“Are you?” Inez lifts two fingers to her lips.
“But I can see that you’re frightened by this business.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m frightened I’ll scare you away.”
“I don’t scare so easily,” Inez says.
“You sure about that?”
“No, I’m not sure about anything.” Inez begins to pace the room. “Tell me something . . . I’m curious how you have so much time off from your job. Don’t you ever have to be at the newspaper?”
Sylvia doesn’t seem to appreciate the question. “I work a lot at night, but I’m going in this afternoon.”
“I’ve been wondering if you’re an impostor,” Inez says, with a sideways grin.
“Have you?”
Inez is silent.
“What if I told you I am?”
“You are what?”
“What if I told you that I don’t work at the Chronicle ?”
Inez backs toward the door. She’d like to scoop out a deep breath, but all she can manage is a trail of shallow gasps. “Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Let’s say I am.”
“Then who are you?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?!”
“I didn’t mean to trick you.”
“You’re not a reporter?”
“I thought you knew.”
Inez stares at Sylvia, the supposed reporter. An impostor. She knew it. Who ever heard of a barefoot reporter, a bohemian journalist in a clingy red skirt? Sylvia, whoever she is, has begun to cry, her eyes brimming as if she were the one who’d been betrayed. Inez looks at the tin vase of mums and wants to knock it over, to make a flood, any kind of mess. She can practically see the orphaned purple mums scattered across the floor.
Instead, she shouts, “If you’re not a reporter, why did you come to my door? Why did you do that? Who the hell are you? What’s your name? Tell me your name. Is Sylvia even your name?”
“Yes,” Sylvia says, looking at the floor. “It’s my name. I’m sorry.” She rubs her eyes. “I wanted to get to know you. I didn’t think I’d have a chance.”
Inez stands by the door, indignant, her cheeks flushed, her hands balled into fists.
“You can leave if you want.”
“I know what I can do. You don’t have to tell me that. I don’t know why I’m still here.”
Sylvia backs away a step. Her mouth opens, but it takes a moment for her to speak. “I saw you at the symphony. The way you came onstage. I got excited just watching you walk to your seat. I fell in love with you before I even knew your name. Before I even understood how I felt.” When Inez doesn’t respond, Sylvia says again, “You can leave.”
“Is that what you want me to do? Game’s over. Leave. Just pretend it didn’t happen.”
Sylvia is silent.
Inez steps toward the impostor. She’d like to slap her across the face but stops an arm’s length away. “Do you do this kind of thing all the time?”
“Never.”
“Just me, huh? How did I get so lucky?”
More than anything, Sylvia wants to take Inez in her arms. She doesn’t dare. Inez has a blank expression on her face, as if paralyzed with fury. Sylvia reaches out toward the violinist and watches her flinch. Sylvia takes Inez’s hand and holds it gently, hoping to calm her. Slowly, lightly, she drags her fingers along the soft skin of Inez’s steely forearm, the iridescent skin seeming to light up as Sylvia’s fingers slide up along the swell of Inez’s bicep, to her shoulder, where Inez closes her eyes and tilts her head as if to hear better as Sylvia traces the delicate curve of the violinist’s ear. Sylvia presses her lips to Inez’s sweet lobe and exhales lightly, knowing how Inez likes that. “Could you ever want me as much as I want you?” she whispers.
“I don’t know who you are,” says Inez, disconsolate.
“I’ll tell you.”
“Do you expect me to believe anything you say?”
“I can hope so. Please, Inez.”
“Why should I?” The truth is she doesn’t care who Sylvia is. Let her be whoever she wants.
Sylvia’s notion is to keep things going. It’s an idea she learned in college music classes: the music is always going forward. If you make an error during the performance, it’s folly to go back and correct it. Your reception may pivot more on illusion than competence. Never pause in midperformance to question your competence. “Will you have a glass of wine? I know it’s still morning, but—a cup of plum wine and I’ll tell you who I am.”
“All right.”
“It’s sweet, I just want to warn you. I know it’s not very sophisticated to like sweet things, but once in a while I like them.”
It seems to Inez that the girl is afraid to stop talking, as if whatever future the two of them have together depends on her crazy will, on not leaving even the smallest space for common sense to seep through.
