Ambient 06 - Going, Going, Gone

might as well have been from Fiji for all I could decipher of their frisky banter. »Your address?« the wee one asked. »Specify.«
    »275 East 18th. Number 8.« The ongoing shortage of oxygen I suffered sent me into bendsville, and made me think tapping the molasses would work. »Ladies,« I said, »your beauty steals my senses. If you’d –«
    Big Girl put the airlift on me. » Mute!«
    »Stop already with the clobberin’ time,« I choked out as she continued girlhandling my poor frame. »Give me a break –«
    »This it?« Little Mod inquired, bouncing up the stoop of my abode. I nodded, flashing a goonpuss. Big Girl finally let loose of me long enough that I could catch my breath, step forward and part the waters.
    »Come up and see the etchings,« I said, seeing nowhere to go but upstairs. They let me lead, keeping me from making a break for it. My shack was a standard walkup the landlord redid in the late forties, after they ferreted out the last of the Gashouse Gang in order to cram in a few more cash-heavy Europeans. Ten years later I lucked out, and found the place two weeks after first setting foot in NY. Came here straight from Seattle, trying to make my way to Morocco while it was still paradise, but of course everybody knows that unhappy ending. Never caught the Marrakesh train but breaks come and breaks go, and it wasn’t long after when I overcame my disappointment when I happened upon my natural metier, that is to say, pharmaceutical improvisation. As I threw open my door that evening, giving these ladies full entree to wonderland, I tried to guess how long before I’d know if the breaks I’d get that night would be metaphorical or actual.
    »Here’s the castle,« I said. »Make yourself at home. Not that I’ve got much sayso.« After the rehab the kitchen was still meet and greet central, and the first room you stepped into. The bathtub, thankfully, was long ago banished to the far end of the flat and therefore no longer pulled double duty as dish drainer. The hens gave my place the deadpan, looking like cotillion debs at an Irish wake. »Squalored,« said Little Mod.
    »Squaloriffic. One ten a month, can you beat it?«
    Big Girl filled the place like it was a dollhouse. A one-woman mystery spot, she somehow took up twice the space than would have seemed natural. After a fumble or two at the wall I found the overhead. In Max’s my guests had profiled perfect but landlord halos tend not to bestow a Hollywood glow. Little Mod took on five or six years between blinks, and it surprised me to see how dark pint-size was – Greek or maybe even Arab, probably, but in the wrong states that wouldn’t cut enough slack to get served. A northerner, no doubt, or from the great west. As for Big Girl, once I got up close her looks and her demeanour made me sure she’d spent more than one summer in the Ladies’ Cooler over on Tenth Street. She plastered on the warpaint but it couldn’t hide the scars. Poor girl had an express line running along her neck and her face practically in HO scale. Shanked in the shower, no doubt, by a short, jealous lifer.
    »Forgive impolitesse,« Little Mod said, throwing me a half smile like she wanted me to catch it. »Haste wastes.«
    »What doesn’t?« Once they stopped trying to hurt me I started feeling those manly tingles they aroused in me anew. »Let’s get comfy.«
    »Where’s your public space?« she asked, seeing the single kitchen chair.
    »Baby, once I’m across the threshold it’s all off-limits to the declasse.« Big Girl elbowed me, not accidentally. »I’ll lead on.«
    We criss-crossed my crib, which was in its usual state of dishabille. In the frontest of the two front rooms I kept my books, a couch, a lamp, the standard domestic accoutrements. The other room was sanctumville, where I housed my shellac. These old walls may have worn plaster couture but the frillies underneath were nothing but chicken wire. I’d spent big moolah having solid oak shelves fitted to the brick underlay so as to avoid collapse. Even so, whenever I came home with a new find I feared the new disc would tip over the line, and my little blue heaven would sink down to China.
    »Weight load’s borderlined,« said Little Mod, eyeing my warehouse.
    »Six thousand, three hundred and four. All 78s.«
    »78 what?« Big Girl said, seizing a prize. There aren’t many on the ball these days when it comes to America’s priceless heritage, but that’s not news. It wasn’t her