Chapter 1: The Gallery

It was an obscure impulse that sent the man hurrying along Broome Street searching for the gallery where he had purchased a painting three years ago. He knew little then about art, but having just purchased a luxury condominium on the Upper East Side, thought he might find some suitable means of furnishing it in the galleries of Soho. After devoting an afternoon to the quest he found only one item he liked, by an artist then obscure but now famous, and the painting that now hung in his living room was worth many times more than what he had paid for it. He had no interest in selling it but he was pleased nevertheless. It was one more proof of his judgment, of his instinct for value, qualities that had made him, at the ripe age of thirty-five, a wealthy man.

He had been enjoying his walk on this cool, sunny April day in 1975, a walk that had begun late morning at his residence, and now found him, in the late afternoon, after various detours and diversions, once again in the area south of Houston Street. He was a purposeful man and his activities were not usually this haphazard. But of late he had been working at high pressure, on a project that required long days and nights and weekends of toil, and the fruits of his labors had only just this past week been crowned with success. It was, he believed, the high point of his career, that is to say the high point so far, for he recognized no future boundaries for his ambitions. But now that it was done he found himself bereft. He had few hobbies or friends, and his main interest apart from work was mainly a nighttime pursuit. So having arisen uncharacteristically late, he had decided to devote the day to walking, to the enjoyment of solitude, and the indulgence of random impulses.

What caused him now to hurry was his sudden recollection of the proximity of the gallery, and the fact that it was now nearly five o’clock. He had this odd hunch, this superstitious feeling lightning would strike twice, that he would find there something valuable, if only he arrived before it closed, for he did not recall the hours of the gallery or even if it was open on Sunday. He had learned to trust his hunches.

Arriving at last at the gallery, he discovered it was indeed open, and would remain so for some little time, sufficient either to verify or to disprove his hunch. Through the front door he entered into a large open room which was empty of customers, save for one young woman examining a painting in the far left corner. In the center of the room stood a sculpture, mounted on a pedestal, an elongated figure of a woman in bronze. In high school he had to take a course in art, and while he couldn’t draw at all, he found he enjoyed sculpting. It was fun taking a lump of clay in his hands and molding it, giving it shape. In a way it was what he did for a living, only it was people and enterprises that he worked with.

He turned towards the right to examine the paintings. What he saw were typical examples of the New York abstract expressionist school. None of them interested him. Moving counterclockwise, he turned left towards the next wall. While examining the paintings there he noticed out of the corner of his left eye the young woman he had seen on entering, still apparently rooted to the same spot and examining the same painting. Perhaps there was something there worth looking at, if not the painting, then maybe the girl. He turned left and walked towards her. As she came within his field of vision he scrutinized her appearance with an experienced eye. She appeared to be in her late teens or early twenties, about five feet four inches in height with dark brown hair extending half way down her back, covering an oversized red flannel shirt whose flaps extended over her blue denim miniskirt. Her slim, shapely legs were encased in solid black stockings, her feet shod in brown leather platform shoes, and she carried a leather bag slung over her right shoulder. As he drew closer, he turned to read the legend next to the painting. The picture was entitled “Broken Mirror” and was selling for eight hundred dollars. It also listed the artist’s name, which was unknown to him.

He walked behind the girl, and as the top of her head only barely came up to his chin he was able to get a good view of the painting, which could also be described as expressionist, but more in the early twentieth century manner. Against a blue background it depicted a stylized picture of a nude woman brushing her hair in front of a dressing table. The mirror atop the dressing table had a large diagonal crack across its length. On the table itself sat a large open pair of scissors. The figure of the woman was fragmented, like a cardboard figure that had been cut in pieces, leaving gaps, with the pieces somehow suspended in space. There were gaps at the waist, at her right shoulder (the one holding the brush), below the neck, and separating the left breast from her body.

He didn’t like the painting, thinking it morbid, and the symbolism rather obvious. Did the girl possess some artistic insight that was able to discern a merit that eluded him, or was she merely exhibiting some individual perversity of taste? Either possibility intrigued him. He decided to address her. Meanwhile she had become aware of his presence and turned around to look at him. Viewed full face, the girl was quite pretty, with fine light brown eyes.

