We sat in one of the booths lining both walls in the coffee shop on Lexington Avenue. Aileen took a metal flask from her purse and poured a golden liquor that smelled like whiskey into her coffee. “It’s medicine,” she said, looking guiltily at me while sipping the hot coffee. “How come you’re working part-time? I am a middle-aged woman and I had to take this job, but you’re young. You could get a full-time job somewhere.” I ransacked my small vocabulary for a reply. “Writer. Work morning, write afternoon.” Aileen sat back in shock. “A writer. What do you write about?” I knew the perfect word because I had seen the magazine on all the newsstands. “Life,” I answered proudly. “Boy, that’s a large subject,” said the woman without irony, gulping her coffee.
Ruth and Esther were in the reception room sitting in comfortable armchairs drinking tea and eating biscuits and cookies. What could possibly make anybody think they were swindlers, those sweet old ladies with their abundant blue-white hair and stylish coiffures, their plump, cherubic cheeks, their welcoming smiles?
“How did she do?” asked Esther with enthusiasm.
“She did well. She’ll be fine alone,” said Aileen looking at me to be sure of her appraisal.
“Splendid!” exclaimed the sisters in chorus, clapping their hands.
“Now, sit down and have tea with us,” said Esther patting a place close to her on the sofa, while Aileen handed her satchel to Ruth and went home. I envied Aileen and felt trapped. My English was not good enough to extricate me gracefully. So I sat and smiled. “These are Austrian cookies, the best in the world,” said Ruth, while Esther approved with enthusiastic nods. “We bought them at die Konditorei, hum, the pastry shop, on 86th street.”
I could smell the delicate fragrance of vetiver coming from their underwear, reminding me of my grandmother. Somehow I was not surprised to have tea with them on my first day of work, but was becoming more and more anxious to get home and start writing. The point of cleaning telephones was to be able to write, not take tea with other foreigners, however much longer they had lived in New York.
Suddenly I found myself standing up. “Got to go. Got to go,” I said slipping through the office glass door, giving them no time to speak and forgetting to leave my satchel.
In my little room in a ten-dollar-a week hotel on Upper Broadway --they charged the prostitutes ten dollars an hour for the rooms but gave a better rate to the few “honest workers”-- I sat in front of my tiny Olivetti typewriter hoping to write a play. I hadn’t had lunch and despite two Austrian cookies I was hungry. Now I felt burdened to write something to justify taking a part-time job. I stared at the blank white page and saw rows of black telephones.
Somebody knocked. Juan, my neighbor, invited me to have stuffed grape leaves and Greek wine with him and his brother Luis. Juan, a short, thin young man with black eyes and black hair, had spoken to me in the hall a few times before. Luis was a humpbacked midget with kind, beautiful eyes, and a mischievous smile. I accepted their invitation because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to write. Juan explained the grape leaves by telling me they preferred Greek food to Puerto Rican and bought it at the little Greek stores on Ninth Avenue where they picked up Greek sailors.
I said I was writing a play.
“Why do you write for the theater?” Juan asked, his mouth full of stuffed grape leaves.
“I like the theater because it makes me feel the work of fiction as palpable reality,” I said in Spanish. “You can physically touch the characters embodied in the actors, and feel their raw emotions like bolts of lightning paralyzing the heart.”
What a relief to be able to speak in my mother language and sound like a normal person and not a moron. Spanish, I felt, was like breaking out from a prison of silence and shame.
“Wow,” said Juan. “I can see you are a playwright. When I first met you I thought you were just trying to impress me.”
The telephone rang and Juan answered it. After listening, he screamed at Luis: “We sold it. We sold it.”
His brother Luis danced all over the room like a belly dancer. His deformity made his dance painful to watch. “My brother sold his songs to Bobby Darin. We’re rich,” he squealed. Lucky Neoyorricans, I thought, they know enough English to write songs for rock stars.
Juan danced over to the kitchenette, fished a bottle of cheap sparkling wine out of the mini-fridge and found three cups in the cabinet. He popped the cork laughing. His sallow face was flushed.
Visions of their future artistic success made the three of us drunk on the cheap wine. I drifted over to telephone and examined it carefully. The earpiece and mouthpiece were covered with a grey and black crust. I excused myself and went across the hall for my satchel. Like a magician I took out the jar with the pink cream and held it up for them to see, saying:
“This will kill all the microbes on your mouthpiece.” Then I cleaned their telephone with great care, holding it up tipsily to admire its intense shine. Juan and Luis watched me, astounded.
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