Alison, had she heard his thoughts, would only have agreed. When she’d first started at Vitae she’d likened it to a temple and the stylists to priests, but not any more. Thi liked to hip-hop to the sink, which was not at all the way to approach an altar, and the way they dressed—weird and funky, in clothes that often looked like rags, but cost a lot more—half of them perforated by rings and studs and subcutaneously stained with ink, they would have been driven out of anywhere holy. No, with the dance music pounding continuously in the background, the banter and the jokes, it was more like a party. A month into her apprenticeship, going to work was like getting paid to go to a party—every day, all day long, without the punitive hangover.
She told this to Billy who asked her who was who.
‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s a wallflower at every party. A hostess. A guy who throws up in the rec room.’
‘Okay,’ said Alison. ‘Malcolm is the chaperone.’ Always at the party but never celebrating, watching instead from behind the cover of a book. Disapproving. She did an imitation of him for Billy, crossing her legs and turning down the corners of her mouth. Her chin, tucked in, doubled.
‘And Jamie’s the lady’s man. He’s the only man interested in ladies. Donna’s the vamp. Robert’s the quiet one in the corner. Roxanne and Thi are the girls giggling in the bathroom, but Thi’s the hostess, too. Amanda’s the unwelcome guest.’
‘Who are you?’ asked Billy.
Alison didn’t know yet.
‘You have to come out with us for a drink after work, Billy,’ she told him. ‘You have to meet everybody.’
‘I’m not sure I want to.’
Billy was conservative, except in bed, a guy’s guy. She hadn’t told him the half of it—that Robert’s partner had AIDS, that Roxanne was seemingly held together by cotter-pin piercings, that Christian’s hair was garishly dyed the innocent colour of a duckling. She hadn’t told him anything about Christian.
He was the life of their party, their indefatigable impresario. ‘Quick! Get me a fag!’ he would bray to the smokers on the back steps. Not only had he spontaneously organized the revolt in the back room, but for Thi’s birthday he assembled them all in the alley and armed Thi with a bottle of Baby Duck, a reference to his hair. Twenty paces off, he stood with a towel over his head. How it resembled a lampshade! Thi fired the plastic cork and when it struck his chest, he pretended to crumple, while, cheering, they passed around the erupting bottle. An impractical joker was Christian, so elaborate and time-consuming were his antics.
If he was particularly pleased, he would take his embarrassed client by the hand and parade her from chair to chair. ‘Is she beautiful, or is she beautiful? Am I good, or am I good?’ Excellent, Alison thought.
Over lunch, always in the deli, though there were cafés up and down the avenue, he would play his favourite game, which was to put on an expression of delighted surprise as he waved to a passing stranger. The passer-by, his victim, would casually wave back, then stop in his tracks, stop and peer in at Christian. Sometimes he would visibly start. Always the easily read question on his face, ‘Do I know you?’ would change to, ‘What happened to you?’ Christian, behind the glass, seemed to bask masochistically in these reactions. He wanted people to look at him and squirm. As the stranger stalked away, Christian would blow a kiss.
‘His name is Karl,’ he told her one afternoon after flummoxing a passing businessman.
‘Whose?’
He gestured to the counter where the deli man was making their sandwiches. ‘I heard someone call him that. Do you think it’s Carl with a “C” or Karl with a “K?”’
Alison sighed. ‘I have no idea.’
‘I hope it’s a “C”. My name starts with “C”. But this is a deli. A German deli. Karl in German is with a “K.” Do me a favour?’
‘What?’ asked Ali.
‘Ask who cuts his hair.’
When she went to get the sandwiches, she said, ‘It’s Karl, right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I’m Ali and that’s Christian. We work next door.’
‘Yes, I know. I see you every morning, flying past my window.’
Perhaps she was looking at him too hard, studying him, trying to see what Christian saw. She didn’t care for his nose; puggish, it didn’t seem full-grown. Under his cap, his hair was fine and straight, the colour of wet sand. Probably in the summer he metamorphosed to blond.
‘Who cuts your hair?’ she asked.