“Sometimes I’ll go into Simon Brothers and splurge on a box of white chocolate seashells from Jacali in Belgium; other times I’m happy with an Almond Joy or a Snickers. I like to let myself enjoy things that aren’t sophisticated. Do you want to know my one and only goal in life?”
Inez nods, spellbound, despite herself, by the mad impostor.
“To become so sophisticated that I don’t have to worry about being sophisticated.”
IN the kitchen nook, Sylvia feels as if she’d like to vomit. Go out like a dog does and eat grass in the backyard. Leave a neat pile of everything that she can’t digest, of who she is, of who she is not, and say to Inez, This is me; I am what you see. She hears Inez take a few steps in the other room. Sylvia feels the stabbing loss of Inez already. Of course she’ll leave. But then she hears the staticky beginning of the needle on the record—side B of the Satie. Inez likes to hear both sides.
Sylvia feels a momentary nostalgia for the days when life happened to people out her window. But she wasn’t watching anymore. Now that her impersonation as a reporter has been exposed, she has the far more difficult task of performing as herself. She may as well see it through. Plum wine, a treat from the Orient, is all that the moment calls for.
Sylvia returns to the living room with a pair of pinch cups and the bottle of plum wine. After filling Inez’s cup she watches her take the first sip worriedly. “Too sweet?”
“No. I like it,” Inez says, stretching out her neck as if she has a crick in it. “Listen, I don’t want to know anything about you.”
“Nothing?”
“No. I wouldn’t believe you anyway.”
Inez hums along with the Satie softly. Clearly, the violinist wants her to pay for her crime, but she hasn’t quite figured out the right punishment. Sex is sitting on the shelf above them.
“I have a gift for you,” Sylvia says.
Inez looks up. “Who’s the gift from? You, or the person who you were?”
“I think you’re beginning to enjoy this.” Sylvia reaches under the love seat for the wrapped box and places it on Inez’s lap. “Read the card. It’s got your name on it. You’re still Inez, aren’t you?”
“Ha, ha.”
Sylvia remembers crafting the brief note—A string of beauties for beautiful Inez—which the stoic violinist puts aside as soon as she reads it.
“Open it,” says Sylvia. “It won’t bite you.”
When Inez finally unwraps the package, she is astonished by the string of bright-colored beads, ceramic hunks, some striped, some spotted, sized like the flanges of a large finger.
“They’re African trade beads. Venetian.” She’d found them in a shop on Union Street.
“I can’t accept these.”
“Why?”
“They’re too much, especially from somebody that I don’t know.”
“Somebody you’re beginning to know. Try them on. You’ll have to have them restrung—they’re just on a length of knotted hemp—but you can put them on for right now.”
Inez looks down at the beads and slips
them gingerly over her head.
“They’d look better with your blouse off.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s the best way to judge their beauty. Then you can decide whether you want them or not.”
“Oh, please.”
“You know it’s true,” says Sylvia, unbuttoning Inez’s blouse.
ONCE Sylvia has helped Inez out of her clothes she can tell Inez enjoys the weight of the smooth beads against her breasts. Sylvia strokes Inez’s nipples, smiling as Inez moans faintly, her nipples tightening with pleasure. Sylvia takes one of them and then the other into her mouth, tonguing them dreamily.
AFTER they make love, Sylvia spoons Inez and strokes her breasts, the beads, the breasts. “You liked that, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Inez says.
“You still haven’t really let yourself go. Have you had . . . an orgasm with me?”
Inez presses her buttocks against Sylvia. “I almost had an orgasm.”
“Aren’t you angry with me anymore? I want you to be angry with me.”
Without thinking, Inez turns and takes hold of the little bells of Sylvia’s breasts and gently squeezes the nipples. She slides down in the bed so that she can get one of Sylvia’s broad, berry nipples into her mouth and bites down on it hard.
“Ow, you’re hurting me.”
“You want me to hurt you, don’t you?”
“Not really.”
