Some Girls

New York City 1 September, 1989

SHE REMEMBERED LEAVING HOME AS IF IT HAD HAPPENED to someone else, how she had wanted to stretch in the front seat while Paula drove her to the airport, wanted to fling her arms out and behind the seat, back arched, but she hadn’t because her sister would see. Would see and maybe guess what she was thinking—that she was better than this. That life was bigger than Alamogordo, than El Paso, than New Mexico, even bigger than Texas.

It had seemed inevitable then, all of it—her one-way ticket to New York, the apartment waiting in the city, and eventually, vague but beckoning, success. She was aware of her spine, the strength of her pelvic bones, the arches of her feet. It was all she needed to support her. She had everything, and five hundred dollars cash. It is me, she’d thought. I have chosen.

And then she arrived in New York, the airport like an airport in a third world country, chaotic, dirty, crowded. People yelled at each other in harsh, urban voices, obscenities. In the corner, a parrot screeched through its plastic carry-on case. Whose parrot, a man kept asking. Whose parrot!

She waited for her suitcase, thinking, It will be better in the city, it will be different, and then her suitcase lurched down the conveyor belt, corners newly dented, abused, the suitcase of an immigrant, absurdly hopeful.

She clutched the handle and rode into the city, the taxi meter clicking and clicking, and she knew already; the city was a terror, glossy buildings rising out of a slum, a place of anarchy, crooked and lawless, impenetrable.

She was an orphan the moment the taxi pulled away, her fortunes depleted, leaving her in the tall darkness of the neighborhood: White Street off Broadway. A rickety wooden structure walled off the southeast corner, and through the cracks a crane loomed silent over the wound it had dug in the ground, crude, raw, that dark earth an incongruous abyss among so much concrete, and she felt it tugging at her as she walked by, a burial place for out-of-towners, people like her with illusions thinking they would be welcome, they would be noticed—she could tumble over and in the morning no one would know she was missing, the city would roll over her like an ocean with its huge, impersonal tides.

The building was like a warehouse, plaster walls cracking, and she had to drag her suitcase up three flights of wooden stairs, each one long and steep, her breath harsh in the narrow passageway. The hall had its own smell, aged, fusty, like old books and stale air-conditioning and something else, something subtle and foreign, what she imagined another country, another culture might smell like. The apartment was at the end of the third floor, next to last, and just as she finally put her suitcase down, that last door opened, and in the dim light she saw her neighbor, a woman moving with the brisk efficiency of one who is just rising, whose day lies ahead—Claire stopped, the keys in her hand, and her heart rose, because the woman was young, she could see that, it was in the way she bent to lock her door, agile and fluid. Her hair was dark, falling just below her shoulders, and when she straightened, her face was a pale oval, eyes so deep you could not see their color. She smiled when she saw Claire, but she seemed unsurprised by Claire’s presence, her eyes distant, fixed on a point on some other horizon.

Moving in?—she already moving past, so lightly, and all Claire could think was how little she wore, thin sleeveless shirt that showed her collarbone, black tights that stopped at her knees, and on her feet only the slight straps of wafer-soled sandals. She had nothing else, no purse, no wallet, nothing but a gold bracelet twisted around the slimness of her upper arm. How could she go out like that, down and into the streets, into that darkness, so blithe and careless, alone.

Welcome to New York, she said as she reached the top of the stairs, smiling again, and the rest was just her footsteps, a quick light rhythm leaving. Claire heard the bottom door swing shut—her neighbor was a woman of the city, it was obvious, breaker of men’s hearts, a woman who would move swiftly through airport terminals, traveling light, unconcerned with what she left behind, sure of her destination.

The last lock was the hardest, as if the apartment itself begrudged her entrance, and it wasn’t till she slammed her knee against it, cursing, sweat stinging the corners of her eyes, clinging like tears, that it gave.

