The Original 1982 Read Online Free PDF Page A

Paris in a room with a view of the Seine; raced at dawn to a plane waiting on a Bogotá runway; listened to the waves crash, late at night, on a beach in St. Barts.
    I learned how to be a lover, how to please and be pleased. He told me stories and asked me to make them up for him, too. We spun each other’s fantasies out of thin air.
    Sometimes, in a perfect moment, I’d hold my breath to make time stop. I’d make a deal with God or whoever it is that listens to prayers in the dark. I’d say, “If I can hold my breath for forty-five seconds, you’ll let it stay just like this.”
    Gabriel didn’t drink at first. He’d gone to AA. He said I should watch my drinking, too, so I stopped. I still smoked pot, though. I left a baggie of it under his mattress to smoke when I couldn’t sleep, which happened a lot when I waited for him to come home after a gig and he was late. Gabriel found the pot and freaked out. He said drugs were for lowlifes. So I quit that, too. For the first time since I was fifteen, I had no substances or alcohol in my body. My love for him was all the drug I needed.
    But after a while, for some reason, we started drinking again and right away things took a turn for the worse, and our magical connection began to erode. I think it was the threesomes that did the most damage. Fantasies were one thing; it didn’t mean I could bear to see him do the things he did to me to someone else.
    Sometimes I found girls of my own in the bars on Columbus Avenue. I kissed them in bathroom stalls. It was easy to become him when I was drunk enough. Once I even brought one back to his bed when he was out of town.
    â€œYou seem like the kind of girl who knows what to do,” that girl said to me, though it wasn’t true. I was accumulating secrets to beat him at his own game.
    Things change. No matter how long you can hold your breath.

Twelve
    O ne day I get a call from my landlord. I’ve heard rumors from my neighbors that he wants to sell our building, a charming brownstone on Seventy-eighth Street between Fifth and Madison. The gossip is he wants to make it into a single-family home, but he can’t do it unless we agree to leave. The building is rent-controlled, which means we can live in it forever with only small increases in rent, an amount determined by the city and not the landlord.
    Some people have lived in my building for more than thirty years, mostly single, older women. They worry about where they’ll go. I pay only three hundred a month for my place, a tiny first-floor studio, and the ladies who have lived here for decades probably pay half that. I feel sorry for them. They seem fragile, brittle, with their home-dyed hair and pale skinny legs, coming down the stairs in worn bathrobes. I can’t imagine a worse fate than to grow old, alone in one room, and then be asked to leave it. At twenty-four, it’s impossible to imagine becoming like them. Being an old woman is something I think I’ll escape somehow.
    My landlord’s office is in a run-down building in the West Thirties near Penn Station. I take the number 6 train down to Thirty-third Street and walk west. It’s a beautiful summer day. I love looking into all the shop windows, love the way the city makes me feel private in public, part of a big world full of people walking with purpose.
    My landlord is a middle-aged man with thinning dark hair and wire-frame glasses. He sits behind a large metal desk. Without a greeting, he motions for me to take a seat, and I do. I’m wearing a man’s white shirt and black pants, top button undone. I’ve tried to look presentable for our meeting. It’s not so obvious that I’m pregnant.
    â€œSo, Miss Nelson, you may have heard we have an interest in your apartment.” He has an accent. I’m not sure from where. Israel, maybe.
    â€œThe thing is I don’t have any money to move,” I tell him. “And the rent