by John Rechy
A car slid alongside her. It stopped, just ahead. The driver looked back, signaling. Normalyn crossed the street, away. Several extravagant women in a group eyed her.
“What you doin’ on this street, gal?” said one of the women in a tight red skirt. “You high-class shit!”
A man with them offered to get her a “hot date.”
Like a tarnished oasis, an all-night coffee shop floated in dirty light out of the misty night. Inside, Normalyn sat in one of several vacant booths.
“Sit at the counter. Booths are reserved for more than one,” a harsh waitress, trying to look younger than her fifty years, said.
“But she’s not alone.” A middle-aged man, well-dressed, slipped into the booth and across from Normalyn. He looked fresh, as if he had just ventured into the tired night. He had dark hair brushed with gray. He smiled conspiratorially at her, against the waitress’s dogged admonition. A Mexican busboy cursorily cleared the table. The angered waitress demanded their order. Normalyn asked for a sandwich. “Any kind.”
“Tuna!” the woman wrote.
“No,” Normalyn confronted the glaring woman. “Chicken— with only white meat. And iced tea with two wedges of lemon.”
The man ordered coffee. “And perhaps some courtesy from you,” he said to the waitress, like a man used to having it. The woman gaped at his audacity but said nothing.
Normalyn welcomed him only for now. She felt safe, yes, and she was tired, and he was kind. Oh, this night had begun when she looked through the book of photographs and saw the pretty girl changing into another person. No—when she stared into the mirror and saw someone else, not herself.
“Have you been long in the city?” the man asked her.
She had seen him before! He was the man at the Ambassador Hotel. No, the quiet man with the heavy one in the park. No, he was the man who had driven up beside her, just minutes earlier. Now she was sure of it. Then she wasn’t sure whether she had ever seen him before.
On the smoke-smeared windows of this coffee shop, reflections of people drifted in dirty light. Outside, the female wanderers huddled from blades of dust, painted faces glancing steadily about the street.
The waitress brought a listless sandwich and two cups of coffee. “Anything else, sir!”
Normalyn was too weary to protest. She welcomed the warmth of the cup of coffee in her hands.
The man’s eyes traced her outline, her features. “You look innocent and frightened under the marvelously brash makeup. Is that what you intended? What are you looking for?”
The strangeness of the night was seeping into this booth. Normalyn slid to its edge, preparing to leave. “I think that I—”
“Shhh,” he silenced her quickly, a finger at his lips. “Forgive me.” He extended his courteous manner. “It’s just that unwanted words banish fantasy. They have to be exact words. Let me create you only in my imagination. Please, just answer what I ask—”
The heat from the coffee intensified on her hands. He was a man who wanted to buy a fantasy. Yet his words resonated with a further, inquiring meaning, camouflaged within a contradictory situation: Answer what I ask— . . . It did not disturb her that he might think she was a prostitute, because she was on Troja’s street teeming with risky life. What she heard clearly, beyond implied questions, was the suggestion that she needed no identity of her own, no life, that she remain a reflection determined by others. That is what she would not be! Easily, she turned over the cup of coffee, letting the ugly dark liquid spill on him.
“Stupid bitch!” He jerked back.
She stood up. Her defiance receded at his accusing words. “I’m sorry!” She yelled the hated apology. But she didn’t hear her own words. She heard the voice of the movie star, as she had been captured in the last photograph of the book she had looked through earlier, the lips parted, still and always ready to apologize for living! Yes, those were the words Normalyn had been ready to identify earlier, from her own constant apology for wanting to exist.
Normalyn ran out of the coffee shop. She had located the origin of this night. It had begun in David Lange’s office, with his soft commands. With that realization, she felt she had awakened from another’s dream. She had made only futile motions of living.
Normalyn’s hands flew up to her face. She smeared the makeup into red and dark slashes, destroying the face she had recreated over her own.
Twenty-Six
“You dreamed it all, hon—and, hon, we were worried sick about you.”
