The Song Is You

by Megan Abbott

  “It’s not even two. King Cole’s booming until four o’clock closing.”

  “Maybe so.” Hop threw some bills on the bar, his eyes moving in

  and out of focus. “But I got someone waiting.”

  “A girl?”

  “Sort of. A wife.”

  It was only then that, in his bourbon haze, Hop remembered there was no wife. Hadn’t been one for almost a month. The only place to see Midge now was tucked in Jerry’s brown-walled bachelor pad on Bronson. It was the first time he’d forgotten and it made him feel lost, a ship knocking against a dock over and over that no one hears.

  That’s the booze talking, he assured himself.

  Driving home, he missed a turnoff and ended up heading toward Bronson, anyway. Some small voice in the back of his head whispered, But only if the lights are on. Then he figured, hell, until a few months ago he wouldn’t have thought twice about dropping in on Jerry at this hour. They’d drink brandy, reminisce about the war, talk about Jersey Joe Walcott or anything at all. That was back when Hop would do anything to avoid going home. Kind of like now.

  He wasn’t altogether sure what he was going to do when he got there. But that didn’t stop him from leaving his car teetering 0n the curb and running up the drive and the four sets of stairs to Jerry’s door, skidding on the last set of steps so hard he nearly tore a leg off his pants from the knee down. It was something about him wanting to see Jerry, like he always did, but now Midge was there and it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair at all.

  It seemed like he’d only been knocking for a second, but when Jerry’s face appeared he realized his knuckles were already sore.

  “Oh boy, you’re soused,” was all his friend said, and before Hop could blurt out whatever it was that was ready to press through from the dark tumult of his head straight out his mouth, he heard that familiar nasal pitch. A voice from behind Jerry, scrambling to make

  itself heard.

  “Get the hell out of here, Gil. No one wants to see you.”

  Midge.

  “Oh yeah?” Hop found himself jamming his hand against the door

  hard, knocking Jerry back a few feet.

  When he heard his own voice, it wasn’t the cool meter he’d imagined in his head as he’d trotted up all those stairs. It didn’t sound like himself at all. It sounded like the Hop only his wife could generate, spontaneously, like a disease.

  “Maybe Jerry wants to see me,” he said. Then, struck by his own petulance, he turned nastier. “Maybe I’m not here to take out the trash.” As soon as he said it, he regretted it. This wasn’t how he wanted to be, not in front of them, not now.

  Still, he kept going, battering forward. He moved past Jerry, ln a pair of striped pajamas that Midge must have bought—they were just the kind of smooth, shiny thing Midge was always buying.

  He pushed through the familiar space, the warm brown room with its wooden turntable and low lights and piles of books, long, tall bottle of scotch and shiny tumblers. And the new pair of acid-yellow

  cushions Midge must have purchased to brighten up the place, a garish splash that hurt his eyes, mustard on prime rib.

  It was only then that he got a good view of his wife, her arms tugging on the door frame to the bedroom, both hands, one above the other, gripping the edge. And she in a long robe with matching nightgown, black and filmy, like a high-class hooker.

  And it was also then that he saw she looked different. Her hair pinned up so tight, like a schoolmarm, a jarring disjuncture with the costume and the mascaraed eyes.

  He looked closer, and something clapped loudly in him and unfurled for miles, falling and falling faster still.

  “You cut off all your hair, Midge,” he murmured, his voice broken, broken to bits. “What happened to all your beautiful hair,” he said, fumbling across the room toward her, shin hitting the coffee table.

  Then, right there, despite her shocked face, he couldn’t stop his fingers from diving into the bright white-blonde curls, curls like spun satin under his nails, in the pockets of flesh between his fingers. Christ, how drunk was he?

  “Stop, stop. You ruin … you ruin … ” she stammered, a hand on his chest and then a hard shove.

  “All your beautiful hair,” he said, repeating himself helplessly, noticing, with a tremble, the stray platinum strand on his fingertip.

  Looking back at him, she said, finally, “You ruin everything beautiful.”