2

SWEAT TILL YOU CRY, THAT WAS NEW YORK THE FIRST TWO weeks for her. On the streets she had nothing but the speed with which she walked and her sunglasses to protect her. Everything had a kind of rawness, a wild volatility; it wasn’t humanity as she knew it, as she had grown up with it. Everything seemed to touch everything else—pedestrians grazed the bumpers of moving cars, they ran into each other, seemed somehow more tangible, more dangerous, than the people of Alamogordo, who were always insulated by their cars, their traffic lights, their well-established codes of behavior. Sometimes, the GIs would come out drunk at night, yelling, making their tires squeal, but even that was predictable, had its place. People shouted out to strangers here, their voices were hoarse with it. They talked to her, men, they passed by deliberately close, murmuring words—gorgeous, they said, and much worse, things she didn’t want to hear, muttered like promises. She wanted to forbid them to look at her but their eyes were penetrating and insolent, they saw her, raw behind the eye makeup, behind the clothes. They confirmed it at the same time as they repulsed her, made her flare with a silent and murderous violence. She was electrified, she could not eat, her stomach was too constricted, she could hardly sleep. The noise of the city astonished her, it came through the window a soft roar, the hum of traffic, machinery, construction and motion, a hum that kept nudging her awake again and again to think, I’m here, I’m in New York City, a shock each time.

She joined the throb of people on the streets in the morning as if she were one of them, a citizen, head up. She memorized her phone number, signed up at an employment agency, Perfect Temps. The women who worked there were all of a type, they had city accents, ashtrays that overflowed, and a fraudulent warm manner that she clung to, her only human contact.

Some days they called her in the morning, she already dressed and waiting by the phone, a subway map clutched in her hand, and gave her addresses—

Fifteen Fifteen Broadway, got that? It’s up at Forty-fifth, you can catch the R going uptown, okay?

The rush in their voices infected her, she’d spread her map out, say, Wait, wait—

Okay, hon, write that down. No hurry. Their patience was elaborately false.

The assignments were brief, half mornings and afternoons filling in for someone who’d called in sick, answering the phone at some ad agency, a publishing company, law firms; when she left their offices at the end of the day, nobody knew her name.

Other days there was nothing, but they told her to come in and wait, in case someone called later that morning. She sat in the waiting room with a handful of other women, all of them attempting the corporate uniform, some more successfully than others. There was one girl, not much older than Claire, who came in at eleven, dark circles under her eyes, always wearing the same thing—an unironed white shirt and black jeans. Sorry I’m late, she’d say, and the agents would exchange looks—can you believe it.

Is there anything for me?

There never was, but the girl would prop herself up in a corner with a magazine to wait, and then she’d doze, head slumped to one side, magazine falling from her hands.

After a couple of hours, they would tell everyone to call again tomorrow, and then Claire had nowhere to go but home.

She bought her groceries between her subway station and the apartment building, did not venture out after dark. She went to bed early, refused to look at the clock—and still, helplessly, she calculated. It would only be dinnertime at home, and the huge weight of desert silence just beginning to press against the roofs of her town, sinking through, making people yawn, making their limbs heavy. How big night was there, and she hadn’t even noticed. Here, it was never truly dark. The sky seemed to hold the lights of the city like a fog, shimmering and low, never lifting. There were no stars.

3

SATURDAY DAWNED, THE FIRST WEEKEND. SHE DEVISED CULTURAL excursions for herself, the Museum of Modern Art, the Public Library. The museum was crowded, the cafeteria prices were high. Standing before a wall of Picassos, all she felt was the eyes of the guards who stood at the door, lecherous and bored.

The library was better. She liked the hugeness of it, the massive, beatific stone lions carved in semi-alert repose, the wide expanse of steps, and the cathedral-like hush on the inside, but when she’d gathered an armful of books, she found she was not allowed to check them out. It was a research library only, the librarian said, she would have to go to the Fifty-first Street branch.

You can get a card, the librarian said, if you have proof of residency. A piece of mail would do.

She had not received any, Claire said. It seemed a terrible admission, the admission of an orphan, a spinster, the admission of one unloved. The librarian, a woman with large breasts and thinning hair, raised her hands, palms up. I’m sorry, she said. She was not unkind.

Claire left empty-handed, swollen with homesickness. She had not known what a legitimate illness it was, how it persisted, undermining everything, refusing to be named.

