Freeze Frames

by Katharine Kerr

  “Who are you?” Nick says. “What are you doing here?”

  “Part of the troupe. Don’t be so uptight, man. Hey, Kenneth said to come on down, they were gonna do something trippy, and so we came on down. There’s a couple of bands on the way, too, and some comedians.”

  “Comedians? I hate comedians! I don’t want any stinking comedians here.”

  “Yeah? So what?” The leopard pulls his paw free and hisses with a show of fang. His eyes flash green behind his spotted mask. “Who do you think you are, pal? God?”

  With a snarl Nick turns away. John finds a place to stand out of the way between two cardboard columns; in the fluting, electricity pulses twixt the parallel lines. Nick trots back and forth, asking each girl in turn if she’s seen Helen, but no one seems to have the slightest idea who Helen might be. By the time he fetches John again, Nick’s face is scarlet.

  “Never should have trusted that little bastard,” Nick mutters. “Come on. Maybe she’s materialized out in the audience.”

  John grins, starts to speak, looks past him, and finds that all words fail. Walking between two columns comes a young woman, her blonde hair piled high above her perfect oval face. Gold shimmers at her throat and dangles from each ear. Although she wears the same Greek costume as the dancers, hers is made not of gauze but real linen, thick-woven and well-worn. Nick sighs in sharp relief.

  “There she is,” he whispers. “Now what did I tell you? Tits out to here.”

  “Shut up!” John snarls. “Just introduce us, okay?”

  The gongs sound again. A man’s voice wails, rising and falling upon ancient words. Helen turns to listen, her head tilted, one delicate hand raised as she pauses, half-smiling until she glances their way and sees Nick. For a moment she goes rigid, her head back, her cornflower-blue eyes narrowed.

  “You could at least act glad to see me,” Nick says. “Come over here, sweetheart. Someone I want you to meet.”

  Helen smacks him back-handed across the face with a much-ringed hand. When Nick jumps back, swearing under his breath, John strides forward to catch her hand and kiss it. For a moment she seems to be about to strike him in turn; then she smiles. She inclines her head in his direction and allows a second kiss upon her wrist.

  “Why don’t you guys get acquainted?” Nick says. “See that door right there? Walk on through and get out of the noise.”

  A door that John has somehow overlooked before stands open among the stage machinery and flats. Sunlight streams through, and the scent of roses.

  o~O~o

  Aunt Linda arrives at six o’clock, sweeping into the living room in a cloud of White Shoulders cologne. She’s a little too stout for the blue striped minidress she’s wearing, her lipstick is way too red for anyone, but when she sees Shirley’s moue of disapproval, she laughs like bells ringing.

  “Live a little, Shirl,” she says. “Margie! It’s time you taught your mom how to live a little.”

  Maggie grins and hugs her.

  “I’m trying.”

  “Good, good.” Linda disengages from the hug and holds her at arm’s length. “God, what have you done to your hair? You look like you should be wearing one of those Bavarian boob-pushers, those weskit things, y’know? With those braids all wound round your head like that. You look better with it down, honey.”

  Shirley makes a sound very much like a growl.

  “Let it all hang down,” Linda says. “Isn’t that what you kids say, let it all hang down?”

  “Let it all hang out.” Maggie finds herself laughing. “Well, Mom likes it better this way.”

  “Okay. For the sake of peace in the family I’ll shut up,” Linda says, grinning Shirley’s way. “Let’s go eat. I’m starved.”

  Inside the smorgasbord, a narrow place with white walls and painted scenes of Sweden, the warm air hangs thick with tobacco smoke and the scent of brown gravies, one congealing over the sliced turkey and cornbread stuffing, the other drowning meatballs. Maggie takes neither, loading her blue and white plate with salad and bread. By the time the three women sit down in a blue vinyl booth and lay their food upon a grey formica table, Maggie feels oddly dizzy. The area round her mouth has turned cold, but at the same time she feels sweat drops forming on her forehead. Fortunately, neither Linda and Shirley notice, busy squabbling as they are over the length of Linda’s dress. Eventually Linda dismisses the subject with a laugh.

