by R. Gay
I slipped a cigarette from my pack and handed it to her. She reached across the table and snatched my lighter, jamming her other hand into the deep pocket of her dress and rocking back on her heels. The lighter snapped, the cigarette flared, and she exhaled a plume of blue smoke. She cocked her head to the side. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll see you again.”
I looked for her in the coffee shop after that, glancing furtively at the door, scanning the other tables. When I caught myself looking up each time the door opened, I pinched the inside of my wrist and picked up my pen. Days passed before I heard the voice again.
“You have such a graceful neck.”
I looked up from my sketchbook. The woman was standing over me with a gleam in her eyes. Her red hair was tousled beneath a crushed velvet beret and she wore a black shirt of raw silk. She was wearing the same collection of necklaces and bracelets as before. She gestured at the empty seat across from me. I nodded.
She slipped into the seat before I could say anything and began pulling items out of a tapestry purse: tubes of lipstick, a fringed scarf, loose change, a dog-eared address book. I watched her as if she were spreading out Tarot cards before telling my fortune. The woman found what she was looking for, a slim pack of cigarettes.
She squinted at me through the smoke, her jade eyes thickly lined with kohl. “Have you ever noticed how strangers will always say the same thing to you? It’s always beautiful eyes, what a lovely smile.”
She looked at me, arching one eyebrow, and tapped her cigarette against the rim of the ashtray between us. “I’d guess people tell you you’ve got beautiful eyes,” the woman said. “You’re not the type to smile often. But your neck is a swan’s, a dancer’s. Every time someone tells me I have a beautiful smile, I say all the better to eat you with!” She reached around her neck and undid a clasp. She held out a slim band of midnight blue velvet. “I’ve been keeping this for you,” she said. “It matches your eyes.”
I stammered something, waving the necklace away in protest. The stranger pushed the necklace across the table toward me, where it lay coiled between us like a viper. She jutted her chin at my sketchbook. “You an artist?”
I mumbled something. “Well, I draw.”
“What do you draw?”
“Plants. Flowers.”
“Looks to me like you draw ashtrays.” She winked.
“Sometimes I just draw whatever’s in front of me.”
The redhead stuck out her leg, turning it to the left and to the right, scrutinizing it, and hitched her black stockings up from the ankle. She rested her chin in her hand and considered me. My shoulders tensed; I waited for the inevitable questions, bent bobby pins working to pick a lock. “Do you draw people?” she asked. “Would you like to draw me?”
I lit a cigarette, fumbling with my lighter. I could see the woman sitting still as my hands moved over my sketchbook, capturing the planes of her face. I thought briefly of the old belief that images steal the soul. Could I steal a piece of someone’s soul with a portrait?
“I’m not very good,” I protested.
“You seem all right at ashtrays. How much worse could it be?”
Her name was Cricket, and the neighborhood she lived in must have been fashionable once, but the large houses were now subdivided, the yards overgrown. Shutters hung from their hinges, porches sagged; the street smelled of grease, aerosol, onions.
We climbed two flights of stairs to reach her apartment. It was almost bare, one long room flanked by chipped columns. French doors led out to a narrow balcony; the doors were open, their long white curtains billowing in the breeze. The room smelled faintly of cat urine. The walls were covered in peeling wallpaper, a muted assemblage of tea roses. Sycamores shaded the few windows and the room was gloomy with shadows.
At one end of the large room there was a futon bed, dressed in rumpled black sheets, beneath a narrow window bordered in stained glass squares. At the other end a writing desk was pushed against the wall. There was no other furniture. Suitcases and carpetbags were piled in a far corner; clothes spilled haphazardly across the floor, a sprawl of colors and textures. A large black cat with an opaque eye hunched on a pile of clothes, hissing when I passed.
There were shelves of brick and board at the head of the bed, weighed down with a stereo, paperbacks, stacks of CDs. Strewn with votives and tapered candles, the shelves gave the impression of an altar. Statuettes of the Virgin Mary struck various pious poses, looking heavenward or at their feet, hands clasped. Rosary beads and dried flowers hung from thumbtacks and the necks of the figures.
