The song gets taken over by static. They’ve fallen out of range. He decides he prefers the original version better, the way Al Green sounds both needy and absolutely sure of himself at the same time. Al Green. He’s remembered! How does he even know that? Because it’s something George taught him.
He looks to George, who stares straight ahead, unflinching. Robin says, “OK, not to make excuses, but I just got dumped by my boyfriend, and then my sister goes AWOL, and so to get criticized by you about my job, which was your idea to begin with…I’m a little touchy today.”
“Don’t take it out on me.”
“Well, you’re not exactly relaxed, either.”
After what seems like five minutes, but is probably thirty seconds, George finally looks at him. “It’s like this,” he says, pushing his glasses up, a gesture Robin has seen him do a hundred times: logical George, ready to present his case. “If I was any blacker, that cop would have pulled us over. And if I was any less black I’d get my ass whooped in West Philly, living with a gay white boy like you.”
“OK, I probably shouldn’t have,” Robin begins. “I’m not sure why I…” Just apologize. “I’m sorry I was talking shit back there.”
“And if you’re not into working at Rosellen’s, you shouldn’t stay. If you’re not into living with me, ditto.”
“Do you want me to move out?” Robin asks, alarmed.
“No.”
“Because I like living with you, even if it sometimes sucks for me in that neighborhood. Maybe if I could get another job…”
“If you quit, you’d probably just go back to Pittsburgh and throw yourself at that hairy white boy. Which would be a mistake.”
“You sound pretty sure about that.”
“I have a prediction,” George says.
“What?”
“I predict you’re going to be over him really soon.”
Robin smiles, against his will, really, and then, for whatever reason, neither of them says anything else, and the silence settles in, and it seems like the worst has passed. Robin keeps thinking he should say more, explain something, clarify, but letting George have the last word feels intuitively right.
On George’s face, in the set of his mouth, perhaps, and in his eyes, shining behind glass, Robin sees the best friend he knows so well and, truly, loves so much. The rock-solid George of so many years, peeking out from the new George, who is someone changing and less predictable. This George is deciding who he wants to be and how he wants to see the world. It is this new George he was trying to wound with words, this new George who’d rightfully gotten angry in return.
Without warning Robin is overtaken by a fluttering of heat rising up through him. It opens like a tiny bud on a branch, in the air after a storm. There is pulsing energy inside this feeling, and he understands that it’s this new George who makes him feel this way. The more confident one. The one who wanted to take control. The one he had really exciting sex with, who read the tea leaves this morning and saw more in their future. This morning, George called it a rebound fuck, but rebound doesn’t cover it. This is something else. You can learn a lot from someone like this, someone who isn’t afraid of who he is.
Unpopulated countryside gives way to the loose density of coastal towns, their names identified on water towers that loom above the landscape like giant eggs. On Route 37, in the town of Toms River (“Where’s the apostrophe?” George wonders out loud), the traffic thickens. It’s even heavier in the outbound direction, as a congested stream of weekenders heads back home. These are the folks who leave the shore at four o’clock to beat the evening rush and wind up creating an afternoon rush of their own.
The highway funnels eastward onto a drawbridge that arcs over the bay. Robin has a memory of stopping near the top of this bridge, as a kid, marveling as the road snapped up in front of them. He’d been in the backseat, licking at dripping ice cream, a braided swirl of vanilla and orange sherbet, while Jackson leaned across him to gawk at the boats cutting through the passage below and Ruby wanted to know if cars ever fell into the gap. It all comes back to him: the summer heat, the sweet melting cone, the road splitting open and stopping the world for a moment. From that long ago day to this one seems like a journey of loss: not just of his brother, of his family’s cohesiveness, but of wonder, of awe. When was the last time he even enjoyed ice cream without guilt? (Probably before his fellow actors started bombarding him with cautionary edicts like, “If you want to do film roles, the camera adds ten pounds.” And this was also when he started getting more self-conscious about being naked in front of other guys, worrying about his body, fretting over little folds of excess flesh pinched between his fingers.)
