Chapter 21

Remembrances of better days with the princess made Sunday pleasant and productive. Leaving my sister to her painting, we spent the morning strolling around Bard campus impressing her. We talked throughout our walk about the play she hadn't started. By noon an idea formed and developed. Using the event of the previous night, we invented a ghost story.

Two lover ghosts reside for decades in an unused attic of a mansion unaware of passing time until two squatters occupy it. They attempt scaring the intruders, but shocks prove milder than the horrors the two hide from. The noise however is heard by the family below, two generations later of the female ghost's family. The residents set up a séance, and as they mill about before it, they tell of the ghosts' suicide and the rift between two houses which created it. The male ghost's family had been plotted against and made debt slaves and their relationship threatened the plot. During the séance, the medium communicates the female ghost's disgust with her family and her eternal love for the male ghost. The intruders realize their relationship to the male ghost while hiding from the residents and hearing the conversations and the medium. The residents ridicule the medium. The hidden intruders seethe with retribution. While the intruders hatch plans, bringing in other family members, the ghosts haunt the residents, making for uneasy and sleepless nights. Meanwhile a resident young man and a servant's daughter hide their secret love in the attic. The servant girl unlike the other poor studied at college and bridges the two languages from two classes. The uneducated occupiers' poor diction had been a butt of jokes by the ghosts, but the girl shames them. When her lover leaves, the hidden occupiers capture the girl and threaten her until she convinces them of her membership in the clan. She helps plan their revenge, making them promise to spare the young man. When another séance occurs attempting to exorcise the ghosts for good, the family kills the medium. A battle of clans ensues in which the occupiers win and threaten to kill the usurpers, but the girl servant convinces them instead to restrain the family and call the police. Unfortunately the chief leads the police and has been corrupted by the residents and attempts to arrest the wrong people. When the sister tries preventing itthe chief kills her. The young man goes berserk and gets beaten into submission. In the end the young man, talking to the ghosts of the lovers, the medium and his love, tells of justice being served, the right people getting arrested for murder and the mansion and its trinkets being sold off to pay back the dishonesty of the residents. He then kills himself.

After a long lunch at the Annandale Inn, hashing out the play, we headed across the circle to the great poet and spent a couple intellectual hours chatting. When we got home, the young poet, the ranger, Grandma and the Amazon had returned. The lost crew looked well tanned, the ranger always did, and refreshed if a little worn down, except the ranger who looked ready to return. In fact, along the way back he noticed a couple acres for sale and wanted to build a house there. He and Grandma debated; otherwise they might have stayed in the area. By my arrival, Grandma had decided to give it a try. First they wanted to buy a car to be independent. Both had money, the ranger being frugal and getting a small retirement benefit and Grandma getting a large insurance payment and her husband's savings. Leaving the young poet to relax in a soft bed, we headed to Kingston in hopes a car might be available. I followed the Amazon's truck in the Morris, my sister and the princess with me and Grandma and the ranger with the Amazon. The Ford pickup became the first new auto either had owned. They didn't bother shopping around; deciding to buy whatever had power and a good sized bed on the lot. Grandma wrote the check and once it cleared, the Amazon and my sister and the princess and I headed to the City and the old folks to a hotel near the land they wanted.

Having called the old flapper before leaving home, our destination became the penthouse. Mother and the old flapper awaited us, packing belongings for the moving van to pick up the next day. Mother looked improved, but only marginally. Neither the Amazon nor my mother enjoyed each other's company, but we kept separate most of the time hauling my sister's and my stuff into the Amazon's truck. Furniture stayed, so mostly we packed clothing and art and film equipment and books and valuables and some of the drawings and paintings given to me when I modeled, leaving most of them for my mother to bring to the Montauk mansion. The flapper offered to give me the entertainment cabinet, a radio and phonograph, but I decided to find a smaller one to buy. I did grab my small stack of records. With the four of us, it didn't take long. The Amazon waited at the truck for me and my sister to kiss and hug my mom and the old flapper, the princess getting some affection as well. I promised to visit Montauk on Tuesday. The Amazon, after a long embrace, headed to our home to unload and then to Woodstock to begin her apprenticeship. The princess let me sleep on the couch in her apartment. Located a block from the Christopher Street restaurant where we ended our first sexual encounter, it couldn't have been better for my plans. Only a few blocks walking placed me at NYU. We ended the evening at the Village Vanguard listening to old friends blow wild.

I walked my sister to her mentor's studio the next morning before heading into the chaos of NYU. Classes started the following week, but registration filled the administration building with impatient and worried students. Asking around for whom to consult about auditing the eccentric professor's film class proved fruitless. Students there matriculated. Eventually I waited in a long line for the class. Worried like the others, when I stood in front of the eccentric professor's assistant, I blurted a run on sentence describing my encounter with the professor at Bard, his description of the course, the evening of short experimental films including my own, the fact that I still attended High School but planned on getting a GED and that I desperately wished to audit his class. The thick auburn haired, dimple cheeked, white button down shirt wearing, pink frame bespectacled beauty smiled up at me. "What's your favorite movie?" she asked.

I hadn't heard the question asked those earlier in line and wondered if auditing required an intelligent answer. I chose "Les Enfants du Paradis" and the sculptor of boxes' film I had seen at Bard.

