Out of Orange: A Memoir

by Cleary Wolters

  Phillip and I got together for a little celebration not too long after our return. He didn’t bring Meg. I let go of the fantasy that he would tell her the truth, that she would magically be fine with it, and we would all celebrate our little triumph together. If he hadn’t told her the truth yet, I doubted now that he ever would.

  We went to the Northampton Brewery. I think it was because a blues band he’d heard would be playing there. We knew a bunch of people who were going, and it was one of our favorite haunts. I knew our waitress too; we had traveled in the same small circles the summer before. She had been good friends with one of my roommates and had worked with another one. Her name was Piper. She had long strawberry-blond hair, always pulled back into a ponytail. She had blue or maybe greenish blue eyes and freckles. She was very pretty, but she seemed aloof, like when she spoke to me it was because she had to.

  She had my attention though, and I think I had hers. I knew she was a Smith College graduate, which impressed me. I was curious as to why she was still in Northampton. I had always thought she was straight, and the only Smith grads I knew who had stayed in Northampton stayed because of a girlfriend or the endless possibilities of finding one. I had also worked at the Northampton Brewery, when I’d first come to Northampton, so I knew it wasn’t the great job she had keeping her in town. She was at the bar, talking to an old friend and a crush of mine, Sheila.

  Sheila was in her midthirties. I hadn’t known she was gay until we’d gotten to know each other better while working at the Brewery together. Sheila was what I describe as butch-femme and had become more of a lipstick lesbian lately. Both were rare in Northampton. They were more common in Boston or New York City. Sheila was initially a butch-femme, since she did not wear lipstick or sport heels ever. Either of these types were women my age and older who you couldn’t quite be certain were gay, but their heterosexuality was debatable. Picture the television character Murphy Brown in leather on a motorcycle—that’s a butch-femme. Picture the same in heels and lipstick on a Vespa—that’s a lipstick lesbian.

  Sheila had lived in Boston prior to Northampton and she had frequented all the same clubs and restaurants I had when I’d lived in Boston in the eighties. I had been surprised to hear her mention Spit, a club that I had thought was the most amazing place on planet Earth when I first came from Ohio. We had nothing comparable to Spit in Cincinnati. We’d once had a lot in common and a lot to talk about when the restaurant was slow and we were trying to look busy.

  When I first moved to Northampton, it seemed like everyone was twenty. It was nice to know another gay eighties survivor from Boston. Sheila had lived in Northampton for a while by the time I got there and already had a circle of lesbian friends closer to our age than most of the younger people in my circle at the time. After I had broken up with my twenty-two-year-old lover, I’d started hanging out with the thirtysomething crowd and Phillip. Sheila and I didn’t talk much anymore.

  Piper appeared to be flirting with Sheila. When Sheila walked away from the bar and left Piper on her own, I watched Piper. She was thinking about something, her chin raised ever so slightly, and she looked down her nose. I kept seeing her profile like this when she stood at the bar, giving drink orders to the bartender, and she looked like an utter snob. I figured there was no way the attitude was real—kind of the same thing where someone always looks mad or grumpy, but they are not. Still, Piper looked like a snob.

  I found myself comparing every pretty woman I encountered with Joan, and not with any of Joan’s faults. Their eyes were not as faraway dreamy or blue, no wisps of silky blond to tame, their shape not as long and sinewy, or they weren’t as witty or smart, they didn’t speak French fluently, or as in this case, they were a snob. I would have found something wrong with even Kate Moss at that particular time. If I tried to picture myself with anyone else, the picture always twisted into a memory of Joan—making out on a bridge over the Seine in Paris, kissing in a quiet snowstorm or in the pouring rain after one of those unbearably hot summer days in Northampton, or the two of us playing in the crystal-clear surf of a P-town beach.

