Given superhuman strength by Mother Necessity, Ella and I managed to half carry, half drag Stuart Harley Wolff through the unwelcoming streets of lower Manhattan in search of shelter from the storm-tossed night. Unfortunately, the only shelter that seemed to be open were bars. Ella didn’t think a bar was a good idea, even though most of them serve coffee.
“How do you know they serve coffee?” I asked. “When have you ever been in a bar?” Mr and Mrs Gerard were as likely to take Ella to a bar as they were to take her to Lima to live among the poor.
“I’ve seen it in movies,” said Ella. “Anyway, they’d throw us out because we’re too young, and he can’t be trusted to order coffee by himself.”
The more we walked, the more Stu talked. His conversation shifted from politics to music to family and friends without any awkward transitions. People owed him money. He owed people money. The tax man was after him. Several women were after him. His father wanted him to cut his hair. His mother wanted him to settle down. His agent was a thief. His manager was a liar. Steve Maya was a back-stabbing traitor. Everyone he knew was out for what they could get.
“It’s a crime,” Stu suddenly screamed, more or less apropos of nothing. “It’s a crime, and everybody knows it’s a crime, but no one will do anything about it.”
I’d been so busy trying to imprint every detail of what was happening in my memory that I’d lost track of what he was saying.
“Now what’s he talking about?” I asked Ella.
She grunted as Stu missed his footing and shoved her into a wall. “Nothing,” said Ella. “He’s just rambling incoherently. And, anyway, who cares? I just want to get inside before I drown.”
Perhaps hearing the staggering lack of concern for him in Ella’s voice, Stu straightened up. “Where are you taking me?” he demanded with disarming lucidity.
“We told you,” Ella told him again. “We’re taking you to get a drink. Remember? We’re taking you for a drink.”
Stu nodded. “A drink. Let’s get a drink.” He held up one hand. “But first I have to take a leak.”
I have to admit that I was a little flummoxed by this announcement, but once again Ella rose to the occasion with competence and calm.
She pointed to the alley on our left. “Go down there,” she ordered. “We’ll wait for you here.”
Out of respect for the privacy required by a genius – and because neither of us wanted to see more than we had to – we turned our backs while he shuffled into the dark.
I couldn’t speak. My heart was too full for mere words. I had my wish: I was with Stu Wolff. True, he was more in my arms than I was in his, but I was still with him. I was beyond being just ecstatically happy; I was sitting with the gods. I was sure that once we got some coffee in him, Stu would become the man of truth, passion, and unflagging courage that I knew him to be.
“What’s taking him so long?” whispered Ella, her eyes on the shadows swaying around us.
I glanced over my shoulder, just to make sure Stu was OK. He was sitting on the ground with his legs stretched in front of him and his chin on his chest.
“Oh, God…” I cried. “He’s passed out. Do you think he could have been hurt when he fell? Maybe he has concussion.”
“He’s going to wish he had concussion when he wakes up tomorrow,” said Ella as we marched down the alley to retrieve our charge. “He’s going to have the hangover from hell.”
Side by side, we bent over Stu. I was trying to make sure that his fine and noble heart was still beating, but Ella started slapping his face.
“Stu!” she called. Slapslapslap. “Stu, wake up. We’re going for a drink.”
I was really intrigued. I’d never seen this Four-star General side of Ella before.
“Where did you learn to do that?” I asked.
“Movies,” said Ella.
Stu opened his eyes, staring at us in an almost catatonic silence for a few seconds, much as a man might stare at angels.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “Where are you taking me?”
“You remember us,” said Ella. “It’s Ella and Lola. We’re your friends.” We hauled him to his feet. “We’re taking you for a drink.”
It felt as though we’d been walking through the hostile, darkling night for hours before we stumbled upon a place of refuge, safe from the ravages of the storm and the possibility of cold-blooded murder.
We found a café.
That is, it said it was a café. But if you, like I, think of a café as being small but elegant, French and atmospheric – the kind of place where one might as well write a poem as order an espresso – then the Purity Café was a diner. From the looks of it, it had probably been a diner for about fifty years.
I wiped a circle of dirt and steam from the window and peered inside. I could see booths, a Formica counter, a chrome-and-glass fridge, and, strung above the griddle, dulled red foil letters that spelled out MERRY MAS.
I stepped back so Ella could see. “What do you think?”
Preparatory to taking him in among the people, Ella was wiping the vomit from Stu’s shirt with a tissue and didn’t bother to look.
“So long as there aren’t armed men inside holding everyone hostage, I think it’s great,” said Ella. “I just want to sit down.”
She was definitely surprising me, I have to admit it. The Ella I met when I first moved to Deadwood would have been in tears by now, running from corner to corner looking for a public phone that was working so she could call home collect.
“Come on,” said Stu, lurching to the door. “I really need a drink.”
The wall that ran along the booths was covered with mirrors. As we stepped into the steamy warmth of the Purity Café, I could see three figures staring back at us over the clutch of condiments that graced each table. Two teenage girls in bedraggled party gear and a drunken twenty-nine-year-old man with string and shredded paper clinging to him and vomit all over his boots. We looked like people routinely picked up by the cops.
The other customers of the Purity Café, glancing up from their drinks and food, saw what I saw. You could practically hear them praying that we wouldn’t sit near them.
“Get him into a booth,” ordered Ella as the waitress bore down on us. “Quick, before she sees his feet.”
