All the Beautiful Girls

by Elizabeth J. Church

  “We can call the cops. Get them to remove him.” Vivid crushed the last of her cigarette in an ashtray.

  “It’s not a big deal. The drama’s unnecessary. Besides, it’ll just make him angrier.”

  “Who gives a shit what scares him or pisses him off? He hurt you, Ruby! What if I hadn’t come over? What then?” Vivid’s voice was raised, but over it they both heard the squeal of tires. Vivid stood and parted her venetian blinds, looking out to the parking lot. “There goes your car,” she said.

  “I don’t mind.” He’d drive out to the desert, think about things, calm himself, and then in a few days, he’d return and apologize. And she’d apologize, too.

  Vivid walked into the kitchen, grabbed a couple cans of Tab, and returned to sit by Ruby.

  “I’m too cold right now,” Ruby said, setting the can on a coaster. “But thanks.” She was starting to shudder in earnest—uncontrollable pitches of her body as if she were having a seizure. It reminded her of something, another time when she’d gone into shock. Another time when something in her world had come crashing down. But she couldn’t quite grasp the memory—it was like chasing a leaf blown in unpredictable patterns across a courtyard.

  “I’ve been thinking about all of this. A lot,” Vivid said, now scooting close to Ruby, lending her body heat. “I’m trying to understand the attraction, why you’d do this to yourself, this thing with Javier. And I think I get it.” She waited, but Ruby just shivered; her shoulders hunched up suddenly and then a chill swept up her spine. “I’ll get you another blanket,” Vivid said.

  When she came back from the bedroom, Vivid arranged a soft, sea-green blanket around Ruby and tucked it beneath her. “Better?” Ruby nodded, reached under the blanket, and removed the bag of peas. She took a moment to look beneath the strap of her tank top.

  “Let me see.” Vivid gently tugged down the strap. “Jesus fucking Christ.” They both saw the deep purple fingerprints blooming on Ruby’s shoulder.

  “I’ll be okay.” He hadn’t purposefully hurt her. If Vivid would just let things alone, they could go back to normal.

  But Vivid was undeterred. “I couldn’t figure it out. None of us could. But now I know why you’re with him.” She reached beneath the blanket, took hold of Ruby’s hand. “He’s familiar, isn’t he? Javier is extremely familiar territory for you.”

  Ruby shook her head. “No. He’s exotic—that’s part of the pull. He’s different.”

  “No, he’s not.” Vivid squeezed her hand once more, as if by doing so she could transmit insight. “Think about it,” she said adamantly. “Think about it, Ruby.”

  Ruby did think, but again it was like that elusive, windblown leaf.

  “Your uncle—” Vivid said, as if coaxing a game-show contestant toward the right answer. “The one who brutalized you. The one you spent your childhood enduring.”

  “Oh, God no,” Ruby said. “Uncle Miles was a pig. He had no education, no refinement. And, he was the ugliest man I’ve ever seen.”

  “Right,” Vivid said with certainty. “And now you’re doing what’s familiar to you. Granted, this time it’s a prettier package, but it’s the same. Repetition.”

  Uncle Miles? Javier? The same? They were worlds apart. Javier could talk knowledgeably about Renoir, Titian. He knew which utensils to use when eating dinner. He fought for what he believed was right, even nobly sacrificed for his beliefs. Uncle Miles spent his life in a recliner, farting and watching television. There was no comparison.

  “Do you trust Javier?” Vivid asked. “I mean really trust him. Enough to tell him things? Enough to reveal yourself?”

  She thought she did. He knew about the cutting.

  “Does he know about your uncle?”

  “Oh, God no. Vivid, you’re the only one who knows. Unless you’ve told—”

  “I haven’t. Cross my heart,” Vivid said.

  Ruby sat there, making a genuine effort to comprehend what Vivid was saying. At the same time, a part of her said, Get up and leave. Who were Rose and Vivid to talk about her behind her back, to analyze and judge her? How dare they? Who made them all-knowing, all-seeing?

  “You spent your childhood being punished,” Vivid began again. “And we do what we know, I think. I know that I stand back. I keep myself distant from men. I don’t trust them, not one iota. And so I make them into toys, playthings. I make sure they never matter.”

