Motherland

by Amy Sohn

  “A maker of stringed instruments.” She had looked it up on the Internet after she read the item.

  “I dated a milliner once,” he said. She marched onto the stage and into the wings and tried to calm down. After the rehearsal, she was going out with Lulu, but luckily, she would be in costume, so no one would recognize her. It was a 1920s party called Swing House at the Brooklyn Lyceum on Fourth Avenue. The dress code was “speakeasy and cabaret,” “late 1800s to WWII.” Combing through her closet, Melora had assembled an outfit of pearls, a flapper dress, and leather combat boots.

  Dress rehearsal went poorly. They could feel the invited audience members, all friends of the production, shifting in their seats. She played Gwen the way he wanted her to, but it felt wrong throughout, and the tension affected her performance. The critics weren’t coming for another week and a half, but the mood was glum. The entire cast seemed afraid that they were going to flop.

  She was relieved to get home at ten-thirty and not have to think about anything. She changed into her outfit and scurried out the front door in case Suzette came out. She didn’t need her reporting to Stuart that Melora had been dressing like a crazy homeless woman.

  The Lyceum was a former public bath that had been converted to an event space, regal but worn down. Melora had lived only blocks from it but had never visited when she was in Park Slope. Lulu met her in front, dressed as what she called a “moonshiner slut”: a boa, a drop-waist dress, a flask in her hand, and dark red lipstick. “How was the rehearsal?” she asked.

  “Terrible,” Melora said.

  “You’re probably being too hard on yourself.”

  “No, I’m really not. It’s a difficult play. I knew that going in. It’s a little dated. Teddy’s so wrong about my part, but he won’t listen to me.”

  “Why don’t you just do it the way you want?”

  “That’s how you get fired. In theater, the director is supreme.”

  They went down a set of stairs into a high-ceilinged room with water lines on the walls. There were a few bleachers on the side where couples, all dressed in 1920s garb, drank and snuggled. On the dance floor, people did period dances like the Charleston to music played by a five-piece band. Melora was relieved to have an opportunity not to think about the show. At the bar, they ordered old-fashioneds at Lulu’s suggestion. “I can never remember the exact ingredients, but I love them,” Lulu said.

  “I always thought an old-fashioned was a blow job ending in a hand job,” Melora said.

  Lulu snorted out some of her drink. Melora crowed. She’d never thought of herself as funny. “Can I ask you something?” Lulu asked.

  “Sure.”

  “What do you like about my dad?”

  “That’s kind of private,” she answered.

  “Just be careful, okay?”

  “Why?”

  “He’s a dick to women.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He tramples on people emotionally. He’s messed up from the divorce. He should never be in a relationship.”

  “We’re not in one.”

  “But you want one. What do you see in him, anyway? Do you have a fat fetish?”

  “He’s not that fat,” Melora said, feeling defensive. Ray hadn’t contacted her about coming over again. She wanted to go home with Lulu so she could see him, but she was worried he would kick her out. Then she’d never be able to go back. Her need to see him was like a tiny pinprick in a corner of her heart. Every time she pictured his stern face describing how to clean his bathroom, she missed him.

  Across the room, Lulu spotted someone she knew, a petite woman in a slip dress, and went to greet her. The woman pulled her out onto the floor, where Lulu did an amazingly convincing Charleston. The two were so well matched, they seemed almost erotic.

  The song ended and the bandleader said, “Now I’d like to introduce a wonderful dancer by the name of Maine Attraction.” On the speaker system came a French woman singing “Parlez-Moi d’Amour.” A petite Josephine Baker look-alike with an outie belly button emerged from the wings. She wore a purple fringe bikini and did a dance that involved miming a saxophone and then pretending to jerk off her imaginary penis. Melora was awed by the woman’s lack of self-consciousness.