‘Maybe you’d like to?’
‘I’m not a stylist yet!’ she told him and, blushing, took the sandwiches and hurried back to Christian at the table.
‘What did he say?’
She wasn’t about to tell him, so she blurted the first thing that came to mind. ‘His mother.’
‘His mother!’ Christian wailed. ‘How can I compete with that?’
She felt fortunate in having Billy. Other than Thi, who was happily married, no one else at Vitae seemed to be in a satisfying relationship. Robert had John, yes, but John was dying, so how could they be happy?
Alison actually knew John better now than she knew Robert. A couple of afternoons each week he would come and sit in the reception area and read the magazines. He no longer worked, he told her, but was collecting a disability pension.
‘Were you a hairdresser as well?’ she asked.
‘We’re not all hairdressers,’ he said. ‘We can do other things, too.’
Embarrassed, she tried to stammer something, but couldn’t think of what to say. She’d only presumed he was a hairdresser by how he kept coming in week after week.
Then he winked. ‘We can dance and arrange flowers. We can’t be beat as interior decorators.’
‘So what did you use to do?’
‘I’m an engineer. But one with flair.’
Later, he told her why he came, why he always sat in the same place on the sofa, right next to the kneeling Venus. It gave him the vantage of looking through the columns to Robert’s station. John came in to watch Robert. For hours at a time, he only pretended to be reading the magazines.
‘Watching Robert,’ he told her, ‘is more interesting than engineering.’
Christian was sweet on the unattainable deli man, straighter than the arrow stuck in his heart. Donna was seeing one of her clients—the gargantuan Scotsman who had asked her what a kipper was. ‘Isn’t that cute?’ she had told everyone. ‘It was, like, a skill-testing question.’ Malcolm, Alison couldn’t imagine with a love life, though some days she wondered if he wasn’t courting all his clients at once. They were old, yet half of them seemed to regress to girlhood when they saw Malcolm coming out of the back room to greet them.
As for Roxanne’s views on love, they were decidedly peculiar. She explained them to Alison one day when they went shopping with Donna after work. ‘What’s your boyfriend like?’ she asked. ‘Christian says he’s a genius or something. He has, like, a Ph.D?’
‘That’s next, I guess. He’s actually taking a break right now and working in a lab at the university.’
‘How long have you lived together?’
‘About a year.’
Donna appeared on the other side of the rack and held up two identical copper-coloured flower-speckled dresses.
‘Put these on. You’ll look like twins.’
‘Twins?’ Alison scoffed, but Roxanne said, ‘Come on, Ali.’
It was a Friday after work, the store crowded, and only one dressing room was free. Roxanne stepped into it, then stood holding the door for Alison. ‘Come on.’
They were all so uninhibited, none of them self-conscious in the least, the salon filled with half-naked plaster statuary and frescoed nudes. Once Donna had taken off her shirt in the back room so that Thi could sew on a button, then sat on the back steps brazenly smoking a cigarette in her b
ra. They would tease her about her modesty if she didn’t change with Roxanne. Everyone back at Vitae would hear about it. But Alison wasn’t sure what she dreaded most: to take her clothes off in front of Roxanne, or to see Roxanne without hers.
Roxanne didn’t wear a bra, Alison saw right away as Roxanne was pulling her T-shirt over her head. Her hair got stuck in the neckband. No, it was her ears. Along the edges, her ears looked brass-tacked, as if she were upholstered. In the lobes were grommets that made holes large enough to see through. All of this was concealed by her hair, as the nipple ring was the secret under her clothes. And the navel ring. And the grooves between her ribs, the bumpy plate of her breastbone bigger than the blebs that were her breasts.
‘Why the right one?’ asked Alison.
Roxanne turned to look at herself in the mirror, at the steel ring swinging from the centre of her petal-pink areola. She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. That’s the side I’d wear a brooch?’
‘It’s for sex, right?’ That was what Alison had read.
Roxanne shuddered. ‘I don’t like sex.’ She dropped her voice so they couldn’t be heard in the next dressing room, leaning into Alison as she whispered, Alison smelling the mouldering odour of Roxanne’s breath. She always smelled of coffee or bile or this faintly rotting scent. ‘Do you?’
