 and the odd people
who come to study the books.
"Does the Newberry really have a book made out of human skin?" Charisse
asks Henry.
"Yep. The Chronicles of Nawat Wuzeer Hydembed. It was found in the palace of
the King of Delhi in 1857. Come by some time and I'll pull it out for you."
Charisse shudders and grins. Henry is stirring the stew. When he says "Chow
time," we all flock to the table. All this time Gomez and Henry have been
drinking beer and Charisse and I have been sipping wine and Gomez has been
topping up our glasses and we have not been eating much but I do not realize
how drunk we all are until I almost miss sitting down on the chair Henry holds
for me and Gomez almost sets his own hair on fire while lighting the candles.
Gomez holds up his glass. "The Revolution!"
Charisse and I raise our glasses, and Henry does, too. "The Revolution!" We
begin eating, with enthusiasm. The risotto is slippery and mild, the squash is
sweet, the chicken is swimming in butter. It makes me want to cry, it's so good.
Henry takes a bite, then points his fork at Gomez. "Which revolution?"
"Pardon?"
"Which revolution are we toasting?" Charisse and I look at each other in
alarm, but it is too late.
Gomez smiles and my heart sinks. "The next one."
"The one where the proletariat rises up and the rich get eaten and capitalism
is vanquished in favor of a classless society?"
"That very one."
Henry winks at me. "That seems rather hard on Clare. And what are you
planning to do with the intelligentsia?"
"Oh," Gomez says, "we will probably eat them, too. But we'll keep you
around, as a cook. This is outstanding grub."
Charisse touches Henry's arm, confidentially. "We aren't really going to eat
anybody," she says. "We are just going to redistribute their assets."
"That's a relief," Henry replies. "I wasn't looking forward to cooking Clare."
Gomez says, "It's a shame, though. I'm sure Clare would be very tasty."
"I wonder what cannibal cuisine is like?" I say. "Is there a cannibal
cookbook?"
" The Cooked and The Raw," says Charisse.
Henry objects. "That's not really a how-to. I don't think Levi-Strauss gives any
recipes."
"We could just adapt a recipe," says Gomez, taking another helping of the
chicken. "You know, Clare with Porcini Mushrooms and Marinara Sauce over
Linguini. Or Breast of Clare a la Orange. Or-"
"Hey," I say. "What if I don't want to be eaten?"
"Sorry, Clare," Gomez says gravely. "I'm afraid you have to be eaten for the
greater good."
Henry catches my eye, and smiles. "Don't worry, Clare; come the Revolution
'I'll hide you at the Newberry. You can live in the stacks and I'll feed you Snickers
and Doritos from the Staff Lunchroom. They'll never find you."
I shake my head. "What about 'First, we kill all the lawyers'?"
"No," Gomez says. "You can't do anything without lawyers. The Revolution
would get all balled up in ten minutes if lawyers weren't there to keep it in line."
"But my dad's a lawyer," I tell him, "so you can't eat us after all."
"He's the wrong kind of lawyer" Gomez says. "He does estates for rich
people. I, on the other hand, represent the poor oppressed children-"
"Oh, shut up, Gomez," says Charisse. "You're hurting Clare's feelings."
"I'm not! Clare wants to be eaten for the Revolution, don't you, Clare?"
"No."
"Oh."
"What about the Categorical Imperative?" asks Henry.
"Say what?"
"You know, the Golden Rule. Don't eat other people unless you are willing to
be eaten."
Gomez is cleaning his nails with the tines of his fork. "Don't you think it's
really Eat or Be Eaten that makes the world go round?"
"Yeah, mostly. But aren't you yourself a case in point for altruism?" Henry
asks.
"Sure, but I am widely considered to be a dangerous nutcase." Gomez says
this with feigned indifference, but I can see that he is puzzled by Henry. "Clare,"
he says, "what about dessert?"
"Ohmigod, I almost forgot," I say, standing up too fast and grabbing the table
for support. "I'll get it."
"I'll help you" says Gomez, following me into the kitchen. I'm wearing heels
and as I walk into the kitchen I catch the door sill and stagger forward and
Gomez grabs me. For a moment we stand pressed together and I feel his hands
on my waist, but he lets me go. "You're drunk, Clare," Gomez tells me.
"I know. So are you." I press the button on the coffee maker and coffee begins
to drip into the pot. I lean against the counter and carefully take the cellophane
off the plate of brownies. Gomez is standing close behind me, and he says very
quietly, leaning so that his breath tickles my ear, "He's the same guy."
"What do you mean?"
"That guy I warned you about. Henry, he's the guy-"
Charisse walks into the kitchen and Gomez jumps away from me and opens
the fridge. "Hey," she says. "Can I help?"
