(excerpt)
Silke’s Confidant Completed June 2012 19 pages A Short Story
When she comes through the French doors of the vestibule, Dieter and I are interviewing potential waitresses, hostesses and bussers. The whole caboodle. She is like the others who have shown up—young, drawn to the city for the arts, wanting an evening job so days are free to make an audition or attend nearby New York University. They may have heard the buzz about Dieter’s American-Asian fusion restaurant from a roommate, or frequented the trendy, Noho eatery with a friend, but most have found their way to Oh No! Noho! through the Village Voice. The help wanted ad published today, Wednesday, June 25, 1995, instructs hopefuls to show up between 3:00 – 5:00 PM and says DON’T CALL! It’s 4:00 PM and the respondents are still arriving, the newspaper peeking out from a worn backpack or tucked under a sweaty arm.
Dieter and I both notice when she enters. She wears red sandals and the strap on her summer dress slacks over one shoulder when she stops to pick up an application from our hostess, a boney, statuesque dancer. She recognizes that the dancer/hostess is cut from the same cloth—a lithe, Midwestern blonde—but chooses not to acknowledge this kinship with a smile. The hostess circles #35 at the top of the form and directs her to sit in the back section, which is now closed to customers. ―Fill this out. Wait until your number is
2 called,‖ the hostess tells her. She scans the thirty-four seated applicants who have arrived before her and releases a guttural sigh of frustration and disapproval. Waiting is not something she wants to do.
So far, today’s interviewees haven’t amounted to squat. Or at least, no one Dieter will agree to hire. There have been several guys with nose and eyebrow piercings and a young woman with a shaved head who waggled her tongue piercing right at Dieter in a failed seduction attempt. Piercings are a style that the 57-year-old, German-born Dieter doesn’t appreciate. There were also the usual, sloppy students wearing shorts and smelly T-shirts. Dieter writes a big ―2‖ on all of their applications, which means ―NO.‖ Two sweet girls, one talkative and one not, are eliminated because of their surplus pounds. Dieter makes this notation on their applications: 210. Translation: ― two to the power of ten‖ and that is code for: No. Never. Absolutely Not! A Dominican, who speaks no English, has come in a heavy, winter suit that appears to be borrowed since it is too big for his small frame. He will be hired as a dishwasher because he has made such an effort in this heat, and because Dieter has a soft spot for immigrants, tries to help when he can.
Dieter races through the process, spending a cursory three-minutes with every interviewee. Hiring is not based on experience, but appearance, one’s smiling ability, and how one handles Dieter’s verbal needling. The longer interviews go to the female applicants, provided Dieter finds them attractive. I don’t contribute much, but as his longtime assistant, I am required to sit next to him on the wooden banquette as his righthand man, a name his wife calls me in her broken English, despite the fact that I am
3 female. Dieter doesn’t like to interview alone and I provide an audience for his verbal antics, the security of my presence egging him on.
This afternoon has not provided fun for Dieter so he pretends to study each unacceptable application form with a grand, over-the-top interest and then dismisses each candidate with a thank you, we are going to talk to everybody here today and we will give you a call if we have something for you. Of course, we don’t and we won’t. Off they go, out of the air conditioned restaurant, back to the scorching, Bleecker Street pavement, positive that they have landed a job in one of New York City’s hippest restaurants, making $200 per night in tips. Cash.
Silke, Dieter’s wife, has telephoned the restaurant, leaving a message with the hostess, who promptly walks over to our table—her feet pointed out with each ballet-inspired step—to hand Dieter the pink paper ripped unevenly from the pad. To: Dieter From: Silke Message: Hungry. Call upstairs when finished. Hurry.
The Viennese Silke lives above the restaurant on the eighth floor of the building, one of the buildings Dieter owns. It’s a prewar architectural standout that has been renovated into large lofts with painted white floors. Silke has claimed the top floor, the space with the most light, for her studio. Here she paints enormous canvases of artificial, young women with vacuous eyes who have been cut to pieces by oversized scissors; or floating women with frogs placed at their crotch; women with polka dot skin and blue hair who
4 open their robes wide apart, flashing their panties. The women in the paintings are high fashion—the skirt of a halter dress in full swing, a bathing cap with an exotic bird. I have heard that Silke herself used to parade outrageous, attention-getting attire by dressing in a man’s tuxedo, or accenting a zebra-striped gown with a gas mask, but since I’ve known her, she wears corduroy pants, shiny red lace-up work boots and sunglasses. Her deep black hair is cropped short. Spiky.
