Rainey Royal

by Dylan Landis

  “Maybe Zola’s happening.”

  Leah blushes so hard she is sure Rainey can hear her capillaries expand over the phone. Her brain starts mocking her. Naïveté’s happening. Proclivities are happening. How does Rainey sense these things? But maybe Leah can sense things, too. Maybe Rainey never noticed, in high school, the current between Tina and Howard flowing so strong it electrified the follicles of Leah’s hair.

  “I’m running an experiment,” she says. Lawrence looks up from the data book and starts to talk. She makes wild arm movements in his direction.

  “Don’t tell me,” says Rainey. “You’re studying what happens when you put crazy lying ex-wives together with tall sexy lab technicians who don’t know remotely what they’ve gotten into.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” says Leah.

  OH, FUCK. YOU KNOW why Zola lied? Leah wouldn’t have come, that’s why. She has rat duty in the morning, and when Zola steps out of their taxi on Tenth Avenue, Leah can see they’re not at a nightclub. Meaning it’s not like Area or wherever people go.

  And Zola—impatiently tapping her foot on the sidewalk, which is sort of her way of laughing—Zola is not a hostess.

  For evidence Leah has the orange-neon silhouette glowing in the window—a homunculus of hair, bosom, and flank, burning against black glass. Then there’s the name, Treasure Chest, and the truck-rumbled neighborhood, not the best.

  “I don’t think so,” she says, and steps back off the curb. But their cab has pulled away.

  Zola tugs her, in pulses, back onto the sidewalk. “Ten minutes,” she says.

  Leah’s silent. It’s less entangling than yes.

  Zola says, “There are two little things you have to get straight.” Leah shakes her head. “Your drink,” says Zola, “and your cover story.”

  Hail another fucking cab, says the cerebral cortex. But somewhere around the brain stem Leah’s also thinking: Move and she drops your hand, is that what you want?

  “Tonight,” says Zola, “you order Jack and ginger. Or Jack and Coke.”

  “Why?”

  “Because all the girls do,” says Zola, “and trust me, in this business, you don’t want to stand out.”

  “I’m not in this business.”

  “If a customer talks to you, be sweet.”

  “No customers,” says Leah.

  Zola swings Leah’s hand like a child. “If he asks why you’re there, say something mindless. Say you’re writing an article on exotic dancers, if it makes you happy.”

  “For what magazine?”

  Zola snorts. “He doesn’t care what magazine. He’s going to say, Really? You a writer? Or Really? You a Virgo? Say yes. Be nice.”

  “I’m not going in,” says Leah. “There are naked people in there.”

  “Not really,” says Zola. “The men have to keep their clothes on.”

  “I can’t.”

  Oh, and her name—

  Her name, Zola says, is Lacey. An alliterative to Leah. An easy, cheerleader Lacey. All blonde hair and boyfriends. Lacey Chase, two words that slide on the same string easy as pearls.

  But Zola is just Zola.

  “I gave up my last name when I was fourteen,” she says. “You won’t find a trace of me anywhere.”

  “FREDDIE, I’D LIKE YOU to meet my girlfriend, Lacey.”

  Is that girlfriend as in girl friend, or girlfriend as in girlfriend? Leah’s brain starts chewing on it: one word or two? Then it stops, distracted by the slightly seductive note—deferential, with a twist of helpless—Zola’s taking with this Freddie.

  The man turns on his barstool and inspects them. His eyebrows step down toward the bridge of his nose, and his hair is pulled into a ponytail. He wears a black jacket over a navy T-shirt. Leah hates that, black with navy. It took her all of college to get used to black with brown.

  She spends about two seconds on Freddie, however, because a woman is doing something fluid on a stage behind him. The woman wears shiny black panties that lace at the crotch, and something papery bristles out of her waistband. A misnomer, waistband—this garment stops way south of her navel. Leah stares a little harder, realizes she’s looking at money. Bills, folded and refolded lengthwise, inserted under the elastic at the hip.

  Also, she has no top on, which Leah finds mesmerizing, and one breast is larger than the other, which she finds revelatory. Why isn’t this a disqualifying flaw?

  “Your girlfriend Lacey,” Freddie repeats, and Leah realizes he’s watching her watch the dancer. She looks back at him with alarm.

