From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel Read online

  The doorman greeted me as I stepped into the lobby, my luggage in tow. He was a friendly Hispanic who kept a nice trim mustache. I introduced myself as Dasha’s friend, and he in turn handed me a spare set of keys. “Wait a sec,” he said at once, “I almost fuhgot.” He produced a folded note from under his station and gave me a little wink, as if something had been understood. “Have a good night, guy,” he said.

  “Thanks, guy,” I said, repeating him. Both cabbies had also called me “guy.” I was quickly learning how to converse with New York’s working class.

  Boy,

  Welcome. Here is your key. Top lock is broken. Please don’t overwater the ficus. And don’t mind Olya, she’s cool.

  Ciao,

  Dasha

  P.S. Make sure Olya doesn’t overwater the ficus either. I already told her, but she’s so forgetful you know?

  This was the first I’d heard of Olya. But I wasn’t at all bothered. Only when I was working did I demand complete solitude.

  On the tenth floor at the end of a long carpeted hallway, I knocked on the apartment door and waited. When there was no answer, I let myself in. All the lights were off and the blinds were drawn. I left my things in the kitchen and went to the bedroom, where I found Olya, topless, wearing nothing but her panties. She was fast asleep on her back with her legs in a side twist. Olya had a fantastic blond bob, though her body was rather pale and hollow and lacked the healthy luster of her hair. Her breasts were small and anticlimactic. In the corner of the bedroom was the ficus, sprouting from a pot of muddy water.

  I thought about covering her, but she had the sheets and comforter lodged between her legs. If she woke up with a complete stranger hovering over her, who knew how she would react? I reasoned the best course of action would be to reenact my entrance and make a lot of noise. This would surely rouse her, I thought.

  Silly, I know, but I went through the motions once again. For the second time I knocked on the door. When I felt certain she wasn’t getting up, I inserted the key into the lock, jiggled the door handle, dropped my suitcase in the kitchen, and slammed the door behind me. I called out, “Hello?” Still, there was no answer. “Hello?” I said again, much louder.

  “Who’s there?” said Olya. She had a calm, throaty voice.

  “I’m Boy. Dasha’s friend. You must be Olya?” I called into the room.

  “One minute, baby.” She began to cough, then hack a little. Waiting in the kitchen, I was greeted with the pleasant smell of a cigarette being smoked in bed.

  Olya came out in a red oriental robe, pinning her hair up with bobby pins.

  “You’re her friend from Asia?” she asked.

  “The Philippines.”

  “That’s the one I always forget.”

  Olya opened the fridge, removed a bottle of San Pellegrino, and guzzled.

  “She mentioned me?” I asked.

  Olya belched. “’Scuse. She said something. You’re staying a few days, yes?”

  “About a week.”

  “Eh? A week?”

  “Is something burning?”

  “Then we’ll have to share the bed. That’s what Dasha and I do. Only don’t get the wrong idea about it. We’re not lezzies.”

  “Oh, I didn’t think that. It’s just that Dasha never mentioned she had a roommate. You can imagine my surprise, meeting you here under these circumstances.”

  “Typical Dasha. We have an arrangement, you know. I sublet from her whenever I’m in town.”

  I found out later that Olya paid Dasha rent for half the queen-size mattress. During fashion week there was a room shortage in modeling agency apartments, so many girls had to double up. The price of glamour comes at an encroaching cost, as Dior once said.7

  “I swear I smell something burning.”

  “Oh fuck,” said Olya. She ran into the bedroom, taking the bottle of San Pellegrino with her. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” From the doorway I watched her sprinkle the soda water onto the bed, extinguishing whatever small flame she had ignited with her cigarette.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked.

  She reemerged from the room and closed the door behind her. “I burned another hole in Dasha’s sheets. She’ll kill me.”

  “Is the fire out?”

  “Of course. I can’t believe this. I’m so stupid.”

  “Don’t say that. They’re just sheets. We’ll replace them.”

  “Fuck her.”

  Olya was a Pole by origin, just fifteen when she was first scouted in her small town of Kozalin by a German who took her to Milan, Tokyo, Paris. He showed her the world, and she fell in love with him. But once they got to New York, with Olya set up at Ford Models, he left her and eventually made his way back to Berlin to pursue a career as a drum-and-bass DJ. “I see him at parties,” she said. “He’s a dick now. But he got me out of Kozalin, so I suppose I owe him something.”

