She's back! The Dragon Lady. Actually, she never went anywhere. It's me been AWOL for the past six months thanks to a cracked femur. At first in the shitshow known as Brooklyn General, then in a rehab/nursing home deep in the wilds of—I kid you not—Gravesend.
The first time I made it out of doors with the help of an aluminum walker and a Dominican home-heath-care aid who seemed to live on potato chips and mango juice, I couldn't believe how much the neighborhood had changed. The old Irish deli was gone, gutted like a Thanksgiving turkey. All that was left of its long showcase where mounds of creamy potato salad used to beckon like Playboy bunnies, were spectral outlines on the old linoleum. On the plate-glass window, a hand-lettered sign: Coming Soon, Sunset Fitness Center. On the sidewalk, a bowl of water for thirsty canines.
A few doors away, the stationery store run for decades by an Indian couple who talked like Beatles ("T'ank yeh, loof. Coom agin, loof.") but, word had it, fixed their Yankee son up with a proper mate from the old country, is now a singles bar.
Thank God for the red-brick Catholic church anchoring the south end of that three-block shopping strip, while Finnegan's gin mill holds down the north. Rocks of stability in a wicked changing world. And "thank God," too, because even before my fall, the church's flagstone entrance stairs is the perch from which I watch the world go by. I used to worry the pastor, a go-getter with an MBA and a two-million-dollar fundraiser three-quarters to its goal as per the red-and-white thermometer graphic he's planted in front of the rectory, might tell me to get off his property. God knows how I might respond—probably not as I like to imagine: "Me and mine have been dropping our ducats, shillings, and greenbacks in your collection baskets since the days of Charlemagne, Your Holiness. I figure that's earned me the right to park my ass here for as long as I like, thank you, fuck you, have a nice day."
And here I am again, four steps up from the treacherous cobblestone sidewalk and the stump of a young oak tree that got flattened by a delivery truck trying to unload before a cop could tell him to move along because he was in an ecclesiastical no-standing zone. From this vantage I have a clear view of the Belle Paris' outdoor tables across the street, the gay dermatologist next door, and a Dunkin Donuts to the right.
There are three sets of stairs leading up to three separate church entrances. I sit on the one next to a life-size marble crucifixion scene that used to freak out my Jewish wife so bad, she avoided walking on that side of the avenue. The streetlamp, a pretend-gaslight thing they put up when they tore up the old concrete sidewalks, can only manage an orange flicker, so at night I'm pretty much in shadow, the observer unobserved. When a passerby does spot me, they pick up the pace, afraid I'm looking for a handout. I respond with a sweet, clerical nod. When I'm wearing dark pants and my midnight-blue jacket, the old Latinas curtsy and smile like little brown bobbleheads.
I'm planted in my usual spot, checking out the human and vehicular traffic—you wouldn't believe how many electric bikes and scooters go by, Mexican delivery guys for hole-in-the-wall Thai, Greek, Moroccan, Chinese, and two gourmet pizza joints that have sprung up like crocus—when I spot a woman in a snug orange dress waiting for the light to change on the corner outside Belle Paris. I need a new prescription for my distance glasses, so I can't make out much beyond her nice shape and long black hair. A #87 city bus passes between us, an ad splashed across its side hawking a Medicare Advantage plan, the heads of two old farts pressed together in geriatric bliss. When the bus clears, the woman is still standing in the same spot. When she has the light again, she still doesn't move. Maybe she's one of those obsessive-compulsives, I think, trying to work up the nerve to step across a crack in the sidewalk. "Go for it... Nope, better not."
Apart from the orange dress, which looks more and more like a party costume, there's nothing unusual about her. She's still too far away for me to guess her age other than "young," i.e., under fifty. She holds herself straight as a pole, hands at her sides, no head movement. But I'm starting to feel there's something familiar about her. It's that goofy dress throwing me off.
Finally she steps off, her eyes focused straight ahead, oblivious to the SUV impatient to make a turn. She seems to levitate across the dark macadam as if anything challenging her would be consumed in occult flame. When she reaches the sidewalk on the other side of the avenue, she stops. She's under a real streetlight now, but half-turned away from me. She seems to be considering which way to go.
My deep brain is working hard to figure out what's making me think I've seen her before. No one I've ever known has dressed in anything like that '60s number she has on. She has good hips, though, and she's just tall enough to pull it off. So, why does she look like a nun in mufti? She might be waiting for a bus, except the stop is on the opposite side of the intersection. Whatever she's doing, she's in no hurry.
