by Lisa Rusczyk
CLEO
The idea of my improv-ing seemed easier after a glass of bourbon on the following Thursday. I was worried that Cecil would bother me about having an afternoon drink again, but he kissed me deeply when he came home and told Angelica, who was now Belle, to play in her room for a while. After we made love, he tapped my lips and told me I should cut down on the drinking in the afternoon. But, he told me, he did like how it made me more, well, excitable. All was well, and Friday came.
I had two glasses of wine before I caught the bus to the Beacon. As Cecil had done the last two times I went to the Beacon, he asked if I wanted a ride. I told him that Barbie and I had fun riding the bus together, that we got to talk more that way. I told him that if he drove both of us, it wouldn’t be the same with him listening in. He asked, “What secrets do you two have that I can’t know? Well, I guess I’ll have to refer to my own advice about it. All women should have secrets.”
Once at the Beacon, with 88 Fingers tinkling a new-age sound and Swan delicately dancing on stage, I found Barbie at her table and sat with her. She said, “You look different.”
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” I told her.
“What about?” she asked, seeming casual, but I could tell she was curious. She must have been wondering what my brain had processed about all she had told me.
“What you said, all the things I’ve seen lately. Real brainstorming, if you must know,” I told her.
She propped her elbow up on the table and took a slow drag from her cigarette. “What did you come up with?”
I impulsively grabbed her cigarette and took a puff. I didn’t cough like they always do in movies when people who don’t smoke take a drag. It tasted horrible, though, but I blew it out like I always had done so. I handed it back to her.
She said, “Have you already had some drinks?”
“A couple,” I told her. “I need some courage.”
“Why?” she asked.
“I want to try to improv tonight. On the stage,” I explained. “I think I’ll certainly need courage for that.”
She arched an eyebrow and half-smiled, and I couldn’t tell if she was surprised. “Most people end up wanting to try. What made you want to?”
I couldn’t explain how I was curious about all she had told me, or about how affected I was by Dynamite’s breakthrough with improv-ing, or about how I wanted some kind of personal experience to form an opinion about spirits and whether or not they could be perceived, much less be real. Instead, I said, “I don’t know how I am going to improv, though. I have no artistic inclinations.”
Barbie looked at the stage. “That wasn’t an answer to my question, but maybe you could ask Nikki. He has good ideas about what works for different people.”
As though summoned by mention of his name, Nikki appeared with a glass of bourbon and put it in front of me. He squeezed my shoulder with familiarity and Barbie told him I was thinking about improv-ing. I took a quick, deep sip of the drink, trying to hide my embarrassment at Barbie’s blatant statement.
He grabbed a seat next to me and took my hand. “Are you serious? That would be awesome. What are you going to do?”
I hoped the flush from the bourbon would hide my anxious blush. “I don’t know, but Barbie suggested I ask you what I should try.”
“Oh,” he said, and held up his index finger, indicating that I had to wait. He hopped up and went behind the bar, grabbed something, and came back. He plopped down a spiral-bound, blue notebook in front of me. He flipped the chair around and straddled it, pointing to the notebook. “You can write.”
“But I’ve never written anything before, not like what you mean,” I told him.
“You wrote in college,” he told me.
“Those were essays, not stories.” I shook my head. “I just don’t know.”
Barbie said, “Cleo could use some special liquid inspiration, don’t you think, Nikki?”
Nikki snapped his fingers on both hands. “I have just the thing. You’re almost done drinking that bourbon anyway.” He shook his head and grinned at me as he stood up, like I was about to jump a motorcycle over ten buses. His excitement was electrifying. As he went back to the bar, I wondered why my improv-ing wound him up so much, but then I remembered how he looked gratified, like life had meaning after all, when Dynamite got his name.
He climbed back onto his chair, putting a bottle and another bourbon in front of me. “This is an over twenty-year aged Evan Williams bourbon, and I just opened the bottle for you. Go ahead, take a sip.”
The bourbon tasted like expensive perfume smells on a beautiful woman. It went down smooth and I felt good when I licked my lips.
“What do you think?” Nikki asked.
I told him, “You should have a glass and tell me what you think, yourself.”
He grinned. “Thanks for the offer, I think I will.” He turned to Barbie. “Joanie? Want a glass for a special occasion?”
She answered, “She hasn’t done it yet. And besides, she needs a pen.”
“Two glasses and one pen, coming back this way in a sec,” Nikki said, and hopped off his chair once again, leaving the bottle.
Barbie rolled her eyes, but smiled. “I guess I can have one glass.”