  After the burlesque dancer had finished, Lulu convinced Melora to dance with her. Melora was nervous at first but got the hang of it quickly. A Japanese woman came over and coached Melora on the steps. They danced with boys and girls they didn’t know. A tall gawky guy in a turquoise shirt, chinos, and suspenders said to Melora, “You’re a quick study.” Melora felt she was becoming Gwen or some strange hybrid of Gwen and Lulu. Free, reckless, independent, half-cocked. To be truly cool, you couldn’t care about being cool. Gwen didn’t, and Lulu didn’t. Why else would she go to parties populated by tall gawky guys in suspenders?

  Soon the MC announced a new act, and a series of fire performers came on, juggling flaming pins. While they played with fire, Melora noticed some young people trickle into the room, the girls in headdresses or feathers, the boys with bunny-ear headbands. They each carried an instrument and seemed to enter from all corners of the room. They unpacked their instruments, and while the fire show continued, a trumpeter started up. A butch woman was hitting a bass drum as the other players joined in one by one.

  The guests got onto the floor, mingling with the musicians to dance. Lulu and Melora danced next to a tuba player, a skinny white guy capable of astounding noise. Melora got carried away with the energy of this strange nerdy brood, hoping none of them would sell her out to the Post.

  When it got late, Lulu took her arm and said she had to go meet some people. Melora waited for her to ask for a ride, but she took off alone. In the Highlander, Melora thought about asking Piotr to drive past Ray’s, but that was stalkerish and strange, so they took the Brooklyn Bridge across the river and back to the cocoon of the apartment.

  Gottlieb

  Gottlieb wasn’t sure what he was doing listening to Hattie Rivera sing for the second night in a row, but he wanted to hear that music again. She did a number that Gottlieb was almost certain was a Pavement cover, followed by one that she said was from a Noël Coward poem. It included the lyrics “I feel the misery of the end / In the moment that it begins.”

  Afterward he sat in the bar area, at the banquette in front of the piano, putting his fingers on the keys without pressing them down. He was waiting for her to come out, though maybe there was a backstage exit and she wouldn’t pass. There was something wrong with him. He didn’t even know this girl and he wanted to meet her. They had a ten A.M. with DreamWorks the next day. His behavior had been charming at a Say Anything . . . age but not now, not at thirty-nine. Before going out, he had removed his wedding ring again, left it on the table next to the bed. He regretted it, the deliberateness of the choice. It was sleazy. He didn’t want to be sleazy.

  The day had been a whirlwind. Universal and Paramount had both made offers—$500K from Drew Fine and Universal, $500K from Paramount. Fox had come up to $550K. Those figures were just for the first draft. The production bonuses brought them up to seven figures. This was going to happen.

  And then he saw Hattie Rivera headed for the door. She was carrying a small white-beaded purse and looked even more radiant up close than onstage. He stood up awkwardly, squeezing his way out.

  “Hi,” he said, feeling like Kevin Costner backstage with Madonna.

  “Do I know you?” she said, frowning.

  “No. I’m just—I really like your music. I just wanted you to know—you’re really talented.”

  “Thank you.” She wasn’t moving. He thought of Lara on top of him the night before. He had to remember that guy, the guy who had gotten a hostile, strange girl to come back to his hotel.

  “Can I buy you a beverage of your choice?” he asked.

  She frowned. “What’s your name?”

  “Danny. But everyone calls me Gottlieb.” He heard the Jewishness as he said it. It was an odd name for
someone who never cared about religion. His parents hadn’t sent him to temple or made him get a bar mitzvah, like his other friends did. He and CC had a Korean wedding ceremony at her behest, in the Prospect Park Picnic House, and were married by a friend of her parents, a Korean judge. Afterward, when all the other half-Asian, half-Jewish couples were joining Garfield Temple, he never pushed her to join, not wanting to pass something on to his sons that he didn’t believe in.

  Hattie hesitated, looking him over. Then she glanced at the door and said, “Sure, Danny. But not here.”

  He followed her into the parking lot. She stopped at a beat-up burgundy VW station wagon from the seventies. Cool girls, cool cars. “Where are you parked?” she asked.

  “I’m in this lot, too.”

  “Just follow me, then.”

