The Women of Saturn

by Connie Guzzo-Mcparland

  Mother also gets out of the car.

  “Wait for us in the car,” I say crossly to her.

  “I’m not going to stay in the car all alone, around this place,” Mother says.

  “They won’t let you in,” I say.

  “Why not?” Mother asks. I don’t have an answer for her, and look at my brother.

  “You’re not of age, Ma,” Luigi says, laughing.

  “This is crazy,” I say, realizing how ridiculous the whole situation has become. The thought of taking my mother to a strip club at four in the morning seems surreal.

  Luigi tries opening the door, but it’s locked.

  I ring the bell. In a few moments, a doorman opens the door and looks us over suspiciously. I explain I need to speak to two of his dancers.

  “Linda and Gina who?” he asks in a gruff voice.

  “Linda Albino and Gina Di Marco. They take dancing lessons here.” I can hear loud music and hooting coming from inside. “I’d like to ask them a few questions.”

  “They’re not dancers. What kind of questions?” He’s not ready to let us in.

  “Can I speak to Charlie Matteo?”

  “You know Charlie?” he asks.

  “Yes, I do. I went to school with him.” I say. He closes the door again.

  Luigi looks at me. “Is that the same Charlie that drove a car to school? He must have been involved in funny business even then.”

  “I know. He was so good looking. All the girls went after him,” I say.

  “Madonna mia! Who are we dealing with?” Mother asks.

  “Who did you expect to find here, the parish priest?” I ask. “I told you to stay in the car.”

  The door opens and Charlie shows up, the surly doorman behind him. “Sorry, but the club is only open to regular members at this time,” Charlie says. As he speaks, he keeps his eyes on me, as if trying to place me. “Do I know you?” he asks.

  “Maybe. I’m Cathy Anastasia. I’m Linda and Gina’s teacher. This is my brother, Luigi, and my mother, Teresa.”

  “Oh yes, they’ve spoken about you. Are you related to Tony Anastasia?” he says.

  “Not at all,” I answer impatiently. “We’re looking for Angie Tonnelli, one of my students. Do you know her? She usually hangs around with Linda and Gina.”

  “No, never seen her. Her uncle Alfonso Abiusi has already called. We told him we haven’t seen her at all.”

  “I’d like to speak to one of her friends. Maybe they know where we can look for her.”

  “I think Linda left already, but Gina is still here. She’s in the dressing room,” he adds hesitantly. “She wasn’t feeling well. I think she’s had one drink too many. You know how it is. I’ll call her, and tell her to come out.”

  “I would rather go inside and speak to her there,” I insist. I want to make sure Angie isn’t hiding inside the club.

  “Sure, come in. But you need to go through the bar and around the stage to get to the dressing room.” Charlie looks at Mother with an amused grin. “It’s a strip club, you know.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “She might as well see once and for all what a nightclub looks like.”

  Charlie smiles, shrugs, and nods at the doorman to let us through. Then he turns to Luigi. “Your face looks familiar to me.”

  “I went to Pius X. You did too, right?”

  “Now I remember you. You used to play the horn.”

  “I still do,” Luigi says.

  “Come in and have a drink.” He walks with us through a narrow corridor that is covered with wall-to-wall photos of Nick Demon in his wrestling trunks posing with well-known personalities.

  I look at my mother, but she just looks puzzled. I can’t help but think of a Calabrian saying as I look at her expression, Cumu nu ciucciu intra i suani—like a donkey in a music hall.

  The music gets louder and louder as the corridor opens onto a darkened, smoke-filled room. A bar runs along the length of the room on one side. Charlie offers us a drink, but Mother and I decline. He pours Luigi a brandy. The blaring music makes it impossible to carry on a conversation, but the eyes of all those present are fixed on the cavorting dancers at various stages of undress. Charlie leads me and my mother to the dressing room, while Luigi stays at the bar.

