Jane is the first one to thaw. “What the hell was that?”
“What?” Orr looks behind him toward the white-flowered tree in the yard framed by the large front window, sparkling after Orr cleaned it that morning with newspaper and white vinegar.
“Play that again,” Jane says.
Orr does.
“You know our songs?” Allison’s mouth makes a perfect cartoon O.
Of course he knows them. The Furies have been rehearsing every night since he arrived—he’s heard their set at least twenty times.
“Come.” Jane’s pulling him down to the basement. The girls follow. Jane turns on some equipment, and Mika gets behind the drums.
“Here.” Allison puts the strap of her bass guitar over Orr’s head. “Do you know how to use this?” Orr shakes his head no. The basement isn’t his favorite place, with its lack of windows and mildew smell. Allison flips a switch on the bass’s side and shows Orr the volume and effects knobs.
When everyone’s ready, Jane gets on the mic. Then she stops, smacks her forehead with her hand, and tears up the stairs, returning with Orr’s orange earplugs. He squishes them into his ears. Jane grins at him, and Orr grins back. She gets him.
Back at the microphone, Jane cocks her hip the way singers do on MTV, and Mika counts off the beat.
“One, two—one two three four!”
11
Swallow
the Well
Orr is in his closet warding off the start of a headache. Last night, he managed to decouple the little window from the layers of old paint that stuck it to the sash. Now, the closet is perfect, blissfully cool and comfy since Allison brought him a thick piece of foam from her boyfriend’s recording studio. It was being used for sound absorption but makes an excellent bed.
In the other room, voices rise and fall, a gentle chirping like the tree frogs outside his bedroom window at home.
His neck is sore from banging his head in a way that always looked so affected when he saw guitarists do it on MTV but turned out to be a natural movement in the context of actual rock and roll. Maybe that’s what’s causing the headache. He’s so tired, but his body is tense the way it gets when he needs a run. There are simply too many things to process from playing with the Furies. And then there’s Plum.
At the thought of her, heat surges through his body, but there’s no erection. He hasn’t had one since he left home and wonders if it has something to do with his hair being cut.
At the beginning of the summer, constant arousal plagued him. The desire was never directed at or stimulated by another person. When he lay in bed and touched himself, he thought of running through beautiful terrain, places he’d seen in the pages of National Geographic or even the woods that bordered their town. Sometimes, the feeling built up as he ran. He’d sprint home and climb into the treehouse, feeling a little resentful afterward about the strength of his body’s call. The pleasure was almost a pain, too intense.
When he was younger, he imagined that desire would bring him close to another person, help him find some reason to get to know someone besides Iph and Mom, but the confusing power of it had isolated him further. When he turned twelve, Dad tried to talk with him about girls. Finally, he even tried talking about boys. Orr was silent for both, and Dad seemed happy enough to give up.
But the other day, when he called home from Plum’s house, there was something in Dad’s voice. Almost . . . satisfaction. Maybe even approval. Are these the kinds of adventures he always wanted for his son? Midnight escapes, van rides with punk bands, a redheaded girl who looks like a painting? Orr thinks yes, they probably are. Even so, Dad didn’t even try to imagine a life like this for Orr. All he could think of was a place like Meadowbrook.
Late afternoon sounds drift past Penelope. Kids rolling down the sidewalk on skateboards and scooters. Cars driving by, windows down and radios on. Orr knows he is crying because the shaking hurts his head. He is weeping like a puppet might, limbs floppy, torso jerking up and down with the rhythm of this unidentifiable emotion. Panic rises, but he sends it a song—something in Spanish Mom used to sing.
Whatever this feeling is, it’s linked somehow with memory. He shudders to recall his childhood foolishness. So many misunderstandings. Outbursts he couldn’t control, rules he could never intuit. The tsunami of stimulation from the other children—their smells and colors and accessories and, worst of all, their energies. It was like living in a vat of primary-colored poster paint. All the edges were hard and the textures unpleasant. But these are old memories, situations already cried over and gone. What’s left is this strange . . . sorrow.