  She knew all the major cities and was a tremendous help to me as I navigated my way. She marked in my guidebook how to get to Ground Zero, how to get to Saks from Barneys, then to Bryant Park from Times Square. She enlightened me about the monthly metropass, scams by persuasive men at the turnstiles—“Don’t ever pay them for swipe”—and where the closest subway station was. “Far,” said Olya. “If you have casting, you have to leave like forty-five minutes early to get anywhere.”

  And so I spent the rest of my first day getting lost, making transfers, missing connections, falling in love. New York’s subway system is a rubber band of sexual tension, stretched and twined around the boroughs, ready to snap. I frolicked in this salacious underground, where every motion had meaning—every leg crossed, every glance up from a paperback, every brush of a shoulder or rump was a kiss blown in my direction. The porcelain Chinese beauties on and off at Canal; the thoroughbred Eastern European models of Prince, castings a‑go‑go; the NYU coeds of Eighth Street, plump and studious. Oh, and the sexpot hipsters at Fourteenth, right off the L, like cattle, their eyes drowned in eye shadow, looking as if they had never missed a party, nor would they.

  My first meal I ate at an establishment called Steak Chicken Pizza Grill, Forty-second Street. Its sign was lit up like a carnival and called out to me, American food eaten here. I was aware of the tackiness of the eatery upon entering. Its sign, menu, and patrons were a testament to a class of people I wanted nothing to do with. But let me tell you, it was the best meal I had ever tasted. The blackened burger, thick tomato, crisp iceberg, and lone fry, which somehow snuck its way under the bun, each lent a delight to the other. And the slice of authentic New York pizza, reheated by a Mexican, handled from oven to tray by a Pole, and rung up by an Italian—“Here you go, boss”—complemented the burger beyond my wildest dreams. I consumed more than my small body could digest. And what a feeling! Like I’d just fueled up on unleaded and had gasoline pumping through my small intestine.

  The city could be hard on its own. It took everyone in as orphans, but if you didn’t pull your own weight, you could be squashed. I learned this after that most memorable dinner, as I was standing outside Steak Chicken Pizza Grill, studying the foldout map of my guidebook. I was to go east on Forty-second to get to Bryant Park, the site of New York’s fashion week. Twice a year it became the beating heart of the industry, and I wanted to walk its grounds in order to feel it pulsing beneath me. When I looked up to get my bearings, I saw a man about my age, a South Asian. Our resemblance was remarkable. Like me he was five foot one, nearly a foot below the average New Yorker. He seemed to share my same build, though one couldn’t really tell because he wore a giant menu over his torso. He was an advertisement for the Sovereign Diner. I began my approach in order to get a better look at his face. His eyebrows were overgrown and had formed a prominent unibrow, whereas I plucked mine daily. He had my mustache, a neatly trimmed whisper, just the right dash of masculinity. But it was looking down the length of the cardboard menu—2 EGGS, HAM, SAUSAGE, OR BACON $2.95—that I saw the biggest tell of all, the trait which bound us together as brothe
rs of this world.

  His hands.

  His small, dexterous hands.

  His hands were just like mine. And in his hands were menus, replicas of the giant board he wore like armor. “Take one, take one,” he said, rapidly. “Take one.” And then, “Please.” This was his job, to stand in front of the Sovereign Diner distributing menus. Had he come here hoping for something better? Of course he had. What he got served, however, was hard-boiled reality, the city’s ruthlessness, and he had to wear it every day, bearing the brunt over his shoulders as a sign.

  PANCAKE SPECIAL $4.95.

  I took one of his menus and at the next corner threw it away with a hundred others. Bryant Park had suddenly lost its appeal. Instead, I went back to Ludlow Street to spend more time with Olya.

