Spanish Disco (4 page)

“I’d rather have imperfection, Cassie. Think about it.”

“I will.”

“Call me.”

“I will.”

“Write me.”

“I will.”

“And no falling in love.”

“Okay.”

“Talk to you soon.”

“Sure.”

“I do adore you.”

“Michael…”

“Ciao.”

I held the phone, listening to dead transatlantic air until the operator informed me it was time to make a call. What had just happened? A perfectly good editor-author relationship had gone up in flames. How could he love me? We’d never met, as he so stubbornly kept pointing out.

In the past, I’d stared at his cover photos feeling mildly like a jellyfish and woozy inside. He was sexy. But he was there, and I was here. It was perfect. No morning chit-chat. No fighting over toilet seat lid etiquette. No one badgering me about my weird hours, my caffeine addiction, my overindulgence in tequila sunrises. No one yelling at me when my gut screamed out over my combined poor habits and I was writhing on the bathroom floor—no “I wish you’d see someone about that.” Michael was my ideal non-lover. And if he thought about it long enough, he’d realize it, too. I’d just let it all sink in to him. Maybe he was having a post-writer’s block orgasm from our most recent phone call.

I turned my attention to the serious pile of Goodwill
clothes amassing on my bed. I hated to shop but realized I didn’t have a month’s worth of clothes to take. Time to hit the mall, then visit my father.

In a place where pink palaces reign, the malls are enough to make a practical woman don a burlap sack. Overpriced is a mantra, and over-the-top is a Boca staple. I pulled up to Bloomingdale’s and forced myself to go through the doors. I am seriously mall-phobic. I think it’s those faintly
Night of the Living Dead
-like makeup counter women. I’m fond of my slightly flawed face the way it is—crooked smile, full lips, and freckled nose included. I even like the tiny scar by my right eyebrow where Billy Monroe stabbed me with a pencil during a second-grade fight. Billy ended up with a black eye. I called it even.

My shopping technique is simple. I head to Ann Taylor and find a shirt I like. Then I buy it in seven colors. Next I find pants I like. I buy three of the exact same pair in the same size, eight. I do the same with shorts. I toss a scarf and a new purse on the pile. Buy two pairs of size-nine shoes that look comfortable. I don’t try anything on. I have them ring it all up. I am out the door in less than fifteen minutes. The Ann Taylor girls see me coming from three stores away and sound some sort of “Bitch alarm.” They steer clear of me ever since I told the manager, “Look, I am about to spend seven or eight hundred dollars. I don’t want any help. I don’t want anyone to talk to me. If you stay out of my way, then I will return several times a year to spend roughly the same amount of money. Deal?” She had nodded, and I’ve been shopping there for four years.

After damaging my credit card, I left the mall and drove to Stratford Oaks Assisted Living Facility.

“Mornin’, Charlie.” I smiled at the security guard in the fern-filled lobby.

“Mornin’, Ms. Hayes.”

I had hoped to be able to really talk to my father, but today wasn’t going to be one of those days.

“Sophie!” He smiled broadly at me and called me by my mother’s name. I hate that I look like her.

“Jack.” I smiled warmly, approaching him, this half-stranger who no longer knew me by my real name most of the time. He looked thinner by the day. They told me he resisted all foods but pie. Why pie? They used to go to some place down in Greenwich Village and order pieces of it after the theater.

“Come here, Sophie. I have to tell you the funniest story.”

I listened to his tales of authors and editors in New York’s 1940s literary circles. My father had worked for Simon & Schuster. I laughed where I was supposed to laugh and feigned shock where I was supposed to feign shock. I had heard all these stories many times before. “Sophie” patted his bony hand and smiled and went along with the whole charade. I waited patiently for a moment when lucidity would peek through like a ray of sunshine streaming down from behind a cumulus cloud. Sometimes I was rewarded, feeling like some people do when they see a magnificent beam filtering down—that perhaps there is a God in heaven after all. Other times, the clouds stubbornly shut out the sun, leaving both Dad and me in dreary grayness.

“Well, Jack, I really must be going.”