‘Sure,’ said Alison, suppressing a smile, thinking of the night before. Billy had dragged their futon into the kitchen. It was larger than the surface area of the floor so he had to roll the sides, forming a padded chute against the cupboard doors and fridge and stove. Their Half-Tunnel of Love, he called it afterward.
All Alison’s life she’d been told she was a good girl. That she was helpful and unselfish, with a sunny disposition. That was not necessarily the opposite of someone who liked sex, yet somehow she always felt strangely embarrassed afterwards, as if it wasn’t really her who did those things.
‘Jamie and I are in love, did he tell you?’ Roxanne asked.
‘No.’
‘It’s hopeless.’
Alison nodded. Roxanne was brunette.
‘I don’t like to be touched, so we’re just friends. Still, when I see him with other women, it just kills me.’
‘Why don’t you like to be touched?’ Alison asked.
A sharp rap sounded on the door. ‘What are you two whispering about in there?’ asked Donna.
‘Love,’ Roxanne answered.
‘Oh, that. Hurry up.’
‘Once I saw him kissing a girl,’ Roxanne continued hushedly as she unzipped and stepped out of her jeans.
‘Necking in the car. That’s when I did this.’ She stuck her tongue out, the stud nestled there, as on a velvet cushion. It was Alison’s turn to shudder. ‘Anyway, I have to accept it. It’s the way it’s got to be. Except for Jamie, all my men friends are gay. You can trust them.’
Alison didn’t know about that, but she did think it was cool that now she actually knew a few homosexuals personally.
‘I like you, Ali. You always listen.’ She reached out with her bony arm, slinging it limply over Alison’s shoulder and turning to face the mirror. Before them was a picture of two women of equal height, one hipless with very thin, slightly bowed legs, a shrunken chest and voluminous hair; the other not exactly fat, but much, much fuller—rounded, fleshy. With Roxanne’s skinny arms around her neck, their heads together, it was strangely clear to Alison that both of them felt they came out ahead in the comparison.
5
‘Mrs. Soloff,’ Alison said, ‘I’ll take you back first because I know Malcolm likes to shampoo you himself.’
She held out her arm for Mrs. Soloff to clutch, drew back the red velvet curtain. Then, after a respectful lapse of time, she asked, ‘Are you all right? Would you like my help?’
‘Yes, dear.’
She came in smiling and holding out the smock. It seemed to hurt Mrs. Soloff to creak her arms back; she stiffened halfway, waiting for Alison to bring the sleeves to her instead, and in that moment Alison noticed something written in blue on the inside of her arm near her wrist. Numbers.
‘Oh, Mrs. Soloff. Is that a tattoo?’
Mrs. Soloff stopped. She let go of Alison’s arm, so Alison knew she’d made a mistake and that it was worse than falling on faux marble and shattering a hip. The numbers meant she’d been in a camp. A concentration camp. Mrs. Soloff? Alison shouldn’t have blurted it like that. She pulled aside the curtain to let Mrs. Soloff through.
And Mrs. Soloff, bracing herself against the column, not even looking at Alison, said clearly, though not loudly enough for anyone else to hear, ‘You are a very stupid girl.’
Alison just stood there, stricken. She watched Malcolm sweep over to help Mrs. Soloff, saw him settle her in the chair and, taking a towel, wrap it dotingly around her diminished shoulders. Though she couldn’t hear him across the gallery for the music, Alison knew that when he paused and bent close to Mrs. Soloff, he was asking in a concerned whisper if anything was wrong.
Alison wanted to cry. She took hold of her own hair with both hands and pulled until it stung more than Mrs. Soloff’s words, until that, instead of her confusion, was the reason for her eyes welling up with tears. Turning, she went back to the reception area. The woman who had been waiting when Alison first arrived was still there. On any other day, Alison would have offered her a coffee. ‘Who are you here to see?’ she asked dully.
‘Christian.’
