I get my things together. I pet Abby behind the ears, and then extend my hand to Spider. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me, Maggie, thank the big guy upstairs,” he says, shaking my hand. Then he opens the door and I leave.
I get out on the street. “Big guy upstairs.” Please. I don’t believe in that personal God concept. The universe is just math. A big bang, lots of molecules, some aberrant forms of intelligence, and plenty of algebra. Nobody is looking out for anybody. Well, maybe sometimes drag queens who die of AIDS; maybe they are looking out for someone. What did Goodie say about up there?
“I said it’s computerized,” Goodie says, flying close to my ear.
“Where have you been?” I say. “Why didn’t you help me out last night? I ended up having to be rescued again by this guy who claims I have a problem.”
“Really, well, even fairy god-queens can’t override free choice—even if the choice is downright stupid.”
“Goodie, do you believe in God?” I ask. “I mean now that you’ve been up there?”
“I don’t know, Mags, it’s different once you’ve crossed over. It’s a much bigger picture, and you know what they say about LA?”
“What? That there is no there there?”
“Well, it’s kind of like that—there is no there up there.”
“Weren’t you angry about dying? I mean, did you mention that to someone?”
“That’s where the bigger picture comes in. It didn’t seem relevant anymore.”
“Well, I don’t believe, and if Spider thinks I’m going to go to AA, he’s crazy. I had a friend who did AA and ended up selling her condo and moving to Montana. Besides, I’m not an alcoholic. I’m a drinker, yes, and once in a while I get drunk. Big deal. So what? And I’m still angry you’re dead even if you aren’t. And if somebody is up there pulling the strings, they’ve got an evil streak.”
“You need a bigger God, Mags,” Goodie says and flutters off.
“It’s all luck anyway,” I shout after him. It’s where you happen to end up on line. If you’re near the beginning, there’s a chance there’ll be some hot food left, and if you’re near the end, well too bad for you.
As it turns out I’m just a few blocks from my apartment, so there is some luck—it’s lucky that Spider and I happen to live a few blocks from each other and lucky he was in the park that night and lucky he works at McManus’s Bar and lucky I’m a nice person and not bad to look at so it wasn’t so hard for him to be gallant and rescue me and make himself feel good. Hell, he should thank me. People like Spider need people like me. It’s obvious he likes being a hero as evidenced by his nickname and the framed comic book cover in the bathroom. So it works out all around, and I don’t think it has anything to do with the big guy upstairs—or Sam Malone. And so far Goodie the fairy god-queen hasn’t made much of a difference except to make me feel more crazy than usual—so there you have it. It’s math and a few random mutated cells.
A car horn honks loudly as I step off the curb. I jump back. Yikes. I definitely need another cup of coffee. Yeah, I need more coffee and a shower and I should go to the gym. And I won’t drink today. I don’t have to. I’ll show him. I’m not an alcoholic. I don’t need to drink every single day like alcoholics do.
I stop at the Amsterdam Deli for a cup of joe. I also get a bagel with cream cheese because I’m starving. My stomach is begging for fuel. I tear open the plastic tab on the to-go cup and snap it back. I sip the coffee as I walk. The sun is shining. It’s a beautiful day, dammit, and everything is great. I turn the corner onto my block.
“Maggie,” I hear yelled. I see Jack coming toward me at a run walk. “Where the hell have you been?”
“What are you doing here?” I ask, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk.
“I was calling you all last night. At home and on your cell. You didn’t answer.”
“Damn, batteries are dead again, I’m the worst cell phone person,” I say.
“I was worried. I drove into the city. You weren’t home. I waited for you.”
Damn, I forgot that Jack still has a set of my keys.
“I stayed at my friend Patty’s place down in the Village. We went out and it was late and I stayed down there. I do it a lot. Have you met Patty? She’s great. Want a sip of my coffee? Have you eaten? We can split this bagel.”
I say all of this as nonchalantly and quickly as possible in an attempt to defuse the situation. I’m not an actor for nothing.
“I’m sorry, Jack, I wasn’t thinking,” I continue as I take Jack’s arm and steer him toward my apartment. “We didn’t have plans to get together, so I didn’t let you know. I’m so used to being on my own. Here, have a sip of coffee. It’s very good. Hazelnut. I got it at that place on Amsterdam.”
The ease with which I lie amazes me, and when I get on a good roll, I go on and on.
“Patty has such a wonderful apartment. You’ll have to see it someday. She has a little backyard. We had coffee out there this morning and it’s so lovely. Jessye Norman, the opera singer, used to live right behind Patty.” At some point in this fiction of an explanation I have taken on an English accent. “Their gardens butted up against each other and Patty used to hear Jessye singing right outside her—”
“Maggie, stop talking, will you? I don’t care what Jessye Norman was singing. I haven’t slept. I was very worried about you. And I don’t believe a word you’re saying.”
