Cleaning Up New York by Bob Rosenthal Page B

poetic-natured old-lover. He called back to say, “Why don’t you sleep with Bob?” Messages from elder, (young) poets must be taken in the light of the playful Gods. Yet this one struck me a shivering blow. Joanne says, “I don’t vamp my girlfriend’s boyfriend.” I steel my body to act, for with love it is better to do than to think. “Cleanliness is next to Godliness / so we clean it up.” Frank O’Hara and Bill Berkson wrote that in 1962. In 1975, we do it.
    I toss myself into hauling furniture, vacuuming, scrubbing and mopping. I clean relentlessly, madly charged with sexual shock. Before I clean the kitchen floor, I pull out the refrigerator to wash the spot it stands on. When I finish the kitchen floor, I’ll be done. I start to push the refrigerator back against the wall. But Joanne wants to clean the rear of the appliance. I leave the refrigerator sitting on the unwashed square in the middle of the floor. I contemplate that spot. Is it my calling card? Is it a weak point or just the thing undone?
    Shelley and I are at Joanne’s; we are drinking Jack Daniel’s. Joanne’s friend Connie comes over. We talk about cleaning; cleaning is mentioned. Connie needs her floors done; she can see how good Joanne’s floors look. It must be peculiar to socially ask someone to clean. Over drinks, Connie asks, “What do you like to eat?” When!? “Do you tell the ladies what to make for your lunch?” What lunch? “What do you like to steal?” Ahh. “You’re supposed to.” OK, we’ll do it. We take a drunken cab to Chinatown.
    Connie lives in Greenwich Village. I love to walk from the East Side to the West Side. It makes me feel smart. I come to Connie’s building about noon. Her two-and-a-half-room apartment looks into a couple of directions where many angles converge and diverge. “It’s like a fortress, you can see all the approaches.” The bedroom is small and the kitchen is just a spit in the ocean. The living room is large, enhanced by a brick fireplace and natural wood floors with an inlaid design in one corner.
    We sit down at the table and have coffee. Connie has soft, small features on a broad face. She looks modeled in clay with aninner core of sparkles. Connie is a waitress in a midtown hotel where the work is not too hard and the tips are pretty good. We both are fascinated by our jobs. We both enjoy meeting peculiar people. We look at each other. We both decide to go back to school. I decide to get to work.
    As I start in on the bedroom, Connie buzzes around me picking up magazines and moving things. I laugh and tell her to relax. Connie says she can’t relax and settles on washing the dishes. Finally she goes out so I can clean a really loathsome area around the refrigerator without embarrassing her to death. Connie comes home, another satisfied customer. I didn’t steal from Connie because it doesn’t occur to me to steal from a friend, besides there is nothing to steal. I figure Connie’s original offer of buying something for me to steal will always be valid.
    Joanne often talks of her friend Lucy. Lucy makes jewelry and runs her own business. Shelley and I meet Lucy and a buyer from Texas at a party. Lucy and I talk about Houston, Texas, which I have been to, once. Lucy communicates in a manner more direct than conversation; what is being said is not what we are talking about. This is probably because Lucy has been reincarnated so often. Maybe I’ll figure out what we really said in some future lifetime of my own. Maybe I’ve already known Lucy, which could explain why the light conversation about why there are no sidewalks in Houston left a deep impression on me. Lucy and the buyer drive Shelley and me home. He and Lucy sit in the front seat and Lucy does more of the driving. We are driving up Sixth Avenue in the Village. The road curves but we are driving straight for the curb.