Coco felt a surge of anger at Gavin for having forced her to buy support from a mercenary for lack of loyalists at home. She lit another cigarette, threw the match on the ground, and hated Gavin harder than ever.
“It’s good to get back to Washington,” Suede offered the awkward silence.
But then the first irreparable silence of their long friendship fell upon them. Suede smoked. Coco smoked. Gavin looked awkwardly up at the sky. A conclave of alleycats was howling. Sounds darted out of the neighbors’ windows.
“Well, maybe we should all crash,” Suede said, again with poor timing.
“Yah.”
They all rose to their feet as if leaving a theater at the end of a movie and walked single-file back into the house. Coco went directly to her bedroom and left Gavin to find towels, if there were any clean ones, to give to their guest. Besides, she knew Suede could take care of himself.
eight
Coco pulled the telephone toward the chaise by the cord of its receiver so that it squiggled across the floor like a black rat caught by the tail. Then she stretched out flat again and watched a branch of the backyard tree (dying, said the lady next door, from American elm disease) scratch, sick but still green, against the screen. During the past few weeks she had been having difficulty remembering Gavin’s office number, which hadn’t changed in four years. Now when she phoned him she had to rev herself up by silently repeating the whole series of digits from the very beginning each time she dialed one number. Coco began mumbling her little numerical incantation.
“Burman, Berry, Conover and Katz.”
“Gavin, please.” Click. Switch. Coco envisioned long limber fingers milking the rubber teats of the switchboard as she concentrated on straightening out her legs so they wouldn’t flip over into the comfortable position which caused the insides to get browner than the fronts.
“Hello.” It was Gavin’s professional, pleasantly expectant voice.
Coco was momentarily struck silent with anger. “It’s just me, Gavin,” she said nastily. “Not her.”
Silence. Then a short, bitter laugh.
“She wouldn’t be calling you so early in the day, would she, Gavin? She probably sleeps till the middle of the afternoon.”
Now he emitted an injured silence.
“Well?” Coco intoned.
“What’ve you been doing, Coco?” Gavin asked to change the unmentioned subject.
“Nothing.” Coco had a way of saying “nothing” which instantly convinced Gavin that she spent her days prostrate and paralyzed on the porch, suffering incessantly from the pain he caused her, and unable to read, let alone write, a book. “You know we’re invited to a cocktail party at the Bradleys’ tonight, from five to seven,” she said challengingly.
“Well … do you feel like going?” Gavin asked, aware that any social excursion was contingent upon the state of Coco’s mental health.
“I guess so. We could take Suede along.”
“Sure. I’m going to see him for lunch, so I can ask him. But I’ve got an appointment at six o’clock that will probably take twenty minutes or so. Why don’t you drive over there, and we’ll catch a cab and meet you around six-thirty?”
“I guess that’s all right,” Coco said poutingly, pleased at the prospect of going to the party alone, but using the same opportunity to sound neglected.
“Who’s going to take care of the kids?” Gavin asked, ignoring the previous accusation.
“Mrs. Marshall said she’d stay. Time and a half.”
“Actually, it might be a decent party,” Gavin mumbled, totally unconvinced.
Coco made her voice sound both brittle and threatening. “Well, it might be a waste of time for you, but it’s good for me to get out of here for a couple of hours once in a while. See you later.”
She hung up, pulled the coffee table closer to the chaise, and removed the jar of pencils so they wouldn’t bounce while she typed. That afternoon she finished the chapter in which Gwensandra Rappoport dropped out of graduate school, joined Delta Airlines, and graduated valedictorian of her stewardess class.
Going upstairs at five o’clock to dress rather than descending into the first-floor inferno had the same effect on Coco’s metabolism as popping an upper. Locked into the bathroom alone—without anyone sailing boats or splashing water or trying to see her pubic hair if she used her lifeguard duty time to take a piss—Coco stripped off her bikini. She turned on the skimpy shower which sprayed tired water, weakened by its climb to the third floor, in rusty lead pipes, and scrubbed her body abrasively before establishing herself in front of the medicine-chest mirror. Then she squinted into the steamed-up glass and saw a blurry, elongated, unfocused face which looked like a mask of her own madness. Quickly Coco wiped away the steam with brisk, businesslike flicks of her hand and began to prepare for the party.
