wattage dim a fraction. I noted it without looking.

“’Have you’ while we celebrate her graduation, that is. Don’t misunderstand,” he said.

I congratulated Cali. She thanked me but stared at him and thought things she didn’t share.

“We’ve been so lazy here, after dinner,” Uncle Gula offered. “We didn’t want to give up the table.” He looked to her and she nodded from a corner of her chair.

“Holding court?,” I asked.

“You pay for the privilege,” he smirked. Uncle Gula motioned for a waiter. “Ever eaten at Gemma, Eric?”

“Afraid not, no, though I can see the appeal.” I didn’t think he was really asking.

“Ah, it’s incredible. I’ll order another bottle. Join us? White alright?”

“I wouldn’t say no. And yes, white is great,” I said.

Cali sat taller in her chair. “That was the deal,” she said pointedly.

She looked at Uncle Gula. It was the look of a child who finds the rules switched on her mid-game.

“I’d have said yes anyway, drink or not,” I said to her directly.

I felt him watchful and coiled in the slouch. So I defused again. It was my job.

“What’s good on the menu?,” I went on, cringing at myself but being sure to open it to both.

“Oh. Were you hungry?”

“No, no, I ate.” I lied. “But I’m often in the neighborhood.” I lied twice. It may or may not have been obvious.

The waiter promptly arrived. Uncle Gula murmured and pointed to something in the wine list. The waiter sped away and he turned back to me.

“Loved the dayboat scallops. Very fresh, light,” he said.

There was a beat. It was the natural space where Cali should have leaped in. She didn’t. I wondered why.

I turned to her and asked what she had eaten.

“The chicken,” she replied, and sounded embarrassed about it.

“I’m sort of a picky eater,” Cali apologized with a shrug and her voice receded. She was girlish, small, staring. Our talk under the clock face a few yards away might as well have been miles away. But then, he hadn’t been there.

I looked back to Uncle Gula, who blinked at her once, twice, in a tolerant way. He then switched back to me and fired up the too-easy grin.

“Lucky for us you were out on the town tonight, Eric. ”

“Lucky? In what way?”

“It’s my last night here in the hotel. Her ceremony’s tomorrow morning. Lucky we ran into you so you can offer us the New York experience,” he said.

“You may be disappointed. I don’t stand in the harbor holding a book and a torch. That gig’s taken.”

Uncle Gula chuckled. “We must’ve interrupted something this evening then?”

“Not at all. I was roaming. My night off.”

He looked impressed. “Nobody with you?”

“Oh no. Defeats the purpose.”

“Which purpose is that?,” he asked.

“Roaming. Not hunting.”

He tilted his head, was about to say something then went coy and thought better of it.

Cali piped up. “I love that. It’s sort of free.”

I offered her my best smile. If I kept this up, we could’ve filmed a toothpaste commercial.

“New York seems to reward stepping out to see where it all leads,” I said.

Uncle Gula’s smile broadened. “And where’s it leading so far?”

“A cap and gown, evidently,” I told him. “I’d like to hear more about that.”

It was more agreeable when she smiled. His smiles were pointed. Hers were grateful.

The waiter returned with a bottle wrapped in linen in an ice bucket and three fresh glasses.

“Orvieto,” Uncle Gula explained. “A little too young but it should still be worthwhile.” No one argued.

The cork popped. Three glasses were poured. We clinked and toasted her graduation.

I asked her what she had studied.

“Art. Design, really,” she replied. “I’m at Pratt. In Brooklyn. I majored in Communications Design. It’s a pretty new field. Exciting.”

I paused to think then said truthfully, “I’m sure. But what is it?”

One of the boys had thrown the ball to the girl finally and it cheered her. An insistence rose in her voice.

“Words. Graphics. Moving images and certain sounds,” Cali recited. “Basically like how to convey a brand or message across a variety of platforms. Relating a powerful message maybe without saying it, but doing so in a slick and kind of effective way.”

“You of all people should appreciate that, Eric,” Uncle Gula intoned over the rim of his wine glass. His eyelids sank a little.

Cali leaned to her right, which brought her closer to me. “But I also took a bunch of photography courses. That’s kind of a side thing. Love it though.”

“Beautiful hobby,” I said.

“And I’m really good at it,” she insisted a little more darkly. Her eyes were locked with her Uncle’s. His glinted in reply above the wine glass.

Cali’s cheek was close to mine over our armrests. “I don’t doubt it,” I told her sideways. “Practical, as well. You never know when your hobby can become your breadwinner.”

“Oh, has that been your experience too?,” Uncle Gula drawled.

Funny guy.

I provided the stock lines about my work. Both uncle and niece were as politely intrigued as most strangers. I wasn’t eager to linger on it.

I looked to him and signaled it was his turn.

Uncle Gula’s index finger jutted from his wine glass and pointed at Cali. “Much the same. Design. Only slightly different.”

“How so, what do you design?”

“People’s lives,” he answered.

A rough swallow of wine. I turned to the girl.

“And to think that deadbeat Moses only parted the Red Sea,” I said and Cali giggled.

Uncle Gula smiled and obliged my joke.

“People who want to overhaul their living space, their working space. They hire me. I create an environment tailored to that individual’s needs, their tastes, their outlook on life. Architecture, interior design. Both, either. It can be as simple as an organizational system to make them more productive, or an aesthetic flow to make them more inspired.”

I nodded and thought about it. “Sounds fascinating. And expensive. A guru with a palette wheel.”

His grin was humorless. “Fortunately there are people who can afford it but can’t do it for themselves. Or prefer to have someone do it for them.”

