MOTHER, DEAD FOR MONTHS, GIVES BIRTH TO SON -- MIRACLE BOY APPEARS NORMAL, SAY DOCS!
Chapter Nineteen
“You HAVEN'T SEEN my red shoes, have you?” Nancy asked, from the bottom of their bedroom closet.
“Nope.”
Her sister was as helpful as ever.
“You didn't borrow them by any chance, did you?”
“Nope.” There was a loud snap, from her chewing gum.
Nancy crawled out again, wearing only a slip, her hair pulled back and held by an elastic band. “You know where else they could be? And don't say nope.”
Her sister opened her mouth, about to say just that, then amended it to ‘Try under my bed. I might have seen them there.”
Under Linda's bed, Nancy found not only the red shoes she was looking for, but the leg-warmers she thought she'd left at the skating rink.
“How does all my stuff wind up under your bed?” Nancy said, holding up her discoveries.
“You're careless.” She turned a page of People magazine. Nancy got up and continued dressing. The wedding was only an hour from now. Then there was the reception and dinner, and finally, dancing, for the select friends of the bride and groom, at the Underground. Nancy didn't often go to clubs and discos, and she was looking forward to going to this one.
“Who's taking you tonight?” Linda asked.
“Nobody.” Nancy unfastened her hair and fluffed it out with her fingers.
“Nobody? Not even Phillip Chen?”
“Chen's meeting me there.”
“So Chen's taking you.”
“He's meeting me,” Nancy reiterated -- though Chen was probably looking at it the same way Linda did.
“That why you're wearing your red silk dress, with the slit up the side?”
Nancy had pulled off the dry cleaner's plastic and was turning the dress on the hanger, looking for flaws. “I'm wearing the red silk because the only other decent dress I have, you borrowed two weeks ago and forgot to -- “
The phone rang, and Linda picked it up. “May I ask who's calling?” she said, in an overly sweet tone. “One minute, please.” She extended it to Nancy, with an interested smile.
“Chen?” Nancy whispered.
“You'll see.”
“Thanks.” Nancy took the phone, said, “Hello?”
It was Jack. “Hope I'm not catching you at a bad time,” he said, “but you know how many Lius there are in the phone book? Took me a half hour to find you.”
“How did you?”
“I remembered you lived on Chatham Square. That narrowed it down a lot. . . Who was that who answered?”
“My sister.”
Linda mouthed “Who is this guy?” and Nancy fluttered her hand in dismissal. Why was he calling? she wondered. She glanced at her wristwatch -- it was five-fifteen, on a Saturday night.
“How are you doing?” she asked, for want of anything better to say.
“Good. . . fine.” He seemed to be searching for words himself. “Listen -- I know it's kind of last minute, but I was wondering if you were free tonight -- for dinner, a movie, anything? I'm sort of at loose ends, and I'd like to get out of the house.” Then, perhaps realizing he hadn't issued the most flattering invitation, he said, “I'd like to see you.”
It was just what she wanted to hear, and just when she didn't want to hear it. Her sister was studying her face as if it were a hieroglyph.
“Tonight, I'm afraid, isn't good,” she said. She explained about the wedding -- “it's one of my oldest friends, from grammar school” -- and the dinner, and the party afterwards. He left a long pause when she'd finished.
“What time will that party end?” he asked. “I'm a real night owl, and I could catch up with you afterward.”
Why was he being so persistent about this one night? “I don't know,” she said. “It's at the Underground -- some of the people from the wedding are going to meet there, in something called the Torch Room, at eleven. It'll probably run pretty late.”
“Great,” he said, “I'll meet you at the Underground. I've been there before, and I know where the Torch Room is. I just really need to see you tonight.”
There was something funny about his voice, Nancy realized; he was acting very chipper and upbeat, but it didn't sound convincing. He sounded. . . desperate, as though he didn't want her to know how much he needed this. Her mind was racing; should she just agree to it? What would she do with Phillip Chen?
