Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen (14 page)

“You seem to have managed.”

“Damn right,” I say and light a cigarillo.

She's impatient when she does help me get ready.

“What's the big show tonight?” she asks, trying Mama's diamond brooch in different places on my white knitted gown.

“Quit fiddling,” I tell her. “It's too important a piece to wear on a belt. Pin it where it's supposed to go, close to the neckline on the left side.”

With a sigh, she positions it and closes the clasp.

“It's
Siegfried
tonight. Wonderful music, but Siegfried is supposed to be a lithe, handsome, Germanic superhero, and they'll likely cast him with some middle-aged overweight tenor. He's the son of the brother and sister who fell in love in the last opera.”

“Inbreeding,” Tamara declares. “That's how you get idiots. We learned that in Health.”

“Except for gods and heroes. Above the law — even the laws of genetics,” I say as she redoes my eyebrows.

That evening, though, before the curtain goes up, there's an announcement that the singer playing Siegfried has had an accident and will be unable to move around the stage. He'll sing, but there will be a stand-in actor playing Siegfried.

When he appears, it's as if a sigh ripples through the whole auditorium. This is what a Siegfried should look like.

Tamara looks at me open-mouthed.

“He's lip-syncing,” she whispers.

“It works,” I say.

Siegfried
is my favorite of the four operas, but I fall asleep midway through Act One. Tamara rouses me by poking my arm and hissing that I'm snoring. Ricardo fetches me a cup of coffee during the first interval, but I fall asleep again in Act Two, waking only toward the end when Fafner the dragon is killed.

“You're just under the weather today,” Adrian says when we go outside for a smoke during the second interval. “It's so hot I think we all felt as if we were right there in that blacksmith's forge. You weren't the only one falling asleep.”

“I hate people who sleep at operas,” I tell him.

So get this. Sitting in the Seattle Opera House with the Wrinkle Queen snoring away in the next seat. Her mouth open. Little piggy snorts, and then it's like she quits breathing and I can see the two guys sitting next to us looking worried, like they're wondering if she's died. They're watching her more than the dragon that's ranting around the stage breathing smoke and fire. They look at one another and laugh softly when she lets out another piggy snort and we know she's still alive.

Thank God there's just one more opera to go.
Götterdämmerung
. Twilight of the Gods. The Wrinkle Queen says this is the one where the whole stage is on fire at the end.

Sometimes I think she might not make it. After sleeping through
Siegfried
, yesterday was a day off and she slept through most of that and didn't seem to know where she was when she woke up.

I got scared and called Ricardo. He gave her some brandy on ice and sat and talked with her for about half an hour, and she turned back into the Miss Barclay we all know and love. Telling me to get out that swirly dress that makes you go cross-eyed when you look at it, make sure it's not creased and press it if it is, and see that there's smokes and brandy in her purse.

She says she's determined to buy lunch for everyone tonight during the interval.

“I'm tired of packing that picnic basket around,” she grumbles (as if she ever carried it). “We'll have Champagne.”

Ricardo helps me pin the dress around the waist before he combs her hair.

While he's busy with the brush and hairpins, I decide to give Shirl a call.

“Honey, how're you doin'?” Shirl says. I can hear the gremlins in the background. “I'm glad you called ‘cause I was going to call you later.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. Lyle...” She's covering the receiver and yelling. “Lyle, you let your sister have that...I don't want to tell you again...

“Oh my,” she says. “We miss you, Tamara. Anyway, I don't know if you remembered but it's Lizzie's birthday on Sunday and I was thinking it'd be so nice if you
could come home — even for a couple of hours — if Miss Barclay can get along without you...”

“Oh...hey!” I say. “Lizzie's birthday. Let me check with her.” I cover the receiver and count silently to twenty.

“Shirl?”

“I'm here, sweetie.”

“Miss Barclay planned for me to go with her to visit her nephew on Sunday. He lives out of town and she wants me to drive.”

“You're driving her around?”

