by Kris Radish
When the music starts again Connie cannot move. She wants to stay right there until she figures out which way to turn next, but then there is another hand in hers. A man’s hand, and when she opens her eyes there is Burt Reynolds and that’s what she says.
“Hello, Burt.”
“That must be the other guy’s name. I’m Michael.”
“Yes, darling, but you look exactly like Burt.”
“And you, Connie, look absolutely fabulous.”
Burt had the first dance but not all of them. Luke had several, and Daniel, and Frannie, and every single one of the daughters, and they drank wine and ate food blessed by the goddess of lust and love and when the summer moon had long since dipped behind the lowest possible building, the Diva Sisters and their saucy and spirited escorts finally—finally—left the party.
There was also kissing under the stars, and exchanges of phone numbers, and making Sunday brunch dates, and a feeling of rapture that wrapped around every single one of them that made this night one they would never forget.
And every single person, man and woman, who left—including the Diva Sisters—had a fabulous new sex toy nesting in the bottom of a purse, inside a tuxedo jacket, or riding in plain sight in a left or a right hand.
15. Be my own boss. Lots of employee benefits. Hiring people I want to be with a lot. Free lunch all of the time. A clear view of a goal that includes the feelings, schedules and talents of the people who work for me. I like this one. Oh, yes. Hey, I’m in charge.
33. Go see more plays.
The Chicago skyline in mid-summer is a towering mass of heat and steel and concrete. The city shimmers. Heat rises in swells that bounce from block to block, from building to building, from one corner of the city to the next. The Lake Michigan sea and its miles of sandy shoreline string themselves like wet pearls along the east edge of a city that seems to stretch from Wisconsin all the way into Indiana.
And it is fun, and wild, and sophisticated, and not so sophisticated, and not like any other city Connie has ever been to in her life, not even New York City. Concerts, dances, block parties, neighborhoods where it is still hard to find someone who speaks English, the smell of sizzling Polish sausage colliding with thick garlic-encrusted pizza, spontaneous gatherings on street corners where men and women congregate to smoke cigarettes, drink beer out of plastic cups from the local bars, and talk with their hands….
Jessica has bounced into the back room of Diva’s, where Connie has her head buried inside of a large cardboard box, and has simply said, “Mother, think about Chicago. I’ll be back later.” And Connie has been suddenly struck deaf and dumb, frozen in place.
Chicago, which is very close to Indiana. Chicago, where two grandbabies live. Chicago, which she thinks she can sometimes see on late winter nights in the reflection off the dunes when she is hiking in the frozen sand along the Indiana shores of Lake Michigan.
There is never much time to actually think about anything. There hasn’t been much time at all since the explosion of business following the Diva launch party, and all the publicity, and the insane knowledge that women are beyond ready for everything that Diva’s has to offer, and the phone calls for home parties, and the push to expand, and the appearance of the Screen Man at a variety of times and places, and two dates with the blond man Luke, and countless phone calls from Burt Reynolds, and this one thought, tiny and creeping so it eventually will form a much bigger thought, that something has to change again.
Something has to change because the Manhattan apartment is very, very tiny and Jessica cannot always go to Martin’s house and—What if?—what if Connie wanted to have a sleepover, and the real estate agent is losing patience, and the condo is almost finished.
But first Chicago.
“Why?” Connie asks when Geneva shuttles into the office on her lunch break, which Geneva is certain will very soon become a long break as she gears up to move into Diva’s fulltime.
“She hasn’t asked you yet?”
“She just asked me to think about Chicago as she was flying out the door.”
Geneva hesitates. Occasionally she wants to place her hands around her partner Jessica’s lovely neck and squeeze it very hard.
“I hate this when she doesn’t follow through. She was supposed to talk to you about the expansion days ago. We’ve got a lock on Los Angeles and Las Vegas but Chicago—well, I might as well talk to you so we can get this over with and get moving.”