  “Mm-hmm,” says Zola musically, “the one I told you about.” Told him about? “We’re going downstairs now, okay?”

  A thought floats into Leah’s brain: She’s afraid of him.

  “You do that,” says Freddie. “See you real soon, Lace.”

  Zola leads her past the stage and through a curtain of plastic beads, clicky and clear like drugstore diamonds, and down a flight of stairs. Under bare bulbs, Leah watches their shadows spill ahead of them, then slink around behind. She follows Zola into a basement bathroom marked ADIES.

  “Congratulations,” says Zola.

  “On what?” Strange, why a toilet area so obviously crawling with microbes would also be brilliantly lit.

  “You passed.”

  “Passed what?” Leah is thinking she means some kind of girlfriend test, the way Leah looked at that dancer.

  “Your audition,” says Zola. “You can take your clothes off anytime now.”

  It turns out there’s a biological basis for those cartoons where a person’s eyeballs pop out. Leah feels air cooling her eye sockets. “You lied to me,” she says. Her red hair blares at her from the mirror. “Ten minutes are up.” Though she would like to stop and watch the dancer for a minute on her way out. Maybe two minutes, if no one notices. She could stand far away, near the door. “I can’t do this,” she says. “I can’t do any single part of this.”

  Zola upends her makeup bag into the sink—big clatter of Maybelline, tweezers, loose change. “I didn’t lie.” On tiptoe, she nudges a dark line along the rim of an eyelid with a short pencil. “I said I was taking you to work.”

  Leah marvels at the ice forming deep in her fingers—classic fight-or-flight.

  “You’re out of your mind,” she says. Fly or die.

  Zola taps a sign by the towel dispenser. It’s lettered in careful capitals and cheaply framed, like an old diploma.

  “Homework,” says Zola. “Read. There will be a quiz.”

  HOUSE RULES

  DANCERS IF YOU ARE LATE FOR YOUR SET YOU WILL

  BE FINED $5 “PER MINUTE”

  ANY DANCER LATE 3X IS “OUT”

  TIPS ON STAGE ONLY. ANY DANCER WHO ACCEPTS

  TIPS “ON THE FLOOR” WILL BE FINED $25

  DANCERS MUST WEAR PANTY HOSE

  ANY QUESTIONS SEE MGMT.

  “No,” says Leah. Though she finds the sign, all regimental with rules, curiously calming. The sign implies a structure to things where she had presumed chaos.

  Bare bulbs light up Zola’s hair, ringlets both flawlessly turned and wild. “You think I’m not serious.” She puts down a compact, rummages in her tote, and hands Leah a balled-up pair of panty hose. Sheer. Sandalfoot. Size D, the tallest. Leah’s size, in fact. Leah is what people like to call a tall glass of water, and sometimes she thinks she is about as interesting.

  Where is a good, shapeless lab coat when she really needs one?

  “No,” says Leah, and starts laughing. Somewhere deep inside, a brake slips. “No,” she says. Even without the laugh, it sounds slightly hysterical, this no. It almost sounds like yes, this no. “This is crazy,” she says. Thinking: My breasts are the same size. I am a symmetrical person having an asymmetrical crisis.

  Commandeer the sole toilet stall; slide the bolt. Tap the door. Base.

  The stall is sordid at a cellular level, with amoeba-shaped overlays of dirt on the tile. An old toothbrush would be nice, and some Clo
rox, because she can tell no one has ever scrubbed this grout. It’s a nasty microbial crust, this grout. Bacteria are probably in the throes of cell division all over this grout.

  She studies the graffiti, hoping for some perspective, and encounters several permutations of FREDDIE IS A SHIT.

  And she was wrong about something else, too: the law of gravity does not apply down here in Basement World. Indeed, the floor has already let go of her feet, and she is fully three feet off the ground, consequence of forgetting to breathe, when the bathroom door wheezes open. Fingernails click on the door of her stall.

  “Hellooo? This is not funny, honey. I’m desperate.”

  Leah peers at Desperate’s feet under the door. Black toenails—painted, not bruised. A high arch. Personally she’d use pumice around the heels, but with those shoes—spiky, strappy—no one’s going to inspect.