“You don’t believe me?” I stop and look hard at Jack. “And who are you not to believe me? Huh? Who are you? I have a life. I had a life before I met you, and if I want to stay at my friend Patty’s, I don’t have to get a release form from you. Does your daddy know where you are every moment of the day? Do you check in with Daddy? And where is your mommy? Huh? Is that what this is all about? You miss your mommy?”
The slap comes hard across my face and it stings like crazy. My eyes tear up.
“Stop it!” Jack yells as he delivers the blow. “Stop it, Maggie.”
The doorman standing in front of the building on the corner comes walking quickly toward us.
“What’s going on? What’s wrong with you, mister?” he says. “Leave her alone or I’m calling the cops.”
“Thanks,” I say. “It’s all right. We’re just having a fight, you know.”
“I know he hit you and that’s not right,” the doorman says.
“Thank you. I appreciate your concern. I really do. But I think we’re all right now.” He goes back to his post. Funny thing, I don’t even know the doorman’s name. All these years we’ve just nodded in passing. But here he is, ready to defend me. Maybe he wouldn’t be so quick to help if he knew the truth.
Jack has turned and is walking toward my apartment. I catch up with him.
“I’m sorry, Mags,” he says, his voice still trembling with anger. “I’m sorry I hit you. I don’t do that. I just don’t know what is going on, and I don’t know why you are lying to me. I live with my dad because it’s financially good for both of us and, when my mother walked out on him a few years ago, he was suicidal. I was afraid for him so I moved back home. And I don’t know where my mommy is. She went to Las Vegas with a man, a man who played the saxophone. Now there’s a bad made-for-TV movie for you, but I don’t think seeing you has anything to do with that. I like being with you, but that seems to irritate you, so now I’m going to get my things and I won’t be back. You’ve got problems and so do I. Who doesn’t?”
We are in front of my building. Jack unlocks the door then hands me the keys. We get up to my apartment and I unlock that door. Jack goes in and gets his backpack.
“So long, Bixby,” he says, reaching down and giving the cat-boy a chuck under his chin. “So long, Sweet Pea,” he says under his breath, and then he gallops down the stairs before I have a chance to make the situation any worse. Well, there’s a blessing.
Bixby stands at the front door looking up at me. He knows. I can feel it. Like I can feel the sting of Jack’s slap. Cats
are intuitive and he knows exactly what a shit I am. I’m a liar. I’m a cheat. I’m a fake. And the closer someone gets the louder I squeal. I don’t even know why anymore. I go in the kitchen and get a beer out of the fridge. I pop the top and drink it down in one big gulp. Then I get another one and pop the top and drink it down in one big gulp, and then I get a third beer and pop the top and sit down on the couch and drink it down in one big, long, lonely swig.
The phone rings. I don’t answer. The message plays and then the beep and then Dee-Honey is talking very fast.
“Where are you, Mags, honey? We’re all waiting for you at Ninety-sixth Street? I’m sure I gave you the call. Robin Hood. You left me a message saying you’d be here.”
Did I call her and not remember? Shit, shit, shit. I take a deep breath and I pick up the phone.
“Dee, I’m on the way. I’m sorry. There was a leak in my bathroom this morning and I had to wait for the plumber. He’s just finishing. I couldn’t leave because water was pouring into the apartment downstairs. Look, can you meet me at Eighty-sixth and Broadway? What? Sorry, Dee.” I actually cover the phone with my hand for a minute and pretend to talk to the plumber. I am a shit for sure.
“He says he’ll be another two minutes. So I’ll see you in a sec, okay?” I hang up the phone. Where is that bagel? I need to put something in my stomach. The brown paper bag is lying next to the sink in the kitchen. I open it, unwrap the wax paper, and bite into the bagel. I hope the dense dough will soak up the three beers sloshing around in my belly. And then for a second I have a brain freeze, I can’t remember what I’m doing. Then, yes, right—I have to meet Dee-Honey. Fuck. Maid Marian. Why do I have to keep playing these parts? Let’s see, Marian falls in love with Robin Hood and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (or Olivia de Havilland in the classic) played her in the movie. What else do you need to know? I hate my life.
I grab my shoulder bag and shove the rest of the bagel and an overripe banana in the side pocket. I can’t find my keys. I can’t find them anywhere. I look everywhere. I start to hyperventilate. The phone rings again.
“What?” I bark into the receiver.
“Mags, honey, we’re on the corner. Are you on the way?”
“I’m almost out the door. The plumber is finally leaving.”
Fuck. Where are my fucking keys? Then I see the spare set Jack gave me back, on the table by the door. Big tears splash down my face. Shit! I pick them up, shove them in my pocket, where much to my surprise I find my own set of keys. All right. Calm down, put the spare keys in the drawer, and get the hell out of the apartment. Randall Kent is standing outside the car smoking a cigarette when I arrive.
“Mags, darling, nice of you to join us.”
“Can it, Randall, I’m having a difficult day.”