“You seem fascinated with that picture,” he remarked.

“Why do you say that?” she asked contentiously.

“I saw you here when I came in five minutes ago and you’re still here.”

She eyed him quizzically for a few seconds then shrugged. “It’s okay.”

“Why don’t you buy it if you like it so much?”

“Yeah, like I can afford it.”

“If you like it I’ll buy it for you.”

She frowned. “No thanks,” she said and started to walk rapidly towards the door.

“Wait,” he called out in a peremptory tone. She stopped short and turned around. He smiled. “If you won’t take the painting perhaps you’ll let me buy you dinner. I’ve been walking all afternoon and I’m hungry, and I hate to eat alone.”

He said this in his most charming and ingratiating manner. She looked at him indecisively for a few seconds, then shrugged her shoulders and said “Okay. Why not.”

“I passed a little Italian place a couple of blocks away that looked nice.”

“Yeah, I know the place, that’s fine.”

He followed her out the door. She walked very fast with her head down as if lost in thought, a posture that did not invite conversation. Five silent minutes later they arrived at the restaurant. In short order they were seated and a waiter came to take their order.

In the course of the dinner he learned a few things about her. Her name was Eve Sloan, she came from a small town in upstate New York and had spent one year at an upstate university before leaving to follow her boyfriend to the city. Sometime later they split up but she decided to stay. She had an apartment on the Lower East Side and worked in a bookstore. Also she was left-handed. These facts, all but the last, were elicited in response to his questions. Her answers were laconic, like a reluctant witness in a police examination. She asked him nothing about himself, not even his name; indeed she hardly looked at him, her eyes remaining fixed on her plate while she ate her food, which she attacked with a healthy appetite. Sometimes she seemed lost in thought. He wondered if she were on drugs, like one of those spaced out hippie chicks. Or maybe she was just shy or else simply uninterested in him, being content to cadge a free meal, the importance of which to her he perhaps had underestimated. On his way to the gallery he had passed a quite similar looking young woman panhandling.

Although the food was good the meal wasn’t otherwise shaping up to be a success. He had been working so hard recently he had neglected his other great interest, women. Perhaps later he would head for one of those nice little bars on the Upper East Side, not far from his apartment, where he might have better luck.

So when having completed their meal they stood on the street outside the restaurant, it came as a surprise when she turned to him and asked, “Do you want to go to my apartment?” She spoke casually as if they were two very old friends who had just accidentally run into each other.

“Sure,” he said. “Where is it exactly?”

“On Fifth Street, between Avenue A and B. It’s about a fifteen minute walk. If you don’t mind walking,” she added somewhat pointedly.

“I don’t mind.”

She turned and again began walking quite fast although with his longer stride he found the pace comfortable enough. It was cool and breezy though not unusually so for an April day in New York. The girl seemed underdressed for the weather; her arms were crossed tightly in front of her. He asked her if she was cold but she shook her head no. He was wearing a tweed sports jacket and had been prepared to offer it to her, but he wasn’t going to press the point. He was more and more intrigued by the girl and her strange behavior, with her distracted air and almost rude indifference at dinner, then this sudden forwardness, inviting him to her apartment, and now her present silence. She was certainly an odd duck. Moody, stubborn, a bit willful, not overly concerned with the social niceties, and with a bizarre taste in painting—that was the way he summed her up in his mind. It was a combination of qualities he found rather titillating.

In due course they arrived at Fifth Street and Avenue A. The neighborhood in which the girl lived was still more or less of a slum, the tentacles of gentrification which had already extended east of Greenwich Village not yet having reached this far. But the older ethnic mix was already sprinkled with a hippie/bohemian element. The street was lined with tenement buildings, four stories tall, mostly dating from the early twentieth century, or possibly even the end of the nineteenth. Eve stopped at one of them and opened the front door and he followed her into the entranceway. He glanced at the mailboxes on his left as she fished for her keys out of her bag before unlocking the inner door. Next he followed her up four flights of stairs and to a red painted door in which she inserted a key.

