“I don’t know if I want to – say no, that is.”
“Alice, if something happens…”
“Dennis, don’t worry! I won’t let Quinn hurt me. I think it would be impossible for him, anyway. I promise!”
Blowing a kiss, I was out the door before he could continue the interrogation, running into The Proprietress, who was walking Sammie out on the sidewalk.
“Did you really believe that?” she asked, following as I hurried to my rendezvous spot with Quinn.
“Yes!”
“Lying to your brother – now that won’t win you any gold stars…”
“I couldn’t tell him what I was doing tonight!” I sniped. “At least I was honest about Quinn and me. Surely there are stars for that?”
“Play it through, Alice,” she sighed as I jumped into the front seat when Quinn pulled up.
The Keystone Club was in downtown Berkeley, on University Avenue where it cut off Shattuck. We met the rest of the band and got in through the stage door. No one seemed to care as I slipped in on Quinn’s arm. The club manager gave me the up-down with bagged and bloodshot eyes, and took the cigarette out of his mouth, jabbing it in my direction. “Singer?” he asked Quinn.
“Girlfriend.”
“Umph,” the manager grunted, shrugging. “She’d bring in crowds.” Quinn threw an arm around me protectively when he gave me another appreciative once over.
“What’s your angle?” I spoke up, and Quinn frowned, eyes darting at me.
“Do you sing?”
“I’ve got a voice.”
“Forty bucks – at least three songs in the set; the band gets ten extra a piece.”
“For real?” Quinn demanded. The band members had gathered around when they heard the offer.
“Only if she sings. She gets the forty.” The manager walked off after smiling and winking.
The band looked at Quinn now, who turned to me and asked, “Do you know White Rabbit?”
I knew it, and what surprised me then, and now, was how effortless it was to belt out such an iconic song from my youth in a room hazy with the smoke of pot and full of strangers, with my boyfriend thumping the bass line on a guitar behind me. I smiled nervously, and bowed very ladylike at the raucous applause and catcalls that followed my performance, and slipped off stage only to be met by Dennis and Harry – who weren’t smiling.
“Hello, Alice!” Harry greeted.
“It was my idea,” Quinn blurted out when he dashed over to join us.
“Do you know you could get this place shut down?” Dennis said quietly.
“I wasn’t here to sing,” I began.
“The club manager asked if she could sing and…”
“Save it, Prince Charming!” Dennis snapped and then looked me straight in the eyes. “You’re coming with me, Alice Rose.”
The next thing I knew I was home, wrapped in a bathrobe and seated on the sofa, freshly bathed and scrubbed, feeling all of my sixteen and a half years as Dennis paced the carpet. Harry had wisely gone into hiding.
“I almost wish I’d caught you in bed with Quinn,” Dennis began in a low, angry voice.
“What?”
“I could deal with that. But this? Do you know what you did tonight could get you taken away from me? Under age, in a place that sells liquor, and the drugs being passed around. The social worker is coming by Monday afternoon for her monthly visit. How am I going to explain this?” he growled.
“You don’t have to say a word.”
“Some of our neighbors were at the club, Alice! My God, what were you thinking?”
“I’m sorry, but the club manager thought I was the singer and he offered some money – I wanted to help the band. Quinn wants to buy a car and have his own bass…”
“So it wasn’t Quinn’s idea?”
“No! Honestly, it wasn’t!”
He was ready to say something but closed his mouth and ran his hands through his hair. “You’ve got one hell of a guy there to take a rap like this,” Dennis sighed. “Alice, your living with me is conditional.”
“Why? Why is it conditional? You told me our New York relatives had to think about it, didn’t want me…”
“I didn’t tell you the truth. The County wanted you to live with our relatives in the Bronx rather than stay here with me. I convinced them I was old enough to do this, that it would work, and there’d be no problems.”
I started to cry and Dennis began to pace, smoking a cigarette – something he rarely did unless he was deeply troubled.