  “Hey, kid,” she says to Maggie. “You okay? You look a little pale.”

  “It’s stuffy in here,” Maggie says. “Don’t you think so?”

  Linda does not, Shirley does, and the discussion reminds them of their teen years, when during World War II Linda volunteered at the local USO canteen, handing out sandwiches and coffee to sailors in rooms much stuffier than the present one. Shirley was not allowed to join her until she turned eighteen, near the war’s end. While they squabble over which of them might have flirted with whom, Maggie attacks her salad. Lately she’s found herself ravenously hungry at every meal, even though she’s begun to worry about her weight—she seems to be putting on water, mostly, round her middle. She assumes that she’s just got the munchies, but in truth, she stopped smoking marijuana some weeks past, when suddenly and for no reason the drug began to taste like insects had died in the stash.

  A reason which had never occurred to her presents itself at the end of the meal, when she and Linda troop off together to use the tiny ladies’ room. As she washes her hands, Maggie notices her aunt studying her. She glances at the reflection of her hair in the mirror, finds it reasonably tidy.

  “Hey, kid?” Linda says. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

  “Oh shit! Uh sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I’d say the same thing if I was in your place. When did you have your last period?”

  Maggie thinks, counting in a growing panic.

  “A long time ago,” she says at last. “Like, maybe I should have had one, well, oh no, really, ah shit, I guess I’ve skipped a month. Like, uh, at least.”

  Linda sighs, leans against the white tiled wall, and contemplates the roller towel.

  “Don’t tell your mother just yet. We’ll get you the test first, okay? Sometimes it’s just nerves, being late.”

  “Okay, yeah.” For a long moment Maggie stares at her reflection in the mirror, then begins to pull the hairpins out of her braids. “I’m getting a headache from all this weight.”

  “Take it down, yeah. You look better with it down, anyway. Uh, look. Think the guy will marry you?”

  Maggie stops with one braid drooping and a handful of pins.

  “I don’t want to marry him. I never realized it before, but I don’t want to marry this guy.”

  “Oh jeez, kid, be sensible. Why not?”

  Maggie hesitates, but she knows that she’s speaking to the one person in the world who would never betray her.

  “He’s a drug dealer.”

  “Well, goddamn!” Linda sags against the wall with a shake of her head. “Pardon my French, but yeah, you’re in a real mess, aren’t you? You can get rid of it, y’know, and don’t worry about the cost. I’ll take care of that. I can ask around at work to see if I can turn up the right kind of doctor. And there’s always Mexico.”

  “Thanks. Aunt Linda, I don’t know what I’d do without you. I mean, like, thanks, really thanks.”

  Who would buy a cow if the milk were free? Tramp, slut, cheap, chippie, fallen woman. They’re only after one thing, you know. They get it and then they drop you. Talk about you in the locker room. Ruin your reputation. A bun in the oven. Never hold your head up again. What decent man would want you now? Knocked up.

  “You gonna faint?” Linda says.

  Maggie considers, but what she feels building is rage.

  “No,” she says. “I was just thinking.”

  “Good. Too bad you didn’t do that earlier, huh, but oh hell, we women never do, do we? Not when it’s love.”

  During the trip home Maggie lets her mother dr
ive the new car while she sits in the back, watching her mother’s and her aunt’s heads, as she so often has on little drives like these, to restaurants and shopping centers, to the homes of other relatives. She wonders what her mother will say if she finds out, when she finds out. Shirley always does find things like this out. She will cry, Maggie supposes, cry and carry on and rage that Maggie is killing her, that she’ll just die, never be able to hold her head up again if anyone ever finds out. After some hours of this she will blow her nose and listen when Linda tells her to shut up and be sensible.

  Besides, Maggie reminds herself, there’s no use in worrying until she’s had the test, which will take a while, anyway. They inject rabbits, don’t they? And then see if they act pregnant. Takes days and days. Yet, the more she thinks about it, the more she’s sure she’s pregnant, sure that she should have listened to Rosie and gone on the Pill, sure that what lies ahead is weeks of either trying to convince some doctor that she’s crazy so she can have a legal abortion or of taking Aunt Linda’s offer for an illegal one, weeks of whining and snivelling in front of men who will decide her fate.

