by Maddy Wells
Later, I learned that while Dr. Lombardi would write you a note saying you were too unbalanced to defend your country his endorsement meant nothing as his medical license had been revoked in Vietnam for dispensing excessive narcotics to amputees.
On rare evenings alone in our borrowed living room, Alex and I would drink wine and talk about our house guests and their shortcomings. Mocking others now seemed to be our only meeting ground, and if that was the game to keep Alex close, I played it with cruel intensity.
Rick was almost never around. He had day gigs as a session musician and on weekend nights he worked setting up sound equipment for the marquee acts that passed through the Filmore East. One evening when our living room was stuffed with people who looked familiar only in the sense that a group of young people from any era look the same, Alex asked me what I knew about him. How did I know he wasn’t an ax murderer? How did I know he wasn’t going to kill us all in our sleep one night?
“Those questions are so Samaria,” I answered. The truth was that I didn’t know anything about him and I was embarrassed to admit it. He was stumbling along the same road as we were, making up details to suit the moment, pretending he was in control of where he was at when in fact he was plummeting from one disaster to another.
“He would be kind of cute if he took a shower,” she said.
“You know musicians,” I said, not really knowing anything about them at all. Rick was the first musician who seemed even a little palatable to me. Alex was the one who wanted to be a groupie. I would have thought she liked his scruffy appearance. It didn’t look as if the Rolling Stones ever bathed either, and she’d had plans to follow them around North America.
Reluctantly, I agreed to take her to the club where Rick now played three nights a week. Alex wanted to see if he was a real musician or if he was a charlatan. “I mean,” she said before we left, taking time with her make-up and care with her clothes, “no one around here,” meaning her, “has ever actually heard this guy play. Doesn’t he ever practice?” She made it sound as if she wanted to protect me from this supposed ax murderer, who was by the way balling me twice sometimes three times a night and getting some excellent response. I knew she just wanted to see Rick making music with his magic guitar, his siren call, and I knew that as soon as that happened she would be lost. But I was powerless to stop her.
The club was in an old two-story red brick building with the name Hibernian Order of America chiseled in the mantle over the oak entryway. You would have never guessed it was a club in the daytime. It was only when lines began to form at dusk for the ten o’clock show and the mix master began his sound tests which you could hear through the boarded up windows that you would believe that the place had a secret life. At night, a bouncer named Leon, a former linebacker for the New Orleans Saints whose pension was a pair of damaged knees, sat outside on a barstool, letting in those of us who were deemed cool. I was cool, naturally, because I was a band chick. Otherwise I’m not sure I would have passed inspection. The other women there were breathtaking: long race horse types or lush earth mothers, like gypsies. Leon, needless to say, didn’t even ask who Alex was. Her face was her admission.
The band was a loose conglomeration of keyboard, bass, Rick on lead guitar, and a temperamental male vocalist who looked like the sickly second coming of Twiggy. They were setting up when we came in and Rick smiled when he saw us. He put down his instrument and came over to make sure that we had a good table and something to drink. He kissed me on the cheek in a proprietary way and for a moment I wished that I loved him because it would be nice to love someone who kissed so gently. More than that, I wished he loved me.
He shook Alex’s hand and she seemed a little surprised at his gentlemanly manner. Or maybe she was surprised he hadn’t tried to kiss her.
During the first set, an older black man with a Kangol beret on his head and a cigarillo between his lips, brought his rum and coke to our table, asked us what we were drinking. Or rather, he asked Alex what she was drinking. She answered for both of us and soon a bottle of red wine appeared on our table. His name was Thornton. Just one name he said, like “the Duke.” We didn’t know who the Duke was, so he said, “Cher?” and we nodded dumbly.
Rick came by. “How are ya all doing?” he asked, not really looking at us. He was scanning the audience and waving when he saw a familiar face. He obviously thought the set was a success, even though I had barely noticed it. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said. A good-looking redheaded girl had smiled at him from across the room. “I have to say hello to a friend.”
Alex’s gaze followed him across the room to the redhead. She snorted. “Well, maybe he’s not an ax murderer, but you’ve got a womanizer on your hands.” She seemed unduly interested in the animated conversation Rick was having with the redhead.
“Can’t he have friend?” I asked. “Doesn’t Lance have friends? Lance has beautiful naked women in his studio all day. That’s questionable form if you ask me.”
Thornton expressed interest in these beautiful naked women.
“Lance is a fashion photographer,” I told him. “Her boyfriend,” I added to squelch any interest he might have in Alex.
A man in a modish outfit of polka dotted skin tight pants and Nehru jacket asked Alex to dance. He wore boots that had a three inch heel and was still shorter than Alex. They threw their bodies into the chaotic crowd on the dance floor, and I saw him shout something into her ear. She nodded and kept dancing, closing her eyes against everything but the music. A dreamy smile appeared on her face, which even the pulsing strobe light couldn’t really distort. Although the dancers looked, on the whole, as if they were performing complicated maneuvers, when you analyzed it, each person did the same movements over and over again like robots. When the music stopped, the purple of the black light was still on and Alex’s dance partner smiled at her, revealing a false tooth right in the front. Black lights went right through dentures, which is probably why they haven’t endured.
