Fallen Angel
A beautiful American journalist for the New York Times, now a crack whore of the projects of San Juan, met in a dive at three a.m.
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Former journalist, crack addict, still stunning.
We’d only been in the condo nine months but had a great time, spending every night at bars, talking away, three amigos. One night was unforgettable. John left us at midnight but Mickey and I were thirsty. We wandered the strip and stepped into a sleazy basement place, (there were at least twenty bars in that one-mile strip) and met a beautiful American girl there, sitting at the bar at two a.m.. She was twenty eight and blond and gorgeous, slender and smart. She told us she used to work for the New York Times as a reporter. She convinced us in seconds, as she had all the trade jargon to perfection. She told us she’d been sent to S.J. on assignment, got hooked on crack, quit her job and had been here for a year, on these streets, an addict and a whore. We couldn’t believe such a beauty with such intelligence could sink this low.
We were so intrigued we asked her to come and stay the night at our condo, just a block away. She said she would if we bought her forty dollars worth of crack. We instantly agreed and she scored it right there in the bar bathroom. A few minutes later she was sitting between us on our couch, emptying vial after vial into her pipe, talking away with perfect lucidity, telling us how she became instantly hooked and went from one boyfriend addict to another, living in the projects at the other end of the strip, a mile away. We were drinking beers and burnt. At three Mickey went to bed.
I took a few hits with her which perked me up for another beer and another hour of talk. I had no plans of sex with her, though she had none of the common signs of addiction and the concomitant malnutrition, jaundice or wrinkles or dark eyes. I thought of Nicky from warehouse days. Perhaps needles did all the damage. But far more likely it was the dirty cuts and impurities in Oakland coke as opposed to the perfectly clean product you got in P.R. and smoking left no trace. She was skinny but her skin and face were lovely. Even her clothes and purse seemed fairly elegant, and she had black, leather boots to compliment her mini-skirt.
But I guessed she must have every S.T.D. known to science, perhaps a few that weren’t yet known. That didn’t stop me from wanting to hear more. Around four a.m. we retired to my bed. She was just as tired as I, from a long day at work. But unlike any other crack addict I’d ever met, she saved half of what we bought her for tomorrow. We fell asleep close together, back to back in fact. It was a single bed. Our talk had been intimate and we felt like good friends.
The next morning I was able to wake up for a minute around eight, called Madeline and told her I was going to miss work that day, then went straight back to bed. She was very surprised. This was the only day I called in sick in over two years. I told her I’d explain later. I didn’t have to. John was in the office with Mickey and filling her in with scattered, half-imaginary details. Mickey left out the part about her being a crack whore, not wanting to upset Madeline’s delicate mind. He just told her of our late night meeting in a basement bar. John knew far less, but he saw me stumble from my room to the kitchen to make the call, peeked in my open door and saw the slim, half-naked angel sleeping there. Madeline was all ears, thinking I’d found true romance. I don’t know what thoughts went through her pretty head that day, but I do know they were as various and rich as her ever-changing dress and coiffure.
When I came in the next morning, Madeline, the only time ever, rose from her desk, greeted me at the door, took my hand and pulled up a chair for me to sit beside her desk, saying excitedly, like a child, she needed to hear the whole story. This put me in a fix. I gained a few minutes by just looking down, unable to speak, as if confused by new love or perhaps just embarrassed.
It flashed upon me in this interval that she must be an avid reader of Harlequin novels. It all made sense, fit her personality to a tee. She was a hopeless romantic. Then it all clicked. All I had to do was leave her with a fantastic, improbable story, with impossible complications and a cliff-hanger ending. If I did it well enough she might not even need to crack open another Harlequin that night, propped on her soft pillows with her warm glass of milk, her eyes closed and her imagination racing.
I began, as one should, with pure truths. Fictions come later, easily, once you develop a basis to build upon. So I began: ‘I met her in the basement bar on the strip. John had left us a half-hour earlier, and Mickey and I were walking along the main drag, not drunk, enjoying the fresh night air. Then we saw a small neon sign to this underground bar, one we’d never noticed before, though we must have passed it twenty times. We were intrigued by the fact that we’d hadn’t noticed it, just two blocks from our condo. So we ventured in, though it was late, almost two a.m. The place was small and dark and smoke-filled, even smelly, with the faint hints of latrines, (I described every detail I could remember). But we wanted one more beer before calling it a night so we headed to the furthest end of the bar where there was a half open window, more lighting and less smoke. Then I see her, sitting at the bar, alone.
There’s an empty stool on each side of her and we politely inquire if we can take them. As the rest of the bar is filled with cigarette smoking Puerto Ricans speaking Spanish, she invites us to sit, glad to meet two Americans. I go on and on, telling Madeline of her beautiful looks and how we slowly engaged in ever closer conversation, she telling me of her journalist career with the New York Times, on assignment here for an article on the San Juan slums, while I told her of my Berkeley career and degrees in English and Classics.
She loves English lit. and we fall into a deep conversation on our favorite poets. Mickey leaves us at this point, too tired to stay. But our talk excites us, keeps us awake, full of life. We’re so amazed at our extremely rare and rich common interests, those dearest to our hearts, meeting in such a strange, ugly, derelict bar, late at night, the unlikeliest place on Earth you could imagine to be discussing English poetry, an unbelievable one-in-a-million coincidence.
I recite to her a poem by Ernest Dowson, “The Days of Wine and Roses”. She takes my hand, clasping it tight. Next we kiss and soon leave, back to my room, and my bed.
Now I leave Madeline with the cliff hanger. She has to fly back to New York today. Her assignment is complete. We pledge and swear to meet again but don’t know when or where. We promise to call each other every day.
Madeline sighs the deepest of sighs, the only one I ever heard from her. It was almost a love moan. Over the few next days, as soon as I came in, she’d ask me if I’d talked to her. I told her I keep calling but only get an answering machine at her office. I leave messages but never get a call back. Then, the next week I told her that I did get a reply the night before from a stranger, a man, who asked me to quit calling. Then I bent low and whispered in her ear: ‘I think she might be married’.
She was married, married to crack, and out of any other possible marriage loop, probably two miles away from us at this very minute, along the strip, on some sleazy corner in her mini skirt, smelly, unbathed for days, one hand held high and waving to any car passing by, or worse, in some dim project bedroom, naked, under a single sheet, waiting for her trick to return with another vile, and another lay.
Love takes many strange forms. But fantasy is so much kinder than reality.