Today the bridge lies flat. Up and over they go, down the other side to the coastal island, into the town of Seaside Heights.
He guides George through the grid of streets, windows lowered, salt air on the breeze. It’s a comforting smell, a childhood smell. For a moment, it blankets his apprehension about Ruby with something benign: this is where people have fun in the water and thrills on the boardwalk, where sexy strangers wear skimpy clothes. How can something go wrong here? They locate a parking spot in a lot at the end of the boardwalk. Robin steps from the car and stretches. A breeze rises over the sparsely grassed dunes. All around is a parade of tanned, exposed flesh, pink and bronze and deep olive, bimbos and himbos: girls in bikinis and short-shorts, bare shoulders and cleavage; boys in tank tops and mesh, boys shirtless, boys in snug swim suits, baskets bouncing as they walk. One buff, barefoot dude in OP shorts goes stumbling past, smelling of beer, chasing after a girl and shouting, “Whaddaya want outta me?” Robin catches George’s eye over the roof of the car, and George smirks, saying, “Don’t answer him,” and then Robin puts on his sunglasses and they both laugh.
As they walk to the boardwalk, Robin almost misses sight of Calvin, pacing anxiously at the side of a boxy white building, moving in and out of shadow. He is so disheveled he might be some kind of boardwalk bum, sniffing around the Dumpsters for cast-off pizza crust. His face has the pallor of the undead. His hair never looks clean, but it’s almost repulsive now, matted down on one side and clumped up in other places. His black trench coat, a kind of anti-fashion statement in Manhattan, is a complete anomaly in Seaside Heights, a red flag: avoid this unstable person. Fresh anger ripples through Robin: of course Ruby wouldn’t stick with this guy, he doesn’t take care of himself and doesn’t look like someone who would take care of his girlfriend, either. He thinks of the attention Ruby has always given to her own appearance, all that time she spent locked into the bathroom they shared in Manhattan, emerging with glossy hair, makeup just so. Even in her recent funereal fashion, she’s precise, exact. Like him, she’s inherited their mother’s vanity, her need to keep up appearances.
“Man, am I glad to see you,” Calvin says, extending his hand to Robin, then to George. His grip is too tight, like he’s clasping a tree branch to hoist himself out of rushing water. When Robin takes out his Parliaments, Calvin grabs for the pack, saying, “I need one of those.” Blowing smoke, he asks them, “So what’s the plan?”
George says, “You’re the last one who saw Ruby. Why don’t you tell us?” He stands a step apart from them on the wooden boardwalk, arms crossed over his T-shirt, eyes assessing.
Calvin’s eyes dart to Robin, as if to confirm that George’s “us” speaks for both of them. It occurs to Robin that Calvin and George have only met once before, in New York around Christmastime last year, when Dorothy invited them all to dinner, and they bonded over how depressing Ronald Reagan’s reelection had been. Calvin probably has no idea what to make of George now. “It’s not my fault we’re in this mess,” Calvin pleads, sounding suddenly vulnerable, in over his head.
“You left Ruby at a nightclub,” George says.
“What, I’m supposed to drag her down the street while she’s telling me, ‘I’m not going with you’?”
Robin says, “Couldn’t you have persuaded her?”
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“Man, maybe you know how to make your sister do something she doesn’t want to, but I haven’t fucking figured that one out.”
It’s true that Ruby isn’t as malleable as she once was. With every passing year, she more readily goes her own way. But he can’t just absolve Calvin of responsibility. “We need more to go on, Calvin.”
“I barely slept last night. And today I drove around with a total hangover, went up and down the boardwalk like three times. What a fucking capitalist nightmare this place is. People just pissing their money away on cheap thrills and junk prizes made in Hong Kong. I finally just passed out on the sand, I have no idea for how long. And then,” he adds, lifting his voice, “I got hassled by the fascist beach patrol.”
George asks, “Did you tell them you were looking for Ruby?”