Orr weeps for the boy who wanted his mother to stay so badly he overturned her suitcase and ripped her favorite shirt. For the boy who was stolen in sleep, innocent in a way he will never be again. He weeps for Dad, maybe most of all. At heart, Dad is admirable. Like a TV dad, he is wise in so many ways. But what he’s done, this level of his betrayal—handing his son over to bigots. Having him kidnapped from his own bed. Orr can’t ever forget. Dad found and lost his son in the wrong order. Can it ever be right between them again?
Orr’s headache is getting worse. He rubs his temples. Sleep is the thing that will stop it from turning into a migraine. He hums Mom’s lullaby to himself.
Ai, ai, ai, ai! Canta y no llores. Sing, don’t cry.
12
When Acting
is An Art
Iph drops a dime into the violin case of the busker outside Powell’s, sorry it isn’t more. The temperature inside the bookstore is deliciously just right, not over-air-conditioned like the mall, where Iph always ends up with a summer cold. Just cool enough for the relief-pleasure loop to activate.
And then there are the books. A whole city block of them. Room after room. Floors and floors. Iph and Orr used to fantasize about being locked in Powell’s overnight, their version of the brother and sister in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. They’d strategize about how they would hide, but more importantly, how they would spend the precious hours between the store’s 11 p.m. closing time and when it opened again at 9 a.m.
As always, Iph starts in the Blue Room at the drama shelf. Today, she finds a sweet old edition of An Actor Prepares. Stanislavski was the Russian creator of “the Method” and mentor to Lee Strasberg, who passed along this physical/psychological approach to Broadway and Hollywood actors. Iph had learned about Stanislavski because of her favorite version of Marilyn Monroe, all dressed-down and bespectacled in her New York acting student days. When Iph had asked about method acting in her high school drama class, she was told it was old-fashioned and too complex for high schoolers.
So she studied it herself, learning the techniques in secret and trying them out in class. Some were good, basic tune-ups for an essentially physical art. Some of the exercises felt clunky, more academic than useful—like the sense memory technique where you recalled physical details of something in the past to evoke the emotion called for in a scene.
Iph’s approach is more visceral, like a dancer’s. In dance, the movement and music should be enough to evoke the feeling. Iph feels like the text and relationships should do the same in a play, at least when you’re onstage. But before that, during preparation, Stanislavski is very useful. She grabs An Actor Prepares, which at this point is a comfort read, and heads to the café for a nice sit and several gallons of free water.
There are ghost prints of Iph’s childhood everywhere in this place. On the maps they offer at the big info desk, she can trace her own development from the toddler-size tables in the picture book section of the Rose Room to the middle-reader stacks she haunted and adored until she got the theater bug and became a professional lurker in her special section of the Blue Room.
Ever devoted to his Redwall books, Orr had stayed in the Rose Room until last year, when he started making forays into the Gold Room for fantasy and sci-fi. Iph closes her
eyes against tears for the millionth time today. She must be premenstrual. What had she been thinking, ripping up Orr’s number and flushing it away? If she had it right now, she’d be outside at the pay phone with her second-to-last quarter.
Clearly, Powell’s has undone her. She misses Orr. And Mom. Even Dad. But how can she go back? Even with the sweetness of their shared language and familiar bodies and beloved faces, she can’t imagine the old life being anything but suffocating after her days in the real world with George.
Her heart beats hard. A sign of dehydration. The tables in the café are all occupied. Tourists with stacks of books and shopping bags. Moms with little kids. Street people drinking the free water like she is—except she can’t forget, for her this is a choice. She gulps a final cup of the cold water and heads for the bathroom. It’s when she’s alone in the stall that she remembers Velma’s velvet bag slung over her shoulder.