  It kind of made me sad to think about dating anyone new. Piper was attractive—in fact, compared to me, she was a goddess—but that’s not the way my mind works. I don’t compare myself to the woman I have a crush on; I compare that woman to my former lovers. I had been very blessed in that regard, as far as physical beauty anyway. But it was probably at least half the reason why I kept repeating the same mistakes. Being an insecure mess doesn’t mix well with beautiful companions.

  Meanwhile, back on Earth, every time I was midsentence and about to blurt out the details of our crime in my conversation with Phillip, Piper appeared at the table to check on our drink status. She would stay and chat for a moment. Then she would scurry away with her overloaded tray of empties and her brain full of drink orders. The place was packed and she had a bunch of tables to serve. Phillip noted her overattention to our table and my having been staring at her like a stalker. He decided to play Cupid.

  Our table got bigger. A couple of Phillip’s straight friends showed up and joined us, pulling another small table over to ours. Then this gay guy—who knew Phillip’s friends and was Piper’s old roommate—joined us, and so it went for the rest of the night, people joining our table until we were an island of randomly merged tables, a patchwork of social-circle intersections.

  By closing time, we had our own little party going on. Piper had given up serving our island or her shift had ended and she joined us. I found she wasn’t quite the snobby bitch she had struck me as, and I found out she was gay. She was also smart as a whip and had a great dry wit. She kept making me laugh. I was drunk but not clumsy and stupid yet. So when she joked about tables that wouldn’t leave and let her go home, I realized she was talking about our table. We were the last group left in the restaurant and she was the last waitress.

  Phillip invited a few people to come over to my house for an after-party. I didn’t object and offered him a ride. It was within walking distance, but we could get there before anyone else and I could make sure I hadn’t left anything out that I wouldn’t want in plain view of people I barely knew. I had ridden my motorcycle to the Brewery to meet him, not because I was lazy but because it was my shiny new toy and Phillip hadn’t seen it yet. This was a small purchase I had made upon our return to Northampton so I could get around. It was a used but shiny black Honda Rebel 450, a big step up from the little red 250 I’d had the previous summer. Summer was coming and that meant bike trips to all my favorite spots, like to the waterfalls in Florence, to the glacier-dug, granite swimming holes in Shelburne Falls, to Provincetown, or to Boston.

  Phillip put on my extra helmet, a small skullcap I kept on the bike for unexpected passengers. He settled in behind me, still holding a snifter full of Courvoisier he had secreted out of the restaurant. I barely had a six-pack of Sam Adams in my fridge. We took off and headed for my house. Phillip held the drink under his jacket when we passed by a police car, before we pulled into the little private road that led to my apartment.

  A couple of minutes later, the gay guy who had first joined us at the Brewery showed up with one of Phillip’s straight friends and Piper. I was pleasantly surprised she had come and joked about her having gotten lost on her way to the home she had been so impatient to get to. But I had to run off and leave her with the boys and their snifter of Courvoisier for a minute. My cats had both retreated under my bed when the three strangers had come into the house. They needed to know the sky was not falling.

  My relationship with the kitties was already on the rocks. I had dragged them to Chicago, abandoned them there with crazy people for six weeks, dragged them back to Northampton, and promptly abandoned them again for a week. Edith and Dum Dum had put up with a lot from me in our time together, and I had work to do to restore their trust in me. In any case, they had been my babies for a long time, and whenever they went under the bed, it worried me and meant real trouble. This late-night intrus
ion might have been the last straw, and there was a whole arsenal of tricks they might have in store for me, including their favorite punishment: pooping on my pillow.

  I was trying to lure Edith out from under the bed, but I was having no luck. Edith even hissed at me when I reached for her, which nearly broke my heart. Meanwhile, right outside my window I could hear something interesting brewing. Phillip and the two other guys had gone outside and I could hear their conversation. What I could gather from my eavesdropping, while prone on the floor with my head under the bed, was that somebody had slept with somebody at some point in the recent past; the somebody else, who was not with them, was pissed. Basically some kind of personal drama was unfolding and I was being a busybody.