“Troja, it all happened! I lived it!” But she felt even more now that she had made only motions of living. “You asked me if I’d ever join the parade, remember?”
“You’d better not have!”
“I didn’t, not exactly. But I was there.”
“Well, we missed you a whole lot. Worried sick, weren’t we, Kirk?”
“Yeah, Normalyn. You shouldn’t’ve scared us like that by staying away so late.”
“But you left me.”
“We shouldn’t’ve, Troja, just like you said. We shouldn’t’ve left Normalyn like that.”
“And I intended to buy special food, even a chilled bottle of champagne for all of us to have at the beach.”
“Oh, hon, that makes me feel even worse, you being so generous and us going alone without you to the beach. Hate myself being so selfish. We missed you so much. And, uh, hon, you sure one of those awful Dead Movie Stars didn’t, uh, slip you . . . something?”
“You’ve said I have no life of my own. Now you don’t want to believe me!”
“Don’t blame you being upset, hon. It’s just that we missed you so damn much.”
As she rode in the cab she had just located at a motel on Western Avenue, that is how Normalyn imagined Troja’s and Kirk’s reaction when she returned. It was deep night, beginning of darkest morning. Moving away from the strange night, Normalyn was sure she had been followed by the two men she had encountered, and she was just as certain that they had no connection with David Lange. What had occurred with them did not fit anything she knew of David. As the night’s events furthered, she was able to attribute concealed motives only to the man in the tunnel, and, finally, not even to him, when, within waves of relief, she saw the beautiful, singular palmtree ahead. Even in darkness, it appeared newly lush.
The Mustang was not there! They had gone out looking for her! She paid the cab and ran into the house.
All was dark, silent. Kirk was not in his bed. She stubbed her toe on the mannequin’s head. The blonde wig had been removed. Normalyn ran into Troja’s darkened room.
Troja sat on the floor in darkness. Her knees were gathered under her bowed head. Normalyn reached to turn on a lamp decorated with colored scarves. At the last moment before she would leave, Troja would often slide a scarf away and drape it about her neck. With that incongruous memory, Normalyn was trying to establish familiar order.
“Don’t turn the damn light on!” Troja said.
Normalyn waited for more words, waited to hear Troja say melodramatically, “Cause I’m a mess—wait till I make myself up.” But she didn’t.
Beyond the window, gray filtered into the inky sky.
Normalyn touched the fragile scarves on the lamp.
“Worried sick—” Troja said.
She had missed her! And Kirk had gone out looking for her! Naturally Troja would be subdued now that she was relieved to see her back, maybe a little angered. Normalyn approached Troja. “I’m all right,” she said. She tried to coax the unfinished expression of concern, to bask in it: “You said you were worried sick—”
“Sick to my heart. He’s gone.”
Troja hadn’t meant her! Normalyn turned away. She saw, clear even in dim light, the blond wig flung on the floor. Her mind bolted back to the night by the ocean, with Enid. It had not been imagined! To force more of the suddenly strong memory, she leaned over the blond disheveled hair—
“Leave that fuckin’ thing there!” came Troja’s growl.
No
rmalyn saw that Troja’s face was bruised. “Kirk hit you!” she said angrily. And the memory of a distant ocean night drifted away.
“Girl!” Troja snapped ferociously.“Kirk never hit me. We never quarrel. You don’t know nothin’!” her shanty voice seized control. But then her hand extended to Normalyn. Normalyn took it. Troja urged her to sit with her, near her. “Where you been, hon?”
Normalyn clasped her hand. Her heart was filled with wonder at life. Rejected, then needed! She said, “I’ve been— . . . living!”
“Yeah,” Troja said, as if she hadn’t heard. She looked at Normalyn. “I wore the wig, hon.”
She was apologizing to her for wearing the wig that mocked the movie star. “It’s all right,” Normalyn said. She asked softly, trying to force an ordinary answer with her casual tone, “Where is Kirk?”
“Took the car. Said he was gonna kill Duke.”
