by Ron Koertge
Beside me sat a banker type, reeking of English Leather; beside him a woman who kept tugging at her tiny skirt like it had a mind of its own; then a kid with three earrings, Security in his yellow blazer, motorcyclist, pimply genius, Vietnam vet, lady with a bagel. Just like downtown used to be.
Finally a girl in high heels and a miniature bunny suit featuring a huge cotton puff on her behind tottered out with a placard and balanced it on the easel at the edge of the stage:
MISS MAUREEN’S SCHOOL OF THE DANCE TAP, TOE, & JAZZ
Miss Maureen herself — packed into a spandex suit and grinning with only one side of her mouth like she’d just come from the dentist — introduced the ballet portion.
Nobody could stay on her toes for very long, though, and as they slammed down on their heels, then heaved themselves up again, it looked like a dance celebrating combustion.
Ten kids tapped to “Sunny Side of the Street,” and jazz dancing turned out to be preteens with yards of chiffon tearing around the stage until they all got low-grade fevers and began to bawl.
Still, flashbulbs went off constantly and we clapped along with everybody else, just like the show was going on in the big scalloped bandshell in Bradleyville’s park instead of indoors somewhere in a manmade Oz.
Rachel and I held hands most of the time and patiently listened to a singer — a pious girl who sang “My Way” the same way everybody else sings “My Way”— and then a rock band called Cryin’ Bob and the Furniture.
“Let’s go,” said Sully, holding his ears.
“One more,” Peggy pleaded. “Please?”
The next act was a magician modestly called Jack the Great. He pulled flowers out of his cape lining, turned ropes into ribbons, and produced a dazed-looking pigeon from a hat. Then he asked for a volunteer from the audience.
“C’mon, folks,” he chided.
“You do it, Walker,” Peggy said.
“Forget it.”
“Here’s one!” she shouted.
“Big hand, folks,” said Jack, pointing at me.
Rachel urged me. “It’ll be fun.”
“For who?”
Jack held out his hand. Everyone who didn’t have to go up there was staring at me like I was a real spoilsport. I climbed the makeshift stairs.
“What’s your name?” boomed Jack.
I told him.
“Speak up, Walter. Now, have you ever been a magician’s assistant before?”
“No, but I’m not Walter.”
“You just said you were.”
“You just said I was.”
Jack looked at the audience. “Is this credibility, folks, or what? Not only does he not know me, he doesn’t even know himself.”
I started to protest, but Jack was wound up. “Now, Walter, I’d like to talk to you a long time and get to know your hopes and dreams, not to mention your real name, but I’ve got a show to do here so I’ll need your belt.”
I looked down. “My belt?”
Jack looked around. “Is there an echo in here? Yes, your belt.”
“What about my pants?”
“Please, this is a family show.”
“They’re a little loose; I lost some weight.”
“Just hand over the belt, okay, and while I prepare to dazzle everyone, you can tell us your diet secrets.”
I shrugged and took it off. When my pants actually slipped a little, I grabbed for them and the audience laughed.
I looked across the footlights, embarrassed. But everybody was smiling up at me and applauding. They seemed nice, not mean, and I kind of liked it up there. Was this, I wondered, how my mom felt six nights a week?
Jack wrapped my belt around both wrists, then whipped out a pair of handcuffs.
“Tell us,” he said as he trussed me up, “how you lost weight. There’s a lot of dieters out there, I’ll bet.”
“Well.” I leaned into the mike, but it squealed and I jumped back. “I, uh, started this job and it was kind of hard, so that was part of it. Then I met this really nice girl and I guess I thought she’d like me better if I wasn’t fat.”
Everything stopped, even Jack. Really embarrassed, I shuffled back a step or two. Then there was this incredible applause. Everybody was clapping and smiling.
“Is she here?” shouted Jack. “Is your girlfriend here? Take a bow, little lady. Stand up.”
Now it was Rachel’s turn to be shy, but I grinned and motioned with my cuffed hands, and, beaming, she stood, turned around, and waved. Then she smiled at me even though I was holding up my pants with both hands.
Did I take too long?” asked Sully, sliding in behind the wheel.
“Let’s put it this way: you were parked here so long they gave your car a ZIP code.”
“You didn’t exactly run up to the door with Rachel, then run right back, either.”
“I know. It was too nice up there.”
“She really loves you, pardner.”
“Really?”
“Are you kidding? After that thing in the mall, she didn’t take her eyes off you for a minute. I thought she was going to go in the dressing room with you when you were buying those new cords.”
“She really was nice today.”
“During dinner, during everything. In the movies I looked over and she was still looking at you.”
“I wanted to tell her I loved her.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Scared, I guess. I never told anybody before.”
“Not Debbie?”
I shook my head. “I think Rachel almost told me, too.” I glanced over at him. “What do you say to Peggy?”
He looked down at the steering wheel. “We don’t talk about that stuff much.”
“Well, if Rachel does love me, you know why, don’t you?”
“Sure, you’re a nice guy.”
“No, I mean exactly why. It’s because I told the truth.”
“About what?”
“About her. When I was up on that stage with Jack the Great and I said how I lost weight.”