“So soon, Sophie? So soon? Our time together is always so brief. I wish your divorce was final.”

“It will be soon, Jack. Then we can be together always.”

The doctors tell me not to go along with his fantasies. “Bring him back to the present,” they say. But I refuse to deny him these afternoons of happiness. He always remembers the same years. My mother and he were dating. It was before I came along. Before she abandoned us both. Before all the heartache.

“I love you, Sophie.”

“I love you, too, Jack.”

The clouds parted.

“For heaven’s sake, Cassie, how long have you been standing there?”

“Only a minute or two, Daddy.”

“Come give your Dad a big old hug.”

I grabbed him tightly, smelling his Royal Copenhagen cologne, rubbing my face against the soft terry-cloth of his blue robe.

“How’s my genius daughter?”

“Just fine, Dad. Guess what?” I said, sitting down on the hassock by his slippered feet.

“What?”

“I’m going to work with Roland Riggs.”

He leaned back in his chintz chair and smiled.

“As if you hadn’t before…but, my God, Cassie, you’ve hit the big time.”

“I know. And I’m going away for a few weeks. To stay
with him while we work on his new novel. He lives on Sanibel Island.”

“Bring me back a conch shell.”

I laughed. “I will. Can you believe it? Roland Riggs!”

We talked for about a half hour. I held on to every clear word. Then I could see him growing tired.

“I really need to get going, Dad.”

I leaned over and hugged him again.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too. And I’m very proud of you.”

“I know, Dad. I know.”

I fought to keep the tears from coming and stood.

“Tell me everything when you return.”

“I will.”

“Don’t forget a thing.”

“I won’t, Dad.” I smoothed the hand-knitted afghan over his legs and held onto his hand one last time.

Then I walked down the linoleum floors of the hallway. Royal Copenhagen was replaced by antiseptic hospitalish clean. “I won’t forget a thing, Daddy,” I whispered. I wished he wouldn’t either.

4

“L
aptop?”

“Check.”

“Bathing suit?”

“Lou, this really isn’t necessary.”

“Bathing suit?” he said, his voice a little more insistent.

“Check.” Lou was going to send me off with the precision of a military operation. We stood in the parking garage of my building, his black Jaguar next to my yellow monstrosity. Looking like we’d just completed a mob hit, we stared into my trunk.

“Pajamas?”

“I brought a kimono.”

“No can do. Pajamas, Cassie. You cannot sleep naked in Roland Riggs’s house. What if there’s a fire?”

“You’ve become a freakish version of a Jewish grandmother.”

“Pajamas?”

“Robe.”

“Well, I knew this would happen. So hold on…” He went to his car and fumbled in the front seat. “Here.” He smiled, shoving a Victoria’s Secret pink-and-white shopping bag at me. Inside was a very tasteful and elegant set of lounging pajamas.

“What? No oversize
South Park
sleepshirt?”

Ignoring me, he continued. “Cell phone?”

“Check.”

“Daytimer?”

“Check.”

“Coffeemaker?”

“Check.” We had decided I should have my own coffeemaker in my room so I wouldn’t have to greet Roland Riggs in the mornings pre-caffeine.

“Coffee beans.”

“Check.”

“Grinder.”

“Check.”

“Double latte with two sugars for the road?”

“No…I figured I’d stop on the way.”

“If you stop, you’ll be late. Can you this once be punctual? Hold on.” Again he bent into the Jag and emerged with a tall double latte from my favorite coffee bar.

“You happen to have a tall, dark, and handsome guy in there who also cooks?” I took the latte and set it on the roof of my Caddy.

“No. But I thought of everything else. That’s why we’re a good team.”

He smiled at me, and we had another one of our awkward moments. I knew he thought of me as a daughter. He and Helen never had children. But she had always been the one with the easy, affectionate gestures. A tall, graceful blonde, with the aura of Grace Kelly, she was the one who bought my Christmas gifts—always something truly personal and perfect. A first-edition copy of
The Sun Also Rises.
An antique cameo pin for my blazer lapel. A tortoiseshell-and-silver brush-and-comb set engraved with my monogram. Helen gave sentimental gifts chosen to show how much she and Lou loved me. Without Helen, Lou faced the daunting prospect of conveying his emotions without her. Since her death, he hugged me clumsily. Mumbled when it felt right. Nursed me through self-pitying moments with visits to our favorite dive bar. But Helen had humanized Lou; they were a perfect pair, and without her he was totally adrift.

