A Thing of Beauty

by Lisa Samson

  Who even thinks to order a gimlet? I smile at him, the question in my eyes.

  He shrugs. “I know my mother, and I know she’ll like it.”

  “And for me?”

  “Tonic and lime. What else?”

  I laugh. “I guess he knows his women, doesn’t he, Mom?”

  Geez.

  “Indeed he does. Now, you just scoot your chair a little closer and tell me all about yourself and why you’re willing to put up with a man like Jack. And before you do, let me apologize right here and now for any boorish or unkind behavior on his part. I’ll blame them on his father, and maybe his ex-wife too.”

  Ex-wife?

  Jack never mentioned having an ex-wife. But then again, if a woman gets to keep her secrets, so does a man. And he might think he doesn’t pay me enough to keep those kinds of things to myself. What he doesn’t understand is just how much I understand the kind of damage gossip can do.

  For the next few hours I play the part beautifully.

  Since I’m dressed up, I might as well make the most of it. Jack hired me a cab for the trip home and I feel like I got into a time machine instead. The driver of the old Ford might just have been the coolest man the seventies had to offer. He still wears a fro—not too long, not too short—underneath a leather cap, the kind with a bill and four sections crowned at the top by a button. He’s a gentleman cabbie in a chestnut-brown, European-cut leather jacket and crisp, flared dark-denim jeans, opening my door for me and then closing it when I’m tucked in the backseat. His demi boots are polished and his name is Mike.

  “They call me Big Mike,” he says after sliding into the driver’s seat.

  Did I mention those clothes were on a six-foot-six frame? And Big Mike must weigh all of one hundred and sixty pounds?

  “Tall Mike might have suited you better,” I say.

  He laughs and the noise fills the cab.

  I join in. “Unless they’re talking about your big laugh.” It’s that kind of laugh.

  “A man’s got to laugh.” He turns his head to face me. “You hear what I’m sayin’?”

  I nod. “I do. Sometimes there’s just not a whole lot to laugh about.”

  “Now, now, that’s just simply not true. You ever heard of Africa? People laugh there all the time, and they ain’t got much to laugh about. You know what my mother always said to me?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Little Bit, they called her. She was all of five foot tall in nothin’ but the feet God gave her, and she had a sad life. Where to, by the way?”

  I give him my address.

  “Nice. Makes sense with the fancy way you’ve got about you.” He starts the meter and pulls away from the curb.

  “Did Jack give you his credit card number?” I ask.

  “He sure did. It’s all taken care of.”

  I relax into the old interior. “Did this used to be an Emerald cab, Big Mike?” They were always the nicest cabs, the only company my grandmother would call when she was alive.

  “Sure it did! I worked for them for twenty-five years. And then I realized I had a fine clientele all my own. Mrs. Dickson on Mondays for her shopping trip at Mondawmin. The Blake sisters . . . married to each other for the most part, but sweet as the day is long . . . they used me at least three times a week. I always told people,” he said in a voice that sounded sage and serious, “don’t take a chance. If you need a driver, you just ask for Big Mike, and so they did.”

  I like him. I like Big Mike. I’m going to ask for Big Mike too. When I can. “Do you have a card?”

  He chuckles. “Do I have a card?” Big Mike reaches over as he negotiates a right turn onto Calvert Street and opens his glove compartment. “What’s your favorite color?”

  “Green. I’ve always loved green. Then yellow. Then orange. I love daffodils. They’re my favorite flower. They have all three colors.”

  He grasps a stack of business cards held together with the kind of thick blue rubber band that usually hangs out with broccoli. He hands me the stack. “Pick one!”

  The cards have been printed on a rainbow assortment of cardstock, just simple black lettering on each with the words:

  Don’t take a chance. If you need a driver, you just ask for:

  Big Mike Reynolds

  Get You There Safe and Sound

  410-555-1711

  Any Time, Any Day, Any Way

  I pick the blue. I can’t help it. “I know I said I love green, but this is a very pretty blue.” I hand him back the stack, then place the card in my evening bag.

