by Ursula Pflug
He didn’t tell, but Phoebe showed up when he was out, and Rickie home. And when he got in, Phoebe was asleep on what he’d come to think of as “his” sofa bed, blue shadows in the white sheets, under her eyes. He sighed and slept on the floor. In the morning, when Phoebe was still asleep, and Rickie had just gotten in from Carlos’s, she said, “You take the bedroom tonight, it’s only got a twin. I’ll share the pull-out with her.”
And he wanted to say, it’s because she was here I didn’t show up at the club. I was afraid she’d rob you, friend or no. I know her type too well. I was one, but at least I got an animal first. But Rickie stared at him with a look that said, it’s my apartment and that’s the end of it, and so Phoebe stayed.
sss
Phoebe would come to Carlos’s too. She always sat alone, a shadow in shadowy corners, drumming her hands impatiently on the table, scowling at anyone who tried to join her. Sometimes he thought she’d melt, disappear, and sometimes she did: disappear for an hour, come back darker, more shadowy still. He’d pay for her beer without knowing why. She’d make cat eyes at him. He’d wonder what she was thinking. With Rickie always reading his thoughts he’d come to think of communication that way: fluid, easy. But Phoebe was the other kind of girl. You didn’t know, and she didn’t tell. It made you want to know. It was her game. He’d be angry, and then he’d remember. All his games, and bring her a second beer so she wouldn’t have to ask. Rickie always spent her breaks sitting with her, happy she’d come. He couldn’t figure it.
She worked in a St. Mark’s Place vintage clothing store, making minimum wage. This wreaked havoc with her newly acquired Rainbow Bridge hours, and, she confessed she sometimes took naps on the old blue velvet couch that was part of the store’s decor, on slow afternoons. He wondered she wasn’t fired when she told him that, but Rickie said her window displays were the best, and he had to admit they were darkly hip.
Every so often, if it was promising to be a lame night at Carlos’s, and neither Rickie nor Joey had work they stayed home instead, talking into the early hours.
Somehow long detailed conversations required the presence of all three: they never happened otherwise. Once when Phoebe went out, visiting friends she said, Joey finally asked.
“You never mentioned her before she showed up.”
Rickie swigged her Coors, sorted seeds, stared at him. “Mention me one good friend you told me about.”
“Of mine?” He was flabbergasted. “I don’t have any. I pissed them all away.”
“So make one out of her.”
“She’s not like you. She’s not together. She has no drive, no passion.”
“She cooks and cleans,” Rickie said. “She’s an amazing cook.” He shrugged, wondering why Rickie suddenly thought these were important; she lived on take-out and dry-cleaning.
“We never used to stay in and talk till she came. I didn’t even know you. You just lived here, and we played music together.”
“We’re not friends?” he asked, astonished. He thought they’d been so close.
“Of course we are.” She gave him her signature comradely hug, said, “but people have different qualities. Why shouldn’t I have a friend who isn’t brilliant, talented? She starts the conversations about life, feelings. Something you and I never bother to do.”
“We don’t have to,” he said. “We have music.”
“Don’t ever let her know you think she’s nothing. Talking is communication too. We’re just not very good at it.”
“No,” he said, “we’re musicians, naturally telepathic.”
“Right,” Rickie said. “Remember you telling me once why Sally said she left you. Something about no talking? Maybe we should learn. Maybe Phoebe will teach us.”
“She doesn’t talk to me. It’s only when we’re all three together.”
“Nobody’s perfect.”
“S’pose not,” he said, relenting. But he thought, you don’t know what she’s really like. And then: but you took me in, and you weren’t wrong. At least not yet.
sss
It was all right when Rickie was there, making a bridge between them. But when he was alone with Phoebe they prowled around one another; those were the times the one bedroom felt too small. Phoebe would do her nails yet again, a new shade of green, and answer in monosyllables when Joey tried to make conversation, draw her out. She’d laugh, as if it was pointless, the effort at talking. He asked her once what she wanted from life and she said, “I like it, I like my job, I know it doesn’t pay well but I like old clothes.”
