Dorothy on the Rocks (9 page)

“Oh my God,” I say, glancing at the clock. “We've got to fast-forward. It's five to eight.” I rush to the bathroom. “I'm going to be late and Dee-Honey has about had it with me; I can't keep her waiting again.” I turn on the shower and step in. I start to soap up and Jack slips in behind me.

“I'm doing the Blue Fairy in
Pinocchio
,” I tell him squeezing some shampoo on my hair.

“
Pinocchio
the one with the cat in the boot?” he asks.

“Didn't you ever see a Disney film?” I ask. “Pinocchio is the wooden boy whose nose grows when he lies.”

“And what does the Blue Fairy do?” Jack asks running his hands down my back and massaging the small section above my pelvis, which indeed feels tight and I wonder how he knows that.

“After Pinocchio learns his lesson, the Blue Fairy turns him into a real boy,” I say.

“Hmmm . . . must be fun for Pinocchio. I thought this was a kid's show.”

“She hits him on the head with a wand. It's not like a
Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson
moment.”

“Your chakra feels tense here,” he comments as he deepens and intensifies his touch.

“Really? I didn't even know I had a chakra there.”

“Well you do, and it's hard as a rock,” he says, kneading it gently with his thumbs.

“I've got to get going.” I turn and wrap my arms around Jack's neck. “Thanks.”

“Just tell me one thing,” he says.

“What?”

“Where the hell did you learn to play pool like that?”

“My brother taught me when I was ten,” I say, stepping out of the shower and grabbing a towel. “He was stuck with me one summer because our mom was away. He was eighteen. Every evening we went to the local pool hall and got hot dogs for dinner and played pool. I liked the symmetry and I loved being with my big brother.”

“Sounds like a nice guy.”

“It's funny, we barely even speak now, but that summer we were pool hall buddies, hangout friends, and by
the end of it, I could whip his butt and he loved it. He thought I was a natural, and I thought he was the best big brother in the world. We hustled everybody in town.”

Jack leans down and kisses me sweetly and then hugs me close. “So Pinocchio has a happy ending?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Well, he gets to be a real boy and maybe one day he finds a real girl,” Jack whispers in my ear. “That's a very happy ending.”

“Is it?” I say. “What if it doesn't work out? What if they don't live happily ever after?”

“Slow down,” Jack says, “you'll get your chakra tight again.”

“I just don't think happy endings are what they're cracked up to be,” I say, “like we're always looking for a happy ending?”

“And always finding them,” Jack says.

“What do you mean?” I ask, brushing my teeth.

“Well, we had a nice evening together and that was a happy ending to the day, and you'll make Pinocchio a real boy and the kiddies will clap and that's a happy ending, and I'll sell a couple of cars today and that's a happy ending.”

“Hmmm,” I slush some water around in my mouth and spit.

“And now you're teeth are dazzling white and you look beautiful and I'm going to kiss you,” Jack says, leaning toward me. “And that's a happy ending.”

“Oh, I see, it's the little things.”

“Yeah, little things like this,” Jack says kissing me gently and then pulling me close. The phone rings in the other room and the machine picks up. It's Dee-Honey.

“Mags, we're on the corner, honey,” she announces. “Maybe you're on your way out the door.”

“Gotta go,” I say to Jack, “got to go make magic.”

Jack grabs me and kisses me goodbye. “Happy ending,” he says with a wink as I dash out the door.

B
UT WHAT
IS
a happy ending, I wonder as I rush out of the apartment. Is it an ending in which everything turns out fine? When the lasagna doesn't burn and the potatoes are done on time? Or do the stakes have to be higher for a really happy ending? Is it the safe end to a difficult journey fraught with life-threatening events that one survives against all odds? Does a happy ending have to be a miracle, or can it be just a pretty sunset at the end of the day and a simple kiss goodnight?

A car horn honks and Dee is waving from the van as she pulls up to the curb. Randall Kent rolls down the window.

“We had to circle the block. Where have you been?” he says getting out and letting me crawl in between him and Dee.

