Author: Don Morgan

When she fell asleep on the couch with Richard, Hormat had no plans to return home that night but soon woke in a panic. She put on her clothes and rushed out of the apartment just as dawn began to throw its shadows.

Alfonz was in bed when she got home and snuggled up next to her as she slipped in.

Hormat lay in his arms staring at nothing, unable to sleep. She was upset and afraid. She could not remember being so afraid.

They were as they always had been, but it was different now, it was as though Alfonz was in another dimension, distant. She turned and clung to him fiercely, unable to stifle her tears.

Alfonz woke, kissed her on the forehead and asked what was wrong.

She shivered and closed her eyes. Nothing, it had been a bad day at work: a drunk, and she was allergic to something and she was just so frustrated. That is all. Bad day.

She got up and knocked around in the medicine cabinet, wiping her tears and biting her lip.

In a moment, she returned to bed and told Alfonz that she had taken some medicine, it would be all right, go back to sleep.

Hormat did not sleep. The sun continued to rise without the least concern for her difficulty.

Alfonz would be getting up soon. She would need to be at the coffee house that afternoon. Life kept going, there was no escape.

After a few months, Hormat started going with Richard and some friends to his apartment, when the coffee house closed, where they would talk until the very wee hours of the morning.

Now, when she got home, Alfonz was usually asleep. She also got up later in the morning, very often after Alfonz had already left on whatever errand he was after that day.

She drank what was left or made herself some more coffee and toasted some cinnamon bread, lounging for a few minutes by the window on the wooden chair in her slip of a night gown thinking about the night before and the day to come.

Later in the afternoon, Hormat, LaGuardia, Richard and a few regulars who liked to help out would gather at “No Where” to re-stock, clean and set up for the acts that night.

Hormat first met Richard, who owned the coffee house, when she came to apply for a job. He was a tall man with thin blond hair that curled as it emerged from under his panama hat. He liked to wear white and carry a trumpet.

She got the job immediately. Hormat’s east european looks and beauty and the fact that her mother was a fortune teller fascinated Richard. He declared her a symbol.

Hormat came to be awed by Richard. She felt that he was certainly the most intelligent man she had ever met, and she loved to listen to him speak, even though she understood little of what he was talking about.

His smile was small but engaging, and he radiated a calm pleasance that made everything seem all right. Simply nothing you could say would surprise him; it all fit in, somehow.

Moreover, she was absolutely charmed by his attempts to describe her as a mystical beauty with olive skin, wavy black hair and portentous black eyes.

And it was easy to fall into step with Richard.

His apartment was much larger than the one she and Alfonz had with a separate area for a kitchen, which they did not have. Richard also had, of all things, a television set and a sock monkey with black and white felt eyes and scarlet lips he kept on the couch.

On this night, after everyone else had already gone. Richard sat next to Hormat on the couch and in a motion as natural as smiling, kissed her. Then overcome by the fragrance of her skin, he made love to her.

 

You can decide to love and you can decide not to love.

When Hormat decided that she had fallen asleep waiting for Alfonz to come home often enough, she still loved Alfonz.

She understood why he was late and knew he had to do it, but it hurt.

When it hurt badly enough, she told Alfonz. He took the very next day off and they went to dinner, drank a bottle of wine. They made love.

But Alfonz still came home late and sometimes didn’t come home at all until the following day.

Hormat understood and said nothing more about.

The kind of hurt she felt could only be understood by feeling what she felt: loss.

And then, of course, he would and could earn her love back. That is what Hormat’s heart told her.

When Hormat first came to New York, she visited Blinky’s a number of times to see Alfonz’ show. Afterwards, they would go get something to eat at a diner near Washington Square.

Then, they would go home to curl up in bed, talk what was coming and, as often as not, make love before going to sleep.

But her hours at ‘No Where’ were almost the same as Alfonz’ hours at ‘Blinky’s’, which meant they usually arrived home around the same time.

Thus, it became the responsibility of whoever got home first to make a late night snack for them both before they curled up together in bed.

Soon, however, Alfonz’ idea began to work- or at least it seemed like it did: he was meeting people and getting invited to auditions, the ones that counted.

More and more often he would be late after the show talking to someone about an audition or part of the act, and then he would have to get up early to be somewhere the next day, which meant he would go straight to bed as soon as he got home.

The time they had together shrank.

