He was Baby Boris, and he needed a place to live. That fall, his building was bought by a beefy eye surgeon, who bustled through the lobby in a camelhair coat leading a wedge of architects toting floor plans. Leaky sinks and broken radiators went unrepaired, and one blustery January day the tenants received a brochure for "Morningside Manor: An Adventure in Luxury." They had until the end of the month to get out.
His real name was Richard Beisky; the nickname had to do with his big bald head which made him look like a Soviet-era thug. Richard wasn't ugly -- he was tall, an inch over six feet, with broad shoulders. But his face had a vaguely menacing aspect that was also a bit comic, like a composite of tough guy and hapless boy made up on a child's dial-a-feature board. Lost in the vast expanse of forehead and doughy cheek were his deep-set beady blue eyes, small pinched mouth, and compact nose.
The tiny studio off Amsterdam was not unlike his life -- colorless and in decline. He had lived there ever since he started graduate school at Columbia. In college, Richard's senior essay, "The Liberal Notion of the Life Plan," had won an award and been published in a slender professional journal. That was seven years ago. He had begun work on his dissertation with slightly thinning hair; now all that remained was a laurel of blond curls ringing the base of his skull, and he had finished only two chapters. His first adviser had been denied tenure, and his second had quit Columbia to open a Tex-Mex restaurant. A squash player in college, Richard had since grown paunchy. He supported himself by teaching sections of "Contemporary Civilization," a discredited survey of the Western tradition. He spent his free time cooking and watching reruns of "The Honeymooners." His parents, during their weekly conversations, referred to him in the third person.
"He's still searching for his niche," his father said.
"What he needs is a nice woman," his mother said.
"What I need," Richard groaned, "is a place to live."
He found listings on lumpenflats.com, and frittered away days exploring depressing hovels: roof-top garrets, home to half-frozen pigeons; and overheated basement tenements, where failing artists and musicians lived in semidarkness and clad only in underwear. A bed, suspended by a complex system of pulleys, hovered in a windowless cubicle. A horizontal slab of iron bolted to a wall split a grubby den into a duplex. A bathtub unfolded from a kitchen closet.
As his eviction day neared, he heard of an opening in a building on 114th between Riverside and Broadway. A narrow-shouldered man in a stained undershirt answered the door. Silently he ushered Richard through the apartment. It was one of those graciously crumbling pre-war affairs yet to be carved up and cannibalized by the university. Elegant molding shedded paint like dry skin, and old transoms rattled from the bitter wind rising off the river.
"You live here alone?" Richard asked.
"There's one more," the man mumbled. His eyes, grey and bunched close like a rodent's, remained fixed on Richard's shoulder as he spoke. "She's been out of town for a couple of days. She kind of comes and goes--"
Just then came the jingle of keys in a lock. The front door banged open. In the middle of the dim landing stood a tall woman in a long dark coat. A turquoise scarf was tucked around her neck, and her face, framed by a torch of blonde hair, was beautiful like a cut stone, remorselessly angled.
On the landing sat two hulking suitcases. As if following a silent command, the first tenant dragged the suitcases into the apartment.
The woman glanced at Richard -- their eyes met for an instant -- then turned down the hallway. "I'm here about the apartment," Richard volunteered.
The woman's boots rapped the parquet like impatient fingers as the gnomish bellhop, lugging the suitcases, followed a step behind. "As long as your checks don't bounce, you're fine with me." At the end of the hallway a shaft of light emerged from the bedroom, and closed upon itself as the door slammed shut behind her.
Richard stood transfixed. Feelings long dormant, lust and dread, stirred within him.
Richard loved his new bedroom, with its two large windows and views toward the north. In the distance, through a gap between two pre-war buildings, he could see bits of the George Washington Bridge and the slightest sliver of water. Illumined by the winter sun, the roofscape of water towers reminded him of the city work of Edward Hopper. But more than the view itself, he liked the cool blue light which cast long shadows of solitude, yet suggested veiled, simmering urban passions.