“Why don’t you drink?” I asked her.
She said, “Sometimes it makes the spirits too loud for me.”
It took me a minute to understand what she meant, but I grasped it. I supposed then that I should get used to her talking about the “spirits” now that I knew her secrets, or at least secrets she had kept from me. Maybe she openly talked about them to the other people she knew like she had just done to me.
Nikki returned and got back on the chair, arms folded over the chair back, and poured two glasses. Barbie took a dainty sip and thanked Nikki.
“Yes, Nikki, thank you,” I told him. After all this time, had I yet thanked him?
He said, “I love special occasions,” and held up his glass. We clinked in celebration and all sipped.
I glanced back at the bar and saw Dream Weaver pouring some glasses of wine. I asked Nikki if Dream Weaver was bartending tonight.
He said, “I asked her to, told her we have a new prospective improv-er and I needed to help her get the guts to go through with it.” He flicked his hair out of his eyes and explained that there were some people who were instantly interested, and others who were hesitant. “Some people come in here thinking it will come easy, some people saying they are afraid, but think they might have a skill at it. You are in the second group, there.”
“But I don’t have any idea if I’ll have a skill at it,” I told him.
“Then why do you want to try it?” he asked.
Yet again, I was road-blocked as to explaining why I needed to do this thing. Instead, I took another sip of the glorious bourbon, aged over twenty years. “I can’t say,” I told him, finding it harder to lie outright to his dark eyes than it was to Barbie.
He didn’t push the subject. He just put the pen on the notebook. “When do you want to try?”
“Maybe when there are more people up there and I’ve had this drink. I don’t know,” I told him. Then I surprised myself by asking, “Do you ever improv anymore? I’ve never seen you do it, but hear that you did spoken word.”
He drank deeply, like he was trying to put off answering, and said, “Not much anymore. No inspiration. Someday I’ll do it for you, though.”
“Why no inspiration?” I asked.
His face changed to the expression he wore when talking about his dead wife. “It’s harder now. I’m not in the right place.” I felt a tingling at the intensity of his gaze, like he was scrutinizing what kind of person I really was, and he liked what he saw. That same way of making people feel special, there it was. “I think you are, right now. I gotta tell you, this is going to be a good experience for you.”
How easily he deflected talking about himself back to me. 88 Fingers took a break and the long-haired man took the piano bench. A woman
I had never seen before got on stage and took the microphone. She explained to us that she was “Danny’s friend,” and I assumed the long-haired man’s name was Danny. She started singing about a lost love to complement his jazzy style, but I could tell neither of them was improv-ing. Her voice was beautiful, though, and I listened to her while Barbie and Nikki talked about an artist in Philadelphia who had recently had an exhibit.
As I drank the bourbon, I felt like I was among family, all three of us made me feel like we were a blood-related team, something I hadn’t felt since my father died. I felt my body warm and before I knew it Nikki was pouring two more glasses for Barbie and me, and he topped his own off.
As the night wore on, Swan danced for an endless time and D.D. showed up, got on the stage, and made poses around Swan, as though they were two figures on a German cuckoo clock. The sight was magnificent, like they had been built of the same platform materials and wound by a master clock maker. D.D. would stand in a fighter’s position while Swan swung around her in twirls and dancing arms at her waist. They seemed like they were a part of the music, a physical part of which the ears could not hear, but didn’t need to imagine anymore. They twisted and turned in an erotic display of sanctity, if there is such a thing, and Danny’s friend couldn’t keep up the words of her song to match the singularity which had been born from Swan and D.D.
I was jealous of D.D., but in a languid way, as she posed no threat to me since Nikki was beside me chatting up my sister. They invited me into their conversation, but I demurred every time by glancing down at the blue notebook and fingering the pen. I was in what kids now call a zone.
I was going to go up there. I just needed one more drink, perhaps. A divine inspiration at best. Nikki kept the bourbon flowing and the music got louder. 88 Fingers had taken up the keys again and Dream Weaver had stopped pouring drinks and was tuning up her violin. It is all so hazy, remembering that night. The drink was strong, and I started feeling confident, like I had just gotten to the top diving platform of an Olympic-sized pool and I was going to jump. I was climbing onto the improv stage, literally stumbling, but it felt natural. Anyone coming onto the improv stage must stumble, I thought.
