Closet Case (Robert Rodi Essentials) (22 page)

“Done.”

“We’ll have a big Italian dinner. I found a wonderful new place that delivers in just half an hour, and throws in a red-checked paper tablecloth.” Once again she put down the phone with a clunk, and he heard her call, “
EEEEE-
MIL, IT’S YOUR
BOYYYY
-FRIEND.” A moment later the music started up again.

Seconds passed before he heard the clomp-clomp-clomp that could only mean Emil was bounding into the room. He was enjoying this; it was so seldom these days that he phoned anyone who didn’t have a hold button. This eavesdropping-by-permission was kind of a kick.

“Hello,” said Emil, slightly winded. “Lionel?”

“Yeah, hi,” he said, sitting down at the kitchen table and slipping his legs into a pair of khakis. “Listen, before I say anything else, I have to ask: Is your aunt really exercising and smoking at the same time?”

“Yes,” Emil said matter-of-factly. “She’s wearing her red pumps as well.”

“Are you boys talking about me?” Nancy said from somewhere in the thick of the music.

“Lionel is wondering how you can exercise and smoke in high heels,” Emil replied.

“I didn’t say anything about high heels,” Lionel protested while tucking in his shirt.

“She doesn’t mind. Lionel, I’m sorry, I really cannot talk, I —”

“Oh, don’t say you’re busy! My sister’s band is playing at a club near Wrigley Field and I was hoping you’d come join Yolanda and me. It’d be okay if you’re late. We can go out for a drink afterwards.” He looped his belt through his pants.

There was a long, disco-paced pause. “Yolanda, you say?”

“Yeah, I thought you might get along better this time.”

“Lionel, thank you, but I’m very busy, not just tonight, but for the next week. I’m studying for a big chemistry exam and must not be distracted. I miss you, my friend, but Uncle John is paying dearly for my schooling, and it would be rude of me to shirk my responsibilities — especially while I’m living under his roof.”

“It was just an idea,” Lionel said, fastening his belt buckle. “Another time. I miss you, too.” He stumbled over those last words; he still felt them a little too keenly for comfort.

“I assure you we’ll get together soon. Good-bye till then.”

“Yeah. Later days, buddy.”

He hung up, slipped into his Weejuns, and started for the stove. The pot of water hadn’t even begun boiling; he hadn’t set the flame high enough. Irritated, it switched it off entirely. He’d just grab a McSomething on the way to the club.

He headed out to fetch Yolanda, but just as he did so she opened his door and came sailing in, sporting a black miniskirt, black boots, and a black leather jacket over a red halter top. A minuscule purse swung from under one shoulder as she attached one final earring. She looked phenomenal. What difference, he had to wonder, would an extra four hours have made? — But instinctively he knew: she’d merely have worked through seven or eight more outfits before settling on one.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “Can you get Spencer back in his cage for me?”

“Of course,” she said, and headed for the kitchen. “That is why I came up. But if he scratches this leather, you owe me a month’s salary.”

He followed her, smiling. “You look like a slut.”

“We are going to Metro. I
want
to look like a slut.”

“What would Bob say?”

“I cannot imagine.” Spencer spread his wings and danced at the sight of her; she scratched his head, then took him on her forearm and steered him back into his cage. He cooed and gurgled at her.

“I called Emil and invited him along,” Lionel said. “But he can’t make it.”

“I could have told you that,” she muttered as she brushed Spencer’s fine white dander off her sleeve.

He cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

For a moment, she looked almost stricken; then she swept a strand of hair from her face and said, “Well, it is such short notice, isn’t it?”

The clock caught his eye and he felt a jolt of alarm. “Oh, damn, we’d better get going,” he said, grabbing his jacket. “Parking’s going to be
hell
.”

As Lionel entered the lobby of Cabaret Metro, he was struck with wonder at the mysteries of the aging process. No one had ever come to him and said, “You are now too old to frequent clubs any longer,” nor had he ever
felt
himself too old to do so, and yet here was, suddenly realizing that, like Yolanda, he hadn’t stepped foot in the place in years, and that there was a very good reason for that.