“Sorry,” I say, “I had a terrible time finding my keys. You know how you leave then someplace and the next minute they are nowhere to be found. I should keep them around my neck.” I don't know why I lie all the time. I don't know why I can't say I had an overnight guest and we had a beautiful morning of lovemaking and I happen to be a little late. Actually, I do know why: lying is easier.

“Put the keys in a special place,” Eddie yells from the back. “I always put mine in a dish next to the refrigerator and they are always there. I also have an extra set sewn into the lining of my knapsack, and then my super has a set and my neighbor on the third floor. So if I lose them, I can always get into my apartment.”

“I wasn't trying to get in, Eddie, I was trying to get out,” I say over my shoulder.

“Aren't we all dear?” Eddie says with a flourish and takes a long drink from his thermos. And off we go to the land of make-believe.

“R
EALITY IS INDISPUTABLE
,” Jack says, squeezing a wedge of lime into his Corona Extra. We're having dinner at a village bistro on West Tenth Street with my friends Annie and Ray.

“Whose reality?” I ask, taking a bite of a deep-fried mozzarella stick.

“Careful,” Ray cautions. “Those things are hot.”

My mouth screams in pain. I take a long pull off my Rolling Rock and try to act nonchalant. But the indisputable reality at the moment is that my tongue is singed.

“Are you okay, Mags?” Annie asks.

“Fine,” I answer and toast her with my beer. “You know me. Tough as nails.” I reach for another stick of mozzarella to prove my point. Jack stops my hand midair.

“Here let me.” He takes the stick and blows on it and then hands it over. I feel like a three-year-old. “There, Sweet Pea, now try it.”

Ray and Annie both look up at the same moment and I know what they are thinking:
Did he actually call her Sweet Pea?

One side of my brain goes, “Ugh” to Jack and “Don't patronize me” and “Stop calling me Sweet Pea.” The other side says, “Please stay with me and blow on my food forever.”

“Reality is relative,” Annie says, getting back to the discussion at hand. Oh boy, I think, here we go, treading down the slippery path of metaphysics—not my strongest subject.

“Relative to what?” Jack asks.

“Circumstances,” Ray says nibbling carefully on a mozzarella
stick. “A blind man's reality is considerably different than a sighted man's.”

“Why?” Jack goes on. “You're living in the same physical world—subject to the same laws of nature.”

“Yes, but I, as a sighted man, don't need a white walking stick or a Seeing Eye dog to negotiate the topography,” Ray explains. “My reality is that I can drive a car. A blind man's reality is that he needs someone to drive it for him.”

“But the reality is the car must be driven. How it's done is irrelevant,” my young hero asserts.

“The how is utmost,” Ray pontificates with glee. “The where and the when are facts; and, yes, indisputable. But the how and the why are fraught with variables and therefore subject to dispute.”

“And what's the other thing of the five things, you know, in journalism?” I ask, trying to hold on to my place in the discourse.

“Yes,” says Ray.

“Yes, what?” I ask.

“Yes, what is the other thing. How, when, where, why, and what, and all of it in the first paragraph,” Ray explains ever so slowly to me, the three-year-old with the badly burned tongue.

The meal arrives. Chicken wings, well-done fries, and another Rolling Rock. I'm starving, but have go to slow because of the tongue situation.

Ray and Annie have been together for years. They never married, but by now qualify as a common-law couple. They are both smart and work for public radio and have an exotic bird named Ulysses who bit me the first time we met. Annie said it was because Ulysses thought I was patronizing him when I asked if he wanted a cracker.

Annie and I met doing summer stock twenty-some years ago. I
was the girl in the bib overalls painting sets and setting the props and hitting the high notes and Annie was the dark-haired ingénue who sang off-key but could dance like crazy.

“Well, age is indisputable,” Jack says. “You can't argue that.” I almost bite my already damaged tongue. The last thing I want to discuss is the indisputable properties of age with someone under forty. I signal the waiter.

