When Any Kind of Love Will Do: Short Stories

By Elisabeth Amaral

"Liz Amaral is an original, both in her writing and her life. In these stories, you will find delight, horror, comedy, and love, and most of all, surprise. You will be confronted by your own darkness-the boogeymen who hide within you-and by your own humanity. This is a book you will not be able to put down. Hold on-it's a great ride."
-Kathrin Seitz, author and producer

Reflecting the common longing to be loved, amid the strangeness, humor and unpredictability of the world, When Any Kind of Love Will Do contains stories and memories from hidden corners of the soul.

Meet a woman who bought a loft whose blood-soaked walls make her feel right at home. Read about a witness to a brutal murder who exacts her own revenge. Inhabit the minds of three young people in Manhattan's West Village who search for meaning in their lives, and see into the mind of a killer and his victim.

These thrilling and imaginative stories tap into our deepest longings and reveal visions of the world that are bewildering, disturbing, or downright hilarious.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 11, 2007
• ISBN: 9780595875931

Elisabeth Amaral

Elisabeth Amaral has designed jewelry, co-owned both a childrens boutique and a restaurant, and sold real estate in New York City. She is the author of Elodie at the Corner Market and When Any Kind of Love Will Do. Elisabeth lives with her husband in Manhattan. Visit her online at www.elisabethamaral.com.

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Copyright © 2007 by Elisabeth Amaral

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-0-595-43252-3 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-595-87593-1 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

For my husband, Robert,

and to the memory of my father,

Karel Sokoloff (1914–2005)

Contents

Acknowledgments

Underwater

Bad Judge Men

Rat Race

Dojo Blues

My Picassos

Drowning

County Road 29

Country Living

Medusa

The Loft

When Any Kind of Love Will Do

Up for Air

Babies

The Bride

Eighth-Avenue Encounter

The Weekend

Lost World

No Sale

Imagine That

Party Time

The Huntress

Tributes

Tribute to Abuela

A Walk from Chelsea Market to Ground Zero

Acknowledgments  

Bad Judge Men appears, in slightly altered form, in the spring 2007 edition of the magazine Method Mad.

I would like to thank Janet Albaugh; Kathrin Seitz; the Wednesday-night group of the East Coast Collective of Poets and Writers; Barbara Isenberg; and my son, Nicholas Del Valle, who is always a surprise and an inspiration.

I would also like to thank my mother, Florence, and my sisters, Madelon and Natalie, for being who they are.

Underwater  

Bad Judge Men  

Hey, Alito, listen up. I was young and pregnant, living on Carmine Street in Greenwich Village, near Bleecker. And I was scared, mister, scared like you and your buddies will never be.

A call I’d been waiting for came at noon. I picked up the phone and heard a throaty voice say, Midnight, the old Breyers plant in Newark. Be there. Look for a blonde in a T-Bird, and bring the money.

I needed six hundred dollars, and I needed it soon. I spent the next few hours waiting for one of my friends to call me and say, Annie, don’t worry, the money is on its way. I sat by the phone, realizing that if it did arrive, my life could end that Friday night, somewhere in New Jersey. I could end up in a garbage-strewn alley, barren or mutilated.

Ellie called me, mid-afternoon … Ellie from Menlo Park, California. She had come through. Jessie sold his motorcycle, she told me. I’d only met Jessie a few times, and here he was, selling his ride so that I could get on with my life. There was no way I could express my gratitude, and there was no turning back now. The money was wired to Western Union on Seventh Avenue South, a few blocks from my apartment, and was in my hands by suppertime. We had spaghetti. That’s what my body felt like—a mass of quivering, slippery strands barely held together.

Jake and I borrowed a friend’s car, and at about 11:00 that evening, we drove down Varick Street, through the Holland Tunnel to Newark. We drove through dark, deserted streets. We passed a solitary, shadowy figure weaving down a side street. A threatening posse of militant young men was hanging out on a corner, not far from where oversized rats gnawed at garbage from an overturned can. Our windows were rolled up, and the doors were locked. My heart was pounding. I looked at Jake. Both of his hands were grasping the steering wheel as we finally pulled into the parking lot of the Breyers plant, a shuttered, ominous hulk of a building.