Moving indeed, Connie learns during the next 13 minutes, as Geneva shuts both of them in the storeroom with the expansion and franchise plans and talks about Chicago locations, and where they want to be by the end of December. The bottom line—right down there below stocking shelves, selling at the Manhattan store, training new staff members, cooking dinner, buying coffee, and playing with the idea of sex-toy parties for women over 40—is that they are hoping Connie can visit Chicago, meet with their real-estate broker, scout out store locations and consider managing that store which they hope to have open by September 15.
“Consider what?” Connie asks as if she has suddenly gone deaf for real.
“You heard me, Connie. It makes total sense to us, but it also has to make sense to you. What do you think?”
“Think? I haven’t been thinking much. Living and working for sure, but there hasn’t been much room for thinking.”
Geneva snorts and throws back her head. She imagines Nurse Nixon not thinking and planning and working like a starving dog and she keeps laughing because Connie Franklin Nixon thinks all the time. Connie’s a natural-born marketing and managing genius. She’s tireless. She’s fun. She’s the reason Jessica drives herself like another starving dog. She’s the example of a lifetime.
“Connie, knock it off. Listen, just call your pal or go take a walk or ring up that guy you’ve had lunch with three days in a row and see what comes up.”
“How fast do you need to know?”
“Jessica was supposed to ask you days ago. We need to have someone in Chicago on Friday. Honest.”
“Friday? You two babes are rich. Friday? What’s your backup plan?”
“We were thinking of asking Sabrina. She might be ready to sell leather thongs. Or maybe O’Brien. Do you think she’s ready for a career change?”
Connie pushes her head back, cracks her neck, and lets out a wad of air as if she really is smoking. She says, “You don’t have a backup plan, do you?”
“Nope.”
Connie reaches back. There’s a silent pause in the sound of Sara and Kinsey verbally dancing with customers, the ringing phone, and the marching and sometimes merciless waves of city noise that penetrate through the concrete, steel and wooden walls like a restless, bored street gang. One moment, way back where Connie reaches, splashes into full view.
The girls are eight, five, and two and Connie is hanging on to a tiny shred of sanity by the tips of her fingernails. Daddy Roger is working second shift, huge chunks of overtime, and it’s the heart of fishing season. Connie doesn’t want to drink, or dance, or leave, or kill anyone. She doesn’t want a moment of silence, or a trip to Paris, or a nanny from England. Connie wants something very simple.
She wants a choice.
It is 9 P.M. on a Thursday and she is working third shift and has not slept in 34 hours. Macy has the chicken pox, and she forgot to bake cookies for Jessica’s choir concert party, and her ankles are swollen, and when she raises her arms above her waist her back hurts so much she drops to the floor, and the bathroom is filthy, and the grocery supply has dwindled and she just wants a choice.
Not a go or a stay choice. Not a want-babies or don’t-want-babies choice. Not a married or not-married choice. Those choices Connie has already made.
Something awesomely simple.
A walk before bedtime. Looking into neighbor’s windows. Kicking pine cones into the gutter. Waving to someone she knows. Watching the streetlights come alive as if there is a magic switch behind the oak tree on the corner.
A
bath. Nothing fancy, just some hot water in the brown bathtub. No candles. Nothing but hot water and 20 minutes and maybe the ratty old blue washcloth.
The chance to read. Not a magazine but a book. An entire book. Stretched out. The window open. The phone off the hook and tucked under the pillow. Words and sentences and paragraphs and page after page after page.
A kiss on the neck. In that one spot. Behind her ear and down three inches where a wild nerve must have landed sideways. Lips, soft and then harder on that one spot. Then again and maybe one more time after that but just a little bit slower.
Lasagna, a salad, garlic bread and more than 27 minutes to eat it all. Someone else cooks. She sits and eats. Alone. Maybe one glass of wine. Make it two glasses of wine. Lots of cheese. No one spilling milk.
