by Ron Koertge
Carefully, wearing an imaginary trench coat and Bogart hat, I peered around the edge of the window plastered with gaudy sweets. No Rachel. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
“Looking for Rachel?” someone said behind me, and I jumped.
“Jesus, Billy.” It was a guy from English Lit.
“She just came out of Nordstrom.”
“Thanks.” I broke into an easy canter.
“Seen Rachel?” I asked right outside the department store doors.
“Try the lower level.”
With a groan I plunged down the stairs, bumping people, excusing myself, not excusing myself, emerging to see her with Tommy Thompson’s loathsome arm draped across her shoulder.
If I’d had a gun, I would have shot him in the foot; if I’d had a club, I would have beaned him. As it was, I ran up and bit him in the wrist.
“Jesus,” he cried whirling around, shaking his hand like it was burned. “What’s the matter with you?”
Rachel turned, her face knotted in disbelief.
“You’re not Rachel,” I said happily.
“Who’s Rachel?” she turned on Tommy. “Who’s this Rachel?”
“I’ll have to get rabies shots,” he said, inspecting his wrist.
“I’m sorry, honest.” I began to back away. “I’m really sorry. Really.” Then I turned and ran.
Upstairs, I went into the men’s room, hardly recognizing myself in the mirror. My hair was plastered to my skull, I was flushed, and somehow my shirt had been twisted so that one sleeve was very short and the other very long. When I bent to wash my face, I got one cuff completely soaked. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I smelled. It was the worst kind of perspiration, the stuff that sets off alarms on TV or leaves people flattened in its wake.
Good Lord, if Rachel did see me, she wouldn’t recognize me. If she recognized me, she would shriek and run; if she didn’t run and for some reason put her arms around me, I’d feel and smell like an old washrag.
“Forget it,” I said, pushing open the bathroom door. And then, naturally, there she was not twenty feet away, staring into the window of Tom’s Travels. Startled, I darted into the nearest store, peering out at her from between the mannequins in the window.
“May I help you?”
“Oh, uh, sure,” I said to the saleslady, whose purple hair reminded me of Mom’s violets. I reached into the nearest bin. “This,” I said. “It’s a gift.”
“You’re sure?” she said suspiciously.
Outside Rachel drifted away. “Absolutely. Wrap it up.”
“This is a panty girdle for the full-figured woman.” And she held it up with both hands.
It was the color of Petunia Pig and about as large. “Oh, well,” I said. “Full-figured. Well.” If I wasn’t hemming and hawing, I was at least hemming. Backing away, I bumped into another counter, reached behind me, plunged one hand into another bin. “These, then. Instead.”
“And what would those be?” she asked, starting to lose her patience.
I looked at them. “Uh, I don’t know.”
“Panties,” she said.
“You’re kidding.” I looked again. Panties were what Rachel wore, little dainty things as pretty and fragile as flowers. These were industrial strength. The elastic could have shot me across the room. I dropped them like they were hot.
“I think I’d better call security.”
“No, no,” I assured her. “Honest, I’m leaving. It’s a mistake. It’s all a terrible mistake.”
I retreated to the parking lot. Like in those old Greek plays, the madness had passed and I was purged. As I sat on the fender idly looking one way and then the other, I didn’t even worry about which side was my good side or even if, like a record that never sold, I had two bad ones.
Then as the crowds thinned, as the security men ushered the late shoppers out and locked the gates to the Magic Kingdom of Things, there she was. Alone.
She didn’t see me; she was walking with her head down, scuffing one shoe on the asphalt like a little kid.
I watched her stop, hesitate, run one hand roughly through her hair, then turn, stride to the nearest waste can, and drop in the bag she’d been carrying. Finally she whirled and strode resolutely toward her car. Until she saw me.
I raised one hand tentatively, a mini-wave. Less than that, a micro-wave. She nodded in reply. And even though it was shadowy in the huge lot I was sure I saw her smile.
