Astrid Sees All

by Natalie Standiford

  In the operating room the nurse, a large man with a gold hoop in one ear, cracked bad jokes to relax me. “What’s the difference between an elephant and a matterbaby?”

  “Um…” I wasn’t really in the mood for jokes. “What’s a matterbaby?”

  “Nothing, but thanks for asking.”

  The doctor snickered. I had to think about it for a second before I got it.

  The nurse stuck a needle into me. “Knock knock.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Closure.”

  “Closure who?”

  “Closure eyes and count backward from one hundred.”

  I felt a stinging whoosh, and my ears roared the way they do when you cover them with your palms. I tried to protest, “That’s not funny,” but I don’t know if I managed to utter the words. From what seemed like far away, I heard the nurse say, “What is the one question you can never answer yes to?” When I didn’t reply, he said, “ ‘Are you asleep?’ ”

  Squiggles of gold flashed under my eyelids. I saw the patterns and textures inside my skin: ropy muscles and tissues and fibers twisting in a dark-green sea.

  * * *

  When it was over, I stumbled groggily into the waiting room. Carmen put her arms around me and led me outside to a taxi. At home, she settled me onto my mattress with books and magazines and Tylenol and blankets. She’d brought a tiny portable TV so I could watch soap operas if I felt like it. She kept my curious roommates at bay, telling them I had the flu.

  I slept until nightfall. I woke up briefly to find her sleeping at the foot of the bed, curled around my legs, toes stuck under one of my pillows. When I woke up again, she was pulling on her socks. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “I’ll get some Chinese takeout.” She went out and soon returned with cartons of shrimp lo mein and chicken almond ding and cans of ginger ale. At eleven o’clock, she asked me if I wanted her to stay or go. “Stay,” I pleaded. She stayed.

  * * *

  A few days later, Laurel called to tell me that Dad was dying. I had to go home. I thought I’d return to New York right after the funeral, but that’s not what happened.

  The whole thing—Ivan, the abortion, Dad’s death, all at once… it swamped me. I was knocked off-balance by a big wave of grief. My reaction to all this was a little extreme, I’ll admit that. I understand why my mother was worried. But Baltimore was quicksand; the longer I stayed, the more stuck I would get. I knew that if I didn’t return to New York by New Year’s Eve, I’d never live there again. And besides, the money bothered me. The money, and the weight in the pit of my belly. I couldn’t move on until I repaid that debt.

  11 WHAT TIME IS IT?

  We spent the second to last day of 1983 fixing up our apartment and preparing for New Year’s Eve. We walked to a discount store on Broadway for sheets and towels and cleaning supplies, then scoured the thrift shops on Ninth Street for party clothes. I chose a silver minidress to wear with my blue Bertha turban, fishnet stockings, and short silver boots. Carmen bought a long black lace dress and a red fake-fur stole. We passed eleven posters asking for information about the missing girl with the Farrah Fawcett hair, Susannah Byers. I know because we counted them. I was growing so familiar with her face from seeing her picture all over the neighborhood, I began to feel like I knew her.

  That night, while Carmen was at Atti’s, I sat at the kitchen table with my shoebox to refine my fortune-telling system. I’d had an idea of pulling two or three ticket stubs during a reading instead of just one, and interpreting them like tarot cards. The stubs didn’t have mythological symbols or pictures, but the movie titles conjured images in my mind, images that could speak to each other and that I could use to construct a vision, to find a message, to look for answers.

  * * *

  “What if my mind goes blank?” I asked Carmen on the way to the club. “What if some celebrity sits down to have her fortune told and I can’t think of a single thing to say?”

  “You know what to do,” Carmen said. “Fake it.”