A phone call. Long and winding. Looking out the window. No place to go. The quiet sensations of time covering every word she utters.
She wants to knock off some of the items on her list. The growing list. The list that seemed to change as everything else seemed to change. Or not.
“Connie?” Geneva interrupts. “Are you still thinking?”
“I told you I wasn’t thinking.”
“You always think and you sure as hell are thinking right now. Where are you?”
“Oh, Geneva, I was long gone to a place I really don’t want to see again. Back there, years ago when I had no choices and was saddled like a derby horse with all my directions and destinations predetermined. It wasn’t so bad, but it was tiring. And, okay, sometimes it was an exhausting disappointment that seemed endless. Pretty damn tiring minus the good things mothers and women are only supposed to mention in public.”
“I can imagine,” Geneva offers. “I think my mother told me this same story about three thousand times.”
“Choices are good,” Connie admits.
Geneva just smiles.
“What the hell, Geneva. I need to go home, clear up some business, take a breath. And I’ll go check out Chicago for you. But…”
“But what?”
“One step at a time. I’m just going. And then we’ll see.”
“We’ll see? You sound just like a mom.”
“I am a mom.”
“I have a but too, Connie.”
Connie grits her teeth, closes her eyes, says nothing.
“There’s no time to go to Indiana. You need to fly into Chicago on Friday and work all day and part of the evening. You would also have a meeting Saturday with the broker, a few more appointments—especially if you see something you like—and fly back here Saturday night late on the redeye. Maybe early Sunday if you really want to stay, but you must be back here Sunday by early afternoon.”
“Why?”
“We have to make a decision by Monday afternoon.”
“You jackasses,” Connie says.
“But it’s a choice,” Geneva throws back at her without hesitation.
Connie hesitates only to look at Geneva. To look at her and her ease in negotiations, her sure sense of self and direction, her knowing exactly what Diva needs and that Connie can and will most likely make up her mind before the end of the conversation.
“I need to go pack,” Connie says as she smiles and gets up immediately and playfully whacks Geneva upside the head.
Just like a mom.
Connie prayed for a woman. She prayed just as she imagined the airplane might be dipping towards Cyprus as it descended into the Windy City. She leaned against the window, felt her nose freeze instantly, and wondered what she might be missing at this very second.
O’Brien halfway to work. The staff at her new place of employment locked in their mandatory Friday morning weekend-assessment meeting. Her next-door neighbor wondering how in the hell much longer he would have to cut her grass. Her real-estate agent leaving yet another message and driving past her house yet another time. The cute guy at the corner gas station wondering why she never rushed in any more for black coffee on the way home from work. The way she had the stoplights in town timed so she never had to stop if she was going 32 miles per hour. The stretch of maple trees in front of the library that she took leaves from every single season of the year just so she could be near not only the leaves but her beloved library. The wild summer art festival—when? Next week maybe—damn, that filled the center of Cyprus with working artists, live music, a food fest and a chance to see everyone she hadn’t seen since the last festival.
Comfortable, countable, reliable, predictable things and people and places and Connie threw a kiss to all of Cyprus and continued praying for a female real-estate agent in Chicago as the plane swooped towards O’Hare.
Maybe in a month, or next year, or when she got to collide on a more intimate level with Michael or Luke or whomever she was with when she totally let her sexual self snap—it might not matter whom she was discussing the new sex-toy store with. And it didn’t matter either that she had sold plenty of products to men.
Or did it?
Connie rushed at herself with the lingering “why” question about her wanting to spend the next day and a half with a real-estate broker who was a woman and knew it made absolutely no sense. Maybe it was because she was so close to home. Maybe she was afraid of running into someone she knew from the hospital, as unlikely as that scenario appeared. Maybe she was just a big, middle-aged baby who was slouching back towards a very comfortable position. Maybe she should just shut up, and give it up, and get off the plane and see what happens.