“Yeah, and they said, ‘Happens every day.’”
“And you let it drop?”
“What was I supposed to do?” he shouts. His arms sweep wide, and his cigarette flies from his fingers, sending sparks skidding along the wooden planks.
Robin catches passersby staring their way. What a sight the three of them must be. “Why don’t we sit down, eat something, and figure out the next move?”
They step into a place advertising “giant slices” of pizza. It’s called the Saw Mill, and its painted sign features a 3-D illustration ripped from The Perils of Pauline: a villain in top hat, cape, and curled moustache leering over a busty damsel who is tied to a log, her mouth open in a scream as she is sent downriver. What this has to do with pizza isn’t at all clear, and as an omen, Robin thinks, it’s about as bad as it gets.
Bon Jovi blares over the bleeps and whistles of pinball and video games.
Calvin asks the Italian guy behind the counter if they take credit cards. “For a slice?” the guy asks. “Ten-dollar minimum.”
Calvin turns to Robin. “Swing me?” Robin hands him a few bucks, sighing. It’s always the rich kids whose wallets are empty.
Robin and George sit side by side, their thighs slapping beneath the table, neither of them pulling away. Robin realizes he’d been harboring the hope that by the time they got to Seaside, Ruby would have already reappeared, crisis averted, and that he and George could then…what? Get a room? Go back home and have sex again? Roll around in the waves, a gay version of From Here To Eternity? He sucks his icy Diet Coke through a straw, telling himself to concentrate.
George takes charge, leading Calvin methodically through the events of the last day. Does Calvin carry a picture of Ruby with him? He shakes his head no. Robin pats his own pocket, remembering the laminated photo in his money clip. Ruby was twelve when it was taken; why didn’t he remember to bring something more recent, something they might show to people? To the police, if it comes to that. It’s hard to be angry with Calvin when he himself is so poorly prepared.
One thing in particular from Calvin’s story stands out: Chris, the guy who had apparently been kissing Ruby at the party. He seems like the answer to wherever she is.
“I barely know him,” Calvin says. “He dated Alice for, like, two whole weeks. He’s a fucking cokehead. I hang out sometimes with Benjamin, Chris’s roommate. There’s always a lot of coke around.”
“Was Ruby doing coke?” Robin asks.
“Not that I saw.”
“Were you?” George asks.
“I hate that stuff,” Calvin says. He lowers his voice and locks eyes with Robin. “Personally, it makes my dick go limp.”
“I’ve had that happen,” Robin replies.
“What’s the point of a drug that messes with your manhood?”
“Exactly.” They share a chuckle, and Robin pulls out his cigarettes, offering another to Calvin. As they light up, he realizes George is looking back and forth between them with obvious impatience on his face.
George says, “When the food comes, would you two put those out?”
Robin fans the air with his hand. “Sorry.”
“If the club is the last place she was seen, that’s where we should start,” George says. “Unless they’re not open on Sundays.”
“Everything’s open here on Sunday,” Calvin says. “Trust me. I’ve been all over this place.”
Robin thinks, Ruby might have gone to church today. For years, she always went to church on Jackson’s birthday, sometimes with Nana, and sometimes he went along, too. She would light votive candles around the apartment and lead them in prayers at the dinner table. She even helped start a youth group at the Catholic church on 71st Street; she tried to get Robin to join, but he told her one member of the God Squad in their family was plenty. Churches have never struck him as particularly welcoming, though he understands why people want something to belong to, why they want to pray to a Big Daddy in the sky. A couple of years ago, Ruby pulled back from all of that, but he wonders: Can you simply turn it off? It’s like breaking up with a boyfriend: just because it’s over, doesn’t mean you don’t feel the need to dial his number just to see if he’s home.
A block from the boardwalk, Robin stops at a phone booth. Between the three of them, they cough up enough coins to make a long-distance call. He dials his home number, glancing through the scratched glass at George, who is looking back at him with just the faintest hint of a smile, almost as if he knows at this moment that Robin is listening to the goofy outgoing message they recorded together. He punches in the message code, which is 1964, the year they were born. The electronic voice warbles: “Two messages.”