No—
“In all that time living together, I never knew he kept a gun,” Troja accused herself. “Maybe if I’da cleaned the damn place now and then, I woulda found it!”
In that moment of bitter humor, Normalyn felt even closer to Troja. She looked out into the other room, to the bed where the defeated muscular form so often lay for hours.
Troja said urgently, “I should’ve listened, I should’ve believed him—when we lay on the sand, hon, when he took my hand and—”
* * *
—he kissed it. He had been quiet, as if listening to himself. “I’ve given you so much pain, Troja—and more each day.” His finger on her lips stopped her denial. “If I wasn’t such a fuckin’ coward, I’d kill Duke to get him out of your life. Instead I keep him there with my drugs, I know that—and now you’re taking them just to be close to me, I know that, too.”
“We are close,” she said. “That matters. And you’re not a coward.”
At that moment, a group of youngmen and women gathered on the strip of beach. Troja had chosen it because it was secluded. Kirk’s eyes focused on the young bodies. He looked down at his own, in trunks. It was muscular, more than those of any of the youngmen who had suddenly appeared, but the sunlight on the white sand revealed scratchy lines on his fading tan.
He said, “I’ve missed the beach, been hiding from it, I guess. This is where I buried my youth.”
That was the first time he had ever spoken about himself as aging. That terrified Troja.
“I have to face it.”
“And then, baby?” Troja asked hopefully.
Kirk shrugged. “Live or die.”
“Live,” Troja said, and added, “please.”
He kissed her. “I love you.”
“I know,” she said.
“When I first saw you, the time we were both whoring”—he tried to laugh, but it was bitter laughter—“I thought you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I’ve told you that, but I’m not sure you believe me, because of what happened.”
“When you found out I was a made-up woman!” Troja could not keep the accusation away, from the ugliest of times, when Kirk had pulled away from her in disgust.
Kirk stood up. He looked out at the ocean. Behind him, the laughter of the younger people echoed. Fog hovered on the shoreline. Birds that gather in flocks late afternoon on the beach had begun to swoop onto the sand as if something invisible were drawing them to acknowledge the advancing night.
Kirk faced Troja. He tried to laugh. “I’ve been faithful to you, hon; can’t do it with anyone else either.”
Not since then. She knew that.
He said, “I wish I could prove my love for you.” He opened his hands, shrugged as if he were puzzling how.
“You do all the time,” she told him.
The ocean breeze swept the sand. More birds gathered in the cold light.
* * *
In the silenced room tinged with purple light, Troja shut her ears. “Can’t remember what else he said!”
“What did he say, Troja?” Normalyn wanted to help her face whatever she was avoiding.
“He said,” Troja said dully, “that maybe the only way he could show his love for me was to . . .just go away.”
Normalyn pulled away from the echo of those words. Troja seemed to hear them anew. . . . And when they returned home, they missed me! Normalyn felt instantly guilty for thinking that at this time. But she wanted to know it only so she could concentrate on the wonder of sharing another’s life, so intimately, when there was trust.
“When we came back here,” Troja remembered—
* * *
—Kirk called up the number Duke had left them, of the couple who wanted him and her. On the way back from the beach, Kirk had brought up the possibility, just a possibility— “try; expect nothing”—and then, in surprise, they both said, yes, testing the other, then meaning it—still afraid. Kirk made the arrangements with the couple. He smiled at Troja with certainty. She understood, so clearly: Those moments on the beach—facing things—had given him courage. He longed to reconstruct that beginning—the origin of their love and their alienation—and so to assert the love and conquer what had turned ugly.
Kirk dressed in casual clothes. He looked tanned, handsome. Troja made herself up. She pinned back her hair. She put on the blonde wig the couple demanded.
* * *
“And we made beautiful love!” Troja said exultantly to Normalyn.
Dawn seeped into the room.
Then how did it go wrong? Normalyn wondered, knowing that Troja’s and Kirk’s lives had been moving swiftly at the same time hers had—life in all its shifting currents; but now was Troja’s time, to find strength by ordering the events of her long night, hers and Kirk’s, its beginning.
