The Wonder Bread Summer (12 page)

“My hair’s not frizzy.”

“It was. Two years ago.”

Tigger looked over the top of his book as if he were appraising Allie’s hair. “Your hair does look a lot better,” he said.

“Fine. Whatever.” Allie’s hair
had
been frizzy. She had never known what to do with her curls, so she had washed them and brushed them, and the end result was a vibrating head full of wiry red hair. Eventually she figured out that she shouldn’t shampoo her hair—just rinse it, condition it, and run her fingers or a comb through it every couple days.

Penny came out of the bathroom and sat down on the couch between Allie and Jet. “Fucking great bathroom!” she said. “Amazing. Totally amazing bathroom. Huge. Huge fucking bathroom. And there’s a bathtub in there!” She wiped her finger along the bottom of her nose. Allie put her hand on the bread bag and tried to pull it out of her mother’s grip, but Penny wouldn’t let go.

“Let’s go to catering. I’m hungry,” Jet said, and he hoisted himself off the couch and walked out of the room, the empty glass still in his hand. Tigger put down the book and followed. Johnny and John-John went, too. Once they’d left the room, Penny opened the bag, stuck her long red pinky nail in, and did a few little heaps of coke. Allie forced herself to stop keeping track of how much her mother took. This was beyond her control.

“Mom,” Allie said, “do you and Jet really have an open relationship?” The thought repulsed her, but her curiosity was greater than her distaste.

“No! Where did you get that idea? Do I look like someone who would have an open relationship! Please!” Penny unwound the bag and took another hit.

“Uh, well . . .” Allie wasn’t sure if she should give her mother the truth or not. Then she remembered Wai Po saying
A SPARK CAN START A FIRE THAT BURNS THE ENTIRE PRAIRIE
, and decided she didn’t want her words, her story with Jet, to be the spark that caused any fires in her mother’s life.

“Well what?” Penny said. She jiggled her feet and wiped her nose.

“The guy I was working for, Jonas? He pulled out his dick at work yesterday.” Allie hadn’t intended to share this story with her mother, but it felt right at the time, like she were indirectly telling her about Jet exposing his penis.

“Oh honey!” Penny wrapped an arm around Allie and pulled her in for a hug. “Men can be such dorks! Was that the first penis you’d ever seen?”

“No, not really. I had a boyfriend but we broke up.”

“You had a boyfriend?! That’s so exciting!” Penny squeezed Allie again. “So, are you a virgin or not?”

“Not,” Allie said, and she felt herself blushing.

“Sweetie, believe me—” Penny picked up Allie’s hand and held it—“that’s not going to be the first time some man whips out his dick. Now that you’re more womanly you have to get used to ignoring them. Just look away and walk away.”

Allie was stunned to hear that this was a part of the experience of growing into a woman. But she couldn’t say her mother was wrong. In only two days, two entire penises had been displayed for her. It did seem doubly sad, however, that one of them had belonged to her mother’s boyfriend.

“Now.” Penny let go of Allie’s hand and stood. She was still holding the bread bag. “Let’s forget about this Judah’s penis business and go eat!”

“His name’s Jonas,” Allie said, and she followed her mother to the door.

Chapter 7

B
illy Idol and his band were also in the County Bowl dining room that served the performers and their roadies. They were sitting at a round table, like a family, laughing and shouting over each other to be heard.

Mighty Zamboni sat at another round table. They were silent, grunting.

Billy Idol was even more beautiful in person. This, Allie thought, was one of the few advantages to her mother: real live access to her celebrity fantasy. Billy Idol’s eyes were enormous, like giant hooded buckeyes. His nostrils flared on either side of a perfectly centered slice of nose. Of course there was the hair—white as cocaine, spiked up like a sea anemone. And then the mouth, that wonderfully snarling, pulpy mouth. Allie had spent many hours imagining Billy Idol’s curled lips biting into her own lips. And now that he was only a few feet away, Allie was convinced that an encounter with Billy Idol might be like painting Liquid Paper over her memory of Marc. She would only remember Marc had been there when she scratched away the surface.