‘He should be here any minute. Come with me and I’ll get you shampooed.’
The woman rose and came to Alison, but Alison didn’t move. She looked back distractedly at Mrs. Soloff. Then she was sobbing, sobbing with shame.
In walked Christian, right on cue. He didn’t say anything to Alison, simply took her hand and, looking at his client said, ‘We have an emergency here, as you can see. I’m going to be later than usual.’
‘I’ll wait,’ said the woman.
‘Sal, you are a dear.’
He whisked Alison out the door. Embracing her on the pavement, he soothed her all the more for being small; Alison, who hadn’t felt so rebuked since childhood, clutched Christian like a doll. In her arms, he felt sinewy and compact and good.
‘I said a stupid thing to Mrs. Soloff.’
‘Mrs. Soloff is an empress. It will be all right.’
‘Really stupid.’
‘Come,’ he said, leading her into the deli.
He sat her in the corner, away from the window, and, taking a handful of napkins out of the chalet holder, pressed them in her hand. She blew her nose and dried her eyes and Christian brought her a glass of water. Sitting down himself, squinting, he waited for her to speak.
‘Mrs. Soloff has a number tattooed on her arm.’ When he nodded, Alison felt worse.
‘I wasn’t thinking when I said it.’ Alison covered her cringing face with both her hands. ‘I knew what it meant. I was just—’
‘It was a mistake.’
‘Now she hates me.’
He pulled on her hand, took it off her burning face and patted it. ‘She doesn’t hate you. She’s just upset. In a few days you’ll be her favourite little shiksa again.’
‘She hates me.’
‘Believe me. I have been countless times in Mrs. Soloff’s position. People say things to me. Thoughtless things. “Ever heard of plastic surgery?”’
‘They don’t say that,’ said Alison, appalled.
‘They do. And worse.’
‘What do you say?’
‘I say, “I’ve had plastic surgery, but when are you getting your tact fixed.” There’s nothing to do but cool off. People are stupid. I forgive them. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have any clients. It’s the ones that mean it who get to me.’
She stared at him. ‘Who? Who would say something like that and mean it?’
‘Sweetie.’ He chirred laugh
. ‘We have enemies.’
Who? Alison was about to ask. Who do you mean? But the deli man approached just then to ask if everything was okay. Christian turned to him. ‘Tell me. Could anyone hate her?’
He looked at Alison, dimple flashing. ‘I couldn’t.’
‘See?’ said Christian. ‘I have to get to work. Why don’t you take the day off? I’ll get your coat.’
She waited on the sidewalk outside and, through Vitae’s window, saw Christian coming up from the gallery with her coat over his arm, then stopping at the desk to use the phone. He opened the door and handed Alison a ten-dollar bill along with the coat.
‘Don’t worry. We’ll manage without you somehow.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘I just called you a cab.’
She was still in bed when Billy got home from work. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Are you sick?’
‘No. I’m stupid.’ She told him what had happened.
‘Christ,’ he said and, sitting at the end of the bed, squeezed her foot through the covers and called her Shit-for-Brains.
‘When was the war exactly?’ Alison asked.
He rolled his eyes. ‘Which one?’
‘You know.’
‘Nineteen thirty-nine to nineteen forty-five.’
In high school she hadn’t been much of a student, especially not in Socials. The events seemed so removed. But if she’d known Mrs. Soloff then? Of course she would have paid attention.
That evening Christian called to see how she was feeling. Billy handed her the phone, eyebrows converging in disapproval. ‘Some guy for you.’
‘I’m okay,’ she told Christian.
‘Was that Billy?’
‘Yes.’
‘I like his voice.’
‘I’ll tell him.’
‘Do. Listen. I’ve written something and want you to hear it.’ A papery rustle, then Christian cleared his throat. “Mein Lieber Herr.”
‘What?’
‘“Long have I sat gazing at your Wurst which dangles so comestibly. Across your groaning board, would I lay me down. Make me your Vorspeise, I do beg.”’ A raspy pause, then he asked, ‘Well? What do you think?’
A History of Forgetting Page 9