"Wasn't the Carne film done by collaborators?" she asked.

"Great art has no politics," I said. "Are Riefenstahl's movies diminished by being fascist?"

"How many people becamw swayed by them? And how many lynchings did Birth of a Nation cause?"

I swallowed. "Too many. But Enfants only inspired great acting, or at least a higher level of expectation. Do I pass?"

"What? No, I'm sorry."

"Oh," I said disappointed. "Nice meeting you then." I began to leave.

"Wait," she said. "I apologize for putting you on the spot. You can audit, but it might be standing room only and students get seated before non students."

"So it wasn't a test?"

"No, I just thought you might have interesting choices."

"Did I?"

"Yes."

"Maybe we could discuss them further," I said. I sensed impatience behind me.

"I'm not sure when I'll be done," she said encouragingly.

I wrote down the princess's number and handed it to her. "I'll be there through tonight if you want."

"Um," she took the phone number. "I need your name and address." I gave them to her and she wrote it on a form, jotting down the hours of the class. "You'll need this at first class."

"Thanks," I said. After a brief interaction of smiles, resigned to her duties, she sighed and removed her smile and beckoned the next student.

Taking the subway to Midtown to the industrial film laboratory, more sexy stuff for the staff to enjoy and copy, I looked at the schedule for the class and tried to figure out my complicated life. Because of the extended time for the lab part of class, i.e. watching movies, class needed to be on Friday with the lecture attached to it. It meant being in the City every Friday morning for a school year to attend from 9 to 12. Other classes lasting no more than an hour per session alternated Mondays and Wednesdays or Tuesdays and Thursdays, so the longer labs tended to be on Friday. My time with the Amazon became threatened. I wondered if she could change her apprenticeship to the end of the week. The pixie took Wednesdays. I could head to Montauk on Thursday and drive in from there Friday morning. Other clients could be met in Montauk on Thursday or Friday or in the City. Would I need an apartment in the City or would a client provide a hotel room for our pleasure or even an apartment if it got that far? I knew they could afford it. And what about the plain woman and our book? For a month she'd be with the pixie and we could work between fucking. Afterward I could stay at her slut apartment on Thursday night after meeting with clients earlier. Then when would I be with the old flapper and my daughter? Friday seemed most likely, heading there after class and leaving early Saturday morning and having Saturday through Wednesday morning or Tuesday night at the worst with the Amazon. That might work. Then there was the secretary. The Amazon wouldn't mind. She could have time to do carpentry while we fucked.

I took the subway south of Houston to the mentor's studio and asked my sister to walk with me. We went east where the young poet and her used to buy heroin, and then to St Marks Place where we sat on a stoop and dwelled on our temptation.

"Remember how sick you got of it, how all it was was a daily fix to fix you up and make you straight," she said. "Remember how your skin went sallow. Remember when I went blue and I almost died and my little brother saved me and felt guilty even though I was the one who needed it more than life. Remember those women who you made feel beautiful and how you couldn't anymore. Remember your failure. Remember taking money from your mother's savings."

"I know. It's stupid. I still feel drawn."

"Me too. Let's buy some reefer and go home."

Princess listened on the phone for messages when we arrived. We could smell the Chinese take out, but she pointed to it anyway. Beside the greasy boxes rested a bound typewriter paper sized booklet about the GED. Putting down the phone, the princess said, "I've got a shoot on Wednesday and a runway show Friday night that I need to rehearse early. School drags me down. I don't care about anyone there. I'm not learning anything worth anything. My imagination stagnates. Let's do this."

Sitting side by side and slurping noodles, we read. The booklet consisted of several subjects with sample questions. Most of it seemed passable. Higher math had us both struggling. Weaknesses in logic for me and chemistry for her could be taught to each other. Otherwise we felt it could be done. Despite not needing it until later, we felt getting it done sooner prevented neglecting it or forgetting the information we had gathered while in school. More samples could be obtained and Princess promised to bring them up when she retuned to Barrytown at the end of the month. Setting it aside, my sister rolled reefer and we got high and worked on the play.

The redhead student called around six. Telling her I'd eaten, I invited her to meet at a beer joint on St Marks Place in a couple hours. She agreed. We kept working, my sister drawing our stoned concentration until time came to meet the redhead. My sister rolled the last of the reefer for the road.

I chose the bar on purpose. A meeting place for poets and artists; it had been where the young poet had proclaimed the field and body concept of composing. It also featured the Missouri junky poet as a regular and the young poet assigned me to meet and discuss having him and his friends come up to Bard and get lost in the woods. He hadn't arrived yet. The redhead student and I got drunk on beer along with the princess and my sister who drew us as we talked film. Exciting the redhead frequently, I told her about the Cinématique in Paris and the Vase. When the junkie writer arrived, his description by the young poet made him unmistakable, I saddled up to him at the bar and told him of my friendship with the young poet and bought him his drink. He joined us, studying me and flirting. His eyes were pinned in the dark tavern, so I doubted the functionality of his penis. After discussing upstate New York and the young poet's invitation, he wrote down the number to the Jewish poet and then took over. Regaling us with fantastic, impossible tales, his slow and low drawl enchanted, making them almost believable. The tall thin street smelling man charmed like no other.