I should’ve been amused by the whole thing, and maybe if I’d been in a better mood I would’ve been. Instead, I dug a bottle of ibuprofen out of my messenger bag, popped three of them, and waited for my stop.
Let’s back up a bit. After I swore off nights spent wallowing in my room, I came up with a plan. I’d steer Betsy away from intolerably loud parties and toward something equally fun that didn’t resemble the slow, debaucherous decline of civilization. If I didn’t have to spend my evenings getting sloshed with loudmouth bros, I figured I could keep up the everything-is-hunky-dory charade with Betsy for at least another six months.
“Oh my god, you’re so, so right,” she said when I brought it up. “Ryder and those guys are fun for, like, forty-five minutes tops. Then we always end up outside or in the kitchen, just chatting with a small group of people who are much more chill.”
“Yes, exactly.” I was sitting on the old sofa in her basement while she dug through a box of VHS tapes. We’d recently uncovered her dad’s old VCR while sorting through stuff for a yard sale and spent hours amusing ourselves with grainy cartoons and kids’ movies. “So why don’t we just skip the rowdy part and go straight to chatting with cool cats who know how to keep it tidy?” I picked up one of the tapes. “This one.”
“Labyrinth? We’ve watched it like twenty-thousand times already.”
“We’ve watched it twice, and it’s fantastic.” Though I considered myself a Bowie fan, I’d never even heard of Labyrinth until I watched it for the first time on Betsy’s basement sofa.
“The music is soooo cheesy.” She paired her drawn out soooo with an eye roll.
“Cheesy? Or brilliant?”
She laughed and smiled that I-ate-sunshine-for-breakfast smile. “Fine, fine. You know I can’t say no to you.”
She slid the tape into the VCR and curled up next to me. “Okay. So instead of hanging out with your b-ball peeps tonight, how about dinner and a movie?”
“You know me so well.” I planted a smooch on her porcelain cheek.
“Apparently, Meadow is kinda-sorta seeing some guy from Newport. Should we invite them? Like a double date?”
“I guess. Are you just dying to size up Meadow’s kinda-sorta new boyfriend?”
She rolled her eyes again. “He’s definitely not her boyfriend. Meadow doesn’t have boyfriends. She just has boys.”
She certainly did, and they’d been an endless string of awful, dismissive older guys who never took her seriously and overeager younger guys who never stopped humping her shapely leg. Sometimes, I feared she’d never find a happy medium.
“If he’s a creep we’ll just ditch them,” Betsy said.
I smiled.
She smiled back and brought her face toward mine. “You know, because I’m letting you watch Labyrinth for the zillionth time, you have to make out with me.”
I wrapped my arms around her. “Bowie is a perfect make out soundtrack.”
Labyrinth plus twenty minutes later, we took our seats at a little hipster bistro on Wickenden Street. Meadow introduced us to her new kinda-sorta boyfriend, Owen. He looked about our age, with broad shoulders and boat shoes. The rich-kid equivalent of a basketball jock, except he probably played lacrosse.
“He goes to St. Joseph’s Academy,” she explained. “Not for the summer thingy. Year-round.” She didn’t say this to brag about her date’s status, because Meadow wasn’t a snob about that stuff. It came out matter-of-fact, like a piece of news no more or less interesting than the weather forecast.
It took me only ten minutes of listening to Owen prattle on about pork belly and prefects and sailing to Block Island to realize I didn’t like him. I’m not a class warrior, I swear. And it wasn’t even what he was saying that stuck in my craw, it was the easy-breezy way that he said it. It was the nonchalant way he brushed his hair out of his eyes. It was the casual way he rested his arms on the table and leaned back in his chair and claimed more physical space than anyone should. Aside from getting caught in a girl’s dorm room after curfew, Meadow’s kinda-sorta boyfriend didn’t have a care in the world, and I kinda-sorta hated him for it.
“How did you two meet?” Betsy asked.
“Johnny Rockets,” Meadow said.
Owen gazed at Meadow with an affectionate smirk. “She seemed like such a cool girl, I had to ask for her number. I’m always on the lookout for hot but low maintenance, amirite?”