I asked her if she was Catholic, my voice too loud in the cavernous room. I glanced across the heavy shelves, at the tarnished silver crosses lying in dust and fragments of dried petals.
Cricket sat down on the bed beside me and lifted one of the Marys. “My mother’s mother was a nun and my father’s mother was burnt at the stake as a witch,” she said. “Have you ever been burnt at the stake? It’s an awful way to go. If the executioner likes you he piles more wood on the fire so you burn faster; if he doesn’t he lets you roast slowly for hours.”
Cricket smiled and ran her thumb across the Virgin’s placid face. “Me, I don’t believe in God, or God doesn’t believe in me. Either way it amounts to the same. You want to split a veggie pita?”
Cricket stared into the wan light of the fridge. It was as empty as the room. She grabbed two bottles of beer from the vegetable crisper and a take-out bag and walked back to the futon. She spread the fast-food wrapper out on the sheet and handed me a beer. I took a sip. It was dark, bitter.
Cricket asked, “Do you like Billie Holiday?” She rolled onto her stomach, fiddling with the stereo.
It was a hot day and a few of the windows were open. A sweetsmelling breeze drifted in, unfurling its willow green scent.
Cricket reclined, propped up on her elbow, and lit a cigarette with her free hand. The crescent of her breast was visible beneath the open neck of her shirt. I studied her, the beret, the silk, the kohl, the mass of bracelets at each wrist. I wondered what Cricket’s shirt would feel like if I rubbed the collar between my fingers. The fabric looked so thick and would be warm from her skin.
Cricket smoked her cigarette and I took long swallows of the beer, trying to finish it. The pita sandwich sat untouched on its wrapper between us. The cool breeze was distracting; it tickled at my skin and reeked of promise. “You don’t sound like a Texan,” Cricket said. “Where are you from?”
I told her about Boston and my father’s manicured lawn, the cobblestone streets and wrought iron lampposts. I talked about the college of stone and ivy and my mother the magician who made herself disappear. I talked about coming to the desert and the horizon that goes on for miles.
“What about you,” I said. “Where are you from?”
Cricket laughed and wrinkled her nose. “I’m from the meadow and the ice plains and the cities where the buildings are stacked on each other like books,” she said. “I was washed up on the riverbed in a crib made of birch bark. I rose up like a flame from my father’s cracked skull. I have no mother and no father.”
“Who are you, really?”
“Who am I? I’m a woman made of clouds. I’m only a dream. We’re all only dreams.”
“Cricket. That’s an unusual name.”
“Call me Cleopatra,” she said. “Call me Helen of Troy. I will call you Delilah, Andromeda, Proserpina. I will call you button and plum.”
The first time we had dinner together I wore a black cotton dress, the only dress I had brought with me to Texas. The moment Cricket opened the door, I knew the dress was a mistake. Hers was dark jade and the color made her eyes glow. Her hair was sleekly coiffed, a few tendrils framing her face. An emerald pendant hung at her throat from a silver strand. The assemblage of bracelets had been exchanged for wide twin bands of hammered silver.
And me in my black baggy dress, like an insect with a dark carapace: a dung beetle, a cockroach.
She had a
bottle of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. When she kicked the door shut behind me, she told me I looked smashing.
I could not return the compliment. I wasn’t going to fall for that. I bit my lip. We were off to a bad start, starting off with charity. I glanced around for a spot to sit and settled on the futon as I had before, brushing a drift of loose dollar bills from the sheets. I folded and unfolded my hands in my lap, leaned forward and backward, crossing and uncrossing my legs. I had underestimated the trouble of limbs and appendages, their limitless capacity for awkwardness.
Cricket did not sit, she did not pause, she was a dragonfly darting between cattails. She popped the top off a beer and handed it to me. She gathered bits of things and tucked them into her purse, checked her hair in the mirror, swept clutter from the kitchen counter into a drawer. She chattered and I offered murmurs and mumbled responses. I had fallen into a chasm in the ground, I was falling and falling, the light going dim above me.