Dieter prefers to stay uptown in their jumbo Fifth Avenue apartment. Silke used to travel there after a day of painting, but now lives full-time in the loft, coming uptown on weekends to spend time with Dieter and their only child, a 14-year-old son. This arrangement has evolved for two reasons. 1. She doesn’t think anyone will take an artist seriously if they admit to a Fifth Avenue address. 2. She gets tired of waiting for Dieter to come home. As it is, it seems to suit everyone.
Silke’s phone message has made Dieter antsy, his leg makes quick bounces underneath the table, so I am glad when #35 is called for her interview. She rises, taking her sweet time to gather up her application, newspaper and lipstick, moving over to where we sit. Waiting. She stands over our table and looks down at us, which makes her seem even taller, like a goofy giraffe. Dieter motions that she should sit in one of the two bistro café chairs placed at the table, chairs that fill the restaurant and which Dieter shipped from the Riviera. She takes her seat across from us, and ignoring me, gives Dieter a whopping smile. Her teeth seem on the large side of perfect and ice white. Dieter straightens his
5 slumped back and I know in this instant that he will come out of his funk for her, that this will take a long time.
Dieter glances at her application form. Name: Juniper Childs Position: Hostess ―Juniper?‖ he asks her. ―Yes, that’s right,‖ she answers. ―Why Juniper?‖ His speech is dusted with his German childhood, just a trace, sneaking into the words here and there. ―My mother loves the juniper berry,‖ she tells him. I can tell Dieter likes her broad, open face, the nasally regional tones in her speech. He believes people from the Midwest work hard and are honest—will steal less from the restaurant than most. ―Does your mother have a sense of smell?‖ Dieter baits her. ―I guess so. Why?‖ ―The juniper berry has a medicinal smell. Doesn’t it?‖ She jumps right back without a pause. ―It has got a pine aroma.‖ ―Do you smell like pine?‖ ―I don’t know, do I?‖ ―You smell good,‖ he tells her. ―Thank you.‖ And Dieter writes a small note on the bottom right corner of the application, ―Smells Good!‖ Juniper is pleased and I look away to the other applicants, wondering how much longer we will all have to endure this.
6 ―Are you the owner?‖ she asks. This is a question Dieter avoids. He understands the benefits of keeping a low profile. This time he answers, ―Yes.‖ Which makes Juniper pry a bit more, ―You’re a restaurateur?‖ She says this with a slight twinge of judgment, a bit of condescension, and I without thinking better of it say to her, ―Actually, Dieter is a doctor, a radiologist, one of the leading diagnosticians in the country. The restaurants are a hobby.‖ Dieter gives me the look, the one of disapproval. I know and regret that I have told her too much, spilled the beans, have not let him play games under the radar. This new information makes Juniper ready for more.
Dieter moves down the form. Are You In School? Yes: X No: ___ I too see that she has indicated that she attends school. I am hopeful this will make her unavailable for our shifts. Knock her out. ―You are in school?‖ Dieter says. ―Yes.‖ she says. ―What do you study?‖ ―Conceptual art at Cooper Union.‖ This is good news for Dieter. He prefers fine artists and photographers to actresses, singers and dancers. He maintains that artists are smarter, like it’s a known fact. This never ceases to annoy me since he knows that I tried to make it as an actress and gave up trying because of my job with him. ―Are you any good?‖ Dieter asks Juniper. ―I think so,‖ this is the first question that hits a nerve. ―You don’t know?‖ Dieter asks lightly, but he is digging.
7 Her confidence is off-kilter. ―People tell me so.‖ ―Do you care what people tell you?‖ Juniper gives it up, stops trying to figure out the right answer, and just smiles. Big. ―I guess so.‖ Dieter returns her smile and now she gets it. He’s playing. ―You only care what the boys tell you?‖ ―NO! Not just what the boys say!‖ The teasing gives her strength. ―I believe I am good.‖ ―You believe it?‖ ―I know it,‖ she states with force. ―There you go,‖ Dieter, says with finality, like he got what he wanted from her.
The hostess approaches our table and hands Dieter another pink message slip. To: Dieter From: Silke Message: Still hungry.
Dieter pushes the note aside and turns to me. ―Tell her I’ll be awhile.‖ I do as I am told and I call Silke upstairs in the studio. I am privy to Dieter’s personal life. I remind him of appointments and opera nights, find his passport when it goes missing, buy holiday gifts for employees, pack his son for camp and then let it roll right off when his son declares, ―I’ll never be a working stiff like you.‖ I oversee the managers of his four restaurants, which means I listen to their complaints about Dieter’s demands and high expectations. I smooth things over and Dieter and I both know it’s a necessity.