She was at the deli on the corner, looking for something to eat for dinner, when a woman came in, an apparition in a long black evening dress so tight it made her body the slimmest of silhouettes, bared her back all the way down to the beginning of that last brief curve, exposed the long ridge of backbone and her skin, the palest shade of olive. Claire didn’t recognize her till she moved, bent over suddenly to scoop up the store’s cat, her waist pliant and her hands reaching so swift the animal could not escape. When she pressed her nose against the cat’s face, Claire saw her eyes close, and in that instant she was light-years away, there was a fatigue in her pose that seemed eons old. His paws stretched and it wasn’t till he dug his claws lightly into her shoulders that she returned.

You love me, don’t you, Taker, she murmured, voice lower than Claire would have imagined from such a small face.

His name Tiger! the deli man said. No Taker, Tay-gur!

He was from Lebanon, and he stood behind the counter and called out to his customers with a brusqueness that Claire found alarming, made her stutter, spill her change, but her neighbor paid no attention, she smiled, and in the light Claire could see the fine angles of her face, how her smile made everything, the corners of her eyes, her lips, curve up.

Don’t correct me, she told him now. I’ve had a white night.

What this, white night? You talk some guy? Some boyfriend, yes?

No boyfriend, she said. No sleep.

What! You no boyfriend? This I not believe!

Say you love me, Taker, she said, and when she bent to let go, the cat leapt from her arms to her left shoulder and kept a fine balance there.

He has one thousand girlfriend! You no special! the man said now, grinning, hands on his white-aproned hips.

I know, she answered, as if she had taken his statement to heart. She lifted one arm to stroke the cat and Claire saw her hands, different from the rest of her, strong-knuckled, blue veins delicate ridges, and though she was utterly cosmopolitan, her pose, the slight sway of her hips, the cat’s raccoon-striped tail dangling down her bare back, evoked another era. Arabian nights, Claire thought, the image in sharp contrast to the store with its crooked shelves and fluorescent lighting, and yet no one paid attention, people glanced at her and moved past, reaching for what they needed, the most ordinary staples of life, quarts of milk, toilet paper, bread.

Okay, maybe he love you more, the deli man said, his voice softer. Maybe he marry you.

Her neighbor smiled again, but her eyes, indigo, smoky as her scent, remained untouched. The deli man’s voice rose again, as if to lift her spirits.

What you want today! Everything good here, everything fresh! What you want—I make, me, myself!

She looked through the glass counter, wound the cat’s tail around her neck, watched while he pulled out different containers, sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil, smoked salmon, green peppers and feta cheese and black olives, and she pointed, told him stop when he scooped, and then he scooped in a little more—This for you present, he said, to make you fat! You need bigger health, more good food, yes!

They had a dialogue, she and Taker and the deli man, it was obvious, and Claire wanted to know, how long had she lived here, how long before she had learned to talk that way, to walk into a crowded deli to buy exotic salads for breakfast in the evening, if it was something you could learn, something that came with living in the city, or something you had to be born knowing.

She lives next door to me, Claire thought; the proximity was unfathomable.

She walked back across the street when her neighbor did, trailing her just a few feet. The woman gave no indication that she had seen Claire, neither in the deli nor outside, but when she unlocked the front door she turned unexpectedly and held it open.

Thanks, Claire said, moving quickly to get it.

You’re welcome, she said. Her smile was brief, and there was something hard in her eyes, an intense directness that took Claire off-guard, she could not match it. The woman walked up the stairs ahead of her, she did not turn around again.

4

MONDAY CAME AS A RELIEF, AND SHE WAS ALREADY dressed and ready when the agency called at eight-thirty and said they had a ten-day assignment for her.

It was at an accounting firm on Wall Street, in a soaring building made of blue glass that overlooked the water, and Claire had to take two elevators just to get to her floor. The firm was huge, one hundred and twenty employees, and she was just the temp replacing a secretary on summer vacation. The other secretaries on her floor showed her where things were, supplies, the fax, the Ladies’ Room key, but they had their own society.