Cricket fussed with hairpins, loose change, keys. She was chattering about the restaurant she was going to take me to, but I did not hear her. I worried about the dress. I saw a stain I hadn’t noticed earlier, a smudge on my lap; ink, most likely, wiped from my hands while I was distracted, drawing. The dress was sleeveless and I could not remember if I had shaved under my arms or if the deodorant I was wearing was the type that left residue like chalk dust on the skin. Would I have to spend the evening with my arms pinned to my sides? My heart hammered, my face felt flushed, there was a roaring in my head like the surf. Cricket was fiddling with her necklace in the mirror; she turned away for just a moment, and I glanced at the beer she had given me. The beads of perspiration on the brown glass stood out in sharp focus. I tilted the bottle and an amber juice sloshed across my lap.
There was perfect silence as I leapt to my feet.
“Your dress,” she cried. I held my breath. Then, mercifully, she began to laugh. The riot of her laughter dissolved my rib cage into a shower of stars and in that moment we were friends, conspirators, children.
“You can’t go out like that,” she said. “I’ll lend you something of mine.” She crouched in the corner of the room over piles of vinyl, satin, velvet, sifting through them as if she were about to deliver an incantation.
The shower curtain was mildewed, the toilet and sink mazy with dark cracks. Cricket walked in, shaking out a baby blue dress. There was a design etched into the fabric: palm fronds, tropical.
“You’re wearing my choker,” she said. She ran her finger approvingly over the band at my throat. I had put it on at the last minute, darting back in just as I was about to lock up, snatching it from the top of the dresser.
When she left, I lifted the black dress over my head and draped it over the metal shower rod, where it hung like a reproach. I was not, by nature, deceptive; this was my first ruse. A ruse, I thought. It made me feel clever. I considered the blue dress, holding it out with outstretched arms, debating whether to step into it or slip it over my head. I remember inching it over my hips, sucking in my stomach, holding my breath. Had I any belief in God, I would have prayed fervently not to hear the sound of the delicate fabric tearing. I managed to zip it up most of the way and smiled at my reflection in the mirror. I tried to arch one eyebrow, the way Cricket had in the coffee shop, but I did not know which muscles to move.
When I stepped out of the bathroom, Cricket moved to inspect me. She zipped the dress the rest of the way, swift as my mother had been at zipping me into winter coats when I was a child. “We should do something about your hair,” she said, talking more to herself than me. She pushed aside vials and bottles on the writing desk, picking out barrettes and a handful of bobby pins. I stood very still as she did my hair in that same brisk manner. Up close, she smelled like sweet cream. I could feel her breath warming my neck. I ran my hands over my bare arms when she stepped away.
“We’ll do something better with it later,” she said, smoothing down a lock of my hair. “You would look lovely with gold highlights.”
My shoulders sagged. I was Galatea: possibly lovely, if only someone would chip away the rest of this coarse stone.
What a night that was, that first night, how dizzying and horrifying and wonderful. I had never seen anyone make an entrance as Cricket did, sweeping into the restaurant, announcing our presence. I smiled at the maitre d’, hoping to catch his eye: There are two of us here, I wanted to say, stabbing my finger at his little book. Reservations for two. But he did not look at me as he led us to our table. As we moved through the restaurant, the diners paused, frozen, forks halfway to their mouths, as Cricket glided past them. She ordered wine for both of us, and I fussed overly long with my linen napkin, unfolding it in my lap and arranging it. What would I have to do, I wondered, to make someone notice me? Upset the table? Throw food? Set the draperies on fire?
Cricket leaned across the table. “You look great,” she whispered. “No one can take their eyes off of you.” Her smile was inclusive; I was grateful for it. Despite the warmth of the restaurant, I felt chilled, and I could not bring myself to look directly at her. My jaw felt pinned shut; I fidgeted with the silverware, moving everything over an inch, lining up the forks and knives and spoons so that their stems were even. I sipped at my ice water and discreetly, beneath the cover of the tablecloth, dug my thumbnail into the pad of my palm over and over again, leaving a red welt.
