Without a Doubt - [68]

That night in the park, I had no cards to play. So I did the only thing I could. I begged. I pleaded. And as fear and frustration overcame me, I began to cry. The other girl watched this performance in silence, but when I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye, I saw she looked as terrified as I felt. When I’d run out of words and courage, I stopped.

The officer stood looking at us for a moment, confused. Then he said, “All right, you two, get out of here, and fast. I don’t want to see you anywhere around here ever again. You hear me? Now beat it!”

I looked at him for a moment, unsure of what I’d just heard. I looked at my friend. She nodded, and together we turned and began to walk away, expecting to be stopped at any moment. After the first few steps, we broke into a sprint that had our hearts pumping. We didn’t stop running until we got to a bus stop about a mile from the park. And there we parted ways. Neither of us said a thing to the other. And after that evening, I never saw her again.

I never figured out what happened that night. How the heroin-if it really was heroin-got there. Whose it really was. The word around school was that the cops had planted the drugs as an excuse to bust us because neighbors had complained about noise in the park. The boys were booked and charged. No one got any jail time, but after that we all pretty much lost touch with each other.

My life was already drifting in another direction.

Shortly after we’d moved to New York, I’d started taking weekly acting classes at a small repertory theater in Greenwich Village, Circle in the Square. I absolutely lived for those classes, especially during the first six months of the school year while I was still battling the stigma of being the “new girl.” The acting teachers at Circle in the Square were terrific; they gave me the opportunity to cut my teeth on Shakespeare. When we worked on readings from Othello, I chose to play the maid rather than Desdemona. No mystery as to why-Desdemona was an ingenue, a sheltered little girl. Emilia, the maid, was an older woman, wise in the ways of the world and the streets.

My teachers seemed to think I was pretty good. At the end of the course, we put on a showcase and I was given the female lead, Emily, in a short segment from Our Town. I also had two roles in Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, which was more than anyone else got to play. While waiting to go on, I was paralyzed with stage fright. It was like being underwater, that queer sense of dissociation from the physical world. I would suffer that same crisis of nerves many times in years to come-in fact, any time I had to deliver an opening statement. But the resolution was always the same. Once I actually set foot onstage, the fear drained away. I became totally immersed in the moment. Onstage the imaginary characters overtook me and I felt the rush of bringing them alive for a few moments. Heady stuff for a fifteen-year-old.

From my first trip into the Village, I felt at home. It was exciting. Exotic. I just couldn’t get enough of it. During the summer between my sophomore and junior years, I found a way to spend more time there: I got a job. Well, sort of.

One afternoon after school, I wandered into a leather shop-I’d always loved the smell and feel of leather-and struck up a conversation with a man who turned out to be the manager. He asked me if I’d like to make a little extra money. I was wary. “Like to make some money?” sounded like a preamble to “Take off your clothes.” The manager saw my reaction and laughed. He was looking for someone to distribute advertising flyers. He’d pay me five bucks an hour to walk up and down the street and hand them out to passersby.

It was too perfect. I’d be right in the middle of the action, and making money at that. I accepted on the spot. He handed me a stack of flyers and I hit the pavement with a big grin on my face. I did this for about two months until I got a job as a salesgirl at a low-end fashion boutique. I was really good at it. I could talk to people, size up types, and put together great outfits. Low-riding, hip-hugger bell-bottoms, tight T-shirts and halter tops.

For the next two years I worked at several shops on the Lower East Side. Artists and entrepreneurs had moved in and begun transforming what was basically a slum into another hip venue. It would come to be called the East Village, but in those days it was still a pretty raunchy part of town. The boutiques where I worked stayed open until one or two A.M. on Fridays and Saturdays, which meant that I was out on the streets in the small hours of the morning. On the way home I had to run a gauntlet of winos, junkies, and speed freaks, all looking for a handout. I knew better than to stop and reach into my purse on those dark streets. I decided I’d better get myself some protection. Not a gun-camouflage. I bought the scruffiest leather air force jacket I could find, as well as a pair of funky, threadbare jeans. Add to that a really beat-up suede saddlebag. I’d change into my grungy getup, pull a scarf over my hair and face, and adopt a speed-freak lope all the way to the subway. Worked like a charm. Even the winos gave me a wide berth.