“There’s this lusty wench who plays string bass with the London Symphony. She plays that thing like she’d stick her hand up a bull’s ass.” He is leaning over the back of the seat to talk to me, facing backwards as the train screams forward into the night. “So I imagine I’m having an affair with this woman… and I imagine we are lying in bed together, and that we have just made love and I get up to put my pants on, get up to leave, and she grabs my arm and says, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’”
I stare at him.
“You remind me of her, that’s all.”
We are on the train, the above ground, lurching and screeching our way back down to Brooklyn. The night is rainy and the water runs in rivulets horizontally across the windows, shaped into tiny streams by the sheer force of the train moving through space. The Kentile Floors sign is lit up and the train almost circles it, as if paying homage, before going underground. There is something comforting about the Kentile Floors sign. It’s like a glorious steel oak tree stretching into the sky.
He is tracing his finger back and forth lazily along the seam of the vinyl seat. He looks at me.
“So what’s your name?” he asks.
“Pearl,” I say. This is the truth.
“Pearl. That’s good.”
“And yours?”
“Elliot. What do you do, Pearl?”
“I work in a butcher shop. Down in Coney Island.”
He smiles. “So you are Pearl and you work slicing meat. You are Pearl and you work in a deli.”
“No, I work in a butcher shop. There’s a difference. We’re talking big pieces of meat. No sliced turkey, no bologna.”
He smiles again. “I see. So you are a Pearl among the rump roasts. A Pearl among the flank steaks. Is that it?”
“Something like that,” I say.
He is small. He has green eyes that can only be described as beautiful. They are beautiful, green eyes. He has a long nose and soft, light brown hair that stands up in little tufts like a duckling’s new feathers. He has one crooked tooth in front. He wears a leather jacket that makes a wonderful scrunching noise as he moves his arms across the vinyl seat.
“So, how do you move that meat around?”
“What?”
“How do you move that meat around?”
“Are you actually asking me that, or are you just a prick?” I say, staring back at him.
He laughs softly. “No, I’m serious. How do you move the meat across the floor? You know, the work that goes on behind the counter.”
“Hooks,” I say.
“Hooks?”
“Yeah, hooks. Big, long hooks on poles that stick into the meat, and then you drag it along a sort of wire overhead until you get it to where you want it. Then, you cut it down and cut it up. You know, to sell it.”
He nods. “Does anyone ever want to buy the whole thing? Does anyone ever want the whole piece of meat?”
“No,” I say. We look at each other for awhile. The train stops and the doors open and that demented bell sounds, signaling: this is your opportunity to get on. This is your opportunity to get off. No one does. On this particular night, I am coming back from the Midwest. I am taking the long train ride back to my little hole of an apartment and I am tired. I have all my bags with me. All the things I felt were necessary to drag halfway across the country for a trip home that doesn’t even feel worth it anymore. Everyone who used to live there is gone. Everyone who mattered, anyway. So just how much shit does a person need to maintain oneself for a week? What is the standard? The teeth necessitate brushing. There must be a toothbrush involved. The feet will be cold. Boots must come along. I look at my suitcases. So, these are all the supplies required to keep a body in working order for seven days. It seems like too much.
“Where are you coming from?”
“Home,” I say.
“And where is that?”
“Big sky country,” I say leaning toward him, my eyes wide.
“I’ve never been out of the city.”
“That’s too bad.” When I first moved to New York, I used to look around at people and wonder what it does to the mind to never see the horizon. The horizon keeps you humble. Seeing thunderstorms roll in across the Great Plains. Hearing miles of insects humming in the tall grass. Some people don’t know about these things. Haven’t felt them. That’s why they think it’s acceptable human behavior to jog down Fifth Avenue while talking on a cell phone. “Where are you heading?” I ask. He is drumming his fingers on the top of the seat, singing something softly to himself under his breath.