  Zu was working the door when we arrived. It turned out she was our neighbor; she lived on the fifth floor of our building with her roommate, Marie-Claude Phan, a fashion designer who owned CloudCuckooLand, the dress boutique on the ground floor. The evening before, at midnight, Carmen and I had seen Zu leaving for work in a neon-green hearse decorated with flowers and skulls, driven by a guy in biker gear who bellowed her name from the street. Now, dressed like a tsarina in blue velvet and a tall fur hat, she led us to Toby’s office. We passed through a lobby lined with urinal fountains spouting rainbows of colored water, and down a hall of live window displays, created by artists and changed every month to illustrate a theme. As Zu had promised, “The Future” was the Plutonium theme for January 1984. The first window showcased a sexy alien romping on the surface of a barren planet—a naked girl in green body paint, antennae sprouting from her hair. She waved at Zu as she finished off a box of Good & Plenty and stashed it behind a giant rock.

  The second window predicted a future underwater, a world of undersea caves inhabited by merpeople. A live King Neptune presided over a clam dinner with his children, who were dolls with fish tails attached to their legs.

  The third window contained a postapocalyptic suburb soon after a nuclear attack: a ruined backyard scattered with abandoned toys and barbecue equipment, a zombie child forlornly swaying on a swing.

  “Aw,” Zu said. “Poor Jeffrey.” Jeffrey, the actor who played the zombie child, sported a convincingly gory head wound.

  We toured the rest of the club, a warren of lounges and bars and dance floors, a shark tank with real sharks restlessly circling, a pool, a waterfall, a huge sign with 1984 spelled out in blinking light bulbs, and a live owl who flew from room to room, perching randomly on people’s shoulders. We climbed a flight of clanging metal stairs to Toby’s office: a couple of desks in a storeroom crammed with sets and props like astronaut suits, nurse uniforms, carousel horses, ant farms, Matchbox cars, stuffed deer heads, mannequins, cereal boxes, candelabras, and a deflated bouncy house. Toby, in his late twenties, with intense black eyes and a shaved head, wore a sleek gray suit over a NASA T-shirt. He was on the phone and seemed very distracted and busy. He told me I was on fortune-telling duty from ten until two, and then to come find him and he’d pay me.

  Zu left us in the bar and returned to her post at the velvet rope, where the mobs gathered like storm clouds to plead for her attention. Her partner, Looie, wore a German SS uniform and threatened people with a riding crop, daring them to call him a door Nazi.

  * * *

  In the bar, near the shark tank, I draped a red velvet cloth over my table and set out my box of movie tickets, a crystal ball, and a sign Carmen had made that said WHAT DOES YOUR FUTURE HOLD? ASTRID SEES ALL. Carmen settled at the bar with a bright blue Drink of the Future, keeping me company as the first guests trickled in. A big fat guy with a putty-gray complexion, a raccoon coat, and a tiny fedora perched on his head asked, in a high lisping voice, who I was supposed to be. He had the air of a cowardly mobster, someone who’d be killed off early in a mafia movie. My first customer.

  “I’m Astrid. Astrid the Star Girl.” I pointed to the sign. “I see all.”

  “You got a real name, haven’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s Astrid.”

  Carmen had promised that downtown I could flee the past and take on a new identity, so I’d chosen a name I’d loved since first reading Pippi Longstocking when I was seven: Astrid. In Old Norse it meant something like “divine strength,” but in English it suggested stars because it sounded like you were slurring the word asteroid.

  The fat man laughed and sat down in my customer chair, dropping an old-fashioned doctor’s bag on the table. “I’ll get it out of you one of these days, dollbaby. How does this setup work?”

  “You’ll see soon. What’s your name?”

  “Bix Pender.” He spelled it for me.

  “You’ve got a real name, haven’t you?”r />
  “Sure I do, dollbaby. When we know each other better.” He rolled up his sleeves. A throbbing constellation of red scars snaked up his arms.

  “First you ask a question. Then you shake this magic box, thinking hard about the question. I’ll choose three tickets and place them on the table. I’ll interpret them and give you an answer.”

  “Huh. Okay. My question is: Are you a phony?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “Your wish is my command.” I put the box in his pudgy little paws. He shook it and picked out three ticket stubs himself. I watched nervously. I was a phony. I didn’t belong in that room.

  Fake it, fake it, I told myself, but Bix’s eyes bored right through me and I could tell that he knew.

