MANHATTAN 3

 

What was I doing on the Brooklyn Bridge? There were still a few hours to kill that afternoon before heading to Times Square; an hour of deep trance, looking above me at the immense web of that bridge and the ice cream shop by the river: "December," I thought, "I wonder if it's going to start snowing a little?" Feeling a little strange after a dinner party at Barbara Berenson's house last week, I'll never forget: taking a taxi with M. Berman to 45 Sutton Place South: a literary party for someone named Nick, apparently I was friends with some celebrities who were also there, but I didn't know who they were either. Barbara invited us to spend Christmas with her and her family at her home in Montauk, on the easternmost tip of Long Island: a waterfront property that included a main house with three smaller houses and the caretaker's house: we'll get there... but I was still staring absently at the opposite bank of the river (the experimental boy throws a phallus-shaped grenade at Christopher Columbus's mother, burying the Americas; the wind made it as if it were minus 15 degrees). I had just read in the newspaper an article about a cousin of Barbara's secretly selling her diamonds on Madison Avenue to help her husband's congressional campaign, and I thought back to Barbara's apartment and that party. How rich people love to talk about servants during lunch and dinner: there were six servants serving canned food and Moët-Chandon Champagne. Victor Blythe was there, looking a little older and heavier; He was talking loudly at Barbara's table and Berman's English boy was trying to be charming at another table, even though he had been passed over; he asked Barbara if she could take him to the other table to introduce him to the author and she said no. I was sitting on a sofa with two paintings on the wall: Degas's Absinthe and Renoir's Cup of Chocolate, thinking, "She has these paintings in her house: it's unbelievable." Miss Berman reappeared after a while and took me to drink champagne with her around the bar that had been set up; soon more people began arriving. One of the models who walked through the door caught my eye: her name was Diana Dodass, and I was sure I'd seen her at a strip club in Chelsea where I'd gone alone ten days earlier; she was as tall as she was thin, and I was so bored that night that I spent the entire show watching her rub her ass and pussy against the stage floor. Miss Berman was drinking more and more. "I like you more than you know, K. I never feel 100 percent safe with you," she said. "I'll only spend Christmas at Barbara's if you go too," I replied, changing the subject a little. – I'm a little tired of traveling: we go everywhere and it's always the same thing, the same person opening the same suitcases (you're right: find a corner somewhere and create your own inner space, yet all the garbage comes after you: television, the global village, and everything else.)” She said, finally speechless. “He he... no one has traveled more than I have in recent years,” I commented, watching from the twentieth-floor window the bluish garments of night stitched together by the bright dots of buildings stretching across the city’s dirt and trash. I added: “The reason unusual and surprising things aren’t done anymore isn’t that they’re particularly impractical, but that most people don’t have the imagination to conceive of them.” But my comment struck her as “common,” and she pretended not to care. “I only like men who kiss as a means to an end.” —she said, running her hand along my neck, and concluded: —When I'm with you, I say: "K and I are the only real artists in the world," and when I was with John (the English boy), I said: "You and I are the only ones who understand high society," and when I'm alone, I say to myself: "Yes, Berman, you are unique." —I laughed, pretending to see some sense in what she was saying.