Body of a Girl

by Leah Stewart

  “Research,” I say, searching for Carl’s name in the program. I find it on the back, beneath the lighting guy and the costume designer. Hannah takes what I said as a joke and laughs.

  An older man passes by, heading up the aisle, then turns back and stops beside me. “Excuse me, young lady,” he says. “Have we met?”

  I look up at his face. He’s smiling hopefully at me, laugh lines around his eyes. “Yes, hello, sir,” I say, rising to my feet. “I’m Olivia Dale.” I offer him my hand.

  He takes it, squeezing it in one hand and giving it a grandfatherly pat with the other. “I knew I recognized you. How did we meet? Are you a friend of my granddaughter’s?”

  “Yes, sir,” I say. “Please tell her hello.”

  “I will.” He pats my hand again. “So nice to see you.”

  “You too, sir,” I say, and when he lets go of my hand I sit back down. He smiles at Hannah, who is watching him with open curiosity, and then moves up the aisle.

  “Nice man,” Hannah says. “Who’s his granddaughter? Do I know her?”

  “No idea. Never met her,” I say. “He’s a city councilman. I did a story on him two years ago.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell him that?”

  “Because the story was not flattering,” I say. “He got caught with a hooker.”

  “That cute old man?” she says, astonished.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say. “The very same.”

  “Jesus,” Hannah says. She cranes her head to look back at the old man, as though now she’ll see a lustful old goat in boxer shorts instead of the sweet grandfather who was there just moments before. She turns back to me and shakes her head. I have to laugh at her openmouthed astonishment. “Damn,” she says. “It makes me wonder what my own grandfather is up to.”

  It’s not long before the lights dim and then come up on the three witches. Macbeth himself strides out of the wings. It takes a moment before I recognize Carl. Most of the actors are absurdly bad, intoning their lines without the slightest idea of what they mean. Carl is the exception. He doesn’t even look the same. He seems taller, thinner, his jaw set, his mouth firm. When he turns murderous, I look at his face and believe he’s capable of anything. Maybe the sad and lonely man I met the other day was only another role.

  After the play, we hang around until Carl emerges from backstage to receive praise. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes lighting restlessly on one face, then another. We wait behind four or five other people to congratulate him on his performance. He catches my eye over another woman’s shoulder and grins at me, all his teeth showing. I smile back, just as though we were friends.

  “Carl, that was wonderful,” Hannah says when we reach him, patting his arm. I nod. He puts one hand on each of our shoulders. “Thank you for coming,” he says. Through my shirt I feel the warm dampness of his palm. It makes me feel dirty, dirty and hot. I resist the urge to step away. Lined with black, his eyes seem huge. His lips are chapped and shiny. There’s a smudge of tan foundation in his goatee.

  “We enjoyed it,” Hannah says. “You were great.”

  “Thanks,” he says again, nodding and nodding. “Thanks a lot.” He squeezes my shoulder. I try to relax the muscles beneath his hand, to imagine what it would be like to want this boy to touch me. He looks into my face and I smile and lower my eyes. “You really were great,” I say. He lifts his hand from Hannah’s shoulder and wipes his mouth with the back of it, leaving pink streaks across his skin. The hand on my shoulder stays.

  “Listen,” he says. “What are you girls doing now? I’ve got an evening performance, too. I was going to grab a bite to eat first. Do you want to come?”

  Hannah looks at me. I nod. “Sure,” she says, and I say okay. Carl squeezes my shoulder again before he finally lifts his hand. I can’t resist the urge to brush off my shoulder, as though to wipe his fingerprints away.

  • • •

  We go to The Pie Lady, a restaurant run by a woman who started selling pies to raise funds for her daughter, paralyzed by a robber’s bullet to the head when she was only eighteen. Glory Hallelujah is her most famous pie. As I step into the restaurant, Carl touches the small of my back. I move away, then force myself to turn and smile at him. There’s no one in the place except the Pie Lady herself, on a stool behind the counter. As Carl speaks to her, Hannah whispers, “Are you flirting with him?”

  I shrug, studying the pies inside the glass case. Hannah raises her eyebrows.

