Up All Night

by Peter Abrahams

  “People can’t change what they are,” her dad said. His eyes were red. Her mom cried silently into a tissue. A burning sensation started in Maggie’s chest, a need for air.

  “I’m a homosexual,” her dad said, and Maggie felt as if she had stayed too long on the bottom, and her lungs had filled with water.

  After they hugged and someone made a joke, which they all laughed too hard at, and her mom asked if they’d want pancakes when they got back, Maggie and David went out for their run. He set the pace, a quick one, and the houses flew past in a numbing blur of ranch-colonial-faux Tudor.

  When they reached the turnoff at the neighborhood clubhouse, David broke the silence. “What do you think about Daddy? Weird, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Maggie said. “Weird.”

  “I always kind of knew. Didn’t you?”

  “No. I had no idea.”

  She waited for him to say something then. Oh, you poor, poor bunny rabbit. It’s okay. Not everything is a lie. You and me, kid, we’re gonna blow this one-horse gin stand and make electric wigwams till we’re rolling in butter-crunch ice cream.

  “Homos,” he said, picking up his feet, making her catch him. “They’re not just for breakfast anymore.”

  It’s nine o’clock, and Reunion Arena is packed for the sold-out show. Fans scramble to get their last-minute sodas and concert merchandise before Cheap Trick starts their set. The girls have skipped the opening act, which is some new wave group out of Boston that they don’t care about. Their seats are in the top balcony, the nosebleed section as her dad calls it, but it was all they could afford.

  “God, we’ll never see anything from up here,” Holly says, squinting at the stage way down below.

  “Who cares? We’re gonna meet them at the hotel, right, Mags?” Diana leans over to low-five Maggie.

  Onstage, several roadies do a sound check. Every time they say, “Check, check” into the microphones, the crowd cheers for them. It’s the kind of thing her brother has to do for Tower of Granite, and she hopes he’s right about Cheap Trick being at the Hyatt. He seemed a little out of it last time they talked. He has a new girlfriend, Tanya, and he calls home less and less these days. One time Maggie left a message for him with Tanya, and she wasn’t sure if he got it, because he didn’t call back for two days. When she mentioned it to him, he just said, “Yeah, well, that’s life on the road, babe.”

  A guy headed up the stairs stops at Maggie’s seat.

  “Hey, you wanna come sit with me? There’s an empty seat,” he says. He’s cute, with a great smile and long, dark hair.

  “No thanks,” Maggie says.

  The guy whistles. “Cold, man, cold,” he says, and goes up to sit with his friends.

  “Oh my god, that guy totally liked you—and he’s cute!” Justine says. “What’s your problem?”

  Maggie shrugs. “Not my type.”

  “What? Cute?”

  “He looks like one of those guys you can’t trust,” Maggie says.

  Justine laughs. “You’re weird.”

  Maggie wants to shake Justine hard. She wants to tell her that you can’t take everything at face value. People are like mirages, and from a distance they seem to be one thing, a cool spring, a date tree, a comfort zone. But when you get up close, they can turn out to be something you weren’t expecting at all. And it’s not like you can make them turn back into the mirage. You can’t say, “Please go back to being a date tree. I was used to the date tree.”

  The lights dim and the crowd roars. It hurts Maggie’s ears, but she’s on her feet anyway; they all are. The band takes the stage. From where Maggie and her friends stand, the rock stars look like small, shiny puppets. They break into their opening number, and the girls scream and dance in the row.

  “I can’t believe we’re gonna meet these guys later!” Holly shrieks, and Maggie feels good that she’s going to make that happen. She throws her arms around Holly’s shoulders and they bump hips, singing along with Robin Zander’s fierce growl, “Would ya like to do a number with me? Would ya like to? Would you like to? Would you like to do a number with me?”

  For a moment, Maggie forgets everything. The music carries her along and she lets it, floating easily on the surface of her excitement and expectation.

  An hour and a half into the concert, Maggie starts to feel funny. It’s hot, and the pot smoke, sickly sweet and choking, is heavy in the air. Maggie feels like she’s drowning. She needs air. She needs out.