8 He tells me we are a de facto family; and in this city, far from my own estranged parents, I feel needed, as if I belong. The truth is, we (Dieter, Silke and I) are connected; he is the longest relationship I’ve managed to maintain with a man, even if it is platonic and he is always my boss. And I like Silke, her fiery energy, what she might teach me.
―Why is he taking so long?‖ Silke says into the phone. ―A lot of people showed up for the interviews this week,‖ I say. She asks if there is anyone good for us and I tell her no.
Dieter is still toying with Juniper and has moved away from the confines of the application. ―You must like birds.‖ Dieter says, referring to Juniper’s tattoos, a delicate chain of red hearts and dark birds alternating in a circle—one bird, one heart—joined together like a bracelet, one around each wrist.
―They were supposed to look like mourning doves,‖ she tells Dieter ―but it didn’t quite turn out the way I wanted.‖ Dieter doesn’t go in for the sentimental or precious, particularly in art, and it seems to me that hearts and doves are inching close to the ―sappy‖ border, a boundary that Dieter doesn’t cross. I think this will put him off of her, but she goes on with the bird talk, sparking his imagination. ―I worry they look like common city pigeons and now I am stuck with them.‖ Dieter is intrigued by her unexpected answer. ―Why would you want to brand yourself with mourning?‖ His question is sincere this time, not a game. ―I like the melancholy call,‖ she tells him. ―They evoke a grief and loss that I understand, but if you listen for their real message, you can hear life and renewal. Peace. Wooo-oo-
9 oo-oo,‖ she imitates. ―Wooo-oo-oo-oo.‖ I can’t believe this Juniper is making creepy birdcalls in the restaurant and Dieter is allowing it to go on and on. ―That’s pretty good,‖ he says. ―Thanks,‖ Juniper says. ―Do you know what else is amazing? The mourning dove is monogamous. They stand by their mate.‖ I roll my eyes, ready to give Dieter a quick kick under the table, but he turns to me, ―That was pretty good, don’t you think?‖ ―Pretty good,‖ I answer.
And then Dieter does something that I have never witnessed. That’s the thing about Dieter. Even after working for him for over 15 years, he surprises me. He rolls up his long Brooks Brothers’ shirtsleeve, a sleeve that covers his arms in all seasons, and tells Juniper. ―I’ve got one too.‖ And there it is, exposed. Dieter’s tattoo. Except Dieter can’t claim the same thought and artistry as Juniper’s curly hearts and intricate birds. Dieter’s tattoo is a row of six numbers, ugly scratches across his forearm, faded now, they look like the deranged writing of a madman or impulsive child, each numeral made of scrawny, haphazard sticks. ―Cool,‖ Juniper says. She has no idea what he has shown her. No idea why the odd little numbers are scribbled across his flesh. Forever and ever. ―How old are you?‖ Dieter asks her. ―I’m 22.‖ ―Have you studied history in school?‖ ―Yes,‖ she says.
10 ―And you paid good attention?‖ ―YES!‖ Juniper answers, still thinking they are playing their game. Dieter won’t push it further. Juniper doesn’t recognize that the numbers identify him as a Jew; and he has no desire to make a snide remark about the Nazis, or Hitler, or his time at Auschwitz. He will not mention that when he looks at her mourning doves, he feels his own memories reshuffling.
The other applicants are impatient, still waiting for their turn with Dieter, their chance at employment; he has taken far too much of everyone’s time. And while he doesn’t care much what others think, he wants to move on from what has been stirred up. ―Someone will call you,‖ he tells Juniper. ―Will they?‖ ―Yes,‖ he says, softer now. ―We should have something for you.‖ ―Great,‖ she says. ―Thank you.‖ Dieter nods and gives her a this-has-been-fun-I-like-you grin. Juniper rises, the heels of her red, summer sandals tapping against the terrazzo floor. Clickity-clack all the way out the restaurant door. Dieter turns to me to sum it up, to regain our normal routine. ―Nice girl,‖ he says, placing the application in the ―YES‖ pile.
I know Dieter will hire her. He will also lay with her. She will want that. He will grab her blonde hair between his strong fingers and suck the wispy ends, tasting them, and they won’t taste like a juniper berry, or pine, or Silke. He will even remove his long sleeve,
11 check shirt, and their tattoos will touch, commingle—her chain of hearts and mourning doves wrapping around his six numerals.
