Something Blue

by Ann Hood

  “Isn’t it great?” Spencer asks Katherine.

  She stares at it. A plastic Elvis head. It looks too lifelike, as if someone actually decapitated Elvis and placed his head on a pedestal.

  “It’s kind of creepy,” she says.

  Spencer looks hurt. He rubs Elvis’s jet-black pompadour. “No,” he says. “Really?”

  “It’s weird,” she says.

  Spencer laughs. “You’re just not used to it,” he says.

  Katherine flops down on his couch. “Can you cover it up or something?” she asks him.

  Spencer comes and sits beside her. “I missed you so much,” he says. “How was Connecticut? How was your family?”

  She feels only a little guilty about her lie. She told him she spent all the time at home.

  “My sister’s getting married in October, so there was a lot to discuss, and plan. You know.”

  He looks at her, all eager and open with his cocker spaniel look. “Did you miss me?”

  “I thought about you a lot,” she says.

  Spencer moves his hand up her thigh, under her white summer dress, slips it into her panties. He knows exactly where to touch her. And Katherine, despite herself, feels her back arch, hears a small groan escape from her. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Elvis, watching.

  Katherine grips Spencer’s wrist, stops his slow, precise movements.

  “Spencer,” she says. Her voice is filled with determination.

  “Spencer,” she says again, “I am so sorry.”

  He looks at her, confused. She sees a line of sweat glisten on his forehead.

  What she says next surprises even herself. “I’ve decided to marry Andy after all,” she says. “I’m going to move to Boston and marry him.”

  Spencer says, “But you can’t. What about the ophthalmologist? What about me?”

  “I’m sorry,” she says again. “I want to marry Andy.” And the words feel as right as she supposes they ever will. Not one hundred percent right. Not right enough to make her soar. Not even right enough to take away that small part of her that will always feel sort of sad. Still, she knows she will walk out of here and call Andy. She will tell him she loves him. She will say, “I’m coming home.”

  When Katherine gets off the subway and walks back to Meryl’s apartment it is still light. She wishes that she thought the city looked beautiful. She even stops and studies the Chrysler Building, all shiny and silver in the distance. But all she really sees is the garbage in the street, the two men huddled together in a corner with cardboard signs: PLEASE HELP. WE ARE VIETNAM VETS. WE ARE HUNGRY. They each hold out ragged paper cups.

  She closes her eyes and conjures a place that doesn’t exist yet. A house with large rooms and great details in its woodwork. Splashes of light everywhere. A green yard with flowers and trees in bloom. She fights for this image to make her happy. But all it does is make her weary. On her way inside the building, she empties her wallet into the men’s paper cups.

  There is no one home in the apartment. Laurie Walker has come by and left some of her things—white nurse’s uniforms hang on the door, wrapped in plastic dry-cleaner’s bags, boxes with shoes and a blow-dryer and a curling iron poking out sit in one corner of the living room. Katherine goes into her new room and flops on the bed. She has to call Andy and her mother. She has to tell Meryl she is leaving. She has to notify the school that she won’t be back. But she cannot move. All she can do is close her eyes. Her hand moves up her thigh. She feels her back arch slightly as her fingers move inside her underwear, searching, searching for the spot that Spencer touched.

  Swimming pools, movie stars

  IN TWO WEEKS, HOLLY Kaye will be back from Atlantic City and Julia will have to move. There are a lot of apartments to house-sit for in the summer. She sits with her options spread before her on the coffee table. It is June, unseasonably cool, but sunny. She has bought a new end table. There are primitive figures cut from it—a running lion, a soaring eagle. The table is dark metal, built by a sculptor.

  Julia reads the descriptions of the apartments. A two-bedroom on Washington Mews. Probably an NYU professor’s, she decides. A penthouse off Fifth Avenue. Someone spending the summer at their house in the Hamptons. Another loft, not far from here. She stacks all the papers, leases, and contracts into a neat pile. She doesn’t want to live in any of them. What she wants is for Holly Kaye to never return. Julia doesn’t exactly wish her harm, she wishes she would just disappear. Vaporize, leaving a puddle of blue crushed velvet behind.

