Little Elvises (31 page)

“
American Dance Hall
,” she said, sounding like she’d been asked the question eight or ten times. “Are you the person I was talking to a minute ago, or some cloud of alien shape-shifters who take turns inhabiting my father’s body?”

I glanced over at her, avoiding looking at the fishburger. “Did you make that up?”

She licked the exposed edge of the dead-white patty and I got prickles in the small of my back. “The shape-shifters? No. They’re all over online games. They’re great avatars because no one knows who you are.”

I said, “Avatars.”

“Never mind,” Rina said.

“So if it wasn’t just the guest stars,” I said, “what else was it?”

“The kids. The ones who were dancing. It was like the first reality TV, if you don’t count the news.”

“Nothing realistic about the news.”

“Did you just change the subject?”

“No,” I said. “I’m being open and unpredictable in my responses. Trying to be an interesting avatar.”

“As I was
saying
,” Rina said, “part of it was the kids. They were just regular old Philly kids, and at first the people who put on the show let in different ones all the time, but after a while they figured it out. The kids at home liked watching the kids on the screen. They wanted to see the same ones all the time. It was like they all knew each other. Like a national clique. They kept track of who was dancing with who—”

“Whom,” I said.

“Thank you for sparing me a lifetime of humiliation. So there was this whole parallel soap opera going on in the studio, and at home kids were calling each other to talk about it all. There were even some stories in
TV Guide
. Did Kenny break up with Arlene or vice versa? Is Eddie cuter than Jack? Didn’t it look like Betty had been crying? And is Corinne really a tramp, or is it just the way she does her eyes?”

I said, “A tramp?”

“This is the late fifties, early sixties,” Rina said. “Girls who got around were tramps.”

“Whereas today,” I said, “they’re empowering themselves.”

“God, you’re old,” my daughter said. “Do you want to hear about this or not?”

“Sure. It’s one reason I brought you along. Your expertise.”

“And the other reason,” she said, “is your girlfriend.” She put the remnant of the fishburger into her mouth and said around it, “And it was really nice of Mom to let me come with you, all things considered.”

“It was,” I said. “How are things with her and Bill?”

“Better.”

“Good,” I said. “That’s good.”

“You are
such
a liar. Do I have mayonnaise all over me?”

“Only the bottom third of your face.”

“Not so bad.”

“And your neck.”

“Do not.” She reached up and swiveled the rearview mirror away from me. “Phooey,” she said. “I’m immaculate.” She looked out the window and said, “Beverly Hills, huh? Guess what. It’s possible to spend a fortune and still live in a dump.”

I repositioned the mirror.

“Who do you think is behind us?” She turned back to check. “The paparazzi?”

“My fan base.”

“The Junior Burglars’ League?”

“So,” I said, “the kids in the audience were watching the kids on the show.”

“You know, we’re going to have to talk about this thing sooner or later.”

“Later sounds good.”

“
Your girlfriend
, you said.”

“I did,” I said. “But it was the way I said it.”

She cocked her head. “And the way you said it was what?”

“I was confused. It was something that popped out because I heard something I didn’t expect, and it confused me for a second. It was a—a blurt.”

“Keep going,” Rina said. “Because so far it doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“Okay,” I said. “Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re on the phone and somebody says about Tyrone, ‘Hey, I just saw your boyfriend,’ and you’d say ‘My
boyfriend
?’ ”

Rina didn’t reply. She was folding the bag the fishburger had come in, creasing it into quarters.

“Well, I mean, wouldn’t you?”

“No,” she said.

I said, “Oh.” We covered a block of Santa Monica Boulevard
and eight or ten acres of jagged emotional moonscape. “Were you ever going to talk to me about this?”

“About
Tyrone?
” She sounded like she couldn’t believe the question.

“What do you think I mean?”

“Daddy,” she said. “It’s not the same thing as your girlfriend, and you know it.”

“It certainly isn’t. You’re thirteen years old.”

“Have you—you know—” She fluttered her left hand in the air. “—with her? Have you?”

“
Later
,” I said. “Later is sounding better by the moment.”

The hand fell into her lap. “Then you have. Oh my God, you have.”

It was my turn not to say anything.

