by Ursula Pflug
When Esme rejoined the others the driver poured her wine she sipped at desultorily and asked her where she’d been.
“There is a woman,” she said. “Every day she passes me on the stairs. She’s carrying a computer. She uses it to write. At first I thought she was real, but then Margit told me she’s not. I mean, she is, but she’s not real here. She is working on a story. And, it’s about me. So, I worry. Do I only exist because she is writing me? I wanted desperately to talk to her even before I found out, I wasn’t sure why. And now, I am afraid. If I go back to the city, she might forget about me. She might stop writing about me. And then…”
“Very Chuang Tzu,” the young man said.
“But what if it’s the opposite?” the driver asked. “What if it’s we who are the originals, the writers, and she is the character. What if you are writing her writing you?”
“Maybe,” Esme said. “But it’s one of the reasons I’m not getting on the return bus tomorrow. Maybe next week. Rachel is looking for an ending, she said in her notes. She has worked on this story for decades and she is tired of it. But she doesn’t understand. If she walks away from the story, or even if she finds an ending, then we will all die. We only live because she writes.”
“You don’t know that,” the young man said.
“Be careful,” Margit said. “You sound like her.”
“Rachel?” Esme asked.
“No. Annielle before she left for Dream.”
“I wouldn’t be afraid to go to find my aunt if I didn’t have to go alone.”
“But maybe if you go to find Annielle we will all die. Isn’t there another possible ending?” the driver asked.
sss
Every morning after breakfast they would read their work and share notes at a big table Berndt had set up in the cavernous bar and covered with a red cloth. On the way downstairs Rachel passed a tall blonde in a blue floral dress and frayed straw hat.
She must have just checked in, Rachel told herself. I’ve never seen her here before.
Then the woman wavered a little, and Rachel could see through her. Which was weird enough, but she also seemed incredibly familiar.
Even though vaping was legal indoors, Berndt couldn’t break the habit of smoking outside. He liked standing on the little concrete porch to see who was coming and going in his town.
She told him about the apparition. “Are there ghosts here?” she asked.
Berndt said, “I’ve never heard of one. But you’ve been working hard and you haven’t been sleeping well.”
“How do you know?”
“People in the three-twenty club can all hear each other in the halls, back and forth, to and fro from the bathroom. My guess is the ghostly woman is somehow a part of you.”
“Busted about the three-twenty club,” Rachel laughed. “But I don’t think she’s a projection or an alter ego. While indistinct she was definitely exterior, not in my mind’s eye. And she seemed familiar.”
Berndt said, “Do you know Ursula LeGuin wrote about Lao Tzu and translated him? She said he was an anarchist. You can’t keep working on your hotel story and you can’t end it either. You’ve told me this more than once. This woman is the key, I’m sure of it.”
“That’s interesting but it doesn’t help me understand what just happened.”
“It’s just a feeling I have, that she is the clue to your ending. Just a feeling, but a strong one. ”
“Maybe it’s the crystals, I don’t know,” Rachel said. “I forgot my laptop upstairs.”
“Really?” Berndt raised a gently mocking eyebrow. “How could you forget a thing like that?”
They went back inside. Climbing the stairs to get her computer Rachel noticed the grime more than usual. She opened her door with a key, not a card, and instead of her pokey room she was in a big panelled corner room full of light. She crossed the room to look out one of the windows set into the red-painted walls. It looked out at a fenced field where skinny horses stood munching grass. Really their corral was just posts driven into a dune.
“Forget something?” a woman asked behind her.
Rachel turned. A straw hat with holes in it cast a shadow over her face but Rachel could still see that she was beautiful.
On the bed was a big canvas tote, orange flowers with stitched leather handles. “Do you like the bag?” Rachel asked idiotically. “I could change the colour. Maybe you’d like fish instead of flowers.”
Esme smiled and handed her her laptop.