  She stumbles down the row toward the exit, not bothering to say excuse me to anyone. Diana’s shouting something to her, but Maggie can’t hear it over the band. It’s like every sound is coming to her through waves of choppy ocean. She staggers into the bright hallway. The lights hurt her eyes after so much time in the dark.

  Five seconds later, Diana finds her. “Maggie! What the hell? Are you okay?”

  Maggie shakes her head. “I can’t breathe. It’s too hot. I need air.”

  “Okay,” Diana says. She fans Maggie’s face with the notebook-sized souvenir program she’s bought. The air feels cool and nice, and for a second, Maggie thinks about telling Diana about her dad. Maybe she would understand. Maybe she’d say, “I had no idea either!” or, “Jeez, you really ARE stupid. Everyone knows. How come you couldn’t see it?” Maybe she could tell Maggie how you let go, how you move on.

  Diana’s eyes narrow. “Oh my god, you’re not gonna pass out, are you?” she says, sounding panicked, and the moment is gone.

  Justine and Holly rush out of the concert hall, trailing a loud blast of music in their wake. “What’s the matter?”

  “Maggie needs air. We’re going,” Diana announces.

  Holly glances toward the section doors. “But they haven’t even played ‘I Want You to Want Me’ yet. You know that’ll be the encore.”

  “You can go back in. I’m okay,” Maggie says, taking two shaky breaths. “I’m okay,” she says again, trying to convince herself.

  “We can ask them to play it for us later when we meet them,” Diana says to Justine.

  They’ve reached the doors, and security warns them that once they leave the arena, they can’t come back in.

  “We know the drill,” Diana gripes. They step outside. It’s pretty warm, but not as stifling as it was in the arena. Maggie takes a steadying breath and feels her body returning to normal. Behind them the concert hall vibrates with sound. It’s the encore. “I Want You to Want Me.”

  “Your brother better be right about this, Maggie,” Justine grumbles. “Or I am going to be super pissed.”

  By eleven thirty, the concert is over. Rowdy crowds of rockers swarm the parking lot of Reunion Arena in T-shirts worn like coats of arms, showing their allegiances to the clans of Led Zeppelin, Bad Company, Styx, or Pink Floyd. Maggie has come in her own badge, a black-and-white Cheap Trick tee she bought on the last tour. A long-haired guy (clan of The Who) gives them a thumbs-up. “All right, man. Don’t smoke it all.”

  The girls race to the ramp that leads into the loading area of the arena, hoping for a glimpse of the band or at least their bus. Several girls line the ramp. Dressed in black spandex and high heels, with crimped hair and dark eyeliner, they seem older, though one looks to be about Maggie’s age. But there is something magical about them. They exude secret knowledge. They exude sex.

  “Groupies,” Diana spits.

  “Those pants are so tight,” Holly whispers, squinting. “You’d think she’d have panty lines.”

  “Duh, they’re not wearing panties,” Justine says.

  A fat guy with a walkie-talkie and an all-access badge waves the groupies down the ramp but stops Maggie and her friends. “Y’all cain’t be here. This is a restricted area.”

  “Is Cheap Trick coming out here?” Maggie asks.

  He shakes his head. “Concert’s over, sweetheart. Y’all need to get on home now.”

  “Come on. Please?” Diana flashes her I-want-peppermint-schnapps smile.

  The man folds his arms ac
ross his chest. He will not be moved. Behind him, one of the groupies flips them the bird before stepping through the privileged door to Wonderland.

  “Assholes,” Diana says.

  The girls push through the crowds in the parking lot. It’s a madhouse of revelers high on pot and music. Three guys in Live at Budokan tees sing “Surrender” at the top of their lungs. They dance in front of the girls, cutting them off until they can be cajoled into joining in with the chorus.

  “Mommy’s all right, Daddy’s all right, they just seem a little we-e-eird. Surrender, SURRENDER! But don’t give yourselves awa-a-ay, awa-a-ay—aaaa-aa-e-ay!”

  The guys break into applause. The one with a scraggly mustache says, “Hey, y’all wanna party? We’ve got—”

  But whatever he says next is drowned out. The night is alive with honking horns, whoops and hollers, car radios blasting a late-night collage of guitar solos, wailing singers, drumbeats, and smoky DJ voices. It ignites something primal inside them, a need to howl at the moon, to brand the night and make it theirs. The girls join the chorus of shouts.