"Here, take the coffee cups..." We all juggle cups and saucers and plates and
brownies and make it safely back to the table. Henry is waiting as though he's at
the dentist, with a look of patient dread. I laugh, it's so exactly the look he used
to have when I brought him food in the Meadow...but he doesn't remember, he
hasn't been there yet. "Relax," I say. "It's only brownies. Even I can do brownies."
Everyone laughs and sits down. The brownies turn out to be kind of
undercooked. "Brownies tartare," says Charisse. "Salmonella fudge," says
Gomez. Henry says, "I've always liked dough," and licks his fingers. Gomez rolls
a cigarette, lights it, and takes a deep drag.
Henry: Gomez lights a cigarette and leans back in his chair. There's something
about this guy that bugs me. Maybe it's the casual possessiveness toward Clare,
or the garden variety Marxism? I'm sure I've seen him before. Past or future? Let's
find out. "You look very familiar," I say to him.
"Mmm? Yeah, I think we've seen each other around."
I've got it. "Iggy Pop at the Riviera Theater?"
He looks startled. "Yeah. You were with that blond girl, Ingrid Carmichel, I
always used to see you with." Gomez and I both look at Clare. She is staring
intently at Gomez, and he smiles at her. She looks away, but not at me.
Charisse comes to the rescue. "You saw Iggy without me?"
Gomez says, "You were out of town."
Charisse pouts. "I miss everything," she says to me. "I missed Patti Smith and
now she's retired. I missed Talking Heads the last time they toured."
"Patti Smith will tour again" I say.
"She will? How do you know?" asks Charisse. Clare and I exchange glances.
"I'm just guessing" I tell her. We begin exploring each other's musical tastes
and discover that we are all devoted to punk. Gomez tells us about seeing the
New York Dolls in Florida just before Johnny Thunders left the band. I describe a
Lene Lovich concert I managed to catch on one of my time travels. Charisse and
Clare are excited because the Violent Femmes are playing the Aragon Ballroom
in a few weeks and Charisse has scored free tickets. The evening winds down
without further ado. Clare walks me downstairs. We stand in the foyer between
the outer door and the inner door.
"I'm sorry," she says.
"Oh, not at all. It was fun, I didn't mind cooking."
"No," Clare says, looking at her shoes, "about Gomez."
It's cold in the foyer. I wrap my arms around Clare and she leans against me.
"What about Gomez?" I ask her. Something's on her mind. But then she shrugs.
"It'll be okay," she says, and I take her word for it. We kiss. I open the outer door,
and Clare opens the inner door; I walk down the sidewalk and look back. Clare is
still standing there in the half-open doorway watching me. I stand, wanting to go
back and hold her, wanting to go back upstairs with her. She turns and begins to
walk upstairs, and I watch until she is out of sight.
Saturday, December 14, 1991 Tuesday, May 9, 2000 (Henry is 36)
Henry: I'm stomping the living shit out of a large drunk suburban guy who had
the effrontery to call me a faggot and then tried to beat me up to prove his point.
We are in the alley next to the Vic Theater. I can hear the Smoking Popes' bass
leaking out of the theater's side exits as I systematically smash this idiot's nose
and go to work on his ribs. I'm having a rotten evening, and this fool is taking the
brunt of my frustration.
"Hey, Library Boy." I turn from my groaning homophobic yuppie to find
Gomez leaning against a dumpster, looking grim.
"Comrade." I step back from the guy I've been bashing, who slides gratefully
to the pavement, doubled up. "How goes it?" I'm very relieved to see Gomez:
delighted, actually. But he doesn't seem to share my pleasure.
"Gee, ah, I don't want to disturb you or anything, but that's a friend of mine
you're dismembering, there."
Oh, surely not. "Well, he requested it. Just walked right up to me and said,
'Sir, I urgently need to be firmly macerated.'"
"Oh. Well, hey, well done. Fucking artistic, actually."
"Thank you."
"Do you mind if I just scoop up ol' Nick here and take him to the hospital?"
"Be my guest." Damn. I was planning to appropriate Nick's clothing,
especially his shoes, brand new Doc Martens, deep red, barely worn. "Gomez."
"Yeah?" He stoops to lift his friend, who spits a tooth into his own lap.
"What's the date?"
"December 14."
"What year?"
He looks up at me like a man who has better things to do than humor lunatics
and lifts Nick in a fireman's carry that must be excruciating. Nick begins to
whimper. "1991. You must be drunker than you look." He walks up the alley and
disappears in the direction of the theater entrance. I calculate rapidly. Today is
not that long after Clare and I started dating, therefore Gomez and I hardly know
each other. No wonder he was giving me the hairy eyeball.
He reappears unencumbered. "I made Trent deal with it. Nick's his brother.
He wasn't best pleased." We start walking east, down the alley. "Forgive me for
asking, dear Library Boy, but why on earth are you dressed like that?"
I'm wearing blue jeans, a baby bl