“Hello, boys,” she said in a silvery voice as she placed her right high heel on the little round table between our chairs. A red rose was tattooed on her ankle. “My name’s Chantal.”
She bent forward at the waist and then back in some twisty ballet move. The line in her calf tensed. I leaned close to smell the flower. I could see a scuff within the gleam of her high heel, and I had the strange urge to polish it with my tongue. Her black hair was straight and glossy, and when it whipped close to my nose I smelled lilac, in a field, with bees buzzing. Or was that just my blood?
It doesn’t take much to break down my defenses, does it?
“Did you boys ask to see me?” she said.
“Uh, yes,” said Skink in a suddenly weak voice. “Yes, we did.”
She kept to her slow twisting, leaning her upper body over Skink as she said, “And what’s your name?”
“Phil,” he said. “The name’s, uh, Phil.”
“Just like that cute little groundhog,” she said. “And you look like him, too, with that gap in your teeth. So what can I do for you, uh, Phil?” Her voice dripped with a promise more languid than lascivious. “What do you like?”
“Oh, I like everything,” said Skink, “yes, I do.” He shook his head, gathered himself. “But we’re not here for me. We’re here for my friend,” he said, jabbing his thumb toward me.
“Oh,” she said, “is this a bachelor party?”
“Of a sort,” said Skink, “seeing as we’re both bachelors.”
With her foot still on the table, she faced away from me, showing off a tattooed shepherd’s crook on her lower back, and then leaned backward, farther and farther, until her spine bent like a bow and her hands reached the far armrest of my chair. There was a white dove tattooed on her right shoulder. Her face was inches from mine.
“Hi,” she said in that Tiffany voice as her body bent and surged to the rhythm of the music. “I’m Chantal.”
The place suddenly grew hot, as if a furnace had sprung on.
“Hi, Chantal,” I said.
“Do you like pinball? I like pinball, how the shiny little balls bounce around crazily. Just the way your eyes are bouncing around right now.”
“Are they?”
“Oh, yes. Be careful not to tilt.” She laughed, a sweet little girl’s laugh. “And what’s your name, honey?”
“Don’t you recognize me?” I said.
A blankness washed across her face as she examined me before she forced a professional smile onto that gorgeous mouth. “Of course,” she said. “How are you? It’s so good to see you again. Thanks for coming back.”
“You’ve never seen me before, have you?”
“No, I have, really. You’re so sweet, and so good-looking, how could I not remember?”
“Then what’s my name?” I said.
“Your name?”
She pushed herself off my chair and slowly straightened her long torso. She took her lovely shoe off the table, stepped back, stared at me for a moment like I was crazy, looked at Skink, then again at me.
“Is it Bob?” she said.
The humiliation of it all brought me back to my senses. I straightened my pants, stood up, closed my jacket as best I could. “Let’s go, Phil.”
“Wait just a second,” said Skink. “No need to rush away when things is just getting interesting. Do us a favor, sweetheart, and tell us your name?”
“I told you already,” she said, her voice suddenly not so silvery.
“But you only told us half. Chantal what?”
“Just Chantal,” she said. “We only have first names here. Like Cher. And Beyoncé.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Just like. And I suppose Chantal’s your real name.”
“Sure,” she said with a light laugh. “Just like Desirée is Desirée’s real name and Scarlet is Scarlet’s real name. And don’t even get me started on Lola herself.”
“Lola, huh?” said Skink. “Who is she really?”
Chantal leaned forward toward Skink, lowered her voice to a conspirator’s whisper. “Sid,” she said.
Skink burst out in appreciative laughter.
“What’s this all about?” she said. “Why are you asking so many questions? Are you guys cops?”
“Do we look like cops?” I said.
“He does,” she said, indicating Skink. “You look more like a high school guidance counselor.”
“We’re looking for someone,” said Skink, “and we thought you might be her.”
“Am I?”
“No,” I said. “You’re not. We’re sorry to take up your time.”
“So who is it you guys are looking for?”
“A girl name of Chantal,” said Skink. “Just like you.”
“Chantal who?”
“Chantal Adair.”
She stared at us for a long moment, stared at us like we were specters from another world who were shimmering in and out of her reality. “Are you kidding me?”
“Why?” said Skink. “You know her?”
“Look,” she said, backing away and crossing her arms over her chest. “I have to dance, okay. It’s my turn on the stage.”
“Are you her?” I said.
“The farthest thing,” she said.
“But you do know her.”
I took a step forward, gently put a hand on her wrist. She looked down at my hand, then up at my face.
“What’s your game?” she said.
“We’re just looking for a dame, is all,” said Skink.
“Well, if you’re looking for her, you’ll be looking for a long time,” she said. “Chantal Adair was my sister. But she disappeared two years before I was born.”
She smiled tightly, put her hand on my chest and pushed me away before she turned around and walked toward the bar. She leaned over it, arms still crossed, looking as if she had stomach cramps. She began talking to the bartender, talking about us, we could tell, because he was glancing our way. He gave her a drink, she downed it quickly.