  “Cheap Trick! Cheap Trick! Cheap Trick!” they call.

  Laughing, Maggie loops her arm through Diana’s, and they make their way toward the Hyatt.

  The Hyatt Regency sits beside a lighted dome tower that cuts into the city’s skyline like a weird architectural dandelion. There’s a revolving restaurant at the top of the tower, but they could never afford to eat there. The only person they know who’s ever been is Cecil Henderson, whose dad is a pilot for Braniff.

  They’ve smoked half a joint in the car—not much, just enough to give them all a pleasant buzz and a case of the giggles. They’ve sprayed themselves liberally with a bottle of Love’s Baby Soft that Holly carries in her purse because she has a primor-dial fear of having B.O. But it’s her special perfume, and she’s upset that they’ve used so much of it.

  “It’s not that I mind or anything,” she says, as they walk toward the Hyatt’s glass doors. “It’s just that I had to use my babysitting money for it.”

  “We didn’t even use that much,” Justine scoffs.

  “At that Barbizon modeling class I took? They said you should spray the air and then walk into the perfume so you don’t get too much. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “They weren’t getting high in the backseat of a car,” Diana says, rolling her eyes.

  Holly smiles. It’s what they taught her at Barbizon, and she’s never forgotten it. She smiles while her mother, the picture-of-the-Pope-on-the-dining-room-wall super-Catholic, tells her she’ll be going to a Catholic girls’ school next year. She smiles when she has to look after her five younger brothers and sisters on the weekends. She even smiled when she told them about her older sister, Mary, getting pregnant and being sent off to the Edna Gladney home for unwed mothers, though, truthfully, Holly could have been smiling about finally getting Mary’s room, which is the attic, away from everyone else.

  “I just hope it doesn’t smell too strong,” Holly mumbles.

  The rumor that the band will be staying here has gotten around. A crowd of about thirty or forty fans mills around in the lobby, and the security team keeps coming over to throw them out. There’s no hope of getting past the lobby—not even cute girls with quick smiles can charm the concierge and well-trained staff—so they take refuge behind a huge trough of potted ferns. The ferns are fake, but it’s hard to tell at first glance. Someone has even oiled the leaves to give them a just-watered sheen.

  “What do we do now?” Justine whispers.

  “We wait,” Maggie answers. “Pretend we’re staying here.”

  Holly chews her bottom lip, casts a nervous glance toward the desk clerk handing a room key to a man in a three-piece suit. “What if they stop us? What if they ask what we’re doing here?”

  “We’ll say we’re here with our parents and we’re supposed to meet them in the restaurant,” Diana says.

  A bellboy walks past pulling a luggage trolley, and Diana says to Justine loudly, “Your mom sure is taking a long time in the bathroom.”

  “She has female trouble,” Justine says back, and the bellboy hurries on his way.

  When the lobby fills with people, the girls see their chance. They break away and wander around the hotel, darting in and out of the gift shop, the restaurant, the piano lounge. In the lounge, a group of Japanese businessmen sits at a table beside a large tank filled with fish bright as gumballs. The businessmen stand and wave Maggie and her friends over. They offer to buy them drinks. Mai tais. Banana daquiris. Piña coladas. Drinks with names as exotic as a travel brochure. Vacations in glasses topped off with souvenir paper umbrellas, lacquered cherries.

  The girls exchange quick glances.

  “Will you excuse us? We’ll be right back,” Diana assures them before ushering the girls into the ladies’ room for an impromptu huddle, a game plan. They busy themselves with fluffing and preening. Justine throws her head forward, shakes her head vigorously. When she stands up, her hair falls around her shoulders like thick folds of silk. “Oh my god, y’all,” she says, putting one more coat of mascara on her spidery lashes. “Those guys must be seriously rich. Those mai tais are, like, four dollars each!”

  “Free drinks!” Holly says, and she and Justine high-five.

  Maggie hugs her purse to her middle. “What if they want us to go up to their room?”

  “Do you think they would?” Holly asks, wide-eyed.

