by Amy Lapwing
“What?”
“Is it paper? It can’t be gold or silver, yet, is it?”
“You’re asking me?”
He filled a mug with water and put it in the microwave. “Ceramics?”
“Aluminum?” Helena took a look at Michael as he stood before the window looking out at the birdfeeders. His belt hung loosely over his hips, she imagined the points of his pelvic bones sticking out. She put two more slices of turkey on his sandwich. “We’ll find out. I bet Pascale knows.”
He went over to Moe’s at eight to make sure the band had the music. Michael had written up arrangements for each of the numbers for the small ensemble, piano, drums, guitar and bass. They had looked at the scrawled sheet music, the pianist had read from it, the other players had not, they got the idea. The pianist gathered there would be someone special in the audience. He assured Michael it would be okay, “Don’t worry, man, we got you covered.” Michael thanked him, the smug son of a dog. He found a table in a dark corner and drank water and waited. All this stale cigarette smoke. He put the ashtray onto another table. Couldn’t be good for a person. He checked his hair each time he went to the bathroom. Not so gray, really, I think. At least I have some.
The place was pretty lively by nine. There were several ‘regulars’ who came to Hoot Night and sang the same songs week after week. Occasionally there were newcomers, usually drunk college students. Very seldom was there a newcomer who was any good. But it was more fun than karaoke, since there was a band and everything plus the added thrill of having to know the lyric. Sometimes people got inventive, and sometimes they were clever. But not often.
At nine-fifteen the door opened and a wan light from the shopping center overhang lit up the heads of a group of three young men. They came in with Grace Hardy. Her face was heavily made up, Michael could see from his distant slot. A short skirt and a tight top. Why did the mere sight of her bother him so much? One little change and so much could be fixed in her. Like Vlatil. Except he didn’t know what to change.
The frat boys and their girl found a table near the stage. They placed their order with the waitress, a college student, who looked over her shoulder at the bartender. They each showed her their fake ID and the girl went to fill a pitcher with beer. Michael sucked in a corner of his lips at the shenanigans, and watched the girl bring them the pitcher. He wanted to say something to Moe, but not tonight.
“Ladies and Gentlemen— sorry! Women and Dudes!” Moe had taken the stage.
Someone echoed, “Dude!”
“Welcome to Hoot Night at Moe’s!”
Cheers and one or two “hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!” fists pounding the air.
Michael went cold with panic. Where’s Justina? He craned his neck and looked about the room. Ah!
She sat at a table two away from the stage, with Charles and Helena. She was showing her ID to the waitress.
Moe bellowed on. “We got some familieh faces with us tonight—” he pointed his index finger, his thumb up, at three people in succession, bang, bang, bang— “and some new ones, I see.” He caught Michael’s eye. “Who’s going to sta’t us off?”
Michael downed the rest of his water and stood, his eyes on the stage.
“All right!” enthused Moe. “Folks, we have a winneh!” The people looked where Moe was looking. “Now don’t be shy and don’t be mean, just relax and groove and dig the scene!” Moe tucked his microphone under his arm as Michael took the stage, elevation eight inches.
He didn’t want to look at her, not till he started. The band began an intro to Portillo de la Luz’s “Delirio.” It would have benefited from a richer orchestration, but he hoped the pretty melody and the simple lyric would make his point. He sang the first verse in Spanish. He sang his own English translation of the second verse, he had not been able to find one. He kept his eyes on Justina except when he closed them.
"Always you are with me
In my sadness,
And in my deepest joy,
And in my pain;
In your hands you hold
All that I am;
My heart dwells in you, my love,
With you I’ll stay."
For Justina, it was like that time, a million years ago, when she pretended to be an alto and he turned to her and the other girls, his eyelids low, open to what their sound might do to him, his head swiveling so slightly, saying no, it can’t be, it’s too wonderful. You are too wonderful. She realized she was looking at him in fascination; she crossed her legs and looked at her glass of wine on the beer coaster.
"I’m delirious with rapture
When I am with you;
You are all I treasure,
For you love me, too."
She turned her right shoulder to him.
The applause began slowly; it built as the people near Justina’s table figured out it was for her that he sang. They turned their still fairly sober eyes and big loose smiles on her. She was studying the fake wood bowl of pretzels, her lips moving. Her head bowed, Helena spoke to her; Charles put his hand on her arm.
No time to waste. Michael gave the band a nod and they began his second and last selection. He needed melting, or something like it. He sang “Le prochain amour” by Jacques Brel, giving it a more tenuto phrasing but light, now, he reminded himself, not too classical.
"I know, I know that my tender weakness
Will make us enemy ships,
But, my heart knows, enemy ships
Departing together to fish for tenderness."
She was looking at him now, her elbow on the table, her thumb and first knuckle pulling on her upper lip.
"Do what you will, say what you will
That a word to the wise is enough;
Do what you will, say what you will,
It is good to be in love."
He held the last note out as the piano player did a short riff. ‘Amoureux.’ When he had finished he brought the microphone to his chest. The audience kept their eyes on him, expecting him to say something. He simply looked at her, awaiting her answer.