Had he really ever been as young as the people surrounding him now? They were so eager to appear cynical and hip, having transparently contrived to wear clothes so ragged that they would surely have collapsed in a heap at their feet, had they not been held in place by huge, zipper-laden, studded leather jackets. These kids had shaved their heads into the most flagrantly affronting patterns, as though they’d spent years defying authority and flouting convention, and all the while the freshness of their skin was giving them away, letting all the world know they were at most a year or two out of some broad-lawned, pampered, collegiate womb. They leaned against the walls, embossed by cheap jewelry, smoking the cheapest cigarettes imaginable, and pretending to be ever so disappointed in the entire fucking world.

No wonder Greta had begged him to be here tonight. All the women in Terrible Swift Sword were either past thirty or on the cusp. God help them when they got onstage with their crow’s feet and sagging breasts, to screech about Jesus to a crowd of puppy nihilists whose idea of sophistication was to denigrate everything within fifty paces through puffs of acrid smoke.

Lionel wished he had dressed differently; he must look ridiculously out of place in his floppy jacket and polo shirt. Why not just don an ascot and spats, and be done with it? Yolanda, however, was garnering lots of stares in her “slut duds.” After all, a striking woman was a striking woman, whatever her age. And despite her diminutive stature, she knew how to walk like a statuesque beauty — slowly, but not deliberately, extending each leg casually as the opposite hip swayed gently away from it. And every third or fourth step, she gracefully tossed her head a little, sending her hair into an intoxicating jumble around her face. The Girl from Ipanema could not have sauntered more perfectly. Yolanda would in all likelihood still be able to grab a crowd’s attention this way when she was seventy.

They squeezed up the stairs to the mezzanine level, where, Lionel seemed to remember, they could get a better view of the stage and dance floor. The place was crowded, even though it was a weeknight; Lionel almost griped, “Don’t these kids have
jobs
?” but it was so uncannily like something his father would say, he let it drop and went to get some beer.

He came back with two opaque plastic cups filled to the brim with a nameless tap brew. He handed one to Yolanda, who had found two chairs and propped them against a pillar so they’d have someplace to rest their heads. She took a sip, then smiled at him with a little mustache of foam. “This is very exciting,” she said, licking it away. “It makes me feel young again, just being here.”

He nodded and looked around him. Here on the mezzanine he was comforted to see a few people his own age — generally seated, of course, and drinking beer, the two favorite activities at any of the sedate parties he attended these days. He began to feel better about the evening. Of
course
the hard-core youngsters would hang out in the lobby; they were here to be seen, more than anything else. He turned back to Yolanda and over the raucous burble of the crowd said,
“Noisy.”

“Wait till the music starts,” she said, crossing her legs, which caused her skirt almost to disappear beneath her jacket. Lionel got a glimpse of scarlet underwear. He surprised himself by being momentarily shocked.

He grimaced and swallowed a mouthful of beer. It was thick and moist and clingy, like pond water. He’d been spoiled, in recent years, by expensive microbrews. “I’m a little worried about Greta,” he said. “Funny, we’re not close or anything, but this is the first chance she’s had to really prove herself, and I’d hate to see it go badly.”

Yolanda patted his thigh. “She is a big girl.”

“In some ways. In others, she’s just a kid. She’s always resisted conformity, but I don’t know it that was out of fear, or — well, you know about my pop. He’s a little intimidating. He intimidated my brother right out of the state.”

She took another sip of beer and licked her lips. “I do not know what you mean, exactly.”

He shrugged. “Well, school was hard for her, I remember — she wasn’t bright — and she used to bring home these terrible report cards and Pop would blow up at her. They’d have these incredible arguments, and she’d always take the stand that grades weren’t important, who cared if she flunked out, she was going to be an artist.”

“Yyyyes,” said Yolanda, trying hard to follow him.

