The Swashbuckler
Page 5
Letting her hand fall from her cheek, she noticed her new ring again. It made her happy. As a matter of fact, for all her misery she was happy. The air was different here. Even though Commercial Street was lined with shops and restaurants and bars like New York, the darkness was softer around it all, she could hear seabells ringing, foghorns beginning to mourn, gulls crying to one another.
Despite the soreness of her feet from the hot sand, she walked up the wharf to its end. She imagined going out on the fishing boats for days at a time — being apart from the land, buoyed up by nothing but water, with hardly anyone to talk to, just herself in her slobbiest smelliest clothes playing a harmonica out on the deck of a boat under the stars. The salt water would jump up and spray her. She’d work hard all day to haul in fish. It would be another kind of life, that was for sure. Grandpere had been a fisherman in Marseilles. Her mother remembered Grandmére pacing the sands waiting for him. Had she ever stood at the end of a wharf like this and wondered about the world?
Frenchy started toward the bar. She did not, after all, belong to the world of fishing boats. She’d found her place in the bars and knew best how to survive there. Maybe, though, someday she would have more money and could move to Staten Island or even Long Island. Wouldn’t it be fine to settle there with some nice femme when she was older and didn’t have to worry as much about her mother? Or if somehow her mother could live with them without knowing Frenchy and her femme were in love.
She was in the bar before she’d finished her daydream. She hadn’t combed her hair, her shirt was half out of her pants, she needed to change her napkin. An extra was stuffed under her shirt, and she went to stand in line. No posing, no drink in hand, no cigarette. Somehow, tonight, she felt comfortable walking into a new bar and standing in the bathroom line. With her sunburned face and her weariness from cramps and being in a strange place, she felt like a washed-out, bedraggled fisherman home from the seas. Smiling, she leaned against the wall and looked at the woman behind her in line.
The woman turned and it was as if Frenchy were seeing the wide expanse of sea again from the beach. Like that morning, she again felt drawn, cleansed, comforted, healed. What was it about this face? It seemed to come from her past and hold her future. Confused thoughts of her grandmére and the fishing boats in Marseilles, of the girls in the bars downtown, all swam in her head.
It must be the sun, she thought once she was in the bathroom. Still, she combed her hair, preening automatically for this woman. She tried to cover as much of the burnt side of her face as she could with her pompadour. She buttoned her jacket to cover the wrinkles of her shirt, then tugged at it to stretch out its creases. She ditched her crumpled pack of Marlboros, regretting the loss of the last two, even as she reasoned the sacrifice was worth it.
When she emerged from the bathroom her heart was beating fast. She smiled charmingly at the woman’s averted face and diddy-bopped a path that opened magically before her across the dance floor.
Stupid of her to get caught up in all the sea-faring fantasies and let herself go as she had. The woman hadn’t even noticed her. But Frenchy planned to change that. She ordered a Scotch again, promising herself not to get drunk tonight. Watching the woman come out of the bathroom, she took her Zippo and slid a Marlboro from its fresh box.
“Mercedes!” a voice next to Frenchy called. Mercedes walked across the room toward the voice.
Frenchy’s eyes were riveted to Mercedes’ face. Then Mercedes was next to her, but she moved onto the dance floor with her friend. She was a little taller than Frenchy and as slender, but in a more fragile way, as if her bones had been cast of finer stuff. Her hair was not as dark as Frenchy’s, but still a rich brown, and not waved, but combed back stylishly. Her skin was a warm red-tan, as if she were flushed from excitement, and spread smooth and glossy on high cheekbones, ran freckled over a wide nose, and blended into small, full lips of a deeper red. Her eyes were brown and full of dancing lights. A red shirt added color to her face. She wore black pointed boots and blue denims, a box of Marlboros sticking out of a pocket. Frenchy watched her dance, fascinated.
And not just fascinated. Puzzled. She couldn’t figure out if the woman was butch or femme. She was too pretty to be butch, but the clothes, walk, stance and cigarettes all looked butch. There was an outside chance she was femme. Frenchy was counting on that chance. She felt damned good considering her state since she’d gotten to Provincetown. Best of all, the woman, once she joined a group after dancing, didn’t seem to have one special girl among her friends. Hell, thought Frenchy, I’ll even take this one kiki.