I shit you not, he said this right in front of her. And, to top it off, he raised his hand to fist bump me. Meadow rolled her eyes but smiled, and Betsy laughed. I honestly have no idea if comments like that pissed them off, but, as so-called cool girls, they’d learned how to tolerate that kind of bullshit without batting a perfectly-mascaraed lash.
Because I’m a chickenshit pansy, I followed bro-code protocol and fist bumped him. And I hated myself for it.
The whole point of this evening had been to avoid clueless cads like Ryder and the guys from the basketball team. And yet I found myself sitting across from one. He might’ve been a little more refined than the cads I’d grown so tired of, but he was a cad nonetheless.
Again, I thought of Mattie and the zero muskrats asses that she gave. I didn’t think she’d say anything to Owen the lacrosse jock, but she wouldn’t have to. She’d just glare at him until he crumbled.
I coughed into my fist. “Is it hot in here? I’m just gonna step out a sec for some air.”
I made my way to the sidewalk out front and massaged my throbbing temples.
“Hey.” Betsy put a hand on my shoulder. “Feeling okay?”
“Honestly, no. I kinda feel like I’m gonna puke. Must’ve picked up a bug or something. Sorry.”
“No worries. Let me go grab the car.”
“No, no. You deserve a night out. I can call a cab.”
“Are you sure?”
“Abso-tive-ly.”
She crossed her arms and scuffed her skimmers on the pavement. “Will, are we okay?”
“What? Of course we’re okay. Why would you ask?”
“I feel like you’ve been weird lately.” She dropped her gaze. “Sorry, I’m probably just being paranoid.”
I’m not gonna lie, this killed me a little. Betsy’s instincts were spot on, but like many a teenage girl, she’d been taught not to trust herself. And because I was a chickenshit pansy, I was just going to let that go on happening.
“Sorry if I’ve been weird, Bets.” I pulled her close and kissed her never-oily forehead. “It’s just a bug or something. Maybe some stress about basketball next year. My coach won’t shut up about college recruiters.”
She nodded and gave me a peck on the lips. “’Kay. Text me later?”
“Posi-lute-ly.”
I didn’t call a cab. I started walking down Wickenden, past all the artsy gift shops and gourmet pizza joints and quirky breakfast nooks. And, for reasons I can’t explain, I wanted to talk to my mom.
I pulled my phone out.
>Are you guys out?
>Yes. What’s up?
>Nothing. Just curious.
>Are you bored with future Miss Sorority Queen? You can come join us.
>Please don’t call her that. Where are you?
She texted me an address on Atwells Ave.
>You won’t be disappointed.
And that’s how I ended up on the crosstown trolley, listening to some college dude scream “Keep your eye on the grand old fag!” while his friends had a giggle fit.
I missed my stop and had to get off at the corner of Eagle Street and backtrack across the bridge. I don’t know exactly what I’d been expecting, but it wasn’t the nondescript bar that I found. It looked like any other bar, except maybe a little more rough around the edges and with shockingly poor lighting. Not the kind of place my parents hung out.
“Ugh.” I pulled out my phone to tell
my mom she’d texted me the wrong address. I didn’t hear back.
The irony here is that I’d been fantasizing about speakeasies full of weirdos for years. And here was a real-life version of that, staring right at me, and I was too blind to see it. Instead of venturing inside, I stood on the sidewalk for an hour, annoyed about my headache and bro-code and my status as an insufferable chickenshit pansy. I finally called a cab and headed back to a dark house in Grayton, because my parents were still out, having a grand old time at a mysterious juice joint in Federal Hill.
The other slap-to-the-face irony—inside Salone Postale, Mattie was getting ready to take the stage for the very first time. That’s how close we came to colliding, like two moons orbiting different planets that pass within light-seconds of each other.
I was more nervous for my first solo performance at a renovated theater turned dive in L.A. than I’d been for any of my performances back home. My typically iron gut revolted under the stress, and I hugged a filthy toilet as I threw up the greasy pepperoni pizza I’d eaten before the show. I cursed the smoggy city and its overabundance of American junk food.
