45,000 Feet

When I’m in my jet, and the captain says we’re ascending to flight altitude, 45,000 feet, I think about my feet on the jet floor, in the black Birks that I’ve lined with faux white fur, and I always think the same thing—that they’re vulnerable and a little cold, assailable from all sides except the bottoms, where the faux fur lining cushions them but also dries them out so much I have to apply a French cream made from baby turtle shells before they reach maturity. It’s my choice. I could cover them, in my Jimmy Choos, or my Balenciagas, or the ones with the red bottoms—I can never remember the name—I’m kidding, my Louboutins, but if I covered them, I couldn’t show them off, and after all the work I’ve put into them, I believe that’d be a disservice to Julietta, who buffs them out on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and every other Saturday and whose fingers are so delicate—from the French cream—that, when she sticks them into my arches, and her pinky nails disappear, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. C’est vrai.

Also, my husband enjoys looking at my feet and, as he’s usually sitting next to me on the jet and is usually, like me, looking down at my feet as we ascend to flight altitude, 45,000 feet. I don’t want to disappoint him. It’s one of his few pleasures these days; he’s so busy tending to his money piles. He is up to his neck in those piles.

“Compromised girl, stuck between the traditional and the new. One foot stepping into foreign territory, the other planted firmly in the past.”

Most people don’t understand how money works. Money comes in piles, which are moved, on silver-plated platters, in between the five industries Goldman Sachs partnered with in 1997. Young runners, culled from the best track teams in the tri-state area, take these platters down country side roads in the early morning hours before we’re awake. At the gates of the partnered industries, assistants, dressed in lavender pageboy outfits, don’t take the platters from these runners but, bending over, offer those tired runners the flattest surface there is, their backs, on which the runners then delicately place the platters before collapsing on cots that have thoughtfully been set up next to the assistants. There they sleep all day.

Then comes the hard part. The piles are separated into seven-inch bundles. Rested runners siphon off each third bill and, after dumping them into copper bowls, add a coagulant, which accelerates the molting  process, eventually turning what would have been scattered paper-stuffs into crisp hundreds. At this point, the industry bosses, alerted by three bell rings, walk the halls in loose trousers whose pockets they’ve pulled out to accommodate the bills, into which the assistants drop the bills, after folding them in half and cinching them with platinum-plated billfolds.

This is happening now, in your town, if your town is a city, and your city’s a big city. In each town, right now, assistants are dropping platinum-plated billfolds of crisp hundreds into the pulled-out pockets of industry bosses, who then walk past the sleeping runners and take off in their own jets to conferences in Miami, Florida; Basel, Switzerland; and, each December, to Miami, Florida for Art Basel.

I forgot to mention the important part! Sometimes I do that.

Sometimes I don’t add meat to the meat lasagna, and it ends up being a vegetarian lasagna. There I’ll be, at my party, on my boat, with my crew, and my guests, and friends of my guests, and my staff, and kids of my staff, saying I’m making a meat lasagna, when, it turns out, it’s for vegetarians. The important part is my husband. He starts it all. The piles are delivered to us early, at 7:35. There were so many, that first day, we had to stack them in the driveway. We thought to add an extra room on top of our house, a kind of penthouse—I say “kind of” because we had a penthouse already. We drew up plans and even got a building department permit before we realized: How the fuck are we going to get all those piles up there? It was so high up. For a quick minute, we thought to use a crane, but upon visualizing that teetering monstrosity, we looked down, sad, before we looked back up again, this time to the right, where we saw a whole other building, our neighbor’s, which we purchased that afternoon and where we now stack our piles.

My husband hands the piles off to the runners. They carry them, but he carries the responsibility. If those stacks aren’t strapped securely to the runners’ backs and some fall, to the sides of the side roads, who gets blamed? The runners don’t. My husband fields those calls and, when his staff can’t handle them, he does the talking. That’s why it’s so important for me to give him breaks, which release pressure that’d otherwise build and thus compromise his stacking/strapping abilities.

“I love your feet,” he said the last time we were on the jet, ascending to flight altitude, 45,000 feet. He was looking at them, in the Birks. “They’re like two baby abalone, surrounded by coral reefs, once colored but now dead and bleached, though still sumptuous in their fossilized intricacies and chalklike, ghosty luminosity.”

“Thanks,” I looked out the window. Outside, the clouds were a flat cushion, graciously separating us from the world below. Up here, the sky was also blue but lighter and shot through with silver specs. Someone chewing Wint-o-green mints had blown all the deep blue sky from below the clouds away and replaced it with snowflakes so small you couldn’t see them, only how they sparkled in the light.

“Two bowls of milk,” he said, looking down, “floating in bigger bowls, the inside bowl whole and the outside skim.”