Billy Idol was holding a fork with something red and runny falling off it while he laughed so hard that he had to push his chair back from the table. He was one of the most joyful people Allie had ever seen. She wanted his joy to rub off on her.

“Are you opening for him?” Allie kept her eyes on Billy as she talked to her mother.

“We’re not
opening
for him,” Jet said. “We’re the first act and he’s the second act.”

“Isn’t the first act the opener?” Allie looked at Jet and smiled. She knew she was being cruel, but she couldn’t help it.

“Not necessarily,” Jet said. “You don’t know anything about this business.” Everyone was silent for a moment. Allie poked at her tamale. It wasn’t half as good as the ones Consuela had made for her earlier. The dining room had a buffet with both Italian and Mexican food. Allie took the Mexican food, just like her mother. A love for Mexican food was one of the few things she and Penny had always had in common.

“Do you know them?” Allie asked. “Can you introduce me?”

“To Billy Idol?” Penny said. “Oh honey, you don’t want to meet him.”

“Yes, I do.”

“We’re not allowed to talk to them,” Tigger said. “Billy said some unflattering things about us in a radio interview.” Tigger had both Mexican and Italian food on his plate. It was heaped high, like a serving platter.

“Don’t even fucking look at them!” Jet said. Allie kept staring.

“Allie, please listen to your stepfather!” Penny said.

Allie laughed. “My stepfather? He didn’t even recognize me! And you two aren’t married!”

“Ah, but Jet and the Queen of Hearts got married in Las Vegas,” Tigger said.

Penny turned to Allie. “The Queen of Hearts is what they call me now that Jet and I are legal. You know all these other women have wanted to marry him over the years—”

“But the Queen of Hearts decapitated the competition!” Jet said, and he did a karate chop in the air.

“Wait, I’m confused. What do you mean you got married?” Allie felt like she wasn’t getting the joke. Her mother, as far as she knew, was married to her father, Frank.

“We were doing a show in Vegas last July,” Tigger said, “and Jet had a little too much to drink and—”

“He thought your mom was this Chinese stripper we met after the show!” John-John said. Jet and the rest of the band, save Penny, laughed loudly. Allie got the feeling they were trying to out-laugh Billy Idol’s group.

“He did not think I was the stripper!” Penny said. “That was a joke.” Penny looked at Allie with frowny concern. “Wipe that worry off your face, honey! It really was a joke. There was this Chinese stripper who was hanging around backstage and everyone kept teasing that Jet thought he was marrying her. But he didn’t. He never even talked to her.”

“Yeah, I only had eyes for the Queen of Hearts!” Jet said. The band burst out laughing again.

“They just love to tease me about this,” Penny said to Allie. “It’s their on-running gag.”

“So you two really did get married? Like a serious, legal commitment?” Allie felt nauseous. Could she and her mother be so distant that Allie didn’t even know she’d married—
again
—a year ago?!

“Of course. It’s totally legitimate and the hooker wasn’t even in the chapel.” It appeared that Penny had forgotten she had ever been married to Frank, even though the evidence of that relationship was sitting right beside her.

Jet shrugged his shoulders, still laughing, then hunched over his plate to eat. There was a shine on his chin from fettuccini sauce.

A thunderclap of laughter erupted from Billy Idol’s table. Everyone looked over except Jet, who stayed focused on his food.

“Mom,” Allie whispered into Penny’s ear. “Aren’t you still legally married to Dad?” Penny kicked Allie’s foot under the table and shook her head nervously.

“Yes, you are. You’re married to Dad!” Allie whispered again.

“Don’t worry about it,” Penny said.

“What are you two whispering about?” Jet asked. He sounded like an angry old man.

“Billy Idol,” Allie said.

“You’re not allowed to talk about him,” Jet said. “No singer from England is worth talking about! Pretend he isn’t there.”

Allie turned in her seat so she was directly facing Billy Idol’s table. She caught the star’s eye. His lip curled up as his eye clicked shut in a wink. Allie felt a flush of electricity run across her skin. The current was so strong it momentarily wiped out any anguish she had over discovering her mother’s additional marriage.

