Dorothy on the Rocks

by Barbara Suter

  And I start to cry sitting in the overstuffed armchair in George’s living room. George hands me a box of tissues. I don’t shed a few ladylike tears; I cry loudly and messily for the remainder of my fifty-minute appointment.

  “Well, I think this is a good beginning,” George says at the end of the session. I gather my things and take the wad of tissues out with me as I don’t see a wastebasket and don’t want to ask.

  “We’ll continue this next time,” he says, showing me out the door.

  Great, just what I want to spend my money on, a sob session with a strange man once a week. I need a drink. I need a scotch on the rocks and make that a double. I call my friend Patty from a pay phone to see if she can join me because, of course, I don’t have my cell phone with me. Christ, no wonder I don’t have a career—at least that’s what my agent would say.

  Patty lives on Charlton Street a few blocks away. Her machine picks up. “Patty?” I say into the receiver. “Are you screening?” No answer. Damn. I check the coin return on the pay phone like I always do and then head for the nearest bar.

  Rose’s Turn on the corner of Grove and Seventh Avenue is a piano bar with a cabaret space upstairs. It used to be the Duplex but the Duplex moved across the street and down the block fifteen years ago. Rose’s Turn refers to the big eleven o’clock number at the end of the musical Gypsy that Mama Rose sings.

  The bar is pretty empty. It’s early for the drinking, show tune crowd. I order a scotch. The clientele at Rose’s Turn is primarily gay men, so it’s a good bet I won’t end up in some compromising position later tonight with too much to drink in my belly and too little to wear on my patooty. I glimpse myself in the mirror behind the bar. A character in Sondheim’s Follies sings a song called “I’m Still Here.” She’s an old showgirl who’s seen it all and survived it all and gets to sing about it. Wouldn’t that be a great way to go? What if everyone got one last number at the funeral? Everybody got an eleven o’clock showstopper song, and then keeled over into the coffin as the lid snapped shut—so long, end of show. I’d want a great costume too. Sequins and feathers and a pair of killer Joan Crawford fuck-me pumps.

  “Can I get you another drink?” the bartender asks.

  “Sure, thanks,” I say. “When does the piano player come in?”

  “Not until nine o’clock.”

  “Do you mind if I noodle a little?”

  “Sure . . .” he says with a slight hesitation. Piano bars can be frightening places because the talent isn’t selected; it’s random and sometimes very random. Anybody can get up and sing their heart out, anybody who’s ever wanted to sing the whole score to Music Man or the aria in the third act of La Boheme, or the love duet (both parts) from Phantom of the Opera, any tone-deaf son of a bitch with enough nerve can get up and sing. It’s a piano bar and that’s what it’s about, making dreams come true for the drunk and less than gifted.

  I put my scotch next to me on the piano bench; I’m an okay piano player and, baby, I got rhythm.

  “Oh, excellent!” Goodie exclaims perching himself on the C above middle C. “Thought I might find you here. Let’s sing that arrangement of ‘Red Robin’ we used to do.”

  “I’m not sure I know it. I wish you could play it,” I say.

  “Sorry, but I need a much smaller piano,” Goodie says. “Go on, you can do it.”

  I pound out some chords. Goodie repositions himself on the top of the piano.

  “Now make it swing,” he says.

  “Oh when the red, red robin comes bob-bob-bobbin’ along, along,” we sing together, Goodie in an interesting tenor and me in my throaty semi-soprano. We swing into the second verse. By this time the bartender and one old guy dressed completely in black studded leather are singing harmony with us.

  And without taking a break I go right into my Cole Porter medley, which always makes Goodie cry. The bartender buys me a drink. The old guy in leather asks, “Do you know ‘Fifty-Percent’ from Ballroom?”

  “You betcha.” And we sing and sing and sing until the real piano player shows up for the evening shift. I thank the bartender and he invites me to come back anytime.

  “I’m doing a show at Don’t Tell Mama soon.”

  “Good luck.” He waves as he pours another vodka for the old man in leather.

  Goodie rides on my shoulder as I walk to the subway.

  “That was fun,” he coos. “Like old times. I love being down here in the Village. The Upper West Side is a little buttoned up for my taste.”

