“I’m really … you see, I’m really not much of a talker,” she insisted, hating herself for feeling awkward around someone her own age.
Mary Beth crossed her arms over the front of a football jersey that bore Harlan’s number and sighed impatiently. “Okay, Amy. Here’s the scoop. I’m a nosy broad, and I talk too much, but I know how to be a good friend. I don’t want a housemate who’s going to treat me like a fucking landlord instead of a pal.”
Amy clenched her teeth. “Why didn’t you get one of your friends to move in here, then?”
“Because I needed rent money to help pay my bills this month, and none of them could move that soon. Besides, they’re all dweebs. Their idea of a good time is a binge- and purge party. I wanted to meet somebody new. Somebody with goals.” She shook a finger. “But I don’t want a damned clam living here. No introverts.”
Amy dropped the box on the bed she’d bought the day before at a discount furniture store. “Everybody in the whole world isn’t like you, you know. Some of us have trouble talkin’ about ourselves!”
“God, when you get mad, you squeak. What a great voice. My speech professor would puke with despair. He couldn’t ever change that voice.”
“Look, you’ve called me a clam, you’ve made fun of my voice, and you’ve basically admitted that you only gave me a room here because you need money in a hurry. Would you like to just stomp on my self-esteem and get it over with?”
“I knew it! I knew it! If I got you pissed off you’d be fine!” Mary Beth threw both arms around her in a hug. “Nobody stays around me for long without learning to defend themselves.”
Startled, Amy stood for a moment, thinking about what Mary Beth had said. Then she began to laugh. Mary Beth plopped on the bed and belched, looking satisfied. Studying her in growing wonder, Amy decided that she might be a blessing in disguise.
“You’re living with a sociopath,” Jeff said bluntly. He walked around the living room looking at Mary Beth’s Grateful Dead posters. Then he picked up a switchblade she’d left on the coffee table. “I suspect that she’s a classic case of borderline personality disorder.”
“She’s not violent,” Amy assured him. “And I like her. She works part-time at one of the local radio stations as a reporter and disc jockey. She’s going into broadcast journalism. I hope you get to meet her sometime.”
“I’ll continue to avoid that pleasure if at all possible.”
“Come see my room. It took me weeks to get it fixed up the way I want it.”
They went down the hall to her bedroom. He took a couple of rangy strides into the center of it and stood, looking around with a droll expression on his face. “Are there walls under all these posters of France and Africa?”
She smiled. “I like posters. Besides, the wallpaper has holes in it.”
He looked even less pleased and gestured toward a bedside table made from a pair of orange crates, then at the towels she’d stuffed into the window casements to keep out drafts. “Why are you living like this? Sebastien gave you enough money to have an apartment and be comfortable. What are you spending it on?”
Amy stiffened with pride. “I’m saving it. I’m gonna give as much back as I can.”
The look of surprise on Jeff’s face bordered on insulting. “So how’s your social life?” he asked abruptly.
“What social life? I’m taking an overload every quarter and making straight A’s. I spend all my time studying.”
“Why are you doing that? You ought to be partying and making C’s.”
“I want to get a great job after I graduate.” She knotted her hands inside the pockets of a corduroy skirt and went to a window hung with homemade curtains. Under a gray wool sweater her shoulders hunched with tension. “I gotta graduate and get on with my life.”
“And then what?”
“I’m gonna get a job in France.”
“Amy, come here.” He held out his arm. She eyed it warily but stepped inside the brotherly curve. It closed around her like a vise. He gave her his hypnotist’s stare.
She shook her head. “Oh, no, you don’t. Don’t go all glassy-eyed and syrupy on me.”
“You know that you want to forget Sebastien. It’s all right to forget. He’s forgotten you.”
“No.”
“Think about it, sweets. A man like him … can’t you imagine how many women he’s, hmmm, dated after all these months?”
She made a mewling sound of despair. “Yes.”
