Something Blue

by Ann Hood

  Lucy takes the bottle from Julia and drinks. “She’s going to be a real mess,” she says. “Andy is everything to her.”

  Julia sighs. “I hate women who let their lives go to pot over a man.”

  Lucy drinks again.

  “It can happen,” Julia adds. “Trust me.”

  Julia and Lucy met at Birnbaum and Beane, an investment firm where they both spent a week working as temps. Julia used to love being a temp. She loved sitting at a stranger’s desk and pretending that someone else’s wedding picture was hers, that the two freckle-faced kids smiling beside it were her children, the black Lab with the Frisbee in its mouth was her dog. She loved all the goofy things people kept on their desks, things that made sense only to them. Like a windup dolphin bath toy or a small stuffed koala bear. She liked their personalized coffee mugs—a chain of reindeer all having sex with each other, a name stamped over and over, a distant city’s skyline imprinted on the front.

  Lucy only lasted that one week as a temp, though. She walked around feeling disoriented and confused. She hated opening desk drawers and finding someone’s aerobic sneakers inside. She hated not knowing how to work the Xerox machine, not being able to find the bathroom or get an outside line on the telephone.

  They hit it off immediately. “Being a temp,” Julia told her, “is the greatest. You can get away with anything.”

  “Like?” Lucy said.

  Julia showed her. They called old boyfriends on the WATS line, read fashion magazines instead of working, and took two-hour lunches at a nearby sushi restaurant. Sometimes, when Julia talked about that week, she called it the week they fell in love. She liked to remind Lucy how women’s magazines were always writing about the perfect relationship. She would take the “Love IQ” tests and call Lucy with the results.

  “We fit the description!” she’d say. “We’re going to have to get married to each other.”

  “No,” Lucy said. “We’d have to start having sex three times a week to be the perfect couple. And I don’t want to have sex with you.”

  “Even without that we scored a 98 on this quiz,” Julia told her. “Not even you and Jasper would score a 98.”

  Katherine has a way of being too friendly. Of assuming a familiarity that doesn’t exist. In college, Lucy thought that was funny, how she’d go up to strangers and strike up conversations. But later it started to annoy her. And now here Katherine is, standing in the middle of Lucy’s living room talking to Julia like she’s known her forever.

  “You look just like New York women do in the movies,” Katherine is saying. “Really hip. That’s great. I could never get away with hair like that.”

  Julia looks at Lucy for help.

  “Are you all right?” Lucy asks Katherine. She doesn’t see even the beginnings of hives. In fact, Katherine’s skin is clear and glowing. With her hair more golden, long and pulled back with an ocean-blue ribbon, she looks like a “Before” model, a scrubbed face waiting to be made beautiful.

  Katherine turns her smile on Lucy now. “Look at you,” she says. “You let your hair grow so long and you’ve got a perm and everything. You look so sophisticated.” To Julia she says, “She wouldn’t even wear lipstick in college. She was always the rebel.”

  Katherine has been here for five minutes and already Lucy is irritated.

  Julia offers the seltzer bottle to her. “Want a sip, Katherine?”

  Katherine eyes it suspiciously. Then says, “Why not?” and takes a drink.

  “So?” Lucy says.

  Katherine sits down, looking very pleased with herself. “I know I should be feeling really awful,” she says, “but I feel great. Andy—” She looks at Julia. “He’s my fiancé,” she says. The word seems to startle her.

  She pauses and starts over. “I have been so miserable. For months now. And finally this morning I decided I couldn’t go through with it. I just couldn’t marry him. I mean, I couldn’t go off to Boston with him and teach until I got pregnant and then spend the rest of my life having dinner parties and watching Sesame Street.”

  Lucy and Julia are sitting side by side on the couch, facing Katherine, listening.

  Katherine laughs. “You two look like a jury over there,” she says. She takes a breath again. “I just got on the train and came here,” she says, sounding like she can hardly believe it herself.

  Lucy leans forward, toward Katherine, shocked. She is sure that Katherine will go back first thing in the morning. That she will reschedule the wedding and get on with her life.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Katherine says, “but I’m not going back. I’m starting all over. I’m going to live in New York and go to plays and museums and have tea at The Plaza and whatever else people do here. I’m going to meet new men. Exciting men.”

