Tied to the Tracks

by Rosina Lippi

Angie glanced at him, and he had the sense he was reading his thoughts. She said, “I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m sorry for Caroline, too. But mostly I’m sorry for Rivera. You’re not the only one Caroline disappointed last night, you know.”

  That caught him off guard. He said, “Caroline dumped Rivera?”

  Angie shot him a sour glance. “You can’t dump somebody unless you’re already with them. That make you feel better?”

  It should, but it didn’t. He thought of telling Angie so, but there was something small and hard in his gut that clenched when he thought of having to apologize again, of always being wrong.

  Without looking at him, Angie said, “Caroline has done a pretty good job of misleading everybody, including herself. She’s still at it, too.”

  And just that easily all the aggravation and anger left him, as though she had stuck a tap in his head at exactly the right spot and drained it out of him. He was overcome by surprise and a deep sense of awe, that Angie should understand so easily, and offer him so much.

  Her hand was resting on the arm of her chair. It would be a small matter to touch her, take her hand, try to bridge the gap. But they hadn’t come that far yet, and John kept thinking of Fran Mangiamele on the phone: You pushed her too hard you went too fast you wanted too much.

  On the screen Patty-Cake was saying, “Notice how the ribbons on the flower arrangements echo the color scheme of the garden itself, an elegant touch in line with the bride’s superior sense of style.” Rob appeared behind her, looking grim, and went straight to the house.

  This much even Patty-Cake couldn’t ignore. She said, “Of course, even the best-organized wedding will run into a bump or two. The trick is to be prepared for every eventuality.”

  It was eleven o’clock, and the camera slid away from Patty-Cake’s face, now sporting a fine line of perspiration along the upper lip, and fixed on the house, where French doors had opened and a crowd of people could be seen poised to come out onto the gallery. A murmuring rose among the wedding guests, and the camera panned across them jerkily. John took in the familiar faces of his own cousins, friends he had grown up with, the few colleagues he had invited. All of them wondering where exactly he was, and if it was really possible that John Grant, steady, responsible, proper John Grant, could be missing in action from his own wedding. Most of his people would give him the benefit of the doubt, but Caroline’s were another matter. Especially if Patty-Cake started talking, something that might just happen if she lost the last bit of common sense she stilled called her own. Somewhere a child began to cry, and John wasn’t far from joining in.

  Patty-Cake was talking to the cameraman in a harsh whisper and the picture lurched back in her direction, providing an excellent view of one heavily mascaraed eye, one flaring nostril, and half an angry scowl. Then it swung away again, as if pushed. Will, who seemed to have no real feel for camera work, somehow found Rivera. She was standing against the wall of the house, her camera cradled in her arms, her face drawn.

  Angie said, “After I kill Patty-Cake, I may just go looking for Caroline.”

  Caroline, who had just come out onto the gallery, bracketed by her family on all sides. Mother and uncle, sisters and brothers-in-law, nephews. She was wearing a suit in a delicate shade of pink and a silky white blouse with a scooped neck. There was a single rose on her lapel that matched the color in her cheeks almost exactly, and her eyes were so bright that John wondered if she had been drinking.

  “That must be her going-away outfit,” Angie said. It wasn’t really a question, which was just as well, because John couldn’t have said one way or the other. All he knew for sure was that Caroline wasn’t wearing a wedding dress. That was such a relief that for a moment he couldn’t talk at all.

  The camera was on Patty-Cake again, who looked suddenly ten years older, and angry. She batted at it openly and it tilted.

  “John’s not here,” somebody said, very distinctly from behind the camera. “John Grant is not here.”

  Then Caroline raised her voice and spoke, her tone sure and easy. This strange new Caroline, confident, unshakable. “Y’all must be wondering what exactly is going on,” she said. “So come on over here and let me explain.”

  There was a scuffle and then the screen shifted: to the sky, a clear deep blue, to the grass, and then nothing.

  “She turned it off,” Angie said. “That bitch. She turned the camera off.”

  Sometime later, when the television had sparked to life again with a rerun of a local beauty contest, Angie roused herself. John was sitting slumped in his chair, his chin on his chest.

  “I’ve got this idea that Patty-Cake may not come unlock the door tomorrow after all.”

  “You think?” John said. “What about Tony, or Rivera?”

  “Possible,” Angie said. “But unlikely.”

  He didn’t seem upset by the idea that they might be here all weekend; he didn’t seem happy or angry or anything at all. He had a right to a little shock, Angie thought. She had no idea how she would react if she knew all of Hoboken was out looking for her with malice on their minds for something she hadn’t even done.

  She said, “Last year I totaled my father’s car. Some idiot ran me off the Parkway and I ran into a construction site at about sixty miles an hour. The airbag went off. Have you ever had an airbag go off?”

  He shook his head.

  “You get slammed with what feels like a full-body punching bag moving about three hundred miles an hour.”