  The Spy Who Loved Me. That’s Entertainment! All That Jazz.

  I lined up the stubs in a neat row, pretending to think about them very hard.

  “I don’t know, dollbaby. You ask me, two out of three of those point to phony.”

  “It’s all about interpretation. The most obvious meaning isn’t always correct. Like in tarot—you know how the Death card doesn’t have to mean ‘death’? It can be good! It can mean change, or an ending….”

  “Sure, sure.” He patted my hand fondly as he heaved himself to his feet. “Come find me in my office and I’ll give you a party favor.” He picked up the doctor’s bag and snapped his head toward the ladies’ room. “Be seeing ya.”

  The party was in full roar now, people pressing into the bar, clamoring for drinks. I waited for another customer, but no one took any notice of me. “They need to look around and see each other and talk and get a few drinks in them,” Carmen said. “Let’s take a tour.”

  We threaded our way past people smoking and sipping cocktails and chattering and pouting and shrieking with manic laughter. No one was dancing. Waiters in robot costumes served drinks and canapés. A Bardot blonde wore a dress made of gold balloons and a crow on her shoulder, who pecked at the balloons, popping them one by one in a slow striptease. A Somali model with knife-blade cheekbones prowled from room to room, shadowed by a busboy whose sole job was to carry her fur coat. Guests climbed a ladder inside a rocket-shaped playhouse and whooshed down a spiral sliding board. People ate cold seafood off the body of a girl on a table, naked except for a G-string. In the pool, two guys in women’s bathing suits and Miss America sashes floated on a raft, while a girl in a bikini pretended to struggle in the jaws of a giant plastic shark.

  My pulse jumped a little whenever I saw a famous face, which was constantly. They glowed in the dark, leaping out like scares in a spook house. Andy Warhol. Sting. Bianca Jagger. Matt Dillon. Grace Jones. Donny Osmond, looking much like the preteen singer I’d swooned over as a kid, except that his face seemed to have melted slightly, like a plastic doll left out in the sun. Ed Koch, the mayor, alone by the pool, jerking his limbs in an attempt at dancing.

  “Zowie,” Carmen said.

  Back at the fortune-teller table, people were lined up waiting for me: the Somali model; Christopher Walken; a beauty in a see-through plastic dress with nothing underneath but a garter belt, stockings, and duct tape over her nipples; William Hurt; Debbie Harry. I was seized with nerves, like tiny fishhooks digging into my ribs. What could I tell these people? I knew nothing, and they knew everything.

  Fake it, fake it…

  The model sat down and held out both hands to me. No one quite understood my ticket oracle; they seemed to expect me to read their palms or look into the crystal ball, which I’d brought as a prop. I admired her long and graceful fingers, but she couldn’t hold them still. Her eyes darted around the room. The busboy waited nearby with her fur coat. She reached for it, wiggling her fingers impatiently. He took one step toward her, put the coat into her arms, and then took precisely one step back, standing at attention like a soldier. She wrapped the smooth skin of her shoulders in fur, then returned her right hand to me.

  “What is your name?” I asked.

  “Bilan.”

  “And what would you like to know?”

  She leaned forward and spoke in a low voice, barely audible under the dance music. “Is someone trying to kill me?”

  Not what I was expecting, but okay. She glared furiously at the shoebox as she shook it. The busboy she had enlisted to carry her coat stood by, ready to be of service whenever she needed him. He looked like a teenager, but he took this duty seriously. She took herself seriously too. Her question was not a joke.

  Multiple Maniacs. Apocalypse Now. The Chosen.

  She gasped. The ticket stubs had spoken, and there was no denying their message.

  “Yes,” I said. “Someone is trying to kill you. But he—or she—will not succeed.”

  She narrowed her eyes, pleased to have her suspicions confirmed. “My boyfriend keeps telling me I am paranoid, but we know the truth, don’t we, darling.”

  “Do you have a bodyguard?” I asked, glancing at the busboy. “A real one?”