  Julia laughs. “You’re going to try to meet exciting men,” she says.

  But Katherine just keeps on talking. “We’ll have a blast. That’s all I want. I want to have fun. Everybody in the world is so mad at me right now,” she says, “and I don’t even care. I had to do it.”

  When Katherine goes to use the bathroom, Lucy tells Julia, “She’s going to freak out when she realizes exactly what she’s done. She’s going to break out in hives and get on the first train back.”

  “I don’t know,” Julia whispers. “She seems pretty adamant.”

  Lucy squeezes Julia’s arm. “What are we going to do with her?”

  Katherine comes back into the room. She has put on pink lipstick, some mascara. “Okay,” she says. “What should we do on my first day in the big city?’

  Lucy says, “Katherine, I think maybe we should make a plan of some kind.”

  Katherine looks worried for the first time. “I’m going to find my own place,” she says. “I just need something temporary. Until I get oriented. I have plenty of savings. I can even pay you.”

  “We were watching movies,” Julia says. She motions toward Betty Grable’s face on television.

  Katherine wrinkles her nose. “Watching videos?” she says. “Come on. I can do that in Connecticut. This is New York City. Let’s do something fun.”

  Julia stands up. “I’ve got an audition first thing tomorrow,” she tells Lucy. “I’ll leave you two to your fun.”

  “No,” Lucy says, grabbing her arm. “You have to come with us. Please.”

  Katherine is standing alone. She is starting to look nervous. Lucy wants her to disappear. But she knows that she won’t, that Katherine needs somebody right now. Maybe since she walked out on her own wedding, there is more to Katherine than Lucy gives her credit for. Maybe it won’t be too bad if she stays here for a few days.

  Katherine chews on her bottom lip. “Lucy and I used to have so much fun,” she says. “I couldn’t think of a better place to come right now.”

  Lucy reminds herself that they did have fun together once. She tries to focus on that, to secure some happy memory.

  As they leave the apartment Julia whispers in her ear. “Temporary my ass,” she says.

  Whispers

  LUCY IS ON A 747 headed for Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. The plane is completely silent and bathed in the lights from an occasional reader’s overhead and the dim red and white of the exit signs above the emergency doors. Everyone has been fed and shown a bad movie starring Judd Nelson as a lawyer. Now, with the airline’s red pillows tucked under their heads, the scratchy striped blankets wrapped around them, most passengers have twisted themselves into an awkward position to sleep. To Lucy, the pillows look like oversize Chiclets, the blankets like cheap motel specials.

  She can never sleep on airplanes. She is too busy running her group’s itinerary through her mind, even though she knows it by heart. She is forcing their special needs into her memory—who is diabetic, who needs special assistance, who needs to place a phone call or send a package.

  Beside Lucy is another Whirlwind guide named Robin. Lucy has only met Robin at the bimonthly Whirlwind meetings, held at a hotel out by Kennedy A
irport. At those meetings the guides are given updated maps, names of restaurants that give group discounts, the latest money conversion charts. Whirlwind guides always work alone, so there is no need to be too friendly with each other.

  In summer, two groups sometimes leave together. Like tonight, with Lucy and Robin. The groups have coded tags—LCDG for Lucy, RCDG for Robin. CDG is the airport code for Charles de Gaulle. Airport codes are the first things Whirlwind guides have to learn. When Lucy first got her list to memorize, she was enchanted by the adventures those three letters seemed to hold. CAI, TEL, SHN, GVA, ZRH. The whole world seemed to be reduced to something manageable, something she could hold.

  Beside her Robin stirs, tugs on the top of her ponytail.

  “What time is it?” Robin asks, her voice hushed.

  Lucy whispers back to her, “I try not to look at my watch. Makes the time go faster.”

  “I don’t like these Paris trips,” Robin tells her. “The people never wake up really. It’s like a tour for Night of the Living Dead. The zombie special.”

  Lucy laughs softly. “The last time I did Paris,” she says, “everyone fell asleep on the bus tour. I went running up the aisles yelling, ‘Wake up! There’s Notre Dame! There’s the Eiffel Tower!’”

