She hadn’t walked far when it hit her, the concept of what she must do. She had seen it, felt it for herself, but she hadn’t paid attention. Everything had screamed at her that this was wrong, that this was right, that one way led to Hell and the other to a plain where no one could touch her. She just had not paid attention. She had heeded her heart and not her guts, her loins but not her brains. She had to change it all, while there was still a chance of survival. It would be difficult, she thought to herself, and she would have to do it oddly, with a twist that couldn’t be undone.
Freddy wandered through the west side of Manhattan, the growing dampness only dimly settling into her clothing and her hair, with this argument raging in her head. Brianna had been right about her. Brianna had seen right through her. Max was a substitute for other things, other people. Max was not the man she should be with at all. Max was a friend, not a mate, a mate in the companionable sense and not a lover, a lover but not a husband. Brianna had been right all along.
She stopped at a phone booth, entered the cubicle, its plexiglass structure so marred by weather and graffiti that she couldn’t see through it, and deposited a dime in the slot. When the dial tone returned after the machinery gobbled up her coin, she dialed Max’s apartment, but on the first ring, she hung up the receiver. She hadn’t thought this through. She had nothing to say to him.
She had promised to phone in an hour and it was past that now. She had promised him. She made a promise. She had to keep a promise. That was her code. It was the way she had always been, had always worked in her life. You promised to do something and you did it. This was different, however. She had nothing to say to him that would make her choice any easier, any more reasonable. She had nothing to say.
She stepped back out of the phone booth and felt the first drops of the gentle rain that she had felt gathering around her as she walked the streets. She looked up at the sky, a unique sky available only on the cross streets of Manhattan, perceived through the rising sides of uneven buildings, its darkness a backdrop to the wood, cement and glass of the city. There were no stars visible, no moon. Only the bunched clouds above moving and altering the picture as they did so could be seen. Rain fell on her uplifted face and it felt cool and it refreshed her temporarily.
"Funerals bring out the worst in us," she thought aloud, "not the best. The worst."
"You said it sister," came a voice from the stoop in front of which she had stopped for her mini-reverie.
"Sorry?" Freddy said, caught unawares.
"Funerals bring out the worst in us," came the reply.
"Oh. Yes. Did I actually say that?"
"You sure did."
She looked at the man sitting on the top step. He was nondescript, one of those Manhattan men who lumber through days and linger through the nights. He had no feature on his face that impressed her. His hair was messy. He was wearing a tattered black raincoat.
"At least you’re dressed for this weather," she said to him.
"Hans," he said. She didn’t know what he meant by that.
"I’m sorry?"
"My name. Hans."
"Oh. You’re German?"
"Native New Yorker. German mother, though."
"I’m a native too," Freddy told him.
"I can tell," he said. "You sound like one."
"I don’t think so."
"You do, Lady. What’s your name?"
"Freddy," she said simply, then regretted telling him.
"Freddy? That’s a boy’s name."
"It’s an abbreviation." She started to move off, but he stopped her with his next sentence.
"So who died? And why was it so important you talked about it to the curbstones?"
She halted, turned and looked at him. "Why is it your concern? Why the interest?"
"You’re a different kind of woman. I can see that."
"What does that mean?"
"You have some class. You have some cash. You have an interest in the death of people you’re not related to."
"How could you know ....?"
"You’re not in mourning. You’re only in confusion. I can read you, Lady. I can read you like poetry in the bathroom. Your feelings would bounce off the tile walls like so much shampoo spilled in the tub. You’ve got secrets, but you share them with the world. You interest me greatly."
"Well, you don’t hold much interest for me," Freddy snapped at him.
"Sure I do. If I didn’t you would have kept walking."
She stared at him with a petulant sneer on her lips.
"Oh, that’s attractive, all right. And soooo scary too. What are you trying to do? Put a hex on me? You can’t. The best have tried, but Hans doesn’t receive ill will from the best of them. Why would he do it for you? Freddy?"
"Don’t say my name."
"Don’t say my name," he echoed her, imitating her. "You make me laugh but you make me cry. You don’t know who you are, Lady with boy’s name. You don’t know who or what you are or what you want. You are pathetic."
"That’s enough!" She could feel tears in her eyes and she determined to keep them there, not let them fall, not in front of this arrogant street bum. "I’m out of here, now."
"Go. What’s keeping you? Truth too compelling to take a hike?"
"You’re an idiot."
"No woman can call me an idiot until after the sex."
"There won’t be any sex with you. You can bet good money on that."