“There. Good. Reality.” He kissed her, flicking his tongue over her compressed lips, sinking it inside her mouth when she gasped. The wet, probing heat frightened her because it was so easy to accept. Wanting it didn’t mean she had forgotten Sebastien, she realized. In fact, the kiss made her want Sebastien more.
Bewildered, she swiveled out of his arms and moved across the room. “Did Sebastien ask you to look after me this way?”
“Yes.”
“He did not.”
Jeff was silent for a moment, his blue eyes holding her green ones with so much sincerity that dread curled through her. “He told me to do whatever I thought best.”
“That didn’t include puttin’ these moves on me.”
“For God’s sake, Amy, don’t you understand? He didn’t care whether it included that or not.”
She sat down on the bed and buried her face in her hands. “He did care.” She had to believe her own reality, not Jeff’s. “You better go. I got some thinkin’ to do.”
Jeff came over and lightly touched her hair. “You need me,” he whispered. “I’ll call when I get back to Atlanta. We’ll talk about this some more.” She shook her head. “You need me,” he repeated, trying to hypnotize her. “I’ll call.” She remained hunched in confused silence as he sauntered out of the house.
Mary Beth, annoyed with Amy’s studying to the exclusion of everything else, convinced her to try out for a Neil Simon play at a local dinner theater. “Sugar, all you have to do is read the lines in that goofy, wonderful voice of yours, and you’ll get the part,” Mary Beth assured her. “And it will do your self-confidence a shitload of good.”
“I’m a business major. International business. And I’m making great grades at it, too. I’m going to do something respectable and work in Europe.”
“Yeah, you’re a business major who listens to comedy albums and watches reruns of old television shows all the time. Admit it, sugar, you’re not meant to walk around in a pin-striped suit with a copy of The Wall Street Journal under your arm.”
“Va te faire foutre.”
“Oh, indeed? Getting uppity now that you’re studying French, are you? I went to a private high school, sugar, and I know all the French obscenities. So get stuffed, yourself.”
“Business may not be exciting, but I know I’d be good—”
“Oh, stop it. You’re just a chickenshit introvert.”
“I … you … if that chip on your shoulder was any bigger you’d need a back brace to get through the day. And sometimes I get tired of your foul mouth.”
“Chickenshit.”
“I’m fighting a war of wits with an unarmed person.”
“Coward. Shy little sugar-tit.”
“All right! I’ll audition!”
Seated at a rickety table in the darkness of a cotton warehouse that had been turned into a stage and dining area, Amy squinted at the students around her. Most of them were drama majors, judging from the conversations she overheard. They were poised and nonchalant; a few looked her up and down then turned away, obviously unconcerned. She felt foolish for competing with them. Her legs began to quiver, and perspiration soaked the underarms of her green shirtwaist dress. She propped her elbows on the table and hoped desperately that her dress would air-dry.
What a great horror movie this would make. Killer armpits. The armpits that flooded Tokyo.
Amy clenched a copy of the audition monologue that the director’s assistant had given her. She noticed that most of the other students had brought
their own copies of the play.
The director began calling people. Amy’s mouth went dry. She tried to concentrate on the other student’s performances. They were incredibly polished. They held nuances of emotion that she’d never even considered. They were professional. She heard her own name. Someone laughed. Miracle.
Oh, this was bad, very bad. She hadn’t even gone to the stage yet and people were making fun of her. Every ego-bashing remark Pop had ever made to her echoed in her head. She forced herself to the stage, not feeling the floor beneath her feet, her senses frozen from fear of ridicule. This wasn’t the circus. This wasn’t a carnival or a children’s party. This was the theater. Shakespeare and Olivier and Broadway and audiences who didn’t throw coins after the performance or spit up their ice cream.
Dimly she knew that everyone was staring at her, waiting. She felt too hot. She held her copy of the audition piece in front of her like a shield and watched it tremble.
“Take a deep breath and give it a shot,” the director said. There were some barely stifled giggles in the audience. She heard those as if they’d been amplified a million times.
She squeaked her way through the piece, not knowing or really caring what she read. The director stopped her halfway. Somewhere in the dark distance between her and the audience he stood up and said, “Thank you. Good night.”