In a week or two, while we sit across from one another at lunch, sharing a Caesar salad followed by a sweet treat, Silke will quiz me. ―Who is she? Who’s the tall, blonde girl with the too red lipstick?‖
Silke is used to—even amused by—Dieter’s restaurant dalliances and dramas. Usually. She wants no part of Dieter’s public restaurant life. Feeding and serving people is not something any respectable European should do. She also knows that the generous profits of their restaurants, not the doctor’s salary, provide houses in four countries and the luxury of making art. Dieter uses this fact to get her to design the interiors of his restaurants on the sly, without any fanfare. And she does—large window panes that zigzag, a different zig and zag for each section, mahogany tables with inlaid green Vermont marble, a large open kitchen, collaged columns, crazy clocks with bright colors, three-dimensional ceramic murals on the walls. It is her way of making a mark on his businesses. It’s zany and kooky and bold.
*****
Silke will wait, but will ask me again. ―Who did you say the blonde girl is?‖ ―Juniper.‖ I’ll say. ―Dieter seems to like her,‖ she’ll push, baiting me.
12 ―I guess so.‖ Sometimes I want to tell her all I know, analyze it, turn it this way and that, even upside down, getting to the bottom once and for all, but I understand my place in this zone. Employer and employee. European and American. The Haves and the Have Nots. I know when we move into forbidden territory, I’d better keep my mouth shut.
*****
Silke invites me, several of the restaurant managers, and the Dominican dishwasher to the studio to help with one of her art installation projects. It’s not so much an invitation, but a command since we are Dieter’s employees. ―Make sure Juniper comes too,‖ she tells me. I do and can’t believe that Juniper is brazen or oblivious enough to accept.
When the twelve of us arrive, we are told to pick a partner and Silke says loud enough for everyone to hear, ―Dieter, why don’t you pair up with Juniper?‖ We all hold our breath, since everyone knows, even the Dominican dishwasher who speaks no English, that Dieter has now taken to calling her Jumping Juni. Juniper loves the little gift of affection, drags it around like the comforting blanket of a worried child. She believes she is special to him. But I know different. Dieter will never abandon Silke. I believe no matter how deep the cracks are, a solid foundation will remain—sturdy, imbedded in the ground.
That’s not to say that Juniper doesn’t have power. She does. She wields it against those she knows she can manipulate. Like me. Juniper has come to demand the best shifts; offers her opinion about the menu as if it’s expected; whines about other employees,
13 recommending who should stay and who should go; insists that the design of the restaurant is stale and has-been, no longer edgy. She arrives to work late and spends a good bit of time lolling around in the back, sipping Cosmopolitans, or she sits with Dieter at his favorite table, chipping away until she gets what she wants.
Silke directs the group of employees who have gathered in her loft. We are told that one partner must lie down on the loft floor—on top of a huge sheet of brown packing paper that her gay Austrian apprentice has cut from a roll. She tells us to trace our partner’s body onto the paper. We timidly outline our co-workers, pushing the black marker around heads, elbows, feet—the inside of thighs. Dieter seems to enjoy the task, following Juniper’s curves and contours. When we are done tracing, we cut out the shapes. It’s strange to see our staff reduced to big brown blobs, faceless and uniform; only the edges of the paper patterns offer definition and a vague identity. Dieter and Juniper are last to finish. Juniper is easy to recognize. Her template is the longest.
Silke will trace these people patterns onto thick, white, vinyl foil and cut them out again. Empty skins. She will fold each crude vinyl figure over a wire hanger, and the hangers will line up across the bar of a rolling garment rack, Seventh Avenue style. She will call this work ―Hang Ups.‖ The installation will grace the front window of a local gallery, located three blocks north of Oh No! Noho! When I walk to work in the mornings, I will pass by. I will see our life-size vinyl representations hanging, loose and floppy, the familiar shapes of Juniper and Dieter pressed close, with the knowledge that Silke not
14 only arranged our bodies, but created them. The figures are in her power, like marionettes.
After we finish our tracing and cutting assignment, the employees scatter fast, Juniper too, and Dieter says he’s going uptown. So Silke asks me to go downstairs to the restaurant for a bite. It’s late and I want to go back to my own studio apartment, but I join her. On nights like these, Silke will feel like talking, share disjointed snippets of her life, like I am a true confidant.
If pressed, I am sure Silke would identify me as a co-worker, not a friend. Still, we have shared many meals. Over the years she has confided to me about her mother growing older so far away, her brother’s marriage, her estranged father and his new family, a lapsed girlfriend who has taken up with a man 30 years her junior. She frets about her only child, his grades, what he will grow up to do, whether he will get on with Dieter. I am surprised such ordinary concerns clutter her artist mind. I listen. I serve up sympathy and concern. It’s genuine.
Sometimes I am able to probe into the years before Dieter. I’ve asked her how she found her confidence and she tells me it comes from the village where she grew up, the community she was part of. ―I can go anywhere in the world and feel comfortable,‖ she tells me, ―It’s because I know who I am and where I come from.‖ I wonder if I can ever attain this conviction.