“Well, it's not far. But a little far to take a taxi.”

“But —”

“It's okay. She's still got her license, and I have my learner's permit. Maybe I can come over a little later in the week. I'd like to get a gift for Lizzie and I haven't had time to go out shopping.”

“Sure, honey...”

“Give those two my love, and say hi to Herb.”

When I push the end button on the phone, it's very quiet. Ricardo is looking at me. I realize he's listened to the whole conversation — my end of it.

“They don't know, do they?” he says.

“No,” I can barely hear my own voice.

“Ricardo...” The Wrinkle Queen is sputtering.

“Not my business,” he says, giving Miss Barclay's do a final spray. As he leaves, I notice him shaking his head.

“You stupid girl,” she hisses at me.

“I didn't know...”

“Stupid. Call a taxi. I'm not about to miss
Götterdämmerung
because you haven't had sense enough to...” She doesn't finish the sentence. “I think I want my white stole tonight.”

“You want a fur wrap!” I yell at her. “When it's ninety in the shade?”

“Don't you question me,” she says, her voice stronger than I've heard it in days. “I happen to be the benefactress, a detail you would do well to remember. All of this cozying up to Ricardo and gallivanting around Seattle. What did you expect? That he wouldn't figure things out?”

“What was I supposed to do?” I ask her. “Stay here and listen to you snoring away all day long?”

“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” She's chanting.

“Oh, drop it.”

“What did you say?”

“I'm calling the taxi.”

Needless to say, things are still tense at the opera house. The Wrinkle Queen doesn't fall asleep in this one. She's too mad. There's the big bonfire with Brunnhilde on her horse riding through the flames. And then the sky castle of the gods disappears. Everything's back to water and the Rhine maidens.

Ricardo and Adrian don't come to find us. No Champagne is ordered, and the Wrinkle Queen has a double brandy during each interval. I end up carrying her white rats, and I feel like everyone in the auditorium is looking at me.

When the final curtain comes down, she glares at me.

“What?” I'd like to throw down her stole and stomp on it.

“You've done your best to spoil it. But you haven't. You can't kill the music. You can't destroy the Twilight.”

I look up at the ceiling of the auditorium and whisper, “Give me a break. Twilight!”

“Don't you be muttering under your breath around me.” She thinks she's whispering but it's loud enough for everyone around us to hear. “I've put up with your lack of consideration, clothes strung all over the bedroom, all that clutter of stuff on the bureau...your hair in my hairbrush...”

“Yeah, well try putting on make-up with a glass full of false teeth sitting on the —”

“For what I'm paying you...”

“Big deal.”

“It
is
a big deal. I'm footing the hotel bill, Ricardo's
my
friend, and you get him to take you out sightseeing with no thought —”

“I suppose we should have dragged you half dead out of your bed?”

“You should have stayed with me. That's what a paid companion —”

“Give it a rest.”

We don't speak to one another on the cab ride back to Pagliacci's.

At least we're leaving in the morning! I shout in my mind. Leaving in the morning!

The bedroom seems impossibly hot and, after the Wrinkle Queen finally falls asleep, hot and noisy with her snoring. I slip into jeans and decide to sit out in the courtyard for a while. I've plunked myself into the big peacock chair before I see Ricardo sitting in the darkness off in a corner.

“Hey,” he says. “So what did you think of
Götterdämmerung
?”

“Lots of fire. Lots of loud singing.”

He looks at me, his eyebrows raised. “Okay, so it was amazing,” I add. “Miss Barclay loved it, I think. She's been dreaming about it for months.”

“Why...” He searches for words. “Why didn't you just arrange with everyone for you to come with her?”

“I guess...she didn't think they would let her leave the nursing home for such a long trip. Her nephew... She has some bad days when she's kind of out of it.”

“And what will you do when she has one of those days?”

“I have her medications.”

Even in the dark, I can see Ricardo shaking his head.

“And your family?”

“They're not my family.”