My attempt to place her keeps coming up empty, zilch. Just one more incident to carry home and tell my Pam about, God rest her soul. Like the time a ditzy young woman took me for a casting director when they were making a movie in the neighborhood. I was just soaking up the sun on a bench near the dressing vans. But the silly thing wouldn't take no for an answer. I told her I don't even go to movies, much less make them. Sure, sure, but all she wanted was a chance, just a bit part, anything at all. When she finally realized I wasn't going to be her ticket to Hollywood, she gave me a look that would kill a zombie. That incident got my wife's attention alright. Probably because she thought the aspiring movie queen must have offered to have sex with me.
The orange woman looks back across the avenue, showing her profile. I'm still 20 or 30 yards away. I know what kind of tricks my brain can play. I see dead people: neighbors, old friends. Sometimes I come almost face-to-face with them before I realize it isn't who I thought it was—how could it be?
A tall, stooped, older gent starts shuffling across the intersection with the help of a walker like the one I had to rely on until a couple weeks ago. The effort of lifting and moving it into position every few feet so he can take a stutter-step forward seems to be slowing him down more than whatever infirmity he has. Meanwhile, on the other side of the avenue, the woman in the orange dress is staring toward the big cemetery a few blocks south, though she can't possibly see that far in the dark. I'm still not making any connection between her and the old guy. It's only when he's reached the sidewalk beside her and she turns toward him that it dawns on me who I'm looking at.
It must be 15 years since I first laid eyes on the Dragon Lady, exiting the Korean greengrocer on the corner of Sunset Place, a tall—her head barely reached his shoulders—older man at her side. It was her outfit then, too, that caught my attention. The difference in their ages almost passed unnoticed. She was all in white, ankle-length like a religious habit. On her head was a white, squared-off version of the khaki cloth caps American GIs used to fold up and put in their back pockets. She and the old fellow were deep in conversation, unusual itself in this neighborhood beyond the precincts of Finnegan's long mahogany. I figured them for college teachers, colleagues.
The next time I saw her, she was with a different man, also old. This time he was doing all the talking. She walked alongside, one eye on the displays in the liquor store and other shop windows. It was Halloween. The optometrist's had a window full of goblins and witches, artfully done, nothing that would scare the kids. The Dragon Lady was wearing that same white outfit. I was close enough this time to get a good look at her. Asian, I guessed, fair-skinned, dark-eyed, 30-something, a bit jowly. The jowls wouldn't age well, I thought. The old guy was setting the pace, such as it was. She might have been one of the aides who accompany residents from a nearby senior citizen housing for shopping on the avenue. Only, the aides are usually young blacks.
The next time I saw her, it was the same, and each time thereafter: an old geezer in tow, minimal conversation, the same white outfit. Sometimes I saw them sitting at a table outside Belle Paris, her companion working his way through something easy on the dentures while she munched pensively on a thick steak. But not a word between them. They might have been strangers in a crowded McDonalds.
That's when the idea occurred to me that she must be after something other than companionship. Why else did I see her with a different man each time? True, it could be weeks between sightings. Even so, a few weeks isn't very long, even on the restricted timeline those old guys were dealing with.
"You do have an imagination," my wife said when I suggested something sinister might be going on. Usually Pam was the one who assumed the worst about people and I played devil's—actually, angel's—advocate.
"You tell me, then," I said. "Where do those old guys disappear to? I say she marries them, knocks them off and collects their Social Security. Not to mention any other assets they might have. Do you know what a house in this neighborhood goes for these days?"
"Has she approached you?"
"Why would she? I'm a good ten years younger than the sort she's after."
"Just watch your step."
I decided not to tell my wife about the time me and the Dragon Lady were standing on the same line at the local grocery. She was just a couple feet behind when I put my items up on the checkout. When the sales girl finished ringing up my stuf,f I glanced over my shoulder as if I had just noticed someone was behind me. "Hell-ooo," she cooed in a ridiculous imitation of the Hollywood femme fatale. I gave her my you-can't-fool-me smile, picked up my bag of bananas and corn flakes, and walked out of the store, feeling like Dick Tracy and Casanova combined.
A moth must get a thrill similar when it decides to swing in just a little closer to a burning candle. It tells itself it's just doing so for the warmth, but deep down it knows it's flirting with something lethal. I had no intention of getting into conversation with the Dragon Lady. So, why when I was back out on the sidewalk, did my knees start to shake and I tripped on a loose cobblestone and almost took a header?
