A Small Crowd of Strangers

by Joanna Rose

  They settled in to the seats, and he unwrapped his Snickers bar.

  The beginning of any movie was one of the great small moments of life. It was all there before you. All you had to do was sit, and it would begin. Especially a movie you’d seen before, that you knew you liked. He settled back, took in a deep breath.

  That’s when he smelled it. Cigarettes. There were no people within four of five seats, or in the row in front of them. He glanced behind. No one there.

  Damn. A smoker.

  Halfway through, she got up to go to the bathroom. When she came back, she didn’t smell like she’d slipped out for a smoke. In fact, there was a perfume smell. Maybe she had gone out for a smoke and had doused herself with some spray or something. But no. The trace scent of cigarette was still there, like before. Then she got up to get a drink of water. Finally she whispered, “I’m going to go hang around in the lobby for a little bit.” Then he got it. He liked Harvey Keitel, too, but Reservoir Dogs was pretty gruesome, even among Harvey Keitel movies. He got up and followed her. She was reading the framed obituary of Gene Siskel hanging on the wall by the bathroom. He stood behind her for a minute, reading it too. She was quite short. And she actually smelled good. Flowers.

  “So,” he said when they were outside. “Sorry about the movie.”

  She said, “Didn’t you like it?”

  “Well. Yeah.”

  “Then you don’t have to be sorry,” she said, “I’m sorry I saw it, and one of us being sorry is enough.”

  He couldn’t think of anything to say except to apologize again, but then she laughed, so he did too. She kind of bumped him with her hip. He bumped her back, and they started along the sidewalk. She was smooth. She was easy. But you don’t say that about girls. Smooth. And that flower smell was lavender. They stopped at the corner of the park where there were four lanes of traffic. She looked up the street one way and then the other. She took a step away from him and looked up at him. He felt tall. Then she took out a pack of cigarettes. Either he was going to say something or he probably wouldn’t see her again. She pulled a cigarette from the pack, then put the pack back into her jacket pocket, which is when he realized she didn’t have a purse. She said something about Little Nicky, which was one of the dumb Harvey Keitel movies. This was it. He took the cigarette out of her hand.

  “Here,” he said. “Instead.”

  He kissed her, on the mouth. A small kiss.

  She tasted like Red Vines and root beer.

  She tilted her head back and kind of peeked up at him through her bangs, which were curly and blowing around.

  “Well,” she said. “I guess I wasn’t expecting that.” But she was smiling.

  He said, “You taste like root beer.”

  She laughed a small laugh, and he said, “And Red Vines.” The laugh got a little bigger.

  Then he said, “Want a ride home?” It just came out.

  “No, I just live down that way. But I hope you call me sometime.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  Another kiss, this one on her cheek. His sister had told him once how fun it was when guys did that. Then she kind of backed away, said, “Bye, thanks,” and she turned, walking down State Street.

  He headed up State Street the other way. He turned around once. It was just when she was turning around, and they waved. Then she kept walking, in those red sneakers.

  Two blocks away, reaching into his pocket for his car keys, he realized he still had the cigarette in his fingers.

  Pattianne had been telling herself, and her sister, and her parents, and even Melissa, that she was going to quit smoking when she finished grad school. And here was this pretty boy who thought she tasted like Red Vines and root beer. There was something friendly about a pack of cigarettes, though. It was the last part of giving them up, reaching for that familiar square pack in a jacket pocket. How you could go into any convenience store or gas station or grocery store, anywhere, any country, “Pack of cigarettes, please,” and there they’d be. To quit smoking was to become aware of desire. After the first week or so, reaching for a cigarette every eight minutes, it’s what was left. Desire. At first, her whole body wanted something every minute (actually every eight minutes, she’d looked it up), but still, pretty much always. To say she was filled with desire might not be true, but her hours were punctuated by it.

