Manhattan Is My Beat

floor next to two battered American Touristers. She opened one, looking over shirts and underwear, which she smoothed, adjusting away creases, refolding some of the wild-colored clothes, then took off her socks and put them into the other suitcase.
    To Richard she said, “Dresser and dirty clothes hamper.” Nodding at the suitcases.
    “You rent this?” the Woodpecker asked.
    “I just live here. I don’t pay any rent.”
    “Why not?”
    “Nobody’s asked me to yet.”
    Richard asked, “How did you get it?”
    Rune shrugged. “I found it. I moved in. Nobody else was here.”
    He said, “It becomes you.”
    “Being and becoming …,” Rune said, recalling something she’d overheard a couple of guys talking about in the video store a week or so ago.
    He lifted his eyebrows. “Hey, you know Hegel?”
    “Oh, sure,” Rune said. “I love movies.”
    The circle of the floor was divided by a cinder-block wall, which she’d painted sky blue and dabbed with white for clouds. On Rune’s side of the loft were four old trunks, a TV, a VCR, three futons piled on top of one another, a dozen pillows in the corner. Two bookcases, completely filled with books, mostly old ones. A half-size refrigerator.
    “Where do you cook?” asked the Woodpecker.
    “What does it mean, cook?” Rune replied in a thick Hungarian accent.
    Richard said, “I feel something epiphanic about this place. Very watershed, you know.” He looked in the refrigerator. A bag of half-melted ice cubes, two six-packs of beer, a shriveled apple. “It’s not turned on.”
    “It doesn’t work.”
    “What about utilities?”
    Rune pointed to an orange extension cord snaking down the stairs. “Some of the construction guys working downstairs, they let me have electricity. Isn’t that nice of them?”
    The Woodpecker asked, “What if the owner finds out, couldn’t he kick you out?”
    “I’d find someplace else.”
    “You’re a very existential person,” Richard said.
    And the blonde: “I want to start our party.”
    Rune shut the lights out, lit a dozen candles.
    She heard the rasp of another match. The flare reflected in a dozen angled windows. The ripe raw smell of hash flowed through the room. The joint was passed around. Beer too.
    The blonde said to the Woodpecker, “Play the movie, the one you picked out.”
    Rune and Richard sat back on the pillows, watched the blonde take the cassette from the Woodpecker and open the plastic container. Rune whispered to him, “Are you two like an entity or something?” Nodding at the blonde. Then she thought about it. “Or are you
three
an entity?”
    Richard’s paisley eyes followed the blonde as she crouched and turned on the VCR and television. He said, “I don’t know the redhead. But the other one—I met her last year at the Sorbonne, I was writing a thesis on semiotic interpretations of textile designs.”
    Is this a joke?
    “I was sitting outdoors on the Boulevard St. Germain, and saw her get out of a limousine. I was filled with an intense sense of pre-ordination.”
    “Like Calvinism,” Rune said, remembering something she’d heard her mother, a good Presbyterian, say once. His head turned to her. Frowning, falling out of character, suddenly analytical. He said, “Oh, predestination? Well, that isn’t really …” He nodded, as he considered something. Then smiled. “Oh, you mean, sort of damned if you do, damned if you don’t…. That’s pretty good. That’s perceptive.”
    “I get off a good one once in a while.” What the hell is going on? she wondered. Didn’t matter, she supposed. He
seemed
impressed. Appearances count. Though she realized she still didn’t have a clue about his relationship with the sullen blonde.
    Rune was about to say something cool and giddy about
Casablanca
—about Rick and Ilsa in Paris—when Richard leaned over and kissed her on the mouth.
    Whoa …
    Rune backed off, eyeing the blonde, wondering if she was going to get into a catfight here. But the woman didn’t notice—or didn’t care. She was stepping back, handing the joint to the Woodpecker, who was adjusting the TV.
    Is this crazy? Letting three strangers into my loft.
    Sure, it is.
    Then, on impulse, she kissed Richard back. Didn’t back away until she felt the pressure of his hand on her breast. Then she sat back. “Let’s just take it a little easy, okay? I’ve only known you for a half hour.”
    “But time is relative.”
    She kissed his cheek, an innocent peck.