You would think that episode would have scared off the moth in me. Just the opposite. I had felt the fascination of the flame and liked it. I saw no reason why I couldn't fly a little closer. Besides, once I put some distance between me and that supermarket, the woman's silly "Hell-ooo" seemed every bit as harmless as the weird outfit she wore.
I made no effort to seek her out. I knew I didn't need to. Sooner or later she would show up with another old guy at her side. Meanwhile I had plenty of time to think about her. I liked the idea of her being a serial killer, collecting her victims' Social Security benefits the way someone else might do day-trading. It would make a good plot for one of the mystery novels my wife was addicted to.
"Not my cup of tea," Pam said, barely looking up from the one she was currently into.
"Why not? It would make a good movie, too."
"Been done."
"When?"
She rattled off the names of a few films, only a couple of which I had seen myself, without ever taking her eyes off the paperback on her lap. If she had, she would have seen I was not in as playful mood as my tone might suggest. I was annoyed by her lack of interest. Thirty-five years is a long time to be married to the same person. I loved my wife. I realize that more now than I did when she was still alive. I also realize how deeply embedded in me she is, how married I still am. Back then, though, marriage could sometimes seem a tentative thing held together mostly by long habit.
A few days later I wandered down to the muffin shop/cafe on the traffic circle where the avenue meets the south end of Prospect Park.That's where I take my midday joe (Pam couldn't stand the smell of coffee). On nice days I sit on one of the benches outside, where I observe young mothers with strollers on their way to a nearby playground. In late afternoon, yellow school buses drop off their charges there on the circle—girls from a Muslim academy in Bay Ridge with dayglow backpacks and white head scarfs; an Orthodox Jewish busload right behind with identical backpacks but no head scarfs. Sometimes I see a pack of wandering homeless women from the city shelter in the armory a few blocks north. What wouldn't the owners of the zillion-dollar brownstones in that neighborhood give to be rid of them.
I parked myself on a bench just outside the big glass entrance door to the muffin shop. The benches were all empty, the evening rush hour still in progress. A steady stream of vehicles was careening around the traffic circle like stock cars on a mini track, heading toward the Hassidic and Latino neighborhoods to the south. SUVs, panel trucks, Buicks and Chevies, middle-aged men at the wheel, some with long scraggly beards, sidelocks and black fedoras pushed to the back of their shiny pates. Just around the corner, a few 20-somethings were stumbling home from the subway. They live in shares with other refugees from flyover states who can't afford a place of their own without commuting all the way from Canarsie.
The big glass door to the muffin shop opened halfway, the tiny hand of a woman with a mammoth stroller in tow pushing hard against the heavy glass. The two-year-old in the stroller was munching contemplatively on a frisbee-size cookie, oblivious to the life-and-death struggle his mother was making to keep them from being crushed to death. I got up and pulled the door open. The young woman—she actually wasn't all that young, they start a family much later nowadays—smiled gratefully. How would she manage when the little pasha was a few years older and outweighed her?
I made sure they were well clear of the door before I let go. That's when I spotted the Dragon Lady, sitting at a table in the middle of the shop across from a tall older man—even seated he towered over her. When the door swung closed again, I still had a good view of their table, though reflections in the big glass windows of cars negotiating the traffic circle made the figures inside the cafe seem like reflections themselves.
The man not only sat tall in the chair he was occupying, he did so very erect. He was doing all the talking, and doing it vigorously as the ghost of a lumbering 16-wheeler moved across the window between us. He would never see 70 again, but the energy he was putting into his monologue was full of self-righteous anger. Eyes downcast, the woman absorbed it like a meek sponge.
I was still trying to guess what the issue could be—had they just met there in the muffin shop, and after an innocent beginning, did she propose something that he took strong offense to? Was that how she snagged those old geezers—offers of sexual titillation that appealed to their guttering instincts without putting too much strain on the vital organs?
The man suddenly stood up, all six feet of him, and strode toward the door, flung it open as if it were a cardboard prop, and stormed past me. Inside the muffin shop, the Dragon Lady remained in the same rigid state she had assumed during the man's scolding, her dark eyes staring at nothing.
You can parade a chorus line of hot women by me, anything from Helen of Troy to Helen the waitress at the Sunset Diner, and I won't flinch. I see and feel what any straight man sees and feels. But the chances of my attempting anything more than a bit of harmless flirting are between slim and none. But show me a female, almost any female, in tears or, worse, doing her best not to cry, and I become a bowl of warm jelly.
