Broken for You (24 page)

"Your friend?" Margaret prompted. "From opening night? He cooks, we eat?"

It's about time!
said her mother.
Between you, you can barely open a
can.

"He'll be here at three for an interview."

"Ah. Well. Tell him hi."

On Easter Sunday, some people attend church services. Some get together with relatives, friends, or lovers, and go to brunch. They watch children dart around on spring grass lawns and fill baskets. Others, if they live far from family, might pick up a telephone. But in the Hughes kitchen, it was a Sunday morning like any other. No special rites of rebirth—religious or otherwise—were being observed. There were no chocolate bunnies or jelly beans. The atmosphere was not permeated with the odor of hard-boiled eggs and vinegar. No hymns were being sung. No one was dressed in their ecumenical best.

Wanda, monosyllabic and preoccupied, was slumped against the counter, staring out at the patio and sipping coffee before she headed off to work. Susan and Margaret were still in their bathrobes—flannel and silk respectively—sitting at the kitchen table. Susan was reading the comics with moist eyes; Margaret was trying to study an antiquesguide. Mostly she was fighting off the presence of her mother, not quite formed, a blueberry shimmer hovering just over her right shoulder and leaning in to whisper the occasional aside.

She's nothing but skin and bones!
she continued.
How could you let this happen, Margaret?

Gus was practicing his sun salutes. He was several minutes into his routine and glowing with perspiration when he spoke.

"Wanda, dear, are you feeling all right?"

Wanda swirled the sludge at the bottom of the coffeemaker and then poured it into her cup. "Closings are a bit sad," she said, "especially when you don't have another job to go to."

"You'll get one," Margaret said.

"Of course you will," Gus echoed.

"You're part of this intense family for a while, and then everyone moves on. I've been at this long enough. Years. You'd think I'd be used to it by now."

"Maybe you're not supposed to get used to it," Susan said.

Wanda gulped her coffee. "Well. Anyway. Bye. See ya later."

"Ta," said Susan.

"OM," Gus intoned.

"Break a leg!" Margaret called.

In boca lupa!
cheered Margaret's mother.

Wanda waved to them all, and then she was gone.

She called a sold-out matinee. Since it was closing weekend (actors are reliably indulgent as they near the end of a run, wanting to extend what may be their last gainful employment for months, even years) and since the play was by Eugene O'Neill, the pace was deadly, the running time predictably long.

In between shows, Wanda reminded the actors to please pick up their cues, clear their makeup tables, and take any personal possessions with them after the evening performance. It was a pleasure working with them. Maybe their paths would cross again.

On this particular Easter Sunday—one that coincided most unluckily with closing night—Wanda thought about good-byes. She found opportunities to stand too close to her assistant, realizing with anxietythat all her clothes smelled like cinnamon chewing gum, wet sagebrush, saddle leather.

When it was over, Troy walked her to the car as usual. He carried her things. She'd parked farther up the hill than ever. They were about a third of the way up before she spoke.

"Are you going to the party?"

"Are you?"

"No." They walked some more. The top of the hill came into sight. "I hate closing night parties," she offered.

"How come?"

"Why prolong the inevitable?"

When they got there, Troy held out Wanda's backpack. She took hold of it; neither of them let go. In this light, his eyes were glossy and dark, like Christmas holly. Wanda gave careful consideration to how she'd feel at the end of her life if she never saw him again. True, he was one of those thirty-three proverbial people in the theatre. There was a much more than even chance that they'd work together again, someday, on another show, somewhere. Those odds should have been a comfort. They weren't.

"Stay here," she commanded. "Don't look." She got into the car and changed into her black dress and rhinestone-studded shoes. Troy studied the night sky. She put on her wig and eyeglasses. Troy whistled; he was a very good whistler. She applied thick coats of lipstick and mascara. Troy rolled up his sleeves. She consulted her map to review the directions to tonight's destination: north, an easy five miles or so up Highway 99 to 85th Street, and then due west to Stan's Jazz Records in Greenwood.

When she was transformed into Detective Lorenzini, she slid out of the car and approached the suspect. "Hand over the gum," she said.

Troy complied. He hid it pretty well, but he was flustered.

Now we'll see,
she thought.
We'll see what this boy is made of.

"This is me," she began. "This is what I do when I'm not a stage manager. It's who I really am. I dress up like someone else and visit used jazz record stores all over the city and look for the man who dumped me. I'm still completely in love with him. He's the one who's got my heart, understand? He's the one. You wanna come along, great, you don't wanna come along that's fine too, but this is me. Do you think I'm crazy?"
Troy kissed her.

The kiss started out the way she wanted—aggressive, muscular, businesslike; but he turned it into something else—a beach vacation, a Mediterranean cruise—and made it last much longer than she'd intended.

She disembarked from his tongue, licked her lips, adjusted her wig. "Well?" she asked.

He still had his hands around her waist. His face was very close. "Yes," he said. "I think you're crazy. Yes"—he kissed her again, another slow boat to China—"I want to come along."

This was not the answer Wanda expected, which is not to say it wasn't the one she wanted to hear. "Have you ever heard of Rasaan Roland Kirk?"

"No."

"Get in," she said. And before he could wear away what little was left of her willpower and her lipstick, she left his arms and unlocked the car. "Let's see how you feel about bebop."