  Unless, of course, she keeps the baby? Some women do, these days, keep their illegitimate babies and raise them. Bastard. Love child. So what? It’s mine.

  The rage grows and blossoms to a grin. Maggie settles back into the seat and crosses her arms over her chest.

  o~O~o

  With John and his spectral lover tucked into an odd corner of the astral plane, Nick feels that he’s finally regained control of this ancient story, which for a while there seemed to have a mind of its own. He leaves the stage area and strolls up a side aisle of the theater. On stage the ritual proceeds in a confusion of girls and fake animals, circling round and round widdershins while the officiant androgyne screams out chunks of Crowley’s text and throws handfuls of glitter into the chanting audience. Clouds of incense drift this way and that. Eventually, Nick supposes, he should put in an appearance, a guest spot, as it were, but at the moment he only wants to get away from the rock music pounding out of too many speakers.

  From the lobby, stairs lead to the balcony, where the incense hangs thick but the music sounds considerably quieter. Since he seems to be quite alone, Nick sinks into a loge seat, puts his feet up on the seat back in front of him, and spreads out his arms to either side. How long will Dr. Lucky stay occupied, he wonders? Days, most likely, plenty of time for the next act of this little tragedy to play itself out. Once he’s danced round the stage a bit, he’ll leave Lucky where he is, then go back to the house. Nick checks his watch, which doesn’t keep the usual sort of time. Yes, Maggie should be arriving shortly, full of despair, weeping and wringing her hands. He’s looking forward to this particular scene. All the way along the little bitch has been threatening to ruin things, to deflect, somehow, the familiar sequence of events, but now he has her, good and proper.

  With a sigh he gets up, then notices that a man, his head shaved clean and glittering, is standing at the railing to overlook the crowd. Wrapped in a black cloak, the fellow shakes his head and mutters, “No no no, I mean, really!” Someone with good taste in these matters, then, if not in clothes, and Nick marks him carefully for further acquaintance before he leaves to go downstairs.

  o~O~o

  Although Maggie has been planning on staying overnight at her mother’s house, she knows that if she does, she’ll blurt out her newfound secret. On a wave of excuses she gets her overnight bag and takes her aunt’s offer of a ride to the bus stop. Linda would drive her all the way home, of course, but Maggie prefers being let off on Mission Street, right where San Francisco ends and Daly City begins, and the 14 Mission electric trolley reaches the end of its line. As she tells Linda, she needs to think.

  “Yeah, do that, kid. You find out about the pregnancy test, okay? UC Med Center probably does them, or there’s that free clinic.”

  “Right. I’ll call you when I know.”

  “Do that. Well, it’s kind of too bad.” Linda pauses for a genuinely sad sigh. “You’re turning out just like your old auntie. I guess Shirl was right, all those years. I am a bad influence.”

  “Depends on how you define bad.”

  “Yeah? Well, take care of yourself, kid, and call me.”

  “I will. Don’t worry.”

  Maggie scoots out of the car and trots to the corner, where a bus stands waiting, glowing against the night. It’s a transfer ride home, and a slow one, jerking along Mission all the way to 18th Street, where she can pick up the 33 Ashbury line. The first part of the route runs bleak, through crumbling art deco buildings and Forties wartime stucco, the bubbled paint turned gruesome by the blue light of street lamps. At 30th Street, Mission turns prosperous. The new Safeway Store glitters in the middle of a full parking lot. People hurry along the sidewalks or stop to talk with friends. Store fronts and paper banners advertise in Spanish, here, and Maggie, hungry again, finds herself thinking more about tacos than the future.

  At her transfer point, fortunately, stands an all-night taqueria and doughnut shop. Maggie fishes for change in her pocket, finds enough for a cheese taco and a maple bar, buys and consumes both, licking her fingers, before the Ashbury bus finally arrives. By the time it gets over the hill to the Haight, jerking round sharp corners and climbing only to swoop down fast, Maggie is regretting her meal. She gets off a block early, afraid she’s going to heave into the gutter like some wino, but the cool night air clears her head and settles her stomach. Is she really going to be able to go through with this, being pregnant for six or seven more months?