  They drove to a small bar twenty-five minutes away. He wasn’t sure what part of town this was, but the bar felt like they were inside a train car. There were old sepia photos of carnies, and tassels hung over the red sconces, as if the lights were strippers themselves. She greeted the surprisingly unmustachioed male bartender and held up two fingers, and soon they were in a booth alone in the back, mysterious cocktails in front of them.

  “What is this?” he asked, pointing to his drink.

  “It’ll taste much better if you don’t know,” she said. He took a sip. He could detect whiskey and bitters. “Was this your first time at my show?” she asked.

  “I came last night, too. Some friends of friends brought me. Did you sing a Pavement song tonight?”

  “Yeah, I love Pavement.”

  “You look too young to know their music.”

  “A good musician does homework.”

  “Do you do this a lot—go out with guys after your show?”

  “Actually, never. Most of them just want to fuck a songwriter. They think I’m singing to them, which is completely ridiculous. I’m not singing to anyone. My songs are states of mind, more than anything.”

  “But if people think you’re singing to them, it means you’ve done your job, right? Something resonated.”

  “Yeah, I guess it does mean that, in a way.”

  “If you never go out with guys after your shows, then why’d you take me here?”

  “I’m not sure. I guess I feel safe with you.”

  “I come off as safe? That’s terrible.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t mean safe-boring. Golly.” Golly? “I meant I felt comfortable with you right away. When I saw you behind that piano, you seemed like a good person.”

  “You saw me behind the piano?”

  “Yeah, I was watching you. Do you play?”

  “I used to. As a kid. I forgot everything I learned. The only piece I remember is Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune.’ ”

  “I love that song. I wrote my own lyrics to it.”

  “What are they?”

  “You’ll have to come to another show to find out.”

  “When are you playing again?”

  “November.”

  “I’ll be gone.”

  “You don’t live here?”

  “No, I live in Brooklyn.”

  “So what are you doing in L.A.?” He talked for a long time about the movie and Jed Finger. He told her about his first feature. He made jokes about the Alka-Seltzers and the Ritalins, and she giggled as though she hadn’t heard pitch-meeting comedy before. He told her the details he had started to tell CC on the phone, the conversations that had been interrupted by the kids.

  “It sounds like everything is about to change for you,” Hattie said.

  “I don’t want to jinx it, but it feels that way.” People at the other booths were laughing quietly around them. Everyone in L.A. seemed happy, and it didn’t seem fake. Or maybe he was just being naive.

  “This drink is good,” he said.

  “Tell me something about yourself that most people don’t know,” she said.

  He considered for a second and remembered something he hadn’t thought about in twenty years. “When I was little, I used to touch people behind their ears. Everyone made fun of me for it. I liked the way it felt. When I came up to someone new, I would go like this.” He leaned over and showed her. “I forgot about it, but then my mom ran into a girl from my nursery school, and the girl asked if I still touched people behind the ears. That was the one thing she remembered about me. I guess it was my way of getting to know people, kind of like a dog. It was a fetish.”

  “I love that,” she said. “I can see you small.”

  “You can see I smell?” He mock-sniffed his pits. She giggled. She was an easy laugher. “Now you tell me one,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said. “When I was eleven, I was home alone. My mom was out on a date and left me in the house. I was flipping channels, and Some Like It Hot came on. The scene where Marilyn seduces Tony Curtis on the boat. I didn’t know what I was watching. It was in the middle, but I stopped because I recognized Marilyn. In the scene he’s wearing glasses and he gets flustered by her. She’s very breathy and obvious, and his glasses get fogged up and he keeps tripping over everything. That was the first time I remember getting turned on.”

  He wondered whether she had told the story to other men. “You know, you’re not my physical type at all,” she said. “I go for large men with shaved heads. Dirty guys who work with their hands. Gaffers, grips, mechanics. What sign are you?”

  “I heard they changed the signs. There was this study, and they found out the moon was in a different place than they thought. So now everyone’s a different sign.”

  “I read that, too, but then I read that they looked into it and changed them back to what they were.” She seemed smart and funny. Maybe she wasn’t a psycho L.A. chick but someone Who’d Really Lived. His life, his wife, his kids, Park Slope, they had never seemed so far from him than at this moment in this place with this young woman.

