The Sheila Variations

Grapefruit Dance

She always had red-carpet accessories, despite the fact that she was a starving artist. Her bags were blue alligator leather that creaked when she opened them, there were waiting lines of a year or more to get her shoes, and she had one-of-a-kind prescription sunglasses sent to her from a small elite company in Florence. I asked her once, we were at some street fair, having smoky shish kebab, and browsing through the hippie tye-dye merchandise, "How the hell do you afford the crap you own?"

I'm not into "things", not really, but her 'things' called attention to themselves. I didn't know her that well. She was a theatre director, although she hadn't risen above fringe festival shows where prime time was past 11 p.m. She was ambitious, a bit manic, she talked a great game, and I was curious about her. I knew she was a big "dater", unlike myself. She was always having these crazy dates with random people, dates that involved going to weight lifting classes together (as a first date), or having some dusty dude take her up in his biplane on a windy afternoon. I wondered if maybe there was a sugar daddy in the picture who kept her in $1200 sunglasses. Maybe someone who backed one of her many pot-boiling theatre projects. But she laughed when I asked my relatively rude question. I'm a proletariat. I've had very little contact with the very rich, but when I have been in their company, I realize that the one topic nobody ever talks about in that circle ... is money. In my class bracket, it's pretty much all we discuss. And in New York, asking someone you barely know, "How much do you pay in rent?" isn't considered rude at all. Her life was like mine: chaotic, bohemian, put-together-with-string, project to project. She wasn't a yacht club wife, I could ask her about money.

She barked out a laugh, and said, "Oh my GOD. Now THAT is a story."

"So tell it to me. Do you have a trust fund or something?"

She laughed even harder at that. I knew she came from nothing. I had heard a couple of the stories about the house she grew up in, the dirty yard filled with rusting cars and car parts. Pieces of engines, the detritus of motion through the years. She lost her virginity in one of those vacant cars to a terrible boy, her boyfriend, who chewed tobacco (at age 15) and punched her in the face at the Homecoming Dance. She scooped up her packages, tossed the rest of her shish kebob in the steaming trash can to her right, and said, "I'll buy you a drink and tell you the story."

It wasn't even 1 p.m. yet, but we sat in a little Russian vodka room in the east Village, white sunight pouring through the dusty windows, and drank. Odd, to drink. In the middle of the day. The smoke from the street fair still hovered around us, and she told me the story. It was fantastic. Too good to be true, really. I asked her a million questions, and she answered in as much detail as one would want. She knew it was crazy, she accepted how crazy it was, so my agog-faced questions were the spark to the flame. She wasn't "over it", or blase. She told the story in a "can you fucking believe this shit???" tone that was completely gratifying and hysterical to me. I did not hear nervousness or depression. It was a drama, a high-drama. She lived her life like it was a performance art piece, and she was the burlesque star, waving her peacock fans at the men in the darkness, smoking their cigars and watching her. I enjoyed her. As long as I was a captive audience, I enjoyed her. It soon (very soon) became too much, and I learned her vicious side, her manic Fatal Attraction side ... but that day, in the white sunlight, with the red leather booths, and the sulky Eastern European waitress with the bad haircut bringing cocktails to us, I loved her. I loved how she could tell a story.

My questions were like:

"Oh my God, what?"

"Were you scared?"

"And THEN what?"

"And THEN what?"

"And that's it? That's it??"

That's it. That's it.

Maybe it was the alcohol, which turned my head, maybe it was the disorientation of drinking hard liquor in the afternoon, maybe those things combined added a recklessness to the air, and yet also a feeling of safety. There is something very comforting about danger. One knows what to do when one is threatened. It is perhaps the safest time of all, because there are no choices.

And in a flash, 2 or 3 seconds, it was arranged.

Like I said, "things" don't matter that much to me. I don't care about money. Or, I care about it - I want to make sure I have a roof over my head, and am able to take care of myself. It is hard to describe the difference. I know people who care, and care deeply, about "things". This is fine. But I did not envy her her sunglasses, her designer digs, her accoutrements. It wasn't about that. It was that I could not believe what I was hearing, I could not believe her story, and needed to see it for myself. I'm naturally a very cautious person. I don't know where I get that, but it is engrained. I do not spend what I do not have. I barely have a credit card. I have never been promiscuous. I have never done drugs. There's something past a certain point that seems out of control, and for whatever reason, I have never gone there. I keep myself on a short leash. In all things. But when I dare? I dare big.

She called me 2 days later, giddy and hysterical. "Okay, it's all set up. Tomorrow at 3 p.m." She gave me the address, and we went over again my instructions, which were tremendously specific.

"What should I wear?" I asked her, nervous. I wear sweaters and jeans. I am not ready to be done up at a moment's notice, it takes some planning.

"You could look like the Stay-Puf Marshmallow Man and it wouldn't matter. Wear whatever you want. And call me the SECOND you're done."