Now, Hormat took her time getting home from an evening at ‘No Where’, sometimes hanging out with La Guardia, the other waitress, or some regulars and smoking another joint and talking.

On her way home, she would stop at the little all night market On Thompson St, near W. Houston, for some fruit, vegetables and maybe some sausage for a snack and something to make for lunch the next day.

Hormat was the first to cheat.

At Blinky’s on Bleecker St., Alfonz was usually waiting tables or cleaning up.

He worked in a tee shirt with a hole torn in the left shoulder and dark pants; he had a piebald rag hanging out of his back pocket.

Alfonz was clearly an out-of-work actor looking for a break and talked openly to anyone about his auditions and ambitions.

Regardless who came in, he found a way to ask who they knew and whether they could help him, giving them a little dance or, maybe, a bit of a song to show he was serious.

If it looked like a customer had influence or could possibly get him somewhere, he would give him preference, even to the point of moving other patrons so he could have a better table.

Around 9pm, Alfonz would arrange the stage, sweep it and clean it. He would get a wooden spoke-back chair and a cardboard poster of James Dean smoking a cigarette out of the back and set them up.

He tested the microphone and adjusted the lighting, but it wasn’t until he was already singing an earnest rendition of “Tonight” from West Side Story or “They Call the Wind Maria” from Paint Your Wagon that the newcomers realized that the out-of-work actor was the role he was playing.

And, while he was on stage, the members of the audience were his competitors at an audition.

Alfonz presented a comic monologue describing his personal angst at auditions.

Then, he would give his impression of some in the audience doing scenes from popular broadway shows, even singing songs.

Somehow, he would work in a skit of a beatnik trying to get the very last drag out of his joint, while ogling an attractive young woman in the front row.

In the end, he would always lose the part he was auditioning for. In a pout, he would whack the spoke-back chair with his piebald rag, leave the stage and go back to waiting tables.

He was on stage three times a night, but he played the role from the time he arrived in the evening until the club closed.

Hormat found a job waiting tables in a basement converted to a coffee house called ‘No Where‘  located off Washington Square. She wore black tights and a short skirt with her hair pulled back tightly in a ponytail.

On a small stage, an acoustic guitarist and a man with bongo drums played with their sound mostly masked by chatter and shouts among the patrons of the smoke filled room.

Pretty Hormat paraded sultrily through the pools of light, smoke and dimly lit round tables delivering strong espresso coffee. Her tips were good.

When a man wearing a straw panama hat, white jacket, tee shirt, slacks and carrying a trumpet approached the stage, it grew quiet.

He stepped up to the microphone, raised his eyes to look directly into the single spotlight focussed on the stage and began to shout, “And Jesus pointed to the heavens and said, ‘It is a Box’…”

His words were immediately interrupted with shouts from the darkness.

But he shouted even louder, waving his fist at the spotlight, He said, “Dig it, man, a box!”

Now there were whoops and more shouts from the audience: “Enlighten me, Richard, enlighten me!” and “Richard Feynman for God!”

The man in the panama hat waited until it was quiet again and continued, “It is a box with but one side.”

Without pausing, he dropped his head so that the rim of his hat shadowed his face and stepped directly off stage into the darkness.

Whistles and howling went on for a while before almost imperceptibly resolving again to chatter and shouts among the patrons.

Hormat stepped carefully among some bodies making love in the darkness.

Outside, boys and men leaned their backs against the filthy alley walls in tee-shirts and jeans, smoking marijuana, sometimes calling to people who passed on the street at one end of the alley or the other.

Hormat wanted to come to New York.

And she knew Alfonz well enough to know that there was a some legerdemain in his choice of words describing his current circumstances, there would be no penthouse suites and glamorous parties. At least, not at first.

But it would be cleaner and more stable than the carnival.

He was just starting, but he had a job; he had a show! There was still a ways to go and she would likely have to work to help him get there but she had to work anyway- why not have a goal?

An ecstatic Alfonz picked her up at the newly built Port Authority and in an expansive, tipsy mood, took her to see the club and some of the theaters nearby before taking her to the apartment.

Hormat was not disappointed with what she saw.

The apartment was bigger than the trailer she shared with her parents on the road and there would be freedoms she would not have traveling and living with the carnival. This would be OK.

Almost as soon they were in the door of his little two-room, Alfonz pulled off Hormat’s clothes and they made love for the first time in almost a year.

The lovemaking was exquisite and continued at frequent intervals for days. Their passion and desire was for the things each dreamed of.