“Is that okay?” Jack asked, eager but, again, a little strained.
Her sister had decided this was all much more interesting than People and was waiting anxiously for the full scoop.
“I guess so,” Nancy said. “Sure. I can meet you there.” Maybe Chen didn't consider it a date, either. “Anytime after eleven.”
She had hardly hung up before her sister pounced. “It's a friend, just a friend,” Nancy insisted as she flew into the rest of her clothes. “Don't try to make some big deal out of it.” But Linda loved it anyway, feeling she'd glimpsed the outlines of some red-hot romantic triangle. She could hardly wait for the next installment.
For that matter, neither could Nancy. She ran out the door, still buttoning her coat, and got to the church in the nick of time. Why did tonight have to be the night Jack needed to see her? Chen was already there, and yes, he was holding a place on the pew for her. He helped her off with her coat, complimented her on her dress. He was such a nice guy, Phillip Chen; she'd known him since grammar school too. They'd even made out a few times in the eighth grade. But now he'd come back to New York, armed with an MBA from Wharton, and he seemed determined to put the rest of his life in order -- and that included a wife, from the old neighborhood, to help him set up a proper Chinese household. Nancy knew that, if she ever came around to marrying him, he'd want her pregnant one week later.
The bride, Amy Wong, was marrying an Italian guy, whose family lived on Mulberry Street, so the guests on either side of the aisle were an interesting mix -- mostly Chinese on Amy's side, mostly Italians on Battaglia's. Phillip leaned close to Nancy, and asked if they were Mafia. “If they are,” Nancy whispered, “they're not very good at it -- the Battaglias live in a third-floor walk-up, and from what Amy tells me, Joey could barely scrape together the money for the tuxedo.”
“What's he do?”
“Something in an art department, for a magazine. Esquire, I think.”
That gave Phillip plenty to think about: Esquire, on the one hand, sounded fairly respectable. But art department sounded, well, dubious. And not having money for your formal wear, that plainly spelled trouble. Phillip worried for a second about Amy's choice, before pondering again his own.
Nancy left him to it, looking around to see who else was -there, smiling at some friends, exchanging a few words with the chubby young woman beside her, who turned out to be-one of Amy's distant cousins. She was wearing very wet, very purple, lipstick, and said she worked “in the fashion industry.”’ Nancy didn't pursue it.
The wedding itself was standard-issue Catholic -- Amy, never the prettiest girl in her class, looking radiant in a long, white dress; and Joey, whom Nancy had never seen in anything but the funkiest sort of clothes, in a black tuxedo. It was only when he turned, to escort his bride down the aisle, that Nancy saw he was wearing a brilliant diamond stud in one ear.
The reception and dinner were across the street, in a common room owned and operated by the church, and the two families had apparently decided to team up on the cooking; there was a long buffet table laden with the most eclectic cuisine -- mountains of crispy spring rolls, beside a steaming tureen of lentil soup, next to a tray of fried shrimp, beside a lasagna easily a yard long and a yard wide. In her own informal survey, Nancy noted that the Italians ate chiefly the Chinese food, and the Chinese ate chiefly Italian. She wondered whether it was just to be polite, or because they enjoyed the change of pace. Phillip ate so little she asked if he was feeling all right.
“Oh yes,” he said. “I'm just a little run-down,
I guess. I stayed at the office till ten last night.” He smiled and took her hand. “But I can't complain; they warned me in business school it would be like this.”
Nancy smiled too, and wondered how to diplomatically extricate her hand. Phillip wasn't squeezing, or even really holding on to her, his hand was simply resting on hers in a kind of easy, proprietorial way. Which almost made it worse.
“Look -- they're bringing out the cake,” Nancy said, freeing her hand to gesture toward the kitchen doors. Phillip turned in his seat. What, Nancy said to herself, was she going to do at the Underground?
Amy cut the cake, Joey fed her a piece -- of course too big, and she nearly choked -- and a lot of flashbulbs went off. Nancy ate her own piece of cake while Phillip was still scraping the icing off his.