  Ruby nodded, only half listening. The concept that had pierced her cloud of incomprehension was punishment. She was used to being punished for some unspecified sin—any sin—and she’d tried to achieve impossible perfection so as to avoid punishment. Uncle Miles. Aunt Tate’s flyswatter. The way they belittled her. She still deserved punishment—that feeling had never gone away. Was Vivid saying that Javier was now her punisher? She tried to think.

  Vivid was watching Ruby’s face intently. She started smiling, nodding. “You see. I know you do. You see, don’t you?”

  Ruby nodded vaguely, still deep in thought. That night of the Tah-Dah! fundraiser, when she’d inadvertently revealed the truth about Uncle Miles to Aunt Tate. When he’d called Ruby a whore and bruised her arm. When Aunt Tate had chosen that pathetic loser of a man over Ruby. Ruby had shivered and shuddered then, waiting in the front yard for her ride. That was the familiar bit—that memory of another betrayal. And now Vivid was trying to save her from a perceived danger. But Vivid was dead wrong.

  Ruby’s shoulder hurt, and she felt wrung out. She sucked in and bit the insides of her cheeks. She didn’t want to cry, but God, it would be such a relief. Really to sob, hiccup, have her breath stutter and her nose run. All the times she’d kept from crying, when Uncle Miles would beat her bare bottom with the hairbrush and say, “Cry, girl! Cry! I won’t stop until you cry!” That vow she’d made at her family’s funeral, never to cry. Such a huge part of Lily had died then, along with Daddy, Mama, and Dawn. And she’d kept dying by increments over the course of that long decade with her aunt and uncle.

  Ruby reached for the box of Kleenex. She blew her nose, wiped the wells of her eyes. Maybe Vivid was right about one thing: Her past was all over her, sucking her under like quicksand. “How do I climb out of my past?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Vivid said, shaking her head slightly. “But I have the feeling that once you’ve seen the light, you can and will. And you do see, don’t you?”

  Ruby nodded, although she still wasn’t sure. She remained convinced that Javier was her teacher, something Vivid just didn’t and maybe couldn’t understand. Ruby had the sense that true comprehension would have to percolate through the soil of her, take its time before it reached her heart and she gained a true, complete grasp of things. For now, all she felt was confusion and exhaustion. And fear. Fear that he’d abandon her.

  Vivid insisted on coming along to keep watch while Ruby showered and dressed for Rose’s party. With a towel wrapped about her, Ruby slid the hangers along her closet rod, still so numb she couldn’t decide what to wear. In the living room, Iago shouted “Oye! Elisa!” Finally, Vivid took over and pulled out an emerald-green, halter-necked catsuit sewn in supple, silk velvet. To go with it, she chose a chain belt that stretched languorously across Ruby’s hips, leopard-patterned heels, and pearl-and-onyx chandelier earrings that swept the tops of Ruby’s shoulders. She searched Ruby’s bathroom drawers until she found a cake of Ruby’s opaque makeup, and with gentle fingertips Vivid covered Javier’s purple fingerprints.

  All the while, Ruby watched and felt her friend’s ministrations. As Vivid brushed Ruby’s hair and picked up a can of hair spray, Ruby knew that Vivid was capable of understanding the kind of pain that had woven itself into the warp and weft of Ruby’s being. Like Ruby, Vivid had no one. Rose had that adoring, doting, kind father. She didn’t have a past—as far as Ruby knew—that included a rapist. Or a pedophile.

  “There,” Vivi
d said, putting down the last of the beautician tools. “That’s the Ruby I know and love. Now let’s go celebrate our asses off.”

  It had been nearly three weeks—the longest Javier had ever stayed away.

  “You have got to get rid of that fucking parrot,” Vivid said when she found Ruby cutting up strawberries and mangoes for the bird. “I take it you haven’t heard from him.”

  Ruby shook her head.

  “You should at least file a police report. Try to get your car back.”

  “Maybe he’s gone to L.A.”