  She paces around Holly Kaye’s apartment, touching all the things she has bought. It is hard to imagine that a short time ago, she owned nothing. That she used to move from apartment to apartment in taxis, all of her belongings in a suitcase and one Hefty garbage bag. Once, on a rainy night when there were no cabs to be found, Julia moved on a crosstown bus. That’s how free she was, how unencumbered.

  But this feels better. And she doesn’t want Holly Kaye to return and send her hurtling backward, into someone else’s apartment, searching the faces of strangers for comfort and excitement. She likes knowing that this couch is hers, that she has chosen these vases and pictures and rugs. She likes knowing that On will call her. That he will sleep beside her. That he cannot tell her about Shanghai or Mao Tse-tung or recite Tang poetry doesn’t matter to her. She has constructed this life for herself, here on North Moore Street in this apartment. A life, Julia believes, that is better than anyone’s. Better even than Vicky Valentine’s.

  Every day she calls Edie at the company that finds her the apartments.

  “Any news from Holly Kaye?” she asks.

  The answer is always no.

  Holly Kaye’s mail has started to arrive here again. Letters with postmarks from Reno and Las Vegas. Julia holds them up to the light, searching for good news, offers of jobs out west or a marriage proposal from someone in Tahoe. But she either can’t make out the words or finds chatty, boring postcards from pianists and singers who have worked with Holly Kaye. “Good weather for this time of year,” they say. “Warm and dry. We need sweaters at night.”

  Julia and Lucy take Katherine out to dinner as a farewell party. They go to a restaurant where stars supposedly hang out. But they don’t see anyone they recognize, even though Katherine keeps thinking she sees someone famous.

  “Over there,” she whispers, “isn’t that Diane Keaton?”

  They follow her gaze. It isn’t.

  “Wait,” she says. “I think that’s Alan King.”

  It isn’t.

  “Why don’t we just relax and order dinner,” Lucy suggests.

  But Katherine’s eyes keep dancing around the room. She stares at the front door, the ladies’ room, the bar.

  “I want to see one famous person before I leave New York,” she says, disappointed.

  Julia says, “I always see them when I work at the flea market. Paul Simon. Dustin Hoffman. Polly Bergen. Everybody.”

  “You are so lucky,” Katherine tells her.

  “Hey,” Julia says. “How can we forget? We’re having dinner with a star. Our own Lucy Wilcox.”

  Lucy laughs. “Hardly.”

  “You’ve been on national TV,” Katherine says. “That counts for something.”

  Julia agrees.

  But Lucy just shakes her head.

  On comes over all excited.

  “We’ve got a recording gig in L.A.,” he tells Julia. “We leave in a month.”

  “Los Angeles?” she says. She feels terror building in her chest, rising upward.

  But On doesn’t notice. “This is so great,” he keeps saying. “Isn’t it so great?”

  “Los Angeles?” Julia says again. “That’s really far away. That’s on the other side of the country.”

  She imagines all the things between here and there. Highways. The Great Lakes. Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon and the Rocky Mountains. Diners and car lots and Motel 6’s. People who speak with southern accents. Families in the midwest. Ski resorts. C
amping grounds. The list crowds her mind until she has to sit down and hold the arms of her new easy chair real tight.

  On plays the drums on her metal coffee table, banging out a beat with his fingers. It’s rock and roll, Buddy Holly or someone. Rat-a-tat-tat. Rat-a-tat-tat.

  Julia focuses on the new chair. It is turquoise and pink, a pattern of triangles and circles that reminded her of The Jetsons. But now it reminds her of outer space, of the big expanse of sky between Los Angeles and New York. When it is dark here, she thinks, people out there are still on the beach. They eat lunch when we eat dinner. It’s worlds away.

  On says, “Aren’t you happy for me?”

  “Well,” Julia says, “personally I think Los Angeles is shallow. No culture. It’s all brand-new and flimsy. All pink stucco and palm trees.” She scrunches her face in distaste.