  Carl turns to us. “The lunch buffet is over, but she says she’ll fix us something.”

  “What would you girls like?” she asks, showing us to a table. “I could do fish sandwiches or maybe fried chicken.”

  Hannah and I order the fish, Carl the chicken, and the Pie Lady wipes her hands on her apron and bustles off into the kitchen. I’ve interviewed her before. I don’t think she remembers me, and yet I know so much about her. “So you really thought I was good,” Carl says after she’s gone.

  “Of course,” I say. “You were the best one onstage.”

  He smiles at me, then his expression grows serious. “How’s your story going?” he says. “Have they found out anything?” He picks up his knife. I watch him turn it over and over in his hands.

  “About Allison?” I say, just to see his face when he hears her name. He keeps his eyes on the knife in his hand and nods. “I haven’t learned much. Just that her mother thought she was perfect.”

  “She was,” Carl says. “In a way.” He sets the knife down and sighs. “For her mother, she was perfect.”

  “And for you?”

  He turns his eyes to me. “She wasn’t perfect,” he says. “But I loved her for a long time anyway.” He holds my gaze, his eyes filling with tears. “I wish she could have seen me in the play today,” he says, his voice trembling over the last words. For a moment I believe that his heart is breaking. Then I remember what a good actor he is. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m doing my best to find out what happened.” I reach out and squeeze his fingers and he smiles gratefully at me. “I’m glad you were there,” he says.

  For the rest of the meal I am quiet, watching him as he rips the chicken off the bone. He’s laughing, telling Hannah a story about a set that fell over, eating the Glory Hallelujah pie he ordered. I shake my head when he offers me a bite of pears and crumb topping, holding his fork toward my mouth. Across from me is a set of untouched silverware, an empty chair. I imagine that Allison Avery sits in that chair, her dark hair falling forward across her shoulders. She looks right at me and smiles, that mischievous, mysterious smile. Hold my gaze, that smile says. I dare you.

  As we get up to go, Hannah slips off to use the bathroom. Carl and I stand in the doorway. I pick up a matchbook and open and close it, reading some of the articles the Pie Lady has taped to the wall. I don’t see mine. Carl’s sucking on a mint and playing with his fat silver lighter, turning it over and over in his fingers, opening it to watch the flame catch and then closing it again. I’m rocking back and forth on my heels, staring at the ceiling, because every time I look at him I discover that he’s looking at me. I glance his way again and find his eyes on my face. “Listen,” Carl says. “I was wondering if you’d maybe like to go out some time, um, you know.”

  I start to tell him that I have a boyfriend. I can feel the color rising in my cheeks. He’s watching me, and now his eyes are big and sad. The motherless boy. “Sure,” I say. I’ll gamble that he has something more to tell me. “Give me a call.”

  Hannah comes back and says, “Ready?”

  “Bye now,” the Pie Lady calls.

  • • •

  Five hours later I’m crammed inside a crowd, so stoned I can’t tell whether I’m swaying or standing still. David brought me to this club to hear some new band, because, he says, “there’s a good buzz on them.” Every relationship I’ve had has been a course in something. My high school boyfriend was an expert on the Bible. I fell asleep trying to read Deuteronomy. He also tried to teach me how to sing�
��from the diaphragm, from the diaphragm—but my voice always came croaking out my throat. When David and I first started dating he went through my CD collection and separated them into two shelves. “This is the cool shelf,” he said. “These are . . . not so good.”

  “Not so good” meant Elton John, Lynyrd Skynryd, much of the country I’d collected as a college freshman. I resented his condescension then. But I just can’t help it, I don’t listen to those CDs anymore. I’m embarrassed to admit I ever owned them. He’s right. They’re not good. Everything changes when you know what you’re looking for.