“I'll have another R-r-rolling R-r-rock,” I say with a slight stammer. My tongue is rebelling against the lousy treatment I've been giving it. I can't say that I blame it.

Ray, the intrepid, charges into the age issue. “I have to disagree. Age is indeed relative.”

Christ. Where is my beer? I toy with my fork and contemplate thrusting it into Ray's larynx.

“There is physical age, emotional age, perceived age,” he continues with the kind of reckless certitude that comes with an Ivy League education. “One is only as old as one feels is a cliché, yes, but it is absolutely true. You cannot measure age with a number.”

I've noticed this argument becomes more and more emphatic the older and older the arguer gets. It's a syndrome known as denial. Ray, in this case, will be fifty-one on his next birthday, so he is adamant in his stance as he glares across the table at my twenty-eight-year-old-stud-muffin boyfriend, who is smiling indulgently at him.

“All right, Ray, I'll let you have this point because I don't want to risk your blood pressure going any higher,” Jack says good-naturedly. Annie laughs and pats Ray's hand.

“The middle-age crisis is a terrible thing. We better get going. I have to be up early tomorrow.” Annie motions to the waiter for the check. I take it from him when he offers it.

“My treat,” I say. “I just booked a national commercial, so please let me be the
indisputable
hostess of this soiree. Besides, I played the Blue Fairy in
Pinocchio
today, so I can make all your dreams come true if you're nice to me and don't argue.”

T
HAT NIGHT
I
WAKE
up with a start. I look at the numbers on the clock—2:30 a.m. The light from the building next door is bleeding through my blinds so I get up and start to close them tighter, but instead I look out into the back courtyard. Most of the windows are dark and the people inside sound asleep, as they should be. There is a light in the third-floor window of the building across from me, the shade is drawn and I can see a shadow moving back and forth across the room—another insomniac passing a sleepless night. I watch as the shadow moves through the apartment. I'm not really an insomniac. I usually sleep well, but now and then I have my bouts of wide-awake nights. When I do, I typically rummage through the kitchen looking for some carbohydrates; a bagel with a slab of butter or a bowl of cereal usually puts me out. But tonight I stand at the window, comforted by the fact that someone else is awake and pacing the hours until morning.

Jack dropped me off after dinner, saying he needed to get back to Queens for an early morning appointment. I did not entreat him to stay. The conversation with Ray and Annie was unsettling. What are the properties of age? What does it mean to be involved with someone younger? Does it mean I'm immature? Does it mean I'm afraid of commitment, or am I just looking for my very own “real boy”? After all, I am the perpetual ingénue. I can be anything as long as I have the right wig and makeup. And where is this relationship going and does it need to go anywhere? Can't it just be?

This train of thought is making me sleepier than a bagel and butter. Bixby is stretched across my pillow. I pick him up gently and put him on the foot of the bed. I turn on the radio. It's late-night talk on WABC. The caller is discussing an encounter he had with a flying saucer on a highway in northern Oregon. Bixby settles into the bend of my knees and the next thing I know it's eight a.m. and my phone is ringing.

The machine clicks on and I hear Jack's voice. “Hey, Sweet Pea, wake up. I miss you. Sorry I took off last night. You and I have to talk. This is getting a little crazy.”

I throw the covers off and stumble toward the phone, but I'm too late. He has already hung up. And what can I say to that: “You and I have to talk”? Those are never good news words. In my experience, those words are rarely followed by words I want to hear.

And what does he mean “Sorry I took off last night” like we had a fight? We didn't have a fight, did we? He said he had an early appointment and wanted to be home in Queens when he woke up so he could get dressed and get on the road. Or was that a cover for the fight he was having in his own head about us—about where we are going and why? They were like the thoughts I had standing at the window in the middle of the night. Had Jack been standing at his window in Queens? I begin to ruminate until I look at the clock. It is later than I thought. I need to get a shower and get to my rehearsal session with Thomas. There is no time to ruminate now so I will have to ruminate later.
Ruminate
being another word I don't fully understand, I make a mental note to look it up the next time I'm near a dictionary.