“She loved that, man.”
“It just popped out. And it’s the truth. She’s why I don’t eat like I used to. It hasn’t got squat to do with being a field hand.”
“Well, it sure did the trick.”
I turned in my seat. “Let’s go see my mom.”
He looked baffled. “I know it’s silly to want connections between sentences, but humor me.”
“I want to tell Rachel the truth about my mom, too. So I want to go see the place where she works; I want to see her act; I want to see everything and then tell Rachel.”
“Are you sure about this?”
“No,” I said, and we both laughed. “But let’s do it anyway.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You could be right. The timing couldn’t be better. She’s nuts about you.”
“Let’s go before I lose my nerve.”
“Okay, but you need a drink.”
“Why?”
“Because John Wayne always had one.”
“Before he saw his mother onstage?”
“Before he rode into town to get his cattle back. He had a double whiskey.”
“Where are we going to get a double whiskey?”
“Doesn’t your mom have some liquor?”
“Just wine.”
He frowned. “It’ll have to do.”
“I thought your mom got home at ten-thirty,” Sully said when I climbed back into the car.
“Not this week. She traded with somebody whose father was sick.” I handed him a glass.
“Not for me. I’m going to drive; you’re going to drink. I don’t want to end up with our yearbook pictures on some Teen Alcohol poster. And anyway, don’t use a glass. Drink out of the bottle.”
I poured some, sloshed it around, and sniffed it like I’d seen my parents do. “But this is how it’s done.”
“Not when you’re pumping up your courage.” He nudged the bottom of the bottle.
I took a s
wallow and grimaced. “An awful little vintage,” I said, “with a runny nose and a history of petty crime. Yuck.”
Sully was a good driver, and he liked to go fast. Just that afternoon the trip had taken over an hour. That night it took thirty-four minutes.
Once, on the way, he reached over with his free hand and massaged my neck like a trainer loosening up his fighter. Another time he punched me encouragingly.
I wanted to tell him how much I liked it that he was able to do that, how much it helped, and how much I liked him; but I couldn’t. Even though that was the truth, too.
When we pulled into the parking lot, I sat up and looked around.
“Not exactly scores of eager valets rushing to serve us,” Sully observed.
The place was a dump, a big, seedy roadhouse out in the middle of nowhere. An enormous neon woman towered over it. Every few seconds her neon gown disappeared and there were her neon breasts, capped tastefully with red bulbs that blinked furiously.
“Oh, my God.”
We made our way among the cars parked at weird angles, one with the front doors standing open. Was everyone in such a hurry to see my mother that they couldn’t park in rows?
“I’m pretty high,” I said, bouncing off a fender.
“Good, I’ve got a hunch you’ll need every drop.”
We could hear the music, all drums and saxophones.
“Watch your step,” Sully cautioned me.
I inched around a piece of plywood thrown across a miniature bog. Lying on it were one high-heeled shoe, half a banana, an empty oil can, and a wrinkled condom.
“I think I saw that in the Museum of Modern Art last year,” Sully said. “It was called The Meaning of Life.”
“I can’t go through with this,” I said. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”
“Anxiety. I’ll get you a paper bag from the waitress and you can breathe into it.”
“I can hear it now. ‘I’ll have a double boilermaker zombie and a lunch bag for my friend.’”
We were almost to the open door when it burst open and out came these extras from Night of the Slime People, big hairy guys whose hands hung down past their knees.
They eyed us suspiciously. Sully and I moved closer together, like children in a dark wood. I was more afraid of getting chewed up than beaten up.
Then one gargoyle jerked his thumb toward the door.
“Great,” he said in a kind of half yawn, half moo.
“Probably the entertainment editor from the Times,” said Sully, ushering me inside.
A bored blonde sitting behind a makeshift counter took one look at us.
“ID?”
“Of course,” Sully said, whipping out his wallet.
She looked at it, looked at him. She held it at arm’s length, then up close like a jeweler. She even took the gum out of her mouth in order to concentrate.
“This isn’t the real you,” she said.
“Still, it’s an interesting question. What is the self, anyway? Or, as you put it so well, ‘the real you’? Is it the polite face we all don in the morning, or is there a deeper…”
I let Sully yammer while I looked for my mom, steadying myself on the doorjamb.
There was so much smoke it was hard to see, but the woman on stage was no relative of mine. I could hear her shriek even above the kind of drumming that would have sent Tarzan diving under the bed. As I watched, she tore off a hairy bra like it had bit her, raced furiously around the stage, then began to climb the grimy curtain.
How would I tell Rachel about this?
“Fellas, what can I do for you?”
Apparently the hostess had sent out for reinforcements.
“We just want to see the show,” said Sully. “We’ve got plenty of money.”
The bouncer (What else could he be? He was even bigger than the Slime People.) handed Sully his wallet.
“Be reasonable, boys,” he said. “At least try to look twenty-one.”
Sully and I inspected one another. Jeans and T-shirts. Mine said BRADLEYVILLE P.E.