I heard classical music in my head, Debussey, Clair de Lune even though the music was something else. The singer had vanished with the long-haired man. All became silent to me, and I sat on the stage facing 88 Fingers’ back. All music and sound seemed gone to me except the sound of that piano, that Debussey piece. I was in a movie, I was in someone else’s daydream. I was cross-legged on the improv stage with a notebook and pen in hand and couldn’t hear anything but that song. Where had I heard it before?
I remembered those late nights when my grandfather played it. Was that where the music came from? It got so loud in my head that sitting was uncomfortable, but I sat just the same and opened the notebook and wrote. First I doodled, then I don’t remember what happened. I was in an ocean, a being allowed to live there by the laws of the sea dwellers, for just a moment or so. The floor stopped being hard, but liquid instead, and I heard the keys of the song delve me deeper and deeper, and now I was a fish. I could breathe under water and see everything that was there. Swimming fish and corals and starfish and sharks and whales. We were all swimming together, in a dance of sorts, all connected to that song. The sun shown in on us, then the night and its moon gave us scant life. I was spinning, seeing it all. All of us, together in the water. Playing out a song and all the meaning that people might put it to. Music and experience flowing from every finger. I could hear nothing else and didn’t know any time. I was gone, and wasn’t even writing. Where was I? Just gone, in some long-dead musician’s head. Why the musician that my grandfather so adored?
I didn’t think about that. I just heard it and sipped my aged bourbon. All the people on stage and off floated around me and I was very safe. I was so safe, and I felt welcome like never before, eyes on me, but they were all fish eyes. They couldn’t blink, just look and offer a bulging cheek.
I was swimming, and there was nothing but the blue water and the way it looked underneath. I actually was in a haven for lost souls, and I was one. I was comforted by it. Lost souls aren’t really lost, they just haven’t found home yet. I might have been finding it then, a home for my soul, which might be lost at that point, and then the piano in my mind shifted and draped itself on me over and over again. I could see the room around me. It was full of watchers, the nameless man and Nikki and Barbie. Swan was still forming herself around D.D. on the stage, and 88 Fingers made some kind of music. There was Dynamite about to plug in his guitar.
I was in Clair de Lune. It was taking me away deeper in the sea and I was following it with my pen in hand. There it was, the pen. I was part of this moment, not just a bystander. It felt like the only time I was in that position. I was swimming, just a swimming fish, a glimmer of light from way up there in my eyes. What happened up there, above the surface? What world was there? Was I happy where I was deep in the sea? I looked to the mollusks and they only sat on the sand. I looked to the fish and they swam with the motion of purposefulness. I was with them, but alone. Alone as usual, but there was something in my hand. A piece of paper in front of me.
The world came back. I was at the Beacon and my name was Cleo. My sister was in the crowd. I had a bourbon in my hand. I fell back against the wall and breathed deeply. I dropped the pen on the stage.
Nikki was at my side and then I was in a seat next to Barbie. Barbie said to me, “I think you have improv-ed.”
There was music of the Beacon again. Then I don’t remember anymore.
Next thing I knew, I awoke on a soft couch. I rolled over and Barbie was looking at me, sitting on the floor near me. She said, “Feel a bit better now?”
“What?” I said.
“Blue Pen,” she replied with a smile. ”Do you feel better?”
I felt horrible. I was in a small room with heavy drapes hiding the light before dawn. Barbie said, “I’ll close down shop for, well, today.”
I sat up, spinning. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, today is special.”
My body felt like it was dying slowly from a poison. I said, “What are you talking about?”
“Of course, you don’t remember,” Barbie said. “Most first time improvers don’t. But we rode the bus home. You don’t recall any of it?”
I rubbed my face, confused and feeling horrible, like my body was killing me from the inside. “Barbie, no time for nonsense. Cecil will be worried to death. Am I in your house?”
Barbie reached out and touched my arm. I realized it was naked, as well as the rest of my body. “Barbie, what happened to my clothes?” I asked her.
“You took them off when you came in, saying something about Bast,” she said. “What is Bast?”
I fell down on my arm in the soft couch cushions. I ached. “Call Cecil, he must be worried.” I gave her the number and she went to another room to call.
She came back and sat on the couch. She stroked my curly hair, and I thought of how she had teased me about it when we were children. “You don’t remember anything about being called the Blue Pen?”
I didn’t, and closed my eyes, enjoying the feeling of Barbie’s pointy fingers on my scalp. When I opened my eyes again, the light behind the drapes had filled out to a full sunrise, and then I fell into a deep sleep.