T-minus five minutes to my act, and I found myself standing backstage, tugging on a lock of hair. All I could think of was everything that could possibly go wrong. What if my assistant tied the wrong knots? What if he didn’t leave me enough wiggle room? What if I choked?
As if all that wasn’t enough, I worried my fat, lazy boss at the diner would fire me for ditching my apron and sneaking out early for my performance. If I couldn’t make rent, I’d find myself sleeping in a cardboard box on skid row and performing handcuff escapes on the street for pocket change.
I gasped when I felt a chunk of hair dislodge from my scalp. My nervous system hadn’t even registered the pain.
– Akiko Miyake, Los Angeles, August 7, 1978
Mattie and the Ravenous Imp
Less than a month after my first day of training, I stood backstage at Salone Postale, my palms sweating and my knees rattling. My brain kept going fuzzy on me. I couldn’t believe I was about to do the very thing I’d spent at least ten years trying to avoid at all costs—putting myself on display under a massive spotlight.
It had taken Miyu almost a full week to talk me into it. “Performance is an integral part of escapology,” she explained after I’d finally succeeded at picking five padlocks in under five minutes while locked in the pitch-blackness of the trunk. “It’s perhaps the most integral part.”
“I didn’t start training so I could perform,” I protested. “I just wanted to. For my own personal fulfillment. Or something. Besides, I’m not ready yet.”
“Unless you’re planning on becoming a spy, these skills you’ve acquired are meaningless without performance. Escapology is an art form designed to awe and inspire.”
“Regardless, performance isn’t for me.”
She stared at me until I began to squirm. “My mother was a nervous wreck before every performance.”
“You’re a terrible liar,” I whispered.
“But it’s true. Do you know why she wore all those colorful wigs for her performances?” I pictured the unstoppable Akiko Miyake with her demure smile contradicting her bright hair—a different color of the rainbow for each performance. “She used to pull out her own hair when she was anxious,” Miyu explained. “Like a nervous tic. She was practically bald by the time . . .”
I thought about all the grainy footage of Akiko I’d watched on YouTube. She always appeared so put together. Was there a rock hard kernel of fear beneath that composed surface? I tried to imagine myself in her shoes, standing on a stage in front a crowd ready to ride an emotional rollercoaster of suspense, tension, and resolution. The very thought made my palms sweat and my mouth dry up, but something inside me—some ravenous imp who craved attention—wanted to know how it would feel.
I continued to protest even as Miyu and I practiced a stage-ready escape act, which included hours upon woozy hours of suspension training. Perhaps all that blood rushing to my head finally got to me, because my resolve crumbled and now I found myself standing next to Monty the Magician, watching a contortionist finish up her routine.
“Try to relax,” he said. “They’re going to love you. Most of them aren’t even old enough to remember Akiko, so a live escape act will be completely new to them.”
“That’s reassuring,” I said as my voice cracked.
He laughed. “I’ll set the stage with an introduction so the crowd will be chomping at the bit by the time you get out there. What should I call you? Personally, I think Mattie the Magnificent is a little old school, but has a nice ring to it.”
Something about Monty saying my name, my actual name, flipped a switch in me. All it would take was one video posted to LifeScape, tagged with my name, and every freaking person in the 401 area-code would know what I’d been up to for the summer. In that moment, I saw me, my whole life, my name, my face, my body splayed out on the interwebs, ready for dissection.
“Oh, dear god. No no no,” I begged. “You can’t use my real name.”
“Uhhh . . . okay. You got a nickname I can go with?”
“Miyu calls me Girl Scout . . .”
Monty shook his head as he smoothed his greasy mustache. “Too cutesy.”
I wracked my brain to come up with a decent stage name. For some reason I’ll never be able to explain, all I could think of was the summer I’d decided to dye my hair fire engine red. It faded into a hundred sad shades of pink after a few washes, and even Stella couldn’t take me seriously.
“You look like an angry, deranged mermaid,” she’d chirped as I obsessed over my reflection in a warped, antique mirror. “Like, Ariel’s evil twin, bent on revenge. Oh! I’ve got it. Ginger the Avenger.”
