by Dyan Sheldon
If the storm kept up, we’d look like bag ladies by the time we got downtown. And Eliza’s gown would be ruined. For the first time I realized what incredible potential for disaster our project had. Mrs Baggoli would kill me if anything happened to the dress. And after she killed me, my mother would probably burn my remains in her kiln.
“It’s karma,” said Ella. She might look like a Pre-Raphaelite model, but she was still her mother’s daughter. “You should never have borrowed the dress.”
By now even I knew that I shouldn’t have borrowed the dress. “Thanks,” I muttered.
Ella linked her arm in mine. “Come on,” she said with her usual cheerfulness. “We’re here now. Let’s enjoy ourselves.”
I looked at the unmoving traffic and the steady stream of pedestrians and the blur of lights in the downpour. I heard the horns and the shouts and the sirens weaving through the cauldron of sound. I smelled the pretzels and hot dogs and stale urine of the streets. I breathed deeply. New York City! I was back where I belonged. My fear evaporated. The blood began to surge through my veins with its old passion and excitement. Like an eagle, my heart began to soar.
“You’re right,” I said. “We’re young, we’re beautiful, we’re talented, and we’re in the greatest city in the world.” I’d been so preoccupied with worrying about the dress that I’d taken the wrong exit and we’d come out across the street from the Garden. I turned us around. “We’re going to have an incredible time!” I announced to the general throng. “An absolutely incredible time!”
The light changed. We stepped off the curb together. Ella kept going, but one of my mother’s killer heels wedged itself in a sewer grate. My body went forward, but my foot stayed where it was.
I screamed.
The man behind us cursed as he more or less flew over me.
After he’d picked himself off the street, he helped me up.
“If you’re going to have such an incredible time,” he said, “you’d better try a little harder to live to enjoy it.”
There were about a million kids milling around outside Madison Square Garden, and about half a million cops.
“Geez…” Ella whistled. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people in one place before.”
“Come on.” I held her tightly. The last thing I needed was to lose Ella. “Let’s find someone who’s selling tickets.”
Ella glanced uneasily at the noisy crowd. “You mean there isn’t a stall or something?”
Sometimes I don’t think Ella is merely sheltered. Sometimes I think it’s more like she’s been in solitary confinement for sixteen years.
“No, there isn’t a stall.”
It took us about fifteen minutes to find a guy with two decent tickets. Because we looked like such nice kids, he was willing to give us a bargain price.
“But that’s nearly fifty per cent more than they should cost!” Ella blurted out.
Under my tutelage, she was definitely beginning to get over her shyness.
Our benefactor gave her a crooked smile in which teeth were only a memory. “Honey, this gig was sold out before the tickets were printed. You’re lucky I’m not asking double.”
“But that’s—” began Ella.
I kicked her in the ankle.
“We’ll take them,” I said. It left us with just enough for incidentals, but it didn’t matter. It was going to be worth it. We might not even need a cab in the morning. Stu might take us to the station in his Porsche.
I pulled out my wallet. I opened it. All it contained was a five-dollar bill.
The tickets fluttered out of my reach.
“That’s not enough,” said the ticket seller.
“Don’t worry,” I assured him. “We have it.” I pulled my satchel from my shoulder. Just in case someone tried to mug us, Ella and I had put most of our money in an empty film canister in my make-up bag. I mean, even in New York no one’s going to steal your make-up, are they? I stuck my hand in. Or are they?
“What’s wrong?” asked Ella.
“Nothing.” I squatted on the ground with the bag and started pulling things out. My Converse, my socks, my black jeans and black turtleneck…
“Ella,” I wailed. “Ella, it’s not here. My make-up bag’s not here.”
“It must be,” said Ella. She bent down beside me. “When do you remember having it last?”
“In the train. Don’t you remember? I put it behind the—”
I looked at Ella.
Ella looked at me.
“Sink,” finished Ella.