The audience applauded as they watched Justina, the people in the back standing up to see. She used the cover of noise to get up and snatch her coat and hurry out of the place. After a moment, Charles pushed his chair away and was about to stand, but Helena stopped him. Michael bounded from the stage and wiggled between the tables after Justina.
She was leaning her hips against the back of Charles’ Volvo, her arms crossed, looking up at the streetlight on the brown utility pole. She heard the scruff of his shoes on the sandy asphalt as he came up behind her.
“Justina,” he said.
“Very nice serenade, really lovely,” she said.
“I used to sing to you, remember?” he said. “I wanted to tell you—"
“I hate it!” She took a look at him, his face was long under his big eyes. “You did it for you! ‘I know, I’ll sing for her, that’ll bring her around.’ You’re always thinking of you! You’re always thinking of how to get what you want!”
“I only want you,” he said.
“Today. And tomorrow? What about when I’m old and ugly? Then it’s throw me out, time to find a new one.”
His face drew up, cheeks and brows into his eyes. “What?”
“That’s the thing with you, you’re like frozen at twenty-two or something. You’re looking for a young wife. You almost had one, she slipped out of your paws. So I come along, I’m the right age, even if you’re not. Then she comes back and you get all confused. You go ‘crazy,’ right? You do like a time warp and you think she’s twenty-two still, so you go for her. But she can’t keep up the illusion, and you wake up and you see you’re lying beside this old witch. So, forget her, let’s try Justina again, she’s still pretty young. Then one day you wake up and it’s, like, ew! I’m married to that? And you’ll be outta there so fast.”
He was shaking his head all through her rant. “No. No!”
“You’re pitiful!” she cried. “You’re like a kid!
You are! You’re sick. I can’t help you. I don’t want to. I don’t want this anymore.” She turned her shoulders away from him and pressed air out through her lips: psssuh! “I’m sick, too. I seem to like older men. It’s pitiful.”
She had crossed her arms again. She was calm, he thought; he took a step closer to her.
“We’re not sick, Justina.”
She jutted out her chin, and stiffened her shoulders.
“We’re not sick, we’re just what we are.”
“No!” she shouted. “You’re what you are! I’m innocent! I didn’t do anything wrong! Don’t you blame this on me!” She went around the car and tried the door handles. Both locked. “I will not take the blame for your fucking her, you fucking asshole!” She went back into Moe’s.
He stood by the left haunch of Charles’ car, trying to decide whether to go in and speak to her some more. Wasn’t it good, that she was angry? She had a right to be. He wished she would blow up once and for all, a great messy explosion. Not these small firecrackers of fury.
She came back out with Charles and Helena.
Michael went to Justina and took her arm. “I didn’t do it to hurt you,” he said. “I don’t know why I did it.”
“Brilliant!” Justina crowed.
“I thought she should be my wife.” He snarled the word ‘wife,’ frightening himself with how true it was.
“Let go of me!”
“I wanted him to be my son and her to be my wife. I’ve wanted it for so long, you don’t know. I didn’t know. I couldn’t make you do what I wanted. And here is this woman who has already done it, and I thought she was mine. She made me feel she was mine!”
Justina tried to free her arm. “I hate you!”
“I did want her for me! I thought I have waited long enough!”
She looked to Charles and screamed, “Help me!”
Michael took hold of her other arm and yelled, “This is not finished!”
“You make me sick!”
“Tell me why! Tell me!” He held her arms tight, trying to provoke her to a storm of abuse, to get it over with. “Tell me how you hate me!”
“Leave me alone! I don’t want this!”
Charles laid his arm over Michael’s. “Mitch, let her go.”
“She has to tell me! She has to say it!”
“Not tonight, said Charles. “No more tonight.” Justina was sobbing, her face pressed in Charles’ side.
Michael released her. She cried, “Anh!” and Charles opened the door for her. Helena got in with her on the other side.
Charles shook his head at Michael— too much— and he got in and drove the hysterical woman home.
The bass guitar and the drum pounded through the door of the club out to Michael’s ears. Music is an expression of emotion. I expressed my emotion to her, honestly, and I failed to move her. No, I didn’t fail, I moved her to anger. She uses it to keep me away from her. Because she was touched, at first, when I sang, I saw it in the way she looked at me. She was thinking something, then, something good.
A couple of men came out of the club, cigarettes between their lips. They got into a pick-up, one of them said something about SteppenPup’s. A good place to go when you can’t get a woman to look at you. Just sit there and watch them dance, let yourself go hard, doesn’t matter. But he was above that kind of thing, he hadn’t been to a place like that since his first year in Kennemac. Couldn’t risk being seen there. Besides, he didn’t need it. He had kept to himself. No dating students, that was a law he had lived by from the beginning of his career as a teacher. And no going to nude dance clubs. And certainly no fraternizing with the female night patrol. He got used to it, after a while. You stop thinking of yourself as a sexual creature. He was saving himself. At first, for Teresa. Then he let go of that fantasy and he was free to see anyone he wanted. He thought he would go crazy with women, but there had not been many. He stuck with the first one he found, for a while. He discovered he wasn’t crazy for sex. It had not been hard, leaving Laura and Pam and the short periods of regular love-making he had had with them.