  Right now I’m looking at David, wondering how long I can stare at him before he’ll glance my way. He is standing perfectly still, his arms crossed over his chest, his neck craned to watch the band onstage. The club is a long and narrow room with the stage at the front and the bar and tables at the back. Around us, kids in tight T-shirts are dancing, moving by inches, shoulders against shoulders, hips against hips, a hand brushing the side of a breast. Their faces are the faces of addicts and zealots, glazed and ecstatic. A tall boy dances wildly beside me, his head down, his dark hair flinging sweat. He throws himself in my direction and I fall hard against David. I turn back toward the boy, my fist raised, and David grabs the back of my shirt. The boy flails off in the other direction. The crowd parts and then re-forms, absorbing him. David asks me if I’m all right and squeezes my shoulder. “Maybe we should sit,” I say to him.

  “I want to stand,” he says.

  “Well, I’m going to go sit.”

  “Okay.” He keeps his eyes on the singer. “I’ll come find you in a little while.”

  I stand there for a minute, looking at his profile, the clean strong lines of his jaw, his perfect nose. “I might go out with this guy Carl some time,” I say. He can’t hear me over the music so I lean in close and repeat it in his ear.

  “You mean like a date?”

  “Not exactly,” I say. “He’s a source. He might think it’s a date.”

  “I don’t know if I like that, Olivia,” he says. He’s staring at me now, frowning. “I don’t like that at all.”

  “It wouldn’t really be a date,” I say. “I wouldn’t kiss him or anything.”

  He makes an incredulous face. “What’s going on with you? You’ve never needed to date your sources before.”

  “It’s not a date,” I say. “Really.” He’s still staring at me. “Don’t worry,” I say. I lean in and brush his lips with mine. He looks at me hard. I want him to pull me close, to tilt back my head with a kiss. “All right,” he says. “You be careful.” He turns his attention back to the band.

  “I wish we had gone to a movie,” I say.

  “I wanted to hear this band,” he says irritably. “You can see a movie anytime. I thought you were going to go sit.”

  I can’t find a table so I just lean against the bar. The bartender comes over and I order a beer that I don’t want, though it’s cold and feels good going down my throat. This is what I love about being stoned—the pleasure of small physical sensations, liquid on your dry throat, air in your lungs, lips pressed against your lips. Someone leans in beside me to signal the bartender. His arm is warm against my shoulder. His thigh brushes my hip.

  Evan told me that he was once in a “grope room” in a gay club in New York. The lights are out, and the room is filled with men, and they just touch each other, and sometimes one man will take his clothes off, and a crowd will gather around him. I can imagine the freedom of it—no faces, no expectations, just body to body. Skin to skin. Evan kissed one man and left. It was too much for him, he said. Too anonymous. Too animal.

  When Evan told me this I recognized it as a fantasy I had as an adolescent, before I had ever been kissed, when my whole idea of sex came from novels I hid under my bed when my mother came in the room. Now it seems like a strange fantasy for a young girl to have. Because women are supposed to want intimacy. Women are supposed to want love. Anonymous sex is supposed to be the province of men.

  “Excuse me,” the man next to me says. “Did I bump you?”

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  “You like this band?”

  “Never heard them before,” I say. The man props himself on the bar like he’s going to stay and talk awhile. All I want is for him to go away as soon as possible. Look at me, thinking about anonymous sex, and then as soon as any possibility arises I’m as nervous as a cat in a car. If Allison Avery were the one leaning against this bar, I imagine she would cock her head and smile as automatically as I turn my face away.

  “I think they’re pretty good,” the man says.

  I tilt my head in his direction and try a smile. I can feel how awkward it looks, my lips stretched over my teeth. He smiles back uncertainly, then turns toward the bartender, who hands him his change. The man lifts his beer in my direction. “See you,” he says, and walks away. I put my hand to my mouth.

  Over the bobbing heads of the crowd I can just see the faces of the band, three men and one woman frowning seriously into their microphones. The bass is so loud I can feel it in my breastbone like a second painful heartbeat, and the smoke from a hundred cigarettes settles into my hair, my clothes, my skin.