A great actor has to learn to take disappointment and rejection in her stride. There will always be the big flop, the bad review, the cancelled series. A great actor has to be able to pick herself up, dust herself off, and start all over again.
I am going to be a great actor. Not having a ticket wasn’t going to stand in my way.
“This isn’t going to work,” Ella hissed in my ear.
I tightened my grip on her hand as we finally started shuffling towards the entrance.
“Yes, it will,” I hissed back.
It was the old “if you want to hide a tree, put it in a forest” trick. I saw it in a movie. The hero was being chased by the bad guys, and the only chance he had of losing them was to disappear into a packed football stadium. Only he didn’t have a ticket. And, because he’d had to leave the house in a hurry and had forgotten to take his wallet, he didn’t have any money either. So he attached himself to a group of guys from out of town and just strolled right in with them.
The problem was finding a large group of very noisy and active people among whom we could lose ourselves. Most of the kids filing into the concert were in couples. And they had no choice but to be pretty orderly, because there were guards on either side of each doorway, taking the tickets one by one.
“It’s a little tricky,” I admitted, sotto voce, “but I think it’s possible. Just follow my lead.”
Ella started deep breathing. “I’m not going to be able to do this, Lola. I’m terrified.”
“Stage fright,” I assured her. “It’ll pass.”
More or less in front of us was a group of four handing over their tickets on one side, and a group of five on the other. Between us were two couples. It was now or never. I squeezed Ella’s hand.
“Come on,” I ordered. “Do what I do.”
I edged through the couples in front of us and attached myself to the group of four on the left. Smiling, I started talking to the back of the girl nearest me.
“I’m so excited,” I told her, inching forward. “I feel like I’ve been waiting for this forever … what song do you think they’ll start with…?” Inch … inch… “I hope they do ‘Love Loser’, that’s got to be my all-time favourite…” Inch … inch… “I wish they let you bring cameras in here…” Inch … inch… “Wouldn’t you just die for a photograph of Stu on stage?”
Still talking, I stepped into the foyer. My heart was racing, my cheeks were flushed. A hand fell on my shoulder and yanked me backwards, none too gently.
“Just a minute,” said the young man in the Sidartha T-shirt with the radio clipped to his belt. “Let me take another look at your ticket.”
I don’t know where he came from. He must have been lying in wait because he wasn’t one of the guys on the door.
“My ticket?” I smiled as though I had nothing to hide. “Sure.”
I dug my hands into the pockets of my cape, but – to my horror – my ticket wasn’t there.
I smiled again. Nervously. “I must have stuck it in my bag,” I mumbled. I opened my bag and started shoving things around.
The young man didn’t smile back. He just stood there looking both expectant and bored.
“It’s not here.” My voice was surprised, innocent, confused. I looked at the ground in desperation. “I must have dropped it.”
He grabbed hold of my elbow. “Come on,” he said. “No ticket, no concert.”
“But I have a ticket!” I shout
ed indignantly. “I had it just a second ago. I—”
“No ticket, no concert,” he repeated, dragging me after him.
I dug in my heels as much as you can on a solid floor. “You can’t do this!” In my red satin dress and black velvet cape, I was in one of my Gone with the Wind moods. And, like Scarlett O’Hara, I was not about to be trifled with. I tilted my head back defiantly. “I demand to see your supervisor!”
“You can see him outside,” he said, and yanked me through the throng moving in the opposite direction and back to where I’d started.
“You really want to see the supervisor?” He held on to my elbow. He must have done this before, he wasn’t taking any chances.
But I wasn’t paying any attention to him by then. I was looking the other way, my eyes on Ella, who was standing on the other side of the entrance, staring at me with a look of shock on her face.