Coco had always believed that she possessed a beauty which could only be appreciated by a properly imaginative person. Such a viewer, however, was very hard to find since no one really looked at anyone else anymore and everyone seemed to have lost the fine art of seeing quintessential qualities of character revealed in a stranger’s expression. Nevertheless, Coco continued to live her life like the star of a low-budget European movie, playing her existence into an invisible camera which she envisioned suspended six feet in front of her, eternally recording each of her theatrically poignant scenes. Compulsively Coco still strained to meet the high standards demanded by the director of her many unreleased films. Daily she rehearsed the soulful expressions which revealed the texture and complexity of her nature and silently practiced dialogues for encounters which would never occur.
She carefully glued on nighttime-density false eyelashes, perfumed the cleavage between her breasts, swatted some bath powder toward her already pungent crotch, and adopted a complicated expression that could be decoded only by the particular Perfect Lover whom she eternally hunted. The message she sent simply notified him that they had finally found each other. Although it was highly unlikely her P.L. would finally materialize at a Georgetown cocktail party, it was important to remember that Coco didn’t belong there either, so there was no reason he shouldn’t make a surprise appearance.
She stared into the mirror and arranged her face into a particularly desperate expression that suggested several dramatic explanations for her presence at soprosaic-a-party. Silently she signaled a need for help and if, as Coco expected, her predestined P.L. had seen and liked Jeanne Moreau in The Beautiful and The Damned, he would instinctively know his part and immediately come forward to comfort her.
Pleased with the rehearsal, Coco returned to her bedroom and stopped to study the one small invitation tucked into her frame of the dressing table mirror.
COCKTAIL PARTY
WHEN: 5–7 Friday, June 23, 1972
WHERE: Sherry and Matt Bradley
3601 Q Street N.W.
RSVP: 265–8097
Mumbling the address to herself, Coco put on a long white dress cut like a T-shirt, sprayed her arms with lemon-scented cologne, and ran downstairs to kiss the children good-bye. Deeply inhaling each of their different smells, while trying not to let them get fingerprints on her dress, she promised them lots of all-day fun on Saturday and then ran outside and down the block toward the fire hydrant that was her permanent parking place. Coco got into the driver’s seat, opened her window, listed slightly to the left like a carjock so that her hair would blow in the early-evening air, and burned rubber taking off around the corner. Once on Connecticut Avenue, Coco made a conscientious effort—at all the stop signs and stop lights—to pull up evenly with cars in the next lane so restless commuters could wonder who she was.
She turned up P Street and wondered if Mrs. Marshall had remembered to take in the milk and if Mike had replaced the wooden plank under the warped back gate after the delivery so that Happy couldn’t get out. The traffic in Georgetown was heavy. Coco remembered Maria (pronounced Ma-rye-ah) Wyeth in Play It as It Lays speeding through
southern California or Nevada, falling apart and flipping out—but only in the most scenic of settings at ninety miles an hour.
Deprived of drama, Coco’s sense of discontent became bloated. She turned so she could see herself in the rear-view mirror, and, surprisingly, the expression in her familiar tawny brown eyes was so terribly friendly and concerned that Coco felt fortified and her sense of quivering dissolution subsided.
The only parking place she could find in the smug, narrow Georgetown streets was four blocks past the Bradleys’ house. Coco was hot, smudged, and messy-feeling by the time she reached their front door. She entered the narrow, classically decorated living room that opened onto a patio at the rear, and stood inside long enough to observe the early guests, leaning toward each other in small intimate clusters. Coco felt a thrill of opportunity—a chill of the hunt—spill through her.
But then Sherry Bradley, who was standing near the French doors, trim and hard beneath a silk striped hostess gown, the late-afternoon sun frosting her streaked blond hair, looked up and spied Coco.
Coco sucked in her stomach, distended her chest, and engineered a smile.
“Coco.” Sherry floated into the long dim tunnel of her living room. “I’m so glad … where in the world is Gavin … oh, sure … lots of people will be late. I want everyone to stay forever.…”
“He’s bringing our house guest,” Coco murmured. “Suede Bellock. You know … he wrote Making Out.”
