Margo

Henry sitting on a broken chair in his stark and empty Queens apartment—writing, listening to a Mets night-game on the radio, he didn’t know the score or who was on base and he didn’t care. Listening to the game like music, the sound grounded him, it was steady and regular, it was soft poetry. 

The world full of pundits, political dopes ready to pounce and pummel the other side, out to set the record straight and save the world from things they fear. 

By 10PM Henry was hungry so he left his apartment to go to Chaim’s Deli. 

Sitting in a booth, his usual waitress Ruby, a thin red head in a skimpy uniform with nice legs comes to his table and says, “Henry where have you been? He says, “Oh— I’ve been in the hospital for a week, I had a jumbo size cancerous wart removed from my ass, pus and blood everywhere, I sunbathe naked allot you know and don’t pray for me Ruby.” Ruby simpatico and saying, “Well you know we love you here.” Henry deadpan, blank.

Ruby was the only one who loved Henry at the deli, "WE"" love you here," a fabrication.

Leaving the Deli to wander the city streets aimlessly around 10PM —

Later walking through the Bowery, tripping over a bum on the sidewalk and falling on him, Henry and the bum both down, side by side, looking eye to eye, the bum's voice weak, he says, “ How about a couple of bucks?” Henry getting up off the pavement, brushing off his chinos with both hands and walking on, knowing a couple of bucks wouldn’t help the woebegone bum.

Feeling muzzy, walking the Queensboro Bridge to Manhattan, needing a drink to stabilize, going to the Holland Bar, a hole for serious drinkers. There were a few dozen barflies there spread out in booths and sitting at the bar. He sits at the front of the bar near the entrance, ordering a mug of beer and a shot of tequila, dropping the shot into the glass of beer, watching it fizz.

He notices a svelte and well dressed women standing near the rear exit of the bar, she is waving madly at Henry like she knows him. She is dressed in designer clothes, Dior or Versace maybe, her hair frosted and bobbed. Henry approaches her, they are close up and she says, “Are you Jim Carroll the poet? Well anyways I’m Margo, I own the Sperone Westwater Gallery here in Manhattan” Henry saying, “My name is Henry Lucowski, I'm on crazy pay, I live Zen style in a unfurnished apartment in Queens and I write”  

Margo asking Henry to go out with her to the alley for a smoke. In the dimly lit alley, standing by a dumpster, she fixes —cooking cocaine in a spoon, mixing it with saline, reducing it and then pulling it into a syringe through a cotton ball. 

The two talk some as the fix settles into her system, she pulls a ounce of cocaine in a baggy out of her purse. 

They snort more than a few lines off of Margo's make up case, then going back into the Holland Bar, sitting next to each other in a booth. Henry has cocaine powder on his face, she begins licking it off doggy style, half kissing him, smudging lipstick on his face. No body in the Holland Bar gave a shit, it was that kind of place. 

Margo saying, “Let’s get out of this dump sweets.” 

Henry a clown on crazy pay with a junky Manhattan socialite, it was weird serendipity. 

They leave Holland Bar looking for Margo’s car, she had forgotten where she parked, they are walking and talking about everything in the world, then stopping to snort coke off a police box. Henry tells her to press the red button on her ignition key, a car alarm goes off less than a block up the street.  

Margo had a sky blue Mercedes convertible with a white top. 

Before getting in the car she tells Henry to drive, asking him to drive slow. He follows the GPS on the dash to Trump Towers on Fifth Avenue, parking underground, they get in a gold elevator and go to the forty-ninth floor.  

The gold elevator going up and up into the clouds..

Inside Margo's condo Henry lays down on one of three pink leather sofas placed so they are facing each other in a C shape. She goes to her bedroom and tells him to help himself to a drink, bottles of everything on top of a white marble bar. Henry pours himself a  triple-x rated shot of Black Sombrero tequila in a snifter. 

This condo must be worth millions.

There wasn’t an empty space on the wall— Twenty-First Century American art cluttered the walls, hung very casually; Liza Adams, George Pratt and Tony Pro.

Margo coming back into the living room an hour later, wearing a Naki Kimono robe and black fish net stockings. It was 3AM, she sits on Henry’s lap, pulling him to her, kissing him deeply and saying, “Henry darling I have to open my gallery in the morning, let’s take some valium and go to bed.”

Henry waking at noon the next day, still on the same pink sofa, both of them had passed out around 4AM, he in the living room and she in her bedroom. Margo had left for work, she had taped a note on his leather jacket, written with red lipstick on her personal stationary, saying simply—

See you at the Holland Bar tonight doll, Love you, Margo.