White Tiger on Snow Mountain (2 page)

Maria laughed. “She thinks you are one of her former lovers.” Apparently she’d been pretty wild in her time, and bisexual too. She slept with Jane Bowles and Max Ernst and tried to seduce Tennessee Williams, which would have been a real coup, but they ended up just friends. After that, she flirted with me about half the time. When she got her second bout of pneumonia, she even asked me to escort her downstairs to the ambulance.
Otherwise, she ignored me completely or asked Maria who I was.

“Maybe I should marry her,” I suggested. “Then we’ll all live happily ever after.”

Maria laughed. “Yes, I’m sure her family would be very pleased.”

“Who are they to doubt our love?”

Then Maria told me a story about taking the landlady to a party, when she was already in her late eighties but still able to get around a bit. It was held by one of her old pals, a decrepit composer. When Maria came to pick her up, the old woman’s clothes were all mixed up. She didn’t have her bra on, and her underwear was backward.

“Did you have sex?” Maria asked her, but she just giggled. It turned out she’d gotten together with one of the other old ladies, who was still naked in a back bedroom, wrapped in a quilt and smoking. Meanwhile, and this is the part that gets me, Maria said she found the host, who was probably ninety himself, sitting and brooding at his piano, plunking chords in a dark fit of jealousy.

“Don’t ever fall in love,” he told Maria. “It’s just poison.”

That’s when I realized: It never stops, this nonsense. We are fools to the end. On my own deathbed, no doubt, I’ll be peeking at the nurse’s legs and desperately hoping she smiles at me.

The place where I went running was a few blocks away, along a quiet road of big private homes with a wide, tree-lined median. One morning as I was finishing up, I noticed that a cop had stopped his car along the street and was talking to a black guy at the curb. Figures, I thought as I walked by, one black guy for
miles around and of course he picks on him. I went to a nearby tree to stretch, and when I looked up, the cop car had pulled alongside me.

“Excuse me,” he yelled. “Can you step over here a minute?”

I felt a rush of free-floating guilt, and a sudden urge to flee, but I walked over, calmly as I could.

“What’s going on, Officer?” He was a beefy guy with a round pink face.

“I was just wondering, what were you out here doing today?”

“Me?” I looked around and then down at my shorts and sneakers. “Running.”

“Running?”

“Yeah, you know. Jogging. Like for exercise.”

“Actually, sir, you were walking when I saw you.”

“Well, I finished running and I was cooling off.”

“Uh-huh. Do you have any ID?”

“I was running. I don’t even have pockets.” I showed him my key. “This is all I have. Do you go running with a wallet?”

“No, sir, I do not.” He looked me over, narrowing his eyes. “I’m going to tell you why I stopped you. We’ve had several break-ins in this area recently, and you were acting kind of suspicious.”

“Me?”

“One, you were on the grass when most people use the sidewalk.”

“But it’s better for my feet.”

“And you were looking around a lot, like maybe you were looking at houses.”

“Well, I probably was. It gets boring running. I always look around. Even when I’m just walking, I tend to look around.”

“And I saw you looking at me before when I was talking to the other gentleman.”

“Oh yeah?” I wasn’t going to explain that one. Finally I gave him my address, or rather my parents’ address, and my name and social security number. Then I waited while he checked me over. He stuck his head back out, looking a bit sheepish.

“OK, sorry, sir.”

“Everything OK?”

“Yes, sir, hope I didn’t bother you, but we’ve just been having these break-ins. They’re really on my back about it.”

“No, that’s fine. I understand. But I can go now?”

“Oh yeah, for sure, sorry, sir.”

“No problem.” I realized that he too was much younger than me, not much older than the lifeguard with the back zits, and he now seemed slightly cowed, as if I might get him in trouble. “Thanks,” I said.

“No, thank you, sir, and sorry again. It’s just they’re really busting my ass about these break-ins.”

Then as I was walking away, a man came by on a bicycle. He was wearing only bike shorts and sneakers and rode sitting up, with his hands free of the handlebars. He had a broad, smooth chest that looked shaved or waxed and tattoos on both biceps. As he rolled by, lost in his thoughts, an absent expression on his face, his fingers lightly but insistently and unmistakably brushed his nipples, arousing them in slow circles. We made eye contact, and he gave me a frank and innocent look, still teasing his stiff nipples, as if completely unaware of what his own body was doing. Then he sailed away.