Then she started toward me. Flustered, I sat down again, goosing myself on the hood ornament, but I think she was still too far away to see me wince.
When we were a few yards apart, she stopped. I smiled encouragingly. She raised both hands tentatively, then sort of kept raising them and hugged herself.
“Walker,” she said softly. “I’m so glad to see you.”
“I, uh, called you a couple of hours ago and when you weren’t home I started to look for you.”
“Well, here I am,” she said holding out both arms like someone showing off a new dress.
“Yeah, me too. I’m here too.” I stood up, kind of patting myself to show I wasn’t an apparition.
We looked at one another, half grinning, half embarrassed.
“How’ve you been?” she asked.
I shrugged. “You know.”
She glanced down at her hands, one curled palm up in the other, like a soloist’s.
“I miss you, Rachel.”
She started to look teary. “I was just in the mall missing you.”
“Me too.”
“Isn’t that dumb? We should have just got together and missed each other.”
Little by little we were getting closer, she moving warily in one direction, I in the other. I’d seen a movie in biology like this, but it was about a couple of birds.
“You know what my dad wants to do now?”
“Build the first mall on the moon?”
“Stay in Bradleyville.”
That stopped me in my tracks. “You’re kidding.”
“Oh, who knows with him?”
“But he said it.”
“Sure, but I’ve been so miserable, it was probably just to make me feel better.”
“Well, it makes me feel better.”
“Me too, but I’m afraid he’ll change his mind again.”
I shrugged. “But until he does…”
Involuntarily we started toward each other again. I knew how it was going to feel to kiss Rachel and to hold her warm, sturdy body. I was just about to open my arms as wide as they would go and scoop her up when I remembered. And stopped dead in my tracks.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “There’s something else.”
“What? Are you mad? I don’t blame you. I should apologize….”
I shook my head. “Something about me.”
“About you? Walker, what?” She looked really concerned. “It doesn’t matter, whatever it is. You’re okay, aren’t you?”
“My mom…” I said cryptically.
“Is she hurt?”
“… is a stripper,” I said, a lot louder than necessary. “She’s a dancer, but she dances at some place called Ye Olde Burlesque, probably with her clothes off. So…” I looked away, then down at her feet. My eyes swept the ground like someone who has lost a key. “So if you don’t want to be around somebody whose mom —”
“Walker,” she said softly, “I know all that.”
I fell back against the car. “You do?”
“I found out a few weeks ago. Tommy Thompson asked me how I like going out with somebody whose mom was a topless dancer. I just told him to stuff it.”
“You don’t care?” I couldn’t believe it.
“Your mom’s nice. God, my dad bullies people until they sell him their homes. What’s worse?”
“But didn’t you wonder why I’d never said anything? What about all those lies about her being a waitress and all?”
“I thought you’d tell me sooner or later. Anyway,” she said swee
tly, “everybody’s got secrets.”
“But if you know and Sully and Peggy know, then lots of people know.”
“Probably almost everybody.”
“How come nobody ever said anything to me before?”
She shrugged. “So they’ll kid you tomorrow.”
They’d kid me. They’d kid me tomorrow. And that’s what it would amount to — kidding. All this time and nobody really cared but me.
I loved holding Rachel in my arms again, and we just leaned against my fender for a few minutes until our breathing slowed and meshed.
Around us the other isolated cars crept away. Nearby, a shiny Porsche pulled up beside a Chevy mini-van whose interior was lined with baby seats. The couple in the Porsche embraced; then a woman slipped out, glanced around furtively, and fumbled — alone and in the dark — with her car keys.
Maybe Rachel had been right all along and the mall was the new community. Certainly everything happened here. Tonight lovers used the parking lot instead of a side street or park bench. Last week a woman had gone into labor right in Pet’s Delight.
“Where were you born?” someone would ask that child, and he would answer, “In the mall.” “Where have you been?” the anxious husband would ask. “At the mall.” If things kept going like this, my mother would end up dancing at the food court.
