A Little Trouble with the Facts Read Online Free PDF

encouragement I needed to sit still and wait. The car idled and the driver’s stereo played something jazzy and low. “Are you a fan of stuffed cabbage?” he asked. “I didn’t even touch my poached salmon.”
    The car dropped us at Veselka on Second Avenue, a well-lit diner that specialized in kielbasa and cold borscht. The train of my gown draped into the aisle, tripping the Polish waitress. I was leaning on one fist, gazing into the black puddles of Jeremiah’s eyes as he regaled me with stories of the film world, the art world, the poetry slammers, and the “sad, terrible struggles that artists face to get any recognition for their crafts.” He talked a one-man symphony, conducting with his fork. I poked my blintz and memorized each note.
    At 1:30, when our plates were lifted away, he mentioned martinis. I confessed I’d never tasted one. Minutes later, we were standing in front of a nondescript door in a darkened alley getting appraised by an electronic eyeball. The door swung open to admit us into a tiny room with a glittering wall of spirits. It was a drinking establishment all right. But the bartender, a Teddy boy in an Edwardian zoot suit, had vetted all the guests.
    Teddy cleared a spot for us at the bar and Jeremiah helped me up onto a stool. He ordered us a round of dirty martinis. I asked him what made them dirty, and he said, “The person you’re with,” placing a hand on my knee.
    I said, “Maybe you’ve got the wrong idea about me.” But I didn’t move my knee.
    He said, “I’ve got a few ideas about you.”
    I said, “We’ll have to start from the first idea and work our way down the list.”
    His first guess: “I bet in a few weeks you won’t even remember the girl you are today, the girl in front of me in this cotton-candy dress, these pink pumps, the big eyes, hungry for a taste of everything. You’ll be amazed to find that you’re a creature of the city, through and through.”
    My naïveté was like so many buttons on a flimsy silk blouse. He’d undone them and I felt exposed. “I certainly hope that’s true,” I said.
    He drained his martini glass. “Careful what you wish for.”
    The bar was a music box. It wound up each time a new group of sanctioned visitors waltzed through the velvet curtain. A guy in a smoking jacket told Jeremiah he’d loved the latest Odyssey release, Chance Meeting at Midnight. Jeremiah answered that he wished he could take the credit, but the real geniuses were the grips.
    “Everyone said I was a born candidate, like my dad,” he confided once his admirers dispersed. “But I’m really a very private person. Still, I needed to prove I was good for something.”
    “I’m sure you’re good for plenty of things,” I said, leaning closer.
    He moved closer too. “To me, you see, the arts are a more powerful tool. An intimate tool.” He moved his hand farther up my thigh. “A work of art can change everything, so I support groundbreaking artists. I buy their work; I encourage them. I give them the impetus to keep working. I can be very hands-on.”
    He certainly was hands-on. His hands were all over the place.
    I’d known my share of commune boys out west. I’d dated at Reed, young men with carefully disheveled hair who were eager to quote Kristeva. But I’d never been this close to a man who was so willing to play the part. Jeremiah didn’t apologize for having money; he flashed it. He didn’t play down his connections; he dropped names like a barman drops ice into a glass. And he wasn’t afraid to be forward. His hand sneaked unrepentantly from my knee to my thigh and I didn’t move to swat it.
    Just before dawn, when his Town Car was back on East Fifth Street, my battered tenement already seemed like a relic of the salad days that would be over soon enough. In three or four days, it would be all sorted out. I’d have that Vanity Fair job, thanks to a few calls from Jeremiah to the right people, and I’d phone my mother from under the