  Diana shrugs. She pulls a tube of pink gloss from her purse and swipes the wand over her lips till they gleam with cheap drugstore sparkles. It’s the one thing of her mother’s she kept after Mrs. Tatum left to find herself at an ashram in Santa Fe. Her dad boxed up every last trace of her—the bottles of Avon rose eau de toilette, the Sears family photos, the macramé projects, half-finished canvases, David Bowie albums, sedatives still in their pill bottles, and broken sunglasses—and dropped it off at Goodwill, where the surprised church workers had no idea what to make of it all. “We’ve donated her life,” Diana said, and she and her dad never spoke of it again.

  Diana corrects a lip-gloss smudge with her pinkie nail. “We’ll let them buy us some drinks, then we’ll excuse ourselves for the bathroom and ditch ’em.”

  “What if they won’t let us go?” Holly asks.

  Diana gives her a hard look in the mirror. “Anybody can be ditched. You just walk away and you don’t look back.”

  The businessmen stand when they return, and Justine beams as one of the men pushes her seat in for her. They seem a lot older to Maggie now that she can get a good look at them, about her dad’s age. The one sitting closest to has uneven teeth stained with nicotine.

  “I don’t think we should do this,” Maggie whispers to Diana, who’s studying the drink menu.

  “Would you relax?” Diana snaps.

  Under the table, Maggie slips a hand into her Levi’s pocket and traces the outline of the dime there.

  Justine cups a hand to Maggie’s ear. “Order a mai tai. They’re good.”

  Justine’s comfortable in places like this. Her parents are professors, and they don’t care what she does as long as her grades are good. Once her mom caught her smoking cigarettes in the backyard, and all she did was hand her an empty Coke can for the butts. Mostly, her parents travel, leaving casseroles in the freezer and the numbers of the hotels where they’ll be staying. Sometimes they forget to leave the numbers.

  The waitress makes her slow march to the table. She has tightly permed hair with straight bangs in a wall across her forehead. She looks like she could be someone’s grandma; her skin crinkles at her elbows, and Maggie swallows hard, pretends to be bored instead of scared.

  “Four mai tais, two wine, one whiskey sour,” the man with the bad teeth says.

  The waitress shifts her weight and cocks a hip, and Maggie feels it in the quickening of her pulse. “I’ll need to see some ID from you ladies.”

  “Sure,” Diana says. She rifles through her purse. “Oh my gosh, y’a
ll. I can’t find my wallet! I hope I left it in the car!”

  “I cain’t serve y’all without proper identification.” The waitress draws out all six syllables.

  “I’m twenty-one,” Diana says.

  Maggie grabs Diana’s hand under the table. “Let’s just go,” she whispers.

  The businessman intercedes. “Twenty-one. Okay? Okay.” He points from girl to girl. “Twenty-one. Twenty-one.”

  The waitress’s lips press into a tight line. “Twenty-one, my eye. I may have been born on a Wednesday, but it wasn’t last Wednesday. You girls need to get out of here.”

  The girls don’t argue and they don’t wait. There is a mad grab for purses while the Japanese businessman keeps saying twenty-one; they manage an indignant saunter from the lounge, and then they break into a run, not stopping until they are in the lobby doubled over laughing.

  “Oh my god, oh my GOD!” Justine says between great hiccuping laughs. “I thought we were toast!”

  “We order drink for ladies,” Diana says, being ridiculous. “Make them drunk for fucky-sucky.”

  Holly screeches and clamps a hand over her mouth, removing it just as quickly. “Oh gross, gross, GROSS!”

  “They didn’t sound like that, Diana,” Maggie says, rolling her eyes.

  “Fucky-sucky,” Justine echoes, snickering.

  It’s like dominoes then. Holly laughs, and finally Maggie has to laugh too. They move down the fluorescent corridor, arms linked, the Four Musketeers of Suburbia, smiling brightly to passers-by, who look confused and slightly suspicious.

  They take the elevator to the sixth floor and walk the hall. A room service tray sits abandoned on the floor beside a closed door. The silver cover has been cast aside, revealing a forlorn half-eaten omelet, miniature salt and pepper shakers, two empty Dr Pepper cans, a lipstick-stained coffee cup, and an untouched piece of toast. Justine plucks the toast from the plate and takes a bite.