  “Robin’s egg blue,” he says, putting the cards back. “My mother’s favorite color. So here’s what Little Bit always said.”

  “Little Bit with the big troubles.”

  “That’s it exactly. Hey, you catch on quick!”

  I shrug. “What can I say?” I don’t tell him that words, having memorized so many of them, now just soak right into me. This talent sounds a lot better than it is. Who wants to remember everything people say to them?

  “Little Bit always said to me, ‘Mike, if you’re not laughing, you’re not living.’ And people, people are funny things. Never forget that!”

  “So that’s it? You’re telling me to laugh at people?”

  All that buildup? I’m a little disappointed.

  He laughs. “Not exactly! My, you a funny one. It’s just like now, don’t you see? What you said? It was funny. People say funny things all the time, but we’re so darned serious about it all, we fail to see the humor. Get what I’m sayin’?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “It’s about living here and now, right here in the cab.”

  “In my own cab? Are you telling me to start driving a cab?” Let’s see how funny he really thinks people are.

  Apparently quite funny, because Big Mike laughs again. “See? You’re catching on.”

  My acting skills have obviously taken a downturn. But I can’t help it. I join in with him, and the goodness I feel soaks through all the layers.

  We pull up to my house as a text from one of my regulars comes in. By regular, I mean he and I go out maybe twice a year. But Alex is a nice guy. A gamer dude, very lonely.

  As he starts to click the meter, I say, “Hold up a sec, Big Mike. Keep the meter running. Can you take me up to Waverly? Jack won’t mind. Do you have another scheduled appointment this evening?”

  “No, I do not. Where in Waverly?”

  “Thirty-Sixth and Frisby.”

  “Let’s go.”

  And so north we travel, Big Mike chatting it up with me, telling me about his kids. “Do you know I like every single one of them?”

  “How many do you have?”

  “Four.”

  “Those are good odds.”

  He laughs again. I’m starting to see his point. And I listen to him, and to myself, and by the time we pull up to Alex’s brick rowhouse with its concrete steps, at least ten of them, leading up a small hill to its small pillared front porch, I realize I don’t want this night to end.

  This night.

  This night I choose not to fool myself that because I only pick nice, lonely guys who will appreciate me in ways the other men won’t, I’m not a whore.

  “How much do we have on that meter so far?” I ask, hand on the door handle.

  “Eighteen seventy-five.”

  Maybe I should get out. I don’t have enough in my purse to keep going. Maybe it’s a sign that things aren’t going to get any better and I’ll be relying on guys like Jack and Mike and that’s okay. But a good first step would be not putting one more cent on Jack’s meter.

  There’s only one way out of this. Get out. But just walk home. In my old red heels. Any other way and I’m not standing on my own.

  “Is this where you live?” he asks.

  “No.”

  Alex opens the door and waves. Big Mike looks back at me. “I see,” he says.

  “See what?”

  “He your next date? ’Cause here�
�s the thing, miss. You a pretty lady, and you get in the cab paid by one young man, and there’s another young man at the other end of the line. Now, it’s none of my business, but does the first young man know you used his money to get to the second young man?”

  I shake my head.

  He stops the meter. “Let’s go. Let’s get you home.”

  Big Mike puts the car back in drive, and I feel as if I’m flying, as he seems to forget what happened and we chat some more.

  As he pulls up to a curb for the third time that evening, he turns around once again. “You got to live now. Like right now. Right now. And you got to decide if your right nows are what you’ve been hoping for. Are they?”

  “Not even close.”

  “Can you make them that?”

  I think about it. All the tools are there, aren’t they? Have I just been laying them out like old buttons on a workbench or storing them in boxes and feeling secure about them because at least they’re in my own home? “I don’t know,” I answer. “I don’t know if I can anymore.”

  With terrible timing, Josia pulls up in his big white serviceable, makes-sense-on-every-level truck.