“And you’re telling me she’s
not
your girlfriend? I mean, speaking of tramps. And I’m not talking about her.” She pushed the button to lower her window and then raised it again. “Take me home.”

“Just once,” I said.

“Oh,
once
. Well, that makes everything fine.”

“And she’s the only one. In all this time.”

Rina tore the burger bag in half and said, “I think I want to cry.”

“I don’t know her very well yet,” I said. “But I like most of what I know about her. And I’m telling you the truth. I’ve never been with anyone since your mom and I—”

“Okay, okay. You’re a great guy. You’ve been completely faithful except for this
stranger—
”

“Faithful?” I said. “Rina, I’m not married any more. And she’s not a stranger.”

“Yeah? How long have you known her?”

“Umm. Two days.”

“Wow. Two whole days. I take it all back.”

“It’s not.…” I said, and then I stopped, since it was the blindest of blind alleys.

Rina pounced on it. “It’s not what? It’s not important? It’s not
serious
? Do you think that makes it better?”

“It doesn’t make it anything,” I said. “It may be important or it may not be. I don’t know yet. It happened, and I can’t make it unhappen.”

“But you don’t think of her as your girlfriend.”

“I don’t know how to answer that. She might be. Eventually.”

“I give up,” Rina said. “You don’t even know how you feel.”

“You and, um, you and Tyrone—”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” she snapped. “I’m thirteen.”

I said, “Sorry.”

“Yeah,” Rina said, cracking her window open again and facing away from me as though she desperately needed fresh air. “Me, too.” She put the window down the rest of the way and stuck an arm out, trailing her fingers through the car’s slipstream. “I’m thirteen,” she said again.

“Yeah, I registered that.”

“Going on fourteen.”

“That’s the traditional sequence,” I said. “And you’ll still be too young at fourteen.”

“You don’t have a clue, do you?”

“I was fourteen once. I wouldn’t do it again for all—”

“Fourteen is the year I get to choose,” Rina said.

I looked over at her. “Choose?”

“Who I live with.”

“Whom,” I said, and stopped dead in my mental tracks. “Whom you
live
with?”

“You,” Rina said. Then she shook her head, brought her arm back inside, and put up a
slow-down
hand, beginning over. “I’ll
point at you to make this easier to follow, okay?” She tilted her index finger at me. “You,” she said, and then she thumbed over her shoulder, more or less toward the Valley. “Or Mom.”

An icy wave broke over me. “The agreement.”

“Gee. You do remember.” Kathy and I had decided that Rina, when she turned fourteen, could decide whom she would live with.

“You mean—you could decide to live with me?”

“I mean that I’ll be entitled to make that decision.” She put the window back up and looked at her lap. “Assuming you’d want me, I mean.”

“Well, of course, I’d want you—”

“To live in motels,” she interrupted. “With you and your girlfriend. Or succession of girlfriends.”

“That’s not fair. There’s been no succession—”

“I suppose I could get used to the motels. I mean, you’d have to get an extra room, and I’d
really
want a nonsmoking room. Do they have nonsmoking rooms in motels? I don’t spend much time in motels.”

“That’s good,” I said, trying desperately to catch up with the conversation. “I mean, motels—”

“They’re okay for you,” she said, gathering speed. “I suppose. I’d have to sort of weed my things down to a suitcase or two, and you’d have to buy me a laptop to replace my desktop, and you’d have to stick to motels pretty close to my school, at least when it’s in session. And you’d have to pay my cell phone bills so Mom could get in touch with me no matter where we are. Where are you now?”

“Um … the, the North Pole.” Never until I said those three words had I seen the sheer breadth of the gulf between the way I lived and the way Rina lived. It yawned wider than the Grand Canyon. “It’s not for you.”

A pause almost too narrow for daylight. “Does she stay there, too?”

“She? Oh, her. No. No, she’s got an apartment. I don’t stay with anybody.”

“What about me?” Rina asked. “Could you stay with me?”

I rolled straight through a yellow light. “I, uh—what I mean—”

“That’s okay,” Rina said. “Are we almost there?”

