“Sure,” she said, not even processing the question. Her brain had gone all soft and floppy. Something about not telling Spencer. Whatever. It was probably a good idea.
“So,” he said, “is she on her way?”
Scarlett nodded.
“Well, we probably have time…”
And then he did it again.
CRACKS
The train home that night was packed.
A crowded New York subway car in the summer is a wonderful place to meet new people. There is no decorum, no breathing room, and often, no deodorant. You survive by keeping yourself small and taking short maintenance breaths and making them last, like divers do.
Scarlett was well versed in the art of subway riding and could handle even the worst of conditions—but today, she was simply overloaded. Her brain was scrambled as they sped along, the train shaking back and forth. All she could see, all she could think about was the kissing. It had become overwhelming—it was taking over everything. It had passed over feeling good to that superintense feeling that is just too much for the brain or body to hold. She pushed her face, lips and all, against the subway pole to keep herself upright, even if that was almost a guarantee of catching something truly horrible.
“Are you going to puke?” Spencer asked. He was standing next to her, holding his bike upright with one hand and carefully balancing himself by holding onto the pole high over her head.
“Huh?”
“You look like you’re going to hurl,” he said in a low voice. “Should we get off?”
The man Scarlett was pressed up against on the other side looked down warily.
“I’m fine,” she said. “It was just warm in there today. Must be dehydrated…”
…from all the kissing I was doing. Shut up, brain!
“What’s wrong with you today?” he asked, unsatisfied. “It wasn’t just the heat. You seemed…I don’t know. Like something was up.”
When she was little, Spencer told her that he could see pictures of her thoughts in her eyes. Obviously, she had figured out this wasn’t possible, but there was still something in her that believed that he could get at her thoughts if he wanted to.
He was doing it now. He was looking her in the eye and seeing the truth there.
“Is there something going on?” he asked.
“Going on?” she repeated. “Going on with what?”
This was idiotic. She knew what Spencer meant, and he knew that she knew. This was her moment to come clean. So what if Eric had asked her to keep quiet? There was no need to keep things from Spencer.
Scarlett opened her mouth to tell him, but something strange flashed across his expression—something so fast and so subtle that anyone else would have missed it. But Scarlett saw it. He wasn’t going to like her answer.
“I got my period,” she blurted out, much to the continuing delight of the man pushed up next to her. “It’s catastrophic.”
“Oh,” Spencer said. “Why didn’t you say so? That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
He didn’t look convinced.
“You would tell me if there was something else, right?”
“Of course!” she said.
This was the first time she had ever really lied to Spencer. It was upsettingly easy. He turned back to the Manhattan Storage ad that he’d been staring at before this doomed conversation started. He had asked, and he had taken her at the word. Which made her the worst sister, ever.
Then again, she thought, she hadn’t really lied—she’d just switched topics. It wasn’t like Spencer told her every little tiny detail. She didn’t want to know every tiny detail. She had once seen an open box of condoms poking out from under a pile of his clothes, for example. She never whipped them out and said, “What, or who, have you been doing with these?” He told her the stuff that mattered to him. She had known about his major crushes, his biggest frustrations. The gory details weren’t important. He had to have left out some pretty big things along the way.
But he had never lied. If she had asked him something, he would have told her, no matter what it was. She knew that for a fact. If she had wanted, for some insane reason, to hear the gory details…he probably would have given them to her. Or, at least, he would have told her as much as he thought a younger sister could hear without her head exploding. He would not have looked her in the face and denied something.
And she didn’t have her period. That was actually a lie.
The train stopped, and he began to wheel off his bike. She followed him as he lifted it up the stairs into the heavy, humid night. He was already talking about something else—something that had happened to him at work that morning. But she wasn’t listening. There was a low pounding in her head, like a pump gone haywire.
She had to tell him. No matter what Eric said. It would be fine. He wouldn’t care. It would change nothing.
Her phone beeped, registering a message that had come in when they were underground. Her hand shook a little as she flipped it open. It was from Eric.
You’ve made a country boy very happy, city girl, it read.
“Who was that?” he asked. “Mrs. Amberson?”
She flipped the phone shut and shoved it into her pocket.
“Yeah,” she said, amazed at how quickly another lie flew from her mouth. “You know what she’s like.”
She would have cracked—started laughing uncontrollably, started screaming. It was unclear. But fate dealt her one other kind hand. As they approached the hotel, they noticed the black Mercedes lolling in front of it with the hazards on. The driver was out of the car and up the street a bit, talking on his phone.
“What’s going on here?” Spencer said, jumping on his bike. “I think we need to go and have a look.”
He rode off ahead. Scarlett walked slowly, trying to catch her breath. She’d made him happy. That was the kind of message you sent if there was a thing—a real thing. She was barely paying attention as Spencer circled the car like a shark, tapping on all the windows to torment the occupants. They didn’t respond to his efforts. The doors and windows remained closed when Scarlett approached.
“What do you think they’re doing in there?” Spencer asked, jumping off his bike and wheeling it to the curb. “If you were going to pick a place to have sex in a car, would it be in front of your own house, blocking traffic?”