Cricket masked over my silence. She talked about the clothing shops in Austin, the ones she shopped at, which ones were overpriced, which ones had the tackiest, the cheapest, the trendiest merchandise. She dropped shop names like passwords into a secret world: Togs A-go-go, Glad Rags. The Good Foot, where you could find fabulous platform shoes and thigh-high leather boots in every color. She said fabulous a lot. This particular mail-order catalogue, Hellabore, was the best, the most outrageous. She had ordered a vinyl vest last month, lilac, zippered up the front and cut down to here, and they carried hosiery with seams. And as for music, she continued, well, you were in luck in Austin. You could walk into any of the little nightclubs squeezed together on Sixth Street and hear fabulous music: jazz, blues, swing, zydeco, hard rock, soft rock, reggae, ska—and what did I listen to? Oh, well, you could find that anywhere. The dance clubs, though—that’s where the real action was, house music, hip-hop, synth-pop, trip-hop, acid-house, techno, rave. We’d drop by her favorite spot after dinner. I was game, yes?
Cricket stabbed the air with her fork, slashed with the side of her hand, and made sweeping gestures as she spoke. I felt I should be taking notes, scribbling these names on a crib sheet, where Cricket shopped, where she went at night. But I couldn’t keep up with her; I was mesmerized by the birdlike motions of her hands, the exotic notes spilling from her lips like smooth stones, hip-hop, trip-hop. Perhaps beauty was contagious. Perhaps beautiful people were like phagocytes, those engulfing, cleansing cells, their luminous membranes reaching out to encompass their companions. I imagined myself being swallowed up in an epithelial layer, the mucilaginous film covering my eyes and transforming me, rendering me into a creature radiant and sublime.
“But who are you,” I asked her.
She laughed. “I’m a beekeeper,” she said. “I’m an astronaut. I’m the queen of a country that hides under the sea. Who are you?”
We went to parties under city bridges, in abandoned factories, dance clubs. Each morning as dawn broke we crashed into her room, knocking over empty wine bottles by the door. We collapsed onto the futon like daredevil divers, attempting a landing in a small pool of water from a great height.
Cricket had shoes with impossible straps, a dozen slim bands snaking up her ankle, wide buckles, intricate knots. Some nights she would lean over to undo them and not be able to complete the task. She would fall back, laughing. “I can’t do it,” she gasped. “Please, get them off me.”
“Why do you wear these things,” I laughed. The attempt to tease was a risk; I was made bold by gin and wine. I lifted myself from the futon, bending
over Cricket’s feet.
“Beauty…suffering,” Cricket sighed. “Like the Queen in ‘Snow White,’ the fairy tale, not the movie, forced to dance in white-hot iron shoes. That’s me. Oh, everything is spinning.”
“You might at least have one pair of sensible shoes, for dancing.”
“God as my witness, I will never wear sensible shoes.” Cricket laughed and laughed.
“You’re so difficult.” I remember my slight smile, then, indulgent. Finally the straps loosened and the shoe gave.
Cricket reclined languorously, stretching her arms over her. The soft skin on the inside of her arms was dotted with tiny red bumps. Mosquitoes loved her, she had said, her blood was so sweet. Her wrists were wrapped in dark leather cuffs.
“Difficult? Am I really?” She sighed. “I’m beautiful, though; that makes up for it. Tell me I’m beautiful.”
I laughed and turned away. My laugh sounded easy, a match for hers in the shadowy room. The other shoe was less tightly bound, and it slipped off Cricket’s foot as she rolled over onto her stomach. Her mascara was smudged, her eyes smoky in the moonlight. She had been chain-smoking and laughing loudly all night, and her voice had grown husky. I lay back on the bed, slowly. The room rippled around me, the walls buckling, the ceiling fluid.
I was not used to drinking then. The music at the parties was earth, the solid ground holding everything together, and the people swaying and maneuvering through the room were a harvest of flowers. Faces swam into my field of vision—corollas of beige, fawn, mahogany—and then out again. Cricket was always surrounded, men lighting her cigarettes, women laughing at her stories, never quite taking their eyes off her. I watched them watch her; I discerned, in that slight narrowing of their eyes, their distrust of her. They cast the same uncertain gaze on me, for my nearness to her. Their caution thrilled.