“So I’m wondering if she really wanted that, or if she just painted herself into a corner — was all this just a defense she adopted because Pop was attacking her, and now she’s stuck with it? Maybe to the point she even
believes
it. God, I hope not.”

“Yours would not be the first parent accused of ruining a child’s life,” she said, running her finger along the outside of the cup, leaving a little trail in the condensation. “My own mother came close to doing that. From the time I was a girl, she pressured me to become a nun. Any time she made a reference to my future it would be, ‘After you have taken your vows.’”

Lionel raised his eyebrows. “Well? What happened?”

She smiled at him slyly. “I did not take my vows.” She hefted her cup in a toast to herself, and downed a mouthful.

He was distracted by an extraordinarily beautiful youth with jet-black hair and five earrings (all in one ear), who came and briefly stood in front of them while apparently scouring the floor below for a friend — then moved on.

Lionel sighed in longing, then turned back to Yolanda. “And how is old Bob lately?”

“Old Bob? Old Bob is dead.
New
Bob, however, is too busy to see much of me.”

He furrowed his brow. “Really? What’s got him so busy?”

“Meeting with his chieftain friends, mostly,” she said, and she turned away from him for a moment to deposit the empty plastic cup on the floor beside her chair. “They get together and, I suppose, scratch themselves and wave their arms and grunt. Really, Lionel, I would rather not talk about it.”

That’s a switch,
Lionel thought gratefully. For a while there, she hadn’t been able to talk about much else. He finished his own beer and set the cup on the floor. “It can’t be
that
bad,” he said. “I mean, Bob
was
a little flighty before he went away. At least now he —”

“He was ‘flighty,’ as you say, yes, but he did not know it,” she said, more angrily than he’d expected. “And if you told him so, he would have been appalled. Now, however, he
loves
to think he is some kind of irrational, primal man who acts on instinct. I cannot bear it. He does not
talk
to me anymore, Lionel. I think he distrusts me.” She shrugged. “Maybe he distrusts women in general … or anyone who will not howl at the moon with him. Or who will not at least say, ‘What a very good thing it is that you howl at the moon.’”

“So, what are you saying … it’s over between you?”

Before she could answer, the speakers unleashed a cascade of hideous feedback, and Lionel turned his attention to the stage. He could make out Greta’s silhouette posing defiantly behind a guitar. “That’s her there,” he said, pointing her out. He scooted to the edge of his seat.

The beautiful youth with five earrings made his way back to the other side of the mezzanine, where he took a seat alone, turning his chair around and straddling it, his arms resting on the chairback.

Funny,
thought Lionel,
how every time I’m at some public event, I’m always aware of the exact whereabouts of the most gorgeous guy in the room. If not the top two or three.

The youth must have felt Lionel’s eyes on him, because he turned and gave him an inquiring, rather irritated look. Lionel reddened and turned away.

Then the spotlights glommed onto the stage and held fast there, like barnacles. Terrible Swift Sword were revealed in all their Ringling Brothers glory. Greta, Lionel noted with alarm, had bleached her hair and donned a white jumpsuit with buccaneer boots, which made her look something like a reverse-image Emma Peel. She’d drawn a veil over her face — literally drawn it, with what appeared to have been a grease pencil. Already under the heat of the lights it was beginning to run.

“HELLO, CHICAGO,”
yelled the lead singer into the mic. She yanked up the strap of her silk teddy (which she wore above a pair of ancient fishing waders) and added,
“WE’RE TERRIBLE SWIFT SWORD, AND WE’RE HERE TO ROCK YOU!”

Lionel couldn’t believe she’d said anything so mind-numbingly clichéd. He’d have to have a word with Greta about the group’s stage banter.

There was some polite applause, but since almost everyone in the club had come to hear Cakes Men Like, they continued their private conversations through most of the first song in the set, an incredibly dissonant screed whose lyrics, to the best of Lionel’s ability to understand them, seemed to be,

      
Saaa
-tan,
Saaa
-tan, you’re a
looo
-zah,

      
Saaa
-tan, you are out of
luhhhck,

      
Saaa
-tan,
bet-
tah drop your
weap
-ons,

      
Saaa
-tan,
Saaa
-tan, how you
SUHHHCK!