  Hop’s hands fell to his sides. “But, baby…”

  She pulled her robe together and straightened. “You lost, don’t you see?” she said, shaking her head, voice spiky. “You lost everything.”

  “Oh,” Jerry said suddenly, and both were reminded that he was there.

  Midge and Hop turned and looked at him, waiting for him to say more. But that was all he said.

  When he first met Midge, he thought she was the loveliest thing in the world, her heart-shaped face, pointy chin tilted, bow lips, just like a porcelain doll. But when you touched her skin, she was neither cold nor hard hut all nerve endings, hot and yielding, tensile and charged—two hands around her midriff (you felt you could wrap them around twice) and her back arched tight, and she’d shudder and ripple and undulate like some kind of wired animal. It was a kick, let me tell you. Who knew the price would be so high? Oh, Midge, I was your chump.

  “Operator.”

  “Yeah, doll. Can you give me the number for, um, Adair, Frannie? A-D-A-I-R.”

  “I have Adair, R, 812 Laveta Terrace.

  “Good enough.”

  He didn’t bother to call. It would slow him down. Out of the booth on Hollywood Boulevard and back into the car. Now no longer just drunk, but drunk and cracked open by his wife’s dainty high heel.

  It wasn’t a long drive, which, even in his condition, he could tell was unfortunate because it didn’t give him enough time to think about what he was doing. He just knew that after that bang-up with Midge he couldn’t stomach going home.

  When he approached the bungalow, he felt the weight of his own bad behavior, but it didn’t stop him.

  He walked up to the door and knocked.

  A moment later, a light went on and he could see Frannie’s red hair peeking out the front window at him. He could almost hear her curse through the wall.

  She flung the door open.

  “I was expecting a satin robe. Or maybe very soft cotton,” Hop said. He had been positive he’d wake her up. It was very late, he was sure. And in fact, he could tell by the long crease on the side of her face and the heavy look in her eyes that she had been sleeping. But she was wearing a wrinkled green shirtwaist dress and a pair of stockings. No shoes.

  She looked down at her dress and ran one tired hand through her tangled hair. Then she looked back up at Hop.

  “What the hell do I have to explain? You’re the one at my door at …” She looked down at her bare arm. “I don’t know where my

  wristwatch is.”

  “You wanna alert the neighbors or can you let a fella in?”

  “You smell like my old man. How many does that make? Must be at

  least four hours of steady bourbon.”

  “Yeah? And you?”

  “A girl’s gotta have some social life. But I’m straight now. Can you

  say the same?” She opened the door wider and walked into her living room. Hop followed.

  Sinking down into her sofa, he looked at her, trying to keep steady. Christ, how many had he had? What the hell was he doing here?

  She brushed a hand over the wrinkles in her dress.

  He was torn between his own private misery and his natural instinct to want to ask her about her night, about the kind of evening Frannie Adair had that sent her to bed before she could manage to unzip her dress.

  ‘You got your shoes off,” he noted, instinct winning out.

  “I think they fell on the floor,” she said, rising. “I’m getting some water. Do you want anything, bright eyes?”

  “Pinch of someth
ing? Might as well keep going,” he said, leaning back against the cushion for balance.

  As she poured the drinks and he had a brief minute alone, he started to feel rotten again, lost his own footing, and remembered the scene at Jerry’s, and the scene before that at the King Cole.

  And then she was handing him a short glass of brandy and she was drinking a tall tumbler of water and something happened. Something knocked loose inside him and suddenly he could hear his own voice talking, talking nonstop, about how he’d seen Jean Spangler the night she’d disappeared, about how Marv Sutton and Gene Merrel— yes, that Sutton and Merrel, silver-tongued crooners, fleet-footed dancers, the whole song and dance—had joined them at a little dive called the Eight Ball. And how they’d taken her off with them and how he didn’t know for sure what happened but that he knew everything had turned very bad somehow.

  She listened. She listened very closely. She watched the words issue from his mouth in long, taffy strings. She let him hang himself, pull by pull. Then, finally, she said:

  “What exactly are you saying? That Sutton and Merrel were involved in her disappearance?”

