by Sarah Hall
So I was a bit bummed to be going alone, and might have backed out but it was my first day off after a string of double shifts and I figured I’d just swing by, check it out.
‘So what are you doing these days?’ Arlette asked, talking over the noise of the party.
‘Working in a vegetarian kitchen,’ I told her. ‘Rosa’s Pantry?’
‘You’re still cooking?’ she said, surprised.
It’s true I used to hate the job. It was only meant to be something I’d do until something better came along: I was working on a poetry chapbook, thought I might take up carpentry, considered enrolling on an anthropology programme, I wanted to travel. But I never really got my ass in gear to change anything, and anyhow I’d come round to kitchen work over the years. You can be pretty Zen about food preparation. And Rosa’s is a co-operative so really it’s more than just a job.
‘But hey, I don’t wanna talk about me,’ I told her, because what I really wanted to do now was steer our conversation round to her. ‘Let’s talk about you.’
‘Oh,’ she said, blowing out through her lips like her story was hardly worth telling. ‘Oh, yeah, okay.’
I suggested we go out to the deck because it would be easier to talk out there. I eyed Arlette’s hips, how they swayed to the music, as we moved out through the crowded living room.
With the trees and the hills and the bay sparkling down below, the view from Ted’s deck was impressive. The air smelled of warm eucalyptus. Anyone would have felt a little envious with a view as phenomenal as that; I’d have liked a place up in the hills myself. We leant against the railing. In the back yard beneath us they’d set out a yellow Slip ’N Slide on the grass. There were kids in bathing suits screaming excitedly as they slid down the hill. A red setter ran up and down alongside them, barking maniacally, its dopey energy relentless.
‘Looks like fun,’ I said.
‘Sure does.’
Her glass was near empty again so I fetched a bottle to refill it.
‘God, I always drink too much at parties where I don’t know anyone.’
‘Doesn’t everyone?’ I reassured her, topping up my own glass.
Her smile really was pretty.
It turned out she’d become a dancer. She’d trained in New York and had only been back on the West Coast a couple of years. It explained why we’d not run into each other before now. ‘I did shows in NYC for a while,’ she said. ‘It was fun but I’m too old now. Too old to dance professionally anyhow. So now I teach.’
‘You’re looking great.’ She lowered her head at the compliment. ‘I like what you’ve done with your hair.’
‘It’s a perm,’ she said self-consciously, then a moment later a thought struck her. ‘I was still a hippie back when you knew me, wasn’t I? Wow! I cut my hair soon as I got to New York. It was a whole different scene over there.’
‘Still reading tarot?’
‘Tarot!’ She couldn’t help laughing.
I caught her eye as she looked back up and there was a flash of something, of the attraction there’d once been between us, I could tell she felt it too. I was feeling good about the way things were going. ‘Yeah, you read my cards,’ I reminded her. ‘Told me I was gonna meet a beautiful girl who’d break my heart.’
‘I did?’ She coloured, then a moment later looked unsure. ‘I said that, really?’
I kept my gaze on her. Shrugged in place of answering.
‘Wasn’t your heart that got broke though, was it?’ she said matter-of-factly, and then she relieved the moment’s tension with a laugh. ‘Honestly, the tarot? I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I just needed money.’
There were a lot of young girls like her in the city back then. Run away from small-town life, from parents who didn’t care or cared too much, looking for something that didn’t feel like everything they’d known up until then. They didn’t have a clue. For a guy like me, it was like being handed a platter at a party.
I’d been in the Bay Area a while already, long before the place was swinging. Came to take an engineering major at Cal, largely because it was what my father had wanted to study, but then I got stuck on the idea I didn’t want to be the realisation of his failed ambitions so I dropped out. I was young and stupid. He cut my monthly allowance and never really forgave me. I had rent to pay and the only work I could find was in kitchens. On my nights off I’d go out and visit jazz clubs and try to meet women. I wasn’t the kind to settle down, I knew that already, I liked variety. After a while of this I was wanting something new and maybe I would have quit town again, moved on someplace else, but then the scene started to change and suddenly everything got kind of crazy and fun. These young kids began to arrive. I liked their music, the attitude, I liked their drugs. And most of all I liked the girls. It wasn’t hip to cross your legs back then, even the shy ones were easy.