  As she walks home, Maggie is considering plans. If she doesn’t have an illegal or quasi-legal abortion, she’s going to have to move out on John, because she refuses to raise a child among so many drugs, and she knows that he’ll never give up dealing. The dealing itself has hooked him, far more deeply than any drug could ever do. It’s the danger, the adrenaline rush, she supposes. LSD, after all, is chemically speaking a close relative of that natural high—or so the lore of the Haight runs. Maggie wonders at herself, that the danger she’s taken for granted for months has now become unacceptable, and all because she thinks she’s pregnant. Perhaps she’s not? There remains that possibility, of course. She’d better say nothing to John until she knows.

  Maggie lets herself in the rusting gate and hurries up the porch steps, where she meets Nameless Girl going out, wrapped in a Navy blue pea-coat that smells of patchouli. For a moment they stand in the spill of light from the open door.

  “You’re back?” Nameless Girl says.

  “Yeah. Is Lucky home?”

  “No, he went somewhere. Nick’s around.”

  Involuntarily Maggie grimaces. Nameless Girl leans a little closer, her voice confidential and quiet. Her eyes glaze, out of focus, and a pink flush lies across her cheeks.

  “He’s the Devil, y’know. Nick I mean.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure.”

  “No, really. You can see it when you drop. Mr. Mephistopheles, like in that poem. Or was that a cat? In the poem I mean.”

  “Oh come on! You’re loaded.”

  “Sure. So what? That’s how I know. You can see a lot of things when you’re loaded.” Nameless Girl cocks her head to one and considers her. “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”

  “Oh shit! Can you see that too?”

  “Yeah. See what I mean? Watch out for Nick. He’s a mean motherfucker.”

  “You think I don’t know?”

  “Better’n me, probably. I gotta go, man. Catch you later.”

  Nameless Girl wanders off through the litter and the garden, heading for the gate on Page Street. Maggie watches until she sees Girl get safely onto a level sidewalk, then goes inside. No matter how she tries to talk herself out of it, she finds herself believing in those acid-soaked revelations, both of them.

  In the room she shares with John, Maggie tosses her overnight case onto the bed, then sits down beside it and picks up the phone from the floor. She can feel rather than hear the
pulse of rock music from the ballroom below. She should call Rosie, she supposes, and arrange for an escape hatch, as it were, when she and John have the inevitable fight over the baby, but she knows that Rosie, secure in her new flat over in Noe Valley, will always take her in. Maggie puts the phone back and gets up, pacing back and forth, wondering where John might be. Making a delivery, maybe? But not if Nick’s still at the house.

  At the sound of someone opening the door, Maggie turns round to find Nick, in fact, standing in the doorway and smiling at her. He never blinks, does he?

  “Old Nick,” Maggie says aloud. “Old Harry, too. Yeah, I should have seen it before this.”

  “Ah shit!” Nick stomps into the room and slams the door behind him. “Too damn clever for your own good, aren’t you?”

  “Or for yours. What happened to the cloven hooves? I guess a pair of cowboy boots will cover anything.”

  “Mock all you want, but I’ve won.”

  “Won what? Are you loaded or something?”

  “Oh, shut up.” Nick glances round the room. “You sure you don’t want to go to a church to pray? The atmosphere would be a whole lot more classy. Dramatic, you know. You could clutch the altar and weep.”

  Maggie sets her hands on her hips. She decides that Nameless Girl’s crazy rap had made her temporarily crazy, too: Nick isn’t some kind of devil—he’s a nut case.

  “What are you talking about, man?” she says.

  “Well, you’re pregnant, are you? Knocked up. Ruined!”

  “Oh give me a break. Yeah, I’m pregnant. So what?”

  “What do you mean, so what? He’ll never marry you now.”

  “I don’t want to marry John.”

  “Even if he did marry you,” Nick goes on as if he hadn’t heard her, “it’ll be a bust. Everyone will know. The girls will pull off your veil and the guys will scatter chaff.”