“That’s the owner,” Thornton pointed at the man who was leading Alex off the dance floor, but holding her hand a little too long. She wiped it discreetly on her jeans. Finally he smiled and left to go backstage. Alex gave him a little wave, like a salute. “A good looking woman,” Thorton said.
“We’re sisters,” I said, preparing for the onslaught.
“ Yeah, you can see it,” Thornton said. “Different daddys?”
“No!”
“Mothers then?” He grinned at Alex as she sat down, sweaty from her exertions in the claustrophobic air. “I have children with three different women.”
“What are you talking about?” Alex smiled absently at us.
“Nothing. Here.”
I poured her a glass of wine, which she raised in a toast, couldn’t think of anything to say so took a drink instead.
During the second set, Alex seemed to enjoy herself and proclaimed Rick a good musician. She noted that the redhead, whom I had forgotten, had left. She seemed relieved.
“If I don’t care, I don’t see why you’re making such a big deal about it,” I said. “I’m not in love with him.”
“You’re not?” She looked at me closely and stroked my hair, moving the flyaway strands from my eyes. “I couldn’t stand it if he hurt you. I couldn’t stand it if anyone hurt you.”
I blushed thinking that my love for her, the love I thought so pure, had been sullied so completely in a moment of lust with Lance. I wasn’t worthy of her affection I told her, although I spared her the reason why.
“If you’re not in love with him, I don’t see what difference it makes then, I guess, who he talks to,” she said.
We left without Rick, but his presence was between us. It was all she could talk about on the way home. It occurred to me in a sickening flash that Alex might actually be in love with him. It wasn’t the loss of Rick that pierced me, because as I said, I wasn’t in love with him at all. It was the thought of losing Alex yet again, before I had accomplished any
of the things I wanted. I was hopeful, though, because at least I would be with them. And I rationalized that it would be more practical. Together, we could conquer anything because together we had it all. It wouldn’t be so bad.
“He’s just an average musician, Alex,” I countered when she suggested that maybe I take another look at his attributes. “Anyway, he’s kind of ugly, don’t you think?”
She shrugged and dropped the subject.
“I can’t go to the casting call with you tomorrow, I’m booked,” she said apologetically. I had asked her to come with me to the open call for “Oh, Calcutta!”
I hoped that the director would so dazzled with her he would hire me when he realized we came as a team. “You don’t need me, anyway. I can’t act at all. You’re the one with the talent.” She gave me an indulgent smile.
“I can’t show up without you. No one will even notice me!”
“You’re giving me way too much credit,” she said.
We walked a while without talking then she said, almost testily, “You’re also putting a tremendous burden on me.” Her shoulders shook slightly. “I feel like I can’t be myself. An actress. What do I know about acting?”
I didn’t say anything, but I felt as if she were a magic creature, changing into a bird to escape captivity. Slipping through my hands.
As I lay on my mattress waiting for sleep to come, she and Lance argued. They tried to keep their voices down, but the beaded curtain gave no privacy. The disagreement was whether or not Alex should have her freedom. She was bored she said. She was getting restless. It wasn’t him, she said. It was just that she was too young to be tied down. Couldn’t he understand?
They spoke for about an hour. The same words over and over, neither one hearing the other. The arguing stopped when Rick came home later. For once, he didn’t sit on the edge of our bed nudging me to wake up so I could respond, but instead he stayed in the kitchen speaking softly to Alex. I couldn’t make out the words but I knew they were together in a way that I had never been with him. I tried to feel rage or anger (after all I was technically being betrayed) but all I felt was immense pleasure that Alex and I were finally about to move on. A future with Rick, a nomad like us, held infinitely more possibilities than a future with a man tied to a darkroom and a closet full of paper dolls.
There was no relief from the stifling air in the loft and I thought their discussion would go on all night, so I decided to take a shower. I got undressed, wrapping myself in the towel that Rick and I shared and went into the bathroom. Lance had had the same idea. He was already in there, naked, standing in the stall without the water on. He was smoking a joint. He saw me through the wavy acrylic shower door and beckoned for me to join him. I dropped my towel, went in and took a huge drag on the joint. We finished the joint and started laughing, looking at each other through barely open eyes. We started stroking each other in a strictly friendly manner when one of us noticed Rick outside the door. I slid it open.
“Don’t be a stranger,” I laughed, pulling him in.
Lance had found another joint, from where I have no recollection because, as I said, he was nude, and we passed it to Rick first in a neighborly gesture. He took it, shed his clothes awkwardly, and stepped in. Alex was right behind, giggling, but refusing the dope. She still had her face to think about and a shoot the next morning.
We smoked the dope, and I said, “I’m trying out for Hair.” I raised my arms and shimmied, feeling the ripple from my fingertips to my knees. When it got to my feet, I tottered and fell against Lance, who laughed and put me upright.
Rick grunted. “No you’re not. Don’t be stupid.”