  John looked thoughtful. “You’re right,” he said. “That’s just about what this feels like.” He finally turned his head toward her. “You didn’t get hurt?”

  “Nah. Just some scrapes.”

  He leaned forward in his chair, put his elbows on his knees. Angie, who had been sure last night that she would be angry at him for the rest of her life, looked at the back of his neck and knew she was bound to give in. For better or worse, she was stuck with the guy. She put her hand on him, felt the curve of his spine and the heat of him. He shuddered.

  He said, “I don’t suppose there’s any alcohol around here.”

  “That’s an excellent question,” Angie said. “Let’s go see if we can find Tony’s stash.”

  They piled the provisions on the coffee table in the reception area. In addition to Patty-Cake’s contribution of apples and diet bars, they had a bag of potato chips, a half-empty box of stale doughnuts, and in the refrigerator they found milk, cranberry juice, and an assortment of Mexican and Chinese leftovers.

  “Not even any fermenting juice,” John said.

  “Oh,” Angie said, and dashed off. John followed her to the kitchen, where she opened the refrigerator again, empty now of everything but film, and then peered into the freezer compartment.

  “Voilà.” She pulled out a bottle of vodka that was almost full, and turned to hold it up. John found himself close enough to feel her breath on his face. Her smile faded away and they stood there a moment in the open door of the refrigerator, unwilling, unable to move.

  “Déjà vu,” Angie said finally, her voice rough.

  “All over again.” John ducked his head and kissed her. An easy kiss, a question she could answer without much discussion. Angie kissed him back, tasting of apple and coffee, and then put her forehead against his shoulder and shook her head. He pushed a coil of hair behind her ear and stepped back.

  Angie said, “You don’t have to get me drunk, you know. It won’t make a difference one way or the other.”

  They had spread out their odd picnic on the floor of the reception room with the vodka bottle right in the middle, where both of them could keep an eye on it.

  “You’re the one who’s pouring,” John reminded her. “Maybe you should stop.”

  She frowned elaborately, her whole face contorting. Mouth and brows and cheeks disapproving, but she looked at the plastic glass that still held a swallow of vodka, and put it down on the table.

  “Spoilsport.”

  “So
tell me,” John said, “what do you think Caroline said, after Patty-Cake turned the camera off?”

  Angie looked at him hard, and he saw that she really wasn’t drunk at all, nor was she as angry as she had been. On the other hand, it wouldn’t take much to push her right back to that place. His own anger had disappeared sometime during the broadcast from Old Roses, and in its place was a void, waiting to be filled.

  “Because,” John said, moving ahead carefully, “I’ve been thinking about this whole thing, and I’ve come to some conclusions.”

  “Let me guess. A vast left-wing lesbian conspiracy has kidnapped and brainwashed your girlfriend. The one you didn’t want to marry anyway.”

  “I guess I deserve that,” John said. “But it is insulting.”

  “Exactly,” Angie said. And then: “So go ahead, tell me your conclusions.”

  He thought for a moment, considered retreating, and understood it would be the worst course of action, the one thing certain to alienate her, possibly past the point of recovery.

  “I can see that Caroline has changed, I guess is the word. She stood up to her mother and her sisters. I didn’t think I’d ever see that happen, but she did.” He focused on a spot on the wall, because to look at Angie was to lose his resolve. “I’m willing to accept the idea that Caroline decided to back out of the wedding because she realized she can’t make that kind of commitment to any man.”

  “But?”

  “Maybe she is in love with Rivera and she’s already announced it to the world while we sit here eating stale doughnuts.”

  “That’s doubtful,” Angie conceded.

  “But maybe—and this is another maybe, Angie, but I’ve got to say it—maybe she’s not.”

  “Not in love with Rivera?”

  “Maybe she’s not gay, or if she is, maybe she’s decided Rivera isn’t the person she needs in her life. Or maybe—and I’ll admit to you that this seems the most likely situation to me—maybe Caroline has decided that she likes women but wants to be celibate. There’s a reason her sisters were worried when she ran off to the retreat house, you know. They’ve always half expected she’d end up a nun. So she might decide to live as a celibate, and whether or not that’s right or good or healthy, whether it’s fair to Rivera or herself or not, it’s her decision.”

  His voice grew rough as he spoke and was almost hoarse at the end, just as Angie’s expression had gone from very still to stone. She wasn’t looking at him, but at her own hands, locked around her glass. John took short, shallow breaths and waited for her to scream at him or laugh at him or tell him exactly what an idiot he was being.

  Vodka, Angie was thinking, is not my drink. Her head hurt, and she was noticing a very odd side effect: all her good anger, carefully fed and flamed and tended over the course of a long and sleepless night, was seeping out of her like gas from an old balloon. John went on and on saying things that sounded sensible and fair, but when added up together meant that Rivera was going to be miserable, and that maybe even Caroline was doomed to be miserable, and there wasn’t anything anybody could do about it except Caroline herself.