“Can I persuade you to call them and let them know what's really happening?”

I close my eyes. I don't want to look at anything or anyone right now. Especially Ricardo, who's been treating me like his own kid. Do all gay guys treat you like you're their best friend, part of the family?

“It would all be finished then,” I say. “I'd probably be put back in government care. Go into some crappy group home.”

Ricardo has moved to one of the chairs closer to where I'm sitting.

“It's only a week, Ricardo, the fashion course. Just a week and we'll be back. Nothing's happened to her so far. She'll be fine. She'll just rest in the hotel while I'm off at the course during the day.”

“You want it that bad?” he says.

I nod my head.

“I was going to do some phoning,” he says. “Instead I think I'll do some praying.”

She's packing. Skinnybones. Running around in shorts and one of those little bits of an undervest that teenage girls wear these days. But I don't feel like getting up. All those hours, all those incredible hours of music and drama, I wrap to me. I won't let it be over.

“Are you okay?” she says.

“I...am...wonderful. I've seen the Ring. All of it.” “Except ninety percent of
Siegfried
, which you slept through.”

“Ah...well. At least I got to see what a real Siegfried should look like. Those legs! Now I can die.”

She laughs. She's in a good mood. I get her to help me up. She has my candy-striped blouse and a red flared skirt set out for me. And my straw hat with the red ribbon. Does terrible things to Ricardo's hairdo, but...

“Tell Ricardo I'd like to settle the bill.”

He comes in. Smiling. And gives me a kiss on the cheek. The old marshmallow. I give him a hundred-dollar tip.

“No,” he says. “I couldn't.”

“You can and you will. You've done our hair and fed us and gone out of your way to keep this juvenile off the paths of delinquency.”

Adrian, too, comes over to wave us goodbye. Tamara holds up the scrolled portrait, tied with a ribbon, for him to see before she stows it in the trunk.

And then we're driving north. I'm very tired and I don't say anything when Tamara finds a radio station playing that kind of frenetic music kids listen to today. As long as she keeps the volume low. After all, the Ring is over. Brunnhilde has forgiven Siegfried and plunged into the fire. The smoke has cleared.

I sleep until we get close to the border. Skinnybones remembers to pull over well ahead of time so I can get into the driver's seat. But it's drifted away from me. What to do.

“Put it in gear,” she says. “Keep your foot on the brake.”

My foot doesn't do what I want it to do. My leg is numb.

“It's okay,” she says. “If they ask, I'll tell them I'm just driving for a little while until you're feeling better.”

But the crossing patrol doesn't ask, and I fall asleep again until we're in Vancouver. On Granville Street, heading downtown.

“Where's the hotel?” Tamara asks. “We need the Vancouver map.”

She pulls over and parks on South Granville.

“After the bridge, turn left onto Davie Street,” I say. “We need to go along Davie and then turn left again on Thurlow.”

“Why is it always left,” she groans. “I hate left turns.”

“Then it's a right on Beach, and that's actually just a few blocks along Thurlow, if I remember. The hotel's right on Beach.”

It is one of the older hotels — old even when I first began coming to Vancouver on vacation — with south-facing windows peering out of a veil of ivy.

“Did I remember to tell you I'd like Suite 307?” I ask the desk clerk.

“Yes, ma'am,” she says. “It's all ready for you.”

“Lots of memories,” I say. The elevator with its wrought-iron door, the cream-colored hallway with its wainscotting and worn Victorian rug.

“Look,” I tell Tamara when she's got our bags in. “You can look out the window and see the ships anchored in English Bay.”

“It's great,” she says. “You want to get some supper now? I'm not hungry.”

I can see she has other things on her mind.

“Nor am I,” I tell her, “but I could use a smoke.”

“It's a smoking room. No problem.” A bundle of nerves, she can stay seated for no longer than ten seconds at a time. She paces back and forth, flips through magazines the hotel has left on the coffee table, flicks the
TV
channels relentlessly, checks out the window every couple of minutes.