The next day was a Tuesday. I woke up with a strange hard ball in my stomach, that wouldn't go away. It wasn't dread. It was more anticipation of the unknown, a bit of fear, and also my warrior coming into play. I was ready. Ready. I felt hard, tight, and clear. Also a little bit insane. I looked at myself in the mirror when I brushed my teeth and started laughing hilariously, laughing until the tears came to my eyes. I didn't feel greed. I wasn't rubbing my hands together in miserly delight about the 2000 bucks I was about to make. I didn't care about that. I may not be believed, but it is the truth. It was the glimpse I was after. A glimpse of a kind of a life that I would never have, never succumb to. But experience? Life experience? Oh yes, I am greedy about THAT.

I wore a sweater, jeans, and clogs. It was a brisk fall day, so I put on a cap, too. I looked normal.

I sat on the subway, jostling north, going over my instructions in my head. Obsessively, like worry beads. Over and over. It seemed simple enough. It seemed that I could not make a mistake. But the unknown is terrifying for that very reason. It is unknown. Whatifs crowded into my head, pushing for space, face-time. I thought of my friend, with her shock of blonde hair, her shiny red lips, her big loud laugh, and thought: she is none the worse for wear. Am I tough? I thought of that time I saw the rip in the pink sky above the church steeple. And how I felt the world was coming to an end. How I tried to crawl out my bedroom window at 3:30 in the morning, because it had suddenly seemed too narrow, in case of a fire. I pushed and heaved myself out into the dawn, sleepless, wired, nuts. That was as bad as it got for me. I survived it. And I'm still here, still able to feel and to love and to grieve and to hope for things. I'm strong. I'm tough. No one could see that rip in the pink sky and survive. But I did.

Upper East Side stop. Here now. The suburbs of Manhattan. The tony suburbs. Where you have to struggle for a spot on the sidewalk amidst the massive baby carriages. Where the townhouses launch up into the sky, gargoyles and stone details and all, where every building has a doorman, where dogs wear desginer outfits. This was not my milieu. I sometimes came up this way for a talk at the 92nd Street Y, but other than that, never. You peek through these people's windows and gasp at the wealth. The grand pianos and chandeliers. What a gap there is between those who have and those who do not. Again, it's not that I don't value money. I do. I just try not to value it too much. But getting glimpses, oh those glimpses, into people's houses up there in the lofty heights of the Upper East Side, questions my value system. I ache. I ache for that grand piano. Those quiet leafy streets. I ache for ease.

But I was up there for another reason. I had the address in my wallet, a sweaty crumpled piece of looseleaf, handed to me in the Russian vodka room. I felt like stopping off at a bagel shop, and sitting quietly at a table in the window, writing in my journal, but the appointment time beckoned. I had to go. I turned onto the street, it felt like my pulse was beating in my FACE. You know how cats look when they feel threatened? When they get intense and crouch-y? You know how their eyes get wide and serious and dark? That's what I felt like.

The unknown.

The front of the building was a creamy marble, untouchably perfect, from another era. A more elegant era. Expansive, easy, where the rules were set. A Plaza Hotel kind of world. I don't go into such places. But I went into that place, that marvelous shadowy lobby, the kind of space that makes your heart pound in response to its beauty. The doorman (I had been told about him) stood at the door, in a deep red uniform, with gold tassels. A jaunty little red cap. He didn't seem to find me insulting, he didn't seem to take offense at my clogs. I approached him openly and said what I had been told to say:

"Penthouse 1. I'm Rosa."

He nodded, with great old-world dignity, as though he were expecting me, and led me to the elevator. He opened the door for me, a creamy thick marble door, and I stepped into the waiting elevator. Said to the doorman, "Thank you," although I was confused at the etiquette in question. I am obviously NOT Rosa. But there were rules in effect that I, by my very presence, accepted. And so he did, too. This was what I was after. What was underneath it all. Life is life, we all understand it, we all know it, we all live it. But what is underneath? Does anyone ever know what is really going on?

I felt like I came close to understanding this existential question when I told that man that I was Rosa, and he nodded gravely at me, like: Yes. Of course you are.

The door closed on me. It was a private elevator (I knew this from my instructions) so I didn't even have to press a button. I just stood, and waited, as we rose.

A kind of tunnel vision came over me then, the sort of thing I have felt when I have been taking an important test. I got major tunnel vision during the SATs and GREs. The adrenaline rush is fierce, it assaults every sense you have. Light seems sharper, sounds seem louder ... it takes a massive effort to just focus on the task at hand. Once you have harnessed your forces, once you have accepted the adrenaline rush and said to it calmly, with love; "No. Not now" ... that is when you get the tunnel vision. The world disappears. All you are left with is the task. In some ways, it is the ideal situation. Danger requires focus. If every light shard and every drop of water causes a psychotic episode, you will be unable to perform. Tunnel vision sheds the unnecessary. It's an alarming experience, certainly not for everyday, but that was what I felt in that elevator. Too late to turn back. I'm Rosa now. On my way to Penthouse 1.

Showtime.

The door opened.

