![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraChapter 3
(iv)
I hadn’t seen Henry Miller in a week, but he’d written me every day. No justifications or excuses for the disappearance. Just sheet after sheet of onion writing paper covered in his oddly schoolboyish script:
Your burning eyes and your long white columnar neck haunt me as I write this. You, my dearest darling, are a witch, an enchantress. I am happy to snort for you, my Circe; to rummage through forests, hunting for such truffles as may delight your appetite. I’ve been thinking of “disenchantment,” the process by which male civilization has sought to free itself from the magic of women like you.
It began with Isaac Newton and his Laws of Universal Gravitation. Newton himself thought his most important work was in alchemy and numerology but the male rationalists around him discredited his metaphysical insights, drew a hard line through the middle of the Seventeenth Century and called it enlightenment.
But you and I are primed for the Alchemical Renaissance!
So much for metaphysical discussion and on to something sweeter. You're a passionate person, my Circe. A very rare and precious thing. There are few who open their passions to the wind and the elements, few who put on their feelings instead of their armor and go forth in the world. There are few who think to themselves: The ride is worth the falls. I believe you're one. And I am too. Hence the secret agent, the duplicitous angel who does not fear to tread.
Tell me more about you. I'm fresh and untrammeled. You can make of yourself whatever you want to me.
Pages and pages and pages. Who could read it all? Why didn’t he send me books or flowers? Or money?
The letters had all been delivered to the house in Bensonhurst. I paid my brother Sammy to intercept them. I’d begun telling my taxi drivers to drop me off in front of the El at the corner of Third Avenue and 42nd street before my stints at the Orpheum.
Sammy was standing in front of the El’s stairwell. It had only been three days since the last packet of letters from Henry Miller, but the fresh packet in Sammy’s hands was two inches thick.
Sammy shook his head when he saw the cab. “I think maybe I’m a sucker for letting you off so cheap.”
“If I see any signs that you’ve tried to jimmy them open, I won’t pay at all,” I said.
Sammy rolled his eyes. “You’re late. You think I don’t got more important things to do than wait around for you? That fonferer is so dull, you’d have to pay me more to jimmy them. I read enough of his stupid shit the first time.”
I’d chosen this spot for our rendezvous because of the automat just five yards away from the stairwell. I loved automats. I loved how each dish was displayed in its own little box; I loved how the boxes were parts of an vast grid like a sagittal slice through an enormous steel and glass beehive. Automats were well lit; there were never any cooking smells.
“Creamed spinach is very good here,” I told Sammy. “I’ll treat!”
“Is it kosher?” he asked.
I laughed. “If you’re joining the army, you’ll have to get used to tref,” I said.
“Is that what you’ve done? Joined the army? Some uniform,” said Sammy.
“They like us to look a bit risqué at the jewelry department at Bonwit Teller’s,” I said. “How’s Papa?”
“Papa,” said Sammy.
“Does he talk about me?”
“Oh, yeah. Nonstop. We all do. Because nobody has anything better to do than to talk about you.”
“No, really. Please. Tell me about Papa.”
“Papa,” said Sammy. “Papa is a luftmensch. Same as ever. Same as Henry Miller. I’ll pass on the creamed spinach.”
And then I had to run up the El stairs, pretend I was taking the train, spy from the platform till I was sure that Sammy was gone, surveil the platform to make sure he hadn’t followed me up there.
I was late when I finally arrived at the Orpheum Dance Palace. Nestor raised his eyebrows, but said only, “Gotch yaw Norwegian stevedores looking for a good time tonight. SS Juvel docked this morning. Fuckin’ Vikings! Thirty-six hundred tons of phosphate. They unloaded it all.”
Florrie and Hannah were both very excited.
“Time to go fishing!” Hannah sang.
Florrie was lacquering her gnawed-off fingernails underneath the nappy velvet banquette. Hannah had bought another one of those French lipsticks. “Tangee Carmine,” she told me. The mirror in her compact was cracked, so she’d done an inexpert job applying; the lipstick had gotten all over her teeth. It looked like blood.
But the Vikings only wanted to dance with me.
“They have plenty of blondes and redheads in Oslo,” I told the girls with a shrug.
The Vikings were surprisingly deferential. They didn’t speak English. They didn’t know how to foxtrot. They didn’t know how to tip. They were giants; I rested my forearms on their ribcages and shuffled awkwardly while they swayed in place and rested their chins in my hair. They were very far from home, and the knew it: Loneliness rolled off them like impenetrable mists from a fjord.
A disappointing night, and halfway through it, I felt a prickle in the back of my neck. Someone staring at me.
I maneuvered my Viking around. There stood Henry Miller, leaning on the wrought iron railings of the balcony, beaming delightedly.