“You don’t say,” I said. The clouds, I realized, were similar to the faux fur lining of my Birks. They cushioned the earth the same way my Birks cushioned my feet—at least the bottoms. The tops, as I may have mentioned, were unprotected.

“I want them in my mouth,” my husband said, “after you lift them—either all the way up, high, with a Rockette kick if I’m standing or, if I’m sitting, if that seems like the right thing to be doing then, with a smaller, more modest, Betty Page kick, halfway up.”

“I’m on the floor then,” I said.

He nodded. “You’re on the floor, holding your hips up and turning toward me while kicking modestly at my mouth while I’m sitting. The other leg being bent at the knee and resting parallel to the floor on which you’re sprawled.”

“No rug?” I asked, looking out the window. “I thought I’d at least have a rug there. What a girl has to go through.”

“The red tips of your toes—zero calorie gum drops I don’t have to chew. They dissolve on my tongue like Pop Rocks. They’re that electric.”

“I used to love those,” I said.

“They were delicious,” he said. “Crystals popping, clickity-clackity, clickity-clackity. Filling one’s mouth with fructose and an artificial cherry aftertaste.”

“They weren’t delicious,” I said. “I liked them because they were unnatural. I was breaking rules.”

“Naughty girl,” he said.

“Got it out of my system, I guess,” I said.

“Good girl,” he said.

“Not all of it,” I said.

“Compromised girl, stuck between the traditional and the new. One foot stepping into foreign territory, the other planted firmly in the past.”

“I guess.” I took my feet out of the Birks to air them out.

“I want to mold them,” he said, “like Play-Doh, into balls and stretch them into long tubes so I can grab them but leave extra flesh hanging over the sides.”

“What’s the use of having extra flesh if you can’t hold it?” I asked, putting my feet back in the Birks (the bottoms were starting to get cold now).

“To be pulled down by its weight,” he said, incredulous, as if nothing in the world could be clearer. “When I lift them, to feel the edges drop.” He smiled and closed his eyes, lost in the thought.

“Funny you should mention it,” I said. “It’s Monday; Julietta hasn’t touched these dogs in four days.” I lifted them up, in the Birks, to rest them on the arm of the couch by the Oriental throw.

“Should I?” Julietta asked from the row behind us, and when I turned, I saw that she was holding her emery board up.

“That’s okay,” I said. “Thanks, though.”

“Don’t mention it,” she said.

“How long would it take?” my husband asked Julietta.

“That depends,” she said, putting the emery board on her lap and leaning back; she had all the power now; she was holding the cards; the emery board was a baton she could have used to play us to Timbuktu and back, though we owned the plane and emery board and she was in the back row, which we’d narrowed each year in accordance with commercial airline regulations so she could only lean back so far.

“On what does it depend?” my husband asked.

“On what you want,” she said.

“What if I wanted you to do what you normally do on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and every other Saturday?” he asked.

“That depends,” she said.

“On what does it depend?” he asked.

“At the car wash, they offer the basic for $14.95,” she said. “That gets you vacuuming but no wax. Twenty-five minutes. Wax is extra. If you get wax, you also get, for $19.95, Armor All on the tires. That’s thirty-five minutes. But for this low price you don’t get hand wax. That’s extra. Hand wax—that brings you to $35.95. Forty-five minutes. Leather protectant on the dash—now we’re at $39.95. Fifty-five minutes. None of this includes detailing. That is to say—it’s included in detailing, but with the detailing, there’s more, like deep cushion cleaning and a thorough deodorizing. Two hours—$79.95.”

“That’s a spectrum,” he said.

“You get what you pay for,” she said.

“I have a question,” he said.

“Shoot.”

“Why is it always something-95?” he asked. “Then they give you the extra nickel from their stash of nickels? All the car washes do this. It’s like a conspiracy. We’re all running around, with these extra nickels in our pockets—jangly-wangly. Why, Julietta, why?”

“Hey, that’s similar to the stacks of hundreds the bosses collect before they bring them to Art Basel,” I whispered to my husband.

“Shh,” he said, as this was a guarded secret between us, the runners, and the industry bosses.

“I know all about the bosses and their hundreds,” Julietta said. “You think I’m an idiot?”

“How long have you known?” my husband asked.

“Ever since I delivered your blueprints for the new penthouse to the building department,” she said.

“I knew we should have asked someone else,” he said, and I nodded.

“So, Julietta,” my husband said. “What if I wanted the vacuuming, the simple wax, and the Armor All?”

“The vacuuming comes with the basic,” Julietta said. “Pay attention. It’s not something you need to ask for.”

“Apologies,” my husband said. “Julietta, what if I wanted the basic, but also the simple waxing, as well as the Armor All?”

“Thirty to forty minutes,” Julietta said.

“Chuck, how long before we land?” my husband asked Chuck in the cockpit.

“That depends,” Chuck said.