When I got to the pool that day, the same lifeguard, the long-legged girl, was sitting at the table by the entrance. Now
I could see what book she was reading—Hart Crane’s
Collected Poems.

“Hey,” I said. “Good book.”

“Hey there.” She laid it facedown. “How’s it going?”

“I just got hassled by the cops. I got pulled over for jogging.”

“What?” She laughed. “No way.”

Then I told her the whole story, leaving out the part about the nipple-biker and how it had reminded me of the Russian with the one big boob, who I saw was right there at that very moment, waist deep in the water, swinging his snivelly kid or grandkid around in a circle. Lisa laughed at my impression of the cop, and when I handed her my guest pass, instead of punching it, she just gave it back and said, “Don’t worry, it’s cool.”

“Thanks,” I said. “What’s your name anyway?”

She held up the cursive, golden word that dangled from a chain around her neck. I couldn’t make it out.

“What’s it say? Tina?”

“Jeez, are you blind?”

So I brushed her hair back out of the way and leaned in closer. She held very still.

“Lisa,” I said.

I lay down in my spot, last lounge in the front row, under the umbrella, close to the Plexiglas windscreen, and was dozing into
Maigret’s Christmas,
when a tumult in the water jerked me out of my dream. One-Boob was howling like a walrus while his boy choked and gasped. Was he drowning? His thin limbs flailed, and it was hard to see past the splashing. Like everyone else, I instinctively stood (later, I realized I had actually flung my glasses and book across the lawn), but before I could take a
step, Bacne, who was on duty, dove in and was lifting the child out. Lisa met him poolside and began CPR. As she knelt and breathed into his little body, her hair forming a private tent for their faces, everyone else clustered around, then got shooed back, then closed in again, cheering happily, as a telltale whine of life went up. The Russians wrapped their yowling child in a towel and carried him off in triumph, while the old folks shook Lisa’s hand. One tiny bean-brown lady in a bright pink bikini kissed her on both cheeks. That’s when I noticed that I had bitten my own cheek, so hard I tasted blood.

That night was a scorcher, and my parents were getting on my nerves, so after dinner I went back down for a dip. There was still plenty of light. But the pool was packed, and when I saw the splashing crowd, I veered off to walk along the fence. I came across a gap in the wooden posts and, pushing through the bushes, found myself on a small path littered with cigarette butts, crushed beer cans, and, for some reason, feathers, as if a cat had just slaughtered a bird or someone had knifed a pillow. I smelled smoke. It was Lisa, sitting with her legs crossed, puffing away and reading her Hart Crane.

“Psst . . . hey,” I whispered through the leaves. “You’re under arrest.”

She jumped. “Jesus,” she said. “You scared me.”

“Sorry. Your smoke drew me in like magic.”

She held out a pack of Marlboro Lights. “Help yourself.”

“No. I quit.” I sat beside her, stiffly bending my legs. “Just blow some in my face.”

She laughed and put the book down, which I took as an official signal that she wanted to talk to me, but we immediately
lapsed into silence, an oddly comfortable silence that I found myself reluctant to break. She smoked, and we stared at the view. It was like a corny postcard: Cliffs and trees, a roll of black road, the wide river hurrying by with a tugboat under its arm. On the far shore, another black line, more bunched greens, and above that the city, spread in squares and spires. And the sun touching here and there: A silver spike, a blinking window, the blazing shield of a car. The spinning, broken blades of the waves. And the bridge.

Her round, tan, smooth knee was just an inch or two from mine, bony, rough, and white. She had lovely hands too, I noticed, as they tapped ashes and toyed with the book. Really they were her best feature, long and finely boned, with a violinist’s tapered fingers. I felt like I could stay like that a long time—sitting in that spot and almost touching this girl, who had that book and those fingers and those knees—and keep on not saying anything.

“Great job before,” I said. “Saving that kid.”

“Oh.” She laughed. “I didn’t really save him. He just got scared and swallowed some water. It happens all the time.”

“Still you should feel good about it. It’s more than I did today.”

She shrugged and looked straight ahead, but I could see she was smiling.

“How’s Hart Crane treating you?” I asked.

She ruffled the pages of the book as if it were her little brother’s hair. “Fine. I just started.”

“Did you read ‘The Bridge’? Sitting here makes me think of it.”

“No. Is it about this bridge?”

“The Brooklyn Bridge. I don’t think this one was built yet.”

She handed me the book. “Read it to me.”