  The club patrons are mostly men, but there are a few women in costumes and masks sitting around the tables next to the stage and the runway. I try to focus on the people in the audience, looking for a sign of Angie in a black leather jacket. Some men sit on stools in front of the mirrored bar, hooting and whistling at the stage on the opposite side; others stare intently but vacantly at the reflections of gyrating bodies in the mirror behind the shelves of liquor bottles. Amidst dry-ice smoke and dizzying strobe lights, a parade of nude girls shake their tinseled breasts, spread their legs, bend forward and backward to offer the audience a full view of their most intimate body parts. Some completely nude dancers with lacy garter belts stand on individual tables, shaking their bodies right above the faces and upraised hands of the overheated patrons, who slip money into the girls’ garter belts for the sole thrill of touching their exposed flesh.

  I turn back to look at my mother, who just follows impassively.

  Inside the dressing room, a half-dozen women chat as they sit in front of mirrors, adjusting their make-up, their corsets, hats, and capes. The ones in full regalia wait behind the closed door for a cue to go onstage. Other nude girls rush in, carrying their shed clothing in their hands, put on robes, and sit down to rest on a cot in the corner.

  Charlie yells. “Gina, someone’s here to see you.”

  Gina’s eyes look glazed over and she doesn’t seem particularly surprised to see me. She’s still wearing the priest costume and has a distant and spaced expression as she gets up from the cot to greet us.

  “Hi, Gina,” I say. “I’ve come to give Angie a lift home. Where is she?”

  “She came and then left right away, Miss.” She speaks in a drawl. She’s obviously quite drunk.

  “Charlie said he never saw her here.”

  “She was wearing a mask.”

  “Gina, are you sure? I need to find her and drive her home.”

  “I swear to you, Miss. She came in, walked to the bar, and then said she had to leave. Everything got screwed up today. Linda never even waited for me.”

  Gina doesn’t sound coherent. I can’t trust what she says.

  A tall statuesque woman in tall boots, a mask and cape, and holding a whip, looks at Mother, and says, “C’est ta maman, Gina?” But Gina doesn’t respond.

  Mother whispers to me, “A woman like that … why doesn’t she find a job somewhere else?”

  “It’s for the money. They make more money here,” I say impatiently, looking intently at each dancer’s face. But there’s no sign of Angie in the room.

  Some of the girls look suspiciously at us. “Mais qu’est-ce qu’elles font icitte?” the dancer with the whip asks Gina, who looks at her blankly.

  “Angie? Angie?” Mother screams at the top of her voice.

  “Il n’ya pas d’Angie iccitte. Allez-vous chez vous,” the dancer sounds annoyed.

  “Vous, allez chez vous … travailler,” Mother yells back.

  “Va ffa nculu,” the dancer says as she struts out of the room snapping her whip.

  “She’s even Italian?” Mother says, astonished, and crosses herself.

  “You should have stayed in the car. This is no place for you. Stay here while I walk around,” I tell her outside the dressing room.

  I walk slowly to the other end of the bar, looking intently at the faces of the patrons, but Angie is not there. I return to the dressing room. Gina stares at me blankly. “Gina, are you okay? How are you going to get home? How come you didn’t go home with Linda?”

  “That bitch left without me. I bet she we
nt to see George. I’ll take a cab.”

  “Let’s go. I’ll give you a lift,” I say, and the three of us leave. We walk past the bar, nod, thank Charlie, and exit the club with Luigi.

  “I don’t know how they can stand working in all that smoke and noise,” Luigi says. “Now what?”

  “Angie came to the club, but for some reason left right away.”

  “O Dio mio. Where could she be?” Mother asks plaintively.

  “I don’t know,” I say, then turn to Luigi and whisper, “If you drive me to the school, I’ll pick up my car and take this girl home. She’s in no shape to go home by herself.”

  Luigi shakes his head in disbelief and speaks in dialect. “What is a fifteen-year-old girl doing in a place like this?” Then he turns to Mother, “So now you can say you’ve been in a club. What did you think?”

  “They can keep them, for all I care. All that smoke, just to look at a woman’s ass? In my time, a man had to get married to see it.”

  “Now all you have to do is pay six dollars for a drink,” Luigi says.

  “Do you know where Angie went after she left the club? Maybe she went with Linda?” I ask Gina. She looks pale, as though she is going to vomit.