  Give them up she did, though, and call her he did. They walked by the river, and in and out of record shops hunting for used Mozart CDs. He walked her home from work, home from a movie about migrating geese, from a walk along the riverfront, and, each time, they kissed―one long kiss out on the front step, a kiss that left her too shaky to say, “Why don’t you come in?” When she got in her bed and reached down for herself she would be wet and ready for her own fingers, and she thought about that mouth. She thought yes.

  The kisses were getting longer each time.

  Sometimes at work, she sat and stared at a piece of paper, and she would be empty of thought but filled with sex. She felt lightheaded, like she was getting a cold, and she would realize that she’d been away, not thinking of fucking or of his mouth or anything at all, just slipping off into this breathless place of desire. She thought of breaking it off with Even-Steven. She was completely distracted. Her underpants were always damp.

  She found herself drinking espressos from little stands on Silver Street with Michael Bryn instead of vodka tonics at the Truckyard, waiting for Even-Steven to get off work. The grass growing between the sidewalk cracks was adorably green, and she found herself leaving her jacket at home so she could feel the soft air on her bare arms. She quit reading Elmore Leonard because she couldn’t pay attention to the story.

  Michael was driving the O-bug north on the turnpike, window rolled down, the air a little too cool, and he was whistling. Not just whistling, but whistling a Frank Sinatra song he didn’t even know. He immediately stopped whistling and rolled the window back up. He was going to tell his mom and dad about Pattianne.

  He was done being messed up about Corinne Mullins. She was gone from his life, and she’d been gone for a year. He’d been on lots of dates, and he didn’t even really like dating. It got a little crazy.

  Like the Saturday his father had arrived early to pick him up for a ball game. The screen door was open, and he’d knocked on it and opened it partway, didn’t even come all the way in. A girl from the night before was still there, in the living room, barefoot, her hair wet from the shower. His father had said hello to her and then he said, “I’ll wait in the car,” and backed out, shutting the screen door gently.

  He didn’t say anything when Michael got in the car, just shifted into drive and drove. Michael crossed his arms over his chest and tried to lean back in the seat. His head pounded from rum and Cokes. There was a fun run through Edison, and they had to wait at Plainfield Avenue while people in costumes and hats ran across the intersection. Tutus. Balloon hats. A guy with a what looked like an actual live monkey on his head.

  Michael said, “Was that a real monkey?”

  His father said, “So, who was that young lady?”

  A lot of rum and Cokes.

  “Diana,” Michael said.

  Sunlight glared on the straight black edge of the dash.

  “I mean Donna,” he said.

  It wasn’t until they pulled into the parking lot that his father spoke again.

  “You’re a better person than this.”

  For an insane moment, Michael felt tears sting at his eyes. He stared hard at the chain-link fence in front of them. He’d met her late in the evening, at the bar. It hadn’t even been a date. After his father had left to go wait in the car, she sat on the couch, pulling on those cowboy boots, and said, “I’ll be slipping out the back, sweetie.”

  “He’s early,” Michael said. “I’m sorry.”

  She just said, “You do have a back door, right?”

  At least his father hadn’t seen the cowboy boots.

  Now
there was Pattianne. She was funny and fun. A little anxious. A pickup truck raced past him on the right and honked the horn, Michael doing fifty in the left lane.

  “Sorry, dude,” he said, and put on his blinker, checked behind him, and got over.

  His mom was folding towels on the dining room table when he walked in. She did that sometimes, when it was sunny like this. Michael kissed her cheek. Claire came through the doorway from the kitchen with two drinks in her hands.

  “This is for you.” She handed him a bourbon and ginger ale with a twist of lemon. “I heard your car a block away.”

  She slurped the other drink, and their mother said, “If you can’t drink that like a lady, you don’t get it,” and she took the drink out of her hand and slurped it herself.

  Michael Bryn Senior came through the doorway then with two more drinks. He handed one to Claire, said, “Sláinte!” and they all clinked and sipped. Chitchat. Sunshine. Basketball. Claire’s new haircut. A little of this, a little of that. Michael still couldn’t get used to seeing Claire with a drink. His mom picked up a stack of kitchen towels and headed into the kitchen. He followed her.