Arlette used to keep that tarot deck of hers in a little Indian purse around her neck, along with some of her other fortune-telling junk – a dowsing pendulum, baoding balls, dumb little crystals. She’d read strangers’ cards when we were out. Nobody cared if she was making it all up. It was a nice summer we spent together. She was fresh, uncomplicated, good in bed. So it took me by surprise when one morning I woke up and she’d cleared out – the armchair was still pulled up next to the wardrobe where she’d climbed up to fetch her duffel bag down, but her clothes, her journals, her toothbrush from the tooth mug by the sink, all of it was gone. The only trace of her was a tarot card she’d left on my dresser. I couldn’t tell you now what it pictured; honestly, I think I tossed it in the trash. I assume she meant something by it, but at the time the gesture seemed juvenile, a little corny. Other than that, no note, no explanation. I wasn’t used to having a girl leave on me. Normally I was the one who broke things up, getting out before it all got too heavy. I figured she must’ve run away back home. Maybe she’d met another guy. I figured maybe a letter would arrive in the post. I was kind of pissed about it for a week or two but the fact of the matter was there were plenty other girls out there.
‘So, are you married?’ I asked. ‘Kids?’
She shook her head.
‘But you’ve got a guy, huh?’
‘No,’ she said simply, and in that moment she looked away like I’d made her uncomfortable. I was annoyed I’d broken our easy flirtation. She shook her hair back over her shoulders and straightened up. ‘Can I get some more of that wine?’
As the party started winding down, we realised we were amongst the last guests left out on the deck. I suggested we take it elsewhere.
She left me waiting a moment for her answer and then said, ‘Yeah, all right. Let me just run to the bathroom.’
Leaning on the deck rail, I finished my wine and watched the sail boats far out on the bay.
I was trying to think what I could remember of her. Small things I’d had no cause to recall for years: how she liked her food spicy; that she’d been named after a Belgian grandmother, or maybe it was an aunt; riding the Tilden Park Merry-Go-Round together on acid. It had been fun talking with her again, time had passed easily, but I couldn’t help noticing that she was different from how I remembered her. She seemed more guarded. And for a dancer she came across as, like, a little tense, if you know what I mean.
After some minutes, I realised Arlette had been gone a while so I figured I’d go in and find her.
The living room was less crowded now, potluck table looted, a Carly Simon song playing on the stereo.
That’s when I saw her – at the door, about to leave. One foot already past the threshold, her jacket on, pocketbook over her shoulder. Evidently Ted’s wife had hindered her; she was telling Arlette something, laughing, their daughter hanging on to one of Arlette’s hands.
I could have stepped back out onto the deck. Maybe I should have let her go, she obviously wanted to, but it was a matter of self respect; when a girl’s already walked out on you once you’re not going to just stand back and let her pull that again. There
was a full moment before she saw me, and when she did, her face flushed with a guilty expression. ‘You two know each other?’ asked Marion, surprised.
‘Used to,’ said Arlette, ‘a long time ago.’
‘That’s wild.’
The daughter dragged Marion away soon after, and I turned to Arlette with a smile. ‘Ducking out on me?’
‘No, no,’ she said, evidently embarrassed. Then she laughed. ‘Actually, yeah.’
She didn’t live far. ‘You want to just follow?’ she suggested. She was a careful driver, especially considering the wine she’d drunk.
When we pulled up and parked she turned off her engine but didn’t make any move to get out.
I locked my own car, then stepped up and opened her driver door, thinking maybe that was what she was waiting for. ‘You okay?’
‘I’m great,’ she replied, and yanking her keys from the ignition she swept herself up from her seat.