"Say my name, then."
"Hans!" She threw it at him with all the arrogance she could muster.
"That said sex to me, Lady."
"You’re a total idiot."
"I live here. Second floor. Apartment 23. Just ring the bell when you decide."
He got up and turned and went into the vestibule of the building. She was ready to walk away, but she stood and watched him as he moved. In the outer lobby, in front of the inner doors, he turned, unzipped his fly and took out his penis. It was large, thick and a pale pink. He waved it at her and she watched him do it. She wanted to throw something at him, but she had nothing in her hand she was willing to part with. Instead she raced up the seven steps to the landing, behind which he stood flaunting his member at her.
"You’re a gross pig," she shouted at him.
"Yeah. I am. But you came up the stairs anyway, didn’t you?"
"I just want to hit you hard," she shouted.
"So hit me, then."
"I... I..."
"You can’t hit me, because you know I understand you and that scares you. You can’t hit me because I’m everything you despise. You can’t hit because you’re coming upstairs with me and you’re going to let me fuck your brains out."
He turned and pushed open the inner doors to the hallway of the brownstone. The doors swung back into place and she was alone in the vestibule. She was sweating. She could feel the moisture on her neck and her chest, knew it wasn’t the gentle rain. There was a slight sense of fear in her heart, fear that everything he had said to her was true, was right. She turned back toward the stoop and the short flight of stairs to the outer world. She took the first step to her freedom, then reached back and touched the doors behind her. They weren’t locked. Without looking she pushed one of them and it gave, opening the way to that unsought for sanctum. Without turning her face to the inner hallway she stepped backward and into it. Her fate was sealed.
Freddy spent two days in his bed, her tears at her own sought-for humiliation were nothing to the laughter engendered in his treatment of her, alternatively gentle and worshipful and at other times dominant and strange. He would tie her to the bed post and threaten to rape her, but not deliver on the threat. He would torment until she cried, then loosen her bonds, and hold her gently for an hour, kissing her eyelids, her ears, her breasts. She had never known a lover like him and she hated him for that. He was everything that Max could never be with her, everything that Mikhael had attempted to be but hadn’t succeeded in becoming.
The morning of the third day, she stepped out of his bed and into the bathroom. She looked at herself carefully in the tiny shaving mirror that swung out from the wall behind the claw-foot tub. She didn’t like the face that stared back at her. It was old, hideously old although she was only thirty, not old, not hideous. There were dark circles under her eyes and her cheeks were puffy. The minor laugh lines around her mouth had deepened into crevices. Her lips were cracked from too much kissing, blistered in one corner, chapped. Her hair was disheveled and stringy. She was a mess.
Her dress was on a hanger on a hook. She took ahold of it and slipped it over her naked body. It felt strange with no bra, no panties or slip or stockings to keep the suddenly unfamiliar cloth from touching her body. She smoothed it over her breasts and her hips. Then she returned to his one-room apartment.
"What’s the dress for?" Hans asked her.
"I’m going now," she replied.
"Like hell you are," he said.
"No. Really. I am." She stepped into her shoes as she said this.
"I’ll leave you my under-things. I don’t need them now."
"You’re my whore, you bitch," Hans said simply, but his words stung her deeply as though he had hissed them in her ear as he had so many other things over the past two days and nights.
"No. I’m not. I’m myself again. I’m nobody’s property."
"And you think that’s enough for you?"
"It is enough for me. Thanks for asking." She picked up her purse and her hat. "I’m going and you can’t stop me, Hans. You’ll never know how much you gave me."
"I paid you nothing."
"I said gave, not paid." She smiled at him. "You’ll never know."
He was sitting naked on the edge of his bed, looking at her. Suddenly the scowl that had seemed almost perpetual broke and he grinned at her.
"Good for you, Freddy," he said. "And good for me. I’m Pygmalion."
"He hated all women, didn’t he? Until he made one he could count on."
"You got me there. Educated bitch." He smiled again.
"I’m not your Galatea, Hans."
"Get the Hell out of my room. Shit, you didn’t even pay for the bed for the two nights you occupied it."
"I think I did."
He smiled at her again. "Yeah, you did." The smile drifted away like smoke from an unpuffed cigarette. "Take care of yourself. Stop talking to the curbstones."
"That’s over. Over." She waved at him and he nodded to her. She left the room and, a bunch of new decisions in her head, she moved out of the life she had been leading, not for two days, but for at least two years. Mikhael and Max were now her past. Her future was uncertain, but it would be all her own.