“Probably not,” Scarlett said.
She suddenly felt a weird affection for Lola and Chip and their cozy little life.
The door flew open, and Lola got out. She was wearing the Dior dress. Chip looked like he was about to get out after her, but then he caught sight of Scarlett and Spencer standing there. His face was a mess—red, wet. Lola looked comparatively composed, though her eyes were clearly a bit on the runny side and her mascara was smudged a little under the eyes.
“Are you okay?” Spencer asked, as she approached them.
“I’m fine,” she said, brushing back some hair that had stuck to her damp cheeks. “Can you just ask him to go? And be nice to him, Spence. Okay?”
She said it so quietly and with such obvious discomfort that there was no way that Spencer was going to say a word in reply.
Lola went inside. Spencer passed his bike over to Scarlett and went over to the car and leaned over the door. Scarlett couldn’t hear what he was saying, but clearly he wasn’t mocking Chip. Chip put up no resistance. The driver got back into the car, and the Mercedes pulled off.
“I don’t believe it,” Spencer said. “She finally did it. She actually dumped him. I think…I think I feel bad for him. That’s annoying. But also, how great is this?”
As he went toward Trash Can Alley to lock up his bike, a glowing cigarette butt came sailing down next to Scarlett, striking itself out on the pavement on impact. She looked up, and was not surprised to see a thin trail of smoke and a shadow above.
“Interesting night, O’Hara?” a voice asked. “I have a feeling they’re only about to get more so. See you in the morning.
”
LOLA SEES A DINOSAUR
Lola was in the Orchid Suite, stripping off her dress when Scarlett opened the door.
“Here,” she said, as Scarlett came in. “This is for you. I think it looks nicer on you, anyway. I’m not sure I can really wear black. Not everyone can. It’s a myth. I’m too pale.”
Scarlett accepted the dress and watched as Lola pulled on a pair of pink shortie pajamas and then set to work dumping out the contents of her underwear drawer onto her bed. She began refolding her panties into perfect little squares, which was something she usually did to relax herself in times of stress.
“Do you want anything?” Scarlett offered quietly. “Tea, or water, or something?”
“I’m fine. Thank you.”
Scarlett put the dress on her bureau and sat down on her bed opposite. She waited until Lola had folded everything to her satisfaction and sat down, squishing the pile of panties between her hands, like a delicate pastel accordion.
“We were at a benefit at the Natural History Museum tonight,” she said. “Some friend of theirs rented out the lobby for something—I don’t even know what—and everybody paid about a thousand bucks to be there. There was a girl named Boonz there. I’ve seen her at a few things. She dates this other guy from Durban. She walked right up to me, like she wanted to make small talk, because there’s nothing else to do at these things. And do you know what she said to me?”
Scarlett could have come out with a few amusing possible answers that Spencer would have loved, but this was definitely not the time.
“She said, ‘Don’t you have a second dress?’ I kept waiting for her to laugh, to show that it was some kind of weird joke. But she didn’t. She said, ‘You’ve worn that every time I’ve ever seen you.’ And she smirked and walked away.”
Scarlett felt a flush coming to her cheeks. There was no reason for someone to cut Lola down. Lola, who could be one of those snotty and horrible people, but who never, ever was.
A few tears dribbled down Lola’s cheeks.
“I barely know her. There was no reason for her to do that. She just had to make a point of the fact that I wear this one dress a lot, because they get rid of them after they’ve worn them one or two times. I was trying not to cry, and I looked up at the dinosaur skeleton, and all of a sudden, I just had this horrifying image of…forever. Being around these people for the rest of my life. I put down my drink and walked out.”
“Good,” Scarlett said. “You should have. Did Chip leave, too?”
“He followed me out,” she said. “He tried to make me feel better. He said that he would get me a new dress. And that’s the problem. The solution is always going to be ‘buy another one.’ The people are always going to be the same. They’re so smug, and most of them are so stupid, and they think they deserve everything they have. They’ll never have to work, never have to do anything they don’t want to do. They can’t understand not having money. They see it as a flaw. Chip doesn’t…but I just realized he’ll never, ever get it. He would never get that, to most people, getting a dress like this is a huge deal.”
She looked at the once-beloved dress, now lying limply on the bureau.
“He wanted to take me out somewhere else. Go downtown to a club, or over to the boat, and I just wanted to come home. We pulled up, and I broke up with him. Just like that. I always thought that was what I wanted. I always thought that’s where I wanted to be—with the people who really lived that life. And then I didn’t anymore.”
There was a knock at the door, and Spencer let himself in, slightly more subtly than normal. He dropped down next to Lola and leaned low over his knees to look up at her downturned face.
“You must be thrilled,” she said. “You don’t have to lie.”
“I wouldn’t. But I’m not saying a word. I was nice to him. And I will be even nicer to you, and your weird underwear sandwich.”
“Thank you.” Lola set the pile of perfectly folded panties on her bedside stand, then reached over and gave his hand a little squeeze. “I appreciate it.”
Both of them sat there watching Lola, waiting for something dramatic to happen, but nothing did. She sniffed a little, straightened the underwear pile, then stood.