Sylvia takes Inez’s right hand and places it between her legs. Sylvia is wet. She presses Inez’s fingers against her clitoris in a circular motion, rubbing against Inez until her breathing quickens. Inez slips her index finger inside Sylvia and sends it deep. Then she adds her middle finger, and Sylvia gasps. The smell of Sylvia bursts into the room and hovers over them like a pungent veil. Screw me, Sylvia says, and Inez is surprised to hear the phrase. Screw me, Inez. Inez shoves in another finger. Screw me, screw me. Sylvia climbs atop her. Screw me. She wants to shut Sylvia up and sticks a few fingers from her other hand in Sylvia’s mouth. Sylvia sucks on them furiously. Then Inez finds a rhythm, her fingers deep inside Sylvia, the walls of Sylvia a spasm around Inez’s hand. Ohhhhh, Sylvia calls, finally. Inez keeps her eyes closed. She doesn’t want to see Sylvia’s rapture but can feel Sylvia’s orgasm shudder through her fingers. Inez’s wrist flutters as if it’s gone spastic. Now Inez rubs herself against Sylvia’s pubic bone. It doesn’t take long.
“Close your eyes,” Inez says.
“Why?”
“Close your eyes.”
Inez doesn’t want Sylvia to see her.
“It’s all right,” she says.
“Close them.” Inez bites down on her lower lip and breathes hard through her nostrils.
Sylvia cups her face in her hands. “Really, it’s all right.”
Her mouth open just wide enough for a word, Inez whispers: Bitch. Then, breathless, she is scaling up the hilltop. That’s how she thinks of it—as a hilltop. How many times has she climbed it? Her own Everest. She’s rarely made it to the summit. She opens her mouth to gasp. The air is thinner. Oh. Oh. Oh, no. Something leaps out of her throat. A winding shriek. Sylvia, or whoever the hell she is, purrs Good, good, good, as Inez settles back into her arms.
AFTERWARD, they prop themselves up with pillows, just like she and Jake sometimes do after sex. Jake usually falls asleep for a few minutes. When he wakes up, he asks if she’d mind the television. He likes to watch The Tonight Show. She’s always hated having the television in their bedroom. She doesn’t want to share her bedroom with Jack Parr and Zsa Zsa Gabor, the procession of personalities. She hates seeing her husband chuckle along with the Alka-Seltzer commercials.
Sylvia doesn’t have a television in her bedroom, nor does she fall asleep. Inez is pleased how long they can remain together in each other’s arms, without saying a word. How long can they remain suspended like this? Inez puts a finger on Sylvia’s lips.
Sylvia smiles at her. “Don’t worry, I can be whoever you want me to be.”
new happiness
IN the end, Inez demands that Sylvia reveal everything about herself. Inez makes the terms clear—she wants a background sketch bursting with particulars or Sylvia will never see her again. She has Sylvia jot it all down—like a criminal forced to write her confession. Even Dr. Rosconini, the wonderful psychiatrist, turns out to be a fiction. Sylvia scribbles a 250-word portrait of her mother. She crafts a bibliography of vocabulary books she and her mother used, and she names all of her piano teachers in Sacramento. She coughs up phone numbers, addresses, three generations of maiden names. Although it is useless information in a practical sense—the whole thing nothing more than another charming ruse on Sylvia’s part—the transaction changes the terms of their relationship.
At the ripe age of forty, Inez hadn’t expected to become a parole officer. Trained as a concert violinist, noted for her beauty and fidelity, for overlooking her husband’s indiscretions, for treating her children with kindness and trust rather than heavy discipline, she hadn’t expected to demand such exacting behavior from another individual. Neither had she expected, at midlife, as she was finalizing a plan to take her own life, to fall head over heels for a woman, a charlatan reporter. Does she really think that she can forestall the inevitable by rooting out the so-called truth and pursuing a relationship with a woman who’s already tricked her, a creature who claims to have a “crush” on her?
On Saturday, Inez strolls unannounced into the piano showroom at Myerson’s. The strains of “Bye Bye Blackbird,” a burst of rhapsodic, dance hall piano, hit her as soon as she steps through the Geary Street door. She is in no hurry to identify the pianist, who is obscured by a cluster of young girls in party dresses crowded around the mahogany baby grand. A tall, tweedy-suited woman, with a huge yellow vinyl purse, stands apart from the girls, keeping a watchful eye. The woman’s purse is large enough to swallow Jake’s Book of the Month Club edition of The Divine Comedy, a volume that belongs no more in the yellow vinyl purse than on Jake’s bedside table, where he insists on keeping it, because one of these nights he may just read it.