  “Involved, involved. What does that mean? Far as I knew, they were just fixing to take turns, that’s all. I don’t know. I had left. I had left, Frannie Adair. I only found out the next day. And I never thought it was so bad. What I did. But now I think I may have missed something. I may not have realized what I did. Could I be the guy she said I was?”

  “She? Spangler?”

  “No. No.” “

  “Who?”

  “I’m not getting into all that,” he said, something in him whispering, Keep her name out. Keep names out. Iolene, whoever. You’ve already fucked it up enough, Hop, why can’t you stop talking? “Why am I here, anyway?” he mumbled. “I can’t believe I went over there. What a jackass. I should never drink. My head feels like a sponge full of quinine. I’m a lousy bum, Frannie Adair. Why did you let me in?”

  “Listen, at lunch you said someone came to see you. Was she the girl you left the Eight Ball with?”

  “No, no. Not her. Let me tell you something, baby,” he said, leaning forward. “Midge, she had the most beautiful hair. I wish I could explain. Like a … like a river of gold running down her back. Do you believe it’s all gone?” He heard the words issuing from his mouth, but they kept surprising him. It was just so comfortable there

  —the yielding sofa, Frannie listening, hair rumpled, smelling like fresh sheets and open windows—he couldn’t stop.

  “Who’s Midge? Is she the girl who came to see you? The one who’s scared?”

  “Midge’s never been scared a day in her life. Midge is my wife.”

  “You’re married,” she said, leaning back in her seat. “Sounds about right.”

  “And the thing is, Frannie Adair, I never thought that I, Gil Hopkins, who everybody always loves, just loves, could make anyone —okay, a woman—so angry.”

  It was true. He’d always thought of himself as the kind of soft-touch, glimmer-eyed boy who begs to be smoothed over with mother love. The kind that women just wanted to curl around the feet of, like little honey kittens. Sadly, as it turned out, he was not this kind of man at all. Somehow, he was the fellow in the cartoon, the comic strip, running out the front door, pants half on, with a frying pan zooming toward his head—zzzzing—thud. He guessed it wasn’t Midge who had started it, but it sure felt that way. Her love like a slug in your drink.

  “I wonder why Jerry let her cut her hair,” Hop said abruptly.

  “Who’s Jerry—her hairdresser?”

  “No, Jerry Schuyler.”

  “Our Jerry? At the Examiner? What’s he got to do with it?”

  “You know, Frannie—can I call you Frannie?—you know what Midge said to me? The last thing before she left me. She said, ‘What, did you think you could keep throwing us together again and again, talking hot about me to Jerry and Jerry to me, practically shoving us both under the covers, and we wouldn’t end up like this?’ And yet, Frannie, here’s the funny part,” he said. “I was surprised.”

  She gave him a long look, reacting to something in his voice. Something funny.

  Then, gently, she said, “Jerry doesn’t seem the type to steal a fella’s girl.”

  “He’s a right guy,” Hop said, meaning it. It felt funny to hear himself mean something so much. “A stand-up guy. He’d give me the shirt off his back.”

  “So you gave him the wife off yours in return?”

  “My, but you’re smooth.” He finished his drink and raised it above his head, saying, “There goes another potato.”

  When he left (”I like to leave before I wear out my welcome”), he could no longer fight a sinking feeling, but he distracted himself by looking at Frannie as she walked him to the door. He stopped at the threshold and looked at her. She seemed to have the most open face he’d ever seen, at least since those Syracuse girls, snow nestling in their ringletted hair, skating around the pond behind church, making larger and larger circles, figure eights, twirling endlessly, smiling at him and waving.

  “Good night, Gil Hopkins. Sleep it all away.” “You too,” he said and, unable to resist the urge, reached out to touch the sheet crease still faint on her cheek.

  The next morning, he couldn’t remember if she’d smiled or just shut the door.

  He woke up many times during the night, propelled from dreams so vivid he was sure Jean Spangler was there crouched under his tangled sheets with him. In all the dreams, she was the same blank beauty, a glamorous maw with no center. Even in his unconscious, he couldn’t imagine a personality, even a sole trait for her. She was What Went Wrong. In one dream, he crawled straight inside her gorgeous violet mouth and found himself right back where he started, listening to her flat, inflec-tionless voice issuing word after word, none of which he could really discern—it was a low, dull stream of nothing.

