A week earlier, we had seen a performance by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at Dia Beacon, where they had performed in the space surrounding a Sol Lewitt sculpture. On this occasion, we had seen, at the Minetta Lane Theater, a performance of Martha Clarke’s dance derived from and evocative of Hieronymous Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. It was by turns erotic and innocent, beautiful and grotesque, desperate and hopeful, and, overall, it was electrifying. When we had settled ourselves at a table at Pó, the beautiful one raised her glass for me to clink and said, in the tough-girl style she employs now and then, “We sure know how to pick ’em, pal.”
“Our luck can’t continue,” I said.
“Yes, it can,” she said. “Here’s another bit of good luck right in front of you. We haven’t been here for a couple of years, but they still serve the wonderful white bean bruschetta. I’ve loved it from the first time I ate here.”
“It’s good,” I admitted, “very good.”
At the table next to us, a woman shrieked, “Tap water? Do you mean water from a tap? Just like that, from a tap? I couldn’t drink that. It isn’t even filtered.”
“Look at this place,” said the beauty, doing herself what she had told me to do. “It’s still such a modest place. They just do what they do and do it really well. We’re lucky that are still places like this. We’re lucky that this place is still like this. Allow yourself to be pleased.”
“Mm,” I grumbled. Tentatively, ready for disappointment, I sampled my linguini vongole. Then, silently, I ate it all.
“Well?” she asked when I had finished.
With a self-deprecating chuckle, I said, “All right, I admit it. I am pleased. I am pleased and I am grateful. I am grateful to Merce Cunningham and to the dancers in his company, to Martha Clarke and her dancers, to Hieronymous Bosch, and to everyone connected with Pó.”
“I would never work with Al Pacino again,” said the woman who had scorned tap water. “He’s very difficult, very difficult.”
I leaned across the table and said with a leer, “How would you like to come up to my place and look at my reproduction of The Garden of Earthly Delights?”
In my overheated apartment, she divested herself of much of what she’d been wearing, perched herself on a stool at my kitchen counter, and sipped some Spanish brandy while we leafed through a volume in which Bosch’s painting is reproduced in a set of detailed enlargements.
“Oh,” she said with a giggle, “this reminds me of that day when you were nearly expelled from the Prado. You were leaning in so close to this painting — I think the attendant thought you were trying to smell it.”
“I am also grateful to that attendant,” I said.
“For not having you thrown out?” she asked.
“No,” I said, “for not laughing at me when I asked her, ‘¿Puede usted decirme que dice en inglés “mujer”?’” |