“Buy you a drink?” Frenchy asked a while later, following Mercedes, alone at last, to the bar.
Mercedes, in an impassive appraisal, took Frenchy in. “Why not?” she answered.
“Good. My first time up here,” Frenchy told her, nervous for once. “I don’t know anybody. You from New York?”
“Yeah,” Mercedes answered after Frenchy had ordered their drinks.
“Where?”
“Uptown.”
“Not as up as me, I bet. I’m from the Bronx.”
Mercedes seemed hesitant to reveal her neighborhood, as if afraid it might scare Frenchy off. “A hundred eleventh,” she admitted finally.
“You ever go to the bars downtown?”
“No,” Mercedes answered. “A lot of times I’m not welcome downtown.” Her dark, bitter eyes met Frenchy’s.
For the first time Frenchy was able to hear, under Mercedes’ heavy New York accent, a slight Spanish inflection, as of someone who’d been in the States a very long time. “I understand,” she said. “I sure wish it wasn’t that way.”
Mercedes shrugged. “Someday I’ll get out of El Barrio and you’ll have to get used to me.”
“That’ll be a pleasure,” Frenchy said before realizing Mercedes might think she was coming on to her. She still wasn’t sure what the woman was. “I mean, to stop keeping you out.”
“You ever been uptown?”
“I don’t know where to go uptown, but I hear there’s a lot of action up there.”
“A hundred twenty-fifth is good. A couple of places. Not so safe, though, for white chicks.”
“Name me a place that’s safe for queers.”
“Provincetown?”
“I’m too new to know. How about you?”
“I was here once last year. Nobody bothered us.”
“You here with friends?”
Mercedes narrowed her eyes as if to say she knew what Frenchy was getting at. Turning from her and leaning on the bar she said sadly, “A few kids from the bars. I haven’t had a steady femme for a while. I have trouble with them, you know?”
Despite feeling as if Mercedes had stomped her heart, Frenchy answered, “You better believe it.”
Mercedes brightened a little now that they had something in common. “You got girl trouble?”
Frenchy’s heart was trying to mend itself with irrational hope. She turned shyly away to speak. “I never went with nobody long. I got one girl, a teacher, we been seeing each other on and off three years. My other femmes, they just come and go.” Afraid Mercedes would think they left her, Frenchy explained, “I get itchy.”
“I know what you mean,” Mercedes said, smiling at Frenchy for the first time. “But sometimes, you know, when I’m down” — her smile faded — “sometimes don’t you wish maybe one girl would come along you’d want to stick with?”
Their eyes met. Frenchy felt a warmth fill her chest and a tingle of anxiety flutter in her stomach. “Yeah,” she said gruffly.
By all the rules Frenchy knew, the conversation should have ended there. They’d established that they couldn’t have a relationship. Frenchy tried very hard to say the right words, to tell Mercedes so long, be seeing you, see you around. . .
But she was riveted to that smile when it reappeared and found herself grinning back like a dumb kid. Again she felt like she was looking at the vast cool waters off Herring Cove, like someo
ne had pulled open the curtains of her heart. Something within Mercedes seemed to touch something within herself. And not because she was so good-looking. It was something else, something she’d got a spark of once in a while with different girls and then lost when they got too close, too demanding. Something she’d felt with Terry, her first girl, when she was thirteen — an incredible, intense excitement that made nothing else matter.
Maybe this Mercedes could change her tune, because she, Frenchy, couldn’t be attracted to a butch. The woman was either kiki or had missed her calling.
“Want to go out on the beach?” Mercedes asked.
“Sure, why not?” said Frenchy, averting her eyes and hiding her pleasure. “You want a beer or something?”
“Can’t take drinks out there. The place will get busted. Come on,” Mercedes said in such a familiar way Frenchy was afraid she’d reach for her hand.