I don’t know what I’d expected but her apartment surprised me some. A boxy conversion on the first floor of a family house. She had her own entrance round the side of the building. It was very clean, everything in its place, but it wasn’t exactly homely, more like it was someone else’s apartment she was just staying in temporarily.
If you’d have asked me before that evening where I’d have pictured Arlette, I’d have bet you she was living someplace nice, with a guy who loved her, a couple of beautiful kids, maybe a puppy dog.
Standing now in her living room, the evidence of Arlette was scanty: a purple foam exercise mat rolled up beside the TV; a film poster for Chinatown thumbtacked to the wall above; a shelf of paperback novels.
A photograph framed on that same shelf caught my eye. It showed a guy standing in the suburban back yard of a light-blue clapboard house, an Oldsmobile parked in the drive. He was wearing a blue apron and a button-down shirt, holding a set of cooking tongs and smiling.
‘My dad,’ she said. She was kneeling below me, rooting through a shoebox of cassettes. She picked one out and put it in, a Windham Hill Sampler from a year or so back. ‘He passed away just before I moved out here, not so long before I met you. Pancreatic cancer.’
Had she told me that before? Probably.
‘You were close?’
‘Yeah.’
Arlette’s father, he was of similar colouring and build to myself. Born not so very long before me either, if I were to hazard a guess. Shouldn’t have surprised me really; it’s not like she was the first girl looking for a father figure.
I set the frame back on the shelf. ‘You know I’ll be fifty next year?’
‘No way,’ Arlette said as she stood back up. It gratified me that her surprise seemed genuine.
I kissed her as she made the coffee. She was faced away from me, standing at her kitchen counter, and I scooped her hair into my hand and kissed the skin at her neck. She stopped, her hands on the counter top, still holding a coffee spoon.
I reached to pull up her skirt and had just hooked a thumb under the elastic of her panties when she whispered, ‘Not like this.’
Taking my hand, she led me through to the bedroom. She didn’t turn on the light.
‘Slow,’ she said, as we sat together on the edge of her bed.
She lifted her fingers and ran them over my face, like she was trying to reacquaint herself, then stroked them through my beard and slow across the lines the years had left on my skin. Sliding her hand to the back of my hair she pulled away the elastic that held my ponytail. ‘This is how I remember you,’ she said with a small laugh, as my hair fell over my shoulders.
I reached for her belt. Heard the snag in her breath as I unbuckled and pulled it through the belt loops. I lifted her dress next, her ass lifting from the mattress for me, arms raising so I could pull it up over her head. Her white lace bra and panties showed in the dark.
‘You sure?’ I said.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied, and pulled me towards her.
Greedy, a little wayward, that was the kind of lover Arlette used to be. She was good in bed still, her body trim and lithe from her dancing, but she was holding back. Each time I went to kiss her mouth she’d turn her head, which was weird, but I let it go because it’s not like I’m going to make a woman kiss me.
And then, as we lay there afterwards, she said something that I guess explained a lot. ‘You know, I was in love with you, Ray. You were the first guy I ever loved.’
I made to say something but she touched my lips with her finger. ‘It’s okay. It really is okay,’ she said. ‘You fall too deep with your first. It sticks with you, you know?’
I wondered how much she’d thought about me over the years and almost felt a little badly that I hadn’t even recognised her earlier on. I wondered if I’d lived up to her memories, but I didn’t ask.
A question came to me. ‘How old were you when we met, Arlette?’
There was a pause.
‘Seventeen,’ she said. ‘I’d have been seventeen.’
‘You were a child.’
‘I didn’t feel like a child,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I feel like more of a child now.’
I reached over and stroked the hair back from her face.
‘You must have been round about my age now,’ she said after some reflection. ‘What were you doing hanging around with us kids?’
I didn’t answer. ‘It’s not like you’re so old,’ was all I said.
‘You still do drugs?’ she asked. ‘Smoke grass and whatever?’