(iv)
I hadn’t seen Henry Miller in a week, but he’d written me every day. No justifications or excuses for the disappearance. Just sheet after sheet of onion writing paper covered in his oddly schoolboyish script:
Your burning eyes and your long white columnar neck haunt me as I write this. You, my dearest darling, are a witch, an enchantress. I am happy to snort for you, my Circe; to rummage through forests, hunting for such truffles as may delight your appetite. I’ve been thinking of “disenchantment,” the process by which male civilization has sought to free itself from the magic of women like you.
It began with Isaac Newton and his Laws of Universal Gravitation. Newton himself thought his most important work was in alchemy and numerology but the male rationalists around him discredited his metaphysical insights, drew a hard line through the middle of the Seventeenth Century and called it enlightenment.
But you and I are primed for the Alchemical Renaissance!
So much for metaphysical discussion and on to something sweeter. You're a passionate person, my Circe. A very rare and precious thing. There are few who open their passions to the wind and the elements, few who put on their feelings instead of their armor and go forth in the world. There are few who think to themselves: The ride is worth the falls. I believe you're one. And I am too. Hence the secret agent, the duplicitous angel who does not fear to tread.
Tell me more about you. I'm fresh and untrammeled. You can make of yourself whatever you want to me.
Pages and pages and pages. Who could read it all? Why didn’t he send me books or flowers? Or money?
The letters had all been delivered to the house in Bensonhurst. I paid my brother Sammy to intercept them. I’d begun telling my taxi drivers to drop me off in front of the El at the corner of Third Avenue and 42nd street before my stints at the Orpheum.
Sammy was standing in front of the El’s stairwell. It had only been three days since the last packet of letters from Henry Miller, but the fresh packet in Sammy’s hands was two inches thick.
Sammy shook his head when he saw the cab. “I think maybe I’m a sucker for letting you off so cheap.”
“If I see any signs that you’ve tried to jimmy them open, I won’t pay at all,” I said.
Sammy rolled his eyes. “You’re late. You think I don’t got more important things to do than wait around for you? That fonferer is so dull, you’d have to pay me more to jimmy them. I read enough of his stupid shit the first time.”
I’d chosen this spot for our rendezvous because of the automat just five yards away from the stairwell. I loved automats. I loved how each dish was displayed in its own little box; I loved how the boxes were parts of an vast grid like a sagittal slice through an enormous steel and glass beehive. Automats were well lit; there were never any cooking smells.
“Creamed spinach is very good here,” I told Sammy. “I’ll treat!”
“Is it kosher?” he asked.
I laughed. “If you’re joining the army, you’ll have to get used to tref,” I said.
“Is that what you’ve done? Joined the army? Some uniform,” said Sammy.
“They like us to look a bit risqué at the jewelry department at Bonwit Teller’s,” I said. “How’s Papa?”
“Papa,” said Sammy.
“Does he talk about me?”
“Oh, yeah. Nonstop. We all do. Because nobody has anything better to do than to talk about you.”
“No, really. Please. Tell me about Papa.”
“Papa,” said Sammy. “Papa is a luftmensch. Same as ever. Same as Henry Miller. I’ll pass on the creamed spinach.”
And then I had to run up the El stairs, pretend I was taking the train, spy from the platform till I was sure that Sammy was gone, surveil the platform to make sure he hadn’t followed me up there.
I was late when I finally arrived at the Orpheum Dance Palace. Nestor raised his eyebrows, but said only, “Gotch yaw Norwegian stevedores looking for a good time tonight. SS Juvel docked this morning. Fuckin’ Vikings! Thirty-six hundred tons of phosphate. They unloaded it all.”
Florrie and Hannah were both very excited.
“Time to go fishing!” Hannah sang.
Florrie was lacquering her gnawed-off fingernails underneath the nappy velvet banquette. Hannah had bought another one of those French lipsticks. “Tangee Carmine,” she told me. The mirror in her compact was cracked, so she’d done an inexpert job applying; the lipstick had gotten all over her teeth. It looked like blood.
But the Vikings only wanted to dance with me.
“They have plenty of blondes and redheads in Oslo,” I told the girls with a shrug.
The Vikings were surprisingly deferential. They didn’t speak English. They didn’t know how to foxtrot. They didn’t know how to tip. They were giants; I rested my forearms on their ribcages and shuffled awkwardly while they swayed in place and rested their chins in my hair. They were very far from home, and the knew it: Loneliness rolled off them like impenetrable mists from a fjord.
A disappointing night, and halfway through it, I felt a prickle in the back of my neck. Someone staring at me.
I maneuvered my Viking around. There stood Henry Miller, leaning on the wrought iron railings of the balcony, beaming delightedly.