Coco moved through the French doors, with Sherry Bradley holding her arm in a department-store-detective pinch. “How lovely. That’s lovely. I just love National Book Award winners. And he’s so handsome.”
Coco made a quick survey for celebrities, acquaintances, enemies, competitors, superstars, Gavin’s mistress, losers, winners, and, of course, her own Perfect Lover. Perhaps he was here, at this very moment, standing with his back to Coco at the bar, where the bartender, imprisoned behind a long white-linen-covered table, was stirring requests. Perhaps in a brief moment Coco’s P.L. would turn … some enchanted evening … across a crowded patio … and see Coco … freeze … stunned … incredulous that his Co-Star in Life stood in the doorway … at the Bradleys’ of all places.… Cool and reserved, long light-colored hair curling softly over a white silk shirt collar, he would move negligently past the other guests like an adventurous explorer, his steel-gray eyes impervious to the beautiful people he brushed past, exploiting the absurdities of the party to assert his own superiority. Only he, her P.L., knew how to both ravish and dismiss any environment, rape the atmosphere to feed his mood, seize and sculpture time and space into an ornate, artistic frame for himself and his destiny. Walking as if on the prow of a ship, he would stretch out a Caribbean-tanned hand to claim Coco as she waited in the elaborate doorway in her shocking white gown, still virgin to authentic passion, submissive in surrender.
“Wouldn’t you like a drink?” Sherry asked. “The bar is over there.”
Coco smiled and moved forward toward the regal rental bartender. But Coco’s P.L. was not standing at the bar or anywhere else in the patio. The guests were only second-stringers—like herself—legislative assistants from Capitol Hill, contributing editors for small liberal publications, lawyers, attachés from Latin American consulates, and local television news commentators who would never make the networks. It hardly seemed worthwhile for Coco to conduct any business here, to run any tests, play any scenes, launch any ships.
Disappointed, she grasped her gin and tonic and quickly surveyed the horizon to find a harbor, or at least a cocktail-party-comfort station. Floating forward on an unpremeditated course, she navigated toward a small group and anchored herself along its edge. Two young Georgetown socialite types who were apparently executive-branch summer interns were speaking of government subcommittees and foreign and domestic policies with show-stopping fluency. Totally overshadowed, Coco stood silent as they drifted into a rap about George McGovern’s staff, which included a large assortment of their friends named Boo and Pooh and Tish.
Coco sipped her gin and then suddenly, unexpectedly, felt a cramp of terror lunge through her body, triggered by the possibility that one of these girls might be Gavin’s mistress. Perhaps one of the creatures with center-parted long blond hair brushing their cheeks had a thing for Jewish intellectuals. Perhaps the blondest girl (if blondness was relative) was the one who met Gavin for lunch before they discreetly taxied over to the Hilton. An older man, standing directly across from Coco, seemed to be addressing a question in her direction, and though Coco opened her mouth, ready to respond, the wave of conversation crested and subsided before she could speak.
The patio was becoming more crowded. Eventually several people Coco knew arrived, and then, defeated, she joined them and stood drinking in the early-evening shadows, waiting for Gavin to appear, picturing Suede gliding into the patio and beginning to circulate, casing the faces, picking himself a girl—a winner—whom he would quickly corner and begin to hustle, softly, steadily.…
But Coco had finished three drinks before Suede and Gavin appeared. When she saw them standing in the doorway, she moved forward gratefully and then instantly felt the rebuff of their combined disinterest. Suede grinned, as she walked toward them, but then looked away—skeptical but expectant—to see if he would be recognized, approached, and admired. Coco’s eagerness was instantly deflated by Suede’s compulsion to use parties as ego jerk-offs, so she quickly shifted her needs toward Gavin. But he too seemed remote and distracted; by the time she reached him, he was gazing out to the far corner of the patio toward the trellis of pink roses.
“Hi,” Coco said very softly, her voice thick from gin and disappointment.
“Hi.” Gavin smiled and gave her a vague embrace.
“Want anything from the bar?” Suede asked, impatient to be off to collect a drink and some tribute.