  “No!” he says. He comes and sits at her feet. “It’s big old convertibles. It’s swimming pools and movie stars. It’s fame and fortune.”

  Julia shrugs. She is trembling. She is clutching her new Jetsons chair so hard her knuckles are white.

  “And,” On adds, “it’s only for a couple of months.”

  She shrugs again. “Whatever,” she says.

  Holly Kaye will be back in three days. Julia has not taken a new apartment to house-sit. Every day, another one slips away, assigned to someone else. Already the best ones are gone and her choices are narrowed down to a floor-through on St. Mark’s, an apartment near Columbia University, and two one-bedrooms in the East Twenties. “You moved too slowly,” they tell her. “You should decide soon.”

  Lucy brings her empty boxes from the liquor store to help Julia pack.

  Julia says, “Oh, I don’t have that much stuff.”

  She looks around the apartment. She can’t even remember it the way it was when she moved in, all empty and barren. She shows Lucy the new halogen lamp she bought. And the long pine table.

  “I think I can use this as a desk,” she says, rubbing its surface.

  Lucy sighs. “But you need a place first,” she says.

  She points to the bookshelves.

  “How about we start there. Load the books into these boxes.”

  “I can do that last,” Julia tells her. “That doesn’t take any time at all.”

  Lucy is looking around the loft too.

  “Have you booked a truck or something?” she asks her. “They’re hard to get in the summer, you know.”

  “I thought I’d do that tomorrow,” Julia says, although she hasn’t thought it at all.

  “But you have to leave tomorrow,” Lucy says.

  Julia nods.

  “Lucy,” she says later, “it’s possible that Holly Kaye won’t come back.”

  “Really?” Lucy says. “I didn’t know that. I thought her contract ended this week.”

  “Yes,” Julia says, “but maybe she’ll go somewhere else.”

  Lucy is growing impatient. “Like where for instance?” she asks. She stands up and paces in front of Julia, waiting for an answer.

  “Like Reno,” Julia says. “Like Las Vegas. Like wherever lounge singers go.”

  Lucy stops pacing and faces Julia. “Julia,” she says, “she is not going to Las Vegas. She’s coming here.”

  “I know,” Julia says.

  Lucy kneels in front of her, the way On had when he was telling her about L.A.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  Julia forces a laugh. “It’s only an apartment,” she says. “Big deal.”

  When Lucy leaves, Julia stands in the middle of the loft. She is surrounded by her things. It is dark and she doesn’t turn on any lights. Instead, she stands there and she shouts. She shouts her name. She shouts letters of the alphabet. She shouts her telephone number. But the words die there, in the apartment. She has filled all that space. There is no more echo.

  Julia leaves the apartment. It is the middle of the night, Or, she corrects herself, it is early in the morning of the day she has to move. She walks to the bar where she had gone that first night, when she met Timothy from Australia. When her life started to change. Even though it is late, almost closing time, the bar is half full, but quiet.

  Julia perches on a bar stool. When the bartender comes to take her order, she says, “Diet Coke,” and looks up.

  The bartender is Barry, looking as nondescript as ever. Except that he is embarrassed to see her.

  “I knew you’d come in here someday,” he says. His voice is very sad.

  “How long have you worked here?” she asks him. Before he answers she says, “When did you get back?’

  He busies himself washing glasses. He doesn’t look at her when he talks.

  “I never went,” he tells her.

  Julia suddenly wants nothing more than to believe that Barry did have a job in L.A. She wants him to have told her the truth, even though all along she knew he was lying.

  “The contract fell through,” she says eagerly. “Right?”

  He shakes his head. He keeps washing the same glasses, over and over.

  “You got something here, then,” Julia says.

  She too is focusing on the spray of water, on the way it trickles down the glasses like tears.

  “You didn’t want to go out to L.A.,” she keeps talking. “Who wants to live there, right? A cultural desert.”

  “I wish …” he begins, but he doesn’t say anything else.

  Julia doesn’t want to hear the truth. She stands up and says, “I’ve got to go now.”

  “Listen,” Barry says. His fingers are growing all wrinkled like raisins. “There was no soap-opera job.”