  In the meantime, Piper had been left in the kitchen all by herself while this evidently secret issue was being sorted out. I could hear her roaming around my house, probably looking at things. I didn’t have much, but it was all new, and that’s a strange sight in our little college town. Most apartments were decorated in Salvation Army and thrift store finds. She put on a Smashing Pumpkins CD from my little music collection and came to my room. I was still lying on the floor where I had been begging Edith to come out from under the bed but ended up eavesdropping. I motioned for Piper to sit down and be quiet.

  She sat on the edge of my bed, probably trying to figure out what I was doing lying on the floor with my head under the bed. Edith came out the other side and hopped onto the bed, unafraid of Piper. Dum Dum followed and lay down by my pile of pillows. Edith, however, made herself comfortable on Piper’s lap. Edith was getting all lovey with Piper. I think she was trying to make me jealous, and it worked. I was happy they had come out from under the bed but a little surprised at how very manipulative Edith had become. She wasn’t one of those cats, the kind that loves any Tom, Dick, or Harriet willing to pet her. No, Edith generally shied away from other people. But now Edith wouldn’t stop cuddling with Piper. When I retreated and turned my attention to sweet little Dum Dum, she too got up and sauntered over to Piper’s side, snubbing me.

  Phillip and the other two came to my bedroom door to let me know they were taking off. Edith remained on Piper’s lap, digging her claws into her leg as she kneaded. Piper didn’t seem to mind having her leg ripped to shreds. I guessed she must be a cat person. I think Phillip thought something much more interesting was brewing in my bedroom; he didn’t linger and left.

  Piper decided it was time for her to go too. I asked her for her number. I wanted to see her again. I knew if I weren’t still so lovesick over Joan, I would have behaved very differently. I wanted to preserve the possibilities if I could. I might come to my senses or she might not come to hers. In any case, my cats liked her . . .

  4 Dial M for Mule

  Northampton, Massachusetts

  May 1993

  NOT EVEN A WEEK HAD PASSED since Phillip and I had returned from his first trip as a drug smuggler before “God” started calling. Alajeh wanted us to pack up, turn around, and go right back to Europe to repeat the journey we had only just completed. But neither Phillip nor I wanted to do that. Phillip’s desire for intrigue had been satisfied and we’d both had barely a moment to begin spending what we had just earned, much less get desperate enough to consider another round of European roulette. While the fact that the trip had been so easy might make it seem more appealing in due time (we had each cleared ten thousand dollars), we hadn’t lost our ever-loving minds. It was way too soon to even contemplate another trip, let alone pack our bags and go.

  Phillip had told Alajeh he could only be reached at my phone number, to avoid the risk of Meg accidentally intercepting information that contradicted his many cover-story lies. That meant it was all up to me to deflect Alajeh’s repeated attempts to get us en route. I screened my calls and made him work hard to reach me. But he was more persistent than a telemarketer. He called all hours of the day and night. I suppose I had hoped he would simply tire of me and give up. I finally answered a call and told him that we would call him when we were ready to travel again and then hung up before he could object.

  Alajeh stopped calling after that. But about a week later it started up again. After a few more failed attempts to reach me, he started having Bradley and Henry call to ask when we could make another trip. They had just returned from a trip themselves and “God” already wanted them to go back. If we didn’t go, Bradley and Henry were suggesting that we weren’t carrying our load and it would affect them.

  Finally, my sister called to tell me that Alajeh was getting angry with me. She was furious that I had taken a second trip. She wasn’t supposed to know about that. But some secrets have a very short life span. Thinking Bradley would not disclose my quick adventure was foolish. If I had been under any delusions before this, I now knew I was playing with fire. I just wasn’t sure how torched I might already be or how bad it might get. My sister had completely broken it off with Alajeh, and in spite of my worries to the contrary, she’d had no contact with him, not until he reached out to her to pass on the message to me that he was angry with me.