The door opened only part way before encountering an obstacle; once inside he saw that the lock was connected to a bolt anchored in the floor, as a security device. The girl said she had to go to the bathroom and disappeared to the right while he looked around at the apartment. It looked small and dilapidated. To his right was a small kitchen which she had passed through on the way to the bathroom. The room he was in seemed to function as a combined living and dining room. In front of him a tatty green sofa stood against a bare brick wall; opposite was an old wooden dining table with two chairs, on the back of one of which he draped his jacket. There was a wall on his left with an entranceway shielded by a Chinese bead curtain. He walked through the curtain into the next room where he stood facing two windows with half-open Venetian blinds that looked out onto the street and in the middle of which stood a worn red leather easy chair. To his left was a bed with a small end table on which stood a clock, a night lamp and a small pipe, which he recognized as the kind used for smoking marijuana. Lying on the floor by the table was a box phonograph of the old-fashioned kind with a raised top that closed into a carrying case, and next to it the phone. He made a mental note of the number; he had an excellent memory for numbers. Against the opposite wall, which like that of the living room was of uncovered brick, stood a chest of drawers and next to it a bookcase that looked like it had been put together by some amateur carpenter. It contained three shelves of books. He glanced at the top shelf and saw various works of philosophy or religion of the New Age type—Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, A Separate Reality by Carlos Castaneda, the I Ching, Be Here Now by Baba Ram Dass. She’s true to type, he thought derisively. Closer examination though showed her main interests to be literary. There were classic novels like Wuthering Heights, Crime and Punishment, Madame Bovary, short story collections, a complete Shakespeare, and many volumes of poetry including, surprisingly, some in French; there were bilingual editions of Baudelaire and Rimbaud along with a French dictionary.

He heard the sound of a toilet flushing which would cut short the examination of her library. Quickly he crouched down to examine the bottom level where a collection of long-playing records rested on the floor. Leafing through them quickly he found an eclectic collection of rock, jazz, fusion and classical. Behind he heard the rustling of the beaded curtain; he stood up and turned around. She had taken off her shoes and was standing in front of the bed in her stocking feet looking up at him expectantly. He walked towards her and grabbed her arms just below the shoulders in a hard grip, pulled her towards him and planted on her lips a long, lingering kiss. She closed her eyes; her lips were soft and yielding. He squeezed her arms until he felt them soften, go limp. Satisfied, he let go her arms and began undoing the buttons of her shirt while kissing her a second time. Their tongues found each other while he pulled apart the flaps of her shirt and slid them off her shoulders and down her arms letting it fall to the floor. Completing his kiss he stepped back, eager to see what had been hidden underneath the oversized shirt. He saw a small boned woman with frail shoulders, slim arms and small ripe young breasts shaped just the way he liked them. He took her breasts in his hands and squeezed them gently, kneading them; then he kissed her once more.

When next their lips parted he put his hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her down onto the bed. Compliantly she swung her legs around and lay down in the middle of the bed and looked up at him, waiting. He kicked off his shoes while undoing the buttons of his shirt which he then tossed onto the red leather chair, and climbed on top of her. Once again he began fondling her breasts; the nipples had become erect and he rubbed them with his thumbs while kissing her. When he tired of playing with her breasts he moved his hands underneath her skirt. He felt for her panties, put his hands inside the elastic and pulled them down and off. He lifted up the front of her skirt and she responded by spreading her legs while lying there with her eyes closed. The black stockings highlighted in a most appealing manner her soft white thighs and pink vulva. He quickly undid his belt, pulled down his pants and entered her.

All this time he was struck by the girl’s passivity. Some men might have been turned off by it, but he liked passive women. This was the sort of girl he could have his way with. As he entered her she gasped. Inside she was warm and moist and inviting. She may have been passive but she was not unresponsive. He began to plant kisses all over her face, and on her neck and on her shoulders and on her breasts. She lay there with her eyes closed; her face had a dreamy faraway expression. He took her wrists and pulled them back behind her head, pinning them to the bed. Suddenly and surprisingly quickly she began to come. He would be inside her a long time and she would come several more times. She did so surprisingly quietly. As her frail body shook orgasmically her vocal sounds were soft and almost birdlike. Even her passion had a kind of reticence to it. He at last achieved his own solitary climax and subsiding, released her arms and lay on top of her. She responded by putting her arms around him, the most active thing she had done so far. They lay quietly like that for several minutes. Finally he got up and off the bed and headed to the bathroom. When he returned she was sitting up on the side of the bed. He started to dress. “That was great,” she said, still breathing heavily.

