All New York Bows to Miss Manhattan

Chelsea

On 22nd street, in Chelsea, Audrey Munson discovered that every automobile in New York City was listening to her at the same time.

Open Rolls Royces collecting falling snow where they sat by the curb, slowly passing Fords, idle carriages with horses disingenuously considering the snowbanks in front of them—all were listening very carefully to Audrey Munson and trying not to be caught.

She pulled her furs close about her neck and retreated farther into the bright orange island under the marquee when a Model T drove slowly by, its headlights looking everywhere but at her. It turned reluctantly around a corner and Audrey fancied she could hear it idling by the curb. She turned and peered through the glass doors into the empty lobby, where a ticket attendant stood by a velvet rope.

Audrey crept even closer into the corner, away from the whirling snow, and approached a small stone relief carved in the wall next to a film poster.

She leaned in and whispered, “I am hideous.”

A darkness presented itself between Audrey Munson and Manhattan; or between Manhattan and itself.

Madison Ave.

On Madison and 40th street Audrey Munson had dinner with a director. They sat farthest from the windows.

“What are you looking at, Audrey?”

“Do you ever think about color, Mr. Straus? A man like you I’d imagine must forget about color. I bet you finish a picture and then are simply amazed by a tulip.”

“Sure I think about color. I like flowers. I’ll get you one. What are you looking at?”

“I feel like I’m being watched.”

“That’s because you are being watched. You’re Miss Manhattan.”

“I hate that, what an awful phrase. How could I be Miss Manhattan? My parents were French.”

“So you want to make a color picture?”

Audrey Munson said nothing.

Indeed it seemed to the director that every guest in the restaurant bent slightly toward them like apples sagging toward the Earth. Some were looking too. All were listening.

“You want to make a color picture?” Mr Straus repeated.

“No. Maybe. My skin is so pale.”

“Snow White’s skin was pale. Worked for her.”

“No it didn’t.”

“Why do you bring up color pictures then if you don’t want to make one? If you really gunned for it, they’d make it happen. We’ll put cartloads of tulips in it. What are you looking at, Audrey?”

“Tulips, which drive men mad.”

Audrey spoke quietly, as though conversing with someone the director could not see.

“What?”

“Tulips. We could make a color film about tulips.”

“A documentary?”

“Not a documentary.” Audrey smiled. “A feature. All in color. The Dutch were obsessed by tulips. It could be a sort of multi-chapter film, you know. Follow folks around and show how their lives each got toppled over by a little tulip.

“By a thing of insignificance. Buy a little tiny thing. When you sound out the word, though, it has power: two lips. How romantic. A flick of the tongue, a bit of air up around the forehead and bangs if you’ve got some, and then: a little whisper, sss. Mad for small trinkets they were. Amsterdam had beads in its veins, the hypocrites. I am the tulip, which drives men mad…

“I could write it. I couldn’t be in it. I could only write it and maybe help you with directing it. But really it would probably not make its money back. It would have to be a labor of love. Who could ever care for a tulip, really? Nothing but a blot of color rushing upward, living too long. Just a bit of idiot color. Black and white is better. Dark gauze of old shame. Oh, Mr Straus, I wish they’d stop looking at me.

“Oh, my skin is so pale. I’m hideous. I can’t be in a color picture. Don’t make me be in it, oh please. I can’t even act.

“But ask me to stand still, and oh boy! I’m your woman.”

Innwood Hill Park

In a patch of soil Audrey Munson lay, watching a white sky between the branches of a tall tulip tree.

The tulip tree moved like the boards of a ship, creaked forward and backward. The hill on which the tree and Audrey lay: a soft swelling breast, a precipitous offer.

Audrey Munson watched the sky move. The ocean moves under the movement of waves, and Audrey felt that she was a ship: a caravel that moves faster than a wave.

Suddenly something moved in the branches of the tulip tree. Audrey frowned and peered up. A low sound issued from the leaves, soft, repetitive.

Who? Who? Who?

Broadway

At three o’clock in the afternoon, with the sky an even steel grey, an unlikely pedestrian was crossing Broadway. It lifted its wings and hopped off the sidewalk curb onto the asphalt. A taxi drove by. Another came from the opposite direction, languidly arcing around the pedestrian.

It was an owl.

When a third taxi passed, the bird hooted. “Who?” it seemed to say. “Me? Tryna hit me? You a wise guy?” The barn owl hopped a few more feet then stood still, looking up and around like an beleaguered city-dweller.