  I was very protective of my baby sister and I had made it clear how much I loved her while on my visit to meet Alajeh, my future brother-in-law and soon-to-be boss, in Africa. He had never asked me for anyone’s address or anyone’s picture like he had asked of Phillip. I would have wondered about the picture request, as I was now doing. What if the reason he collected this information had nothing to do with having someone to connect with in the event of an emergency, like if we were ever caught, as he had explained to Phillip.

  Like Phillip had said, Alajeh was a totally affable guy. That was true at first, second, and third glance. He had been a generous host when I was his guest in Africa. He treated me very respectfully. But I wasn’t his lover. I would have had no reason to be afraid of him after our first meeting were it not for his horrible treatment of my sister. This was not completely foreign to me. I had known men and women in my past who had married and had kids with worse companions than Alajeh. But I had never seen my sister in a similarly horrendous relationship.

  Seeing Hester in the role she had allowed herself to fall into had made me crazy. How could she do that if she loved herself even a fraction as much as I loved her? It was their relationship that had made me want to get us out of there, not the fact that he was a drug lord. Ironically, I think in witnessing her in her so-called Prince Charming and Cinderella fairy tale I had broken the love spell my sister had been under and the illusion had collapsed. At the same time, in focusing my already challenged skills of observation and character judgment on their love affair, instead of the moronic predicament we were both in, I might have missed some big red flags. For example, he had made a joke once about killing Hester if I ever disappointed him, but that was when I still believed they were both in love and he was still the nice, rich fiancé, who also happened to be a drug lord.

  Aside from the shame I felt for becoming the one thing that caused him to reconnect with my sister, I had an awful and sudden epiphany. I realized that he might not have been joking at all back then. Maybe the real message being sent was a threat, reminding me he could reach out to me through her, if I made him. My goofy little sister didn’t realize it, but she was unwittingly delivering the most potent intimidation anyone could ever direct at me. It didn’t matter exactly what she was saying to me; all that mattered was that he had called Hester to have her call me. I got the message.

  When he answered the phone and thundered happily in his very deep voice “My friend!” I had this brand-new feeling. It was like ice had filled my chest and I shook like a cartoon character. I wasn’t the confident international citizen of the world I pretended to be. I was a dumb-ass from Cincinnati, Ohio, who until very recently had still called Daddy to fix things when they got out of my control. Until that moment, I truly had no grasp of what I had gotten myself into, but I wanted out and I needed help thinking it through. I needed someone to talk to, someone levelheaded and smart, but not Dad,
not with this. I couldn’t do that to him. It would break his heart to know what we had done. I decided to tell Phillip about my newfound clarity via Hester’s “message.” Maybe he would tell me I was being crazy paranoid.

  Alajeh also had the contact information of someone Phillip loved. I had to get to him to see if he had also received a message from “God” through his contact. If Alajeh had reached out to Phillip through the contact, I could be pretty certain Phillip wouldn’t so easily dismiss my concern as paranoid silliness. Phillip told me he had made it clear to Alajeh, he was never to contact that person unless he had been arrested or worse.

  Edith jumped up onto my desk and sat on my notebook’s keyboard in front of me, causing the laptop to ding repeatedly. She couldn’t have cared less about the irritating dings; nor could I. She knew I was upset. She stayed seated on the keyboard, letting the dings from my laptop continue without so much as a look at the noisy beast she sat on. Edith had a sixth sense about these things. I could tell by her worried mews: she was upset that I was upset. But I was frozen in my seat, unable to do anything but have a worried staring contest with my cat. Then a calm clarity finally fell over me.

  This had to stop. All of it. I wanted to make damn certain nothing happened to Hester. Phillip wasn’t going to like it, but I had to warn him about Alajeh. It seemed to me now that Phillip had also naively put someone he loved in harm’s way. I understood that now. I stood up and stretched with purpose, like I was about to run a race. Then I sat right back down wondering where I thought I was heading and how exactly I thought I could just stop this.