THE NIGHT CONTINUES AS IT BEGAN
After we were firmly escorted from the Garden (I re-creating Joan of Arc being led to the stake, the noble head held high; Ella staring at the ground in case someone she knew passed by), we hung around outside with the thousands of other wet, ticketless fans who were mobbing the street. Even if there hadn’t been so much noise we wouldn’t have been able to hear what was going on inside, but we could sometimes hear snatches of shouting and conversation and the occasional drum roll or guitar riff. I didn’t care. I was as happy as a person who is missing the last performance of a legend could be. I might not be able to see or hear them, but I was standing on roughly the same piece of ground as Sidartha; I was breathing the same toxic air. The same rain that poured down on me would pour down on them as they ran to and from their limousines. Once someone must have opened an inside door, because I was sure I heard Stu’s voice, his actual, warm, rich, unrecorded voice, break into the night like a flame to heat our souls. “What the hell is that supposed to be?” it said.
Even though she wasn’t the one who got caught, Ella was still shaken by our close encounter with the law. She stood beside me, shivering slightly, the only island of silence in the sea of shouting fans.
“You know,” I said, trying to cheer her up, “you’re not such a bad actor yourself.”
Instead of panicking when she saw me with the guard, Ella had faked outrage and marched to my defence. “We’re together,” she’d called out. “What seems to be the problem?” She was so convincing that he didn’t even think to ask to see her ticket. But not convincing enough, unfortunately.
“You almost had me believing I had lost my ticket,” I praised her.
Ella jammed her hands into her coat pockets. “I was so scared, I think I almost convinced myself.” And then she kind of froze the way someone in a horror movie does when an axe suddenly smashes through the front door. “Oh, my God, Lola… It never even occurred to me… What if they’d arrested us?” Her expression of terror deepened as the axe shattered the door a second time. “Oh, my God, Lola… What would my mother say if I was taken home in a police car?”
She probably wouldn’t say anything; she’d just die from the shame.
“It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you aren’t being taken home in a police car.” Not yet, anyway.
Ella, however, wasn’t really in a state for the cool balm of logic and reason. The thought of pulling up to 58 Birch Hollow Drive in the back of a police car with the blue light flashing while the neighbours all gaped through their blinds and her father tried to revive her mother was too much for her.
“Maybe we should just go home now,” Ella said – again. “Before anything else happens.”
“Before anything else happens?” I waved my arms. “Ella, nothing’s happened yet.”
“Yes, it has,” said Ella stubbornly. “We’re soaked, you almost broke your neck, we lost all our money, we were almost arrested, and now we’re standing in the rain outside the concert. I call that something.”
I re-adjusted my hood, though it was so wet by then that there wasn’t really much point. “You can’t make an omelette without cracking a few eggs,” I said philosophically.
Ella smiled, thinly.
I changed my approach.
“Oh, please,” I begged, grabbing her hands. “We’re so close, El. Stu Wolff’s only a few yards away from us. The concert’ll be over soon, and then he’ll be in the same room with us. We can’t give up now. Where would we all be today if Columbus had given up and gone back to Spain? If Paul Revere had decided to stay in bed instead of warning everyone that the British were coming? If the Wright brothers had decided to stick to bicycles?”
Ella looked like she was about to answer me, but I didn’t give her a chance.
“Nowhere!” I proclaimed. “That’s where we’d be. There’d be no America. There’d be no satellites. No television. No microwaves or mobile phones. No mesquite crisps.” Ella loves mesquite crisps. “We’d be sitting in mud huts in Europe eating weeds, that’s where we’d be.” And anyway, we were in so much trouble already that we might as well go on.
Ella looked thoughtful. She’s a great believer in sticking things through.
“I didn’t say we should give up…” she murmured.
She was weakening. I moved in, stealthy as a panther.
“Don’t you want to see the look on Carla’s face when we turn up at the party? Don’t you want to see her stop smiling when she sees us talking to Stu? Don’t you want to see what happens when everyone finds out that we did go, and Carla looks like the fool for a change?”
Ella nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I do.”
