Christ. I was crying. Like a nosebleed, I couldn’t even feel it. I slipped out, off the bench seat and headed down the hall to the bathroom.
Running into a cubicle, I slammed the door and yanked a yard of toilet paper.
Into the bathroom, a small voice called, “Vivica? Are you okay?”
My heart kicked against the wall of my chest. I lifted my heels up onto the seat.
“Vivica?” she repeated quizzically. She knocked on my door. Suddenly she was down on all fours. Peering underneath, her dark eyes were dopey and cruel at once, like a hunting dog’s. “I saw your shoes go up.”
I stared down over my knees at her.
“Are you okay? Is it cramps? Are you on your period?” She couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. “I have a um—” and she rummaged in her purse “—Tampax?” She shook the paper-wrapped tube at me as if it might lure me into the open.
“No, thanks.” She didn’t move. “I’ll be out in a minute,” I said a bit more sharply.
She blinked, her nose and forehead crinkling up at me.
“I just have cramps, that’s all,” I offered.
“Ohhh … yeah?” Wagging her way out by her back end, she clambered up on her high heels and scampered into the other stall. “My sister gets bad ones.” Suddenly her soft pale hand was under the stall with a sample package of Midol. “Will these help?” The flesh of her hand was so dewy, it verged on pudge.
“Thanks, sure. Thanks.” I plucked the pills and stuck them in my pocket as I quietly dropped my feet back to the floor, stealthily unlocking my stall.
“You’re not going home, are you?” she whined as I stepped across the bathroom.
Slipping out the door, I dashed for the bar’s back exit.
I ran down the alley and came up a side street back to the main drag. Fourth was quiet and I trotted across toward the park, looking for cover, a bush to hide in, something to disguise me until a taxi came. I thought I heard my name called and, instead of stopping, made for the nearest big tree and ducked behind as an old Volkswagen’s sewing machine engine churned past. I was rummaging in my purse for my cell phone when I saw another car coming; its roof displayed a light lit for business. My eyes welled in gratitude.
Peering out from behind the tree, I caught sight of Frank across the road just as he sprang up onto the sidewalk in front of the bar. He looked up and down the road.
The taxi bore down on me. I couldn’t just leap out from the trees and flag it. He would see, call my name and paralyze me.
He turned toward the steps that led back down into Nevermind and I rushed out to the sidewalk, waving frantically at the cabdriver who slammed on his brakes as he passed. Anything for a fare on a slow night. Frank turned at the sound of squealing brake pads. The cab reversed the few yards back.
“Vivian!” Frank hollered. “What’re you doing?”
I threw myself into the back seat before his words could take hold and I shut the door.
I didn’t know where to go. It was only ten-thirty. I couldn’t go home though. Suddenly the trunk came to mind. My mother’s trunk. Frank would go to my apartment and I had to get that trunk out before he did. I didn’t want him touching it. I didn’t want anyone inside my mother’s trunk. Staring out the back window, I wondered if I’d know Frank’s car from this angle. I went back in my purse and turned my cell off for fear it would ring.
Leonard. I could hide with Leonard.
As we pulled up in front of my house, I turned my head a hundred and eighty degrees in either direction, hunting for headlights or men of concern. I needed to get into my apartment. Maybe Frank was already inside. No, he never could’ve made it here yet, I reasoned, and paid the driver.
Rushing to the side entrance, I rocketed down the short chunk of hall and let myself into the apartment, careful not to turn on any lights. I felt my way along the wall and turned on the penlight attached to my key chain. The image of soldiers, marines crowding along my windows, assaulted my senses. I grabbed the large manila envelope from the couch and tossed it into the trunk along with the small photo album for which I had to hunt along the coffee table, knocking over god knows what in the process. A sparking current coursed through my limbs as I tripped over her shoes and crouched to roll up the dress and mink. My penlight was in my teeth now and I half expected a bell to signal my time was up, that doom had come to suck me into the bowels of the earth.