“Why are you doing that?” she said. “It's pure sugar.”
“That's what you need -- to give you a little boost.” “Why would I need a little boost now? The wedding's over.”
“What about the Underground?” Nancy blurted out before she could stop herself. Maybe he hadn't known? But he had, and looked slightly disappointed in her. “Did you want to do that?” he asked.
“Didn't you? Look -- if you're too tired, I understand.
Your hours have been killing lately. I'll be all right -- I can tag along with some of the others.” Was she sounding genuinely concerned for his welfare, or eager to be rid of him? “Really, I don't mind going with the others.”
Phillip looked at her with even greater affection. Apparently he thought she was trying to let him off the hook, at the expense of her own happiness. He picked up his fork, mashed it into the icing, and cleaned his plate. “There,” he said, dropping the fork again, “I can dance all night now. Let's go.”
Great, she thought; she'd certainly aced that one. On the way over, they shared a cab with the woman from “the fashion industry” and two others; when it stopped at the end of a dismal West Side block, and the cabbie said “Five-fifty,” Phillip looked surprised.
“We're there?”
The others were already piling out.
“The Underground,” he said, “this is it. Five-fifty.”
Phillip paid the fare, without asking anyone else to chip in, which was classy of him, Nancy thought. The club had no marquee, or sign, or anything. There was just a velvet rope, stretched in front of a narrow set of cement steps leading straight down; the brick walls were splattered with graffiti. Nancy had been to various clubs before, so she knew you couldn't expect much from the outside. But this one really looked forbidding. Poor Phillip -- he still looked like he couldn't believe it.
The doormen, who must have been feeling unusually kind-hearted that night, let them all in without any wait. Just inside, a girl on a stool collected ten dollars per person, and said, “The check room's that way.” It was lucky she did -- the lighting was very dim, and there were corridors and staircases going off in all directions.
“What is this place?” Phillip asked.
“It was a tunnel, or a railyard, or something like that,” Nancy said. “My sister's been here. She said it goes all the way under the Hudson River.”
Phillip still looked puzzled, and not pleased.
“It's all underground, and underwater,” Nancy said, trying to make it sound interesting and fun. “Pretty amazing, huh?”
“Yeah,” Phillip said, “amazing.”
They checked their coats, and wandered off into what turned out to be an arcade decorated with framed photos, for sale, of naked women wearing dog collars, leashes, and chains.
“Did you already get Amy and Joey a wedding present?” Nancy asked, and Phillip said, “Yes, why?”
“Because I thought if you hadn't, maybe one of these. . .” In the one they were looking at, a blond woman was on all fours, with her leash fastened to a clothesline.
“Want to find the Torch Room,” Nancy asked, “where we were supposed to hook up with everybody?”
“Fine with me.”
“Let's try that direction.” Taking his hand now, she led him, in his nice blue suit and yellow silk tie, out of the arcade and toward the pounding thrum of the music. They passed through a stone archway, guarded by a plastic mannequin with glowing red eyes, down another set of steps, and into what looked to Nancy like. . . nothing she'd ever seen.
It was a vast cavernous hall, with a high, vaulted stone ceiling, eerily lighted by blue and red spots, and echoing loudly with the blasting beat of the music. In a sunken area that ran the length of the room, hundreds of dancers writhed around, twirling and gyrating, and crashing into each other. Above them, behind an iron railing that ran along both sides, onlookers drank, and smoked, and watched the dancers appraisingly. The decibel level was excruciating.
“I can't believe this,” Phillip shouted over the music -- Michael Jackson, Nancy could now make out -- "it's like a cross between Grand Central Station and -- “
“ -- and hell.”
Phillip looked at her, and nodded. “You said it.”
At the far end of the room on the left, there was a metal scaffolding, three stories high, with a bar on every level; at the far end on the right, a raised area lighted only by torches , affixed to the walls. Nancy pointed to the torches, and Phillip gestured, as if to say “lead the way.”