She reaches inside. Silk chiffon. Her fingers know without looking. She pulls the fabric gently from the bag. A scarf? No, a dress. An antique treasure that surely Velma should have kept. Its provenance is likely late twenties or early thirties, with a painterly scattering of wildflowers on a ballet-pink background. It has short, barely-there sleeves, a low ruffled surplice neckline, and a flowing bias-cut skirt. Iph’s chest burns with disappointment. With want. This is exactly the sort of dress she wears in her leading-lady daydreams, but, as always, there is no way it will fit in real life. The best vintage clothes, like so many other things Iph covets, are made for the slight and slender. So sweet of Velma, though. She folds the dress carefully and slips it back in the bag, pees, and heads out of the café for a favorite bench of hers next to the section for small-press poetry and zines. Maybe when Mom comes home, she will give the dress to her.
Before she sits to read, Iph looks for books by Velma Smith and finds nothing. She checks big-press poetry, too, but no luck. She settles on the bench and wishes hard for five bucks. Iced tea and a chocolate croissant sound like heaven. After that, a nap. Iph looks around. The section is empty. She lies back on the bench and closes her eyes.
Pssst.
She sits up too fast. Dizzy. Now that she’s cooled off, she feels how hungry she is. She lowers her head between her legs like she does when she’s worried she might faint.
Psst.
She looks up. Is someone talking to her? Is she imagining things?
Psst.
The sound seems to be coming from a cylindrical rack of books. There is a sign on the rounder: portland presses.
A deep-green hardbound book seems to be emitting some sort of glow. It’s often like this at a bookstore, where a title seems to call to you from its place on the shelf.
Keep telling yourself that, says a little voice in Iph’s head. (It is in her head, right?)
She gets up and walks to the rounder. Picks up the shiny green book. The source of light is the book itself—a figure on the cover embossed in gold, a riot grrrl mohawked Artemis with a bow and arrow and a dog at her heels. Basically, the patron saint of George. There is no title.
The first page reads, Stratagems, Poetry, Plans.
It’s a journal. Each page has faint bronze lines on one side, with a blank page opposite. The perfect thing for a Renaissance artist like George. Poetry on one side, sketches on the other. Iph thinks of the beat-up spiral-bound notebook and the way George’s energy flickered when Velma mentioned writing. George deserves a book like this. Maybe even needs it.
Iph fingers the smooth spine. Sniffs the pages—fresh paper and fir trees.
She turns it over. Stamped in the same gold as the front cover are the initials RCT with its vine climbing the R and C. This time, there are little wings sprouting from the top of the T in Rose City Transmutation.
The price tag reads $9.99. It might as well be a hundred. Iph puts the book back. Rejoins Stanislavski on the bench. The section remains empty, so she risks lying back again and closes her eyes.
What would the book’s patient teacher, Tortsov, a stand-in for Stanislavski himself, advise in this situation? If it were an acting exercise, what would Iph do?
She wants to give this journal to George. But how to obtain it? In the theater and out in the world, a character’s trajectory is never perfectly smooth. In every play, even every scene, there must be an obstacle. Here, the obstacle is money. How can Iph get some? She relaxes, lets her body melt into the part of Girl Who Wants to Buy a Present for Her Sweetheart.
She lets her mind wander. A song peeks out like a rabbit in the underbrush. A jig played on a fiddle.
Iph sits up. She hides the journal behind another book to prevent anyone else from buying it. All the water she’s had in the café has gone right through her, so she stops at the bathroom on the way to the exit. Drying her hands after washing them and splashing water on her face, Iph feels around in the bag, almost like she’s worried the dress will be gone. She pulls it out again.
In the larger space of the empty ladies’ room, she notices that there is no zipper. It’s a wrap dress, an adjustable style that often works for curves. She also remembers how oddly stretchy silk can be when it’s cut on the bias. How many times has she succumbed to a beautiful vintage dress’s siren song only to crash into the rocks in the dressing room when she realizes she can’t get the thing past her neck?