“They need femmes,” I said, drawing out the last word. “Femmes who can do a nude pas de deux.”
I turned to Alex. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling with the same self-absorbed look she had had on the dance floor that evening. Lance suddenly turned on the cold water.
“Jesus Christ!” Rick screamed, covering his genitals with his hands.
“It’s for your own good,” Lance said.
“God, you are a sicko.” Rick slammed open the door and stalked out, grabbing our towel from on top of the toilet seat.
“It’s a hot night in the big city, boy,” Lance said. “You have to adapt. I’m adapting.” He gave me a wicked smile. “So’s Nadia here, aren’t you? Our little Nadia is going to dance nude on Broadway. If that’s not adapting to our sordid times, I don’t know what is.” He pinched my cheek. “Why else are we in the shower, if not to get wet? If you can’t stand the water, get out of the shower!” He found this enormously funny.
Rick turned and pointed at Lance, looking at Alex. “This is what I’m talking about. See?” He was breathing heavily, the effects of the dope totally negated by the surprise glacial shower. Alex, unfazed by the cold water and the arguing around her, stepped out regally and pulled on her jeans, following Rick out of the bathroom. She didn’t look back at Lance. Lance sighed and slumped to the floor of the shower, putting his head between his legs and covering his face with his hands. He was crying. He really loved Alex and knew she was going.
I left, scurrying naked across the floor because Rick had taken my towel. Everything was quiet, breaths held in. Even traffic in the street seemed to be waiting for the next move. Lance dressed and slammed out of the apartment, and so now there was no reason for secrecy and tiptoeing. I joined Alex and Rick in the kitchen. It was time to make travel plans. Our travel plans. I smiled at them, and after a polite second to acknowledge any hurt feelings I might have, they smiled back.
“I knew you would be pleased,” Alex said.
“We’ll call the moment we’re settled,” Rick said. He ran his hand through Alex’s hair, delighting in the turn of luck that enabled him to do that.
Alex smiled then she laughed. I could hear her paper heart rustling and I briefly pitied Rick, because he was about to find out how little warmth that organ provided. But still they were deserting me and I was angry at both of them.
“Call?” My smile was feeble.
They kissed me relentlessly. “It’s easier,” Alex said.
“I can’t stay here! Lance doesn’t even like me!” I wondered what happened to Rick’s belief that I should get out of there because Lance was evil. Only a minute ago he’d called him a sicko. Would they leave me with a sicko?
“Just use your charm on him. I know he’ll succumb,” Alex said. I knew then that she knew about me and Lance and she was paying me back. Still, I had only slept with him once. I didn’t abscond with him in the middle of the night. “It’s just until we get settled.”
Alex took nothing more than a cloth backpack into which she threw some bottles. Shampoo mostly. Hair was definitely king in those days. Long beautiful hair. Rick stuffed some underwear into his guitar case and they were gone. They left with no more fanfare than that. I didn’t ask where they were going. So besotted were they with each other, they wouldn’t have understood the question. Assuming they even heard me.
I was left alone with my futon on the floor, that grimy mugginess you get only in a summer city filling my pores and numbing any resolve to just bolt, get the hell out of there. But it was more than that. You see, I had nowhere to go.
A few hours later, Lance came in. He wasn’t alone. I heard some squealing and knew that a model wannabe was betting that Lance was what he claimed to be: a photographer who could jump-start her career after, of course, he’d jumped her. He came over to my futon and saw me.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, obviously disappointed to find the wrong end of the dyad still there. Any mileage he had hoped to get out this woman in terms of jealousy from Alex was lost. He didn’t waste time on preliminaries, but conducted business with his date.
I lay still, blocking out the sounds beyond the beaded curtains with the loud sounds of my own plans, which soon tangled with other night noises of New York until I could no longer distinguish which despair belonged to me and which belonged to those unseen othe
rs.
Chapter Five
From that moment, the summer assumed a new form. Whereas before I had yearned for an indefinite future with unnamed pleasures and glories, I now had a purpose, which was to get Alex back before I drowned in obscurity.
We, that is, Lance and I, settled into a routine. He didn’t throw me out, as I expected, but allowed me space on my mattress. After that first night, he no longer brought women back to the loft, so I found some peace in that fragile area of my psyche. Within days our silent routine was forgotten and we began speaking like mad, mostly about our plans to get Alex back. That’s all we could talk about. Did I think that this was a temporary fling? Did he think she had changed since he met her? When was I going to see her again?
Because I did see her. I wasn’t exiled from her life as Lance, in his unfortunate status of ex-lover, had been. I was still her sister and you have to do something heinous to create a barrier between sisters. I went by her place every morning on my way to work, hoping to catch her. She never called me. Her new apartment was pretty big, even though I told her I thought she could afford much more.
“We don’t want to get heavily into debt. We want to be free to leave. Anytime.” She looked dreamily around. The apartment, while spacious, was stingily furnished. A waterbed, an electric-cable spool for a coffee table. A few boxes with clothes hanging out as if they were planning to escape in the middle of the night without paying the back rent. It was the way I had envisioned my life. It was my apartment, my life.