“Home, I guess.” He looks at me again for awhile, cocking his head to the side. I do the same in imitation. I wonder how old he is. He is older than he looks, I think. Probably thirty-five. I don’t care enough to ask though. I have spent my entire life in the company of men. They don’t hold the same mystique for me as they do for other girls my age. I have come to the conclusion at this early point in my life that the only things women have in common are men and children and the only things men have in common are women and confusion. He looks lonely, but like he’s used to it. He doesn’t mope around anymore; he only drifts blankly. “Can I tell you a story?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Once when I was a boy, my father and I were driving through the desert, Southern California, you know, on the Mexican border, way out there in the middle of nowhere. It was night-time and there were no windows in the van and it was hot, it was so hot that the breeze didn’t even really feel like a breeze, it felt like a blowdryer in your face. And I was just a little boy, you know, sitting in the front seat all dirty and naked from a day of swimming in a little pool where my father and I had a picnic. He packed roast beef sandwiches and lemonade. It was a good day. And so we were driving back that night, back to the border in that busted-out old van with no windows and the stars just covered the sky and the cacti went whizzing by and I was thinking, I’m just a little boy, you know? And we were listening to ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ and I was thinking life was great and this song was great and my father was singing along and smoking some grass and then up the road in the headlights we see this old lady crossing the road. She’s an old Mexican lady and she’s wearing this blanket around her and kind of hobbling across the road and we were going so fast and the song was so great and she just came out of nowhere that there was nothing we could do but just keep on driving. So we just drove straight through her, with ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ playing in the background, and when I looked behind us there she was, still making her way across the road, and she waved to us and me and my father waved back.” He stops. He bites his lip and traces the water streaming down the outside of the train window with his finger. He has long, beautiful fingers.
“I thought you were from New York,” I say. He stares at me.
“I missed my stop,” he says, without even looking out the window.
The train has stopped and is hissing, catching its breath for a moment before it does the same stretch of track in reverse. I have missed my stop too. “We went all the way to Coney Island.”
“I’m hungry, Pearl. Would you take me to your butcher shop? Is there a little stove in the back, one little burner we can cook a steak on?”
I think for a minute. There is no one waiting at home for me. In fact, there is no one waiting for me anywhere.
“I’ll cook you a steak if you carry my bags,” I say.
“It’s done,” he says with a smile, and picks up my suitcases. We head off the train, down the stairs, into the wet night, past the bumper cars and Astro Land. He carries my bags.
The butcher shop where I work, where I have worked since I moved to New York, is called The Last Chance. I never had dreams of grandeur. I didn’t move to New York to become a starlet or a great writer. I expected The Last Chance. I welcomed it. I am a girl who works in butcher shops. I unlock the grate, pull it up, open the door, reach inside, flip the switch. The fluorescent lights buzz and flicker as they come on. The walls and floor inside The Last Chance are white tile and the counters are stainless steel except for next to the register where they are a beautiful, polished wood. Elliot sets down my bags and takes a chair from the back and sets it up at the counter. I light the little utility stove and go to the walk-in cooler in the back and take out a big marbled steak all wrapped up nicely in paper like a meaty Christmas present. I put the steak in a big frying pan. It sizzles. Elliot watches me. He stands behind me, so close I can feel his breath on my neck.
The steak is ready. I put it on a cracked blue china plate and make Elliot go sit at the counter. I sit on top of the counter next to him, a rack of knives hanging behind me making a steel halo behind my head.
He eats the steak, and I watch. “This is delicious, Pearl,” he says, and smiles. He eats half of it and looks up at me. “What would you say if I told you it was the most delicious steak I have ever eaten?”
“I’d say you were probably telling the truth.”
“And what would you say if I said we should spend all our time here, right here together in The Last Chance?”
“I’d say you were delirious.”
He gets up from his chair and moves toward me, just slightly. He doesn’t even touch me. He just looks at me. “And what would you do if I took you in my arms right now and kissed you?”
I stare back at him. Lean in real close. “I’d take one of those big knives back there and stab you in the heart.” I smile.
He backs away, nods gently. He sits back in his chair and smiles. “You, my girl, should be in charge of some grand enterprise.”