  Oh yay! Here’s another man that Big Mike gets to see.

  “Josia!” he calls as my roommate climbs out. “My man!”

  Josia saunters over. “Well, if it isn’t my favorite man behind the wheel!”

  And they visit like old friends. I don’t ask how they know each other, but that they do isn’t surprising. I think wise people tend to gravitate toward each other. Maybe wisdom tends to latch onto itself when it finds itself in various places. I don’t blame it. There are a lot of fools in this world.

  I sigh.

  Yep. There certainly are.

  Nine

  Despite the prior evening’s many social interactions, I step with relief into the Bizarre and immediately begin telling Randi about the cribs. She fixes my drink and chatters about her evening spent scouring the Internet in search of someone to fix her espresso machine’s wand. To no avail, of course.

  I get comfortable at the counter.

  While checking my phone, the sugar/caffeine high begins to take hold, and I’m just now realizing how lucky I am that dress still fit last night. I’ve stayed the same size, okay, but the quality has gone from high-end department store to outlet strip mall. Then again, maybe it’s better just to be scrawny than to meet with a really boring trainer three days a week. Because the exciting trainers were even more annoying.

  I hated exercising then, and I hate exercising now. But with that interview coming up in a little while, I might want to start getting my arms in better shape.

  What am I doing? What if this big interview ends up being something absolutely no one cares about? Bouncing back from that sort of humiliation would be near impossible.

  My cell phone rings.

  “It’s Jessica,” I tell Randi.

  “Oh, be my guest! This might be good!” She pushes her pencil into her beehive and crosses her arms.

  I nod and push the button. “This is early for you, Mother.”

  “And even earlier out here, Fiona. But I’m sure you remember that.”

  Of course.

  She continues, “Things are really heating up in the tabloids this time. Whoever’s writing these things knows what they’re doing. And the photos. They are going to some lengths, which makes me feel good about the promotion for the film. Oh, what they can do with a computer now! I look better than ever. Who says these new girls have anything on us?”

  Who indeed?

  “They even flew your father over to George Clooney’s place and snapped pictures of him with that new singer everyone’s talking about. Cute girl, but such a little girl. What? Twenty-two? And people are lapping it up. He’s still on the cutting edge of things, like always, thank God. Have you seen?”

  “I don’t read the tabloids anymore.”

  She actually gasps. Not a beefy, “I can’t believe you didn’t know Aunt Susan used to be Uncle Bob” gasp, but more than an “I think I might have forgotten to turn off the curling iron” intake. “Are you really that disinterested in your father and me?”

  All because I don’t read the National Enquirer.

  “Mother—”

  “You surprise me, Fiona,” she says. I picture her in her “martyr’s chamber,” an eight-by-eight bedroom that’s only packing a single bed and a nightstand, testifying to her vow of never sleeping with any man again in an attempt to make Brandon feel guilty.

  Okay. If it worked. But it doesn’t.

  “But whatever you might think, I almost can’t wait to see what happens next!” she says. “And of course people are commenting all over the Internet in my favor. Or so my publicist told me when she called. It’s glorious! They think he’s such a scoundrel.”

  I don’t tell her this sounds like it all might actually be true and maybe her soon-releasing film is a coincidence. Even if I wanted to say it, she’s on a roll.

  “They say he’s soon to sue me for divorce and half my personal fortune! Ha! Even Brandon wouldn’t be that stupid. But the public will lap it up!”

  “They always do.”

  “Don’t you just love the way the same plot twists work over and over? Brandon is brilliant in some regards. And a complete numbskull in others, granted. But if it keeps us in the news . . . So, Fiona. I’m coming to Baltimore in a few weeks, just to see you.”

  “Just to see you.”

  I’ve been waiting for this call for over ten years, all of my life, actually. Jessica, finally making me a priority. And now that it’s here, I can hardly think of anything I’d like less.

  “When?”

  “In a few weeks, like I just said. But maybe sooner. Should I assume you’ll be able to put me up?”