  “I am hiring one tomorrow. What else do you see?”

  I tapped the stub for The Chosen. “You are very special, but people often misread you. They think you’re arrogant and fickle, but you aren’t. Your heart is true. You’re misunderstood.”

  “Thank you.” She nodded solemnly. “Thank you.”

  Christopher Walken had drifted away, so my next customer was the beauty in the see-through dress. Her head did not go with her body. She had short brown hair and round, matter-of-fact eyes under straight brows. Except for her mischievous mouth, she did not look like someone who would walk around practically naked. She said her name was Caroline and she wanted to know what her true path was. I asked her what she meant.

  “Like, should I be an art historian, or join the Sotheby’s training program, or take my mother’s place on the board of the ballet? Or should I be an artist myself?” She touched the stiff, clear plastic of her dress. “Can partying be an art form?”

  I put the box in her hands. “Shake this, and concentrate hard on your question.”

  Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Rocky. Take the Money and Run.

  Hmm.

  “What does it mean?”

  I stalled for time. “What are these movies about? Angela Lansbury flies around on a magic bed and uses witchcraft to defeat the Nazis. Sylvester Stallone triumphs by losing a boxing match. Woody Allen is an inept criminal. Do you see the thread connecting these stories?”

  “Not really.”

  “Art is magic. If you use it, you will triumph—but it will take a lot of work. Like Rocky running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Did you see Rocky?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Remember that part where he runs up the steps?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But if you take a shortcut—like trying to steal money instead of earning it—you’ll come to a bad end.”

  She frowned. “I didn’t say anything about stealing money.”

  “You should be an artist,” I said. “You will have great success.”

  “Thank you.” She reached for the stubs. “May I keep these?”

  “No, I need them.”

  Before the next fortune-seeker could sit down I excused myself to go to the bathroom. This was the most wonderful room in the whole club: a large lounge with the usual row of stalls, sinks, and mirrors, plus a bar, a sitting area, and a woman in a corner selling condoms, candy, cigarettes, aspirin, toys, and other supplies. A beautiful man in a tight dress and Nico hair—long, straight, blond, with bangs—sat on the velvet couch smoking and chatting with a guy in silver lace pants. I checked under the stalls for an empty one. In the last stall I saw a pair of feet in wet sneakers, one foot grossly swollen. The owner of the feet was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. I couldn’t see his upper body. One of my new neighbors had swollen feet like that, an old woman who roamed the halls of our building in her robe and slippers. I’d met her for the first time when she knocked on our door very, very early that mor
ning.

  Back at the bar, Carmen was flirting with a tall guy in a blue satin tux with no shirt underneath—nothing but suspenders and a faintly hairy chest. He had a grown-out English-schoolboy haircut, and his skin had a sheen I’d noticed on Zu and Bilan and a lot of the other people at this party—skin as shiny-bright as a shield, deflecting any troubles, I imagined, to keep their insides soft and safe. Carmen’s eyes were gleaming, perhaps from too many Drinks of the Future. I couldn’t get her attention.

  Andy Warhol wedged a sparkly HAPPY 1984 tiara onto the tall guy’s shaggy head. It looked good on him, with his girlish upturned nose and full lips. He whirled around, laughing, and talked to Andy, touching the tiara but not removing it. Carmen finally looked my way, and we telegraphed the same message to each other: Andy’s flirting with the tall guy. It was not surprising. The tall guy had an easy, natural glamour, and he was very good-looking.

  Then Andy noticed my table. He held the tall guy by the arm and led him over to me. “Oh look. A fortune-teller. Astrid. Nice name.”

  “Would you like me to tell your future?”

  “No, thank you. I already know the future.” He shuddered slightly. “Too grim.”

  “It might not be so bad.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, it will. Every story has the same ending, doesn’t it?” He crossed his arms over his chest and closed his eyes, playing a corpse.

  “What about you?” I asked the tall guy. He took me in, my turban and my shoebox and my homemade sign, and his eyes softened. I wondered how I looked to him. I was seized by a sudden interest in his future.