Though only in his late twenties, Richard had come to think of himself as a bachelor -- he figured he would eventually finish his degree, find a tenure-track position at some third-rate college, and live a small unthreatening life. He had been involved with a few women, but those experiences were distant and brief. He had the same desires as anyone else, only a relationship seemed an undue cost for their satisfaction. Yet now he found himself observing his new apartment-mate acutely, allured by the caprices of unattainable beauty.
Sasha was her name. She was doing a Masters in graphic arts. Usually she prowled about the apartment puffing cigarettes in slinky black miniskirts, her mouth set in the unsmiling expression of the hurried and put upon, but some mornings Richard would find her sipping coffee at the kitchen table in worn jeans and a loose white T-shirt, a Yankees cap slanting across her brow.
She often chatted on the phone with her artsy friends about gallery openings and club dates, but once he found her scrunched in a ball on the living room couch, hand engulfed in cord, whining into the receiver, "But, Mom!"
And then there was the time that he discovered her reading "Little Dorritt," sitting perfectly erect, sniffling, surrounded by used Kleenex.
Finally, there was her small deformity. Her fingers, like the hips upon which they often rested, were slender and elegant, but her thumbs were squat, topped with a flattened rectangle of nail, and fastened to her palm with a freakishly excessive piece of webbing. Richard was smitten.
But the feeling she aroused in him wasn't love -- it felt more like a concentrated assault on the careful edifice of control that he had erected around his life. At night, Richard would lie in his bed and try to banish Sasha from his thoughts, but then he would turn on his side, and there she was again, diffuse, floating in a dark ether of outrageous and wanton fantasy.
Joe, the other tenant, was a spectral being. He worked for the Chemistry Department as some kind of lab assistant. He spent little time in the apartment and seemed never to shower. A stale pickled odor, like sweat mixed with formaldehyde, lingered about him. When they passed in the hallway, Joe would move slightly to the side, causing Richard to command, almost imperceptibly, more of the middle. Joe often ran errands for Sasha, who rewarded him with such harrowing indifference that Richard considered the tantalizing possibility that she was his dominatrix, and he her slave. It was easy enough to imagine the little chemist's porcine squeal and grunts while Sasha dripped hot wax on his naked hairy buttocks. But a hasty search of the apartment uncovered no equipment of bondage and domination.
Richard was preparing himself dinner one evening when Sasha strutted into the kitchen in short skirt and black cowboy boots, and began flipping through a volume of Weber he had left on the table. "You read a lot of dead Germans, don't you?" she said.
"Not by choice."
She glanced at a few sentences between puffs on a cigarette, then read aloud, "Increasing rationalization means that principally there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play." "That's a sentence I can live with..."
"Weber can exert a kind of Teutonic fascination," Richard declared, surprised by her willingness to communicate. "His real interest was in what he called the process of disenchantment, you know, the withdrawal of magic from the modern world."
"Disenchantment," Sasha repeated, clasping her arms under her breasts. "Tell me about it."
As he skillfully separated the whites and the yolks for the batter for his Chicken Lyonnaise, Richard noticed that she was watching him. The back of his skull began to tingle.
"Pretty ambitious," she said. "Where'd you learn to do that?"
"My mother used to teach cooking at an adult-ed school. Now she writes her own syndicated food column."
"Excellent," Sasha said. "The most cooking I ever learned from my mother was how to burn waffles while swigging gin."
"She had a drinking problem?"
"You could say that. But it basically cleared up once she discovered coke."
Richard scanned his family history in vain for a matching tale of addiction. Finding none, he recited some statistic he had come across in the Times about how dealers of crack receive wildly long prison sentences as compared to dealers of regular cocaine. Sasha seemed not to listen. She told him a story about a former boyfriend who worked as a chef in a restaurant in the East Village. "He turned into a real bloat king. I guess good cooks often struggle with their weight."