15 Silke has brought me to her Austrian village a few times. The idyllic, mountain town charms me until one evening she shows me a black and white photograph from the war— here is the main street where her family home has a prominent place, but instead of the flower baskets which hang today, pretty and inviting, there are Nazi flags, stark and imposing. The photo makes me nervous, unsettled. I feel I cannot ask the obvious. We are in troubled waters again and I know my place. Later back in Manhattan, I do ask her this, ―Wasn’t your Austrian childhood an issue between you and Dieter?‖ She looks surprised by my question, as if the inquiry is one she has never considered before. ―No, it wasn’t. It never was,‖ is all she tells me.
Silke has traveled far—from one world to another—from her country’s art academy to America, where the men, the protagonists of Pop Art surrounded her. In the Sixties, she was the young girlfriend of a world-renowned expressionist, who brought her to New York City, and was soon enveloped by a tight group of artists—Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Warhol, and Rivers. She was outrageous with her costumes, forthright with her words, aggressively self-assured. She was one of the few constant females, accepted like family, captivating them all, even after she let the older painter go. ―I did it to him before he could leave me,‖ she whispers to me. ―I saw the signs.‖
Sometimes she will show me the photographs of her past, a Silke life tour. When I tell her she is pretty, she is quick to disagree. ―No. I was never pretty, but I had something. I had a style, a sense of myself.‖ I think she’s right; her edges are too defined for pretty. Pretty is too lightweight for Silke. She has a layered beauty, is her own work of art.
16
Dieter was never handsome or famous or an artist. ―He looked important,‖ Silke says with pride. She worked with him too, fussed and tweaked, until she created his look— crisp linen pants, vintage ties, a loose, navy sports jacket. After many years, she recalls for me how she met Dieter at an uptown party. When Dieter phoned her the next day, she remembered him, ―Oh yes, you’re the German guy.‖ She wouldn’t date him; she’d given that up. But Dieter was persistent, was never afraid to take a risk. He is not like the other lovers. His work is steady. He is a young doctor like her brother. He comes to her small, no nonsense studio and sits on a stool crusted with oil paint and watches her work, watches her stroke the canvas with her brushes, spawning something loud and colorful from nothing. He brings her food, specialty items like roasted red peppers, pesto and chocolate. He works double shifts at the hospital so that he can take her shopping to Bloomingdales every Friday evening, where she buys whatever she wants. She agrees to marry him if he understands her art comes first. And he does. The ceremony is just the two of them and a clerk. Before the marriage she makes him buy her lunch.
*****
They are fighting more now. About their son, another new restaurant, the new design. Dieter tells her the concept is tired and stale, not edgy enough. They quarrel about anything at all. Silke says the Wilted Lettuce Salad special was terrible. Dieter tells her she doesn’t understand the complexities of New American cuisine. They snarl at one another, screeching like hungry animals defending their territory. ―This isn’t something
17 you know about,‖ he shouts at her. ―Stop inserting yourself where you don’t belong.‖ I want to walk away, escape, but I am trapped between them, embarrassed. Silke turns to me and says, ―What do you think?‖ They both wait for my answer. Each expecting my loyalty.
Silke will win, can trump Dieter any time with, ―Then I will go home to Austria and not come back.‖ And when I tell her she doesn’t really want to do this she says, ―I only want to paint, secure my place in art history.‖
*****
In five years or so from now, Silke will have a cancer that spreads out from her ovaries; it will grab her fast, without warning. The diagnosis will bring Dieter to his knees, rip him apart—he will fear that the loss will drain him of his vibrancy like nothing else that has come before. He has tended to many, become respected for his knowledge, but he won’t be able to make this patient all right. Not with his science. Not with his willpower. Not with his heart.
By then, Juniper will be long gone and replaced by other young hopefuls who pass through the doors of Oh No! Noho! looking for employment. Maybe Juniper will think of Dieter now and then, and perhaps Dieter will recall Juniper when he sees a tattoo drawn across the neck, or cheek, or fingers of a new applicant.
18 But for now, for today, Silke and I are eating a sweet treat and she is confiding to me in her way, coming right up to the edge, right to the boundary of what’s allowed between us. ―Why does Dieter like this Juniper so much?‖ she asks me. ―It’s so very odd.‖ ―I haven’t a clue,‖ I say expressing equal bafflement, but even saying this is going too far. ―Who is she?‖ Silke says. I shrug and tell Silke the truth, ―No one. She is no one.‖ And we move on.
(excerpt)