There was no hallway, no common corridor like other apartment buildings. This elevator opened directly into the penthouse. A gleaming wooden floor greeted me, and 16 foot ceilings, white and rounded at the edges, with little flutes and columns coming up from the wainscoting. I couldn't take it all in, not at that moment, but my impression was that of great and deep space. A room as large as a gymnasium, a massive fireplace, dark onyx statues perched here and there, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking all of Central Park. These were just snapshots though, things I could put together later, when I looked back on it. In that moment, I was just focused on my very simple (according to my friend) task. I did not enter the room. I stepped out of the elevator and did not move. I waited. Looking out into that grand space. Waiting. Glanced down, feverishly, to my right, and saw the net bag lying on the floor, as I had been told it would be.

And then it began.

A man stepped out into the great room beyond and positioned himself directly opposite me. There was about 40 feet between us. He was fat and pale, and (in retrospect) he seemed to give off an out-of-breath impression. Like, he didn't move all that much. Just stepping into the open space was an ordeal. I got a glimpse of his blue suit, crisp, well-made, his open white shirt, and his bare feet. None of this was a surprise. I had been prepared. He stood opposite me. Staring at me. Neither of us moved.

It is on the top of the list of the most absurd moments of my life.

Nobody spoke. I had my instructions. I trusted my friend in the designer sunglasses. I trusted that what she told me to do I was supposed to do. I did not think. I did not contemplate or ponder. I just reached down into the net bag beside me, grabbed a grapefruit off of the pile of grapefruits, the grapefruits I had been told would be there, pulled one out - and then, as instructed, chucked it at him as hard as I could. He dodged it, and it went careening off into his room, smashing against a stone pillar. Damn, that fat man was agile. I reached down again, picked up another grapefruit, and hucked it at him as hard as I could. Again, he dodged it (I have very good aim) and this time the hurtling citrus fruit knocked a blue and white vase off a pillar and, horrifyingly, the vase flew into the air and shattered into a million pieces into the floor. I almost lost it then. I am afraid of wealth, and nervous when I am around precious objects. I go to the Metropolitan Museum and literally tiptoe around the glass cases, fearful that disaster will occur. I clapped my hands over my mouth, and stood, hunched, and terrified. At the mess, at the crash, at the loss of a vase he might have had ordered from freakin' Versailles, for all I know. But fat man didn't care at all. He didn't even look over his shoulder at the carnage. Just gestured at me impatiently with his pudgy paw, like: Gimme another one!

So I did.

There were 20 grapefruits in the net bag. I threw them all. After the vase-crash debacle, I got to a kind of Zen place in my mind with the experience. He wanted this. This was what he wanted, and he paid good money for it. He paid good money for "Rosa" to come to him, once a week, and hurl grapefruits at him. And damn the consequences. I hurled grapefruits at his fat head. He ducked. I aimed for his kneecaps. He leapt into the air, landing with a wet slap on his bare feet. I tried my curve ball, still there with me from Little League, and he dodged to the right, to the left, arching his back in a way I wouldn't have thought possible. I made it my mission, my mission in LIFE, to hit him at least ONCE. I wanted to nail him in his pinstriped torso, I wanted to see him buckle over in pain and shock, at least ONCE. I actually took some time, before each windup, as though I were Curt Schilling staring at Jason Varitek's hand-signals. I tried to gauge which would be the best way to "get" him.

In the process of all of this, I broke:

-- a precious glass-shaded lamp
-- a ceramic bowl
-- a potted plant
-- a display of ivory figurines
-- 5 framed photos on the table (they went down like nine pins)

There was probably more damage done, but this is what I remember. I remember glass shivering through the air, and I remember the dirt from the potted plant heaving itself onto the floor through the cracks in the pottery. 20 grapefruits is not a lot, though. If you want to do some REAL damage, you would need at least 40.

And I never hit the son-of-a-bitch once.

After I threw the last grapefruit, fat man, who had shown himself to be surprisingly agile and athletic, stalked out of sight. Into the penthouse beyond. Where I would never be invited, where I would never go.

He was done. It was over.

I felt strangely let down. I had liked throwing things at him.

Back into the elevator. Back down. Gold-tasseled doorman opened the door for me, unperturbed, unruffled, and absolutely uncurious. Took a small cream-colored envelope out of his pocket, and handed it to me.

More than anything, in that moment, I felt baffled. At a loss. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but utter disorientation was not on the list.

"Thank you." I said, shoving the envelope into the back pocket of my jeans.

He nodded at me, a face like a petrified wood statue, I couldn't get in there with him if I tried. He was beyond. Beyond the concerns of the everyday person. He was, in a classic sense, in service to someone else, and whatever he knew he would take to his grave.

Half a block away, I took the envelope out of my back pocket. Still disbelieving. I had just thrown grapefruits at a man for 20 minutes. He had leapt and dashed and dodged through his penthouse from my hurtling citrus missiles. This was an appointment for him. An appointment he kept every week. Didn't matter who the girl was. The girl was irrelevant. What mattered was the dance itself.

Inside the envelope was $2000. Cash.

I never went back.

But believe me, I've been tempted.

I've been tempted not just because of the money. But because there was something fiercely satisfying, cannibalistic satisfying, about throwing objects at another human being, relentlessly, over and over and over ... about watching that strange man dart and dodge and leap ... and try to handle whatever it was that I threw at him.

Posted by sheila