  “Zola,” says Desperate, “could you explain to your friend? I can’t afford another ten-dollar pee.”

  Jesus, how many people were expecting her tonight?

  Zola says calmly, “Lacey? Are you listening? You can go in the sink for all I care, but you have to get out fifteen seconds ago.”

  “I can’t,” says Leah, but she concedes the stall, still holding the balled-up panty hose. Desperate shoves past her, a discordant blur of peach satin and blue-black hair, and Zola, still engaged with the mirror, thrusts a lipstick in Leah’s direction. Makeup—that’s why they burn so much wattage down here.

  “What’s a ten-dollar pee?”

  It’s a new lipstick Zola hands her, color like blackberry stain, tip sharp as a knife. Then she touches the back of Leah’s hand, whispers. In the mirror, Leah sees her lips move. In her hair, Leah feels her breath. What gets lost are the words. And as it turns out, she cannot lip-read from memory.

  You are beautiful.

  No.

  Do this one thing for me.

  No.

  Don’t you know where you are, my heart? This is the brink.

  No.

  Just open your arms and fall. Fly or die.

  Zola’s back at her makeup. And Leah can’t ask. But here is one thing she can do. She can commune with this vampire lipstick. She can incise a blood-black heart along her upper lip.

  No hour with Rainey has felt this dangerous, this close.

  Desperate barges out of the stall, says, “God, I never learn,” jockeys for a sliver of mirror, pursues something in her teeth, then flings the door open, talking straight through. “You’re Zola’s friend, right? You’re the virgin, right? You need a Tums? Listen,” she adds, as the door severs their connection, “you’ll be great.”

  “No,” says Leah.

  “Delilah,” says Zola, like that explains everything.

  “What’s a ten-dollar pee?”

  Zola turns to her again, takes Leah’s chin in one hand, wields a pencil. Midnight blue.

  “You’re better than many,” says Zola, drawing a curve along Leah’s eyelashes, then smudging it with a pinkie. “Didn’t throw up. Didn’t back out.”

  “No,” says Leah, “this is not happening,” and curls her toes around the edge of the cliff.

  TRASH

  Her mother said, I’ve had it with detangling this hair. Rainey, sit still. Gordy, you try it. Start at the bottom and comb.

  Her mother said, Will you look at this drawing, Howard? Who draws an antelope in kindergarten? Will you stop playing for one minute and look?

  Her mother said, You just got yourself a job, Gordy. She sits so still when you do it. Look, she doesn’t breathe.

  Her mother said, The problem with a pet is you are tied to it forever, so no.

  Her mother said, When you sew a dart, leave a tail of thread and tie it in a knot.

  Her mother said, Your father is the most charismatic man I’ve ever known. There is nothing he could ask me that I wouldn’t do.

  Her mother said, That’s a sleepover, baby. When I go into Gordy’s room? Mommies can have sleepovers. So can Daddies. It’s not just little girls.

  Her mother said, Every morning I go up on the roof at six o’clock and pray for twenty minutes. It keeps me from coming apart. Her mother said, Coming apart, coming apart—it’s just a crazy thing I feel.

  Her mother said, Every woman needs a signature, and mine is tea-rose oil. You don’t need to hear this when you’re eight, do you? But you need to make your mark as a woman. You might as well think about it now.

  Her mother said, We’re having one of those grown-up parties, baby—close your door tonight and stay in your room.

  Her mother said, Rainey Royal, you baste like a dream. That is the neatest hem in New York.

  Her mother said, It’s like having two husbands, I swear to God, except neither of them provides.

  Her mother said, If you don’t like what goes on in this house, Rainey, don’t be a part of it. (Her mother did not say what to do if it was already a part of her.)

  Her mother said, You can keep your groupies, Howard. You can keep your loverboy Gordy—that is one sick friendship. I want something real in my life.

  Her mother said, Sometimes I go sit by the washing machine, Howard, just to escape the fucking jazz. I don’t care how good it is.

  Her mother said, Rainey, sometimes a woman has to do something for herself.

  Her mother said, Say something.

  Her mother said, I’ll write, I promise.

  Her mother said, Maybe in a few years you can live with me.

  Her mother said, We’ll see.