We sat in the car, waiting, at midnight. Silence surrounded us. This was the 1960s, and we were in pre-raceriot downtown Newark. The reality of where we were was as frightening as why we were there.

It wasn’t long before a woman in a platinum blonde wig pulled up in a baby-blue T-Bird. She positioned the car so that her open window was close to Jake’s, and he rolled his window down. I’ll take the fetus out, I heard her say, and I started to shake. Jake handed her the money, and I realized she must have said, I’ll take the fee now. Well, that I could deal with; that actually seemed reasonable, and then funny. I began laughing like a lunatic on the edge, that place where reason and terror meet. Jake leaned over and hugged me.

It was time. Somehow, I managed to get out of our car and into hers, realizing as I closed the door that I was also closing the door on my fate. Wait here, the blonde told Jake. I suddenly was as frightened for his life as I was for mine. This was a very bad place to be, and I was overwhelmed at the thought that something could happen to him, or that he would give up and drive away.

Coupla hours, the blonde yelled to Jake as we drove off. As I looked back, I saw his arm stretched out of the window, waving at me. I wished I loved him more.

The woman drove for a short while, finally parking behind an unfinished high-rise in Weehawken. With the exception of a large yellow crane parked in a corner, ours was the only vehicle in a large muddy lot. I was going to die soon, and no one would find me. I would be butchered. My body would be buried in pieces in swampland in Secaucus or thrown off the Palisades.

The woman, who finally introduced herself as Joanie, walked briskly ahead of me toward the building. She had a key, and she let us into the unfinished lobby. I wondered if there was water in the building yet. I forced myself to keep step with her as she led me through empty halls, our shoes echoing on partially-tiled floors.

We reached the elevator bank.

They’re working, Joanie said.

That’s good, I said.

Gonna be a nice place when it’s finished.

I’m sure, I answered.

I moved in a haze, aware that I really might not survive. I was putting my life in the hands of a woman wearing a bad wig and turquoise capri pants and a doctor I had met one time several weeks ago in Union City. He’d been eating a liverwurst sandwich and had a blotch of mustard in the corner of his mouth.

The elevator ride was smooth. It stopped on the ninth floor. The corridor was lit with dim, uncovered, dangling light bulbs. We walked to the left, to the end of the long hallway. Joanie knocked twice, and the door was opened by a young man with acne scars. Joanie turned around and headed back toward the elevator. She told me she’d see me later.

I followed the man down a short hallway within the apartment. As I glanced into an open doorway, I noticed a young woman standing near a cot. She was slipping a pale-blue sweater over her strawberry-blonde hair. She smiled at me, a small upturning of colorless lips in a pale face, but all I cared about was that she was alive. I felt a glimmer of hope. And then I saw, past her, that the rest of the room contained another six or seven cots, most of them occupied. Young women wearing patterned robes were lying on those cots, and a man was changing a sanitary napkin on one of them. As I learned later, the man was a driver, like Joanie. I saw this in a moment as I was being led down the hall and into a small, windowless, brightly-lit room. I saw the table and stirrups, the counter with instruments and gauze, before I noticed the doctor and a large woman in white. She terrified me. Her hair was a mass of tight, angry red curls, and her lipstick was uneven on a thin-lipped mouth.

Hi there, the doctor said. I remember you. Take off your clothes.

I kept on my bra and a white half-slip with lace on the bottom, which was immediately yanked up to my waist when I climbed onto the narrow examination table. I slid my rear to the end of the table and put my feet into cold metal stirrups. The feeling of humiliation that washed over me initially muted my fear. I had come this far, this would all be over soon, and so I lay back, closed my eyes, and waited for the anesthetic to be administered. A thin, useless mask was slapped over my nose and mouth. I was told to take a few deep breaths.

Nothing ever could have prepared me for the pain that began between my thighs, ripped my insides in two, and traveled to my brain. A scream was pulled out from somewhere deep inside me, followed by a slap from the woman. Shut up, bitch! she