She'll Take It Read Free Page A

have potted palms and a chandelier in their lobby; we have a broken lightbulb and a plastic container of wheat grass. They also have a real doorman who always smiles, and I’ve never seen him trip anyone even once.
    Sometimes I think I should report Charlie to the NAACP or some other such human rights group, but would that really help Jimmy? Isn’t it better for him to have a semiwarm hallway to live in rather than the streets? The day I moved in I gave him a pillow and a blanket to sleep on, but they’ve subsequently disappeared. I don’t understand how he’d rather sleep on bare cement, but it’s really not my place to teach him how not to be a homeless drunk. I suppose I could protest, move out, raise a stink, but I don’t. I have rent control. I like Jimmy but I’m ashamed to admit that sometimes when he smiles at me I have to look away.
    Inside our apartment there are problems as well. I can handle the cockroaches (with a little help from my friend the cotton ball), but both Kim and I are terrified of the mice. They mainly hang out in the kitchen section of our pad, and if we stomp on the floor before we enter, they’re polite enough to scatter back to their holes. The cockroaches, on the other hand, have no such decency and they’re becoming quite bold. I found one on the television the other day watching The Sopranos . He was perched on Tony Soprano’s right nostril. It was so entertaining we couldn’t bring ourselves to kill it. I named him Tony, and I marked the top of his little body with red nail polish. He’s the only one we won’t squash, poison, or drown. The rest of them are on their own.
    Before I go to bed, I play the movie How I Met Ray . It gets five stars, it runs in my head, and I can even watch it without a huge bucket of buttered popcorn. It goes a little something like this:

    EXTERIOR—NIGHT—MANHATTAN
CHARACTERS: GIRL (Me)

    MOST BEAUTIFUL MAN EVER
(Ray)

    A beautiful GIRL in her late twenties (twenty-nine is still late twenties) is dejectedly walking the streets of Manhattan after a lousy audition for an off-, off-, off-, off-Broadway play. She leaves the audition when the director declares that it will be performed in thong underwear as a ploy to put the audience at ease. GIRL walks out without uttering a word of her two-minute comedic monologue. GIRL decides she will quit acting and definitely quit waitressing at Beef Boys Bar and Grill where Columbia frat boys come in to check out her ass over pitchers of beer.
    Suddenly we hear music. It wails from a bar on the corner, a small basement dive distinguishable from a sad basement apartment only by the neon eye that blinks above it. GIRL drops to her knees on the sidewalk and peers in the window.
    MOST BEAUTIFUL MAN EVER stands on a rickety stage with a guitar slung around his neck and a harmonica wedged in his full lips. GIRL’s heart never stands a chance. She closes her eyes and holds his image. Broad shoulders, shaggy black hair, and since she can’t see that well through the dirt and the din, she imagines eyes like soft blue ice (I was wrong about the blue eyes, but jade green is unbelievable too, don’t you think?), rough hands, and a mind clear enough to pierce through the clutter of hers. GIRL knows if he makes love like he plays, GIRL is in huge, big trouble. GIRL licks index finger and writes “I Want You” backward in the dirty window. Music stops. Lights dim. MOST BEAUTIFUL MAN EVER looks up, sees GIRL, sees “I Want You,” and smiles. The smile says, “Then come and get me.” And she does.
    THE END (but hopefully just the beginning).

    Here’s the part of the movie we don’t get to see: One month later, lying in bed with him I ask him about this moment, the moment we fell in love at first sight. I trace the dimple in his chin, waiting for his rendition of our magical moment. Ray leans his beautiful head back and looks thoughtful. He