“I’ll tell her everything, Dennis! I’ll ask her to go easy on you – it was my fault; she can’t blame you for my being stupid. I’m sixteen, for God’s sake! I’m supposed to do this, aren’t I?”
“Let me think about that. For now, you’re on a month’s restriction.”
“A month?”
“You come home straight after school, music lessons, drama club. No stopping by Quinn’s.”
“But…!”
“I could make it worse. I could call his parents – and from what you’ve told me about them, it would be a damn sight worse for Quinn.”
“No!”
“A month, Alice.”
I took my punishment. When I walked back upstairs and opened my bedroom door, I was in the Curiosity Shop. The Proprietress, running a paper-tape calculator, didn’t miss a click or a beat as she handed off a bottle of Diet Pepsi as I passed by.
I looked around and there was Dennis seated at the table near mine, enjoying a slice, or rather, chunk, of cheesecake. He motioned with the fork to an empty chair, pulling it out and patting the seat. I chose to stand over him and glare.
“It was for your own good,” he said between bites.
“You’re supposed to say that!” I grumbled.
“True, but it was.”
“Like you never did anything to piss off Mom and Dad.”
“I’m just sorry I wasn’t around later to prevent you from making more stupid mistakes. But I guess we all play the stupid card in order to figure out life as an adult.”
Joan of Arc looked up from her New York Times Book Review and frowned, a hand resting lightly on the hilt of her sword. “True love is never stupid!” she said.
“It makes us do stupid things,” Dennis defended himself. “There she goes! Off to write it all down,” he said as I brushed past him to my table and made a lot of angry noise opening the laptop and settling in.
“What if love demands things of us beyond our control?” Joan hissed. “Or we love someone so much that we hurt ourselves in order to prevent others from being hurt? Or, and more to the point here, what if we are too young to understand what actions love takes – and we do not understand those actions until it is too late, or we have matured?”
“A good argument, that,” Richard the Third spoke up. He raised his cup of coffee in tribute.
“How many of us have an opportunity to make things right after an accounting’s made, or want to?” Tyrone Power chimed in.
Everyone in the Shop turned and stared at me, including two new patrons: Marie Antoinette, who wore a pink striped gown with panniers that made her look like a walking peppermint stick and that had live birds in her powdered wig, and the Goddess Athena, carrying a great snowy owl that seemed bored by his surroundings, for it immediately fell asleep. After rudely staring at every person in the Shop, from saint to monarch, I ignored everyone and kept typing at a furious pace.
“Does anyone know what she’s typing?” Richard the Third queried, glancing around.
“Worried about bad press?” Joan asked.
“No, but doesn’t anyone else notice that Alice is always typing on that thing when she is here?”
“She’s writing a history of the Fourth Crusade,” Athena spoke up. “Now that is one of the best examples of men’s stupidity, don’t you think, Alice?”
“Only one of the best?” I quipped.
“Oh dear,” the king murmured, his eyes sliding to the door. The Doge of Venice
, Dandolo, who instigated the sack of Constantinople that was the legacy of the Fourth Crusade, had entered the Shop and departed just as quickly when he saw me.
I looked up over my reading glasses and hissed at the people still staring, “Haven’t you all better things to do?”
The Proprietress started to speak and then thought better of it obviously, for she took out a cloth and started dusting the immaculate counter tops and shelves. It was then I noticed workmen in a corner, struggling with wall sconces and lights. After a short while, they stepped back to admire their work and one of them flipped a wall switch. The most exquisite patterns of light were thrown on the walls and floors, a gigantic kaleidoscope of rich colors, which I now admired through a kaleidoscope I was playing with as I sat in Quinn’s upstairs study.
“What did the guy at the Fillmore say?” I asked, turning the wooden barrel to marvel at a purple butterfly of colored glass and light.
“Wasn’t interested,” Quinn muttered, switching on the television set.
“Impossible! That was some of the best artwork they’ve had in a long time!” I protested.