“My God,” I said, stepping back. “Do you know what we should do?”
“Yes, start kissing and never stop.”
“No. I mean yes, but no. We should go and see my mother.”
“Where is she, home?”
I shook my head. “Working. At the club. Dancing.” I was talking like a tap, going on and off. “We could see her. See what she really does. Sort of. Maybe wave to her. Or something.”
“You go,” she said softly but firmly. “I need to see my father.”
“No. I mean, sure, but why? What’s he doing?”
“Probably waiting for dinner right now, banging his spoon on his dish.”
“Afterward, then. You could dress up and look twenty-one easy.”
“You go, sweetheart.” She touched my chest lightly, not off to the left where everybody pledges allegiance, but almost in the center, where the heart really is.
“I just don’t want to go alone, do I?”
“I don’t want to face my dad, either. But I was thinking about a lot of things in the mall tonight, and I just don’t want to be his bookkeeper anymore. Or cook breakfast for him every morning or tell the cleaners there’s a spot on his cashmere sweater.”
“What’s he going to do?”
She shrugged and smiled. “What can he do, threaten to move?”
I drove home and paged through the closet until I found my only suit, the one I hadn’t worn since my father’s funeral. Peggy had cut my hair so that it stuck up stylishly, but I slicked it back and even tried to part it on the side like an adult. Or, anyway, like my idea of an adult. Okay, okay — the truth: like my father.
When the phone rang, it was Rachel. “Are you okay?”
“I got my pants on with the zipper in front — that’s a step in the right direction. How about you?”
“Dad’s on the other phone downstairs. Probably buying Asia. Call me when you get back, please.”
“Really? This could take a while.”
“For me, too. This is going to push all my father’s buttons. Call me on my phone, okay? We’ll talk about what we want to do tomorrow. I want to see the oats. I miss them.”
“They miss you. Every time I went out there, they asked about you.”
“Well, I think I hear the heavy tread of the professional parent.”
“Yeah, and I think I hear the music all the way from Love’s Park.”
A different blonde reading a paperback as big as a brick hardly looked up as I came in.
“Table or the bar?” she asked, holding out her hand for the admission.
The bar was farther away from the stage, so I chose that, slipping in beside a man with arms so hairy I thought he was wearing a sweater. In front of him were half a dozen tiny umbrellas, carefully folded. Another, opened, decorated his tall tropical drink.
“What’ll it be?” asked the bartender. “Three-drink minimum, you get ’em all now. When the show starts, I go on break.”
Everyone had glasses in front of him. A bald man had one in each hand, holding on like they were levers. Another guy arranged his into an arrowhead; a third made a long, even line; and a fourth filled his with ashes and bent filters.
If Sully had been there, he could have done a psychological profile on each one: heavy-equipment operator, cowboy, drill sergeant, slob.
“Uh, do you have a Diet Coke?”
“Three Diet Cokes comin’ up.”
A very tinny combo hidden behind sequined curtains at the far edge of the stage swung into “How High the Moon.” My father only owned a dozen albums; four of them were by Les Paul and Mary Ford; out of all the songs on all the albums, “How High the Moon” had been his favorite. I wondered if Mom was backstage listening and, if so, what was she thinking about?
Casually I turned to inspect the room. There were lots of women with their boyfriends or husbands, though why women would want to see other women take their clothes off was beyond me.
I was surprised at how well behaved everybody was; people chatted over their drinks, laughed those soundless laughs, and waited patiently, tapping an index finger in time to the music.
My worst fears were that the winners of some playoffs would show up, teams with names like the Drooling Cretins. And there were a few tables of rough-looking guys, but mostly the same kind of people you’d see in a doctor’s office, just more of them.
Ta-daah! The master of ceremonies was good-looking, if you like those marinated types, and he wore gold chains with links almost as big as the ones we used on our tires in the winter.
The show opened with a comedy sketch. There was a judge, a peeping Tom, and a French maid. I think it’s probably enough to say that the main joke was the misunderstanding between “Your Honor” and “You’re on her.”