  Robin sighs and pulls her blanket closer around her. She whispers, “What a mess.”

  “What?”

  “Everything,” Robin says. She presses a button on her seat and is immediately sitting upright. “Boyfriend stuff.”

  Lucy can hardly see Robin’s face. What she sees is the high dark ponytail, a vague silhouette, the letters RCDG glowing in hot pink against her uniform. Lucy can hardly remember ever exchanging even a “Hello” with Robin before their groups converged on Gate 24 of the International Departures Terminal.

  Still, in the dark 747, with the engines humming and the sounds of people sleeping around them, when Robin tells her she has boyfriend problems, Lucy turns toward her and says, “Me too.” And then they talk to each other, telling a stranger things they have not told anyone else. The darkness, the low whispers of their voices, somehow make it easier.

  After Robin has told her about her boyfriend Ted, about his cheating on her, his drinking too much, and Lucy has talked about her and Jasper, Robin goes back to sleep, her head resting on two red pillows pressed between her seat and the window. Far off in the distance, Lucy sees a thin line of pink. Morning is somewhere out there, she thinks. She imagines Parisians waking, making their coffee, dressing for work, while New York goes to sleep.

  Lucy tries to imagine Katherine, sleeping in her apartment. She tries to will her away. What if Lucy returned from Paris and found Katherine gone, beamed back to Connecticut and Andy, a happy bride after all? She smiles at the thought. This morning on the telephone Julia had said, “Why do you let her stay? Why are you being so nice to her if you don’t like her?” “I do like her,” Lucy said. “She’s just a pain in the ass.”

  Now, Lucy wonders why she really is being friendly to Katherine, long after their friendship has run its course. There used to be some things about Katherine that she liked. She presses her forehead, trying to revive those things, to call them to mind. She thinks of a spring break in Fort Lauderdale, of standing beside Katherine, their heads poking through the sun roof of someone’s car, calling to boys on the sidewalk. She thinks of the way Katherine used to advise her—poorly but with great concern—about life.

  How many conversations did she and Katherine have like the one she had tonight with Robin? Lucy wonders. Not on a jumbo jet, of course. But in the narrow beds of their college room, identical bright yellow ribbed bedspreads wrapped around them, the room dark except for a street light outside, the sounds of girls studying or coming in from late dates. The sounds of whispered voices in the halls.

  They whispered too.

  “I’m going to do something really exciting,” Katherine used to tell her. “Maybe join the Peace Corps. Teach in Africa. Move to Europe.”

  “‘Lucinda Luckinbill’ will be the ‘Peanuts’ of the future,” Lucy would say. “Lucinda Luckinbill” was the comic strip she wrote for the college paper, chronicling the woes of young women in the 1970s.

  “Yes,” Katherine always agreed. “You’ll be famous. Definitely. You and Lucinda.”

  “You’ll marry a sheikh. Or a duke,” Lucy would say. “They’ll name a small village in Somalia after you.”

  Katherine would sigh. “Lucy,” she’d say softly, “I can’t wait.”

  The next day, she would be the other Katherine again, dressed in her chinos and bright polo shirt, or on her way out to dinner with Andy, wearing lip gloss and Laura Ashley. But Lucy knew that underneath was a dreamer, a woman who would teach children how to read, who would, in some distant place, change the world a little bit.

  Sometimes at night they imagined their futures, the way they would intertwine. Rushed meetings at JFK before Katherine left for overseas. Reunions at Lucy’s New York City apartment, where they drank champagne and looked back on these late night talks. It was 1978, and they were trapped between the radical sixties and the apathetic eighties. They were either born a few years too early, or a few years too late. They weren’t sure. It felt harder somehow for them to make their mark.

  “But we will,” Katherine used to whisper. “You’ll see.”

  The captain announces their landing in Paris. Everyone is bleary-eyed, looking confused and disoriented.

  “It’s eight A.M. in Paris,” the captain is saying. “Sixty-eight degrees and sunny.”

  Robin and Lucy do not speak. They gather their things—handbags and Whirlwind carry-on totes. When the “Fasten Seat Belt” sign dings off, they stand and search the plane for their groups.