“The best team in publishing.” I hugged him. We were about the same height. He patted my back.

“Call me.”

“I will. You’re going to miss me.” I pulled away.

“Oh sure. You after two pots of coffee barking at me over the schedules and covers. Hell, I might actually get some work done with you gone.” He cleared his throat. “You better get going.”

I threw my pajamas in the trunk, donned my Ray-Bans, and took my latte.

“Admit it.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll miss you. Now get going.”

I eased my car out of its tight parking space, waved and was on my way, trying not to think of Michael Pearton. But the mind, even my caffeine-hyped mind, doesn’t work that way. I drove across the Florida Everglades, heading to ward Sanibel Island, and tried—hard—not to think of his voice. But the harder I tried, the more vividly his face and disembodied voice drifted toward me, like a phantom passenger on my soft leather front seat.

I forced myself to think of Lou and
Simple Simon,
which he made me re-read three times. Lou had been impossible since Roland Riggs’s call. Every day he had new instructions. “Hook up your e-mail if you can. Right away. Call me the second you finish reading the manuscript. Tell me what he looks like. See if you can find out if he’ll do publicity for the book. Is he willing to do interviews?” I hadn’t seen him so hyped up by the possibility of a book since he courted movie legend Joan Fontaine to write her memoirs. (She declined.)

“Lou, shut up,” I had said. “You’re making me nervous. He’s just a guy. He pisses standing up like all the rest of you.”

“Sometimes I piss sitting down.”

“You know, Lou, that’s a little more information than I need to know.”

“Christ, I get to hear about every time you have your period. We brace for your PMS like it’s a hurricane cross
ing the Caribbean and heading dead-on towards Boca. You can hear about how I sit.”

I smiled to myself as I drove. Think of Lou and Roland Riggs—was I talking to myself already?—not Pearton. I flipped on my stereo, popped in my Elvis Costello CD and steered toward Alligator Alley while listening to “Indoor Fireworks.”

Alligator Alley is a lonesome, flat expanse of highway stretching from one coast of Florida to the other. As far as the eye can see in any direction is Everglades. Reeds and swamp, the occasional scruffy tree. I presume alligators. And dead bodies. Mafia hits take place in the ’glades. At least that’s what Joe “Boom-Boom” Grasso told me. We published his book about life in the Gambino crime family.

Empty mile after mile of swamp ate at my nerves. I gave up and allowed Michael to invade my thoughts. The mark of a good editor is an anal-retentive mind that never forgets a detail. With my typical obsessiveness, I replayed every conversation I’d had with Michael over the last five years.

So much of what passed between us was banter at first. Indoor fireworks. But somehow, over the years, we had progressed to intimate all-nighters about God (he tried to persuade me to give up my agnosticism), writing, dreams, Freud (we both concurred—sometimes a cigar is just a cigar), and even my father and mother. I forced his face from my mind by singing along with Elvis. Every time I tried too hard to make Michael vanish, he returned to my
thoughts, his enigmatic smile staring up from his jacket photo. I felt my stomach tighten slightly.

Two hours after my departure from Boca, my banana-mobile and I emerged from the ’glades and proceeded toward the island. If you’re into the beach and the sun and palm trees and sand—which I am not—then Sanibel is indeed a paradise. I hadn’t yet spoken to Roland Riggs, but he had given Lou explicit directions to his house. For a New Yorker, any directions that start, “Make a right onto Periwinkle Way” bodes ill.

Driving along Periwinkle, one lane in either direction, I cursed the blue-haired in front of me, steering her Caprice with all the agility and speed of an Indy racer on thorazine. At this pace, I took in Sanibel Island. Dairy Queen. A pizza place. A real estate agency. A shell shop. Not a coffeehouse in sight. No bar I’d consider calling my home away from home. I’d never survive a month.