P
enny took the Wonder Bread bag on stage. Allie could barely believe it. She hadn’t seen a move like that since fourth grade, when Dorothy Lancaster took Allie’s Malibu Barbie, insisted it was her own Malibu Barbie (once upon a time, they each had one), and carried it around everywhere at school, tucking Barbie into her armpit as she leaned over the desk to write.

Allie stood in the dusty dark of the wings, watching the show. The salesgirls to whom her mother had given the passes were singing along to every song, standing as close to the edge of the stage as possible. Allie thought she saw tears in one girl’s eyes when the band started playing “Miracle Oracle Lovers,” a song that Allie had always thought was so stupid as to be embarrassing (
. . . the oracle of love has declared the miracle of love within the debacle of . . .
).

Allie turned and left the backstage area.

B
illy Idol was alone on the grubby plaid couch in the lounge where Allie had hung out earlier with Mighty Zamboni. He was reading
Sassy
magazine.

“Hey!” Allie stood in the doorway, leaning in. Her head felt cloudy and wet with nerves and excitement.

“C’mon in!” Billy Idol said, in his wonderfully choppy British accent. “I’m catchin’ up on my literature!” When he said
literature
, it sounded like
lit-tra-chure
.

“Anything good I should know?” Allie asked. She sat on the red puffy chair and tried to arrange her body so that she looked leaner, sleeker—one leg crossed over the other, her head held up as if by a string.

“Ya! If you use a bleedin’ eyelash-curler before puttin’ on mascara it will make your eyes look bigger.” Billy Idol sneered.

“Good one!” Allie couldn’t believe she was actually having a conversation with Billy Idol. She was so in love with him that the chaos, danger, and disasters that had preceded this moment almost seemed worth it, because all that stuff—including the bread bag that she’d love to forget—had led her here.

“You with Mighty Zamboni?”

“No,” Allie said, too quickly. She realized she was embarrassed by Mighty Zamboni.

“But I eyed you over there eatin’ with them.”

“My mother’s the tambourine girl. But she moved away when I was eight. I don’t really know her.”

“The Chinese bird?”

“Yeah, she’s half.”

“So you’re a quarter.”

“Yeah. What are you?”

“White boy,” Billy Idol said, and laughed.

“You dye your hair, right?”

“Oh yeah. I think it’s really a mucky brown or something like that. Makes me look all rock ’n’ roll, don’t it?”

“I like the white,” Allie said. She hoped Billy Idol would talk to her about his hair color for hours. Or talk to her about anything, as the sound of his voice was as beautiful to Allie as the sound of his music.

“I like your red. Funny. A Chinese with red hair. Bloody hilarious.”

“I guess.” Allie smiled.

“I’m goin’ to write a song about you. ‘China Girl with Red Hair.’ ” Billy started thumping out a beat on his black leather thighs.

“My dad’s black,” Allie said.

“You’re fuckin’ kiddin’ me!” Billy Idol laughed.

“No, I’m serious. And I have one Jewish grandfather. He’s dead.”

“You’re a fuckin’ bloody ’malgamation of the whole fuckin’ world, aren’t you?” Billy Idol grinned.

“I guess.” After so many years of following Wai Po’s wishes that she pretend to be white, Allie had never realized how cool her black-Jewish-Asianness was. Now that she saw it through Billy Idol’s eyes, it actually seemed like something to be proud of.

“You’re like the bleedin’ United Nations in one bloody girl-package, are you not?” His grin spread wider.

“Maybe.” Allie smiled. There was silence for a moment. And because she had no idea what to say next, how to keep this conversation running, Allie offered the only thing she thought might capture Billy Idol’s interest longer than her Chinese-black-Jewishness. “Do you want some coke?”

“You got some fuckin’ coke? What’s a China-blackie-Jew like you doin’ with coke?”

“Someone gave it to me. Hold on, I’ll go get it and meet you back here in a sec.”