Inez plants herself across the carpeted showroom to take in the scene. Of course it’s Sylvia at the piano; Inez recognizes the right hand as it makes its showy leaps. The piano playing is quite competent. If one happened to have a feeling for show tunes, a customer walking in from the street might be dazzled by the exhibition. Surely, that’s the point—to dazzle the unsuspecting. Now, as Sylvia chords through her final good-byes to the blackbird, a gangly man, a dressed-up beatnik in a blue double-breasted suit and a string tie, of all things, sidles up to the woman who could smuggle Dante in her yellow purse.
Inez is trying to decide if there’s something illicit about the man offering the woman a cigarette. The woman lowers her eyes, and the man in the blue suit sparks a small flame with his Zippo. Meanwhile, Sylvia, who’s dressed simply in a cream-colored shift with a delectable ballet neck, turns to talk to the girls. They adore her. Inez adores her, but she’s decided this morning to stay in the shadows.
Sylvia hoists the smallest of the three girls onto her lap and shows her how to tinkle her baby paw up a C scale. The other girls pester the pianist for a chance at the instrument. Their mother stands with her hands on her hips and watches the scene at the piano. The way she bites on the filter of her cigarette and inhales for all she’s worth reminds Inez of Susan Hayward in one of her death-row scenes in I Want to Live. The man in the blue suit shifts his weight from one foot to the other and offers his kindliest rogue smile. He’s doing his damnedest, Inez realizes, to sell the woman a piano. Lifting the girl off her lap, Sylvia spots Inez standing by the sheet music and mouths her name, the tip of Sylvia’s tongue settling between her teeth for the long “Z” of Inez. A negotiation’s begun for the purchase of a piano. The woman unbuttons the jacket of her tweed suit to expose her white blouse. She wants the salesman to know that her breasts are good-sized, as if that will factor into the final price. The man in
the blue suit nods, it seems, in recognition. All in a day’s work. Although the girls are clamoring for Sylvia’s attention, she keeps her gaze fixed on Inez, who, in the splendor of the moment, backs away, swallowing the final vowel of her lover’s name after she’s mouthed it.
ON Thursday, after her matinee concert, Inez decides that she’ll visit Sylvia that evening in another of her worlds. Late in the afternoon, her children wander into the kitchen making noises about dinner. Inez is seated at the kitchen table, sipping a massive gimlet from a San Francisco 49er tumbler. All the other glassware is in the dishwasher. She needs to start a jelly glass collection like Sylvia’s. Either that, or buy some new glasses. Anna has been breaking them. Every time Anna empties the dishwasher she seems to break another glass. Clearly, she’s doing it on purpose. It seems a strange way for a thirteen-year-old girl to seek attention.
“What do you want for dinner?” Inez asks. It’s been a warm October day. Earthquake weather, as people are fond of saying. “We hardly have anything in the house.”
“How about a tuna casserole?” Joey says, naming his favorite food—his pathetic idea of a wholesome, home-cooked meal, but one he knows he can’t ask for often as his mother doesn’t care for tuna.
Inez turns toward her daughter. “What do you think about that, Anna?”
“Okay with me.”
Although her appetite is the best it’s been in years, Inez still cannot abide the notion of tuna. It’s hard to say what she despises most: the smell of the open can or the too-rich odor of the baked-in-Pyrex casserole, featuring Uncle Ben’s rice and Campbell’s cream of celery soup. No one else in her family seems to mind the smell of tuna, which lingers in the drain even if she rinses away the tiny scraps of fish and runs the disposal with sucked-out lemon halves. Inez takes a final swig of her gimlet and thinks to hand the 49er glass to Anna to see what she’ll do with it. Toss it across the room for all I care, girl. Instead Inez puts the glass down and decides that once she distracts the kids she’ll pour in another jigger of gin and a splash of lime juice.
“Will you guys help me prepare it? I have to go out tonight.”
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