“Not funny, Chuck,” my husband said to Chuck, but then Chuck said we’d be landing in forty minutes.

“Perfect timing,” my husband said to Julietta.

“Where are we going again?” I asked my husband.

“I can’t believe you don’t remember,” he said.

“I forgot, Jesus, sorry,” I said.

“No—I’m not upset. I also forgot. It’s just that, usually, you remember. Chuck, where are we going?”

“That depends,” Chuck said.

“Not funny,” my husband said.

“Puerto Vallarta,” Julietta said.

“I love how you pronounce that,” my husband said.

“I should probably start on the Armor All now, if we want to finish by the time we land,” Julietta said.

“Land where?” my husband asked.

“Puerto Vallarta,” Julietta said.

“I just love how you pronounce that,” he said.

Julietta moved to the couch, leaned, put the Oriental throw on the floor, and attended to my feet. I reached heights in my understanding of her psyche that I’ll never reach with another. We skipped past blooming cherry blossoms, singing show tunes and snapping our fingers on odd contrapuntals. She licked the insides of my ears, whispering lullabies my mother used to sing that I’d long ago forgotten. I learned Etruscan, the names of each of the Southern Himalayas, and eighteen guitar chords.

Electrical currents, as if powered by gentle streams, stretched past my ankles and came slowly to rest along the insides of my thighs. A door opened, then another, and another, and there I was, back at the same door, only this time it was a little different—more substantial. I dared not open it. Though it technically blocked me, its clear outlines and varied texture resonated, supplying a base on which I felt more secure, not puffed up with airs, just more myself.

Julietta leaned back and dabbed at the sweat on her forehead with a Hermès scarf I’d given her that she’d cut into sections and repurposed as travel handkerchiefs.

“Exquisite,” my husband said, looking at my feet.

“Thanks,” I said.

“The nickels are from Art Basel,” Julietta said, catching her breath.

“Come again?” my husband asked.

“At Art Basel,” Julietta said, “when they buy the art, they give an extra hundred, on—”

“On top of the fees?” my husband asked.

“I was about to say that,” Julietta said.

“Sorry,” he said.

“On top of the fees,” she said. “The dealers take these hundreds, change them into nickels, and give them to the people who run the car washes.”

“How do you know all this?” my husband asked.

“Everyone knows,” she pointed out the window, down.

“Two currencies,” my husband nodded, smiling. “One above, and one below, and you—because of your unique position, because of your chance inclusion in both sets of parameters—know both, are privy to both, can move in between both.”

“Sí,” Julietta said.

“What a privileged position you occupy,” my husband said.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” she said.

“Why did you tell him?” Chuck asked Julietta.

“It was time,” Julietta said.

“Not your decision to make,” Chuck said.

“Eyes on the road, Chuck,” I said. “Aren’t we supposed to be landing now?”

“I have to circle first,” he said.

“I don’t think that’s right,” my husband said to Chuck.

“Not your decision to make,” Chuck said.

“I like the way you hold the wheel,” I said to Chuck. “I like the way you turn it when you circle.”

“But could he handle the money piles?” my husband said. “That’s the question.”

“I believe so,” I said.

“What money piles?” Chuck asked, and Julietta explained.

“So that’s how they get the nickels,” Chuck said to Julietta, who nodded.

My husband leaned back, stroking my feet. His fingers grazed my toes, then moved up to my ankles, almost tickling them but pushing into them deliberately enough so as not to tickle. “Sometimes I wish I had humble origins like you, Chuck,” he said to Chuck, “so I could give them to my kids. It’s the one thing you can’t buy, besides one-hundred-year-old oak trees.”

“You’re forgetting about cranes,” I said, and, when I saw that he looked concerned, I assured him I wasn’t talking about building another penthouse. “They dig them out, with cranes, then replant them.”

My husband shook his head. “The stress kills them—don’t you know that?” His cold fingers curled around my arches. “Ancient trees, humble origins—that’s what keeps me up at night, Chuck,” he said to Chuck. “That’s the blade twisting in my sides as I drive across Mulholland; pushing the Prius pedal down those few airy degrees jumpstarts the thought process, propelling me into greener pastures, where Centurion Oaks tower over a less staffed kitchen. Mi madre stirs the paella with a wooden spoon, careful not to let the coals from the open fire singe the frayed edges of her skirt. After dinner, mi padre sings us songs from his ancestral village. Do the shadows our singing faces make on the far wall reflect an insular existence, cut off from outside influences, offering only limited, less colorful choices in shallow fields that won’t be wide enough for modest, lateral advancement? Far from it, Chuck. Those fleeting images possess a depth and foundational vitality that your towers of gold can’t touch.”

“I grew up in New York City,” Chuck said.