Girding herself, she sets the velvet bag on the metal ledge above the sink, checks under the stalls for feet, then whips off her shirt and slips on the dress. It goes around her, at least. Under the cover of the skirt, she turns her back to the mirror and takes off Nana’s baggy shorts and stuffs them into the bag. The skirt has a sewn-in slip of smooth silk that’s cool against her legs. Her bra is totally visible in the front, but untying, adjusting, and retying the dress at her waist actually fixes that. She turns slowly, not ready to believe. But, oh! The mirror reveals the truth. Velma is a sorceress.
The dress is perfect. Iph is both voluptuous and somehow light. A girl of summer, sylphlike and young. An ingenue. A leading lady.
Rearranging her shorts and bulky T-shirt so they fit in the velvet shoulder bag, Iph finds a little packet at the bottom. An envelope of rice-paper blotters, a sweet old-fashioned beauty trick. Iph uses one on her face. There is a small sample lipstick, the kind in a fingernail-size pink tube from Avon. Mindy’s mom used to sell these and let Mindy and Iph have all the unused samples. Iph puts on the berry-pink shade and pulls her hair up off her neck. This whole situation seems to call for an updo. Of course, there’s an ivory hair comb in the bag. And finally, a pair of delicate gold chandelier earrings. Looking at the entire ensemble, Iph smiles. She’s always been the kind of actor who comes to life in costume. Her plan is totally going to work.
The fiddle player has moved around the corner from the entrance, following the shade. What now? She remembers her training and takes a beat, leaning against the building a respectable distance away. He finishes the song and takes a break to drink some water.
Iph’s intention is to persuade—but maybe she needs a better verb. What she wants is to join forces with this guy.
“Hey,” she says. “Thanks for the music.”
“Anytime!” He grins. He’s actually kind of gorgeous, with dark shoulder-length hair and elegant wrists covered in jade bracelets. “It’s been so slow. It’s the heat, you know? I keep thinking if I figure out the right song, it’ll shake loose. It’s like that sometimes—you get a few tips and then the rest rolls in.” He plays a few notes of a mournful flamenco.
“I have an idea,” Iph says. “And it’s totally fine if the answer is no. But I think people may need something unexpected in this ridiculous heat. And to be honest, I could use a little cash.”
“Do you sing?” The guy looks excited.
“A little,” Iph says. She can carry a tune, but that’s not what she has in mind. “I’m more of an actor. And I was thinking a little Shakespeare accompanied by
music could be just the thing.”
He looks at her, and maybe he thinks she’s flirting. Guys usually don’t interest her, but this one’s exceptionally pretty. Besides, her objective must be achieved! They will join forces.
“I’m Iph,” she says.
“Simon.” He puts his hand out. Iph takes it, knowing she’s won. “What should I play?”
“Anything you want. I’m going to start with Emilia from Othello. She has an excellent feminist rant in Act Four in defense of cheating wives. That should stir things up!”
“Sounds good. Just wait one sec, though. The lights are about to turn red, and then all those people will be a captive audience while they wait.”
“Pro advice. You got it.”
The violin begins a few moments before the light changes, priming people to listen and look. Iph takes a step away from the building into the sun.
For a moment, she is lost. She knows the words to the monologue but has forgotten whatever preparation she did before performing it last year in class. Besides, this isn’t a stage, and these strangers haven’t signed up to watch a show. She steps back, then realizes. She will join forces with them.
Diaphragm engaged, Iph begins.
But I do think it is their husbands’ faults
If wives do fall.
People are stopping, smiling. They definitely want to hear what these errant husbands have done.
Say that they slack their duties,
And pour our treasures into foreign laps,
Or else break out in peevish jealousies,
Throwing restraint upon us; or say they strike us,
Or scant our former having in despite;
Why, we have galls, and though we have some grace,
Yet have we some revenge.
A crowd has gathered. The fiddle is underscoring her delivery perfectly, egging her on and adding an edge of humor that is perfect for Iph’s objective.
Summer in the City of Roses Page 16