It was night when I awoke, and again I tried to figure out where I was and what had happened to my clothes. It all eventually came back to me and I found my pants and shirt in a pile on the floor. I dressed and went out into Barbie’s living area. She was cooking, stirring a pot on the stove and I could see that the oven was on.
She smiled at me as I came in. “Want some water?”
I sat down on the floor near the kitchen linoleum, rubbing my face. “I must have blacked out last night. I can’t remember anything after I got off the stage. I barely remember being on the thing.”
She took the pot off the burner and set it asi
de, got me a glass of water and sat next to me. “I have some chicken baking and just made carrots. You’ll feel better after you eat.”
I asked her what Cecil said when she called.
She told me, “He sounds just as nice as he used to back in Nebraska. I told him I’d take good care of you, that you drank a little too much. He was okay with it, don’t worry.”
“My daughter will be wondering where I’ve been all day,” I said.
“Kids adapt to a new situation much easier than we adults do,” she said. “I’m sure Cecil kept her company. You being gone for one afternoon won’t upset her.”
I thought of how Belle wouldn’t talk to me when I came back from the shore and cringed internally. I drank the water and complained about my headache, then asked, “What did you say I was called?”
Barbie’s eyes lit up. “They called you the Blue Pen. It wasn’t until they’d all read what you wrote, though.”
I asked, “What did I write? I can’t remember.”
She told me, “You wrote such sad and beautiful prose about a woman dead in the ocean. Dream Weaver said her niece drowned and was sure you wrote about her.”
I shook my head. What nonsense, was my first thought.
Barbie said, “I can tell by your reaction that you think it was just drunk rambling, but it wasn’t. I could tell when you were up there that you were improv-ing. Tell me, what did it feel like?”
I tried to remember exactly what it had been for me up there on the small stage. I told her, “I heard Clair de Lune, like Grandfather used to play. It was a good feeling, I do know that.” I kept the part about the sea and the fish to myself.
Barbie patted my shoulder, saying, “I wish I had an art and could try improv-ing, but I figure the feeling I get when I channel spirits is pretty much the same thing. Seriously, Cleo, you wrote such sad words. That’s why you got the name. There wasn’t a dry eye in the reading room.”
I asked, “The reading room?”
“Yeah, you know. Behind the beaded curtain. Nikki hung your writing on the wall in there for everyone to read.”
I felt immediately embarrassed. All those people looked at my wasted scribbles. Oh my. “They really thought it meant something?”
“Don’t be self-conscious. You really shouldn’t be at all. It was good writing, very powerful. It was true,” she added, as though that explained the one answer to all of my black-out questions. A timer went off and Barbie prepared two plates of chicken and carrots, bringing them to me and putting them both on the floor.
We ate sitting there, and for once I didn’t feel the discomfort I usually felt in adult Barbie’s presence. I was still hung-over, and attributed it to that, but some other part of me realized that it was probably her. She had changed towards me. I was now in the club, part of the secret, a coconspirator in the game of getting through life in an alternative way.
After I was halfway finished with my food, my stomach cramped like I was about to give birth for a second time. “Oh, I don’t think I can eat anymore,” I said.
Barbie told me, “Just take little bites on and off for about twenty minutes. You really need to get your strength back. That was strong bourbon Nikki gave us.”
“Aged over twenty years,” I muttered.
She smiled. “He really likes you. Not in a weird way, don’t worry. I’ve never even seen him get together with a woman. He thinks of you as a kind of soul mate.”
I rubbed my cheeks and asked, “Now, how would you know that?”
“Well, for one, I can just sense that type of thing. But he also told me that, you know?” she said.
“No,” I told her, “I don’t know.”
“You feel the same way,” she said, pointing her fork at me. “Soul mates aren’t necessarily lovers. Like, for example, we’re soul mates with our mother.”
I asked, “Then why do people always say soul mate when referring to a lover?”
“It’s just over-used,” she explained. “When it’s between two people romantically it’s actually called twin flames.”
“Oh,” I said, thinking about saying something sarcastic, like, “Where did that jewel of wisdom come from?” But looking at Barbie so comfortable with me, after she obviously took care of me all night, the urge to push a confrontation left me. I said, “I puked last night, didn’t I?”
“Again, don’t worry,” she said. “It wasn’t till we were here, and I helped you. I felt a little sick, too. Strong stuff, but it was worth it. I could see so much more about what you go through on a daily basis last night when you were improv-ing.”
I guessed those special senses were what she meant. They were enhanced, she thought, when she drank.
“I should be getting home,” I told her after a nibble of carrot and suppressing another vomit.
“I told Cecil you’d call him to pick you up.”