  At that moment a large black man wearing an orange boa and platform shoes comes walking toward us. On the corner a fellow in lederhosen and kneesocks is playing a banjo, and as we get to the subway entrance a young woman with short spiked orange hair and fishnet stockings talking on a cell phone rollerblades through the intersection.

  “See what I mean, these are my people,” Goodie says. “I’ve got to go. I’m meeting with a few friends on Cornelia Street. You know that bakery with the most delicious coconut cream pie?”

  “Your friends?” I ask. “Little friends or big friends? More fairies? I never thought there were more of you.”

  “Mags, my love, the afterlife is complex and way too hard to explain until you’ve been there. Lots of levels, off-ramps, holding pens.”

  “Sounds like a board game,” I say.

  “Kind of,” Goodie says, “but then that’s the way my mind works. You might find it completely different. It’s perception, perception, perception—like life, darling.”

  Goodie gives me a peck on the cheek, then spreads his gossamer wings and flies south.

  I stop at the Village Smoke Shop and buy a pack of cigarettes for what seems like a hundred dollars. I have got to quit smoking. Again. I have quit before. Hasn’t everyone?

  Mark Twain said, “Quitting smoking is easy, I’ve done it a thousand times.” And so have I. I decide to walk for a while. It’s a beautiful summer evening, and Seventh Avenue, as Goodie has pointed out, is an entertaining stretch of road.

  I stopped smoking for a year while Goodie was sick. I didn’t want to smoke around him, but then at a wedding reception in Connecticut I picked up the beast again and haven’t been able to kick it since. I made the mistake of going to the wedding alone. That’s how it started. I knew the bride from an ad agency I had done some commercials for, and I thought it would be politic for me to show up, but couldn’t convince anyone to go with me. Texas Joe was back in Houston, so I was on my own. It was a few months after Goodie died.

  The wedding guests were all rich and privileged, all except me, of course. The groom was a graduate of Yale and the bride of Smith College. So the conversation was clever and witty and very Ivy League. I stared straight ahead most of the time and tried not to make eye contact with anyone. I didn’t want to be sucked into some conversation I couldn’t keep up with.

  Then a handsome Yale guy whom I had been introduced to earlier asked me to dance. I shook my head explaining I had twisted my ankle when I tripped on a baby stroller on my way into the tent and was going to sit it out. That wasn’t the truth. Truth was I was wearing a pair of black-and-white checked pants that made me look like a table for four in contrast to all the fitted designer dresses and slacks.

  Then I noticed an abandoned pack of Marlboros lying on the table where I was sitting. I reached for it. I fingered the oblong package. I ran my hand over the cellophane. I guiltily sniffed the three last cigarettes nestled cozily in the corner. They smelled delicious, like a forest glen after a rainfall, like roses in full bloom at the height of the summer, like honeysuckle along a country road, like freshly mowed grass.

  The three-piece band started to play “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” That did it. I pulled one of the cigarettes out. I rolled it around in my fingers for a while. I put it in my mouth. Dormant desire came to life. My lips curled longingly around the filter. Ah, sweet Jesus, it was like running into an old lover on the street in the middle of a late afternoon summer rain shower and ducking into a bar for a gla
ss of sherry and some sweet memories. Like standing on the beach at the end of the day with the sun setting and the warm ocean breeze brushing against your face. It was like heaven.

  I looked around for some matches, a lighter, or some dry kindling. A bespectacled overweight accountant type bumped into my chair.

  “Got a light, big guy?” I asked.

  “I sure do,” he said as he fumbled in the pocket of his seersucker suit and pulled out his Bic. He flicked the igniter wheel, a flame jumped up and kissed the end of my cigarette, and the Hallelujah Chorus started playing in my brain. I inhaled deeply, pulling the hot smoke into my lungs where it filled every nook and every cranny. I coughed once, then twice, then relaxed and took another drag. And just like that, I transformed myself back into a pack-a-day, devil-may-care, what’s-your-problem, get-out-of-my-way-or-I’ll-knock-you-down, hard-ass-cigarette-smoking broad. The bespectacled accountant watched in wonderment. I imagine it must have been like witnessing Dr. Jekyll turn into Mr. Hyde.

