Jess slipped me instructions after an American Lit class. “Dear Accessory” is how it opened. She has plans for a Norman Rockwell illustration that’s on display in the Oak Room. I show up at 1 P.M. A door has been slightly propped open with a twig. I’m quickly under the stage where Jess and I made love while A View from the Bridge was being performed above us. I have a cardboard tube to house the Rockwell featuring a jockey weighing in after a race. I also have some small tools that Jess says we’ll need. It suddenly strikes me that the backstage panel we use to enter isn’t big enough for the frame, not even diagonally. I sit in a corner next to the sleeves of chairs, worrying and hailing the BVM. I shudder and head for the exit when one of the access doors that reminds me of an old sliding desk-top slowly opens and I can see light.
“Scare the shit out of you, Tommy? Did you think I was Aunt Polly come to drag you home by the ear?” She’s dressed in a tight black sweater, matching jeans and watch cap. I’m dressed darkly too but baggy.
“Not a bit,” I lie. She places the illustration on top of a row of chairs and works the door shut. She has a cardboard tube too. She switches on a headlamp like coal miners use. We free the victim from the frame. I gently roll it up and put it in my tube. Jess opens hers and slips out a duplicate jockey illustration but the face is Marilyn Monroe’s. She frames the star in a flash. Jess has a buyer. She wants to get her teeth straightened with the money. The ones that concern her overlap uniformly.
“Here’s a little something for your help,” she says, giving me an envelope. I swear with my hand up her sweater and on her unfettered right breast that I will never speak a word of our theft. Before leaving with the two tubes under her arm and the “new” jockey to put back in place, she raises an inch of my watch cap, kisses and licks my forehead. That’s it for us,” she says and I detect a bit of sorrow in her words. I toss my latex gloves down a sewer like a doctor who’d just finished an operation as well as the tools she trusted me to trash.
Working at a chain bookstore, The Title Page, I often think of Jess. I keep the envelope holding the hundred-dollar bill. I’m never tempted to spend it no matter what. I must admit that I have doubts about its authenticity. I take acting lessons from an old woman named Midge Matson who is a regular at the bookstore. She’d had many small parts in “B” movies, even Three Stooges films. She’s aged well, a lovely woman. Her high cheekbones are still sharp and her smile would light up Twain’s cave. I like the way she applies a shot of perfume to one wrist and rubs it gently against the other. We sing in the St. Teresa’s choir. I nearly faint when she calls me over to look at something in a volume open on a table of remainders, a coffee table book of Norman Rockwell’s work. It’s open to Weighing In.
“I read in The Village Voice,” She says, “that a doctored copy of this has been sold for substantial dollars. The jockey has Marilyn Monroe’s face, not jockey Eddie Arcaro’s! I do like that! The money will go into a trust for injured female riders. ” I do shock management; hold my breath for a few seconds.
“A wonderful switch,” I say.
“She jazzes it up and up some more.”
I auditioned for the Rodolpho part in The View from the Bridge. My rendition of “Paper Doll” didn't impress the director. I had too much Jess on my mind.
The first time I take Midge up on having lunch at her place, the house is being painted. The worker high up on the ladder is a woman or a hippie guy judging from the long black hair topped by an engineer’s cap. There is a fireplace and a drawing to the left of it that looks like Thomas Hart Benton’s Huck and Jim.
“Like that Tom?” I pause expecting a “Sawyer” remark.
“I sure do. Are you an artist?”
“No, it’s an original Benton sketch that guided him through the canvas.”
“Very impressive,” I say, louder than necessary I judge.
My exclamation is twofold, once for the sketch and again for a longer glimpse at the house painter. Her teeth are Hollywood straight, bright and exposed as thoroughly as any human face could manage. She flashes a victory sign with her latex fingers then pats the breast I’d sworn on.
“The window frames her nicely doesn’t it Tom,” says Midge.
I agree, although the sash strips make me think of a cage.
DoubleSpeak 