Excerpt
The Rich People Have Gone Away
Daily Cleanse Mr. Harper takes sex in doorways. Halts new lovers at the threshold of his front door. Left hand on shoulder. Right hand on hip. He searches the ninth-floor hallway for furtive eyes before pressing the whole of himself in the tender nook of his lover’s ass.
“Here,” he says. There is gravel in Mr. Harper’s voice. He understands the implications of force. Social distancing was in place before the March lockdown, gloves and masks. He waits for a greeting, a slight rearing back, a double-cheeked sway, the perfect balance of ass to cock and cock to ass. He will undo his pants in a matter of seconds and let left hand descend, down, down, down the slender side of his lover’s body, bringing disorder and chaos. He has done this deed a thousand times where he now stands: gripping the doorknob to his front door. If you asked him, he would tell you with gravelly certainty that his profession as an aesthetic advisor helps. Geometric shapes on beveled glass door, volute, chrome handles, ornate gold bell. Fixtures that have stood the test of time. Inanimate objects are immune to pandemics and viruses, though the wrong touch, in this environment, could make a well man sick. He knows the right cleansing agents to refinish, to buff, and to restore.
Tournez à gauche—left is for opening doors.
Tournez à droite—right is for closing them.
If a woman is wearing pants, he waits for her to unzip while he unbuckles. “Pants are so damn cumbersome,” he says, mouth working the curving nape of her neck or the armpit of a shirt he’s just pulled off. And if she wears a skirt or a dress—God’s gifts, he thinks, for the ease with which they allow him to peel away underwear, cotton, spandex, polyester, or silk. Perhaps it’s his midwestern upbringing, but Mr. Harper is always a little disappointed when he finds women riding bare beneath their clothes. Exposed private parts make the public part of sex less private. To rip, to tear. He’s never worn nor does he sniff/collect underwear as souvenirs. But he has annihilated a fair share. Hers. His. And theirs. Why grapple with social constructs or the contradictions within himself? Everything is an opening onto something else.
But the stores are closed.
And the city’s shut, shut, shutting down.
Hard to believe—rock bottom, rock-bottom hard—that not even a month ago he helped a real estate agent sell three houses in one week. Walked into a 1900s Victorian in Ditmas Park where West Indian families, intent on suburbia and white picket fences, will never be able to return upon sale.
May Florida and Long Island keep them, he thought, turning to Simon Pratt, the real estate broker, and the eager young buyers.
“Let me tell you a thing or two about doorways. The Egyptians built them as portals to the afterlife, a means of transcendence, their version of somewhere over the rainbow via waterways . . .”
What he wanted to say was,
The trick to sex in doorways is to see if you can begin and complete the act—slam bodies together tight as clams. The sex is for you, never for intruder, voyeur, happenstance, other, her, him, them, though the anticipation comes with its own frills, thrills, and expletives. When the sex plays right, your throat convulses, oh, yes it does, and the air threatens to leave your body. When the sex plays right, you stare at the ones who beg for a change of scenery—wanting to finish f***ing on the Persian carpet or the hardwood floor or the sofa, bed, desk. Whinny whoop. Whinny whoop whoop. “Next time, darling . . .” you tell them. But that honor is saved for women or men you want to see again. There is sex and there is meaning. The hidden door you point out to the eager young couple—right behind the fireplace—lands the sale. As soon as they leave—calling their real estate attorney on the way home—you f*** Simon Pratt to celebrate. The outing is better than cognac or Veuve Clicquot. But Simon’s experience rates altogether different. He confesses later to his husband, Felix Ramirez, with whom he shares an open marriage and hides nothing, that f***ing you made him grateful he isn’t straight.
“We have our anger,” Simon said. “But straight anger’s a human rake.”