  Look at how far she had come. The beauty and generosity this little Polska had was bursting from every invisible pore! She shared her Icelandic yogurt and showed me all of the cable channels. We talked about movies, fashion, drive, ambition. She promised to take me with her to the week’s castings and introduce me to other models and designers, with the intention of getting me a job on a show somewhere. When we retired to the bed, she kept me up, tired as I was, in order to practice her English language skills. She was preparing to take a TOEFL exam and planned to study at Baruch College in Manhattan. Olya read to me the opening pages of The Catcher in the Rye. I had read the book in high school, but hearing it through Olya’s Polish accent, with her poorly timed inflections, gave it a new place in my heart. “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me…”

  I wanted to make love to her then, but I am not an animal. You see, I respected the boundaries of our new friendship. A girl who would share her bed with a total stranger didn’t deserve to be taken advantage of. Plus, she had a new boyfriend, Erik, who she talked about constantly.

  I had no delusions. In a city that could reduce a virile young man to dressing up as a menu on Forty-second Street, pleading, “Take one, take one, please, take one,” I understood the force I was up against. One needed friends much more than lovers and enemies. This city was cutthroat. This city, crossed with the exclusivity of the fashion industry, was a closed network to new talent. This city wasn’t hard on its newcomers—it was goddamn relentless. Don’t believe me, take a look outside the Sovereign Diner, and surely a walking, talking menu will be there—feast your eyes! Under that menu is a human being whose English is good enough to have any job, but too many obstacles stand in his way, poor menu. Sure, the financial skyscrapers, the sprawling bridges, the underground love tunnels, the people in their park-side penthouses—these were physical proof of the impossible. Manhattan was a testament to everything being out of God’s hands and within Man’s. Dreams could be realized on these streets. Olya was hot smoking proof. But mostly, dreams were crushed in this city (menu man prime example). Ninety-nine percent of the time.

  I knew a sign when I saw it, all right.

  1. “Fashion Coup,” New York Post, June 4, 2006:

  HERE’S ONE TO brighten your Mercedes-Benz Fall Fashion Week. Federal officials say that Fashion Terrorist Boy Hernandez is headed for Gitmo. Let’s hope this junior designer likes bright orange jumpsuits, because that’s what he’ll be wearing 24/7.

  The President authorized Hernandez’s one-way ticket to the maximum-security compound by the bay on Wednesday, setting a new precedent in the War on Terror. Hernandez will be the first Guantánamo detainee captured on U.S. soil.

  The Fashion Terrorist had been living illegally in the Williamsburg area since 2002. Like many other illegal immigrants from Mexico, Hernandez dodged officials for years.

  His independent women’s fashion label, (B)oy, was expected to be a major ATM for Hernandez as of next season. Sources say that once (B)oy took off, the proceeds would have backed terrorist sleeper cells. Their whereabouts are still unknown.

  “We don’t know where they plan to strike,” said White House correspondent Mike Anspa. “Be it the White House, the Empire State Building, or Tallapoosa, Missouri, it doesn’t matter. Put us on the board. We got one.”

  (see related “Panic in Tallapoosa,” page 13).

  2. Fashion Institute of Makati, Makati City, Manila.

  3. His right, actually. And it’s the Kosciuszko Bridge, connecting Maspeth, Queens, to Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

  4. According to the National Park Service, the Statue of Liberty was undergoing restorations at the time.

  5. Also known as Warrior 1.

  6. Philippine edition of the reality television show Big Brother, wherein twelve contestants are chosen to live in the same house under video surveillance. Many contestants go on to pursue careers in acting, pop music, fashion design, or in some cases all three.

  7. It was Cristobal Balenciaga who said this.

  Apropos of No Man’s Land

  How did I end up in No Man’s Land? It has been two weeks since the Overwhelming Event of May 30, 2006. That’s right, just two weeks ago I was back in Brooklyn at work on a new line of women’s wear out of my studio in the toothpick factory. (It really was a former toothpick factory.) My latest collection was to be bought and sold in Barneys alongside Philip Tang 2.0, Comme des Garçons, Vivienne Westwood. Gil Johannessen had called my collection a “bildungsroman” in the pages ofW magazine. A compliment. I had finally broken into Bryant Park after six seasons in New York spent struggling to get editors and buyers to show up at my showcases. I had come of age as a designer, and I was ready for the big leagues. Then, faster than you can say Sunni insurgents, it was all taken away from me. Bandits, Homeland Security’s henchmen, came bursting through my door in the middle of the night, ripped me from artistic slumber, and told me very explicitly to put my hands behind my head, and that I better pray to Allah that there’s no one else hiding in my shit hole, motherfucker.