“Good night” meant “Get lost,” she’d already heard someone explain. Amy stole a glance at the people around her as she left the stage. People craned their heads to watch her. They had bewildered expressions, as if they weren’t quite sure how to classify what they’d just seen and heard.
Her face felt as if it were on fire. She bolted into the cool evening air and ran to the Ferrari, then threw up beside the rear bumper. She slumped against the car and rested her head against the smooth black metal. Doc, I’m sorry. This is one thing I can’t do. I’m never going up on a stage again.
She and Mary Beth and Harlan drove to Florida during spring break. Daytona Beach. It was a madhouse filled with college students from all over the Southeast. Amy wore an ordinary white maillot to the beach and was surprised when boys whistled at her.
The attention pleased her and bolstered her confidence at the same time that it made her nearly sick with loneliness. She didn’t want to be ogled by these guys; they were just kids. She had sampled something that they were incapable of offering, and she couldn’t forget it.
Mary Beth hauled Amy and Harlan to a wet T-shirt contest on their last night in town. Sitting in a club packed with eagerly waiting males, Mary Beth drank six vodka stingers and Harlan drank four. Amy drank one and stopped. She felt disoriented and depressed.
When the contest started Mary Beth shoved her bra into Amy’s hands and went up on stage with two dozen other girls. She wore only tight cutoffs and a Grateful Dead T-shirt, and her breasts bounced merrily. Harlan grew morose as the emcee started spraying the girls with a hose and the audience started cheering.
Mary Beth proudly thrust her plastered chest into the spotlight. She won first prize and twenty-five dollars. Harlan was embarrassed and grumbled about Mary Beth’s morals all the way back to the motel. Amy was sorry to be sharing a room with them. Mary Beth stripped to her panties and got into one of the double beds.
“Can the lecture,” she told Harlan. “I wouldn’t protest if you entered a wet jock-strap contest. Life was meant to be experienced, sugar. Now shut up and go to sleep.” Harlan left his clothes on and flopped down beside her.
Amy turned out the lights, pulled the tail of her T-shirt out and removed her shorts, then slid into her bed and lay there in the dark listening to Harlan and Mary Beth mutter to each other. She was stunned when the mutters turned to soft slurping sounds. Then she heard a zipper open, followed by Harlan’s grunts as he pushed tight denim shorts off the lower half of a 250-pound body.
Amy turned her head and saw the faint pinkness of Harlan’s naked butt as he rolled on top of Mary Beth. Her sense of honor wouldn’t let her watch the rest; she pulled a pillow over her head and turned on her side, facing away. The sounds filtered through anyway—soft moans, the bed thumping the wall, ragged breaths, and finally simultaneous gasps.
As crude and silly as the whole event was, it turned her loneliness into a hot, aching desire to be touched, and suddenly she understood how any attractive man could serve a woman’s purpose at a moment like this, or vice versa. She muffled her soft sobs in the pillow and whispered Sebastien’s name.
The old wound was now just a fine, crescent-shaped scar, mostly hidden under her chin, with only the front tip visible under close inspection. Mary Beth liked the scar. She said it and the tattoo gave Amy an air of mystery and a sinister appeal. Amy decided to make fun of it, rather than let it embarrass her. She was learning to protect herself by making fun of a lot of things.
Pop never mentioned the scar. He didn’t this time, either. He treated her like a distant relative who dropped in to visit, which depressed Amy more than his bad temper had. At least when he had been mad at her, she’d felt noticed.
For her Easter visit he wore a yellow flannel shirt and his best brown slacks. He propped his elbows on Maisie’s prettily set kitchen table and dangled a beer between his hands. Amy sat adjacent to him and stared at the pink roses on the china. Maisie bustled around, bringing casseroles to the table, humming a gospel tune, her mind much farther away than her body.
“You’re dressing like one of those preppies,” Pop commented. He nodded at Amy’s herringbone blazer, pleated blouse, and long plaid skirt. “I thought college kids were supposed to be hippies.”