“Now,” he said, “I’ve probably got a guy or two in here tonight who’s a little less than legal, okay? But he made the effort; he put on a suit and tie. If the cops come in, they nose around and at least everything looks kosher. If I let you guys in and they see you in your diapers, they got no choice. They have to lift my license. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” we said in unison.
“Good. So no hard feelings.” He pointed to me. “This one’s not driving, is he?”
“No, sir.”
“Also good. Now, you remember where the door is?” His hand on my shoulder weighed about nine pounds.
Outside I leaned on the nearest car. “I don’t care, Sully. I’m going to tell her anyway.”
“Think it over. See how you feel in the morning.”
“Do you think she’ll hate me?”
“Don’t be dumb. Just think it over, that’s all.”
I could hear the music build, and the sound of the crowd.
“It was pretty grungy, wasn’t it?”
“It’s just a place, Walker,” he said, trying to sound convincing. “And anyway, Rachel loves you.”
“What would you do?”
“I don’t know,” he said quickly. “C’mon.”
“But you’re the doctor. You always know.”
“I know you shouldn’t drink any more wine.”
I put my hand to my stomach. “All of a sudden,” I said, “I don’t feel so good.”
“Walker?” My mom’s voice was so faint I thought it was part of my dreams. “Honey, are you okay?”
I rolled over, then waited while the room — like the bubble in a carpenter’s level — evened out.
Tap, tap, tap. “Walker?”
“Coming, yes.” I groped for my old Scooby-Doo bathrobe, then opened the door. “What time is it?”
“Almost noon. I got your note.”
“My note.”
Mom followed me down the hall. “The one I translated into ‘Let me sleep.’”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, pausing at the bathroom door. “That note.” What note? I didn’t remember writing any note.
“Will you come into the kitchen when you’re finished?”
The light above the sink was awful, a flashbulb that never stopped. I looked at myself in the mirror, then turned away, quicker than a vampire. I was so woozy that I sat down to pee, grateful that Sully wasn’t around to bring up John Wayne again, his father’s hero. Finally I brushed my teeth and my tongue, pushed my hair around a little, and went into the kitchen.
“I won’t kiss you,” my mother said, “if you have the flu. Exotic dancers have a lot of strange gimmicks, but throwing up on the front tables isn’t one of them.”
“I don’t have the flu,” I said, looking her right in the eye. “I got drunk with Sully.”
“I figured. You smell like a drunk. Want some eggs?”
“I may never eat again.”
As I sat down at the table, Mom reached for my hand and patted it.
“I remember my first hangover,” she said. “Yuck. But you’ll feel better soon.” Then she asked seriously, “You didn’t drive, did you?”
I shook my head. “Sully did. But he wasn’t drinking.”
“Okay, but take it easy with that stuff, all right?”
I nodded, a little ashamed of myself. “Oh, did Rachel call?”
“No, but her father did. I keep telling him to talk to you, but he doesn’t seem to get it.”
“Does he want to buy the place lock, stock, and oats?”
“There’s been some kind of hitch. He sounded peeved. I think it’s going to come down to an option to buy.”
I shook my head to show I didn’t know what that was.
“Sort of a dog-in-the-manger deal. While he has the option to buy, nobody else can, but it doesn’t mean he will.”
“But I get paid?”
“Enough to get you started in college, a
nyway.”
“Mr. Kramer said once that we might lease what I’ve got for grazing, and if Rachel’s dad didn’t care, maybe we could put in a cash crop next year.”
“Do you think so? Every little bit would help.”
Talking so earnestly had just about worn me out. “I think I need a little more sleep,” I said, managing a half smile. I got up, then sat right back down again. “I’m sorry I got drunk last night. I won’t do it again. Honest.”
She smiled at me. “You’re a great kid, you know that? I hear women complain about their children all the time. Then I tell them about you.”
Embarrassed, I started to get up; instead, though, I took both her hands, made them into a fist, covered that with mine. “I went to the club. Sully and I did.”
“Really? What’d you think?” She seemed genuinely interested.
“I didn’t see much. We couldn’t get past the girl at the door.”
“But you got the general idea.”
“Why do you do it? Why do you work there?”
“Do you think if I really loved you I wouldn’t? Is it like a test I have to pass?” She wasn’t angry. Her voice was soft.
I shook my head. “No, not really. It’s just such a wretched place.”
She smiled, extracted two or three fingers from under mine, and rubbed the back of my hands. “Wretched, huh? I guess it did look that way last night. We had something like six soccer teams from Kansas City. All the losers. So you can imagine the mood they were in.” She sat back reflectively. “They were crude and they tipped like Scrooge.”
“So if it’s so bad…” I persisted.
“You know, sweetheart, lots of times it’s not. The pay is good, it’s fun sometimes, and I always like to be forty and still able to get up there and hold their attention.”
“It all seems so hard. Your job, I mean.” I felt shaky inside. “Much harder than I ever imagined.”
“Why is that?”
“You know when Sully and I were standing there trying to get in?”
“Uh-huh.” She smiled encouragingly.
“I saw part of somebody’s act.”
She leaned toward me again, combing back my hair, the same color as hers.
“And I guess I want to know if you have to do that, too.”
“Do what, sweetheart?”
“Climb the curtain every night.”