“I guess she’s not the one,” I said.
“Worth a tattoo if she is, mate. Got to give her that.”
“Yeah, but the name isn’t hers.”
“Her real name’s Monica, Monica Adair,” said Skink. “But it seemed worth a shot, what with the fake dance name and the real last name both matching the tattoo.”
“Yeah, I suppose. It’s a little weird, though, don’t you think, using her missing sister’s name to dance to?”
“She’s a stripper, which explains a lot. I knew a girl out in Tucson—”
“I bet you did,” I said, “but I don’t really want to hear about it right now. I’m going home.”
“I think I’ll stay around a bit longer.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Research, mate.”
“Your enthusiasm for the job is heartwarming.”
“I got a second possibility on the tattoo front. Since this didn’t pan out, I’ll set up that one.”
“Another strip joint?”
“Nah, something a little more technical. I got me a guy what—”
Skink stopped in midsentence, which was a rare and wondrous feat. I followed his gaze, to see what had interrupted his chain of thought. It was Monica Adair, coming back our way, a strange smile on her face. She walked right up to me and put her hand on my arm.
“You never told me your name,” she said to me.
“Victor,” I said.
“Are you leaving, Victor? So soon?”
“I have to get home. Big day tomorrow. Big day.”
“I’m up next on the stage, but then I can get out a little early. Sid owes me. Are you hungry?”
“It’s kind of late, don’t you think?”
“Oh, Victor, it’s never too late to eat. And if you want, while we eat, we can talk about my sister.”
19
It’s not every day you sit in a diner with a stripper while she talks about a saint.
“Did you ever learn about St.
Solange?” said Monica, her voice still silvery and childlike. Inside the confines of Club Lola, where every woman was there solely to satisfy a man’s most puerile urges—long limbs to wrap you tight, abundant breasts to suckle—the voice fit in perfectly. But here, in the Melrose Diner on Passyunk Avenue in the hard heart of South Philly, it was more than passing strange.
“No, never,” I said. “My people weren’t much for saints.”
“Not Catholic?”
“Jewish.”
“That’s too bad. Nothing is as comforting as a saint in times of stress.”
“I prefer beer,” I said.
She had taken the night off after her stint on the stage—a stint full of enough tricks and stunts to make even a politician blush—so she could talk about her sister. And I must say she cleaned up nice, did Monica Adair. Usually that expression refers to someone all dolled up for a change, but it was the opposite with her. In a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, sneakers, her makeup wiped off and her glossy hair pulled into a ponytail, she looked like the prettiest, most wholesome college kid you’d ever want to meet. But all it took was for her to open her mouth for you to realize she was also a total wack job.
“My mother is crazy for them,” said Monica. “Saints, I mean. Saints and plates with paintings of clowns. My sister and I were each named after the saint on whose feast day we were born. Chantal was named for St. Jeanne de Chantal, the patron saint of parents separated from their children, which I suppose is a little sad, considering how things turned out.”
“What about you?”
“August twenty-seventh, the feast day for St. Monica of Hippo. The patron saint of disappointing children. Are you going to eat that pickle?”
“No,” I said. “Help yourself.”
She reached over and plucked the long green sliver from my plate, snapped it between her teeth.
“It could be worse, though,” she said. “We could have been named after the clowns. Could you do me a favor and straighten your tie?”
“My tie?”
“Yeah, it’s a little off to the side. The other way, right. Stuff like that drives me crazy. Or untied shoelaces, or specks of dust on a lapel. And I wash my hands a lot. Is that weird?”
“If I worked where you worked, I’d wash my hands a lot, too.”
“Why?”
“I’m just saying—”
“I think they keep it quite clean.”
“I was just—”
“But St. Solange was always my favorite saint,” said Monica. “She was this shepherdess in France who took a vow of chastity when she was, like, eight. Then, when she was twelve, the son of the count on whose land she grazed her sheep put the moves on her. She refused him, so he pulled her off her horse and chopped off her head.”
“Nasty,” I said.
“But then, and this is what I like, apparently she rose up after she was killed, picked her head off the ground, and carried it into the nearby town and started preaching. It was like nothing could stop her from getting out her message. She would have been perfect on the Today show. Could you imagine Katie Couric doing the interview?”
“Talking head to talking head.”
“But the way St. Solange kept preaching even when she was gone, that’s what I feel about my sister.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She disappeared before I was born, but it’s like she still talks to me. It’s like she’s been talking to me every day of my life.”
I leaned closer, searched for a sign of insanity on her pretty face. “What does she say?”
“Are you going to eat the rest of that sandwich?”
“Probably not,” I said.
“Can I have it?”
“Knock yourself out,” I said, but even before I said it, she was reaching for the half of the corned beef special that was still on my plate.
“Mmm, that’s good,” she said after she took a bite. A shred of coleslaw hung from the corner of her mouth before she wiped it away with her finger. “I get so hungry after I work.”
“Tell me about your sister?” I said.