“Seems like everyone had the same idea: using the Moody Blues with medieval themes.”
“Did Anthony Smollers have a show?”
“Yeah, it was pretty good – he got the gig.”
“They don’t know good when they see it!”
“You’re my girlfriend – you have to say that.”
His comment wounded me; in fact, I felt a dull ache in my chest, hearing the words, as if a weight had been dropped on it and the air forced out of me.
“You don’t think I know good artwork?” I demanded quietly.
“Paisley patterns and castles are for coloring books.”
He jerked his chin at my history textbook, the brown grocery bag cover decorated with my paisley patterns and castles, roses, medieval ladies in profile.
“That wasn’t kind.”
“I’m not in a mood to discuss what is and isn’t art, Alice. Let it go.”
“So you think I know nothing about art and music? Of light-shows?”
“You listen to Mary Hopkins!” he chuckled.
“Well,” I sighed, “maybe when you play the Fillmore I can sing for them, and I’ll give you the forty dollars. You won’t have to worry about a light-show, or money for a car or guitar – or a girlfriend who knows nothing about art!”
“Alice!”
I grabbed the history book and my purse and fled.
Chapter 5
“Alice, please! Wait!”
I ran down the stairs, though it surprised me how many stairs there were. As I ran the photographs and paintings on the wall came to life in paisley, kaleidoscope and spirograph patterns in bright colors that swirled and spun as I passed by. Family members long dead were standing on the sidelines, as if it were a race, calling my name and trying to take hold of me. The Proprietress was at the foot of the stairs. I was ready to collide with her when she snapped her fingers, pointing behind me.
I stopped.
Quinn had a hold of me now.
“I didn’t mean it.”
“I say what I mean. When two people care for one another, they’re honest about their feelings and thoughts. I expected the same from you, not more, but the same.”
The statement was direct, quiet, and far from argumentative. As quickly as I had felt the pain, it was replaced by elation, lightness. I realized that in the spring of 1970, that had not been my response.
“Shit! You’re angry!” he sighed.
“Just don’t assume to know my mind.”
He leaned in, his face close and I began to tremble, anticipating one of his kisses, the kind that made me weak all over.
“What about your heart?” he whispered huskily as we kissed.
He pulled me back upstairs and I gave no resistance as we tumbled on to the sofa, letting our kisses and exploration go farther than we’d ever had in the year we’d been going steady.
“I don’t hear anything – hope I don’t see anything!”
Quinn’s father was on the stairs. We both moved away and rearranged our clothes as the footsteps stopped. There was a pause and a knock and Professor Radcliffe poked his head around the door.
“There’s the faery princess herself!” he teased in his Yorkshire accent and leaned over to bestow a kiss on my brow. “What an angel she is, too!”
“Hi, Professor,” I murmured, self-consciously.
“Don’t mind me, children, just looking – ah! The concertos.” The Brandenberg Concertos recorded by the New York Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein were removed from the record cabinet. The professor struggled to his feet and winked at his son. “We’re going out if you two want to come along – a matinee at the Opera House. New Italian tenor with an extraordinary voice. Gianni Schicchi, Quinn, one of your favorites.”
“A comic opera by Puccini,” Quinn said, noticing my raised brows. “You’d like it – it takes place in thirteenth century Florence.”
I nodded like a dumb bunny, holding my blouse closed and keeping my eyes on the professor, who was staring at my breasts undoubtedly showing through the gauze peasant blouse I wore and the lace brassiere down around my waist.
He looked at us, one and then the other, expectantly. “No? Maybe another time when you’re not so engrossed in each other’s charms – no pot or drugs, I hope?”
“Dad,” Quinn sighed. “We’ve had this conversation before.”
“Yes, we have, haven’t we? Well, see you this evening.” The professor started out and then turned. “Be a gentleman, Quinn – at least lock the door if you’re going to have a right good snog!”
“Dad!”
“Be a gentleman to this perfect lady. Bye, children.”