“I see what you mean.”

“Do you?,” he asked, maybe sensing another dig.

“Believe I do. If more people played the piano, there wouldn’t be much novelty in my playing it for them.”

Uncle Gula placed his glass back on the scuffed table and re-laced his fingers. “As you say,” he admitted.

“You immerse yourself in others’ lives for a living. Better than they’re willing or able to themselves. When your work is done, their lives are changed as if by magic,” I said, ballsier than I’d intended.

He looked pleased. “Unlike Mary Poppins, I don’t soar up into the sky afterwards,” he said.

Alright, so that was funny.

“Maybe not, but people will always pay for newness,” I insisted.

“Tell that to my antique dealer.”

“I took some amazing pictures during our helicopter flight today,” Cali interjected, a little shrill at the edges. We turned to look at her. “Would you like to see them?”

Her hand shot into her purse and pulled out her phone. She flipped through several images on the screen and leaned back towards me.

“I treated her to a helicopter ride this afternoon,” Uncle Gula murmured as if he’d bought her an ice cream. “A gift for myself too, I’d never done it.”

I leaned further to my left to join Cali in the middle.

They were the usual aerial cityscapes, but well framed and lit. She had a good eye. Cali kept the slideshow brisk, the screen of her phone tilted up to face us both. I could smell a light, sweet sweat on her. I tried not to show it. Across the table and excluded, Uncle Gula busied himself with the last of his wine.

Then her finger started wiping the screen faster, a motion hidden by the phone. Cali’s expression never changed. The cityscapes blurred by one after the other until she landed on the faceless picture of a stark naked girl.

She was curves and swells and dimpled places, not solid and not heavy. The breasts pointed slightly in opposite directions as if for maximum field of fire and were roundly capped by very pink nipples. The shoulders were slim and the arms hung artfully like in an old portrait. Her stomach was not at all hard, but fleshy and a little shaded until it sloped into a fuller shadow below. The hips were wide and cocked so that the glancing hint of one cheek was teasing the camera. The legs were strong. And familiar.

The lighting was afternoon golden. The picture was taken in the reflection of an old full-length mirror on hinges. What little I could see of the room was well appointed.

Before I could stop, my eyes shot to her right breast pressing into my arm then back to the picture on her phone. I never doubted I was looking at a nude photo of Cali, but I like to be thorough.

The beaded moisture on my wine glass smeared as I drained it and placed it empty back on the table.

“Impressive, right?,” Uncle Gula prompted.

I looked at him over the top of the phone and then back to the screen.

“I’d suspected your niece had gifts, but this confirms it.”

Cali had been stoic. But now she giggled again and bunched her shoulders into her neck in fake unease. Her bottom lip jutted and her silent ‘oops’ narrowed her eyes. Cali looked at her uncle as if she’d knocked over his priceless Ming vase while playing with the puppy. Then she unraveled into throaty laughter.

Uncle Gula read her face, at first quizzical, his eyes darting. Then the cloud lifted and he smiled at her and placed his forehead in his fingers.

“Oh God. You showed him that picture, didn’t you?”

I didn’t stare at her. I looked dead at him. Maybe I shouldn’t have been shocked.

Was the picture’s background a hotel room, this hotel in particular? I’d no idea. Both her hands were visible in the photo so even though a mirror reflection, she hadn’t taken it herself. Unless she used a timer? Did someone else take it?

I left the last, obvious question unasked, even to myself. Too late of course. Once it crosses your mind you’ve already asked it and are halfway to an unwanted answer.

He might not have taken the picture. But at the very least he had seen it prior.

Cali switched off the screen and threw the phone back in her purse. Uncle Gula lofted his hands up in defeat.

“Well, girl, I can admit when I’m wrong,” he told her with some respect.

Now I watched them both. I suddenly hoped they found me more of an idiot than I felt. It would be expedient.

“Thanks for the drink,” I said, rising from my chair. “Thanks for the photo. And good luck with the circus, this act should be huge in the south.”

Uncle Gula watched my branching off in mild interest. He didn’t’ rise. I didn’t expect or want him to.

Cali appeared by my side with her purse on her shoulder a few yards later and kept pace.

“Walk me to the subway?,” she asked with her earlier perk.

“Afraid you’ll get lost?”

“I don’t know this part of town or where my line is.”

I turned and faced her. I didn’t sweat wondering if she was angling to invite me back to Brooklyn, or walk her part of the way and then make out at the top of the subway stairs. Truth be told I thought about pressing it, if only just to see. No question it’d be memorable. But no.

“Let’s look it up, to be safe” I said instead, and took out my phone to scroll through maps.

“I might get lost,” she said.

“Not for long. You have an appealing way about you. I know, I’ve seen it.”

I asked what line she took to get home and found it and showed her on the map how easy it would be to find. I suggested her uncle walk her if she was anxious. Cali looked put out by the idea. She asked why I couldn’t do it.

“Oh I’m booked solid, sorry,” I told her.

“With what?”

“With whatever happens in there,” I said and pointed at the twin glass doors of the hotel with the etched initials.

“That’s the hotel. What happens in there?”

“The rest of my night, whatever it is.”

I wished Cali luck and meant it and shook her hand and felt like an ass for being susceptible to her look of disappointment. She’d survive. Lunatics always do. I doubted she’d remember it by the time she climbed out of the subway stairs near her dorm. I was certain I’d remember far longer than she did but then I always think that.

I waved her off and the doors were swung open for me by a pair of attendants in dusty crimson vests.

I made my getaway.

© Eric Yves Garcia 2012