  I’ve asked for a lawyer. They keep delaying. One thing they’re very good at in No Man’s Land is delaying. I’ve shouted it from my cell, frantic; I’ve cursed it for days in a row—“Bring me a lawyer!” Still nothing happens.

  My cell is approximately six feet by eight feet. I measured it heel to toe. The walls are steel mesh, and my bed is a metal plank affixed to one side. There is a barred window that brings natural light, though the outer pane is opaque. There is a squatting-style toilet—an Arab toilet—and a sink built low to the ground.

  I am administered comfort items. One standard-issue blanket, one towel, one rubber exercise mat (my mattress), one inch-long toothbrush, one travel-size tube of toothpaste (Colgate), one roll of toilet paper, one plastic water bottle (Freedom Springs), one set of flip-flops for the shower. I receive religious paraphernalia: one standard-issue Qur’an (mine is in English; it once belonged to a D. Hicks,1 his name written on the inside flap like a child’s), one foam prayer rug, one white skullcap, one plastic vial of oil (patchouli). These items are completely useless because, as I keep telling them, I’m no Muslim! I was baptized a Catholic, and I’m barely that anymore.

  The man who guards me from 0600 to 1800 hours is from Fort Worth, Texas. I had never before met a Texan. His name is Win. I’ve wondered if that’s his real name or if he’s given me a nom de guerre. Win.

  In here I go by a nom de guerre of my own: Detainee No. 227.

  Win wants to be a lawyer someday. He’s still quite young, only twenty, with an associate’s degree in economics. His plans are to finish college back in Fort Worth and then use what’s left of his GI scholarship to go on to law school, studying the Constitution and arguing cases in mock trials.

  “Mock trials?” I said.

  “Yeah, mock trials. Fake ones,” he said. “Something they do in law school to prep you for the real courtroom. There’s a judge, two counselors, just like in real life, and you argue the case to the best of your ability. Sure it’s fake, but you don’t know what the outcome will be. No one knows,
and so that’s what makes them seem real. No one goes to jail or anything. At the end of the day, everyone gets to go home.”

  “What kinds of cases?”

  “Every kind, I imagine. Criminal cases, murders, civil suits, you name it.”

  “And each man gets a fair hearing?”

  “Oh sure. But it’s still fake. No one really did anything in mock court. It’s practice.”

  “I’ve never been to Texas,” I told Win.

  “It ain’t nothin’, really. Though there are a lot of other jarheads here who’ll tell you different.”

  “That’s what they call Texans?”

  “That’s what they call marines. Jarheads, grunts, leathernecks. Texans are Texans.”

  “Leathernecks.”

  “No one says leatherneck anymore.”

  The man who relieves Win at 1800 is named Cunningham. He’s from a place called Government Mountain, Georgia. Cunningham’s not much of a talker. He’s a true jarhead, high and tight. He sits in his chair with his feet up on my cell door for the most part and rocks back and forth on its hind legs, reading a magazine. Everything I do gets recorded in a logbook. Cunningham keeps the logbook at his side on a little table. He writes down whatever I do at night. The time I sleep. The time I eat. If I take a squat, this goes in the logbook.

  He is very good at pretending I’m not here. He can go for hours like this, flipping through magazine after magazine.

  Just the other night, while I was lying on my bed watching Cunningham read a Maxim, I caught a glimpse of my past on the cover. It was Olya. My darling Olya, who once shared a bed with me so openly and who would remain a dear friend over the years. I couldn’t believe it was her. Olya has walked the runway for every major designer—Marc Jacobs, Carolina Herrera, Lanvin in Paris, Burberry in London—and now here she was spread-eagle on the hood of a flaming Pontiac in a cheap patent-leather bikini. “The Hot Rod Issue” boasted a most offensive cover font. It’s been months since we last spoke, not because of anything that happened, but because I had been extremely busy with my collection before the Overwhelming Event landed me here. Cunningham turned the magazine on its side to look at a two-page spread, which I found especially irritating.