  “If your tag says RCDG, please wait for me before deplaning,” Robin shouts.

  Lucy studies her face in the light. She has wide lips, dark eyes with light smudges of mascara beneath them. She is very tall, very thin. She wears a diamond stud in one ear, a dangling earring in the other. She looks like a stranger. But Lucy remembers how sometime between night and now, Robin told her that she’d found used rubbers in her bathroom wastebasket when she got home from a Whirlwind Weekend in London last week. How Ted, her boyfriend, can drink a case of beer in one day. “He starts as soon as he wakes up, and drinks until there is no more.” She told Lucy that after this trip, she wants to not even return to their apartment at all. “I may get on a train and go home to Virginia,” she’d whispered. “No more Whirlwind Weekends. No more Ted. No more Big Apple.”

  Lucy’s group is lining up now, clutching their bags, the navy blue travel kits with WHIRLWIND WEEKENDS across the front.

  “I’m so excited,” she hears someone say.

  Lucy takes a breath, makes herself smile. She wants a cup of coffee but it will be a long time before she gets her group through customs and baggage claim, through airport crowds and into their hotel van to the city.

  Robin smiles quickly at Lucy. “Have fun,” she says, without a trace of familiarity. It is what she would say to someone who did not know about Ted or what she finds when she gets back from her weekends away.

  “You too,” Lucy says, and turns to face her group.

  Lucy stands at the entrance to the duty-free shop at the airport. The weekend is almost over. In an hour they will be on a plane back to New York. They have eaten in a real Parisian outdoor cafe, toured the city by bus, the Seine by boat at twilight. They have gone to the top of the Eiffel Tower, except for one overweight woman who was afraid of heights. Some took a side trip called “A Literary Look at Paris.” Those people visited spots where Hemingway drank, Joyce wrote, and Gertrude Stein gave parties. The others shopped at a real French department store. They are all exhausted.

  Lucy explains again about francs and dollars. She tells them what buys are good here.

  “Grand Marnier, perfume, Chanel products,” she says.

  Some people take notes.

  She steps aside and watches as they spill i
nto the duty-free store, like winners on Supermarket Sweepstakes. She always feels sad at the end of a weekend. She feels she has cheated these people somehow, whizzing them through streets and historical monuments, shouting out facts and tidbits so fast they don’t have time to register what she is saying. She always thinks they should get a refund. Or a coupon for a longer trip.

  The woman who is afraid of heights taps Lucy’s arm.

  “You’re just great,” the woman tells her. She has on a T-shirt celebrating the Eiffel Tower’s bicentennial. Fireworks splash across her chest. The tower climbs upward from her stomach.

  “I’m glad you had fun,” Lucy says.

  “I did,” the woman says, nodding. “I like home better. But this was good.”

  “Did you buy anything yet?” Lucy asks her.

  “I’m on my way,” the woman says. “Just wanted to tell you ‘Merci boo-coop.’”

  Lucy smiles. She watches the woman weave her way through the crowded shop.

  Home is better, Lucy thinks, and again imagines Katherine in her apartment. She’s probably cleaning, spraying lemon furniture polish on tabletops, Windexing mirrors and windows. Suddenly, that image makes Lucy feel terrible. She realizes that she does like Katherine. What she feels isn’t about liking her or not. It’s about disappointment. It’s about all those plans they whispered to each other in the dark. Katherine is what she seemed in daylight after all.

  Lucy wanders into the shop. She’ll bring home champagne for her and Jasper to drink. A bottle of Grand Marnier for some late night when she is alone. Robin is beside her, dropping items into a red basket.

  “How did it go?” Lucy asks her.

  At first Robin frowns.

  Then Lucy points to her name tag. The LCDG is a faded pink now.

  Robin smiles. “Oh,” she says, “Lucy. I didn’t recognize you.”

  Before she leaves, Lucy stops at the Chanel counter. She buys a bottle of Chanel No. 19 for Katherine. She isn’t sure if Katherine even wears it anymore. But suddenly she wants to bring her something. A souvenir. A reminder of another time.