Frenchy followed the small woman through the crowd, wondering what had happened to her cool. She was far from drunk, yet she didn’t care when they hit the sand and the wind took the waves out of her hair, didn’t care that her boots were getting wet as they walked along the water’s edge. She didn’t withhold her most dazzling smiles from this butch who wouldn’t appreciate them and would probably be offended by them. All she knew, once they had returned to the bar, was that it hurt to let her go, this Mercedes.
“My friends will wonder where I went,” Mercedes explained. “Sometimes, when I take off on them, they got to put me together again when they find me.” She laughed sadly. Then she smiled and looked Frenchy in the eye. “I want to thank you. I was feeling low. I liked talking to you.” She was nervous now, skittish, as if afraid to spend too much time with Frenchy. And she left reluctantly as if she had to force herself to go.
Frenchy worried about her then. Mercedes had told her during their walk how depressed she was. How coming here was her friends’ idea to get her out of the city. How they’d even had to lock her up awhile when Maria, her first femme, went back to her boyfriend. Ever since then, off and on, she still got a little crazy. Frenchy wanted to offer her own life to Mercedes, to tell her how steady and predictable it was, to share it with her until she healed — as a friend. And Mercedes seemed drawn to her, too. The bay breezes had lifted Frenchy’s hair from her face at one point and Mercedes had put her hand to the sunburned skin, wincing in pain for her. “Poor face,” she had said in Spanish, then translated.
Frenchy relived that gentle touch as she ordered another drink. Maybe the uptown butches touched each other like that more easily. Just a few minutes, she thought — though they’d been together well over an hour - just a few minutes is all it takes to fall in love. “Isn’t that a line from a song?” she asked herself.
She downed one Scotch after another and watched Mercedes do the same. If only Mercedes wasn’t butch, she lamented. If only she wasn’t still so hurt by that one girl she’d mentioned over and over and instead ready for a new love.
She had no interest in any of the other girls, forgot how bad she looked, didn’t want to leave until Mercedes did. She saw Mercedes cry at her table (she couldn’t be a real butch to do that) and watched her friends comfort her. She was really tempted to ask her to stay in her room for the night — as friends. But she knew she wanted her for a lover. She couldn’t do that to Mercedes under the guise of friendship. And knew Mercedes couldn’t accept her as anything but a friend. One Fine Day was playing over and over on the jukebox. She listened to the words: someday the guy would want the singer. She wanted to shout, sing from the rooftops, somehow tell Mercedes how she felt about her.
Toward closing Frenchy lost her sense of time. Now and then she’d light a Marlboro when one burned still in her full ashtray. She’d turn away so Mercedes wouldn’t see her staring and realize she’d forgotten she was not in New York. One of those times, as she turned back, she just caught Mercedes’ friends helping her walk out the door. Frenchy staggered after them.
In the clear chilly night air she tried to shake the dizziness from her head and concentrated on walking a straight line. Usually she didn’t drink as she had this weekend. Didn’t even really like liquor or how it dulled what she felt. It was just something you had to do in the life. A gesture you made in response to any situation: introductions, depression, trouble. A car came slowly down the street toward her and she moved out of its way. One of Mercedes’ friends was driving. Frenchy lurched at the open back window of the car. “Mercedes,” she cried. “Mercedes!” She didn’t care what they thought of her.
“She’s sick, honey,” a woman called out of the car. “We need to get her home!”
“Mercedes,” Frenchy whispered, puzzled, as the tail-lights got smaller and smaller. She turned herself around with effort and headed toward the guest house, hesitating now and then, as if she had some unfinished business to attend to, as if something in the air was calling and calling to her.
* * * * *
Sunday came, Frenchy’s last full day in Provincetown. It was raining, but she was too hungover to be bothered by it. “It figures,” she told herself as she rolled over to sleep more. She’d been too drunk to undress and she was painfully uncomfortable and sticky between her legs, but she couldn’t get up, not right away.