Billy waved
Sassy
in the air as if he planned to continue his reading while Allie was gone. “I’ll be right here, doll!”

M
ighty Zamboni was in the middle of “Thunder Falls Arcade,” a song with a rolling tambourine shimmer throughout the chorus. Allie positioned herself by the side of the stage, almost in a crouch. The minute the chorus started, Allie ran onto the stage, grabbed the Wonder Bread bag that sat at her mother’s feet, and ran off again, as efficient and swift as a ball boy at Wimbledon. Penny barely noticed the distraction as she was also harmonizing, eyes shut, hair swishing behind her head while she whacked the tambourine in a series of quick little spanks.

Allie’s heart thumped happily as she returned to the room and found Billy Idol still on the couch reading
Sassy
.

“Don’t tell me you’re carryin’ the blow in that bread bag!” He tossed the magazine to the ground and patted the seat of the couch beside himself.

“Crazy, huh?” Allie scooted in next to him. She was so close she could feel the heat off his thigh.

“Give us a peek, will you?” Billy took the bread bag, removed the twisty, let the neck unwind, and looked inside. “You gotta be bloody kiddin’ me? This is real?” He stuck his long, angled index finger in, pulled out a bit, and rubbed it on his gums.

“What do you think?”

“You a bleedin’ dealer? A China-Jewish-blackie bird dealer?” Billy Idol was grinning so big that Allie had the urge to lean over and lick his teeth.

“No. My boss is. Or former boss. I have to return it to him soon. And, really, I shouldn’t give any more away but if you want just a little—” Allie shrugged. How could she let her mother do some and then withhold it from Billy Idol?

“I’ll take as much as you’ll bleedin’ give up!” Billy Idol laughed and the gold cross earring in his left ear shimmied and shook.

A
llie’s head was jumbly and her heart was wobbling around like a top that was about to fall. She hadn’t done any of the coke with Billy, but the longer she sat with him, the more she felt as if she had. Desire was like an oil fire burning in her veins. Other than when she knew she was in love with Marc, Allie had never felt such a strong pull toward another human being.

Billy spun the bag shut and handed it to Allie. It seemed even rock stars had their limits.

“D’you wanna have sex?” He opened his leather pants and pulled out his dick. It was as white as flour, the size of two Babe Ruth candy bars, side by side. Allie wondered if this was how things would be until she hit middle age. After nineteen years on the planet, she had seen a total of
zero
live dicks in her life. Then she turned twenty and was introduced to Marc’s. And now, in less than forty-eight hours, she had seen three more.

The difference between this display and the previous two was that Allie was happy to see this penis. “Yeah. If you do. You don’t have VD, do you?” She dropped the bread bag on the floor and waited. Because Allie had only been with Marc, she wasn’t sure how these encounters usually operated.

“I don’t have any venereal diseases that I know of. But the worst anyone can get is gonorrhea and my blokes tell me you just take some antibiotics for that and, bam, it’s gone!” He pushed his leather jeans down like a snake shedding a skin.

“I don’t have my diaphragm,” Allie said, with a little panic in her voice. She hoped they could still make this work.

“No worries, doll! I got me willie snipped so I’m only shootin’ spit!” Billy kneeled on the gritty couch beside Allie and unfurled her curls with his finger. Within seconds, she was naked, too, and they rolled, bounced, and flipped around like dolphins in a tiny, shallow tank. It certainly wasn’t the greatest sex Allie had ever had, but it was the most exciting and, strangely, the most joyful. It was as if Billy Idol were the happiest man on earth, and she, Allie, was able to feed off it if only for those few minutes.

Afterward, Billy Idol lay on his back and patted his belly for Allie to lie on top of him. “That’s nice,” he said, and swirled his hands along her back and down to her ass.

“I can hear your heart beating.” Allie wished she could record it and carry it around with her. It was a beautiful heartbeat, deep and powerful. Sexy.

“I must apologize to you, darling. We had beautiful bleedin’ intercourse and I never even got your name.” Billy ran his palm along Allie’s face. He stuck his finger in her mouth, swirled it around, and then pulled it out.