It was a man dressed in a thousand-dollar suit, with brilliant white teeth, hair trimmed three seconds ago and, if she guessed correctly, Connie determined he must be about 15 years old. There he was holding up a white sign that said NIXON and greeting her with a lively, “Hello, how was your flight?”
And they were off and Connie was totally disarmed by his professional manner and by the way he answered every single question she asked without raising an eyebrow. They stopped immediately in the airport coffee shop to lay out the day’s plans, and the night after that, and whatever of the next day and night they might need as well.
Well, there.
Connie drew a line, imaginary and deep, so she thought, as they moved from the baggage area and walked across the concourse to the coffee shop. She would be Connie Franklin Nixon, spokesperson for Diva’s, potential store and regional manager, possible executive board member, and not another person for the entire time she was with Jason Belmont. Not a mother or ex-wife or sex-starved nurse-in-transition. Not a wild kisser of swamp men or dancer until 3 A.M. in Manhattan. Not a dream-list devotee. Just Nixon, like the sign the broker held at the airport, assistant to the sex-toy stars, planner of the future, progressive woman of the universe.
She threw herself into her exhilarating but demanding job while shrugging off her almost physical attraction to Chicago, and she acted as if she were about to hire a new staffing assistant back at the Cyprus hospital. She wanted to know Jason Belmont, and why he was the chosen real-estate broker guru, and what he could do that no other broker could do, and how long it would take him to do it.
Contacts. Negotiating skills. A law degree. Obvious charm. More contacts. A way to steer clear of controversy—even for sex-toy stores. Even for high-end sex-toy stores. Determination. Research, and once again, contacts. Knowledge, not just of the city but the suburbs, too.
“How much controversy are we expecting in Hinsdale, Burr Ridge, Naperville or a place called Wrigleyville?” Connie asks over coffee.
“It could be a disaster with protests at the planning-commission level, or it could be a piece of cake if it’s done right,” Jason explains. “It’s not like you want to put in a pizza parlor or a religious goods store, although I have to tell you these days either one of those could cause some kind of disastrous mess in the neighborhood.”
“What? Like a religious reaction to pepperoni?” Connie replies, straying quickly from her straight woman disguise. She simply cannot help herself.
Jason laughs and tells her that her ap
proach will probably work well in Chicago, even in some of the upscale suburban neighborhoods they are ready to attack.
“If you know your business like I know my business, we should knock them all dead today, Connie,” he says enthusiastically. “Jessica told me you would probably run for mayor by the end of the weekend, so let’s go to it.”
“Fine, Jason, but just so you know, Diva’s is planning on a piece of cake, a swift and controversy-free lease agreement, and it would be perfect if our selection included an option to purchase,” she says. “The women of Chicagoland are waiting and Jason, if you disappoint them, imagine what that would feel like.”
Jason did not want to imagine. He wanted to succeed and at the tender age of 34 he was totally disarmed by this New-York-by-way-of-Indiana woman who seemed to know this part of Illinois, her business, and herself very, very well.
Connie started taking notes on the way to the car and didn’t stop all day long. Jason knew his territory and what to do to make that work for his customers. He knew the direction Diva’s wanted to take but he didn’t know the potential customers like Connie knew the potential customers. He had mapped out a vigorous day of touring, meetings, and more touring that was not scheduled to end until 8 P.M. when he took her to dinner at her hotel and where he expected to finish every single task he had outlined for the day.
He wanted to know more as they drove from the airport into the heart of the city, stopping at locations he had mapped out along busy thoroughfares, close to mass transit drops, and in hip, funky sections before they strayed towards the suburbs. By 3:30 P.M. they had visited 12 potential locations, rejected all but two, and Connie had a sense that they needed to venture out a bit more into the fingertips of the suburbs, not the hands or wrists or elbows, just close enough so the women could get to them quickly, and without making an excuse, and close enough too for the city girls who would be equally embarrassed to have to drag themselves out to the burbs.