  “Hardly. I’m finally renovating around here. You’ll have to get a hotel room.”

  “Well, if that suits you best.” She seems relieved, though. “I’ll leave it to you to find something suitable. And while I’m in Baltimore, I want to visit the offices of Jasper Venn and his studio as well. I’ve always wanted to guest star in a gritty police drama, and my agent thinks that now’s the time.”

  “Actually, that sounds like fun.” Big Mike could drive us. There most likely would be no pictures taken. Add to the fact that gritty police dramas have dwindled under the hot stream of meth and motorcycle clubs, zombies, and three-martini lunches, and there’s no reason why I shouldn’t take a stroll around Jasper’s corpse of a set. Shoot, maybe Jessica’s presence would make the show itself a zombie of sorts, resurrected but still saying things like, “I am a gritty cop with a sad past and addiction or religion issues. Uuuuuhn.”

  She pauses. “I wouldn’t want to bother you with it.”

  “The show is a little old-fashioned,” I say, wincing at my own childish reaction to her. Once again, rejection.

  “It is?”

  “Well, kinda. The show is on its last legs, if you want the truth.”

  She says nothing, then, “What about other shows? What are the biggies, then?”

  “None that film in Baltimore.”

  “Hmm.” I hear her tap the phone with her fingernail. Will she come see me anyway?

  “Are you sure you want to come now? I mean, with the renovations and all?” I ask above the noise of the woodpecker inside my phone.

  She stops tapping. “Nonsense. I’ve never seen your home. It’s about time for that, Fiona. You’ve done the hermit thing just a little too long now.”

  No. I haven’t.

  “Well, let me at least think about it.”

  “Think all you want, I’ll still be booking that flight. I wish you didn’t live across the country. You know I’d much rather take the train.”

  After we ring off, I watch Randi and sip on my latte. That woman right there with her sweet little shop and her nice customers? She has the life.

  The golden evening arrives accompanied by a pink that’s more ballet slipper than cotton candy. I don�
�t feel like going on a date, and I don’t usually work in my studio at night because the basement transforms into a mad murderer’s workshop, the foul old lair of one who employs odd devices to ply his trade and sneaks into my basement to do it. And that’s enough said about that! I always refused to do horror flicks for a reason.

  I should try to at least think about what I’m going to do for the Bizarre. But all the supplies down there don’t help in this regard, okay. The dog-eared vision of a box of doll parts has not gone unrealized. But the accompanying idea was to make a work decidedly un-creepy with them. It’s a tall order, and no idea, shimmery and bright with promise, has entered my mind yet. One doll in particular continues to fascinate me, though, a little boy doll dressed in a velvet short-pants suit and a white shirt with a lace collar designed to swallow his head if the situation warrants it. He should look like he’ll end up in heels and a wig someday, but there’s something defiant in his eyes, as if he’s saying, “Oh, don’t you worry about me, lady. I’ve planned quite the revenge for having to wear this outfit. Just wait until I turn fifteen.” Maybe I should just pull him out and pitch the rest.

  It’s just the impetus I need.

  I trek down to that dark basement, yank the gray string hanging like a weary subway commuter from the light fixture, and go right for the box. I tuck Edwin, for that is what he looks like, under my arm, then haul the box up the inside steps and out to the back porch to join the other boxes.

  According to Big Mike, there’s hope in the present moment, and presently I actually feel like going through the boxes I stacked out here just before Josia moved in. If I don’t make the most of it, I’m an idiot. And I take a minute to talk myself out of talking myself out of it like I always seem to do.

  I really am my own worst enemy.

  The large moon shines in sympathy tonight, providing enough clear light to complete the task. By the time eleven rolls around, I’ve separated the items into a keep stack and a discard stack. Edwin sits on the iron chaise wondering what I’m going to do with him now, and truthfully, I just don’t know. But I simply will not leave him here on the porch. He’ll have to come inside with me. This horrid doll outfit that smells exactly like the basement has to go, and right now.