“It’s just a big change—”

“Sure. Sure, I understand. I mean, Mom
said
you’d—”

“My life, the way it is right now, it’s not right for you. I’d have to make a lot of changes, find a permanent place, maybe change a bunch of other things, but—”

“But you like your life the way it is. That’s why you left in the first place, isn’t it? You don’t want the little white house and the fence and the, the kid you have to look after all the time. No, the North Pole sounds great. And your girlfriend. Sounds great. How much farther
is
it?”

“Right up here. We’re not finished talking about this.”

“We are for now,” Rina said, and she sounded exactly like her mother.

The room was
small and intensively air-conditioned. It contained two rolling black leather office chairs and a style-free black-and-chrome table, topped by a flatscreen TV hooked up to a DVD player. Rina took the chair on the right without a word, provoking a curious glance from the young woman who had ushered us in. Rina gave the glance back with compound interest and then turned to study the wall to her right. We hadn’t spoken since we parked the car.

“We pulled everything that came up using the search terms Mr. Whelan gave us,” the young woman said. “Our collection of
American Dance Hall
isn’t anything like complete. Some of the kinescopes have disappeared, some haven’t been digitized, and Art Clay hasn’t made others available to us yet. But we found three appearances by Giorgio and two by the other boy, Bobby, um, Bobby Angel.”

“That’s great,” I said, all hearty enthusiasm.

“I’d never seen any of it until I dug these out for you,” she said. “Gosh, Giorgio was handsome, wasn’t he? Whatever happened to him?”

Without turning to face us, Rina said, “He died in a fire.” She barely seemed to be in the room.

“How terrible. He was so beautiful. I was surprised I hadn’t heard of him before.”

“Did you listen to him sing?” I asked.

“Oh, well, yes,” she said. “That. Still, he could have made movies.”

“He did,” Rina snapped. “Isn’t this supposed to be like a research facility or something? He made three movies and quit acting halfway through the fourth.”

The young woman took a step back. “I see. Well.” She handed me a DVD in a plastic sleeve. “It’s all on here. Just leave it in the player when you’re finished.” She backed out of the room and closed the door.

“New friends are like stepping stones in life,” I said.

“Who cares? This place looks like it cost a trillion dollars, and there’s more information in
Wikipedia
.” She put a foot on the white wall, removed it, and looked with satisfaction at the print of her shoe. “Which is free, as you might remember. This is so
old-world
. Everybody getting rich preserving stuff that’s already getting preserved for free. And most of it’s junk anyway.”

“Speaking of junk,” I said, sliding the DVD into the player.

“What am I supposed to tell Mom? About your girlfriend, I mean.”

“Oh, Jesus. I don’t know. Nothing, don’t tell her anything. It’s not going to make her happy.”

Rina said something rude under her breath. Aloud, she said, “She’s already not happy. I don’t know how a lie is going to help.”

“It’s not a lie. I don’t know yet whether this is important. You could get your mother all upset and three days from now, it’ll be over.”

“And then there’s me.”

“We’re not through talking about you.”

“Says you. Maybe I say we are.”

“You’re too smart for that.”

Rina slid her chair four inches away from me, closer to the wall. “Not everything is about smart.”

“Do you think I don’t know—”

“So, about the girlfriend,” she said, “I suppose you want me to keep quiet until you decide whether the woman is
worthy
of you.”

“That’s not the issue. She’s not a box of crackers. She’s got something to say about it, too.”

“Glad to hear it. But what’s already happened, that’s going to cut Mom up, you know?”

“An excellent reason not to tell—”

“You probably think, because of Bill—”

“I’m not talking about Bill.”

“No,” Rina said. She’d been sitting forward in her chair, and now she leaned back. “You’ve been really good about that. I keep waiting for you to bring Bill up, and you keep not doing it.”

“Listen.” I paused and tried to find words that wouldn’t crank things up again. “You living with me, that’s a different
discussion. We’ll have it after I think about how I can create a space, any kind of space, that would be good for you. But about the other thing, it’s—look, if you were out in a car with some friends, and somebody else drove into, I don’t know, the rear fender of your friend’s car, and the car got kind of dinged up but nobody was hurt, I mean everybody is absolutely okay, not a scratch, just some damage to this other kid’s car, would you tell your mother?”