The next day, Richard enrolled in an aerobics and lifting class at the gym. He began with Stylus and Ergometrics, and then introduced free weights into his workout. At night he would stand before his mirror in his jockey briefs, arms clasped behind his back, monitoring his progress. He dropped fifteen pounds in a month. In a new sporting boutique, he bought himself a present: a pair of Spandex 'animal' shorts and a hot red turbo tanktop.
It was a colorless arctic afternoon. The city seemed tired of winter's mindless cold and longed for the ascending power of another season. "Contemporary Civilization" was going badly: No one did the reading, discussion lagged, attendance was lousy; he noticed one student had scrawled on his notebook, the tedium, the tedium. The gym was his only respite. After his workout, Richard paced around, his tanktop slicked to the sweaty contours of his abdomen. Watching the women in the aerobics class was a favorite pastime of the lifters, and though Richard couldn't bring himself to stand akimbo and stare shamelessly like the others, he stood by the side and peered through the door.
The forty or so women stood in even rows. There were a few overweight ones, lumbering along like astronauts; the others, splashed in colorful tights, pulsed and bopped to ancient Prince and the flushed exhortations of the beaming instructor. Now touch your knee! Option shin! Toward the front, Richard saw a woman in black leg warmers whose step was a touch more spry than the others, whose purple Spandex followed her form just a little more gorgeously. A moment of appreciative lust passed before he realized he was staring at Sasha.
He felt naked, gripped with old inhibitions about his body, but he checked his impulse to flee. When the first woman emerged from Sasha's class, he began a furious set of push-ups on a stretching mat next to the door. He had reached fifty-five when he saw a pair of black Reeboks position themselves before him and heard a voice say, "Hey!"
Kneeling, he looked up at her. Her hair was pulled back in a pony-tail, and her eyes were ringed with glistening circles of sweat.
He stood up, only slowly extending himself to his full height.
"So how long has a cerebral guy like you been into the cult of the body?" she said.
"I don't believe in dualisms," Richard stammered. "I'm just trying to stay fit."
"It seems like you're having some success." Sasha made a small fist and punched him lightly in the arm. Then, as if checking a grapefruit, she squeezed his biceps, pushing hard with her dwarf thumb. Richard laughed, but could feel himself blush, which only made him blush deeper.
Sasha seemed to enjoy his mortification. "Where'd you get the sweet tanktop?"
They were both out of groceries so they went to a new Brazilian restaurant on Amsterdam. Sasha wore a black skirt with a silk blouse, her hair teased into leaping flames with sculpting gel. A waiter stared at her from across the room while twirling the edges of his dark moustache.
"You have an admirer," Richard said.
"I'm used to it," Sasha answered. "Most men think they can just let their eyes walk all over you."
"Demaine calls that the 'pornographic gaze'. He believes it's a form of ocular rape."
In the last couple of weeks, Sasha and Richard had begun having long conversations -- about her alcoholic mother, the culture of dysfunction, the eroding distinction between art and fashion -- as they'd slowly sip coffee that Richard prepared in his espresso maker. In this time, Richard had come to an astonishing and simple realization: that despite her beauty, in many respects her life was no more full than his.
"Of course, the problem isn't with pornography per se," Richard continued. "It's the way our entire culture objectifies women."
Sasha laughed. "That's what you say now. But later tonight you'll go racing back to nookie.com."
Richard blanched. Had she rifled through the cache of his laptop?
"I'm just teasing," Sasha said, touching his arm. "Though I wish I'd had a camera just then to capture your expression... Anyway, who said there's anything wrong with porn?"
Richard shrugged. Through a combination of fawning deference and intellectual bravado, he felt himself nearing a brilliant possession. "As long as it doesn't recapitulate the whole history of gender subjugation."
"Wow, you're a true enemy of your sex."
"I hate to tell you, but not all men are proud of the legacy of patriarchy."
"I know -- those men are called 'gay.' Just kidding..."