  “Not without his bus and photo equipment. Not without Oye Elisa here. No, he’s just proving a point. He’s the boss. El queso grande.” Vivid laughed at her own joke and grabbed a strawberry before heading for the doorway. “He’ll show up soon enough,” she said.

  And that was precisely what Ruby both longed for and dreaded—the reappearance of Javier Borrero. During Javier’s absence, she’d practiced conversations with him in her head. When he came back, she’d tell him he could never, ever, physically harm her again. He could not slam things, throw things. She’d tell him that she understood that he had been afraid, that his past had controlled him, and that maybe he’d even been unaware of his physical actions, but he could not ever again frighten her that way.

  She would accept her proper share of the blame. Ruby knew that she hadn’t approached the whole issue of Rose’s bridal shower in the right way. She’d overplayed her hand by announcing her decision to go, rather than discussing it, listening to Javier’s concerns, and appeasing them. Still, she’d have to think of how to phrase it all. What she had to do was use empathy, tell him that she understood, that she would help him learn more productive ways to express disagreement or strong emotions.

  And Ruby would improve on her own ability to translate Javier Borrero. Up until now, her interpretations of his behaviors and intentions had been flawed. They could both do better. This was all about learning.

  Still, she remained uneasy about his return. It was, she realized, one thing to have attained some minor psychological insight; it was another to follow through. He’d bred such a need in her. Was she in over her head?

  * * *

  —

  SIX TIGERS STALKED Cleopatra’s gold barge and loitered beneath ten-foot potted palm trees. On board the golden Egyptian ship, Ruby and the other dancers fed grapes to oarsmen or posed seductively against the boat’s figurehead—an elaborately painted bust of the Queen of the Nile. Vargas had designed wonderful black braided hairpieces threaded with gold drum beads and topped with gold cobra headbands. The showgirls wore hip-skimming skirts sewn in a gold fish-scale material that shivered beneath the lights as they danced. Their eyelids were spread with gold and silver glitter, their lips vermilion. Minimal brassieres made of gold chains held their breasts captive, and emerald- and ruby-eyed creatures twined about their upper arms and calves. It was all performed to Shocking Blue’s “Venus,” and no one seemed to notice the mismatched references to queens and goddesses, the conflation of eras.

  When a torch on the boat suddenly flared, one of the tigers roared, and the audience gasped. Ruby smiled out into the sea of people, wondering how many of them were in town for some championship bowling tournament, how many had come to celebrate a twentieth wedding anniversary or been married that day at one of the on-the-fly wedding chapels. She fought hard not to feel empty and unloved, but those were the abiding emotions she felt in Javier’s wake.

  At the conclusion of the number, the showgirls held their arms above their heads with their wrists bent away from their bodies at sharp right angles. They slid their heads left and right in line with their shoulders, and asked the audience, “What’s your desire?” before bowing to the applause.

  Backstage, Ruby found a vase of pink roses on her dressing table, along with a large manila envelope. She sat and opened it. Have you locked me out of your heart or will you come start again with me? Javier had written on a plain white card. Accompanying the card were two tickets to San Francisco.

  With shaking hands, Ruby poured herself a glass of water. She drank thirstily and, on autopilot, unscrewed the lid to her Pond’s face cream and began removing her makeup. Above the elated and confused pounding of her heart, she only half heard the other girls as they chattered about their plans for the rest of the night. Behind her in the mirror, she could see the approach of an arrangement of white mums so enormous that it hid the flower-delivery man’s entire upper body.

  “For me?” she asked and then leaned aside so that he could set it on top of her vanity. She looked amongst the pom-pom blooms; there was no card. Turning, she started to tell the delivery man that the card must have gotten lost, but then she stopped.

  “Is me.” Javier smiled tentatively. “I am back.”

  He was wearing the white Nehru jacket he’d worn the first time she’d seen him staring up at her from beneath the stage apron. She took a deep breath, looked down into her lap, and tried to slow her heart.

  “You have open that envelope,” he said, reaching over her shoulder to pick up the airline tickets. The scent of him, that familiar musk that was Javier, compelled her to turn in her chair and face him.

  “Javier—”

  “You must forgive me. I am just a passionate man. That’s all.”

  “We—” she tried to begin again.

