going west at that point, and signaled the wagon. But the wagon turned east, the wrong way.
The cabbie swore and ran two lights to get back on Houston by way of Sixth Avenue where Houston was two-way by then. They kept their distance as the wagon slowed down at every intersection, the driver looking for his street. He turned in at Wooster. But Wooster, they discovered when they got there, was blocked this side of Prince Street. A movie shooting there? So where were the trailers, where were the cops? The cops loved movies. Julie overpaid the cabbie and took her chances on foot. She knew SoHo pretty well.
She soon spotted the black wagon parked tight against a high wire fence midblock. The driver was wriggling across the front seat to get out on the passenger side. He went to the back and unloaded a couple of high-wattage lamps and a reflector. Could be they were on rental from Mr. Bourke. The man started up the street with them on the opposite side to the crowd. Julie stayed on the crowd’s side, but at the fringe. At last the distant wail of approaching police. Two things happened at once: the man set down the lamps and reflector and, ignoring the crowd, took out his keys to unlock a door, and the crowd let out a collective cry, “Look! Look!”
Julie looked. A woman was dancing nude in the third-floor picture window. Not dancing, but jumping up and down, flailing her arms, and not a woman. It was Juanita.
Julie plunged across the street, waving to the girl and calling out, “Juanita!”
Some of the crowd moved with and past her. Interpreting for themselves, they caught hold of the man, pushed him from one to another, and pulled at his clothes. The multilocked loft door swung open. The redheaded woman took a step into the street, then tried to retreat inside the building again. When no one else took hold of her, Julie lunged and grappled her to the ground. The crowd loved it. The police came finally, swinging their nightsticks to disperse the crowd.
Julie and Juanita rode home in the chief inspector’s car after they had stopped at One Police Plaza, to swear out the necessary complaints. There were things Juanita would not or could not talk about—mostly her fear and what she’d imagined might happen to her, but she liked to tell the action parts, especially how, when Dee had chased and caught her, she clung to the front window drapes and brought them down on top of Dee and her. By the time Dee had found her wig, Juanita was dancing in the window. Oh, yes, she insisted, she was dancing.
In time, police across the country fleshed out the chronicle of Dee and Danny, a horror story. They would arrive in a city, sublet quarters, recruit local talent, film, and move on. They supplied a flourishing market in underground cassettes. The true horror was not only in their corruption of the innocent, but in the despair in which they left the corrupted. These unfortunates rarely went home again and almost never broke their silence on the street.
Justina
M ARY RYAN WAS CERTAINLY not homeless. She had lived in the Willoughby for forty-three years. Once it had been a residential hotel occupied mainly by show folk, people who worked in or about the theater at subsistence or slightly higher level. Recently it had been renovated into a stylish cooperative, but with a few small inside pockets, you might say, of people like Mrs. Ryan, who were allowed to remain on as renters by the grace of a qualified managerial charity: after all, what can you put in an inside pocket? Besides tax rebates.
The neighborhood—the West Forties of Manhattan—had gone, in Mrs. Ryan’s time, from respectable working-class to shabby and drug-pocked misery and back again to a confusing mix of respectability, affluence, and decay. But through all the changes, the area had remained a neighborhood, with people who had lived there all their lives loyal to one another, to the shops who served them, to church and school, and who were, by and large, tolerant
The cabbie swore and ran two lights to get back on Houston by way of Sixth Avenue where Houston was two-way by then. They kept their distance as the wagon slowed down at every intersection, the driver looking for his street. He turned in at Wooster. But Wooster, they discovered when they got there, was blocked this side of Prince Street. A movie shooting there? So where were the trailers, where were the cops? The cops loved movies. Julie overpaid the cabbie and took her chances on foot. She knew SoHo pretty well.
She soon spotted the black wagon parked tight against a high wire fence midblock. The driver was wriggling across the front seat to get out on the passenger side. He went to the back and unloaded a couple of high-wattage lamps and a reflector. Could be they were on rental from Mr. Bourke. The man started up the street with them on the opposite side to the crowd. Julie stayed on the crowd’s side, but at the fringe. At last the distant wail of approaching police. Two things happened at once: the man set down the lamps and reflector and, ignoring the crowd, took out his keys to unlock a door, and the crowd let out a collective cry, “Look! Look!”
Julie looked. A woman was dancing nude in the third-floor picture window. Not dancing, but jumping up and down, flailing her arms, and not a woman. It was Juanita.
Julie plunged across the street, waving to the girl and calling out, “Juanita!”
Some of the crowd moved with and past her. Interpreting for themselves, they caught hold of the man, pushed him from one to another, and pulled at his clothes. The multilocked loft door swung open. The redheaded woman took a step into the street, then tried to retreat inside the building again. When no one else took hold of her, Julie lunged and grappled her to the ground. The crowd loved it. The police came finally, swinging their nightsticks to disperse the crowd.
Julie and Juanita rode home in the chief inspector’s car after they had stopped at One Police Plaza, to swear out the necessary complaints. There were things Juanita would not or could not talk about—mostly her fear and what she’d imagined might happen to her, but she liked to tell the action parts, especially how, when Dee had chased and caught her, she clung to the front window drapes and brought them down on top of Dee and her. By the time Dee had found her wig, Juanita was dancing in the window. Oh, yes, she insisted, she was dancing.
In time, police across the country fleshed out the chronicle of Dee and Danny, a horror story. They would arrive in a city, sublet quarters, recruit local talent, film, and move on. They supplied a flourishing market in underground cassettes. The true horror was not only in their corruption of the innocent, but in the despair in which they left the corrupted. These unfortunates rarely went home again and almost never broke their silence on the street.
Justina
M ARY RYAN WAS CERTAINLY not homeless. She had lived in the Willoughby for forty-three years. Once it had been a residential hotel occupied mainly by show folk, people who worked in or about the theater at subsistence or slightly higher level. Recently it had been renovated into a stylish cooperative, but with a few small inside pockets, you might say, of people like Mrs. Ryan, who were allowed to remain on as renters by the grace of a qualified managerial charity: after all, what can you put in an inside pocket? Besides tax rebates.
The neighborhood—the West Forties of Manhattan—had gone, in Mrs. Ryan’s time, from respectable working-class to shabby and drug-pocked misery and back again to a confusing mix of respectability, affluence, and decay. But through all the changes, the area had remained a neighborhood, with people who had lived there all their lives loyal to one another, to the shops who served them, to church and school, and who were, by and large, tolerant
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