  “Do you want to get a drink at my hotel?”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “The Sunset Tower.”

  “I love that place. Did you know John Wayne used to keep his pet cow on the balcony? He told his dinner guests that if they wanted cream for their coffee, they had to go directly to the source.”

  “I heard it, but I don’t believe it.”

  “I do,” said Hattie. “Anyway. I’m a sucker for a good myth.”

  They caravanned to the hotel. He wondered how anyone had spontaneous sex in this city with all the caravanning. He took her to the Tower Bar, gilded and old-school, all beiges, browns, and puce. Over martinis and chilled oysters, they sat close in a corner banquette. He was in a play about his own life and the stage was this bar where white-coated waiters floated between tables as if on skates. The city lights flickered beyond the large windows like a scenic backdrop. They talked easily about old movies and of the Sunset Tower’s alumni, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Frank Sinatra, Tim Curry, Diana Ross. Gottlieb was midway through a riff about Bugsy Siegel’s tenure in Los Angeles when Hattie put her thumb and index finger to his left earlobe and stroked it softly. A shock ran through his body. She leaned over and kissed him, and his hand went to the back of her black hair. It was smooth and thick.

  The night before with Lara, it had felt illicit, but this was something else, something deeper. He felt drawn to Hattie, he wanted to own her, he wanted to stay inside with her for a week and turn his back on everything and everyone. For some crazy reason, she had agreed to go for a drink with him—a stranger at the Hotel Café. He thought of the Yiddish word bashert—meant to be.

  He was kissing her again when he sensed someone watching them. He opened his eyes to see Andy by the doorway, fifty feet away, blinking at them. Hattie’s back was to Andy, and they were too far for him to see her face. It didn’t matter. He had seen them. Andy shook his head slightly, turned, and went away. Fuck. This was why you didn’t stay in the same hotel as your screenwriting partner. Gottlieb hadn’t wanted him to stay here, he’d wanted independence and priv
acy, but Andy had insisted it was more convenient.

  “Let’s go,” Gottlieb said.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, fine. I just want to be alone with you.” It was as though Andy’s sighting had invigorated him instead of bringing him shame. Andy could judge him, he didn’t care, he was going to do what he wanted.

  He paused at the threshold of his room, feeling like a teenager, and watched as Hattie crossed the space, stepping out of her dress as she moved. Turning, she stood wide-eyed and motionless in the living room in her maroon bra and panties, the half-light from the desk the only margin between them. And then he was in front of her as though looking into a mirror, her image the reflection of his own crazy desire. Her breasts were heavy for so slender a torso, and her skin was smooth and dark. His cock was so impossibly large and hard in his jeans that he was astounded. Every erection in his life merged into this moment, and he could feel the pulse of his heart between his thighs.

  Gently, he touched her hipbones and moved his palms across her taut stomach up to her breasts, her nipples stiffening beneath the soft fabric of her bra. Gooseflesh appeared on her arms. She inhaled deeply. Stepping close to her, he pulled her panties down, and dropped to his knees. He could smell her sharp, slightly earthly odor. He was burying his tongue in her, she was so sweet and young and fresh. She moaned and reached her hands behind his head and pulled his face closer. He tasted her rich wetness, his tongue and lips sliding up the length of her lips and locating her clit.

  He led her into the bedroom and pushed her back on the bedspread, licking her greedily. She looked down at him, removing her bra and pulling at her own nipples. Her orgasm spread through her, and she shook as she came, flooding his mouth with her wetness. He was drinking her and she cried out “Danny,” as if in a song.

  She pulled him up on top of her, and they kissed deeply, sharing her taste. He held himself above her as she unbuttoned his jeans and pulled at his cock, his pre-cum wetting her fingers. She brought them up to her mouth to taste him, too, and stroked him again. He couldn’t stop, couldn’t stop, stop himself from coming, all his muscles flexing, the sperm fired up across her body from her pubic hair to her neck. So much of him on her. She spread his cum over her breasts and pushed her fingers into his mouth, and before he could react, she kissed him again deeply, mingling the substance of their selves without thought or shame.