“Oh, Chantal, she was like a saint herself. The darling of the neighborhood. She was only six when she disappeared, but she was already special. She loved church, loved animals, took in a bird with a broken wing, a stray dog. I have a dog. Luke. He’s a shar-pei. The one with all the wrinkled skin?”
“I don’t know it.”
“From China. Not Luke, I picked him up in Scranton. The breed, I mean. Quite an aggressive sort. Don’t mess with a shar-pei. Don’t play accordion either. That’s about the sum total of my advice on life.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“And anchovies.”
“What about them?”
“I don’t know, I’m still up in the air about anchovies. A little too salty, don’t you think? But they’re not bad on pizza. Chantal liked pizza, and french fries. But especially she liked to dance. She was, like, great. My parents still have old movies of her in her outfit, doing her routines. They watch them all the time. She was on that Al Alberts Showcase. Do you know the one on TV on Sunday mornings? With all the local talent?”
“Yeah, I remember it.”
“She did a dance solo on it once. The Amazing Chantal Adair. Tap, with little red shoes. I still have those shoes, like Dorothy’s ruby slippers.”
“What happened to her?”
“No one knows. One day she went out into the neighborhood to play, like she did every day, and never came back. It was in the papers for months. The police were all over it, but they never found anything. Not her body, not a ransom note, nothing. It’s like she clicked her ruby tap shoes and disappeared.”
“That’s awful.”
“Yeah, it is.” She reached over to my plate and swiped a potato chip. I pushed the plate toward her, and she took another. “It destroyed my parents. They had me to try to make up for it, but I wasn’t quite enough, so their disappointment was doubled. They’ve never recovered.”
“What do they think happened?”
“Everyone just assumed she was murdered somehow. There was an old rummy in the neighborhood that was acting weird, but they could never pin anything definite on him. And then a rumor had it that some guy in a white van had been trawling the neighborhood for kids.”
“It’s always a white van, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, why is that? I have to remind myself that next time I rob a bank I should use the brown van. That’s the second time you looked at your watch. Do you have someplace you need to be?”
“It’s just late,” I said. “And I have to be in court tomorrow.”
“Something important?”
“No, just a custody thing.”
“It sounds important to me. Who do you represent?”
“The mother.”
“That’s nice. I’m all for mothers. Do you know who the patron saint of mothers is?”
“No.”
“St. Gerard. He was accused of getting a woman pregnant and refused to speak until he was cleared.”
“He must have had a good lawyer.”
“You ever shoot a gun, Victor?”
“Never.”
“I have one. I’ve never used it, but one day someone’s going to break into the wrong apartment and bam.”
“What with the dog and the gun, Monica, I think I’ll stay out of your neighborhood.”
“Oh, Luke. Luke wouldn’t hurt anyone. And that one guy in the park, well, he was smoking, and Luke has this thing about cigarettes. But I don’t think she was murdered. My sister, I mean. I don’t think she’s dead at all. Remember the girl that was supposed to have been burned to ashes in a fire, but it turned out she was stolen and living somewhere in New Jersey?”
“I remember.”
“I think that’s what happened. I think Chantal was taken someplace, taken because she was so perfect, and given a perfect life.”
“By who?”
“By someone who loved her very much.”<
br />
“It’s nice to think it, I guess.”
“I feel her presence all the time, like she’s close, looking over my shoulder, looking out for me. That’s what I meant when I said she’s my St. Solange. Gone but still preaching. Chantal guides my life. Because of her my life has a purpose. I was conceived to fill a gap. That it hasn’t worked out so well is a little sad, but still, it’s more than most people have. That’s why I use her name at the club. As a tribute.”
“I’m sure she’d be touched.”
“Really?” she said, her smile blinding, as if I had complimented her on her hair. “I hope so, though I expect she’ll let me know sooner or later.”
“You think after all these years she’ll just up and call?”
“Oh, Victor, I don’t just think it. I’m certain of it. How about some pie? I could go for some pie. Do you think they make pie here?”
“I’m sure they do,” I said.
It wasn’t lost on me that she didn’t ask anything about how I had come up with her sister’s name. She had waited all her life for the word, I suppose she figured she could wait for it to come out on its own. And in any event I wasn’t about to tell her of my tattoo. It was both too embarrassing and too bizarre to share that with her, especially as I observed her slightly deranged discussion of her sister. Her sister, Chantal, was a strange fire burning within her, she didn’t need me to toss on a bucket of gasoline.
So we ordered pie. I had the peach, she had the blueberry, with a dollop of ice cream on top. Even with the blue streaks on her teeth, she was beautiful. And sad, too. Usually I can spot it right off, that streak of sadness that speaks to some primal part of my personality, but with her I didn’t. It was only as she spoke that it became clear, how her life had been so sadly influenced by the missing girl who was the warp and woof of her existence.
But about one thing I was certain. All of it, the whole sad story of her missing sister, had nothing to do with me. The Chantal Adair she had been waiting her whole life to hear from was not the Chantal Adair whose name I had foolhardily tattooed onto my chest.
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