I shook my head no. I didn’t do any of that any more. Hadn’t even smoked a joint in several years. ‘The stuff was killing my libido,’ I joked, although it wasn’t so far from the truth. It was easy enough to let it all go. I’ve never had an addictive personality.
Not for drugs anyhow.
Maybe she could tell what I was thinking or I don’t know but when she spoke next it was hard to read her tone. ‘You haven’t changed so much though, have you?’
We lay there together in the darkness and when I didn’t say anything eventually she rolled away from me onto her back, then got up for some water.
When she came back I asked, ‘So what was the deal with you leaving like you did? Sneaking out on me without even saying goodbye?’ A part of me wanted to remind her that even if I’d been no prince she hadn’t been totally faultless back then either. By her silence now I got the impression this had worked.
‘Running away was a pretty immature way of handling the situation,’ she said finally, but she didn’t apologise.
She kept me waiting a long while before she spoke again, and when she did I thought maybe she’d jumped topic, wasn’t going to answer the question. ‘Do you remember that girl we picked up near Indian Rock?’ she asked. ‘Really dark eyes and all that crazy black eye makeup. Short, dark hair. Kind of wild-looking?’
I looked over. There wasn’t enough light to make out the expression on her face but I could feel a shift of mood, something in the pauses maybe, a sort of nakedness; it seemed evident that she was telling me something she hadn’t planned to share.
Back when Arlette and I ran around together, I was driving a tan sedan and yeah – couple of times at least – it happened like she said. We’d be out and we might see a girl looking lonesome and Arlette would roll down the window and offer her a smoke. If they took a drag most usually they’d come back with us to party. It worked pretty well.
‘So you remember her?’ she asked again.
‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘I think yeah.’ I gave a slow nod, but really I just wanted to see where this was going.
‘Remember her name?’
Nope.
‘Susanne,’ she said. ‘Least that’s what she told us when she got in the car. She wasn’t a good liar. Is this coming back to you at all?’
‘Yeah, I guess. Or maybe not. I mean, it was just one of our things, right.’
Arlette took in a long breath, then released it again very slowly.
She started to talk. About that night, an
d how the girl – Susanne – climbed in the back seat. How she smelt of unwashed hair and patchouli, sort of feral; I could imagine the smell of her there in the car with us. We drove back to my place and Arlette read Susanne’s cards, and we had a couple of joints, Arlette was good at rolling by then, couple of drinks, no doubt talked the usual stoned bullshit we used to talk back then, and Susanne started coming on to her. Really coming on. ‘Just me though,’ Arlette made clear. ‘It was me she was into and she didn’t hide it. You might as well not have been there.’
The thought of it was intriguing. ‘Go on.’
So the two of them started messing around on the bed. Clothes came off. Susanne kept whispering to Arlette that she was beautiful, telling her real nice stuff. No one had ever talked that way to her, she said.
And me? I’d taken a seat in the armchair, she told me, in the corner where I could keep out of their way and watch the two of them.
Funny, I could recall that armchair all right, a hulking green-upholstered thing someone had left on the sidewalk. Likewise the apartment I was living in back then. A studio on Arlington. I used to keep the bed under the window, no curtains. I had an embroidered Indian quilt I’d picked up in a yard sale, a crimson lava lamp. I wanted to remember this Susanne girl too, but I couldn’t.
Even so, it was easy enough to picture the scene she was describing – two girls fooling around on the mattress in the red light, one long-haired, the other smoky-eyed, all of it loose and spontaneous, destined to be forgotten by the morning. I must have lived through a string of similar nights back then. The girls themselves were interchangeable. It didn't need to be Arlette, could just as easily have been some other girl I'd dated, in bed with some other woman.
‘She took a scarf,’ Arlette continued, ‘and then she tied my wrists. You know, to the bed frame. Went down on me.’
‘Uh huh?’ I said. Her story was definitely getting me a little aroused again. ‘You liked it?’