That's how I met Pam. She was sitting on a bench by the park back when I still took a daily constitutional down to the end of Prospect Park and back. I had given her a quick appraisal without feeling anything in particular: youngish (we were both in our mid-30s, though she didn't look it), pretty, though that was hard to tell because of the way her mouth was pulled down and her brow so tightly furrowed. It wasn't till I had walked on a few steps that I realized she had been crying. I did an about-face, went back to her bench and sat down on the other end. But it was game-over for me even before I worked up the nerve to say, "Having a bad day?" and she murmured, mostly to herself, "You could say that."
A Budweiser truck, probably headed for Finnegan's, flitted across the thick glass between me and the Dragon Lady. She still hadn't moved. What was it she was contemplating in the empty space between herself and the muffin shop's other glass wall where that beer truck was now waiting for the light to change on the avenue? Her dark eyes glistened with as much fluid as eyes could possibly hold without overflowing. Her long thin lips were quivering.
Gone was the serial seducer of elderly gents for the sake of free meals and whatever other goodies she could get out of them. In her place sat an ordinary woman with ordinary feelings, her pride if not her heart badly wounded. Was it just love she wanted after all, someone to care about and be cared for? So what if she favored older men. Was that any worse or better than a woman who fancied tall skinny guys or heavy short ones?
At that moment my Pam was sitting on the sofa in our apartment reading one of her mysteries. When she came to the end, she would pick up another like a chain smoker who lights a new cigarette as soon as they finish the one they've been smoking. I had never really gotten to the bottom of what made her sit weeping on that park bench 30 years ago.
I stood up. A loud horn sounded from a white SUV on the circle impatient with the hesitation of the panel truck ahead to get a move on when the light changed. Several other cars took up the raucous complaint like crows playing following the leader. My legs began moving away from the muffin shop, but it wasn't until I crossed 16th Street and was passing the optometrist's window, decorated with dozens of tiny Easter bunnies hopping around a landscape of blue and yellow crepe, that I resumed breathing normally.
When the old man the Dragon Lady is with tonight finally reaches the sidewalk on my side of the avenue, she begins walking slowly away from the intersection, keeping a couple yards ahead of him. For me to keep the two of them in sight after they disappear beyond the life-size figure of the crucified Christ and the two Marys standing vigil beneath the cross, I'd have to get up and walk to the corner myself.
"She has a new beau," I whisper to my dead Pamela in the flicker of the faux gaslight street lamp in front of the church.
"I see you haven't lost interest. What is it you call her?"
"The Dragon Lady."
"Why 'Dragon'? Is it because you think she eats men alive?"
"It goes back to that movie Good Morning, Vietnam. Robin Williams has just arrived for a tour of duty and is riding through downtown Saigon in the back of a jeep. When he sees all the gorgeous women on the boulevards he starts shouting, 'Dragon Lady at two o'clock! Dragon Lady at four o'clock!' Like they were enemy aircraft."
"I see."
"You and I saw that movie together."
"I liked Robin Williams."
A big truck pulls up outside the Dunkin Donuts across the street. The driver climbs out of the cab, opens the back, pushes a tall rack of goodies onto the tailgate and lowers it automatically, standing alongside. It looks like fun. I wonder if he still gets a kick out of riding that tailgate elevator the way he must have the first time he did it.
That old guy might have done a tour of duty in Vietnam himself. Maybe acquired a taste for Asian women, was having a last go at romance before he has to turn in his walker for a plot in Green Wood cemetery. Heart attack be damned. Maybe to him it's worth it.
"Would you?" Pam asks. "Think it's worth it?"
"No."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure."
There are almost no pedestrians left on the avenue, though it's barely 10:00 PM. I get up off the church steps, using the black wrought-iron railing to steady myself. I check to make sure I have my keys—the first time I went out on my own after the operation, I didn't realize I'd dropped them when I was stuffing mail into the box outside the little PO next to Finnegan's. I didn't miss them till I was halfway home. But tonight everything is where it should be—keys, wallet, cellphone.
When I reach the corner, I look down the broad street the woman and the old man were heading a few minutes ago. Empty. Not even a car in sight. Before an expressway was cut through the heart of the neighborhood, that thoroughfare used to be the main west-east artery from New York Bay to a tree-lined parkway taking you all the way out to the ocean. Now, except for rush hour, you can cross it with your eyes closed and the odds are a hundred-to-one you won't come to harm... not that I've tried it.
In any case, I have to take a pill in half an hour and get to sleep before midnight. Otherwise I'll be dead on my feet tomorrow and miss the show out here on the avenue. Weather permitting.