“How can my computer be in your room?” Rachel asked and then she laughed, a little hysterically.
“How can you see me on your stairs? Go teach your class,” Esme said.
“I will. I just want to look out the window a moment longer.”
The ribby horses munched grass. Rachel traced her finger along the carved woodwork around the window where the red paint peeled and peeled.
“It isn’t called The Red Arcade here,” Esme said at last.
“Why not?”
“The name moved across to your hotel years ago. Even though it is here that there are blind arcades on the outside of the building, painted red. The arcades are symbols. Each arcade represents a different dimension, a doorway to another hotel. Although right now there are only two. At other times there were more.”
“Can you show me? I’d love to see the building from the outside.”
“You already know what it looks like,” Esme said.
Rachel nodded. “The front yard is mainly sand. You swept this morning, to spruce things up for when the bus comes. Leaves blow in from the trees that edge the sea.”
Esme nodded. “I have to help Margit serve the lunch. The driver hasn’t stayed over in years and she is so excited. Did you get all that?” she laughed.
“I think so. Can’t I come to lunch too?” Rachel asked. “It feels like somewhere I’ve always wanted to live only I didn’t know it.”
“If you stay, you’ll become like Annielle.”
“The driver said she went mad because she left the hotel to go to Dream.”
Esme shook her head. “It’s the staying that makes you crazy, not the going.”
“It just feels so amazing, so much like what we all long for over there. We can sense it but we can’t quite touch it and it breaks our hearts.”
“But you can,” Esme said.
“I can what?”
“Touch it.”
Esme placed her hand over Rachel’s hand, still on the peeling red window frame. She exerted a little pressure.
“You feel it, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then that is what you must go back and teach.”
Big Ears
JOEY WANTED TO GO HOME. He wanted to go home so bad it made his teeth ache, but home was back with Sally, balanced on a tightrope wire he didn’t have the shoes for, and the thing that frightened Joey most was large and very hairy and had just taken up residence on the opposite bench. It leered, drooling. Joey tried his best to ignore it, warming his hands around his coffee cup.
Joey did not notice Rickie when she walked in. He didn’t look up when she ran off a long complicated order at the take-out counter, inverting syllables like a dyslexic push-me-pull-you. Then Rickie did a Python 007 routine and slithered over to his table. She snuck in beside the drooling hairy thing, scaring it half to death. It was none the wiser for it. Those types never are.
She cleared her throat and lowered her voice as far as it would go, which was a fair distance. “I believe the Sourpuss Parade just turned left on Main Street,” she said, staring him right in the eye. “It was no more than five minutes and change ago. You can still make it if you’re quick.”
“It isn’t funny.”
“It isn’t? Tell me what isn’t?” She did look like the sort of person who laughed a lot; a big round face nestled in
large quantities of cheerful black curls.
“Me. Right now.” He felt too tired and beaten for the old game: extract female sympathy for your miserable condition and go on from there. So what were his motives in telling her the truth?
“You catch on quick,” she replied, “for a turtle on reds that is,” and went to wait for her order.
And why was she bothering? She’d been up all night; he knew that already. The mix of beer and bennies that had propelled her this far not yet worn off; the mile a minute chatter she’d entertained her friends with all night had just enough gas left in it to spill over onto him. She didn’t really care, and he didn’t hold it against her. But she was cute, very cute. “All you got to do is ask,” she said, coming back with an enormous paper bag. Mind reading powers as well, it looked like.
Joey spoke up, pride notwithstanding. “Okay, okay, I’m asking.”
Rickie gave him a Camel filter. “When you’re finished you can have one of these.” She reached into the bag and brought out a cheeseburger.
“That’s a pretty good hat trick,” he admitted, lighting the cigarette greedily, “considering when I ate last.”
“It is,” she boasted, “although I know a few others.”
“It shows,” he said. Joey wastefully put out his Camel only half smoked and carefully unwrapped his burger, took an enormous bite. It tasted almost as good as a brand new reed would have, for his exiled saxophone. Almost.
