Just Kids [50]
One such night, Danny Fields came over and invited us to sit at the round table. This single gesture afforded us a trial residency, which was an important step for Robert. He was elegant in his response. He just nodded and led me to the table. He didn’t reveal at all how much it meant to him. For Danny’s thoughtfulness toward us I have always been grateful.
Robert was at ease because, at last, he was where he wanted to be. I can’t say I felt comfortable at all. The girls were pretty but brutal, perhaps because there seemed a low percentage of interested males. I could tell they tolerated me and were attracted to Robert. He was as much their target as their inner circle was his. It seemed as if they were all after him, male and female, but at the time Robert was motivated by ambition, not sex.
He was elated with clearing this small yet monumental hurdle. But privately I thought that the round table, even at the best of times, was innately doomed. Disbanded by Andy, banded by us, no doubt to be disbanded again to accommodate the next scene.
I looked around at everyone bathed in the blood light of the back room. Dan Flavin had conceived his installation in response to the mounting death toll of the war in Vietnam. No one in the back room was slated to die in Vietnam, though few would survive the cruel plagues of a generation.
I thought I could hear the voice of Tim Hardin singing “Black Sheep Boy” as I returned with our laundry. Robert had gotten paid for a moving job with an old record player and had put on our favorite album. It was his surprise for me. We hadn’t had a record player since Hall Street.
It was the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Though autumn was ending, it was a bright Indian summer kind of day. I had gathered up our laundry, slipped on an old cotton dress, wool stockings, and a thick sweater, and headed toward Eighth Avenue. I had asked Harry if he wanted any laundry done, but he responded in mock horror at the prospect of me touching his boxer shorts and scooted me away. I put the stuff in the washer with a fair amount of baking soda and walked the couple of blocks to Asia de Cuba to get a cup of café con leche.
I folded our things. The song that we called ours came on, “How Can You Hang On to a Dream?” We were both dreamers, but Robert was the one who got things done. I made the money but he had drive and focus. He had plans for himself but for me as well. He wanted us to develop our work but there was no room. All the wall space was taken. There was no possibility for him to realize his blueprints for installations. His spray painting was bad for my persistent cough. He sometimes went up on the Chelsea roof but it was getting too cold and windy. Finally he decided he was going to find a raw space for us, and began looking through the Village Voice and asking around.
Then he had a piece of luck. We had a neighbor, an overweight sad sack in a rumpled overcoat, who walked his French bulldog back and forth on Twenty-third Street. He and his dog had identical faces of slack folding skin. We coded him Pigman. Robert noticed he lived a few doors down, over the Oasis Bar. One evening he stopped to pet the dog and struck up a conversation. Robert asked him if he knew of any vacancies in his building, and Pigman told him he had the whole second floor but the front room was just for storage. Robert asked if he could sublet it. At first he was reluctant, but the dog liked Robert and he agreed, offering the front room starting January 1 for a hundred dollars a month. With a month’s deposit, he could have the place for the balance of this year to clean it out. Robert wasn’t sure where the money would come from but sealed it with a handshake.
Robert