Later, they stood around the living room drinking wine. "It's amusing," Sasha said, "how differently men and women usually think about these issues."
"It's to be expected. Mulligan argues that communication between the sexes is impossible because discourse itself is a gender construct."
"Is that what you believe?"
"I would say communication is difficult but not impossible."
"I see... And under what conditions would you say it's possible?"
There was something in Sasha's tone, a wry and poignant curiosity that made his mind go blank. He shrugged.
"You know what I think?" she said. "I think you've got something on your mind besides feminist theory."
Richard felt himself redden as he peered into her keenly focused orbs of hazel. How many times had he prayed to see this look in a woman of Sasha's beauty? How many thousands of words, gestures, acts had been arranged, choreographed, and deployed to bring him to this moment? He couldn't remember.
Nor could he remember what to do.
Sasha rose and switched off the light, plunging the room and Richard into darkness. "I'm going to bed," she said, glancing back at him meaningfully as she left the room.
Richard's temples tingled. Clearly she wanted him to follow her into her bedroom. Or did she? What if he had misread her, what if she pushed him away with hysterical guffaws of disgust? It was Baby Boris' same old problem. The beginning was always the hardest, then things fell into place. It was just a matter of climbing back on the horse, so to speak. Richard paced the hallway as if in a surgical waiting room. Passing Joe's room, he glanced in through the half-open bedroom door, and was surprised to see the little chemist lying on his back, fast asleep, naked. A shaft of light from the kitchen intersected with light from the window forming a pale blue cross at his flaccid penis. Yet in the moment that Richard found himself staring at Joe's sex, the member, as if stirring in a private dream, slowly unfurled, rose for a moment, and then resettled on Joe's other thigh, like a body turning in sleep.
Startled, Richard tiptoed away and shut the door to his bedroom.
Spring came, a warmer, wetter manifestation of the Grey. Sasha, in these weeks, spent ever more time in the studio. When she returned home late at night, Richard and she would drink cosmos or vodka martinis together in the kitchen. Later, they'd go to her room, where, with the lights out, Sasha curled on her bed and Richard sitting in her armchair, they'd watch reruns of "The Honeymooners."
She desired him -- there was no doubt any more. And while he desired her as well, he had to admit to the peculiar relief he derived from delay. One night, after he switched off the set, he walked to her bed, ran his hands through her hair and gently kissed her forehead. Then he turned and left the room.
"You bastard," she whispered, her hand trailing after him.
The next night, Richard read until past midnight, then lay sleepless in bed, waiting for Sasha to return from the studio. Even in the dark, the apartment was dimly illumined, filled with the relentless noise from the city outside. Desire stirred within him, as he felt transported by the casual narcotic of the diffuse. When an hour passed and she still hadn't come back, he tossed off his covers, dressed quickly, and hustled up Broadway. The streets were filled with students and the deinstitutionalized.
The heavy door of the studio opened to his insistent knocking. An Asian man with horn-rimmed glasses and a ponytail ushered him into a cavernous neo-industrial space.
"Have you seen Sasha Grove?" Richard asked.
The man shook his head.
Richard strode down the length of the studio, past rows of drafting tables framed by narrow arcs of light. Ink sketches, j-pegs, printouts, posters and photographs lay scattered about. Cigarettes burned untouched on old brass plates.
He turned to a woman who nervously fondled her nose ring while examining her design. "Have you seen Sasha Grove?"
"Didn't she leave with Derrick?"
Richard was seized with an instant of desperation, but just then he spotted her. She was alone, hunched over a drafting table, her knees pressed against her breasts, swiveling back and forth on a stool. Her hair, in the Halogen spot, burned like a lone prairie fire. He approached her from behind. Without saying a word, he bent over and began examining her design.
"Hey!" she cried. "What brings you here?"
"Why, you, of course..."
Sasha's face was wan and deep lines uncurled from her nostrils and fell to the edges of her mouth. The tired intimacy with which she greeted him made Richard aware that in some uncertain way they were already lovers. He leaned over and gave her a kiss.