“What else?” he asked.
“I used to really like math.”
“What else d’you like?”
“I like music.”
“You don’t want to play, though?”
“Not everyone plays. I don’t have talent.” She glared at him, sneered at his monster. Who’d want talent, she was thinking. He could tell.
“The years’ll go by, you have to have something you care about, some way to get ahead, make progress.”
“I like my life,” she said. “What’s wrong with just living?” She stared at him as if she thought he was very very old to have forgotten this. She looked at her watch. “Time to go to the club. You’ll be late. The others are expecting you.” She scooped his creature off the floor, handed it to him. It looked like a winged rat, but he was grateful it was small tonight. She looked spiteful. “Forgetting something?” And it was true, he’d rather leave it home, if it were only possible. It was embarrassing having it sit next to him on stage, so ugly.
sss
She shrugged too much. He should’ve known. You only shrug that much if there’s a payoff: the secret comfort, the thing that matters, makes the other things not matter. Shruggable.
Carlos’s, being private, got away with a unisex john and that was the night Joey saw the needle imperfectly hidden under damp paper towels in the waste basket under the sink. He confronted her. And she stared at him, her eyes huge, purple shadowed. “Big deal,” she said. “It wasn’t mine.” And he left it at that, having no proof.
sss
He wasn’t sleeping with either of the women. Sally was years over by now, and while there’d been women since, none of them had been real. If he got involved with Rickie, it would have to be real, she’d stand for nothing less. And if he got involved with Phoebe, it wouldn’t be real, and he’d chance blowing his friendship with Rickie.
He smiled at himself: the things you knew at forty you hadn’t at thirty. If only he’d been so circumspect with Sally. And now he was living with two women, and not doing either of them. Hard to figure. In time he’d even stopped being hopelessly aroused by their long sexy if unshaven legs propped on the coffee table, balancing coffee cups. He wondered if they’d known.
He wasn’t in love with either of them. It was more as if he was in love with their life, and it was something about being three: just one and he knew the inevitable outcome. Two were safer. When they weren’t working or at Carlos’s, they spent their time watching old black and white movies on television at two am, eating Phoebe’s incredible sandwiches, doing crossword puzzles or reading in the big perpetually messy bed. He’d never had female roommates before, not without being romantically involved. It was like a revelation to him, what girls were like when they lived together. He got to listen to them talk about clothes and make-up; Rickie’d never revealed that side to him.
Sometimes he woke in the morning with a strange, sickly, unfamiliar sensation. At first blink he’d figure it for a hangover and then he’d realize it was hope. Joey felt he’d been given a reprieve. He was forty-two, and the girls were in their late twenties, even Carlos only thirty-one. One day, he suspected, it would be over and he’d have to reassume his real age. Plodding towards middle-aged failure.
He wanted to warn Rickie, protect her. So few made it, in spite of talent or hard work, or ev
en an animal, and she hadn’t one yet, not one that he’d seen. Why not?
Why was it taking her so long to grow a creature? They were the only true solace; they made everything possible. His, for instance, was busy pulling the stuffing out of their only armchair, spreading it over the carpet in an even unvacuumable static coating.
“Have a back-up,” he said. “Not cocktailing, even if you’re in a good place, the tips are good. Go to school for something more practical than music, more worthwhile than waitressing. Have continuity, friendships or partners that last for years and years.”
All the things I didn’t do, he wanted to add, but Rickie, as always, already knew the unspoken things. She walked over to his creature, picked it up, put it in his arms.
“Be kind to her,” she said, but the gryphon bit his ear. Maybe he’d give it to Phoebe. If only he could. Where was she?
But he knew.
Out.
sss
He lived with them with great pleasure, feeling each day a little more healed, knowing still it wasn’t really his life, but theirs. Or Rickie’s. Phoebe he knew had already given herself up to the shadows, just making a good secret of it. And who was he to judge?
One day when she was leaving he asked, “Where are you going?”
“To the racetrack.”
“Isn’t that a euphemism for your dealer?”