We dragged Stu to the nearest booth. I got in first and pulled him after me.
As soon as he hit the fake leather seat, Stu started talking.
“Everybody wants something from me,” he informed us again. “Even people I don’t know. Everybody thinks they own me.”
The waitress stopped by our table, pad in hand. If this were Deadwood, the sight of us would have put her into cardiac arrest by now, but this wasn’t Deadwood, it was New York. She had the jaded, seen-it-all air of the waitress in a depressing play. She looked at Stu.
“What’ll it be?”
“You think I have any real friends?” Stu asked her. “None of my friends give two cents about me. If I lost everything tomorrow, I’d never see any of them again.”
Her eyes fell on his sodden silk shirt with the bits of vomit Ella hadn’t been able to get off and the tentacles of paper and string.
“You’re in luck then,” the waitress told him. “’Cause it looks like you have lost everything.”
“We’ll just have coffee,” said Ella politely.
“Not me,” said Stu. “I’ll have a boilermaker and a deluxe hamburger platter, with a large side of onion rings.”
Ella and I exchanged a look of panic. We didn’t have enough money for a deluxe hamburger platter and a large side of onion rings.
“This isn’t a bar,” said the waitress. “How do you want your patty?”
Ella leaned across the table and touched Stu’s hand. “You’re not really hungry, are you?” she inquired gently. “Why don’t you just have a coffee for now?” She smiled encouragingly. “Or mineral water. Mineral water would be better than coffee.”
Stu acted like he hadn’t heard her. “Rare,” he ordered. “Swiss cheese.”
Ella turned her smile on the waitress. “Just bring him a coffee,” she said sweetly. She winked. “He isn’t really up to a meal right now.”
Stu stood up. He’d heard her that time.
“I want a deluxe hamburger platter and onion rings!” he bellowed. “And I want it now!”
The waitress raised one eyebrow. “You two better keep him in line,” she warned. “The boss won’t stand for any nonsense.”
I looked over at the heavy-set man behind the counter. The one talking to the two cops who were eating doughnuts and drinking coffee. He seemed to be deeply engrossed in their conversation, but all the time he was glancing around the room. His eyes met mine for one very long second, and then he laughed.
“Don’t worry,” Ella promised. “He’s all right; he just had a little too much to drink.”
After the waitress shuffled off, Stu fell back in his seat and turned on Ella and me.
“What do you want?” he demanded. He seemed a little obsessed with this question. “Autographs? Money? A quick roll in the hay?”
A quick roll in the hay?
I stared at him, agog. Was this the poet whose words of light had lit my darkest days; the genius whose intuition and wisdom had so inspired me? I was shocked, I admit it. Shocked and disappointed. Stu Wolff is a spiritual being. He is supposed to be above things like rolling in the hay.
Ella’s treacherous words repeated themselves in my mind. Stu Wolff’s not an adult, he’s a rock-and-roll star… Stu Wolff’s not an adult, he’s a rock-and-roll star…
“We don’t want anything,” I enunciated carefully into his ear. “We’re trying to help you.”
Stu laughed. It was a laugh of torment and pain.
“You don’t want anything? Well, that sets a new president, doesn’t it?”
“Precedent,” I automatically corrected.
Stu wasn’t listening. He was still talking.
“What are you two, aliens or something?” He listed to the left, knocking over the menu propped against the napkin holder. “Hey!” he shouted to the other customers. “Hey! These girls are from another planet!”
The waitress and the counter-man looked over. The two tired-looking workmen in the next booth looked over. The women at the back looked over. The cops looked over, too.
Ella leaned across the table again and put both her hands on Stu’s. “Shhhh…” Ella calmed him. “You have to be quiet or they’ll throw us out.”
Stu pulled roughly away. “Why? I don’t have to be anything. I have three gold records. I can do what I want.”
One of the cops looked over again.
Genetics is a complicated thing. As different as I am to Karen Kapok, when I opened my mouth I sounded just like my mother.
“No you can’t,” I told him firmly. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself.”
It didn’t work when my mother told me I was making a spectacle of myself, and it didn’t work with Stu, either.
“But I am a spectacle,” he announced to the Purity Café in a working-the-stadium roar. “You think I’m a regular guy? I’m not a regular guy.”
“Shhh!!” I hissed. I didn’t have Ella’s patience.
Stu didn’t shhh.
“I’m a three-ring circus,” he boomed on. “You think anybody knows me? Nobody knows me!” He knocked the bowl of sugar packets off the table. “I don’t even know myself.”
I gave Ella a look. “Didn’t I tell you?” I whispered. “He’s a tortured soul.”
The waitress arrived with our coffees. “Food’s coming,” she muttered. The cop who was eating the powdered doughnut was watching her over his shoulder.
Ella squashed her mouth into a line. “Torture’s involved,” she agreed. She shook her head sadly. “But it makes you think, doesn’t it? I mean, why shouldn’t he be happy? He has everything he could possibly want…”
No, he didn’t.
“What’s this?” Stu spluttered as the waitress set a cup in front of him. “This isn’t a boilermaker.”
“It’s coffee,” said the waitress. “I told you before, this is a restaurant, not a bar.”
Before I could stop him, Stu was on his feet and pushing past the waitress. “I have to go to the john,” he announced loudly. “I expect that to be a boilermaker by the time I get back.”