“It’s the Reagan era, now, Pop. everybody’s going conservative.” She studied the graying auburn hair that lay on one of his shoulders in a thin braid. “But hey, I always liked the Willie Nelson look.”
“Raise hell and live the way you please.”
“Sing with Julio Iglesias. It gives me the shivers.”
“You’re making fun of Willie.”
“No, I’m making fun of Julio. He looks like a lounge lizard. Or since he’s Spanish, like a lounge iguana.”
Pop laughed. It startled her. She couldn’t recall when she’d made him laugh at a joke. Despite the thread of distrust and bitterness that always underlay her feelings for him, she couldn’t help but be pleased.
“College has made you more fun to talk to,” he told her.
“Fun is my middle name these days. So, how’s the art world treating you, Picasso Pop?”
“Lousy. Haven’t sold anything in three months.’
“Power company cut us off last week,” Maisie interjected. “I had to sell off fifty of my hens to catch the bill up. I fussed with that man out at the power company, but he wouldn’t give me any more time.”
Amy frowned over this news and was about to ask more questions about their bills, when Pop asked abruptly, “Heard from the Frenchman?”
Amy cleared her throat and answered, “Nope,” in a nonchalant voice. It still angered her that stories about her and Sebastien had gotten to Maisie through Pio Beaucaire’s secretary. She rattled the ice in a glass of tea and hoped that dinner would be ready soon. She wouldn’t feel like eating if Pop pursued this subject.
“Well, I’ll say this for him,” Pop continued, nodding. “He stole the milk, but he paid for the cow. Can’t ask a man to do more than that. I mean, if you had to go live with some foreigner, I’m glad he was a generous one. And he didn’t knock you up, so there was no harm done. I just don’t understand why he picked you out of all the girls who worked at the winery. He wasn’t some kind of pervert, was he?”
Maisie gave Amy a sympathetic look and plopped another casserole in the center of the table. “Amy wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with a homosexual. That man was probably just shy. You know, some men are scared of girls who sound too smart. Amy suited his nature, that’s all.”
Amy took a swallow of tea. She very calmly set the glass down. She arranged Maisie’s pink, embroidered napkin in her lap and folded
her hands on top of it. She was going to be very pleasant, eat her dinner, and compliment Maisie on her cooking. She had reached an important point in her life, and it made her calm. Deadly calm.
“Pop, do you know how much that car I drive is worth?”
He snorted. “More than this double-wide and the chicken house put together.”
“Right. Well. I’m gonna sell that car. Then I’m gonna buy me another car—something ordinary. I’m gonna give you and Maisie the rest of the money. I want you to be comfortable. I don’t ever want to worry about you and wonder if you’re able to pay your bills.” Her voice kept a low, casual timbre, for once. She nodded to Pop. “Because I’m not ever coming back here.”
That announcement pretty much ruined dinner. Amidst all of Pop’s snide comments about her attitude and Maisie’s pleas for her to give them some money but not abandon the family, Amy remained unyielding. She’d pay the debt for what, if anything, she’d done to deserve being unloved and made to feel unlovable. Now she could move forward, toward a time when somebody could love her and she could love herself. It was another step toward Sebastien.
Sebastien rented the top level of a spacious duplex in an exclusive section of Abidjan, a place where chauffeured cars cruised down streets lined with fruit trees, and gardeners tended yards filled with tropical flowers. His downstairs neighbors were a university professor and his family. The professor had left the Senoufo tribe as a very young man and gone to France to attend college.
Though middle-class, middle-aged, and very European in dress and manner, he proudly bore the whiskerlike scars of the Senoufo on his face, and he had taught the traditions of his tribe to his children.
To Sebastien the Ivory Coast was like that professor, a fascinating mixture of cultures. Thatched huts existed in the shadow of skyscrapers and resort hotels; huge freighters slid along the surface of the great inland lagoon that fronted the city, while only a short drive away monkeys chattered in the rain forests.
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