“Well, it’s really long,” I said. “Like forty pages or something.” So I read her the “Proem” instead, “To Brooklyn Bridge,” a kind of prologue to the epic that was Crane’s master-work. To be honest, I found it rough going. I mean I had this book, buried in a carton somewhere, and I thought of Crane as a favorite, but somehow over the decades my taste had blunted or sharpened or something, and now that thick language stuck in my mouth like peanut butter. I could barely follow it. Even his double-punning name (Hart! Crane!) now seemed like a bad pseudo-Japanese word-picture. But Lisa loved it. She even read it back to me, and that was better.

“Do you write poetry?” I asked her.

She nodded. “But it’s not any good. Do you?”

“I used to.”

“He killed himself, didn’t he?” she asked.

“Yeah. He jumped off a boat.” I told her what I knew about his short, wild life, his uncontrollable drinking, his turbulent existence as a gay man in those times, and of course the final leap. I pointed at the open book in her lap. “I think about that jump whenever I hear this line about ‘elevators drop us from our day.’ And I think of him cruising for sailors when he says, ‘Under thy shadow by the piers I waited.’ Or, ‘We have seen night lifted in thine arms.’ You know what his last words were? As he jumped off the steamship?”

She was watching me very closely now. She shook her head.

“ ‘Good-bye, everybody!’ ”

She laughed abruptly, a short burst, and covered her mouth with her hand.

“It’s true,” I said. “I think anyway. I read it somewhere.” And then, while I wasn’t looking, she kissed me. It really took me by surprise, and for a second I wasn’t sure what had happened. She just kissed my mouth softly and sat back, watching. Her eyes focused in on mine. I leaned forward and kissed her.

We undressed quickly, peeling off her shoulder straps and slipping her suit down her legs, pulling off my T-shirt and trunks. She climbed onto my lap, and we jostled a bit until I was inside her, and then we just sat there like that for a while, mouths together, chest to chest, not moving, except for our breath. She stopped kissing me and spit in her hand, then reached down in between us, making a serious face. Then she began to move against me, and grip me harder, and I took her in my arms and pushed her onto her back as her breathing raced and she put her nails into my chest and I brushed back the hair from her eyes. Later, after it was over, we both lay on my towel and she smoked. Again it was silent, but this time the quiet felt uneasy, and when I tried to put my arm around her, she shrugged me off.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

She nodded but continued to face away, smoking methodically as if burning through this cigarette was a chore she was determined to complete. I tried to look at the scenery. Then a scary thought crossed my mind.

“Lisa?” I touched her shoulder. “Listen, was this, you know, your first time?”

“First time what?”

“You know. Are you, were you, a virgin?”

She frowned at me, with a look that mingled derision and pity.

“What?” I asked.

“Don’t you know anything?”

“What? What do you mean?”

“If you’re a virgin, you bleed. And it hurts and the hymen breaks and everything.”

“OK, sorry.”

“Don’t worry.” She snorted and put out her cigarette. “You’re not the first guy to fuck me. Or the second. And I’m on the pill, so it’s fine.” She lit another cigarette, clicking her lighter and blowing the smoke out with a sigh. Then she looked back at me, eyes bright. “But I guess you better still worry ’cause I have VD and AIDS.”

“What? What’re you talking about?” I felt a wave of panic, more nausea than fear.

“I’m just kidding,” she said very softly, realizing she’d gone too far.

“What a fucked-up thing to say.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

“Jesus.”

“Sorry, I said.”

“What a fucked-up thing to say.”

“Are you mad?”

“Not mad,” I said, and it was true; the hollow feeling in my belly was not quite fear or anger. “But I kind of feel now like you jinxed us, you know what I mean? Like it’s bad karma. Like a broken mirror or something. You gave us bad luck.”

“Sorry,” she said again. We both sat there, still naked, and went back to staring at the view. A couple of barges went by. Traffic on the Henry Hudson was heavy, yet the bridge itself was light. It occurred to me that, unlike most vista viewers at
that moment, we were actually facing east, away from the sunset, although the moon was nowhere to be seen. But the river’s darkness seemed to be swelling, leaching up the banks and into the blackening trees, like their roots were drawing it in. In the city, the shadows of the buildings deepened, as if each were a door slowly opening onto deep corridors and basement stairs. Already the bridge beneath us was fading. Its far side was gone. She flicked her cigarette away in a bright arc, and I thought: This world will manage with no more poems about it. Just one last bored young girl, talked out of her clothes, and by poor old Hart no less.