Then Sherry materialized beside them, smiling and delighted by the prize of a celebrity guest and a possible flirtation. Excitedly she took Suede’s arm, introduced herself, greeted Gavin, and then moved off to pass Suede around from guest to guest like a tray of canapés.
“Let’s get a drink,” Coco said, straining to capture Gavin’s attention; his eyes had paid her only superficial notice.
“Haven’t you had one yet?” he asked with brief interest.
“Two.” Coco smiled, feeling the word float out of her mouth into the rose-scented air. But Gavin was still staring beyond her, and Coco felt totally deprived and disconnected, as if her connection to her husband had been cut like a telephone wire.
“Well, hello, Gavin.” A large cumbersome girl in an Indian dress suddenly appeared next to Coco. She had a round, flat face featuring fat lips that were smiling toward Gavin. “Surprised?” She giggled, obviously happy to see him.
“Hi, Sylvia,” Gavin said, flushing as he reached out to shake hands. His face seemed to contract and tighten. “This is my wife, Coco. Coco, this is Sylvia Brydan, a client of mine.”
“Hello,” Coco said politely, for she had heard Sylvia Brydan’s name at N.W. Area Theoretical Council meetings. The girl made a swift grimace of acknowledgment toward Coco and then turned back to Gavin. “How’s the brief going?”
Gavin began what sounded to Coco like a law-review cram course.
“Sylvia’s one of the plaintiffs in the Channel Eight case that I’m handling,” he explained, suddenly pompous and solemn. “A group of female employees from the station are challenging the federal license renewal on grounds of discriminatory hiring and promotion practices.”
“Yes,” Coco said, “I know. It was in the newspaper.” She paused long enough to radiate extreme annoyance toward Gavin.
Apparently he was still enough in touch with her signals to receive the message, because he looked perceptibly more uncomfortable and tightened his thin narrow lips more closely together, sinking into a sullen silence.
Coco turned with scientific curiosity toward the young woman who was emanating such amazing amounts of unwarranted sel
f-confidence. Sylvia Brydan seemed totally uninhibited by the condition of her complexion, which was still flirting with adolescent acne, by the twenty pounds of excess fat around her hips and buttocks, or the undeniable fact that she had a most extraordinary commonplace face. Her loose cotton dress had small round mirrors and yellow elephants embroidered around the neckline, and as she shifted her weight from one dirty white sandal to the other, Coco saw she had enormous breasts that were spilling and flopping about inside her tentlike dress.
“Maybe I should get us some drinks,” Gavin said suddenly.
“I guess I’d like a gin-and-tonic,” Sylvia announced.
“I’ll get three,” Gavin said, moving off into the crowd.
Then Coco, feeling petite, composed, and sophisticated, smiled at Sylvia. “I knew you worked with the D.C. Coalition, but I didn’t know you were into television,” she said in a mature, generous tone of voice.
“I don’t work at Channel Eight,” Sylvia answered. “I just organized the women employees over there. The D.C. Coalition sent me in to help them get their shit together.”
“Oh,” Coco said. Eternally intimidated by the mysteries of organizing, she couldn’t think of a rejoinder.
The girl shifted her eyes and looked away.
After a few minutes Coco asked if a court date had been set yet. She was condescendingly informed in monosyllabic prose that there would be a hearing—not a trial.
But when Gavin returned, juggling three glasses, the girl erased her lackadaisical, surly expression and smiled eagerly—way, way, way up high—at Gavin as he distributed the drinks. “Suede Bellock’s coming over to meet you,” he informed Sylvia. “He’s doing an article for Esquire on different women’s-lib suits being brought into courts around the country, and he wants to talk with you. There’s a couple of other cases similar to ours in New York and California.”
Coco felt a great surge of anger pulse through her. Not only did Gavin have a secret lovelife, but even his legal activities had become private and exclusive. Her husband and his unattractive client were apparently bound together by ties much stronger than sex or marriage, and their closeness seemed offensive and affronting to Coco. Upset, she mentally exempted herself from the moment, and instead went into a pose, froze for a still—stomach taut, chest out, hair ruffling romantically in the warm breeze, lips and eyes glazed with mystery—ready for her P.L., who might be arriving late, delayed by a deadline.
Loose Ends Page 10