“I’m glad you liked it,” he said with a smile as he buttoned his shirt.

“You want to listen to some music?” she asked.

“I have to go.”

“Will I see you again?”

“Sure.”

“Let me give you my number.” She scrambled nervously to find a pen and paper, as if fearing he would vanish if she took too long. She had suddenly become animated, as if she had been half asleep all this time and he had awakened her to life. Sleeping Beauty, he thought. “I’ll give you my work number, too,” she said. When she was done she handed him a paper. Written in block letters it contained her name, home phone, and the number and address of Spring Street Books.

“Thanks,” he said as he stuffed the paper into his front pocket. He kissed her once more then said “See Ya” as he headed for the door. She rushed after him.

“Wait,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Roger. Roger Nettles.” He picked up his jacket and went out the door. Jauntily he climbed down the stairs, pleased with his little adventure. He thought the girl a find; she was pretty, and submissive, even had brains, judging by her books. There was definitely potential there. Certainly she was eager enough. He would have to bring her along slowly. Better not to call too soon though.

* * * *

After Roger departed, Eve sat herself down on the tatty green sofa. She felt exhilarated; this may have been the best sex she ever had. At least she couldn’t remember when she had come so many times. Often she didn’t come at all. She liked the way he made love, the way he kissed her, the way he undressed her, the way he held her down. And he was so big! He was big even for a man of his size and height, and she had always preferred tall men. She was also proud of the way she had taken the initiative in inviting him to her apartment (notwithstanding that he had approached her first). It was a feat that, in those days of women’s liberation, she perhaps rated too highly. But for her it was an unusual thing to do, for she was “a maiden never bold,” though technically not a maiden. But above all she was pleased with herself for having conceived a plan, a romantic plan, and carried it off.

Her initial reaction to the man and his attempt to pick her up had been negative. She supposed him to be one of those square older men prowling the Village for “hippie chicks,” impelled by media-inspired fantasies of uninhibited young women who freely “put out.” But when he offered her dinner, well, she was always short of cash, and while she rather prided herself on her poverty and indifference to material concerns, the offer of a free meal was not to be sneezed at. Besides, the man was quite attractive; he was tall, ruggedly built, and almost movie star handsome. He looked and acted like the kind of man who had no trouble getting women to sleep with him, beautiful, stylish women, for he was obviously well-heeled. As she considered herself a merely average looking young woman and was besides rather dowdy, she couldn’t help feeling a bit flattered.

She was also open to adventure, for lately she had been feeling bored and restless. For a long time she had wanted to go to Europe, traveling with a backpack and staying at youth hostels, and if she could scrape up a little money for airfare she just might do it. The prospect of foreign travel often inspires in people dreams of romantic sexual adventures. Sometimes Eve would picture herself sitting in an Italian piazza, in Florence or Rome, being accosted by a dark-haired, olive-skinned, muscular youth, followed by (confusing her geography somewhat) a night of passionate love making on a Mediterranean beach. Or she would imagine herself sitting in some Left Bank café in Paris, and be approached by some poetic looking young man, a student or maybe an artist, who would take her home to make love in a creaking bed in some upstairs garret.

Those were future possibilities. Meanwhile, it was a long time since she had slept with a man and she was becoming horny. Anonymous sex with a handsome stranger was another appealing fantasy. During dinner she wondered what the man did. Maybe it was something dull, like selling insurance, or something she despised, like advertising. Fearing disillusionment, she decided not to ask him anything, not even his name. She would have her adventure, and the more mysterious and romantic the circumstances the better. But worried that her apparent disinterest in him had turned him off she decided to not wait for him to make the next move, but instead turn the tables and proposition him!