She smiled, seemingly not taking offense. He’d never seen her smile. “Actually not.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Come see for yourself then, if you’re so sure.”
He had nothing else to do, so he put on his coat and accompanied her on the subway, all the way to Queens. They drank ice cold beer and chatted. Phoebe read the racing forms with a determined focus that startled Joey, and moreover won sixty dollars, which wasn’t bad considering. Perennially broke, her original stake had only been ten.
“I’m impressed,” he said, meaning it.
“You can’t go to off track,” she explained earnestly. “It’s not the same thing. You have to see the horses, the jockeys; if you look at them carefully you can see whether it’s a good day for them or not. But mostly you have to be very analytical: judging, weighing, measuring everything.”
“Analytical,” he said on the ride home. “What a concept.”
He was careful not to sound snide, but she only said, “Thanks for coming with me, Joey. It’s more fun when you’re not alone.”
“Isn’t everything?”
It seemed she liked it that he was impressed. She went more often, dragging him along when he wasn’t busy. She took to bringing the racing form home and studying it for hours, pointedly, in front of him. So much for thinking she didn’t care whether he lived or died. She stopped cleaning up after them, stopped doing their laundry. At least her incredible Italian sandwiches didn’t stop.
There were fewer needles in the bathroom suddenly, the needles that he always hid before Rickie came home, the ones Phoebe had been too gone to hide.
“One junkie always knows another,” she said. “You stopped; I’ll stop. Just let me do it my way; please don’t tell Rickie. Remember when no one could tell you anything?”
She didn’t say, “not even Sally.” Rickie would have said that, but Joey was grateful Phoebe didn’t, thought it showed a remarkable discernment, a finely discriminating tact. He even forgot to think it was more game. And so he conspired in her secret with her, and prayed no harm would come to any of them because of it. It went against his better instincts, but it was all he could do. Her big shadowy eyes: give me this one chance. And Rickie had given him that chance, and so he couldn’t say no.
He remembered what Rickie had said, that first morning, when he’d asked why she was bothering with him. To get to heaven, you have to save one life. It’s the entry fee. He’d thought she was being facetious, but now it gave him pause. Phoebe’s sandwiches were delicious, but food for thought is the best kind. He took the trash out often, and went so far as buying Phoebe needles so she’d use new, and clean. He didn’t think that was what it would take, to save her life, but it was all he could come up with. Buying time.
But now there were horses in Phoebe’s life, and fewer syringes in the trash. She emerged a little from the shadows. He thought it was the winning, which she did often, in small amounts, but she laughed when he called her a gambling junkie. “I like winning,” she said. “It’s a reward, but it’s the figuring I really like.”
He remembered again when she’d shyly admitted that in high school she’d loved math, as though, in their musicians’ crowd, it was something to be ashamed of. And it was true; it was so foreign to him it was as if he hadn’t heard her. And now, some nights when she got that slippery look again, as though she was going to disappear, make phone calls in alleyways, he’d get off stage, apologize to Carlos, take her by the arm and say, “Let’s go. We’re going to the races.”
sss
Mojo asked him to lay sax tracks for his new CD, said it would be an honour.
Joey was astounded, and Rickie laughed at him. “You really haven’t a clue, have you?”
“A clue?”
“We all think it’s an honour. You’re one of the best.”
“People my age don’t think that,” he said, grateful for her all over again.
“Fuck ’em,” she said. “We need you.”
“Maybe you just haven’t seen me screw up real bad.”
“Oh,” she said charmingly, “but you’re reborn now. You’re over all that, whatever it was.”
He’d never told her. She didn’t know. He was amazed at her faith in him. She didn’t know how tempted he was. Phoebe. A door that swung two ways. What if he only threw out Phoebe’s needles so he could handle them again, a tiny illicit thrill? It would be so easy to fall, such a comfort.
Then he realized if he fell, he might fall alone, for Phoebe was changing, or just showing him more of her hidden good side. They all went to the recording studio together, and Mojo, who loved to play but had only learned MIDI because you had to, was struggling with the code, grinding his teeth in frustration. And Phoebe leaned over his shoulder, took the pencil from his hand and scribbled down a new version.