  “So,” he said.

  She stacked the towels into a drawer by the sink, except one.

  She said, “Yes?”

  She draped the towel over the small rod on the end of the counter.

  He laughed. It felt fake. She turned to him, and her face eased into its mom smile, the one where her eyebrows did that funny thing.

  “What’s up, oh kiddo of mine?”

  “I’ve been seeing someone.”

  And then she did that other thing she always did. She turned away from him, gave him a little space. She opened the oven door and peeked in. He smelled stuffed peppers. He didn’t like stuffed peppers. He wondered if he would ever be able to come right out and say that to her, that he really didn’t care for stuffed peppers. She closed the oven door.

  “She’s a librarian. Her name is Pattianne.” He took a sip that was more of a gulp. “Anthony.”

  What to say? That she quit smoking for him. That she was an amazing kisser. That she wore red sneakers.

  “She loves Mozart.” Then he felt like a fool. “And I want you to meet her.”

  His dad and sister laughed at something out in the dining room, Claire saying, “I’m sure,” and laughing some more. His mom looked at him. There it was—the mom worry. But just for a second.

  “You could invite her to church with us on Easter. The choir will be singing the Coronation Mass. How does that sound?” She slipped her arm through his. “That’s Mozart,” she said. She steered him back to the dining room.

  It sounded great.

  The shops along Silver Street had window boxes full of daffodils and early tulips, the whole street lined with cherry trees, and the pink petals drifting in the air made Pattianne feel like she was in some romance cartoonland.

  Michael stopped at one shop window that had dresses on hangers pinned up, as though the dresses were dancing, and he said, “I like that one,” pointing to a dress of light green rayon, or maybe silk, with dark shell buttons down the front.

  “Pretty girly,” she said. “I think you’d look better in the blue—match your eyes.”

  “Silly bones,” he said, and when she pulled him along, he didn’t move. He said, “I’m thinking of your eyes.”

  “My eyes are hazel,” she said. “No particular color at all.”

  He turned her by her shoulders and looked down into her eyes.

  She said, “Don’t,” and tried to find something else to look at. She said, “Let’s go get coffees,” wanting to be moving, standing still suddenly unbearable, and Michael trying to look into her eyes was why, but he held her by the elbows, warm fingers on her bare skin.

  “Your eyes are green, Pattianne Anthony,” he said. “That color green, like that dress.”

  To stand very close to someone and let them look at your eyes will cause the sidewalk to drop away. “They’re hazel,” she said. “No particular color at all.” And she closed her eyes just long enough to feel ridiculous, and when she opened them, everything, the cherry petals, Michael’s face, everything around her, jumped a little brighter. Michael Bryn, his pretty-boy face when she opened her eyes, there he was.

  He whispered, “You have no idea how pretty you are,” and he turned her around and pushed her toward the glass door, Tessa’s Dresses in gold curlicues.

  She was thinking, I am not pretty. I am plain. Good teeth, good skin. Otherwise ordinary.

  His whispered voice behind her, “Let’s you go try on that dress.”

  She tried to not go in the door.

  “Michael.” She tried hanging on to the sidewalk with her feet somehow. “This is a Silver Street dress shop. I am a part-time librarian. I can’t buy a dress here. And if I could buy it, I couldn’t wear it, not that little tiny thing.” This is what she said instead of what she was thinking. Which was, He thinks I’m pretty.

  He said, “Just try it on.”

  She turned to him. “No,” she said. “You do realize I’m a thirty-year-old woman.”

  The blue eyes blinked. “Thirty?” he said. “You’re kidding.”

  It was her height, or rather the lack of it, being five feet two inches tall. She had never looked her age. She still got carded regularly. She said, “Why? How old are you?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  That felt awkward. Five years.

  She said, “You’re kidding,” and he laughed a little, and the awkward moment passed.

  “Well,” he said. “I mean, don’t get me wrong—thirty is impressive. But what’s that have to do with that dress?”