Cecil was not happy when he came to get me. Neither was Belle. He said he had been worried all night, not having been able to fall asleep. When I hadn’t come home by two in the morning, he just paced all the rest of the dark hours deep in disturbing imagery of all the awful things that could have happened to me. I apologized, and he said it was okay as he rubbed my knee in the car, that he was glad that I was safe. Belle, in the backseat, wouldn’t even say a word. Cecil said that if I got that drunk again I should call him and at least let him know I was alright. I agreed humbly.
Humble as I felt that night, the rest of the week I played the part while thinking, thinking, thinking. I couldn’t stop thinking. My brain was one tidal wave after another of thought, and each whoosh of water brought me closer and closer to wanting to be a part of that thing that people at the Beacon lived for. One day, I was Cleo, and later in the afternoon, I was the Blue Pen. I imagined how I might have looked, madly scribbling on the improv stage, then I wondered about what I had written. I could have gone to the Beacon any time that week and read it, but that would compromise my fragile position with Cecil and Belle. I needed to keep Friday nights as a usual thing, or else my secrets would be discovered. What were those secrets? They were that I had a world of my own that excluded them, that had nothing to do with them whatsoever. That I had people in my life whose names my family had never heard. In my dreams, I heard 88 Fingers on the piano and saw great oceans shifting and changing eternally. I was a part of those seas. I had a place.
I often thought of Patrick. I hated to admit it, and would never have done to anyone out loud, but I wondered if it was possible to contact his spirit. I found myself washing out a coffee pot, reorganizing my closet, dusting the library…and pondering if Barbie really could contact the dead. Could she talk to Patrick for me? Then, following on that, if I had improv-ed, could I contact him myself? Then I would ask, if I had improv-ed successfully, why didn’t he come through rather than Dream Weaver’s dead niece? Of course, after those thoughts I would chide myself. It was all wacky at best. It was drink and delusion and hope for touching our dead that drove these people. Was I these people?
My inner skeptic made life’s new shine dull, like I had plunged a fresh, craftily-smithed sword back into the fire it was forged from. I was torn, to say the least. My family had no idea because I played like I always had, but the cloud of my not coming home that one night hung over the entire week. Sometimes I could even smell it, and it was cigar smoke from the man with no name, Barbie’s cigarette puffs, scents from the candles in the room behind the beaded curtain, the reading room. I was in inner turmoil, and I knew when Friday came that the relief of going back there on a reasonable basis in the context of my family’s opinion was probably too great too hide.
Cecil offered yet again to drive me, and again I demurred. I rode the bus downtown to the Beacon, eager to read my own writings that had given me an improv name at the Beacon. Anxious that my intrigue would be disappointed. Looking forward to seeing Nikki, and yes, prepared to ask Barbie about Patrick. I had made big, perception-changing plans for the night.
I walked down the candle
-lit, dark stairs of the Beacon with a squeezing sensation in my chest, like I was about to move from Nebraska all over again. I could hear 88 Fingers and smell the smoke.
When I came to the bottom on the stairs, nothing seemed different at first, but then heads turned and I saw people looking at me and whispering amongst themselves while they examined me. I stood there, not sure what to do. Barbie wasn’t there yet, and I didn’t know where to sit. Nikki was nowhere to be seen and Swan was dancing on stage. I decided to sit next to the man with no name at the bar. He held his corner like the cloud of cigar smoke marked his identity and personal space, and he greeted me with a metallic eye. I said nothing, hoping the stares would stop, and after a moment they did. I was dying to go in the reading room and check out my drunken improv-ing.
The man with no name touched my shoulder and said, “You did well last week. You know that, right?”
I shook my head and told him I didn’t remember much of it, feeling another riptide of anxiety hit me.
He said, “You did well. You and your sister, gifted. I can see it all, you know. Of course you know. I told you, and you have not forgotten. I know.”
I nodded to him just as Nikki walked out from the reading room and came behind the bar, grinning wildly at me. “The Blue Pen has returned!” he said, clapping his hands together once. “And what would the Blue Pen like to drink tonight?”
His words made it all so ordinary and comfortable, his demeanor was such that everything that had happened was almost expected of me, and that I was the same person to him.
“I’ll have whatever you are serving,” I told him, unable to hide a self-conscious grin of my own.
“No more of that bourbon left, Pen. But I know how you love red wine,” he said, and uncorked a bottle sitting on the bar behind him. He poured and put the glass in front of me. “Don’t let no-name make you get all weird-feeling. No-name has that effect. On you?”