The first is Ruby’s from last night. He listens to it again, hoping for some new insight, like when he reads a play for a third or fourth time and finally grasps some truth about his character. He wonders about the motel she mentioned, with the diving woman on the sign. Maybe he could find that; it can’t be far from here. For all he knows, she might have been calling from this very phone booth. Now her voice is saying, “…I’m trying to find him. I followed him. I’m a little buzzed.” This boy, Chris. He must be the key. Even though Calvin didn’t see him at the club, Ruby might have made a plan to meet up with Chris later. Her final words, “I’m not sure what I’m doing,” are cut off so abruptly it’s as if a hand had reached into the phone booth and covered her mouth. The image suspends his breath, and then the second message begins, and it’s Peter:
“Hi. I’m about to drive back to Pittsburgh, and, kind of against my better judgment, I’m calling. But you’re not there now, and I need to get on the road, so…Honestly, I thought I’d hear from you first. Don’t you think you owe me an apology? For acting like a complete bully? I know you were upset, but Douglas isn’t—you blew that out of proportion. We could have talked through this, but…maybe when you get back to Pittsburgh, we’ll see if—” Blpppp.
If what? We’ll see if we can be boyfriends? If we still miss each other? If you test negative for AIDS like three or four more times…?
They’ve got to get an answering machine that allows for longer messages.
Robin’s finger hovers over the keypad. Will it be “3” for save, or “2” for erase?
He presses “3,” then slams down the phone.
They continue on foot to Club XS, Calvin a half stride ahead of them, his long legs setting the pace. The building is two stories tall, cement, with blacked-out windows along the sidewalk.
Calvin swings open the front door, and they are blasted with air-conditioned cold. Eyes adjusting to darkness, they follow the sound of Madonna singing You’ve got to prove your love to me through a black curtain to a vast, nearly empty dance floor. Robin loves this song, but in this cavernous setting it sounds robotic, the siren call of a machine forcing fun on the masses. Four women, their skin leathery, their hair permed, shake their asses at the center. At a horseshoe-shaped bar, under a wide banner promoting “Sex on the Beach Shots $1,” a couple of very loud girls in tank tops, too much makeup, and short denim skirts are flirting with a couple of silent, thick-necked guys in baseball caps. Everyone looks a little baked, by the sun, the long weekend, the
cheap shots of Sex on the Beach.
Something about the decor here reminds Robin of a place he took Ruby and Calvin to when they visited him in Pittsburgh. They were taking a chance, hoping their fake IDs would work. For Robin, it was an acting exercise, as he successfully channeled the nonchalance of someone older. Ruby had been intimidated. She ordered a club soda, even though Robin and Calvin had no trouble being served vodka, and she kept tugging at the hem of her skirt, worried that in her attempt to appear of-age she wound up looking cheap. She had only just begun to commit to her new style, the skirts and boots, the ink-black hair and frosted makeup, and she was behaving like a guest who wants to leave a party soon after arriving, convinced she has dressed wrong and is attracting too much attention. He had tried to ease her mind, telling her if anyone stared, just smile and look away. The key to dealing with unwanted flirtation was to absorb it, but not to look back. Remembering that night, when Calvin was dressed sharp and had a fresh haircut, Robin realizes what bad shape he’s in now. Ruby’s disappearance has really wrecked him; that, or maybe he’s caught in some larger downward spiral, slipping loose from the orderly world.
Robin approaches the bartender, who looks both fleshy and muscular at once. He’s got gel in his hair and gold at his neck. You can smell the cologne from far away. He lays down two cocktail napkins, at which point Robin realizes George is hanging back several paces. He’s the only black person in the club; it’s possible they haven’t seen any black people since they drove into Seaside. He’s also the only one of the three of them of legal drinking age. “Actually, I’m looking for information,” Robin says.
Robin and Ruby Page 18