When he was gone, we sat staring at the door, bewildered, and then burst into laughter. “Damn!” Quinn swore softly and scrambled off the sofa, heading towards his bedroom. “Don’t go anywhere!” he called over his shoulder. No sooner had the bedroom door slammed than I heard a crash – what sounded like books and pottery falling, as if a shelf had gone.
“Are you okay?” I called. “Quinn?”
“Don’t worry – I didn’t break anything – ow! Shit! I’m bleeding!”
“Quinn!”
It was quiet for a moment and then Quinn finally reappeared with a package. As he passed the stairwell, he kicked the door shut and locked it.
“Your forehead!” I moaned, noticing the cut and the trickle of blood starting at his hairline, and took a tissue from my purse and pressed it to his scalp.
“Dictionary dropped on my head, that’s all,” Quinn said, dismissively, and he knelt before the sofa, holding out the package. “I brought this back from England; it’s for your birthday – we missed it with my being away during Easter Vacation.”
“You didn’t have to,” I purred with delight. “‘Eloise Radcliffe’s Antiques and Curiosities – York,’” I read aloud from the gold foil label with black lettering. “From your grandmother’s shop!”
“She picked it out herself.”
“She doesn’t even know me…” I murmured, smiling, as I ran my hands over the tissue paper decorated with gold starbursts and roses.
“But I know you, and I told her what I was looking for. Open it!” he demanded, and put on a record, Never Comes the Day. He sat close with an arm around me as I carefully lifted the tape on the paper and uncovered a cardboard box that held a snow globe and a jeweler’s case. The snow globe caught my fancy immediately: a knight on horseback in the globe, the base encircled by a castle. Opening the case, I discovered the rosa alba, the White Rose of York, crafted of silver and suspended on a thin silver rope.
“Look at this,” Quinn said, and flipped the globe upside down and turned a key. It was a music box. We stared at the globe while the song Greensleeves tinkled from a clock work mechanism, expecting something more to happen when the song wound down. “I hope,” he said softly, slipping the rose around my neck, “you’ll
correct me if I’m wrong, but ladies used to wear their lovers’ favors, so, I hope you’ll always wear this.”
I tugged at the ribbon holding my hair back in a braid, a length of iridescent purple silk, and tied it around his wrist. I then leaned over to kiss him and offer thanks, and ignited a fire. Quinn became more daring, more passionate and despite my fear, I allowed him the freedom to do what he would.
“Do you want to go into the bedroom?” he whispered.
“Quinn …”
“I’d never hurt you – I just want to be with you. Do you want to? Do you want to be with me?”
“What about protection? I could get pregnant.”
“We can stop – I can. I know I can. I don’t want to hurt you Alice, but I love you. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and wish you were there,” he said, brushing the hair out of my eyes and holding my face in his hands. “I feel this emptiness because you’re not with me and I think of you, wondering if you’re feeling the same…”
His kiss was gentle, as were his eyes when he lifted my chin and met my gaze.
“I do. I think about you before I fall asleep at night, every night, and wonder what it would be like.”
“We can find out together then.”
“But it’s important to a girl,” I began, between petal soft kisses. “I mean, I don’t want a reputation.”
“I wouldn’t let that happen. You know I don’t talk, and it’s no one’s business but ours.”
“But,” I paused. “There are things…”
“Tell me?”
“I’m trying to say that I’m confused, because I am in love with you, and I’ve thought about it, but I’ve always thought it would be my husband the very first time, because that’s the way it’s supposed to be, isn’t it?”
“I can imagine us being married, in fact, I dream about it. I love you, Alice.”
“Do you?”
He smiled and nodded, and then, kissing my neck, whispered, “Let me show you.”
“Wait here,” I said, slipping out of his arms.
I slipped into his bedroom and undressed, slid under the covers of his unmade bed, pushing aside the Rolling Stone magazine and the sheet music. There was a knock on the door and I called in a hoarse whisper, “Come in!”
Tallis' Third Tune Page 6