I glanced at the subject and his face was stone. I told Nikki, “I feel okay. A little nervous tonight.” It felt good to be able to say it aloud to someone who would understand, and I knew he did.
He said, “You haven’t even read what you wrote yet, have you?”
I took a sip of wine, pleased that he was a mind reader. “I admit I am curious.”
He said, “Sorry the bourbon was so strong last week.” He winked and I knew he wasn’t at all sorry. We were in on a joke together and I let the day of hang-over suffering slip away from me.
“Where’s Barbie?” I asked.
Nikki told me he hadn’t seen her. “Strange for her to not be here yet. But Reed isn’t, either, so there you go.”
I nodded in understanding. He urged me with a flick of his hair to come to the reading room with him. I took my glass, tipped it to the man with no name, and followed Nikki to the room behind the beaded curtain.
My blue notebook hung on a nail next to one of Rivers’ paintings of a meadow. He took it down and handed it to me. In a low voice so that none of the few people surrounding Astra could hear, he said, “I’ll leave you in private with your wine to look it over. I have to say, I am quite impressed. Your improv name suits you.” He touched my hand slightly as he handed me the notebook, casually, but almost sensually. Was I seeing too much into a simple gesture? He left and I sat on a pillow and opened the notebook.
It was my handwriting, but the cursive strokes seemed more fluid, like they had been penned by a poet. I cannot tell you what it said now, but as I poured over the three pages, I felt confused. I couldn’t possibly have written it. There were strange phrases and references that I didn’t know. Yet I found myself sad at the tone, not just sad. Nostalgic, envious of the writer’s poignant view of the world. I knew I couldn’t have written it. But I had, there were witnesses. Was it possible that the notebook had been switched? Had my pages been ripped out and someone with my handwriting put something different in there? I even checked the metal spiral binding to see if there was a paper edging from having pages torn. Nothing.
I closed the notebook and put it on the floor. I felt silly hanging it back up, like I would be broadcasting to the others that I thought it was worthy.
When I went back into the bar, Barbie and Reed were sitting at the usual table. Swan was with them, done with her dancing. Dynamite was tuning his guitar to the piano and the shy singer woman from before was holding the mic, looking petrified.
Barbie greeted me with a hello and Reed nodded to me. Swan grasped my arm and congratulated me on my improv-ing the week before. She said, “We all knew you had it in you, but wow! That was fantastic. I cried when I read it. I am so happy I was improv-ing when you did it. We improv-ed together!”
I smiled and sipped the last drip of wine from my glass and Nikki, on cue, put another drink in front of me. He asked in a low voice so the others couldn’t hear him over the music, “What did you think about what you read?”
I told him it seemed like I couldn’t possibly have written that. “It is weird. It is in my handwriting, but I just can’t see how…” I trailed off.
He knelt down next to me. “Don’t feel weird about it, Cleo. It’s just a thing, you know? I can tell you take things seriously. Just let it flow, have fun with it.” He pointed at the stage, saying, “Do it again, we all loved it.”
I thanked him, for the compliment, for putting me at ease, and for the drink, determined to thank him for everything since I’d so long neglected doing so. “I would like to try again, to see if it was a one-time thing, to be honest.”
“It’s nothing,” he told me, “Once you’ve got it down. Never see people stumble a second time.” He squeezed my hand and told me he had to get drinks for some thirsty people.
As Dynamite started a slow wail on the guitar, the woman at the mic set out some sultry tune that seemed to have been in her head for a long time. It was becoming easy to me to see when someone was improv-ing or not. She wasn’t.
Reed took up the stage next to 88 Fingers and polished his harmonica, then made little filler trills between the woman’s breaths. Barbie leaned toward me and asked how I was feeling.
“Good,” I told her.
“I was wondering,” she said, “Since it’s your first time back since you improv-ed. Do you feel different?”
I felt entirely different, and I told her I was surprised at what I wrote. I said, “I’ve never even had thoughts like that, Barbie. I can’t decide if it was the drink or not.” I hadn’t spoken so frankly with her before then, not since I had told her about holding Patrick’s hand at the fair. I was surprised at how good it felt, and the question I was determined to ask her about Patrick burned in my mind like a sin.
She smiled, saying, “You did so good. You’re skilled. I’m so glad we can talk about it now. I have to admit, it was hard to talk to you before, but now you understand, don’t you?”
What could I say? I didn’t really understand the question, but I said, “It’s all so new,” and settled with that.