“I should go tell Marlene,” she said. “And then I’ll tell Mom and Dad. About this, about the job. Might as well. I just broke up. They aren’t going to kick me when I’m down. I’ll be back in a minute.”
She floated off, closing the door quietly behind her.
“Did you see that?” Spencer said in a low voice. “That’s not what you look like when you break up with someone you really like. Remember when Gillian broke up with me last year, during our final production?”
“Which one was Gillian?”
“The one with the really long red hair. She broke up with me right in the middle of The Music Man.”
“I remember,” Scarlett said. “You sat in your room for three days over the long weekend and got drunk on that Johnnie Walker you stole from her apartment and told Mom you had the flu, except you smelled like booze. And you threw up a lot. And you never changed your clothes.”
Spencer nodded, not even a little taken aback by the description.
“Exactly. That’s what it feels like. I know.”
“Didn’t you go out with her best friend a week later?” Scarlett asked.
“That’s not the point…”
“And she broke up with you, so it’s not really the same.”
“All right. That was a bad example. Do you remember Emily, from junior year?”
“From The Glass Menagerie?”
“That’s the one. I broke up with her, and I felt horrible. I was a big, hot mess.”
“Yeah, but didn’t you break up with her because she was gay and about to break up with you anyway to date that other girl in your class?”
“Scarlett,” Spencer said, drawing himself up, “I am trying to teach you a lesson.”
“Sorry.”
“Lola’s way too calm.”
“Lola’s always calm,” Scarlett replied.
“Lola isn’t always calm.”
He said it like he knew what he was talking about, but Scarlett couldn’t figure out what he was referring to.
“You only look that calm when you feel relief,” he went on. “When you didn’t care in the first place.”
This was punctuated by a slamming door and heavy footfalls down the hallway. Marlene came tearing into the Orchid Suite and made right for Lola’s bed, clawing at the sheets and pulling them off the bed, then knocking things off the dresser. It was a very uncoordinated effort, one that screamed of a general frustration. Spencer caught her around the waist and hoisted her up. She flailed at him, but the blows were ineffective.
“Marlene,” he said, “you must chill a little, okay?”
He kept her dangling there until she gave up and went limp. Lola rejoined them and looked at Marlene sadly.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Marlene, I really am.”
Marlene wasn’t interested. She wiggled her way out of Spencer’s grasp and stalked out of the room.
“Why is she more upset than you?” Scarlett asked.
“I think she sees Chip as an older brother.”
“She has an older brother,” Spencer said. “I’m her older brother.”
“Her older brother with a boat and a driver,” Lola clarified. “She got attached to him. She’ll be all right. I’ll talk to her when she calms down. Don’t let her break anything, okay?”
Lola went off again, and Spencer just shook his head in amazement.
“That’s enough drama for tonight,” he said, peeling off his shirt. Even he was struck by the powerful odor that had been caused by the long day in the church. He held it at arm’s length. “I’m done. I’m going to go to bed and read important books about theater.”
“It would be easier if you just said porn,” Scarlett said.
“No idea what you’re talking about. But knock first if you
need me.”
When he had gone off, and the room was quiet at last, Scarlett went over and picked up the black dress and held it up to herself. It was hers now. And she had Eric. And Lola was single.
She went to the window and pulled it open. The windows of the Hopewell were old, made of thin glass, and largely uncared for wood frames that coughed up paint and pigeon feathers when you touched them. But the night air was warm and sweet, and didn’t smell too heavily of garbage from the alley below. There was a white full moon hanging over Naked Lady’s building.
She read the message on her phone again.
You’ve made a country boy very happy, city girl.
She was the city girl. This was her city. And for the first time that summer, maybe ever, Scarlett felt so full of contentment that she would even have been happy to see Naked Lady and wish her well.
CELEBRATION
The cast was fading in the heat the next day. They lounged on one another across the big, empty floor, treating each other like pieces of furniture. Scarlett had always noticed, when dealing with her brother’s friends, that actors were touchy. She now appreciated this fact completely. She smiled benevolently as she watched Ophelia share her bottle of water with Spencer.
She didn’t sit next to Eric. It was too soon for that. She took her place over by the wall, next to where Mrs. Amberson had planted herself during the actors’ warm-ups. She had now taken the low stage.
“Trevor and I have been talking,” she announced to the group. “And we think…”
Unless she was seriously imagining things, and she might have been, Scarlett detected a very slight, very fake British accent creeping into Mrs. Amberson’s voice. It wasn’t constant—it would just twang Scarlett’s ear from time to time, sharp as a flick of the finger. No one else seemed to register it. Or, if they did, they weren’t letting on. They were a bunch of actors, so they could have been acting like they didn’t hear it.
“…that we need to push the dramatic stakes a bit. We need to give this performance a real sense of style, so we’re going to take what you’ve been doing and extend it a bit. Think classic film. Think silent movie. Hamlet and Ophelia, you’re going to be like classic screen legends. Think Bogart and Bacall. Valentino and Garbo. Spencer and Eric, you’ll be our Keystone Cops, our Marx Brothers.”
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