  The line of people in front of me parts to let a jostling group through. “Let’s get out of here,” one of them says. She doesn’t look more than sixteen, in tight black pants and a tank top, her blond hair grazing her bare shoulders. “I’m bored,” she whines. “This place is lame.” Her friends, all male, ignore her, so drunk they’re weaving on their feet, laughing with wide-open mouths. “Y’all,” she says, drawing the word out into two long syllables. One of the guys turns to her. He looks about my age, and he’s sweating profusely, his face red and his eyes huge and wild. I recognize him. He’s the one who slammed into me earlier. Now he scoops the girl up into a dancing position and whirls her around, his laughter loud and manic. She’s insisting he let her go. Instead he hugs her tighter and tighter while her voice rises toward a scream. The other boys laugh, except for one. He stands, staring at the floor, rolling a bottle of beer between his palms. He lifts his head, and I see that he is Peter.

  I look away before my eyes meet his. The girl’s voice rises and rises, louder than the band. The guy spinning her seems lost in the motion, his forearms flexed with the effort of holding her tight. I go toward them. “Hey,” I call out. “Hey, put her down.” The guy stops spinning, glaring at me over the girl’s shoulder. For a moment I could swear his eyes are whirling in his head, like pinwheels. “Let me go, Steve,” the girl says. “Please.”

  “No problem,” he says. He loosens his grip and the girl slides down his body until her feet touch the floor. “Who the fuck are you?” he says to me.

  I ignore him, touching the girl on the arm. “Are you all right?” She glances at me, then looks away. “Fine,” she mutters. “I’m fine.”

  “She’s fine,” Peter says, stepping forward. “Everybody’s fine.” The bottle falls from his hand to the floor. He stares at me, his lovely face flushed. “Are you following me?”

  “You know this girl, Pete?” Steve says. He’s looking at me as though he’d like to hit me.

  “We’ve met,” he says. “I don’t know her.” He looks at me again, that appraising gaze. “She’s a friend of Allison’s,” he says suddenly, his eyes on my face. “But I don’t like her.” I raise my eyebrows and say nothing. He’s beginning to make me angry.

  At the mention of her name the rest of the group falls silent. I wonder if they’re the “fast crowd” Carl told me about. Only the girl looks young enough to be a friend of Peter’s.

  “We were all friends of Allison’s,” one of the guys says quietly. He wears a concert T-shirt and army pants, and he looks stoned, his eyes small and red. He lifts a hand as though to touch Peter’s back, but lets it fall away before it reaches him.

  “That’s right,” Peter says under his breath. “That’s right.”

  “Let’s go, Pete,” the girl says. She lays a hand
on his arm, but he shakes it off with a quick, impatient movement. “Go ahead,” he says. She hesitates, uncertain, and then she turns and disappears into the crowd. The guys follow her, the one who last spoke offering me his hand to shake before he goes. His palm is sweaty and hot.

  Peter stays a moment, still looking at me. I meet his gaze. “You know what?” I say. “You’re an asshole.”

  He doesn’t laugh, or call me a bitch, or any of the things I expect. Instead he blanches, his eyes going wide, as though I’ve hurt his feelings. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, his face a map of confusion. He stands there, weaving on his feet, and presses both hands to his forehead. Poor kid. He looks sick, and like the girl, he’s much too young to be here. Then he drops his hands and takes a few steps toward me. In the half-light I can barely make out his features. “Olivia.” He smiles grimly. “I’ve been reading your stories.” He sways, and I put a hand on his arm to steady him.

  “What are you doing here anyway?” I say. “How did you get in?”

  He reaches into his back pocket, moving with the extreme precision of the very drunk. “You want to card me?” he says, handing me his wallet.

  I pull out a driver’s license. “Voilà!” he says. “I’m twenty-two.” He leans over my shoulder, looking at the license. “He looks like me, don’t you think?”

  “You’re drunk.” I hand the wallet back.

  “Allison got it for me,” he says. “She got me this wallet, too. She said it was time I had a grown-up wallet.”

  “It’s nice.”

  “Yes,” he says. He shakes his head, as though to clear it. “I’m very drunk. It has me worried.”

  “Why?”

  He sighs. All the bravado is gone, and he looks like a child. “You met my mother,” he says. “I have to go home sometime.”

  “Better sober up first then,” I say.

  He laughs. “That could take a while.”