  “Let’s dance, big guy,” I said.

  “I was getting a drink for my wife. I have to get back. She’s expecting her white wine spritzer,” he gasped as I shoved him into the electric slide line dance.

  “Oh, sorry,” I shouted over the music. I waved him off as I slid once and clapped and rocked back and forth and slid, slid, slid.

  “Hey watch that damn cigarette,” a guy in a khaki suit admonished.

  “Yeah, and watch your mouth, buddy boy,” I snapped. I got out of the electric slide line and headed back across the dance floor in search of that abandoned pack of cigarettes. Smoking felt like a vacation. The months since Goodie’s death had been difficult. I cried all the time. I had watched him wage a long, excruciating battle against his disease, but could do so little to ease his pain. No one could. In the end he was shrunk to the bare minimum of flesh and bone. Frail as an eighty-year-old man, his skin became translucent, but his eyes were still hot with hope. Hope for a cure, for a reprieve, for a day free of pain, for a new melody to play on his beautiful baby grand piano sitting silent in the tiny living room of his apartment.

  I found a pack of matches on the table and lit another cigarette. I took a long drag and was reminded how cigarettes neutralize emotion and put everything into park and let you idle for a while.

  The band started to play a pretty decent arrangement of “Light My Fire.” The Yale grad sauntered over to my table.

  “How’s the ankle?” he asked.

  “Much better, thanks.” I smiled. “How about that dance?”

  He put down his drink and slipped his arms around my waist and sang, “Come on, baby, light my fire,” slightly off key into my left ear.

  The Yale grad and I danced the last dance with our heads pressed together, two lonely ships at the end of a long and tedious day of nuptial bliss. He held me tight, but all I could think about was another cigarette and another and another to numb the pain. I have been smoking ever since.

  I’M ON TWENTY-EIGHTH Street by the time I shake my head clear. I have been walking for fifteen minutes lost in memory. I need another drink. The scotch from Rose’s Turn is long gone. McManus’s Bar is on the corner. “A scotch on the rocks,” I shout to the bartender over the U-2 tune blaring on the jukebox. And before I know it I’m sitting on someone’s knee in the corner of the back booth as the night folds me in its arms and I am gone.

  13

  I wake with a start. Someone is licking my hand. I’m lying on my back, my hand is dangling over the side of the bed or sofa or whatever I’m lying on, and a large wet tongue is exploring my right hand. I open my eyes for a second. My head is pounding and the light makes it worse, so I close my eyes quickly.

  “Come here, girl.” I hear a voice call and the tongue stops and goes off to find the voice. I hear clicking noises on the floor. I open one eye. The ceiling is mirrored. Oh my God. I close my eye again. I take a deep breath. Where the hell am I?

  I remember being in the Village, at Rose’s Turn, and then walking uptown and then? Oh, right. I went into the bar on the corner of Twenty-eighth Street. McManus’s. I ordered a scotch. And then I was with someone I didn’t know. I think he said he was a lawyer, but I’m not sure.

  I open my eye again. I avoid the ceiling and look in the direction of the voice. There is a partially opened door. A bathrobe is hanging on the back of it. And then the tongue, which is attached to a large golden retriever, comes bounding back into the room.

  “Abby, come here,” the voice commands. And Abby turns around instantly.

  I slowly sit up. Light is pouring in through the window. Hasn’t anyone heard of blinds for Christ’s sake? I squint and manage to stand up. My head is pounding like the clichéd bass drum. I’m dressed except for my shoes. I take steps toward the open door. I have to find a bathroom.

  NOTE TO SELF . . .

  When you wake up in a strange bed with mirrors on the ceiling, find your sunglasses—quick!

  I venture through the door, and there sitting in a big wicker chair is a young black man. He is drinking what I assume is coffee out of a large mug and has a newspaper open on his lap.

  “We meet again,” he says.

  I take a moment to let my eyes focus. “Spider?” I say.

  “That’s right.”

  “Ah, of course, Abby. And you. How did I get here?”

  “I’m the night manager at McManus’s. You were passed out in the back booth when I was closing. I got you up, poured you into a cab, and brought you home with me.”