I jammed the fur and shoes in and turned in circles trying to think if I’d left anything out. “Your heart?” I whispered. “It’s there.” I slammed the lid closed, and then, pulling my purse over my shoulder, lugged the trunk down the hall. I reached around under the load for the door handle, wrangled the box onto my hip, balancing it against the wall to free up my hand.
In the outer hall, I listened for footsteps or the rattle of the building’s entrance before I slipped out, locked the door and snuck back out the side exit.
I scurried through the parking lot, behind the fence and down the alley, eyes darting, stomach somersaulting until I came to the back of Leonard’s building. Along the fence I went, checking over my shoulder, feet hesitating with the sound of each of the three or four cars that passed out front of the building. Finally I nipped into the entranceway and nosed Len’s intercom button, whispering hoarsely. As the entrance buzzed, I fought my way in.
Len stared at me from his apartment as I came toward him. Neither of us spoke. I stopped in front of him and whispered, “Are you alone?”
“Yeah,” he said, full-voiced.
“Can I sleep over?” The moment it came out of my mouth, I felt as though I were waking up from a foolish dream.
He shrugged, “Sure,” and looked at my trunk. “Is that Josie’s stuff?”
“Well, yeah,” I said, suddenly irritated. I pushed past him.
“Why are you whispering?” He trailed down the hall after me. “Are you drunk?”
“No,” I snapped, standing in the middle of his living room holding my box.
“You smell drunk.” He wore his white tuxedo shirt and cummerbund over his black pleated trousers. His bow tie sat on the table.
“Did you just get home from work?”
“Mrs. Chelsey called last minute and asked me to do a cocktail party at her house.” He gnawed at his thumbnail.
The phone rang. My head spun. “If it’s Frank, I’m not here. I’m not here if it’s anybody.”
His eyebrows raised. “Whatever you say, lady.” I watched him carefully as he spoke into the receiver. “Oh hi. Yeah, sure. No problem … ha ha … that’s right … Tomorrow? Ah, no, I’m free, sure … Okay then … You too, Eunice.” He put the phone down. “Mrs. Chelsey. Bridge party tomorrow. Are you just going to stand there holding that thing all night?”
Glowering at the trunk, I said, “Eunice? Befriended another old crone, have you?” and grudgingly set the box down.
An hour later, my mother’s things were spread out on Len’s rug and a pot of tea was between us. Len had changed into loose jeans and an old flannel painting shirt. I wore one of his tees and his sweatpants. He had been slowly shaking his head in awe since I opened the box. “This is so cool. I always knew there was something. Member she said she saw Sinatra sing in New York? I mean, didn’t you just know it was something. But you can’t just ask that type of thing.” His lisp sounded especially pronounced to my ear at that moment.
“You’re starting to sound like those old ladies you wait on,” I said. “You sound like Liza Minnelli’s ex.”
“Stop being a cunt,” he said serenely as he examined the glass heart’s inscription. “Who do you think B was? Think it was Bobby Kennedy?”
I had told him about the Web sites. “No.”
“Yes, you do.” He turned the heart over. “It was someone pretty flippin’ rich; this is from Tiffany’s. You think you’ll keep in touch with that Glenda?”
“His name’s Richard. No.”
Leonard picked Sinatra’s picture off the floor. “I bet he was nut
s about her. She could’ve had her pick of anyone she wanted. Remember when she came to our grad ceremony and every male teacher and every father in the gym was staring at her, offering her gum and cigarettes and rides home and …”
I felt sulky now. With something verging on a hangover—and Frank was going to be furious with me. “Do you think I need a shrink?”
Len shrugged. “You were pissed off before she died. Did you think you were suddenly going to get unpissed after?”
“Whatever that means,” I sighed and reached for the phone, dialed into my voice mail. You have three messages, the computer announced. A phone company operator once told me that the computer voice is known as Marsha. Her directions to the listener are called Marsha prompts. Marsha gets under my skin in a way I can’t describe. First message, she said. “Hi, Vivian. Listen, I’m ah …” and then a sigh, “I just wondered when you think you’ll come get the car. Or if you’ll come get the car. You can always sell it if you don’t want it. Or sign it back over to me. Let me know when you’re coming and I’ll leave the keys on the kitchen table or in the mailbox or something. Okay …” another sigh. “I hope you’re doing okay. I’m …” Her voice broke a moment. “Okay. Lemme know.” To erase this message, Marsha’s puckered voice explained—I deleted before she had a chance to natter on.