Later, after more sleep, she lay comforted by the muted drumming of rain on the roof, something she never heard in the apartment building at home. She’d awakened seeing Mercedes’ face before her, and smiled. It felt good, the way she loved Mercedes, even if she couldn’t have her. Sometimes she worried about how she went from woman to woman, simply seeking the high of love, of romance, but it was different this time. The high was there, but so too was something more diffuse, something which felt as warm and steady as she imagined this Cape Cod rain. There was a little of the feeling she had for Jessie, a little of the way she felt about her close friend Marian at the store. It was a little confusing, to suddenly feel this way about a woman she’d just met. Jessie and Marian had been her friends for years. And it gave her hope, as if by mixing the love she was used to with this new deeper thing, they were fated to be together, she and Mercedes. As if, given time and patience, it would all work out. And meanwhile she glowed with pleasure in anticipation of seeing Mercedes at the bar that same night.
She sat up suddenly, and felt as if she’d bashed her head against a beam. What if Mercedes went home today, what if she wasn’t staying over until Monday?
She ran to the bathroom. It was noon and all the faggots had left for brunch. She had a temporarily helpful bath and scrubbed at the new spots on her pants, grateful the black denim mostly hid them. She dressed quickly and went out. Between her hangover and her compulsion to see Mercedes, she didn’t give a thought to her sunburn, or to the rain which would keep her from evening it. She had to be able to see Mercedes again in New York.
She had no idea where even to look for her. Could she be having breakfast before leaving? She walked Commercial Street all day, stopping here and there for coffee, new cigarettes. She’d never thought to bring a raincoat to the Cape, so her clothes were wet, her hair was limp. By seven that evening she was able to swallow a cheeseburger and afterward set off for the bar, squishing as she went. She’d met Rob and Gerald once and extracted a promise that they would send the short beautiful woman dressed in red and black to the Ace of Spades as soon as they saw her.
As she sat at the bar Frenchy combed back her wet hair and tried to light a damp cigarette from her pack. The woman next to her offered a dry one and Frenchy gratefully took it.
“Looks like you need a hot toddy,” said the woman.
“That would go down nice about now.”
“I’m Jenny.”
“I’m Frenchy.”
“Frenchy?”
“Yeah, my name’s too long and foreign, so people call me Frenchy.”
“Okay, Frenchy, then. Are you from New York?”
“Yeah. How about you?”
“Ohio.”
“Really?” Frenchy asked, w
ide-eyed.
“Is that exciting?” Jenny asked, laughing. She was tall and red-haired with an open plain face and manner like Jessie’s.
“I never thought about gay girls living in Ohio before. It sounds like such a straight place. Why do you stay there?”
“My hometown is there, Frenchy. We’re not all big city girls, you know.”
“Yeah, but is there any life there?”
“Just about enough for me. I couldn’t keep up with your pace. There’s a small group of us, all living in small towns within about a hundred-mile radius. We get together for dinner a lot, visit each other weekends.”
“How do you find each other?”
“I don’t know, really. We just do. There’s Daughters of Bilitis in Marion, the nearest city to me. I’ve met a couple of girls there.”
“What a funny way to live,” Frenchy marveled. She realized she was just talking to this nice woman, not trying to get her into bed. She must be butch.
“You up here for long?” Jenny asked.
“Just till tomorrow. But it seems like forever.”
“How come? I’ve only got two weeks and they’re flying by, it seems.”
“What can I tell you? Everything that could go wrong did. You’re not looking at the real Frenchy, you know. I don’t always go around looking like a drowned rat.”
“I could tell by the way you combed your hair. And combed your hair.” Jenny laughed again.
Instead of becoming embarrassed, Frenchy joined her. “Buy you a drink?” she asked.
“I don’t drink, but thanks. Maybe a Coke when I need it,” Jenny said, lifting a half-finished glass.
“You don’t drink?” Frenchy looked shocked.
“I say a lot of astounding things, don’t I?” Jenny chuckled.
“Hey, I really don’t know anybody who doesn’t drink. At least that goes to a bar and doesn’t. How come?”
“I hate hangovers. And once I start drinking I can’t stop. Then I hit people.” Jenny smiled warmly at Frenchy. “It’s not healthy — for me or anyone around me. When I lost my last girl over hitting her I decided to lay off.”