He had waited a long time for Justina, and he had been crazy for her. Nightly solitary sex for a month, then her announcement she needed to be alone. She had made him wait a few months more before she let him into her bed. And then the perplexing backlash and his banishment to Costa Rica and other far-off places for a nine-month. Finally they could not take pretending indifference anymore, they had gotten married. He had been more than happy, his life was exciting to him, he looked forward to seeing her at the end of every day, he missed her when she went on trips. He had been so right to wait, she was so perfect.
That is not right. She is not perfect. She annoys me with her overblown explanations of her projects, delivered with no sense of humor, as though the president himself were eagerly awaiting her report. She doesn’t care if I don’t understand what she’s saying, she can’t be bothered explaining it to me. She can be arrogant at times, but I cut her down to size, and she tries to be adorable again, to me. That’s all right. That’s give and take.
A man and a woman came out. She was peering into her purse while he looked around the lot and saw Michael looking at them. He put his arm around her waist as she drew out her keys. They got into a convertible whose raised top fit imperfectly against the windshield. It must whistle loudly when they drive on the highway. Too expensive to fix, probably, has to be put up with. They drove away, probably to another bar, thought Michael, though probably not to a strip joint. They would get drunk and drive home. They did this every weekend, sometimes two nights in a row. Twenty years from now, they would still be going out to bars on the weekend, but they would probably not get drunk.
Michael got into his car and drove north toward Concord. She’s right, I did do it to make her do something. It was selfish of me, to sing to her like that. He got off the highway and turned around and drove back to Kennemac, to Charles’ house. Charles and Helena were sitting in the living room when he came in. They turned off the T.V. and looked up at him, he knew they wanted him to talk to them. He said, “Sorry,” and went upstairs to the guest room.
Inside Moe’s, Grace sat sullenly watching the singers, drinking her beer, while Aaron and his two buddies smoked and called insults and cheered. Someone sang “All I Ask of You” from The Phantom of the Opera, doing a respectable job on the high part, “Anywhere you go, let me go too, that’s all I ask of you.” During the applause Paul Fortinbras left his table with Magda and some of the other Concert Choristers and pulled up a chair next to Grace.
“I was going to say that,” he said to the side of her face.
She started, then settled back into her stuporous position.
“You going to sing tonight, Grace?” Paul asked.
Aaron turned to hail the waitress and found Paul there. “Who’s this?” he said to Grace.
Paul stuck out his hand. “Paul Fortinbras.”
Aaron stretched his arm around the back of Grace’s chair, the elbow hitting Paul on the chin.
“Sorry,” said Paul, “I didn’t catch your name?” He snapped his fingers. “Wait, I’ve seen you before, you’re with the asshole club.”
Aaron flexed his arm and stretched, then settled his hold on Grace again.
“Come on, Grace,” said Paul low, “I’ll sing with you. It’ll be fun.”
“Hey!” said Aaron. “Take off! You’re bothering her.”
Paul moved his head closer to Grace’s ear. “Let’s get out of here. Let’s go somewhere and talk.”
Aaron stood, his buttocks in Paul’s face, and put his fingers around Grace’s wrist. “Let’s go,” he said to her. Her glance at Aaron contained fear, it seemed to Paul. She looked for her coat and put it on.
Paul stood and said, “Don’t go, Grace.”
Aaron started to lead Grace out by the elbow.
“Leave her alone!” called Paul. To Grace he said, “Don’t go with him!”
She turned and he thought she would cry.
More softly he said, “You don’t want to go with him.”
Aaron said something in her ear and she let him pull her toward the door.
“Don’t!” called Paul. “You don’t have to!”
“Yes, I do!” she answered.
“No! Why?”
“‘Cause I know him.” Paul came hurrying up to be near her. “And I know myself, when I’m with him,” she finished.
He watched her go out with him, the other man’s hold on her was unreasonable and unshakable, she accepted his public vilification of her as apt return for her devotion to him. Paul felt his eyes hot. He ran out and saw the asshole’s car pulling away. He got into his car and jammed his key in the ignition and started the engine, but he did not move. Banging on the steering wheel he yawped at his tears of powerlessness.
Chapter Seventeen
Promise To Be Good
The Jeanblancs invited everyone to their house for Thanksgiving, no one was having relatives. Justina was going home. Michael was grateful not to be cut by his friends after publicly harassing a woman.
“You can’t bully her like that, Michael,” said Helena while they were in the little kitchen getting things ready. Pascale manned the bird, Charles had baked a cheesecake with apple topping, so he and Denis were setting the table, Helena was assembling the potatoes au gratin, Michael was in charge of the salad, and Nicolas jounced himself in his tinkling bounce chair atop the kitchen table. “It’s not going to work.”
Michael let out a deep breath. “She is so angry. She needs to be angry, she needs to release it. It’s good for her, at least.”