She accepted it with such nonchalance that he immediately kissed her again. "Well, well," she said. "Isn't this a surprise."
Their shoulders touching, she showed him the project she was working on -- a cover for a graphic novel by a contemporary Japanese writer. Sasha's design blended elements of old Japanese prints and garish anime to make a striking pastiche. Richard lacked visual gifts and her ability to compose images made her all the more substantial in his mind.
"It reminds me of Liechtenstein," he cried, hoping the analogy was on point. He kissed her again, a long one that parted her lips and grew more fervent just in the moment that it seemed to fade away.
They went to Stimpy's, a bar popular with the art students. "There's a dance at the studio on Saturday night," Sasha said. "The theme is Something Black... Well, are you going to be my escort or not?"
With the gesture of a maestro expressing gratitude toward his audience, Richard indicated that he would be honored.
Yet their conversation was desultory. There were long pauses while they sipped beer. At one point, they went outside so Sasha could smoke a cigarette.
Richard said, "Who's Derrick?"
"Where'd you hear that name?"
"In the studio."
Sasha looked at him and yawned. "Just a friend. Anyway, he's a real flamer."
Inside a large group of men watching the basketball playoff from the West Coast erupted in cheers.
Sasha pulled Richard close and in a sudden sibilant gesture, thrust her tongue deep in his mouth. "Let's go home," she whispered.
Back in the apartment, she poured herself a whiskey. When she sighed, Richard could hear her contentment and expectancy. After another kiss, he said, "I'm going to sleep." He examined the look of disbelief on her face.
"What?" he snapped.
"Never mind -- just the charms of this game are wearing thin."
Richard ran his hand over his bald pate. "If you just want to get laid, you can go back to one of your pretty boys. You just don't know how to deal with a man who finally respects you."
Sasha laughed, "Respect? Is that what you call this?" Then she turned and left the room. A few minutes later, the muffled sound of her television filled the darkened hallway like the hushed chatter of parents.
That Saturday night Richard and Sasha dressed for the dance in their separate bedrooms, like a pair to be betrothed.
For the occasion Richard had gone to a Hispanic vintage clothing store in the upper 90s and bought an old polyester tuxedo. The pants had black velvet stripes running down the flank, and the jacket, which didn't exactly match, had a swooping front. He also got a frilly pink dress shirt, and a velvet clip-on bow tie. But what had seemed funky in the store struck Richard as clownish as he turned in the mirror.
Sasha was waiting for him in the living room. She wore a strapless black dress which ended above her knee in silky pleats, black diamond motif stockings, and a leopard-spotted clip in her flaming hair. She stared at him without comment.
"Is there a problem?" Richard asked.
She lit a cigarette. "C'mon, we're more than fashionably late as it is."
The gallery was clotted with dense clusters of monochromatic costumers. Sasha was immediately swallowed up by a group of friends. "You look positively sinister," she exclaimed to a vampiress. After a minute, she said, "Oh, let me introduce you to my apartment-mate." Richard stood in glum silence. When he began lightly playing with her fingers, she clasped her arms tightly across her chest.
A tall black man with striking green eyes put his arms around her from behind.
"Derrick!" she cried, turning around. They kissed lightly on the mouth.
Richard slipped away, and got himself a couple of carrot sticks and a double shot of vodka. People stood in conspiratorial gangs, smoking and dancing in vague, studied gestures to the music of the band, Section Eight, whose slags of stuporous snarling neo-garage pulsed through the high-ceilinged space.
He drifted around the gallery, examining the paintings. A huge canvas of a one-eyed man beheading a cat reminded him, for some reason, of the glimpse he had caught of Joe's penis. He remembered how once, in the shower room at the gym, he had seen a young man slowly lathering an enormous member. An uncertain feeling washed over him, a reckless apathy edged with dread.