  The cold-hot of drunken sleep covered him head to toe, shot through periodically with the slow realization of everything he’d said and done the night before. He couldn’t have possibly gone to that girl reporter’s home, could he? He, the professional juggler of newsmen, the light-and-shadows artist forever dangling, then withdrawing, promises of sexy secrets and sexier lies, couldn’t possibly have gone to a reporter’s house and held forth on the carpet, no charge, no trade, tales dark enough to kill a half dozen careers, especially his own? Not him. He was the master of keeping his mouth shut, could practically count on two fingers the number of people in this town who knew his full name. Power in withholding. It’s what every smart woman ever taught him, and the not-so-smart ones, too, by bad example-

  You give anything away, you might as well give everything away.

  Still, the more his thoughts took hold and he was able to distinguish his recollection from his frenzied dreams—the things he said from the things he merely thought while saying other things— the more he had to face the grim truth.

  He’d told Miss Frannie Adair a lot. And he was going to have to fix it, fast.

  He had no one to blame but those two girls so hard on him the last few days—Iolene and Midge weighing him down, he who so depended on being light on his feet, always moving, never sitting still.

  As the sun finally crept under his blinds, Hop, half awake, forgot for a second about everything, other than a wave of brief pleasure at the flickering dream image of Iolene’s coffee-with-cream thighs. But the image didn’t wake up with him, just settled into his body, his bones and joints, nuzzled for a second, then passed. In its place twitched the memory of the Midge hubbub. That sure woke him. The clock read 7:30. He had to clear the murk from his head. He had to get out of bed. It was Saturday, right? Yes. Thank god.

  Ten minutes later, he’d managed to make it to the bathroom, to the pulsing shower and then the medicine cabinet to scrape a night of bad living from his face. As the fog on the mirror slowly evaporated and the shaving cream slid away to reveal his bright, forever bright face, he began thinking straight for
the first time in twelve hours. For a second at least. Then:

  That goddamned wife, like a little girl, pulling off the legs of insects, one by one. First she steals his best friend for herself, then she gets him so worked up that he goes off and spills his guts to a professional megaphone.

  And who was this Iolene, anyway? Christ, he barely knew the girl and she’d managed to throw his life into some kind of crazy funhouse mirror in a matter of days. She’d tapped into a tiny reservoir of guilt, of sympathy, of something, and now he couldn’t untap it. Iolene.

  Still …

  Facts are, Hop, you fucked up. You have to admit it: you have only yourself to blame. You gotta fix it.

  First, Frannie Adair. What does she know and what does she plan to do with it?

  “City desk.”

  “Frannie Adair there?”

  “Not yet, pal. Call back later.”

  “She comes in today?”

  “She’ll be in to file. She’ll be at the courthouse today. Say, who is

  this, anyway?”

  Okay. Okay.

  He made some coffee and got dressed.

  As he drank a cup, scalding and bracing, he thought hard.

  Okay, I’m Frannie Adair, junior reporter out to prove my chops. What do I know? I know Jean Spangler met up with high-wattage stars Sutton and Merrel the night she went missing. I know they were looking to have a party with her. That’s it.

  What don’t I know?

  He thought hard about this. He never told Frannie where Jean Spangler and the others had moved on to after they left the Eight Ball. The name “Red Lily” never passed his lips, he was sure. He never said who else was there, except that there was another girl he left with. She doesn’t know who that girl was (of course, neither does he). He never said anything about his story to the police, about his lies, half-lies, and whatever else he used, because, let’s be honest, he’d used everything he had.

  So if I’m Frannie, he thought, and I’m as smart as she maybe could be, what do I do with what I know? I don’t go straight to Sutton and Merrel’s people. Instead, I work the angles, the curves, the corners. I work the cops on how they missed Spangler’s evening jaunt. I work the Eight Ball. I work me. Hop, that is. Good luck there, Frannie Adair. Last night, you got the biggest piece of me you’ll ever get.