She smiled again and lit a cigarette. “Are you going to improv again tonight?”
I said I didn’t know. The night went on and I drank and watched and listened, Nikki fueling me with red wine. The players on the stage switched up a few times. D.D. showed up at one point and she was the only person in the place who gave me a bum eye. She didn’t get on the stage right away. Instead she went to the reading room with a drink.
I was tired of her attitude with me, though she had never said anything. It was all in her posture, her expressions. I knew she resented me for having Nikki’s attention. Feeling buzzed and brave from the wine, I went behind the beaded curtain and found her sitting on a pillow reading my notebook. I sat next to her, saying a greeting. She appeared nonchalant about looking at my writing, but I saw a flush in her pale skin. I was self-confident, not wanting any enemies, prepared to explain to her that I was married and that Nikki and I were only friends.
I asked her, “Why do I get the feeling you dislike me, D.D.?”
Her red eyebr
ows shot up and her lips curved upwards. “I don’t dislike you, Blue Pen.”
I was surprised that she used my improv name. “You give me looks,” was all I could come up with.
“Oh, that.” She settled back into the pillows, averting her gaze down to the notebook. “You improv-ed well. Ice said you would, someday. He can tell about people. I wasn’t as convinced, but you proved me wrong.”
I bit my lip, not knowing what to say. I was certain this attitude was over Nikki’s attention to me.
She said, “I’m just protective,” as though that explained it.
“What do you mean?” I said.
She sighed and stretched out her luxurious legs, dropping my notebook on a pillow. “People come in here all the time. Ice thinks they’re the greatest thing. Especially women. I guess I was wrong about you, after reading this. After all, we did improv together. I could tell you were for real. I seen it myself.” She was saying the words, but she didn’t look at me. Her tone was casual, like it was everyday conversation, nothing to her. My instincts were confused. Her words said those things, but her body said she thought I was a speck of dust floating around one of the hurricane-glassed candle flames, and at the same time her cheeks stayed flushed and her eyes glimmered with a personal satisfaction, like she had dealt me a deep, hard blow to the gut.
I didn’t know what to say, but it was obvious that I needed to say something. I decided to react to her words rather than her body language and told her, “Okay, I just don’t want anyone mad at me for something, especially when I don’t know what it’s for.”
She made a shushing sound and said, “Mad at you? That’s silly. Why would I be mad at you?” Her eyes pointed at me, stabbing at me, demanding camaraderie and delivering accusations.
I shrugged, not knowing what this woman was about. A game player, I wondered? Or was I just reading her wrong?
I glanced back at her as I left the reading room. She was hanging my notebook back on its nail on the wall, expressionless.
I improv-ed again that night after several glasses of wine, fully enjoying hearing, “The Blue Pen!” called out from the audience. I had similar sensations as the last time, but I could remember more. I saw desert scenes and it seemed my vision would zoom in and out of the landscape in my mind. I could see a scorpion’s stinger, then aerial views of a brushy, sandy ground below me. I closed my eyes and wrote, Swan dancing beside me and 88 Fingers jamming on the piano on the other side of the stage. I really don’t need to describe it anymore. I think you get the point of it, reporter. As with the last time, I tossed the pen and notebook aside when I was finished and joined Barbie at her table. I don’t remember much more, as I was quite drunk, but Nikki kissed me on the cheek when I left and told me to come back sometime during the week if I wanted. He said, “We’re not just open on Friday, you know.”
Barbie walked me home uncharacteristically chattering, but I couldn’t make out a lot of what she was saying. I was grateful for the arm she lent me so that I could keep my balance. I had a hard time getting the key in the door, and once inside I waved goodnight to Barbie.
Cecil was waiting for me in the library, clutching a glass of whiskey. “It’s after two,” he said. It looked as though he were floating to the right in my drunken vision, like a star you can’t quite see when looking right at it, but rather you have to look to the side to catch a glimpse of its shine.
“I’m fine,” I told him. “Just a little tipsy.”
“Where do you two go?” He sounded as though he was trying to be patient, like how he was with Belle when she wanted to paint and he didn’t want to clean up after her.
“I told you,” I said. “To clubs.”
“Which clubs?” He set his glass on the coffee table.
“Just clubs,” I answered, and left the room, trying to climb the stairs. I stumbled and clutched at the railing to keep myself from falling, but Cecil was suddenly there taking my shoulders.
“Not so fast,” he said, and led me back to the library, setting me down in an armchair. He crouched in front of me and looked up into my eyes. “I want to know where you go. Name a club you go to.”