Still, people laughed. The judge hit the peeping Tom with his gavel; the maid clutched her rouged cheeks in mock terror. I just got more and more nervous.
“And now,” boomed the MC, “here she is, wearing only beads… of perspiration — Wanda, the Wildcat of Burlesque.”
Wanda may have been onstage for ten minutes, and she was never one mile per hour below top speed. Those in front leaned back, and a few shielded their eyes like they were watching a fire. She sped around the stage with her teeth bared; she threw herself on a bear rug so hard that I was afraid she had broken something; and for a finale Wanda climbed the main curtain again, screaming all the time and slamming her pelvis into the air. She’d exploded onstage wearing very little to begin with — just a sort of hairy bra and panties — and this time she didn’t take off a stitch. When we applauded at the end, we applauded like physicists celebrating pure energy.
A tenor was next, piping to a stunned house about Ireland and mothers; then a skit with two beds, three doors, and four newlyweds.
Monique, direct from the Côte d’Azur, glided around the stage dragging a fur for what seemed like hours; then — as if to show us she had other skills — she twirled the tassels on her breasts clockwise and counterclockwise. Monique was a big woman, anyway, and with her arms straight out and her tassels going, she looked like a World War II bomber waiting for takeoff. To finish, she urged the crowd to count over the drum roll as she tried for three hundred, a personal best. Something went wrong in the two hundreds, but we gave her a hand anyway.
Then it was time. “Her name’s Virginia,” said old oil-and-chains, “but she’s no virgin.”
I turned on my stool and hung my head, like a kid in class who doesn’t know the answer.
“And she came to us via Las Vegas from Gay Paree. Let’s have a big hand for the cleanest act in burlesque — the Virgin Queen, Virginia LaRue.”
So far all the dancers except Wanda had been from France; according to this guy, there was nobody in France but strippers, all standing at the coast in their high heels and feather boas waiting for the next boat to Kansas City.
The music was playing; the lights were down; the spot was on. Everybody was watching but me. I just stared at the ceiling.
“Nice,” said the man next to me, so I sneaked a look.
My mother sat in a bogus bedroom with her back to the audience, jauntily slipping off leg warmers, headband, and sweatshirt.
When she stood up from the flimsy vanity table and turned around, there was her K.C. Royals T-shirt, which drew some scattered applause from the sportsmen in the crowd.
I was fascinated and appalled. I struggled to look at the stage. Involuntarily my hands leaped up and clamped themselves over my eyes. All I could hear were the shouts and whistles; all I could feel was the place coming alive.
I peeked out from between my fingers; my heart was beating like crazy and I was short of breath. I could just see the headline — STRIPPER’S SON DIES AT LATE SHOW.
Then she slipped off her T-shirt, holding it against her coyly. Someone actually shouted, “C’mon, honey. Take it all off.” I wanted to storm over there and ask how he would like it if somebody talked about his mother that way.
Suddenly the lights went down, the music slowed, and out of the wings came half a plastic globe seething with soapsuds.
So that was her gimmick. No snakes, hula hoops, or tassels, but a tub: the cleanest act in show business. I put my head in my hands. Oh, my God, oh, my God. Taking a bath in front of a hundred strangers. Her legs emerged from the foam and her fingers tiptoed down them.
“I hope her bubble bath is like what my wife buys at Thrifty’s,” my neighbor said. “It goes flat in about two seconds.”
I guess I was about to faint, because I remember feeling flushed and lightheaded. Then I had the weirdest experience. I’ve never told it to anybody, even Sully, up until now.
What happened was that all of a sudden it was like I could see everything from the upper left-hand corner of the room. There I was, my face nearly on the bar from embarrassment. There was everybody else — all the bald heads, all the perms and sets, all the good clothes and the bad. I could see the band, professionally bored; I could see the bartender idly wiping a glass, and I could see a waitress sitting near the jukebox rubbing her feet.