  Angie tried to throw the anger switch, and found she couldn’t. Because he was right, and that irked her but she couldn’t be angry about it.

  She said, “So you don’t care if Caroline dumped you because she likes women. If she just stood up and told all of Ogilvie, you don’t give a damn.”

  He blinked at that but before she could work up any indignation he found a way to steal that, too.

  “Well, shit, Angie,” he said wearily. “Of course it’s going to hurt like hell. You think it’s easy admitting that I didn’t notice there was something missing? I’ll take heat for this for a long time.”

  She leaned forward. “So why didn’t you notice?” It was as close as she could come, as she would ever come, to asking him about sex with Caroline. If he didn’t answer her, she wouldn’t be surprised.

  He blew out a breath and closed his eyes. “I’ve been asking myself that pretty much nonstop since last night, as soon as I saw her there in the doorway talking to Rivera. Right before I made an ass of myself to you and walked away.”

  “Sweet talk won’t get you anywhere just now,” Angie said. “So did you come to any conclusions?”

  He put his chin on his chest. “One possibility. You won’t like it.”

  “Try me.”

  “Caroline,” he said evenly, “isn’t you.”

  “Oh, please.” Angie wanted to lean over and slap him, but she also wanted to lean over and run her hands over his body; she was a weak human being, unable even to keep herself from smiling.

  John was looking at her in a calculating way. “You know what I’m trying to say. I spent five years dating women who weren’t enough like you to keep my interest, and it got to the point that I just gave up. I came to the conclusion that something was always going to feel slightly off.”

  “That’ll do for a start,” Angie said. “But you’re not off the hook yet, Harvey.”

  He gave her a half smile. “Does this mean you’re not mad at me anymore?”

  “Don’t rush it,” Angie said, taking the last swallow of vodka in her glass. “Let me think.”

  He reached across the litter of their meal, took her wrists in his hands, and pulled her face to his. “Can you think while I do this?”

  “I do my best thinking when I’m lying down,” Angie said, when the kiss broke. “Or sitting in a chair. Your call. What?” she said, alarmed by the look on his face.

  “I don’t think I have any condoms.” He got up and patted his pockets, found his wallet, pulled it out. He looked as frantic as Angie felt as he tried to open it. The wallet flipped out of his hands, spitting out a shower of credit cards and bits of paper and business cards that flew over the floor. Angie caught a flash of foil and went diving after it, came up with a half piece of gum still in its wrapper.

  “Shit,” John was saying. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Angie flung herself down on the couch and the cushions crackled suspiciously. John heard it, too.

  “Didn’t you tell me Tony brings women here sometimes?” John asked. And then they were both taking the couch apart. Among candy bar wrappers and store receipts and note cards covered with Tony’s scrawling handwriting there was a long streamer, bright blue foil squares each containing a ribbed circle. Six of them.

  John reached for her, grinning. “I’ll die trying, I promise you that.”

  Somewhere among the wreckage on the floor, Angie remembered, there was a carton of juice. She was thirsty enough to go look for it, so she began to disentangle herself from John. Her sweaty skin peeled away from the leather cushions with a vaguely obscene sound, and he cracked one eye at her.

  “Who,” Angie said, “puts a leather couch in an editing suite reception room?”

  John’s hand moved up her back, his thumb questing. “Hey. I may have my faults, but when it comes to negotiating with university autocrats, I am without peer. First class all the way for the new film program.”

  “You’re responsible for this couch?” Angie grinned. “Did they hire you for your skills as an interior decorator?”

  “No, they hired me as chair of the English department,” John said, yawning, but his hands seemed completely awake and interested in exploring. She knocked them away.

  “Explain.”

  He cocked his head at her. “They made me an offer, I made them a counteroffer, you know how it goes.”

  “You asked for a leather couch in the editing suite.”

  “God, you’re dense sometimes.” He pulled her closer and kissed her. “I told them the department needed to add a film studies curriculum. I made it a condition of my hire. I was right, they didn’t fight it.”

  “Explain the couch.”

  He laughed at that. “What’s to explain? I negotiated a budget for production facilities. I made some calls and had it designed. They started what, last January, finished in June. Money does make some things e
asier.”

  Angie thought about that for a minute. “But you don’t have any film faculty.”

  “We’re going to be searching this year,” John said. “Two faculty positions, one administrative to run this place.”

  They would be looking for a new medievalist, too, Angie knew, but now was not the time to be thinking about Caroline Rose.

  He said, “You interested?” His tone was perfectly easy, as if he had an endless supply of good things in his pocket, things that were hers for the asking; things he wanted her to have.

  Angie sat up and scooted away before he could stop her. “I might teach one course in the fall for you, but that’s it.” She looked at him over her shoulder as she began to shift through the stuff on the floor. “You’ll have five hundred applications, you won’t miss mine. Here”—she tossed him a take-out carton—“the last of the dim sum. Mangia, Harvey, you’ve got to keep up your strength.”