Mojo stared from under his dreadlocks, blinked.
“That’s it, Phoebe. How’d you do that?”
“I don’t know, really. I went out with a guy who understood MIDI, and I paid attention, a bit.”
Mojo looked at Joey, dumbstruck. “So much for Phoebe as the junkie groupie,” he said later, when the girls were out getting food.
“So much for. Not that she ever slept with me; isn’t that part of that particular package?”
“Me either,” Mojo said a little wistfully, and Joey had to suppress a laugh. He’d cut off his own dreads around the same time white kids like Mojo started growing them, but he liked him in spite of himself.
“She should go to school, stop wasting her brains.”
“And her veins.”
“That too.”
So Mojo knew. But he was pretty sure Rickie still didn’t.
sss
Sometimes, coming home from an ecstasy-stained midnight tour of Carlos’s club, they’d fall asleep, all three, fully clothed on the pull-out. As had just happened. But Rickie woke again, got up alone. The peace of it. She looked at Phoebe and Joey, curled around one another, her hand sheltering his cheek. Joey’s rough years vanished when he slept. And Phoebe wasn’t old enough for hers to show, not that Rickie knew much about them, had always loved her friend too much to see the shadows that were drawn to her, collecting at her feet like black puddles. She rearranged the duvet, pulling them down where Joey’s long feet emerged like curious platypi. Spring had come, and with it the heat prematurely turned down as always. The dawn chill had set in.
She re-boxed the coloured felt pens that Phoebe used, with a complicated
system of colour coding that neither she nor Joey understood, to annotate her racing sheet. She replaced Joey’s sax into its case. She liked that Joey played with her, thought she was good enough now, on her guitar. And the few older musicians in the city’s club circuit who occasionally dropped in at The Bridge no longer treated her like a flighty wannabe. She knew, too, that the session guys gave her points for trying to pull Joey together, when they’d turned away, frightened or angry, contemptuous or apathetic. So many lose everything in this town.
It had all seemed easy that morning: being funny, giving him Carlos’s card.
She’d just wanted to play with him. Was honoured by the thought. Didn’t know his peers stayed away from him as if he had the plague. She hadn’t even thought he’d show up, especially in light of that risky eighty-dollar loan. After all, she was just a girl who couldn’t play, and he was a small legend, a firefly.
Did she want him, she wondered? Did Phoebe? They’d discussed it and both agreed that while he grew more attractive with each day that he cheered up, he was too good a friend to risk losing as a lover. And really, his heart was still Sally’s. One day she’d have to ask about Sally. Some people just never got over a person.
She pulled on her boots and her coat, closed the door softly behind her, heard the lock click into place, walked towards her river.
In the street everything was dawn grey, the pigeons and the newspapers, even the sky, now. When she reached the water it was grey also. She knew it was dangerous, walking alone to the East River at dawn, past burned out tenements, but she never felt threatened. She loved it. It was her most church-like moment.
sss
When she got back they were already gone. Rickie set up the mike stand in the middle of the floor. She plugged it in and turned on the tape deck, playing back her previous attempt from what was, after all, only three days before. She listened carefully, and could name the place where her voice lost its resonance, where her gut drew back and hesitated. When the song was finished she fast-forwarded to Joey’s new instrumental track, the cries of his saxophone, Carlos’s punctuating drums. She switched over to the voice track and touched the record button; the familiar little red light went on. She listened to the music, feeling for an opening, hoping for her bird to flutter from her throat—a strange bird she’d seen, alone, three times. She’d been afraid to tell, even Joey. What if it didn’t stay? Its moods were still too unpredictable. Perhaps if she made her bird feel welcome it would visit more often. Her voice grew and filled the confines of the small room, as her song rose and fell, then something larger grew from behind, pressing her voice outward, expanding it even more. It was that something she could never explain nor define, that fleeting spirit of her music. Her voice would always, she knew, be her first and best instrument. The guitar was just so the guys wouldn’t make fun of her, call her just a singer.