She waited two miles for him to say something. When he didn't, she turned on the radio. They listened to late night blues, that old bogeyman of the jazz family tree. Primal, raw, pained, unpretty, it was a good sound track for the scene playing out between them. At the same time, with its slamming rhythms and set forms, it matched the part of her that felt like a stupid bee, pollen-dopey, driven by pheromones from flower to flower just as the ragged-voiced singer dragged her blues-drunk self out of one chord and into the next.

This thing with Troy, whatever it was, was sloppy. An embarrassment. At least her pursuit of Peter kept on the course of a designed madness, one of her own creation.

Chemistry isn't love!
she wanted to shout.
Pheromones don't last forever!

Maybe he doesn't feel it,
she thought suddenly. This was even more awful to contemplate. Maybe she was alone in this hot, insensible haze of attraction. Her eyes slid sideways. She glimpsed his left hand and forearm, daringly available in the space between their seats, producing so much heat that the terrain of his skin pulsed, as if he were a mirage. No. He felt it all right. She wasn't alone.

A dozen times she wanted to stop, pull over, slip out of her scripted craziness and into him. Here he was, after all, due east from her chest and a mere thighbone's distance from her belly. She didn't need a map to find him. She could triangulate his location and get them both out of costume in less than a minute. Getting laid on closing night had been a ritual event ever since she was fifteen. There was no need to break with that tradition now.

But she stayed in character and kept driving. A self-defined seeker, she was genetically and temperamentally predisposed to adopt desperate measures in pursuit of the unattainable.

He probably thought they'd kiss again. He was wrong. She'd put on the whole show for him, let him see how deep it went, how crazy she really was, and that would be the end of that.

They arrived. There was parking on the east side of the street, directly in front. It wasn't until she turned off the ignition that it occurred to her: Peter might actually be inside this very store, this very minute. That was the whole point: finding Peter. It was the hope that had brought her across the country and landed her here, deep in the heart of Greenwood, wearing fuck-me pumps and an evening dress. It wasn't for Troy that she was dressed like this, behaving like this. She hadn't found Peter yet, but that wasn't because he didn't exist. He wasn't some phantom—he was real; she wasn't insane—she was determined, and this might actually be the night. If there was ever a right time for the universe to reward her faith in affirmations, it was now.
I
am going to find him. I am going to find him. I am going to find him.
The words were as true as anything she had ever told herself; her faith in their power was more potent than ever.

"Did you say something?" asked Troy. She reexamined his skin— he was all firm planes now, and clear boundaries. She sniffed the air— diffuse, and cool. His chemical hold on her was gone. The bonds had dissolved. The detective was back.

She smoothed her wig and reapplied her lipstick. "Listen carefully," she said in the throaty voice of her alter ego. "You can watch, you can listen, but you can't act like you know me once we're inside. Are you still sure you want to come along?" "You promised me bebop." She would not be charmed. "Get out. Let's go."
He stepped onto the curb, she got out street-side. The detective noted people strolling the streets—more than she would have expected in this neighborhood at this time of night. They looked happy, overdosed on Peeps and the promise of resurrection.

They went inside. She cased the place—no Peter, not yet—and introduced herself to the clerk. She was just beginning her spiel when Troy sidled over, gumshoe style. He stood next to her and pulled a notepad out of his pocket.

"Good evening," he said. "I'm Detective Bridges. I'll be taking notes on our conversation, just to make sure we have our facts straight, help my partner jog her memory later. I hope that's all right."

The clerk gave a knowing nod. "I know the drill," he said. "I live for
L
aw & Order."

Troy looked to Wanda, his pencil poised. "Detective Lorenzini, please continue. You were describing the suspect."

She stared at him. "You think this is a joke? You think this is funny?"

The clerk paled. "What? Did I say something wrong? Is everything all right?"

"We're investigating a
crime,"
Wanda emphasized to her partner.

"Really, detectives," the clerk rushed on, "I'm sure I haven't seen anyone that fits the description. I'd never lie to an officer of the law."

"Excuse us, please." Wanda yanked on Troy's arm and pulled him outside. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

His expression was teasing. "Are you aware that impersonating an officer is a criminal offense?"

"It's not funny, Troy." He really was a child; how could she not have seen it?

"Subject to fines, punishable by jail time?" He was moving in closer, laughing now. She felt maddened, endangered, because he was just about to capture her.

"I said, it's not funny!" The evening was ruined, her cover was blown. She flung out her arms, stormed around to the driver-side door, and started to open it.

"Wanda," he said placatingly, chasing around to her side of the car. "Wait. I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to —"

But she couldn't hear him. She was frozen in time, on the verge of ascent.

It was a smell that seized her first, a familiar smell that she couldn't name, not quite, other than to know that it was the perfume of comfort and love, and it led her eyes upwind and then she saw him: walking away, going north on Greenwood, a tall, lean pedestrian on the other side of the street, his hair long and pony tailed, his body the one around which her own had surely been molded.

It wasn't Detective Lorenzini's deductive powers that made her know the receding man was Peter, it was desire: ancient, sensual, and born of unshaped memory—the kind that is deeper and dearer than memory sculpted by words.

She called his name. She tried to run toward him, an awkward cartoon in her ridiculous shoes. Tendons, ligaments, ankle bones—forced into impossible anatomical relationships—strained for control, buckled crazily. She heard Troy call her name as she stumbled into the street after the man, that man, the man that got away, but it was cut in two ("WAN!") by the sound of screeching tires. And then she was airborne.