  “That’s all right,” she says quickly. “I’m sure you’re very happy here.”

  She walks out of the bar and grabs a taxi to On’s as fast as she can.

  On is awake, eating take-out fried chicken when she arrives. He is dressed in a pair of black pants and nothing else.

  “I want to come with you,” she tells him right away.

  He fixes a plate of food for her. There is coleslaw and potato salad too.

  “I want to move to L.A.,” she continues. “I’ll go to film school. And that’s the place to do it.”

  On bites into a drumstick. He looks thoughtful as he chews.

  “We can rent a Ryder truck and drive out there,” she says. Her mind is full of all those things between here and L.A. again. But this time they are not weighing her down. Instead, they are making her excited. She has never seen any of it before. Yellowstone, she thinks. The Grand Canyon.

  On says, “What about pink stucco and palm trees?”

  “What about swimming pools and movie stars?” she says.

  “Julia,” he says, “we can drive out together. We can be together when we’re out there. But I don’t want to commit to something—”

  “I don’t want to either,” she says, meaning it. “I want to go out there with you and see what happens.”

  He thinks about this. Then he nods.

  “That sounds right,” he says. “We’ll just see how it goes.”

  Julia starts to leave, to get more boxes. She has to pack her things, get ready for Holly Kaye’s return. At the door, she tells On, “We’ll be eating dinner while everyone in New York is getting ready for bed.”

  He says, “We’ll be the last ones to see the sun before it sets.”

  “Just think of it,” she says. “Just imagine.”

  Whirlwind weekends

  JASPER’S VOICE ON HER machine says: “Hey, Miss Famous Illustrator. Miss National TV. Miss Good Morning America. Remember me? I knew you when.”

  Lucy doesn’t call him back. She doesn’t know what that message is supposed to mean. Has she forgotten him because of all that’s happened with My Dolly? Is that what he thinks? Is he right?

  She leaves for another weekend in Boston with Nathaniel Jones, the green message light flashing behind her.

  They go to his office first. Nathaniel has a new project for her. It’s another book by Fa
wn MacIntyre. An alphabet book.

  “Same concept,” he tells Lucy. “Complex ideas for kids.”

  Lucy says, “I’m so busy with this Dolly family. The Boy Dolly. The Baby Sister.”

  “A is for armadillo,” Nathaniel says. “B is for baguette.”

  Lucy frowns. “Baguette?” she says. “Are you kidding me? What child knows the word baguette?”

  “These books are very upscale,” he says.

  “Why not B is for brie?” she mumbles. She thinks of Jasper. Ten Tiananmen Squares, he had said. Nine Noriegas.

  Nathaniel strokes her hand. “We’re flexible. You know that. We didn’t do ten tornadoes, did we?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not married to baguette,” he says.

  But Lucy shakes her head. “I want to concentrate on My Dolly.”

  “Just look the thing over,” Nathaniel says. “There’s some great stuff.”

  He flips through the pages. His face brightens. He holds something up for Lucy to see.

  “Quixote?” Lucy reads out loud. “Q is for Quixote?’

  Nathaniel is getting excited. “You could do something very Man of La Mancha with this one,” he says. “Windmills. Donkeys.”

  Lucy says, “Forget it.”

  Nathaniel holds up two hands. “Take your time. Think it over. No rush.”

  “Quixote,” she says again.

  “I love when you’re difficult,” he says. He kisses her cheek. “You knock me out when you get like this.”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “So,” Nathaniel says, tucking Fawn’s new manuscript into Lucy’s overnight bag. “What do you want to do?”

  “Maybe something simple,” she says. “Like going to the No Name for fresh fish.”

  He turns to her. “I know,” he says. “I’ve got a real treat for you,” he says. “Marblehead.” His hands poke at the air with each word. “Beach. Rosalie’s. The Inn by the Sea.”

  “A quiet dinner here would be fine,” she says.

  He picks up her bag. “You are going to love it up there. Just you wait.”

  “Lucy,” Jasper’s voice says on her machine, “it’s me again. I really do want to see you. I want to talk. I want to see your pretty face.”