We take our lunch from one to two, the receptionist informed her, but someone has to stay and pick up the phones.

So she went out by herself each day at noon, bought an apple from the fruit cart on the corner, pretended not to be excited by the people, streams of them, converging impatient on street corners, pushing out into the traffic, their faces closed, purposeful. Single men in sunglasses and ties, young secretaries with teased hair and bronze eye shadow, talking loud, lighting up as soon as they were out those revolving doors.

She drank murky coffee through the afternoon, left at five o’clock sharp and took the subway home. You’ll get used to it, Jocelyn had said, but she found herself holding her breath each time she descended those stairs—some of the stations were clean and tiled, modern transit centers, but the train was a dinosaur; it came with a heavy shriek of metal, lurching and rattling, a carnival ride from hell.

On Thursday night, it started to rain, the sound drifting to her through her sleep, soothing but insistent; she was amazed to wake up and find it was still coming down, amazed at the sheer vastness of the quantity, its unendingness.

It rained all day Friday, and she stayed inside during lunch, stood by the window of her supervisor’s office when he went out. The river was dark, it churned. Wind blew the rain in gusts, in sheets, against the glass. She was on an island, it came to her for the first time—it was island weather.

In New Mexico, the sense was always of land, stretching as far away as you could think. In New Mexico, this kind of rain would be unimaginable, an act of God, mythic. She was overcome with the desire to show them, her mother, her sister—Look how far I’ve come, she wanted to say, and fantasized that they would hardly recognize her.

She would write her mother a letter.

Dear Mom. It’s been raining all day. She stopped, crumpled it up. You wouldn’t believe, she wrote, how much it can rain.

She read the words over; they communicated nothing. Dear Mom, she wrote again, and then she sat there, pen poised over paper, unmoving. She had never written her mother a letter before; she had never been far enough from home. It made Ginny seem a stranger, made the words come out without inflection, flat and polite. She picked up the phone, punched the 505 area code quickly. They made a thousand long-distance phone calls from here every day; no one would know.

It was eleven o’clock in Alamogordo, Ginny had already been at the shop two hours.

Chic Boutique, she said, and in those professional tones Claire could hear her mother’s whole day, see her squinting in the morning sun to unlock the door, flipping the sign to Open, unlocking the register. Everything was there, the dark closet in the back, the radio that played Light Oldies all day long, and the two ancient mannequins in the window, years of dust making their eyes blank, even their forms outdated with their pointed breasts, their voluptuous hips.

Mom, it’s Claire.

Claire? Where are you?

I’m in New York, on the thirtieth floor of a building, she said. I’m at work.

Oh! For a second I thought something was wrong, hearing your voice like that in the middle of the day…

I can’t talk long, Claire said. I just wanted to say hi.

Is everything all right?

Everything’s great, she said, her voice like the voice of a newscaster, cheerful and false. I’ve got this assignment, it lasts for another week—

Another week? And then will they offer you a job?

There’s no job, I’m just replacing a secretary who’s on—

Yes but I’m sure if you do a good job—are you sure you should be making this call?

It’s all right, Mom, she said, she couldn’t keep the irritation from her voice. Everyone’s at lunch now anyway.

But what will they say when they get the bill? They might make you pay for it, Claire, and it’s the middle of the day, you really—

It doesn’t matter, Mother, I can afford it—they’re paying me a lot here, fifteen dollars an hour—

Fifteen…!

—Before taxes.

My God, Claire, you’re making more than I am!

But everything’s more expensive here—a cantaloupe costs two dollars—but you can get salad in all the delis, they have everything—

Don’t tell me that’s all you’re eating—cantaloupe and salad.

They have egg rolls and noodles and sushi—

Sushi? What, raw fish? Please don’t eat that, Claire, you don’t know where it’s come from, and it can make you very, very sick.

Okay, Mom, Claire said, she spoke sharply to cut her mother off. I heard you.

Just a minute. Claire heard a Bobby Vinton song playing faintly in the background, and then her mother’s professional voice again, pitched slightly higher, saying, I’ll be with you in a moment.

I’ll let you go, Mother, Claire said. I was just wondering if Paula went to that interview on base yet.