“Great.” I slipped my arm through hers. “In that case, it’s time we went downtown.”
According to Carla’s invitation, which I’d had such foresight to commit to memory, the party was in Soho. Where else? Soho is New York’s artistic soul (and, therefore, America’s), and Sidartha was its voice. Besides, everyone knows that Stu Wolff lives in Soho.
Our plan was to be outside Stu’s building when the guests started arriving so we could choose our moment to meld in with the crowd. I figured it would take us at least an hour to get down there on the bus and then find the address, especially with the rain. If we left before the concert actually ended, we’d have plenty of time to reach Soho before everyone else, and even be able to go to a coffee shop to dry off and repair what damage we could.
“Can’t you read?” The bus driver pointed to the sign. “Exact change or tokens only.”
I felt myself blush. I’d been in the wilderness of Deadwood for less than a year by then, and already I’d forgotten how to ride a city bus. It’s my father’s fault; he insists on walking everywhere.
Ella started digging through her pockets, but I kept my eyes on the five-dollar bill in my hand.
“Please,” I pleaded, the shadow of tears in my eyes and voice. “It’s my sister.” I raised my voice. “She broke her foot, but she can’t go to the hospital to have it set until we get there to mind the babies.”
“I have a dollar forty in coins,” said Ella, dropping several of them on the stairs. “How much do you have?”
I knew how much change I had without looking: fifty-eight cents.
“It’s not enough,” I said in a voice thick with sadness. Ella started picking up the coins she’d dropped. I turned my unhappy eyes on the driver. “Please… She had to crawl to the phone to call us. She—”
“Take a cab,” said the driver. “It’s quicker.”
“But we don’t have enough for a cab.”
There was a shriek of disgust behind me.
“Oh, my God!” screamed Ella. “I just saw a cockroach.”
No one paid any attention to her. A cockroach on a city bus isn’t exactly news.
I waved the bill at the driver. “Don’t you understand?” I was practically sobbing. “My poor sister’s all alone with three little babies and a broken foot, maybe even a compound fracture… She’s lying there in pain, waiting for us to come and save her.”
Ella straightened
up. “I almost touched it,” she squealed. “I almost touched it with my hand.”
This statement didn’t catch anyone’s attention, either.
“Look,” said the driver. “This isn’t an ambulance, it’s a city bus. You have to have the exact fare.”
Bitter tears of frustration welled in my eyes. “But the littlest is only two months old,” I wailed. “Two months old, sir. Do you have children? Do you remember when they were two months old? How they’d lie in their little cribs crying and crying until their mother picked them up and took them in her arms…?”
“Look,” said the driver, sighing heavily. “It isn’t my bus. I just drive it—”
“You do remember!” I was nearly sobbing. “You do know what it’s like.”
He looked over his shoulder. “Anybody got change for a five?” he called.
ON THE STREET WHERE HE LIVES
Ella, shaken from the attack of the killer cockroach, spent the entire ride downtown standing up, watching her feet to make sure nothing with more than two legs walked over them. When she wasn’t staring at her shoes, she was darting anxious glances at our fellow travellers. Ella had never been on public transport in New York before. When her parents brought her in they went everywhere in cabs. The Gerards don’t take any chances.
“Do you think that man back there is crazy?” she whispered.
Pretending that I was reading an advertisement for a computer course, I looked towards the back.
“Which one?” I asked, my eyes now on the headline of the paper the woman sitting in front of us was reading. “The one who’s talking to himself, or the one holding up the snake so it can look out of the window?”
“Neither,” said Ella. “The one wearing the sombrero.”
We got off at Fourteenth Street. I knew my way from Fourteenth Street. At least, in dry weather and daylight I did.
“Aren’t we there yet?” grumbled Ella.
I got us to Soho OK, but I was having a little trouble finding the exact street we wanted. It was one of those little ones tucked behind a lot of other little streets with funny names. I’m better on the numbered streets and avenues.