“Public housing,” my husband nodded, stroking my feet. “Five to a room. Tito Puente blasts through the tin door, but you can’t say boo because you’d upset Jorge, who gave your mom that look that time that said he’d be back for more looks and that the look after that one wouldn’t be about looking. Christmas lights are strung along the banister, but it’s July, and the lights blink in different patterns—solid-solid-fireworks, then fireworks-fireworks-solid. You have to go through your sister’s room to get to the bathroom, and she doesn’t like that.”

“Sutton Place,” Chuck said, circling.

“Rent-controlled, inherited from Grandma,” my husband nodded, “passed down through three third cousins on your mother’s father’s side. The super, when he’s in town that is, won’t answer your calls—about the bugs, or the shouting matches across the hall, and definitely not about the leaky faucet, from which you wish clean water spouted; instead, Chuck, it’s muck, sandy in color, staining the porcelain sink and pounding in its steady drip a metronome to the saddest concerto every played: your life.”

“Prewar, doorman, classic six,” Chuck said, circling.

“Must have been hell,” my husband said.

“Only western light,” Chuck nodded.

“Why are we circling, Chuck?” my husband asked.

“You don’t want to know,” Chuck said.

“Try me.”

“We got pushed back,” Chuck said.

“But why, Chuck, why?” my husband asked.

“You don’t want to know,” Chuck said.

“Try me,” my husband said.

“A bigger jet.”

“Excuse me?” my husband asked.

“I’m out,” Chuck said to me.

“Honey, what’d he say?” my husband asked.

“I didn’t hear anything,” I said.

“Neither did I,” Julietta said.

To be fair, I don’t know if they’re the same copper bowls; they might be different bowls. If they’re not the same, I’ll say this: they’re wasting bowls.

My husband looked up, holding my left foot. With one hand, he cradled my heel and with the other, he covered my toes, not touching them but hovering over—shielding—them. “My sense is that, nearby, there lurks forces larger than me with whom I’m competing and against whose energies I’m compromised,” he brought his hand down on my foot, slapping it softly. “Were that I could leap up from these small environs and into more spacious, less encumbered vistas, on whose peaks I could stretch, becoming taller, more striking—a focal point to which outside lines might then easily converge.” He moved my foot to his leg, rubbing it into his thigh. I curled my toes to grip the fabric of his slacks. “In this new space I’d store sweaters my tailor’d cut and stitched to conform not to my arms but to an outline of my arms one-fourth inches around my arms, so I’d have freedom of movement to punch at the sky when I wanted, gesture at the help when I wanted.”

“Julietta,” I whispered.

“Sí.”

“Code red,” I whispered.

She took the polish, and she untwisted the tiny white cap.

“The universe hands you coins, and you spend them,” my husband said, rubbing my foot into his belly. He held my ankle with both hands and moved it in a slow circle as though stirring a pot. “Or drop them into your coin bucket for safekeeping. I recall times not so distant from where we’re speeding now when those precious coins rained down, from gray, wet cumuluses. I’d but to knock them with an opened palm” (he laughed, his head angling back), “to push them in my wide bucket. They banked off that welcoming rim to resound in chimes louder than those made by the most hollow of holy church bells.” (He closed his eyes, lost in the thought, then opened them again.) “Cut to: aluminum sheets, angled expertly, to direct those coins to my pile now would only grow rusty, sitting silently in the afternoon glare, for there’s a drought come to town that even seeding these gray cirruses wouldn’t fix—oh. The breath blown out by middle-school-aged vapers contains in its evaporating mist more substance than our paltry stratus or nimbus—oh.”

Julietta took my foot away from my husband’s belly and carefully applied the polish. She blew on it until it was dry. Leaning back to balance myself, I lifted my feet up to my husband’s face; he pressed them to his cheeks. His face and hands warmed the tops and bottoms of my feet in a way my Birks could not.

“Will you . . .” he asked. His eyes were closed.

“I’ll make the meat lasagna, yes,” I said, thinking about how I’d surely fuck it up. My problem is not with the plastic wrap the meat comes in. It’s smooth. Run your fingers across it, it feels wet. Press into it with your palm, it’s like soft clay. Hold it up to your nose, you just smell plastic, nothing else. Look at it from a distance, it’s ebullient; it’s like they extracted all the artificial red dye from the Pop Rocks and massaged it into each twisting worm of dead flesh. But after you break the seal, you’re holding animal tissue that has been chopped and whirled in (I’m guessing) one of the copper bowls they use to make the hundreds. I find it hard to hold that.

To be fair, I don’t know if they’re the same copper bowls; they might be different bowls. If they’re not the same, I’ll say this: they’re wasting bowls. Yes, the molting turnover rate’s high, but there’s always downtime, because there are only, at one time, so many awake runners. That’s something to look into on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, or every other Sunday, when I’m not with Julietta. World below, hear this: I am going to make sure we’re repurposing those copper bowls.