He went back to the bar and ordered another vodka. As he mixed the ice with his finger, he saw Sasha dancing with Derrick. The band's lead singer wailed in a raspy throat, Sweep the ashes, you fairytale queen. Your nasty stepsisters, they make you wanna scream!
Like a backup dancer in a VH1 video, Sasha lifted the hem of her skirt to mid-thigh. She tossed her head in profile, her eyes half-closed, her lips dark and full in the bluish light.
Richard scratched his chin against his palm and tossed back his drink in a histrionic gulp.
He exchanged a glance with a woman with mascara-drawn feline eyes. When she tried to slide past him in the crush of people, Richard turned to her, rubbing against her breasts. The woman glared at him. "What?" he said, trying to sound oblivious. His mouth was pinched like a little sack tied with string.
Sasha came toward him and tugged him by the sleeve. "Let's dance," she screamed in his ear. He tried to pull her close, but she pushed him away.
"First," he said, "a kiss."
She kissed him once, fast and hard, on the lips.
"Another," he demanded.
She tried to tug him to the dance floor, but he grabbed her and pressed a kiss upon her lips. She struggled free of his embrace. "Stop that."
"I thought this is what you wanted. What you've wanted all along."
"I want to dance."
"You seemed to be having a good enough time with your fag."
Sasha's eyes narrowed. "What a stupid hateful thing to say," she said, "especially coming from you."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Drop it."
"No, I want to hear."
"NEVER MIND," she shouted, then adding almost in a laugh, "anyway he's not as gay as I first thought."
Richard took a step toward her, then thrust his hands in his pockets, stabbing his nails into his palms. He watched her tug Derrick back to the dance floor. The two danced close, her fingers clinging to his neck like a star-fish on a smooth rock.
The singer crooned, Hey, Cinderella, they say it's your slipper - but it don't fit, girl, no, no, it don't!
Flushed, Richard felt as if he were watching a scaffolding peel away from a strange and complex edifice of his own making. Things were falling apart -- was he a thing? With astonishing clarity he imagined her fondling the dark sex with her webbed paw.
He broke through the crowd, and took her by the wrist.
"Richard," she said, twisting away. To her friend she explained, "My apartment-mate."
"Ah," Derrick said. "The famous chef."
Richard turned to Sasha. "We have to talk." Suddenly he felt foolish before them - the cliché rang in his ears. He couldn't say why he was there, but now he also couldn't leave. "It's important..."
"Just go sit down," Sasha said between clenched teeth. "I'm sure it can wait."
The singer brayed, Pumpkin's busted, slipper's smashed...Sweet Cinderella, have you ever felt sooooo...RANDOM?
Richard could feel himself redden, his heart pound.
"I guess she's not feeling very conversational," Derrick said.
"Hey, fuck you, pal," Richard snapped.
Derrick blinked in astonishment, and lifted his hands as if to say, whoa. Sasha pulled him away without bothering to look back at Richard.
His blood was crashing in his ears; he clenched and unclenched his fists. Then he turned and shouldered his way out of the gallery.
It had started to rain and long black daggered streaks ran down the sides of the dark buildings of Broadway. Richard didn't bother to cover his head, but after a couple of blocks, the rain let up. A light beaded fog rose up from the river and invaded the side streets. Traffic signs flashed their vacant message.
Back in the apartment, he tore off his sopped tux and hideous shirt, and banged the door open to Sasha's bedroom. He switched on the T.V. and threw himself on her bed. The room was dark, the sheets smelled of something defiantly female. He watched a rerun of "The Honeymooners," and unzipped his fly. Slowly massaging himself, he waited.
He awakened with a start. The set had been switched off and the odor of smoke curled through the room. His eyes darted toward the orange lambent glow. In the corner armchair sat Sasha puffing languidly on a cigarette. She wore black pumps and nothing else.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, slowly uncrossing and re-crossing her naked legs.
He reached for his answer, but it wasn't there. Outside, the elusive form of a building rose from the night's fog.