Oh, that. No, the appointment’s for later this week, she said—I don’t know how she thinks I’m supposed to manage this place all by myself. I’ve had to stay late four days this week alone, just doing the damn inventory—

Well, I think it’s great, that she found something—

She hasn’t got it yet, Ginny said, her voice sharp now too. And anyway, it’s certainly not going to be great for me—I can’t, I simply cannot, run this shop by myself.

Claire imagined her mother’s face, how it looked after a bad night. Pale and tight, extra-help makeup thick under her eyes. She wore sobriety like punishment, never saying a word, pouring coffee with hands that shook, painting over the chips in her nail polish before work.

Have you spoken to your sister?

Claire knew from her mother’s tone that she already knew the answer to that. She expelled her breath.

No, she said. I thought maybe she would call me, when—

Well, you know, she’s angry.

Yes, Claire said, she could not help her sarcasm. I gathered.

She heard a faint click, the sound of her mother’s lighter, and then she heard Ginny exhale.

Okay, listen, Claire said after a moment’s silence, I really have to go.

The city’s filthy, and dangerous, Ginny said in a sudden burst, I wish you would just come home.

Oh, Mom.

Claire had a vivid picture of her mother standing there behind the counter, alone all day, speaking in those bright tones to the occasional woman who came through to finger through the sales rack, then locking up again at five, bending in her heels to fit the padlock, and she was crushed with sadness, she had no words for it.

I’ve got to go, she said. I’ll write you.

5

IT WAS PAST THREE IN THE MORNING WHEN SHE WOKE UP, and for a moment she thought she was at home, in her own room, her mother just down the hall, but she could not make sense of the angles of the walls, or the streetlight that made shadows on the ceiling…and then it came to her, she was here, she was alone, the knowledge penetrating as ice water, inescapable, and she felt her own presence like a ghost’s, floating out beyond the perimeter of the room to permeate the city itself, a spy seeking to defect.

The phone rang, and she came back to herself in a rush, grabbing the receiver before the bell could shatter the silence again.

Hello?

That was quick, Tommy said, his voice as instantly familiar to her as her own, that slow deep timbre unchanged by the high miles of wire that connected them.

I was awake.

Oh yeah? You just get home or somethin?

Tommy, it’s three o’clock in the morning.

Yeah, he said, Saturday night in the big city, right?

Yeah, she said, she sat up. Right.

They were both quiet for a moment, listening to each other breathe.

Saturday night. If she were home, she would be in Cloudcroft right now, Tommy would have made dinner. Steak fajitas with hot green chili, tortillas warming in the oven, the beer ice-cold. Sometimes they ate sitting on the kitchen steps, watching the last pastel light fade to blue, and then the dense blackness spreading out and out and out, hiding the Sacramento Mountains in the distance, pierced only by the light that shone through the open kitchen door.

So you got a job, huh? You a career girl now?

News travels fast.

Saw your mother comin out of the gas station this afternoon.

I’m a temp secretary, she said. It’s no career.

She said you had some view.

I was thirty floors up, I could see everything.

Like what? Traffic and smog? People killin each other?

Like the skyline—the Empire State Building, the World Trade Towers. They go up a quarter of a mile, she said. That’s as high as an airplane.

Yeah? Someone taken you up there?

Someone like who?

I don’t know, he said. Some stockbroker millionaire.

She laughed. I don’t know any stockbroker millionaires.

Huh.

Really, she said. I don’t know anyone.

Sounds pretty lonesome.

It’s okay, she said, she hardened herself against his sympathy. I’m fine.

He didn’t say anything and in the small snag of silence she felt his retreat, heard the bed creak as he changed positions, and she was filled with a momentary panic, that he would cut her off, hang up, that he would never call again.

Tell me everything that’s happened, she said, since the day I left.

Nothin’s happened, he said, and even in those brief words she heard his loyalty, she read his life without her, everything the same, a space where she used to be. The bed empty.

Nothing at all?

Truck broke down.

What this time? she asked. As if she were right there, the curves and bumps of his life lay claim on her, snaking