Audrey watched from up the street. She wore the collar of her fur coat as close around her cheeks as she could and her hat low.

A hot dog stand on the other side of Broadway was surrounded by hungry people gripping coins tightly. A passing businessman eyed them mistrustfully. A crack of thunder rolled overhead. More cars drove by. When they passed, the barn owl ruffled its feathers, and hopped forward.

By now it was in the middle of the street. No one seemed to notice it but Audrey. She nearly fainted when a large truck zoomed right toward the bird and seemed to hit it, but when the truck passed, the barn owl emerged unscathed and unperturbed.

Audrey wanted to run to the owl, clap her hands and send it flying away. She marveled at the bird's presence. How could a barn owl have found its way into the middle of New York City? There were no owls, so far as she new, in Central Park. It must have come from a different borough.

Against the pavement, the steel and the stone the owl was terribly beautiful. Precious and naked, Audrey thought.

It finally, as if by accident, reached the far side of Broadway, hopped up on the sidewalk, and strolled into an alley between two tall theaters. Just before disappearing, the barn owl seemed to glance back at Audrey.

SoHo

In a courtyard between four very tall cast-iron buildings in the direct middle of SoHo, Audrey Munson emptied the contents of a shopping bag into a sewer grate. Not directly into the grate, but into a thin stream tumbling from the alley through a gentle channel cut into the sloping pavement. Cross-legged upon the damp gritty ground, Audrey watched white drops strike the water one after the other, beading up and beads stretching with the momentum of the stream before slipping between the grate bars and vanishing. Everything glinted a different million ways under rows of lanterns, electric and kerosene, winding upward along the four fire escapes surrounding the central shaft of rainy air.

Somewhere high above, a figure shook out a rug.

Somewhere high above, a little baby whined into the rain, left forgotten in its fresh-air crib.

Somewhere high above, the smell of burning bread drifted out of a window, along with shouts from children, and a caged and giggling macaw.

Somewhere high above, a crack of lightning shot through the dark.

Somewhere high above, clouds were bunching up, fused by reflected orange light from the stirring nocturnal streets.

Somewhere high above, a radio blasted news about the pictures.

“…Audrey Munson adorns yet another façade, and this will not be news for anyone living in the vicinity of New York City, where her impeccable profile and fine pale marble skin stand astride every pedestal erected in the past decade. Controversially, she can be seen in a forthcoming picture in quite the same state that you may see her in the park; that is to say, in the slender suit God gave her. All New York bows to the real Miss Manhattan…”

“All New York bows to the real Miss Manhattan,” Audrey whispered. She let the whisper drop into the stream along with the mercury beads, and listened to it disappear into the grate.

Straus Park

At the edge of a small landscaped park separated from Broadway by a tall wrought iron fence and a few yards of sidewalk, a group of tourists hastily silences their cellphones upon the request of an increasingly impatient tour guide.

“Thank you. And here we have a memorial to the director William Straus by Henry Lukeman, in beautiful black stone.”

“What kind of stone?” somebody asks. The guide pretends not to hear.

“Can anyone tell me who modeled for the sculpture? I’ll give you a hint: since the beginning of our tour yesterday, you’ve seen her about three dozen times. No? Not surprising. She’s largely forgotten today. Audrey Munson. I’ve got a nice quote from her somewhere. Munson passed away in 1996 at 104 years old, after sixty-five years in the St. Lawrence State Hospital for the Insane, having survived the complete dissolution of her career and a suicide attempt in 1922 from mercury poisoning. She was at one time the most famous woman in New York City, known as the ‘American Venus,’ and ‘Miss Manhattan.’ I’ve got a really good quote somewhere.”

The tour guide rummages through every possible pocket with growing frustration.

One young man leans over to the woman next to him and whispers.

“She’s beautiful.”

“Got it!” cried the guide, in triumph. “It’s a good quote. ‘What becomes of the artists' models? I am wondering if many of you have not stood before a masterpiece of lovely sculpture or a remarkable painting of a young girl, and asked themselves the question, 'Where is she now, this model who was so beautiful?'

Okay. Well, let’s get going. I think it’s going to rain.”

A large bird flitted from one tree to another. A roll of thunder echoed overhead.

Innwood Hill Park

On a stone the size of a child’s crib, in a patch of soil encircled by cobblestone, is inset a plaque which reads,

“This boulder marks the spot where a tulip tree (Liriodendron Tulipera) grew to a height of 165 feet. It was, until its death in 1938 at the age of 280 years, our last living link to the Reckgawawanc Indians who lived on this island.”