Now, if you live in the wrong neighborhood or the right neighborhood—Mr. Harper lives in Park Slope—toilet tissue is in short supply. He goes to Glory Groceries on Seventh Avenue on the way home from work and you would think a colony of ants had usurped humanity. The shelves are depleted and the manager—what is he? Maybe he’s Hispanic? Latino?—the manager has worked in Glory Groceries over a decade and Mr. Harper, who has shopped in the store for just as long, has never thought to ask his name. The manager is frazzled and lugs two twenty-pound bags of Canilla rice on his back. Every aisle in the store—one through eight—is jam-packed with customers. The rice, like the beans and the cooking oil, jars of tomato sauce, pasta, all things canned, are going, going, gone.
The manager assaults Mr. Harper with unexpected civility. “How’s your wife?”
Mr. Harper smiles and says, “She’s coming along. We’re pregnant.”
“Congratulations,” the manager says. He waves his ungloved hand. “Never thought I’d see this.”
This is the early days, the eve of the lockdown. Mr. Harper doesn’t know how to respond or what to say. “Welcome to the zombie apocalypse.” Is it his imagination or when he blurts out “zombie apocalypse,” does the manager step away from him? Do the anxiety-ridden shoppers quicken their pace?
The manager says, “My wife thinks the world is ending. I don’t know. Maybe the world
is ending.”
There are too many people in the store. There are too many people on the planet. There are too many people invading his space and being frantic. Mr. Harper prefers his frantic coital, carnal, strings undone but not attached. Surrender. Hands up. It is Mr. Harper’s turn to back away. He’ll find a better day, another store. “Mother Nature’s acting out. Population overload.”
A senior citizen, wire glasses, gray beard, pushing a buggy piled sky-high with Gorton’s Fish Sticks, Stouffer’s family-sized lasagna, Amy’s Pizza, and Green Giant frozen vegetables, does a U-turn.
“You hush your mouth. People said that shit during the AIDS epidemic. Hotspot. New York City. Hotspot. Pandemic, f***ing politicians. Where’s the lard? So stupid.”
He walks away, leaning on his buggy like it’s a walking cane, black-and-white shirt a moving chessboard.
Mr. Harper retreats through the store’s double glass doors.
Theodore Harper brought the art deco door with him when he closed on his Park Slope apartment. He had scoured antique stores around the city in search of the perfect door. The one that would set the entrance to his home above the rest. That was over twelve years ago. And that shopping spree, that splurge, marked a shift to a successful career as an aesthetic advisor after selling furniture to rich people at ABC Carpet & Home for close to a decade. He never shares with lovers that his co-op was once rent stabilized—a third of the renters second- and third-generation African American and Puerto Rican families. Or that his neighborhood was considered part of Prospect Heights before the real estate agents rechristened it the North Slope, creating an imaginary zoning line that synced with his new career. From the South Slope to Fort Greene to Bedford-Stuyvesant to Manhattan and Williamsburg, real estate agents now came equipped with aesthetic experts like himself. Most of them, in his opinion, shams. Mr. Harper made peace years ago with his midwestern architecture degree and background. Frank Lloyd Wright country, he barks/smiles whenever there’s the need to put down East Coast comeuppance.
Possibility.
Probability.
Personality.
He wears a mask and plastic gloves when he leaves the apartment now or ventures down to the lobby to retrieve his mail or pick up takeout. Only residents are permitted to enter their co-op building. The board’s decision—Mr. Harper is on the board—resulted in half the residents’ fleeing Park Slope for country homes. Other residents have hunkered down—he and Darla among them—in their apartments. A handful of fledgling couples consisting of girlfriends, boyfriends, and others are betting that love will endure the quarantine.
In the lobby, a subletter—
must be a subletter—holds the elevator, waiting for Mr. Harper to join him. Mr. Harper does not recognize the young man. Only three families of color reside in his building. The skinny African American teenager seems dwarfed by an oversized Cardi B T-shirt with “Diamond District in the Jag” splayed across Cardi B’s authentically fake breasts. The teenager wears a red bandanna over a disposable mask. Mr. Harper is certain he is neither resident nor resident’s kid, but the teenager pushes the close button before Mr. Harper can confront him.