“It happened in the house we went to, in Bel Air,” Troja said—
* * *
—a house the couple had rented from a producer in Europe.
A woman of about forty and a man slightly older waited for them. They were dressed with austere formality, he in a dark suit, she in a tailored dress. He was slightly heavy, careful about his weight; she had anxious features, a blocky body; she made clawing gestures as she smoked. They were drinking, slightly drunk. They had bought cocaine through Duke and had waited for Kirk to show them “exactly how” to snort it.
All four moved into the bedroom, into hidden softened lights. An enormous bed was covered with satin sheets. There were plush chairs about the room.
“The black Monroe.” The man’s eyes raked Troja’s; so did the woman’s. The woman approached Kirk, who—Troja saw, with tenderness—automatically flexed his biceps.
The man said, “Specimens!”
“Yes!” the woman approved.
Troja’s eyes were only on Kirk, Kirk’s on her.
The couple breathed more white powder—clumsily, hungrily. Tiny grains spilled on their clothes. Holding tinkling glasses of liquor, they prowled about the two beautiful bodies.
Kirk’s hands touched Troja’s shoulders, and hers slid over his. Kirk’s fingers eased the dress from the brown body, revealing golden breasts. The dress fell slowly to the floor. The glowing body was naked. Kirk’s hands outlined the amber curves.
The woman gasped, “Ahhh!”
“He can’t get hard,” the man reminded himself with urgency.
Troja heard the ice in their glasses scrape. Duke had told them that! Afraid, she pulled Kirk to her, before this moment shattered; she held his tense body until it relaxed again. The difficult moment flowed away. Troja unbuttoned Kirk’s shirt. He removed his clothes, his muscles naked. In the soft glow of this room the two bodies shone. He touched Troja’s breasts lightly. She pulled back, in fear, the earlier memory invading. He guided her back to him.
Circling, the man and the woman stared, sighed.
The woman’s voice hissed: “Made-up breasts. Artificial breasts!”
Kirk’s movements stopped. Troja’s eyes closed, to contain the rage. Duke had told them that, too. That was part of what was meant to entice the man and the woman.
Now Kirk would withdraw, like the first time, in doubled disgust—
Kirk licked the perfect nipples. Then gently he removed the blonde wig and freed Troja’s own hair with his fingers.
“No!” the man protested.
But it was now as if Kirk and Troja were alone. She felt his groin harden against her body.
“You’re supposed to be impotent!” the woman rasped at Kirk—and hurled the words at the other man, too.
“You weren’t supposed to get hard!” the man accused Kirk. His hands plucked at his own groin.
Rejecting the surrogate battle the man and woman had staged in substituted anger at themselves and each other, the two beautiful, created people pressed their bodies together. Their mouths touched, opened.
“Artificial! Made up!” the woman accused Troja; her hands explored her own concealed body.
“Made-up bodies. Unnatural!” the man said.
Kirk’s mouth glided down Troja’s breasts to her stomach. He held her hips. His lips slipped down. He kissed the soft opening between her legs. Troja leaned back on the bed, guiding Kirk over her. She parted her smooth legs. The two constructed beautiful bodies fused as he entered her.
After Kirk came inside her, he and Troja held each other.
The man and the woman retreated with wounded gasps to prepare a new assault.
* * *
Sun-was beginning to sweep into the apartment. A few feet away, the wig lay lifeless.
Troja sighed, wanting to linger longer over cherished moments. Normalyn had listened quietly, knowing this was life, just life. . . . Troja’s fingers absently stroked Normalyn’s hair. “Hair’s so pretty hon,” she said.
“I made myself up,” Normalyn said, “like when you—” But she had wiped the makeup off entirely in the cab. “I wore your dress,” she confessed guiltily.
“Noticed,” Troja said. As if remembering the treasured closeness with Kirk, she pulled away slightly from Normalyn.