  We what? she wondered. We can’t? We shouldn’t? We’re wrong for each other? But looking at the sheer beauty of him, perceiving repentance in his face, she knew how hard he was trying.

  The way Ruby had made it through life was by focusing her willpower. Scallywag’s determination had gotten her out of Kansas, into the featured showgirl spot. She put her shoulder to the grindstone and she pushed. And now she knew—she wouldn’t quit Javier.

  Besides. She loved him. Loved him. And he’d come back to her.

  * * *

  —

  IN SAN FRANCISCO, Ruby fell in love with the crush of the city’s flamboyant hippies, the street musicians, the psychedelic posters, and the narrow Victorian houses of the Haight. She reveled in the sight of a black man in a crosswalk dressed in a charcoal-gray stingy-brim hat with loud purple pants and a purple sweater. She was charmed by the steep hills, the crystalline water of the bay, the benevolent kiss of humid air on her face. The unbridled hair of young men’s heads and faces, the girls’ silver bangles, flowing skirts, and peasant blouses. The corner liquor store that sold loose tobacco and greasy tacos, the unabashed smell of marijuana in public parks, and the fresh sourdough bread that she and Javier tore apart and ate sitting cross-legged on an unmade bed. From their Bush Street hotel room window, they watched as antiwar protesters marched in the street below, heard the drums and horns, the megaphones and the shouts of “Make love, not war!”

  Javier took her to see the Grateful Dead at The Fillmore, and once again Ruby couldn’t help but feel she’d been living in a sort of fairytale Disneyland for too many years. She was so out of it. These kids weren’t coming to Vegas; Rotarians and pallid mobsters came to Vegas. Hippies didn’t have money for the Strip. Ruby had been dwelling—stagnating—in the music of her parents’ generation. She’d been operating within their world definition. Ruby feared she was becoming just as passé as Vegas.

  “They have fashion design schools here,” Javier said, using a pocketknife to cut off a hunk of salami and slide it into his mouth. “We must come here, live here. We have a life here.”

  Ruby poured another couple inches of red wine into each of their glass tumblers, and lying back against the pillows, they smoked one of the joints Javier had bought in the Haight. She pictured herself in some shady grove in Golden Gate Park, flowers painted on her cheeks, a sketch pad resting on her raised knees. She could wander along Maiden Lane, duck in and out of fabric stores, loiter in the galleries of the Legion of Honor and gain a better understanding of how sculptors and painters created the drap
e of a sleeve or skirt, the folds of a sleeping dog’s skin.

  They used finger paints to decorate each other’s bodies, weaving peace signs with curlicues and flowers, leaves and butterflies and birds. Moons, stars. The paint dried quickly. It cracked and shattered into colorful shards that drifted across the hotel sheets like spent confetti.

  Make love, not war, Ruby thought as Javier moved inside her. She wanted love with him, not war. No more battles. Not even a skirmish. She hadn’t asked him how he got the money for this trip, but she didn’t care. He’d found a way to apologize on this grand scale, and she appreciated his efforts. This trip was a tangible symbol of his love for her, of his remorse.

  Ruby wasn’t stupid. She knew these few California days were just an idyll, but she also believed in change. She and Javier could put her savings to good use, draw on her funds to keep them going while they found new, meaningful lives. She could be a different, better person, here in this place—she knew it. The city of San Francisco was jubilantly pushing open every door and window; it had thrown out all of the tired old locks and laws, the reflexive, habitual ways of living. She’d escape again. Together, she and Javier would heal.

  As they walked from their hotel room down to Union Square, Javier pulled her into a doorway and kissed her deeply. He held up his right hand as if taking an oath and said: “You see? I am cutted this for you.”

  The pinky nail he’d grown to use as an ever-ready coke spoon was cut to the quick.

  “You’ve stopped?” Ruby asked. “Completely?”

  “Sí.”

  It was the final piece of evidence she needed. Javier had changed.

  On their second, ultimate night in California, Ruby asked him about his father.

  “Already, I have told you about him,” Javier said, gently brushing flakes of spent finger paint from her cheek.

  “But who is he? Does he sing in the shower and cook like you do? Is he a good dancer? What does he like to read?”