  “No, Angie left as soon as she came in. I think she went looking for Eddie, in TMR. Linda spent the evening with a guy I’ve never seen, and then she left with him. I got stuck in the dressing room all night, helping the girls.”

  “Do you know Eddie? Does he live in TMR? Where can I find him?”

  “He was going there to trick-or-treat, he told us at the park. Maybe he’s back at school.”

  “Gina, it’s four in the morning. Nobody’s at school, except the night janitor.”

  “Try George’s office.”

  “Who’s George?”

  “The night janitor. The two hang together at the office.”

  “The office? What office?” I ask impatiently.

  “I’ll show you. Angie and Linda and Eddie and George…,” Gina mumbles vaguely.

  Luigi looks at me and makes a face, as if asking if Gina is all right. I just shrug my shoulders.

  “So, what are you going to do now?” Mother asks.

  “I can’t do anything else. Just drive us to school,” I say.

  “She’ll probably wake up drunk in some other club, like this girl,” Mother says. “What have we come to?”

  “Not everyone lives like us, Ma,” Luigi says.

  “I’d go hide in a mountain if you two lived that way,” Mother answers.

  “Yes, there is a full moon tonight,” Luigi says, looking up at the sky.

  I’m feeling dizzy; I hold on to the car’s door.

  At this time of the morning, somewhere, maybe back in my own apartment, Sean is gloating about my failure as a guardian of the girl he never wanted in the house. Antonio may be busy firing scathing editorials and accusations against people he’s hated for years. Bruce is alone in his bed; and a few short miles from here, Lucia dreams, blissfully unaware of what her desire to start a new life has unfurled. Her brother is scheming; her husband is hiding; her lover, if indeed she had one, remains somewhat of a mystery; and her friend and rival from a lifetime ago has lost her only daughter, whom she was asked to take under her wings and protect. Images from Angie’s composition suddenly come alive and fill me with dread.

  57. THE OFFICE

  “WHAT’S THE MATTER, NOT FEELING well?” Luigi asks once I’m in the car.

  “I’m scared,” I say, holding back tears.

  Luigi taps my hand. “You’re tired and you’ve worked yourself up, and there’s a full moon. Look up!” His words and touch reassure me.

  “But Mother is right. How did we end up this low? Is this where you’d think we’d be twenty-five years ago?” I say.

  “A quarter century already!” Luigi says as he drives away. “We didn’t do so badly.”

  “We had much bigger expectations, though. Remember the stairs to the stars? I was supposed to become a famous singer and you were going to be a big trumpet player. We’ve just dragged Mother to a strip club where a stripper told her to fuck off. It’s so unreal.”

  “In a few years, we’ll laugh about tonight and tell stories about it.”

  “No, it’s too humiliating … to have travelled so far and stooped so low,” I say.

  “Look,” Luigi says, “Don’t exaggerate now. We still have a full life ahead of us. We’ve done what we could with the means we’ve had so far. We neither left a paradise, nor came to one. If we’re disappointed, it’s because we all had dreams of grandeur. It’s an Italian trait, you know, to dream big. Let’s admit it to ourselves.”

  “Well, there’s been no big dreaming around Angie, I’m sorry to say—a real cop-out. We failed her. It’s so humiliating. I blame myself. I let her slip through my fingers.”

  “You’re too hard on yourself. She’ll show up soon enough. You’ll see.”

  “And the corruption … the lies, the greed, this place … it’s so depressing.”

  “These types of places have always existed and always will. Remember there are more of us shmucks who go to work every day, who pay our taxes, who build good families, who sleep well at night, than there is of them. They make more smoke than us, that’s all, but they’re only a handful.”

  Luigi lets me and Gina out in front of WLHS, but he waits until George, the night janitor and short-order cook, has opened the door.

  “We’re here to get my car,” I say, and then motion to my brother to go ahead.

  “Did Linda come to see you?” Gina asks.

  “No, I haven’t seen anyone,” George answers and seems in a foul mood.

  “Do you know Eddie?” I ask.

  “Eddie who?”

