Puck

fiction by Sarah Hafner, from work in progress

I am sitting at the Village Vanguard, listening to Betty Carter. At my right is Topper, a man I met when I was still in high school. I am thinking about David–I always think about him, how far away he is, earning his Ph.D. at Oxford–and about my ballet class tomorrow. Lighting a cigarette, Topper puts his arms around me, making it harder for me to smoke. I am not in love with Topper, but the more I drink the easier it is to think I am. I am getting drunk, Betty isn’t that good, and I cannot have a hangover for ballet, because my sweat will reveal my hangover, and I am frightened of college. My thoughts drift back to David, and his wild proposal of marriage, which I have kept to myself. Now I have the problem that because Topper–what is his real name?–because he bought the tickets to this club, will want to have sex and I will probably go through the motions.

Everything about New York City, everything from the mailman to the subways to watching the Honeymooners at night frightens me and I tremble unless I drink. I take wine to school, the cheap beer at the cafeteria does nothing for me–I am taking Valium, and it occurs to me that I cannot live without a man by my side at all times. I live in the most beautiful place in Brooklyn, and I go to Pratt Institute, and it is not sex I desire, it is some type of confidence. I think about David more and more, and I say to Topper, I love you to frighten him, but he says I love you too, and his arms hold me closer, and I am lost in a lie. And then somehow, as if by magic, I grab my huge bag, in it is my camera and a cheap pint of liquor, and makeup so that I won’t be merely pretty but almost beautiful, I get out of the club, and take the train back to Park Slope. But I am still drunk and I call the professor I have a crush on and he tells me that I can miss ballet unless I’ve missed it three times already–and am I okay? I’m drunk I tell him–he knows that, it is late and do I need him? Yes I do, but I am asleep by the time he gets to my apartment and has to use his key, and when I wake up he is making love to me.

At the foot of the bed is David’s letter, and 45 minutes later, it is his voice on my machine–he knows I cannot sleep and it is 8 a.m. in England.

He knows that there is a good chance that I will be sleeping with my professor, and it is in this moment I decide to marry him–he knows me through and through, the alcohol haze, and Topper, and he has to have a very smart wife. I need a wife like you, he wrote, I need a wife who is very smart/ borderline genius. I need a very very pretty wife, is what he said. I take the phone into the bathroom, and it dawns on me that I may throw up–not because there are three men I am seeing, but because I drank too much at the Vanguard, and Betty wasn’t that good. The professor is making Bloody Mary’s. I hear him opening the vodka, the tomato juice, and I tell David to hold me and I throw up everything.

David is perhaps my best friend in the world. His parents, like my own, were fired in the 50’s thanks to McCarthy, and we first bonded over this–later it was a love of drugs–but more recently it has been letters and phone calls, and the marriage proposal which made me so weak and frightened–as if I were about to be sold into slavery. After I am finished throwing up, I pick up the phone, and David wants to know yes or no? Yes, I say, I will be your wife. After all, I don’t eat, but I do drink–and he is very good, down there. He knows exactly what to do, giving head. We watched the moon landing together, we went to Woodstock, we were right for each other, we have memories.

What frightens me the most is: what will happen when he finds out that I am not at all smart, not even funny? Or that I hate school and refuse to go back? That I have fucked so many men? I put down the phone and take the Bloody Mary outside in bare feet and look at Prospect Park, where my father once walked and his father before him. When I come back in, the professor is fast asleep, and I call my father.

Is there enough money for a wedding? With a jazz band and a white dress and my hair in one braid going down my back? David, I keep saying. That’s who. Is there enough money, Dad? Can we afford that?

Yes, my father says, and I sigh. I pick up the Bloody Mary, and drink it down, then I climb into my bed where the professor sleeps, and he takes me in his arms, and I fall into a deep sleep filled with wedding cake and a white dress and sandals and a flower in my hand. Just one flower. An orchid.

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