Greta, who was somehow managing to hit a bad chord about every six-and-a-half seconds, clomped around the stage as though stomping out a series of very small fires, tossing around her matted mane like a cat-o-nine-tails. She jumped in the air dramatically and swung around, and as she did so her foot caught on the cord to the singer’s mic stand, which responded by toppling over and hitting the floor with a head-jangling crash. But the singer, undaunted by this, simply threw herself to the floor, pressed her face against the supine mic, and continued singing.

      
Saaa
-tan,
Saaa
-tan, you’re pa-
theh
-tic,

      
Saaa
-tan,
bet
-tah wake up
faaast

      
Saaa
-tan, got no
few
-chah
on
Earth

      
Saaa
-tan,
Saaa
-tan, kiss my
AAAASS
!

It was all fairly typical of the Christians Lionel knew, who preferred to ignore the Gospels’ message of love, mercy, forgiveness, and forbearance in favor of the cosmic soccer match between Good and Evil (with the outcome conveniently foretold, thanks ever so much, Book of Revelations). He found it intellectually barren, ideologically ridiculous, and personally embarrassing. He’d known that Greta treated her own spirituality with something akin to elitism — no one he knew was more holier-than-thou — but to hear her onstage, making a fool of herself in a getup that made her look like a drag-queen Man From Glad — that was different. He’d expected her, now that she’d been given the chance to be heard by so many, to have something positive — or at least less arcane — to say.

And yet, something strange was happening. He looked around him and saw that people seemed to be
enjoying
themselves.
The beautiful earringed youth on his backwards chair nodded his head in time to the unrelenting beat, and smiled so that the pearly perfection of his teeth caught the light. All across the mezzanine, and on the dance floor below, people were beginning to sway, or jump up and down, or whistle.

There was only one explanation: Terrible Swift Sword was so very terrible, people assumed it must be intentional. They were indulging in appreciation of what they thought was deliberate camp, like Spinal Tap, or the Rutles.

Lionel turned to Yolanda, who, he found, already had her eyes on him. He shrugged, as if to say,
I never promised you a good time
. When the song ended, she put her hand on his and said, “Lionel, they are awful.”

Yolanda
had felt compelled to say this. Yolanda, who never said anything bad about anyone. Yolanda, who if pressured into commenting on Hitler, would’ve said, “Not a bad painter.”

“The crowd seems to like them,” he responded blankly.

“Then the crowd is mad.”

And then they were flung into a new song, this one a blistering anti-abortion number called “Mommy Wants Me Dead.” Lionel caught some of the crowd on the floor below whooping in wild pleasure between chugs of beer.

“I wonder if they realize the audience is laughing at them,” he said when the tune had screeched to a halt.

“You must not tell them. It would be a cruelty. Besides, who is to say they would not rather be laughed at, than entirely disregarded?”

“Not headbangers,” he said. “Thrashers aren’t so big on irony.”

The lights dimmed. The stage was bathed in a swirling pink miasma. The lead singer (who by this time had managed to right her stand) cupped her hands over the mic and growled, “
Loah
-wud, my man done
left
me for a town called Sod-
DUMB
.”

Oh, no,
thought Lionel, his heart skipping like a scratched LP.
I should’ve expected this, I should’ve known.

“Whoa,
Loah
-wud,” she continued, wailing like an adenoidal banshee, “how could he
leeeave
me for the
arms
of anuthuh
maaain
.”

Lionel sat as still as a redwood, listening to every mortifying word, every slurred innuendo, every hissed accusation. And in the middle of this sweaty, grimy, interminable tune about two hell-driven, sin-obsessed men who defy every known law of God and nature to commit acts of brutal carnality to the delight of the Devil — Yolanda took his hand and said, “I am sorry, I have a headache and would like to go now.”