Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz Page A

ripped because I kept a lot of variables and disregards in the pockets—and the shoulders had a little padding in them, by now somewhat lopsided.
    It didn't bother me, the looks and stares I got. People were angry with me, and why? Because I was some sort of freak, an artist. They were trapped, and I wasn't. So I felt smug, even though I was starving.
    But when I got to my big mausoleum, I found I only had $10 in my savings account: I took out nine. Ginger, my dealer, owed me money. I had at least two grand coming to me, which was going to have to go for the rent. I hadn't paid the rent in months, in protest. The crummy landlord, Vardig, hadn't turned on the heat. So even if Ginger paid up, I would still be broke after Vardig got what he was owed.
    Meanwhile, as I was waiting for the cash machine to excrete my receipt, I could hear snickers coming from behind me on
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    line. This made me mad. I walked out of the bank in a fury. Who needed this kind of attention? I strolled up the streets like a panther, grimacing and ready for food.
    So I stopped off at the restaurant nearby I liked to frequent. This place had been around since the days of J. P. Morgan. Wood-paneled walls redolent with coffee smells, the ceiling blackened by ancient grease and cigar smoke.
    I bought the Times and sat at the counter, a fudge brownie before me. The counter woman, Marion, was very frisky today. Our acquaintance went back over a few years. But we weren't intimate, normally she spent our conversations racking up complaints against the customers. What a skinny little salamander she was, with a pitted face and eyes the color of lime juice. "How's the painting going?" she said, scouring the counter with a rag held in one clawed hand. "You paint pictures, right?"
    "Great," I said. "I've got this idea for a painting—"
    "I could tell you a thing or two about artists," she muttered. "You see that man sitting over there?"
    On the other side of the counter was a small creature wearing a hearing aid and a binocularlike pair of glasses: a poor denizen crawled up perhaps from the subway. "I see him," I said.
    "He's not supposed to drink coffee because of his ulcer," Marion hissed at me. "But does so anyway. Some people have no more sense than a can of peas. He's been married four times, and left every one of them for various complaints. Where does he get off thinking of himself as so desirable that any woman would come running for him?"
    She left me to bring the man a plate of cinnamon toast, though I hadn't noticed him ask for it. He gave her the royal nod, and she came back to me, the salamander relegated to the scullery.
    Well, that was poor old Marion for you. I could tell she was depressed, each of us has been gifted from birth with our own problems. In her case it was her appearance. But she cheered up when I told her my idea for a painting: I wanted to use her
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    as a model. Already in my head I could see those salamander thighs topped with a pink pot of geraniums and a cluster of frog's eggs. "Me? Me, a model? That's a joke," she said. Still, she was pleased. She straightened herself up and began smashing the coffee cups with a little Mae West twist of her tail. With a certain neat flick: I half expected she lived at night in some sort of hole beneath the counter, so much a part of the room were her movements.
    After this we were best buddies—she slapped an extra goo-brownie on my plate at no charge. I got out my notebook, and would have sketched her, too, right then and there, with her two slabs of breasts like day-old cupcakes on what was otherwise an amphibian physique. Only I remembered. My mother was scheduled to visit me that day. I was late, it was already early afternoon.
    When I got back to my building, my mother was waiting in the lobby. More overweight than ever, if such a thing was possible. From the top of head to ankles, one piece of flesh, indisposable. Without joints—nor did I believe there were bones underneath that skin.