Half the burger gone, the drooling hairy thing shrank a little, its ugly grimace distending into an almost smile, appeased by Rickie’s gifts. Joey managed to ask, “Where’re you having so much fun, anyway?”
She gave him the card to a private club, and he asked, because she seemed more than just a club kid, what she played, and she said, “I just sing, but I’m learning the guitar, although I haven’t taken it on stage yet. But it’s a cool place; Mojo comes every Thursday, and you should come.”
“What makes you think I’m a player?”
“I’ve seen your picture in the trade papers, Joey.”
“You mean you read?”
She rolled her eyes, pulling the card away, but Joey took it back and put it in his pocket.
Mojo. Mojo’s first derivative world beat recording had sustained a moderate success, and Joey felt bitter. If he went to this place, Joey guessed, he’d be surrounded by musicians ten to fifteen years younger, and a few of them, like Mojo, who was white, would have better club dates and recording contracts under their belts than he’d ever had, even with his twenty years of dues. He thought he wouldn’t show. “I’d love to come,” he said, surprising himself, “but my best lady’s in hock, and I wouldn’t want to show with a lesser companion.”
“How much?” she asked.
“Seventy-five bones,” he replied wearily, wiping cheeseburger grease off his chin.
She did something miraculous then. Reached into her jeans pocket, and pulled four crumpled twenties off a roll. “Here,” she said, “don’t spend it at the bar. Show by eleven. By sun-up you’ll have enough to pay me back.”
He took the card out again. The Rainbow Bridge. Prop: Carlos Cienfuego. “You mean you actually get paid at this place?” He was revealing everything now, and to a girl who couldn’t be more than twenty-eight. So much for sounding older, wise, cooler than hell. But she seemed the one with all the wisdom this morning. Maybe they’re like that now, he marvelled.
“Ten dollar cover at the door, and people come, because the music’s real good and doesn’t stop till morning. At least some nights it’s real good.”
He stared at her. “How come you got so wise?”
“I want to get to heaven,” she said. “You have to save one life. That’s the entry fee, I heard.”
“I knew there was a catch.”
“Don’t screw up,” she said, as if only now, the first daylight streaming in the front windows, could she see how broken he really was. She left in a hurry, crashing into the door on her way out, sounding like a platoon of armadillos wearing rings on their fingers and doorbells on their toes.
He hated her for just a second: a girl, afraid he might embarrass her. Didn’t she know who he was? But she did. It was why she’d invited him. And why she was afraid.
And he walked across town in the snow to save the bus fare, brought his beauty home, bought a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter at the Latino convenience store on the ground floor of his Avenue C walk-up with the leftover five dollars. He practised for four hours before he ate and went to sleep, and when he played that night at Carlos’s he didn’t embarrass Rickie at all. He’d completely forgotten the rush of applause; he’d done only session work for so long. Jingles. But this was real.
sss
After they’d made music four nights a week for a fortnight his landlord turfed him out for non-payment, and Rickie, reading his mind again, invited him to share her First Avenue one bedroom, use the fold-out. How foolishly idealistic the young are, he thought. How does she know I won’t screw up my share of the rent, won’t come on to her, won’t deal heroin out of her crib? Rickie stared into his eyes, still too knowing, said, “Because I believe in music. Because you’re not as good as you used to be.“
“No, I’m not,” he answered, ready to call his old supplier, have her come to the apartment while Rickie was out at work, make indiscreet phone calls, leave the bathroom full of needles and bent blackened spoons.
“No,” she said. “You’re not as good as before. The last two nights you were better. Whatever happened to you, and I know it wasn’t good, you’ve finally turned it into something good. I’m just a girl who believes, but you’re a real musician.”
It was true, he thought. “I believe too,” he said.
And she said, “Of course you do. Why else would you have stayed in the game so long? Not gone into real estate, software, whatever?”