In the seriousness of the moment, my haze sharpened and he stopped spinning. I said in my most self-righteous tone, “Why are you hounding me about this? You practically begged me to hang out with Barbie. Now I’m doing it, and you are getting on me about it like I’m some teenager who missed curfew.”
He held my chin and said, “Name a club.”
With him staring so hard into my eyes, I couldn’t lie and besides, I was too drunk to make up a name. I said, “One is called the Beacon.”
“The Beacon,” he repeated. “Where is it?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Somewhere downtown. I just follow Barbie.” My ability to lie was coming back. “I couldn’t get there in my own.”
“Okay,” he said, standing up. He walked back to the couch and reclaimed his drink, settling on the cushions. “And tell me, Cleo, how is it that you pay for the drinks that get you so loaded on every time you go to the Beacon?”
That was the last question I thought he’d ask. Why hadn’t I ever thought of it? I muttered to myself.
“What was that?” he asked.
“Barbie pays.”
He shook his head. “Barbie doesn’t have that kind of money.”
“How would you know?” I said.
“I picked you up from her place. She has no money, living there. So let me ask again, and tell me the truth. Who’s footing the booze bill?” He looked both frustrated and scared, like he didn’t know me at all and was just realizing it.
“What is it you’re accusing me of?” I asked, trying to sound calm. I really wanted to not be having this conversation.
He looked away and rotated his shoulders, taking a deep sip of drink. “Is there another man, Cleo?” His voice sounded weak, like it didn’t ever want to have to say those words and now it had.
“Oh,” I said, getting it. He thought that I had a man on the side, taking me out every Friday and getting me drunk and who knows what else.
“What does ‘oh’ mean?” he asked.
“It’s not that at all. I mean, the place we go to, the Beacon. The drinks are free.” I actually giggled, but he didn’t like that at all.
He clenched his drink and his ears flared red. His voice was quiet and angry as he said, “Do you think I’m a fool? There is no club that gives away free drinks. That’s just ridiculous. Tell me the truth.”
I held up my hands and told him, “That is the truth.”
He rolled his eyes. “You could come up with something better, really. Like you stash away cash. That Barbie really does have money, but chooses for some reason to live in squalor. That your grandmother sends us money that you pocket. But a bar that gives away free drinks…It’s another man, isn’t it?”
Nikki really wasn’t another man, not in the sense that Cecil meant. Sure, I thought about him a little too much and yes, I enjoyed his attentions more than a married woman should, but I was telling the truth when I said, “No other man.”
He leaned his elbows on his knees and breathed deeply. “So you are telling me that you go to a club where you get all your drinks for free. Why?”
“Everyone there does,” I answered.
“Oh, my God. You really do think I’m an idiot.” He rubbed his face.
“No, it’s for real,” I told him.
“Okay,” he spread his empty hand out. “Take me there. I want to see if I can get free drinks.”
I didn’t ever want Cecil into that part of my life, that new life I was making outside my home, my secret place. The place where I was going into a trance and writing strange things and getting socially rewarded for it. Wasn’t his knowing the name enough? “I don’t want to.”
“Why?” he asked. “Is it because you’re, I don’t know, lying?” He dragged out the last word.
“No, it’s just that it’s my place,” I tried to explain.
“What does that mean?”
“Well,” I said, “You have work. You go to work and have a life at work. That is your place. I have a place too, it’s just not work. It’s mine, though, and I don’t want anyone to go there with me.”
“Except for Barbie,” he added.
“Well,” I said, “Barbie took me there. So I guess it is our place.”
He stood up so fast that some of his drink spilled on the table. “Work is not fun, it is not my place. Here, home is my place. You,” he pointed at me, “Are not going back to this free bar unless you take me with you. End of discussion.”
As he left the room, I yelled at him, “You have no right to tell me what to do. I can do whatever I want. It’s my place! And I’m not lying!” but he was gone.
When I got into bed ten minutes later, Cecil was on his side facing away from me. I could tell he wasn’t asleep, but I had lost my anger and fell into a slumber almost immediately.
I woke up a few hours later, made coffee and took an aspirin for my headache. I sat on the porch and watched the sun rise as I sipped the strong brew, thinking about the fight I’d had with Cecil. He’d think I was nuts if he knew about the improv-ing. Was I nuts?
It all seemed crazy to me at first, then intimidating, but now that I had done it, it felt like nothing had changed. It was like sex looming over an adolescent virgin’s head, and once it happened, the big deal was gone and it was just another part of life.