  “I’d look like I was in eighth grade or something. Girls who wear that kind of dress have basically no internal organs.”

  “Come on,” he said. “Don’t you need a new Easter dress?” He pushed her through the door, his hands on her shoulders, the carpet inside so thick that she thought there was a step up, and she stepped up, to that surprise landing of a step up where there is none.

  “Can we help?” A girl with big painted-on eyes and no internal organs stepped out from behind a flower arrangement.

  Pattianne said no and turned around face-first into Michael’s shirt, blue, pinstripes, laundry soap, starch. Starch. A warning tried to sneak into her brain.

  He said, “She wants to try on that green dress.”

  A warning about guys who starched their shirts and said Easter dress.

  “No,” she said.

  “Excuse me,” Michael whispered to the girl, his arms around Pattianne, who was staring at the blue pinstripes and breathing the clean smell of him, and not even thinking of a cigarette. He said, “Do you have a dressing room we can duck into for just a sec? I can talk her into anything if I can get her kissing.”

  The girl’s lollipop-pink lips went into a round O and she stared at Michael, and Pattianne got loose and went back out the door.

  He came out right after, lollipop-pink laughter trailing out the door of Tessa’s Dresses. There was a painted iron bench by the door, and she sat down, and Michael sat down next to her. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Okay,” he said. “No green Easter dress,” his easy laugh kind of bubbling up around his words. A woman walked by pushing a little girl in a stroller, and as they passed close, Michael pointed a finger out to the girl, who reached her fat baby fingers out to him, and the mom kept pushing, not seeing Michael flirt with her cute little girl. They pushed on down Silver Street. He folded his hands together and did not say a word, just watched them, the little girl’s hand waving in the air. Pattianne watched them too. Silver Street was always full of young matrons, wearing their cute children like diamonds. The hair salons had childcare. The kids all had stuffed penguins. “So,” Michael said, and he scooted closer. “Do you want to go to Easter Mass with me”—the pink petals raining down on them gently—“and my family? You could meet them.” Tall baskets of white lilies crowded both ends of the iron bench.<
br />
  Pattianne touched the waxy petals to see if they were real. She couldn’t tell.

  “Christ the King, in Edison,” he said, close to her ear, whispering. “Latin high Mass. Easter service, choir. My mom and dad. And my sister, Claire.”

  Even if she had her jacket on, there would still be no pack of cigarettes in the side pocket. She touched the center of a lily and the orange powder smeared on her finger. She wiped it on her jeans.

  “That stuff really stains,” he said.

  She turned and faced the top button of his shirt, where it was open, where there was white skin and that soft angle of bones coming together.

  She kissed him. Slipped the tip of her tongue across those lips.

  If they could go home right now and fuck, she’d wear the green Easter dress, she’d go to Mass with his parents. But she didn’t say that.

  She said, “It sounds a little . . .”

  Michael Bryn put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed ever so softly.

  “It sounds a little intense,” she said. Which sounded idiotic even to her. “I mean, we don’t know each other very well really.”

  “It is intense,” he said. “They’ll be singing the Mozart Coronation Mass. It’s amazing. They’re brilliant. They went to Rome and sang for the pope.”

  “Mozart,” she said. The air in the shade had a slight chill, and his arm around her shoulder suddenly felt just right. It didn’t have to be about meeting his family. It didn’t have to be about going to church. It could be about Mozart.

  “So”—feeling her way through this—“your parents are Catholic?”

  “Well, yeah,” and he laughed.

  “Mine were,” she said. “I mean, I was raised Catholic. I never went to Catholic school though. I mean, I don’t really go to church. Anymore.”

  That arm, light and easy across her shoulders, his palm warm on her arm. “Why not?”

  Maybe he really wanted to know, or maybe there was a judgment there, or maybe this was just conversation, like all their few times together were full of, just wandering conversation. Do you like basketball games, no, have you ever been out west, yes, what do you want to do now that you’ve finished grad school, nothing. Did you know that Mozart’s full name was Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart? He’d said wow.