“Sally,” I told Len. “I think she was drinking.”
“Takes one to know one,” he said, reevaluating Annie West’s gun belt now.
Next message: “Vivian, it’s Corinne. I’ve got a last-minute audition for you tomorrow at noon for a new series called San Diego Sugar. You would be reading for the part of the Blonde. There’s just two lines but the scene would be with Jim Belushi. It’s a fantasy sequence with a blonde and a brunette maid but only the blonde has lines. I’ll e-mail the sides to you.” To save this message … I hovered over the keys. It was so rare to hear from my acting agent. Marsha asked, Are you still there? I deleted.
Next message: “Vivian! What the hell is wrong with you? What the …” Frank gasped, “What the fuck are you on? You … humiliated me in front of my friends. I don’t know where you are. I went by your place. I’m tired of your shit. You need your head read.” Click. End of messages. I pressed the number-one key. You have NO new messages, Marsha said emphatically.
I put the phone down and watched Len watch my mother. He squinted as he held the picture at arm’s length.
“Do you think I look like a slut?” I asked. Len glanced. “I mean, do you think when guys look at me they think I look like a fuck machine who can’t get enough?”
He tucked his chin in a moment before replying. “Well, that’s kinda what you were always going for, wasn’t it?” Seeing the look on my face, his voice sped up as he tried to clarify. “You know, like a Courtney Love, kind of, fashion-slut, urban … Madonna the Whore–type thing. You used to like the word slut. You used to wield it like a machete or something.”
I did. I do. “This is fucked up.” I hugged my knees and rested my eye sockets against them. “My whole life is fucked up.”
“Poor Vivian,” he said with the near-genuine soothe he used when he was without sympathy. I raised my head and gazed at the scar under his left brow. With a mind reader’s repartee, he added, “My father’s birthday is this weekend. I gotta go out to a big family brunch in Coquitlam on Saturday.”
He never flinched when he mentioned his father.
“You gonna get him something?”
He shrugged. “I might get a boxed collection of John Wayne movies. This one time when they took me with them to dinner, the chef came out from the kitchen to meet my father. Apparently he used to cook for John Wayne when Wayne came up here on fishing expeditions. He couldn’t get over how much Dad looked like him.”
I spun the heart in place on the rug. “Does he like John Wayne?”
“Loves him.”
“Figures.”
He took the heart out from under my fingers as though I was being disrespectful. I reached into the trunk for the Vegas matchbook.
“There was a piece of paper,” I said, “with Annie West’s address and phone number in here too.”
“You told me. You left it at the apartment.”
“But the number’s out of service.”
“Yeah.” He wrapped his fingers round the heart and held it there. “It’s a nice weight. And it’s cool. If you were sick—” he held it to his temple “—it would be soothing.”
By one in the morning, pillows, sheets and blankets were laid out on the two couches that hugged his walls and met in the corner. Our sleepovers had been this way since we were seventeen, the year Len got his first apartment. He would come home from his shift as a janitor at Ron Zalko sport club and I’d meet him there, and we’d smoke weed and watch movies, fall asleep exactly where we were.
“You think Annie West would still be alive?” I asked from my couch.
I heard his shoulders shrug against the covers.
“At the bar tonight,” I said, eyes to the ceiling, “we were talking about that Bambi Hunt shit that was supposed to be going on in Vegas? That stuff never happened, you know. It was all bullshit. He made it up.”
Len didn’t answer.
“Do you want my mother’s car?”
“Mrs. Chelsey gave me a hundred-dollar tip tonight.”
I rolled onto my stomach and stared over at him. He was on his back, looking up. “Oh yeah?” I said. “You make her some special dessert or something?”