“That sounds like a comic book character, not a mermaid.”
“Why can’t she be both?”
Stella spent hours that summer concocting an elaborate back story for Ginger the Avenger. The details of the back story faded with time, but the nickname simply refused to die.
“My best friend calls me Ginger,” I croaked.
Monty smiled and nodded, scratching his stubbly chin. “I like it. It’s got an air of classic Hollywood glamour.”
The contortionist took a deep bow and ducked off the stage as Monty closed the plum-colored curtains. I discreetly plucked at my black stretch pants, trying to unwedge my underwear from my nether region. I was far from obese, but my pants made every ounce of pudge I had stand out. I felt like I was made of curves and gobs of unruly flesh, and with my skin tight t-shirt and sneakers, I looked ready to take a yoga class, not perform for a crowd full of quirky weirdos.
Two steel cables with clips on the ends dropped from the darkened ceiling above the curtained stage. My stomach turned and I desperately wished I hadn’t eaten a cheeseburger from Sid’s a mere forty-five minutes before I was supposed to go onstage. Something that tasted like cheese mixed with bile bubbled up from the pit of my belly.
“Ready?” Miyu asked as she wheeled a rattling cart with the equipment for my act past me and onto the stage.
I didn’t respond. My knees locked up while the rest of my legs turned to jelly. Monty gave me a gentle nudge. “Come on, kid. From what Miyu’s told me, you’ve got this one in the bag. Go out there and make us proud.” I shook my head at him, and he grabbed my wrists. “That woman is terrified of leaving her own house,” he whispered. “But she has so much invested in you, she’s out on that stage, ready to help you perform. And I’ll be there, too. You’ll be fine.”
His mustachioed face looked so strangely earnest in that moment, I allowed myself to believe him. I gave him the briefest of nods and somehow willed my jellied legs to move so I could join Miyu on the curtained stage. Monty slipped between the curtains to face the hecklers at the front.
“Who wants a mustache ride?” one of them shouted.
&
nbsp; “I want the bendy girl’s number!” another one shrieked.
“I can’t make any promises,” Monty said breezily. “But buying me a gin and tonic couldn’t possibly hurt your chances. But before we start bartering with drinks and digits, we’ve got an extra special tasty treat for you tonight, pleasure seekers. A delectable morsel of suspense.” My stomach threatened to turn inside out, and I silently cursed Monty for referring to me and/or my act as a morsel.
“Many years ago,” he continued, “a world famous escapologist graced this very stage with a few of her most stunning performances. After her tragic death, her only daughter found a young pipsqueak of an orphan digging though the dumpster in the alley behind the salon, hungry for cheeseburgers and fame. She took her home, raised her as her own, and trained her in the exquisite and death-defying art.”
“What the hell?” I whisper-whined. “Why did he just invent an insane back story for me?”
“His stage persona is kind of a dick,” Miyu said. “The crowd knows he’s all bullshit, but they love him. Just let him do his thing.”
“Ladies, gentleman, non-ladies and non-gentleman,” Monty bellowed, “you are about to witness that feral orphan’s inaugural performance, aided by her mysterious assistant—a living shadow known only as . . . The Hummingbird.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Miyu barked under her breath.
“Without further ado, the Salone Postale proudly presents the intrepid, the indelible, the incomparable . . . Ginger!”
A stagehand pulled open the curtain. Once my eyes adjusted to the blinding stage lights, I got my first look at the audience.
“Her hair’s not red,” one of the hecklers shouted. “I want my money back.”
I almost passed out.
Monty winked at me. “To get your hearts racing and your palms sweating, Ginger will escape from a straitjacket . . . while suspended . . . upside down.”
The crowd “oooohhhed” while Miyu slipped the straitjacket on me. I took in a deep breath, puffing up my chest as she cinched the straps around my ribcage. I knew I wasn’t in immediate danger of literally dying—just dying of embarrassment—but I felt fragile, like the slightest knock might cause me to crumble into a pile of dusty bones.
The Art of Escaping Page 7