  I don’t know what to say. This feels very awkward. I blush and drop my eyes. Funny how quickly embarrassment turns into shame, and then how quickly a clever girl like me can turn it right back.

  “Geez, this is crazy. You are my . . .” Eyes back up, I smile with all my might.

  “Guardian angel?” Spider finishes the sentence.

  “Yeah, is there a bathroom?” I ask. “Because I really have to . . .”

  “Through there to the left,” Spider says, pointing to the hallway in front of me.

  “Thanks. I won’t be a minute.”

  “Take your time,” he says, glancing down at the newspaper. “Coffee’s on the stove. I hope you like it strong.”

  The bathroom is painted avocado green. Ugh. I sit on the toilet and put my head in my hands. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. I notice a framed comic book cover on the wall across from me. It’s Spiderman. Well that makes sense.

  I stand at the sink and splash cold water on my face. I find a tube of toothpaste and squeeze some on my index finger and brush my teeth, prisoner-of-war style. I wish I had a Water Pik. That would feel great. I look through the medicine cabinet for some much-needed aspirin. Thank God. I find a small bottle of Bayer. I take three.

  “I’ll have a cup of that strong coffee, if you don’t mind,” I say as perkily as I dare on reentering the living room.

  “Be my guest. The cups are in the cupboard over the sink.”

  “Thanks.” I pour the coffee and then join Spider. I sit on the sofa. Abby plops down next to me. “This is a great dog,” I say patting her head. “Aren’t you, aren’t you a good doggie?”

  Spider puts his newspaper aside, and I can feel it coming. We’re going to have a discussion, and I have a suspicion it’s going to be about me.

  “Do you know where you are, right now?” Spider asks.

  “I’m in your apartment, which is really lovely, and thank you so much for your hospitality. It’s funny how we keep bumping into each other.”

  “No, it’s not funny, Maggie, it’s dangerous. For you.”

  “Why, what happened? Did something . . .”

  “No, something didn’t, but something could have, and you wouldn’t have known. You were in a blackout—could have ended up dead from a gunshot or a knife wound or you could end up with HIV from unprotected sex or pregnant or any number of things. Are you with me? Are you listening to me?”

  “Are you a high school guidance counselor or something?” I ask.

  “Maggi
e,” he snaps.

  “I’m listening,” I say.

  “You have a problem. You get drunk and you do stupid things.”

  “I get drunk sometimes and once in a while I do something stupid,” I counter.

  “And what are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m going to go home,” I say, getting up. “I guess my things are in the other room.”

  “I guess,” Spider says. “But before you take off I have something to say and I’ll just say it once. I’m a recovering alcoholic. I know the game, and I’m telling you if you play it much longer you’re going to lose. It’s time for you to get help. AA. Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s cheap and there are meetings around the clock or you can check yourself into a rehab or you can go to a monastery, shave your head, and take a vow of abstinence, but do something, Maggie. I’m not always going to be there.”

  “What are you doing working in a bar if you’re a recovering alcoholic, Mr. Smart Guy?” I ask in an accusatory tone. “Isn’t that against the rules?” I can’t help being a smartass sometimes, especially when people are telling me what to do when I haven’t asked for their opinion.

  “Well, the money’s good and it gives me a chance to help poor wretched souls like yourself,” Spider says with a smile. “Remember the show Cheers? The character Ted Dansen played? He was a recovering alcoholic, so you can think of me as the black Sam Malone.”

  “Right. Yeah. I never liked that show after Shelly what’s-her-name left. It wasn’t the same. Anyway, that’s funny, you being the black Sam Malone,” I say, hoping to end the discussion.

  “Do you believe in miracles, Maggie?” Spider continues, much to my chagrin.

  “No, not really,” I say in a pleasant what-me-worry tone, “although, lately I’m more inclined to believe in unexplained events.”

  “Well, you should, because in one week a total stranger has saved your life, not once but twice. A total stranger who is a nice guy and who is offering you some good advice so maybe you can end up living the rest of your life and not pissing it down the drain. If I were you I’d get down on my knees and thank God and say, ‘I do believe in miracles and I’m not going to waste these.’ All right. That’s it. End of discussion.”