“She said I was dear to her. She’s nice, I mean she’s really beautiful and interesting. You should keep your mum’s car.”
I dropped my face into the pillow, breathed cotton and foam and turned my gaze to the columns of light still dancing on Len’s silent stereo. “You want my car? I don’t need two.”
“A psychic told me once that I shouldn’t drive, that I was a speeder and speed would be the thing that killed me.”
“You’re not a speeder. You’re a neurotic. I want you to have my car. You want my car or not? It’s old and slow.”
“I guess. If she’s not at that old address, the new people might know where she is.”
“Would you drive down with me?”
“To California? No.”
“Erin lives down there now. Right near San Anselmo, I think. Marin County. We could stay with her.”
“No. Who’s Erin?”
“Erin. Remember? She married that director and moved to California?”
“Oh her.” He sighed.
“What?”
“She’s a compulsive liar.”
“She just exaggerates a little to make a good story. You take things too seriously.” I rolled back to face the ceiling. “Who’s Louis Prima?”
“The guy who sang ‘Just a Gigolo.’”
“That was David Lee Roth.”
A snort through the darkness. “Before him.”
Len’s phone rang and he said, “Frank, I bet.”
“Don’t answer it. I’m not here.”
Pulling the blanket over my head, I listened to Len’s end of the conversation. “Oh hi, Frank … Yeah, she’s here, but she’s going to sleep … No, I don’t think I better. She’s pretty emotionally, you know, ah, overrode right now … yeah, yeah, me too … Okey-doke, I’ll let her know. Bye.” He put the phone down.
I pulled the blanket off my face. “Thank you.”
“Uh-huh.” He settled back.
“Overwrought.”
“Whatever.”
Six
LIGHT EKED ITS WAY THROUGH LEN’S BATIK CURTAINS. HE was still asleep on the other couch and I lay on my side, watching the frown on his face as he dreamt. He looked so young in the dim light, I wanted to reach over and smooth out the creases between his brows. He almost looked like he did the first time we ever spoke. We were in high school, grade nine.
Spare had just ended, the bell had rung and I was late as a result of sitting across the street at Tim Hortons, drinking coffee, having a smoke, picking at my
nail polish. I was just sauntering back onto the school grounds, thinking about dying my hair Goth-black, when I saw Len. He was crumpled up in the courtyard near the side door of the school. I thought he’d fainted or maybe he was an epileptic like a chick in my gym glass who used to drop and wriggle fairly regularly. I became an expert at sticking a sock in her mouth so she wouldn’t bite her tongue.
There was blood around his nose and lips. I crouched and touched his collar, asked him if he was okay. He sat up, holding his stomach. I remembered him now. He was part of the yearbook photography-class crowd: tall, cute, a slight lisp and rumour had it, gay. I imagined that’s what had happened to his face, some sort of fag punishment. I pulled a Tim Hortons napkin from my purse and kneeled beside him.
“Don’t bother,” he said in a rather snide tone, considering.
“Don’t get pissed off with me, I’m not the one who hit ya.”
“No, but one of your loser boyfriends did.”
“Ah, go bugger yourself, you don’t even know me. Do you want a hand or not?”
He let me haul him to his feet. “What boyfriend?” I demanded.
“Gordy Bewly,” he mumbled.
My next class was gym, which I could skip. He looked pretty bad and I suppose I felt some convoluted guilt about Gordy Bewly, so I brought him back to my place to get cleaned up.
Mum was at school. Len stood at our bathroom mirror, staring at himself inches from the glass. His lip had fattened and a bruise was starting on his cheekbone. He checked his front teeth for loose connections. Gordy Bewly wasn’t what I would’ve called a boyfriend. I’d gone out with him only once in a dating sort of scenario. Got drunk in the back of his dad’s Buick on a half bottle of gin, didn’t want to have sex with him so I gave him a hand job instead. We weren’t buddies anymore after that, old Gordy and me. I would say I didn’t have much in the way of friends at all after that evening. Turned out Gordy Bewly and Angie Alexander were going around together. As of the night before.
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