And now it was over and had turned out to be every bit as good as she had hoped. Perhaps it was that good in the beginning with Paul, her first lover, to whom she had lost her virginity, back in her one and only year of college. He too was tall, but lankier than Roger, and his hair was longer. No one would have imagined he was a businessman. Of course he was younger though three years older than herself. He was a political activist of the radical sort who had led a student strike which had shut down the university for a week. After the close of the academic year he decided to move to the city. To the horror of her family she followed him and together they moved into an apartment in the Village. She followed him too into his political activities, into meetings, into demonstrations; she tried to adopt his convictions as her own. But in her heart she lacked zeal, and in time he transferred his affections to another, a fierce young woman whose dedication to the cause matched his own. Heartbroken, Eve moved out and “crashed” for a while in an apartment with three other people, with a sleeping bag for a bed. She refused to return to school, resolving to remain in the city, finding casual employment, mostly as a waitress. She was helped out a little by her older sister, who had graduated from the same upstate college with a degree in English, and who now worked for a publisher in New York and had married a lawyer. Her sister lent her money from time to time, which she never repaid.

For a while she drifted, eventually drifting into the orbit of Patrick, the scapegrace son of a prominent attorney, who had spent a year at Columbia and either dropped out or was expelled, she was never sure which, and now made his living dealing drugs. Tall, highly intelligent, voluble, pugnacious, charismatic, he liked to read philosophy, and could discuss Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. He was subject to mood swings, perhaps a native quality, or maybe the effects of too frequent use of methamphetamines, which he tried to get her to use, as well as heroin. But she resisted the use of hard drugs, being frightened of needles, among other things and was content with the use of psychedelics, mostly marijuana, though she experimented a few times with LSD and once with mescaline. She found the experience thrilling but had a black reaction afterwards, and soon abandoned them. Meanwhile Patrick became more and more volatile, and in his black moods would lash out at her, until finally he resorted to striking her. It was the final straw; she packed up her meager possessions and fled.

She found a haven with another young woman who had befriended her, and who had her own apartment, the very place she now lived in. That friend introduced her to a feminist consciousness raising group. A somewhat solitary, bookish girl, Eve had never had a lot of female friends, but having lately sworn off men, she found new pleasure in the companionship of a group of women. But ideological zeal of any kind being foreign to her nature she came to feel out of place, so before long she dropped out. By then she had found the bookstore job. She spent so much time reading there that the manager, a middle-aged gentleman who had taken a fatherly interest in her, approached her when a vacancy developed. He teased her that with the additional income she might actually buy a book now and then. It was a perk of the job that she received a discount on purchases and she was able to expand her collection of poetry.

After a time her friend decided to move out of the city. The apartment was cheap and rent-controlled and with her job she could just manage the rent. She approached her sister who agreed to loan her the security deposit and to co-sign the lease, so the landlord allowed her take the place over. Her sister was happy at least that she was settling down a little. She was somewhat appalled upon seeing the place but its very smallness was a recommendation, thinking there was not much room for a man, and with her sister’s taste in men that was all to the good.

She now entered into a happier phase of her life. Her heart had mended and she came to find her life romantic, living in the big city, eking out her meager means by enjoying free concerts and museums. Her very poverty seemed to her romantic, redolent of la vie boheme, of artists living in garrets. The arts were her passion and she would have liked to have been an artist herself. She even wrote poetry, which unfortunately was not very good. Meanwhile she had found a safer crowd to hang out with; she didn’t want any more Patricks in her life. Her self-imposed moratorium on sex came to end and she began to sleep around a lot. There were a lot of one night stands. It was better that way, there seemed to be something dangerous about the men she became attached to. After a while though she ceased to find much pleasure in it. She was passive in bed and believed she was a lousy lay. Once she overheard a couple of guys talking about her, one of them saying “She just lays there.” She was mortified, but it was true.

Lately she had begun to tire of her life, which had come to seem pointless and futile. Her romantic notions of bohemian life had begun to fray. The people she knew were mostly kids sowing their wild oats, temporary dropouts from society, mixed with some older burned out, or drugged out cases. Men too she came to tire of, and began another period of self-imposed celibacy. Perhaps after all she should go back to school, not returning upstate, but applying to one of the free colleges of the City University system. She would still have to work, of course. Her bookstore job, which she liked, was a daytime job. Still, there were ways of working things out.

So she was ready for a change in her life when out of nowhere this tall, handsome stranger from a different world entered it. Still glowing in the aftermath of her post-coital euphoria, she felt a sudden craving for new adventures. Perhaps this attractive, virile man would be the one to provide them.