  TINA’S GRANDMOTHER DIES, AND Rainey stays four days on East 101st Street. She sleeps in Señora Colón’s narrow bed and folds the dead woman’s enormous clothes. She makes Tina eat. She follows Tina slowly up the aisle of a packed church and watches, shocked, as Tina presses her lips to the dead woman’s forehead. Cath, give me strength, she prays, and bends to kiss what feels exactly like the old, veined marble of Lala’s kitchen counters. Thank you, Tina whispers. She has barely spoken in days.

  Rainey comes home to a front hall footprinted with dry mud that no one has mopped.

  “A pipe broke downstairs,” Rainey’s father says from the piano. “We got the plumber out of bed.”

  Rainey runs down to the basement utility room. It’s empty now, swamped with two inches of water that flow out to form a delta of muck.

  She stalks back into the parlor. “Where’s my stuff?”

  “I’m composing.” Howard teases out a flutter of high notes.

  “Where are my boxes from the utility room?”

  “Your boxes? It looked like trash.” Howard stops playing, tries a short variation, stops again. “Everything got soaked. I threw it out. Tax records, too. We better not get audited.”

  “It looked like trash? My mother’s clothing looked like trash?” Rainey can catalog every piece. She packed it away when she was thirteen, when Linda left: a Marimekko miniskirt, an Indian-print jumper, a wardrobe Linda stitched herself on a secondhand Singer before it died.

  Howard sets his palms on his thighs, turns to Rainey, and says, as if explaining simple arithmetic for the third time, “It should have been thrown out years ago. When she took off, if you ask me.”

  “I had photo albums in there.” Rainey wraps a long hank of hair around her finger, pulls it taut, and fights the temptation to chew on it. “I had her bangle bracelets.”

  “You could have told me, Daughter,” says Howard. “I opened the boxes and saw wet clothes.”

  “I don’t care if they’re soaked.” The hair sneaks into Rainey’s mouth. “I’m bringing them back in.”

  But now she can’t recall if she saw boxes at the curb when she came home. She can’t remember if any townhouse on the block still had trash on the street. Maybe garbage trucks came while she was comforting Tina and inhaling Tina’s boyfriend, Eric. Eric is a tattoo artist who etches scenes of old New York—ships, buildings, even battles—down people’s arms and backs. The rules say she cannot steal Eric. The rules do not say anything about standing ver
y still, one inch too close, admiring the golden hairs on the arm that guides the needle.

  “I’m sorry, babe. You should have written on the cartons.”

  Rainey dips her head back to look at the ceiling cherubs.

  “I can’t move,” she says, and this is true. She is scoured out.

  Howard snaps his fingers twice. Rainey still stands with her head tipped back.

  “Look, if it’s such a big deal,” says Howard, “your aunt Laurette’s a clutter hound.”

  Rainey sees Laurette about once a year, maybe twice—lunch, it’s always lunch, and it’s always at Tom’s, never at home; and it’s got to be a tuna-fish sandwich; the rest of the menu might as well be toxic. Howard might mock her for going, but Rainey likes to hear Laurette talk: her aunt has her mother’s voice.

  “I see Laurette sometimes,” she says cautiously. The clutter-hound thing is news to her.

  “Then you know,” says Howard. “She’s kind of a shut-in. A little nuts. But she might have things that belonged to Linda.”

  “HOW DO I KNOW you’re not with the landlord?”

  “ ’Cause you know me, Laurette.” Rainey traces with a finger the marker scars on the lobby wall and leans into the intercom. “Please, I just want to talk to you about my mom.”

  “I can’t know who you are.”

  “Come down and look.”

  “My niece doesn’t come to my apartment. No one comes to my apartment.”

  “Laurette, just come down and see.”

  “Wait there,” says Laurette.

  Rainey has time to finish her cigarette before Laurette descends the lobby stairs in flip-flops and comes to the glass front door. Her thick, crinkly hair is unbound, and three silver rings flash from one hand as she lets Rainey in. “You’re not supposed to come here,” she says, stepping back.

  “Don’t be mad.” Rainey follows her into the lobby. Instead of pressing the elevator button, though, Laurette sits on the steps. Rainey leans against the mailboxes and twirls her hair, hoping she looks endearing. She has no idea what the problem is. “Can’t we go upstairs?”