To get there, they had to walk along behind one of the iron railings, on a narrow strip already packed with people. Nancy had to weave her way through the crush of bodies, black guys in berets and artfully torn T-shirts, white guys in loosened ties trying to look “downtown,” girls with so much eye makeup they looked like raccoons. The smell of smoke, from cigarettes and joints, hung heavy in the air. Where the walkway ended, there were three carpeted steps up, into what was comparatively an oasis of peace and quiet.
“Welcome to the Torch Room,” said a tall black waiter in a Carmen Miranda-style turban. “Can I get you a drink?”
It was like a sudden intrusion of sanity. “Yes, please,” said i Nancy. “A vodka and tonic.”
“Make it two,” Phillip said.
The turban whirled away, empty tray held high above his head.
“Hey, Nancy, come on over here.” It was Amy's older sister, who'd been maid of honor, calling from a Victorian settee. Phillip and Nancy went over to join her.
“Is this place something, or what?” Susan said; somewhere along the way she'd changed from her wedding outfit to a leopard-print miniskirt.
“It's something all right,” Nancy said, then told her how she and Phillip had described it.
Susan laughed, and clapped her hands together. Her boyfriend, sitting beside her in an oversized jacket, pretended to laugh too. “That's great,” she exclaimed. “Hell!”
And from here, in the Torch Room, it looked even more so; Nancy could hardly take her eyes off the vista that extended out behind the sofa Susan was sitting on. There was another iron railing, about waist high, with two huge stone angels, kneeling and weeping, at either end; between them, and going out as far as the eye could see, into an absolute blackness, was an enormous, vaulted tunnel with two of the original train tracks -- the wooden ties, the gravel bed -- still embedded in its floor. The tracks emerged from right under the Torch Room, and traveled out, in parallel lines that appeared to converge hundreds of yards off, under the last of a series of rusted steel trestles, bathed in a pale blue light. Beyond them lay that yawning, and impenetrable, darkness.
There was something almost hypnotic about it, and Nancy stood, staring, until she realized the turbaned waiter was hovering beside her, with her drink on the tray.
“Oh, thanks.” Phillip had apparently already paid him. “And thank you, Phillip.” He was stirring his own drink with the plastic swizzle stick.
A few of the people in the room started to applaud as Amy and Joey arrived -- others, who were no part of the wedding, looked confused. Joey was still in his tuxedo, but Amy had-changed into a fuchsia Danskin and a leather skirt. She was smiling broadly, receiving kisses on the cheek, f
luttering her hands like a Flapper doing the Charleston. Susan said, “Boy, is she blitzed.” With Joey in tow, Amy made the rounds of the Torch Room, kissing and hugging and waving; Nancy could swear she embraced a couple of people she'd never ever seen before. When she got to Phillip, whose family had known hers all the way back in Taiwan, she gave him a big, sloppy kiss, ruffling his hair, before turning to Nancy, bleary-eyed, and saying, “Hope you don't mind.”
“Be my guest,” Nancy replied.
“He's just so cute,” and she kissed him again, Phillip blushing furiously. Joey, standing just behind her, took it all in good humor. His bow tie was hanging undone now, and some- one had passed him a joint.
“How ya doin’, Nance.” He offered her the joint. “Wanna hit?”
“No, thanks. I'm doing fine already,” and she rattled the ice cubes in her glass.
“Yeah, well, not as fine as Amy's doin’.” Amy had just slumped onto the sofa, with her chin resting on her sister's shoulder. “She's gonna be sick as a dog tomorrow.”
“Are you going on a honeymoon?”
She suddenly knew, without looking, that Jack was there.
“Nah, not yet. We're still savin’ our bread up to get a better apartment. The way we figure it. . .”
Joey went on to describe their future plans, while Nancy slowly turned in place to look for Jack. Phillip, fortunately, was talking to Amy and her beau.
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