Could be I wasn’t good for anything else, he thought, but agreed instead. “Whatever. But you know too much.”
“Only when I’ve been singing,” she replied.
And they went to Orchard Street and shopped for sheets for the pull-out, and he thought perhaps she’d teach him to love New York all over again. “Get an extra set,” she said, “for your beastie.” She leaned down to pet it but it snarled, snapping at her fingers. He winced, full of remorse. Why did it have to follow him everywhere, looking like that?
But Rickie only said, “I’ve never met anyone who has one before. I’ve heard of them of course, seen them on TV, but I’ve never met a real person who’s got one. Even Mojo.”
No kidding, he thought, you can’t be a copy-cat and expect an animal to come to you, but said instead, “I know you don’t have one, I would’ve seen it by now. But don’t you ever feel one waiting for you, wanting to come?”
“I dream of a bird sometimes. It’s golden and very beautiful.”
“Dream more,” he said, and looked at his creature in shame, dragging her peeling yellowed talons along the cement. She hadn’t always looked like this.
He remembered the beginning, when he’d first moved here, when it had meant so much to live in the East Village. Meant everything; that he’d honed his craft so lovingly he had a creature to prove it, a beautiful gryphon with yellow eyes who sat behind him when he played. That had been worth more than gold. He looked at Rickie. That must be what she felt like still, waiting patiently for her animal, calling it with her passion, her attention, her discipline. Life’s biggest dream was about to happen to her. That anyone could still feel like that. His monster drooled and shuddered beside him, shedding feathers and fur. He wished he could kill it, start all over. But of course it didn’t work that way.
sss
Three months into their arrangement a girl came to the door when Rickie was at her four night a week waitressing gig. Pale pale face, short dark hair, a hollow wooden look. Rickie was such a survivo
r, so efficient and competent, he’d forgotten there was another kind of girl, this kind. Stick figure, bird bones, puppet. Marionette, he thought, who’s pulling the strings? And then wondered at the thought, its flash of unasked-for intuition. He checked to see if she had an animal. She didn’t, unless it was very small, hiding in a pocket. She stared right back, looking past him at his monster who’d come skulking down the stairs after him. A bag of feathers and fur, matted, shedding.
The girl asked for Rickie, but Rickie was at work, and Joey too had to leave to record his tracks for a jingle, so he couldn’t invite her in for coffee, not that he wanted to.
“What should I tell her?” he asked.
“Just say Phoebe dropped by,” the girl said. “We’re real good friends,” but Joey had never heard Rickie mention any Phoebe.
“You come back some other time,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t. Phoebe sighed heavily, as though he was such a drag not to invite her up, stared past him, slyly, at his creature, smirked.
He shut the door in her face, hating himself again for being so old, for knowing too much in a different way than Rickie did, Rickie whom he owed rent. He hated himself for his cynicism, but knew without a doubt that friends like this didn’t come to the door unless they wanted something: food, a share of the stash, a place to stay, money. He knew he was being unfair, but he’d been around too long not to peg the type when he saw it. He’d had that look himself, for over a decade, frightening people, or arousing their contempt. Probably still had it. Only Rickie had seen through to something else, a brightness buried deep within, almost winked out. Maybe he was an alley cat, protecting his turf, jealously guarding Rickie’s generosity for himself. What if Rickie kicked him out, invited Phoebe to share the flat instead? Those cat eyes, he could feel them staring through the door even as he climbed the stairs. Telling him he wasn’t an alley cat at all; no, he was a monster. Had to be: he had one, didn’t he?
A street door that locked. Windows that didn’t look at an air shaft. That’s what First Avenue did for you, even if it was a cheap rent control she’d paid key money for, borrowed from her parents. Sally was still in the one Joey had had. Heat that worked. Three months and he still couldn’t get used to it. It had been years. He thought he wouldn’t mention the girl.