  “You know little Eddie … Eddie Marshall,” Gina says.

  “I told you, I haven’t seen anyone all night long,” George says. He glares at me. “Next time you keep your car overnight, you need to ask permission, or I’ll have it towed.” He walks away, in the direction of the auditorium.

  “He’s not very friendly. Do you know him well?” I ask Gina.

  “He used to work at Miss Park Ex too,” Gina says.

  “I know. But is he always this unfriendly?”

  We walk past the dark cafeteria. A couple of night janitors, whom I don’t recognize, look us over suspiciously as if resentful of our intrusion. A thorough cleanup and floor-washing has cleared away all signs of the partying students. The only tell-tell sign of student life is the graffiti on the walls, which Mr. Champagne tries so hard to wipe out. Suddenly it occurs to me that once painted over, the students’ scribbles, their love notes, their four-letter words are never completely erased; they become layers of hidden words, screaming to rise above the surface.

  We walk past the hairdressing classroom without stopping, past the loading dock and the receiving area. Instead of taking the stairs up to the garage, Gina walks straight into the empty space used for the storage of used furniture, where the swimming pool was to have been. “I’ll go check George’s office,” Gina says dazedly. “See if Eddie is there.”

  I follow her, past piles of old desks, portable blackboards, boxes and boxes of old books, and the car parts that have spilled over from the nearby automotive classes. In all of my years at WLHS, I have never bothered to cross this dark, cluttered space.

  Gina walks to the far corner and, sure enough, there’s a cubicle with glass windows, similar to the cubicles next to the labs on the upper floors. This “office” must have been intended to serve the instructors who would have a view of the swimming pool area. The windows are covered with faded construction paper. The door is unlocked, but there’s no one there.

  A second door leads into another room that contains a table, a couple of chairs, and a futon. Posters of metal-rock bands are plastered all over the walls. Used
Styrofoam cups, plastic plates, and cardboard pizza boxes from Miss Park Ex litter the floor.

  “We missed them,” Gina says. “Everyone’s gone already,”

  “Who comes here?” I ask.

  “Lots of kids do, and they bring their friends. It’s George’s office.”

  “What goes on here?”

  “You can buy stuff here. I even heard that some girls do tricks here for ten dollars a pop.”

  “Are you serious, Gina? Are you making all this up?” I shake her by the shoulders.

  “I’ve just heard about it from Eddie. I’ve never seen it.”

  “But when do they come here?” I ask, as we walk back toward the stairs.

  “George only works at night. Eddie hung around during the day before he was expelled. At night, people come through the door next to the delivery garage. But I heard that, even during the day, Eddie used to let some girls bring guys into the office. They lock the two doors and no one can see what’s going on.”

  “Let’s go home,” I say wearily.

  We walk to the car and drive out of the empty garage. “Why did you think Angie might be here with Eddie?” I ask Gina, while driving.

  “Angie likes him, and he sometimes stays here overnight with George, so I thought she might have followed him here. Some of the kids said they were going to party at the office after everyone else left.”

  I still can’t believe what I’ve heard from Gina. I tell her, “It’s impossible for this stuff to be going on during the day when there are supervisors going around. You’re making it up.”

  “I’m not making anything up,” Gina says shrilly. “Mr. Master knows all about it. Linda and I saw him there once. Believe me.”

  Gina lives only two blocks east of the school. I let her off without arguing with her, but I decide not to go home yet. I want to speak to Costa at Miss Park Ex. He told me once that he knows everything that goes on at school, but it’s too early for the restaurant to be open.

  I stop the car on a side street to collect my thoughts. I believe that Gina has told me the truth. The booze or whatever she was on loosened her tongue. Besides the club and the school, I don’t know where else to look for Angie. The girl had wanted to go to Charlie’s party so badly, I had been sure I’d find her there. What could have made Angie change her mind? The clue has to be Eddie. He might have sidetracked her from staying at the club, just as Bruce had talked me into leaving Susan’s party. I put my head back, close my eyes, and try to piece together all I’ve heard, but I’m so tired that I doze off and it all plays out like a crazy surreal dream.