“Aren’t we all, dear,” he says, climbing into the car.
“Sorry, everybody. It was a mess. The whole ceiling was pouring water.”
“I thought it was leaking to the apartment below,” Dee-Honey says, catching my eye in the rearview mirror.
“It was both places—my ceiling and theirs. The pipes burst—all of them. It was a fucking flood. Who’s playing Robin Hood?”
“Wally Greig, you know him. He was out in LA for a while and now he’s back. He’s riding up in the truck with Frank. Didn’t you do Pied Piper with him a few years ago?” Pauline Letts asks. She is sitting on my left, straightening out her needlepoint.
“Oh, yeah, sure. Isn’t he kind of chunky for Robin Hood?”
“Fat, is that what you’re trying to say?” Randall asks. “Yes, he’s a plump Prince of Thieves, but Ron is out with the Rumpelstiltskin cast. Isn’t that right, Dee?”
“Yes, honey, we are short on handsome princes right now. He’ll be fine. Wally is a wonderful actor.”
“Yeah, but he’s fat,” I contend. “He should be playing Friar Tuck, not Robin Hood.”
“Think how thin you’ll look playing opposite him. Maid Marian will look absolutely anorexic.” Randall laughs. My head feels like it’s going to explode.
I reach in my bag and get out the bagel. I finish it in four or five bites and then eat the banana. I feel better, but not much. I don’t know how I’m going to get through the day.
“Where’s the show?” I ask.
“Albany.”
“Albany?” I moan. “That’s three hours away.”
“Plenty of time for a line rehearsal,” Dee says cheerily. “Does anyone have a script?”
As usual there is not even one script to be had among the whole cast. Dee-Honey’s company believes in the oral tradition of theater. You learn the lines by saying them over and over onstage in front of five hundred screaming children. Once when I was going on for the first time in Little Red Riding Hood, I asked Dee for a script. She had to call five people before she could rustle one up, and it wasn’t a Xeroxed copy. It was mimeographed. The way they made copies back in the Dark Ages. It was like reading something printed on the Gutenberg press.
Three hours and 150 miles later we arrive in Albany. We’ve been through the play three times, with Dee-Honey filling in as Robin Hood.
Frank and the crew from the theater are putting up the set. Wally Greig is sitting in the front row of the theater eating a bag of potato chips and a turkey club on rye. He’s as fat as I remember. He’s going to look like Robin Hood, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon.
“Hey, Wally.” I wave. “Looks like we’re the lovebirds today.”
“Hiya, Mags,” he says through a mouthful of sandwich.
“Do you want to go over anything?” I ask. “We have that duet. We should definitely go over that as soon as Frank gets the sound set up.”
“Sure. Want some chips?” Wally offers me the bag.
I shake my head no, and just like that my stomach starts to turn. I have got to find a bathroom.
“Frank, bathroom?” I yell across the footlights.
“Stage left, down the hall.”
I walk, then break into a full-out sprint. I get there just in time. I heave it all—the beers, the bagel, the banana, the two cups of coffee. I heave and heave.
Then I hear a voice from the other stall.
“Is that you, Mags? Are you all right?”
It’s Pauline. Shit.
“Fine,” I say. “It’s food poisoning. I had some seafood last night and I guess it was spoiled. I don’t know. It was expensive. Geez.” I’m lying, lying, lying.
“I have some Tums in my bag if you need them.”
“Thanks, Pauline. I think I’ll be all right now that it’s out of my system. Seafood. I should never even order it, but I do love it and my boyfriend was paying, so, you know.” Lie, lie, lie. If fairy tales came true, my nose would be four feet long.
THE SHOW GOES pretty well. At least until we get to the archery contest between Robin Hood and Sir Guy of Gisborne, the bad guy henchman of the scheming Sheriff of Nottingham. Randall Kent plays Sir Guy with a swagger and bite that would put Basil Rathbone to shame, and Wally’s Robin Hood isn’t so bad—he’s just fat.
But, alas, in the archery contest it is revealed that Wally isn’t only fat, he is also blind. As Robin Hood, the hero of our tale, he has to shoot the arrow offstage into a blanket that is draped over a ladder.
You don’t actually have to hit anything, just get it in the right direction and, of course, get it offstage. Wally’s first arrow lands below the curtain line and slides off the apron of the stage onto the floor. A child in the front row throws it back.
As Maid Marian in the disguise of a young lad of court, I catch it, thank the girl, whom I pretend is one of the townspeople, and ceremoniously hand the arrow back to Robin Hood, who puts it in the bow, shoots it offstage, but misses the blanket and hits the back wall. The arrow bounces off the wall with such force that it lands back onstage at Robin Hood’s feet. The whole cast is shaking now with repressed laughter, Randall has turned his back to the audience so he can bite on his hand to try to stanch his guffaws. One boy in t
he audience shouts something obscene and he is quickly escorted from the auditorium.
I, as the young lad aka Maid Marian, am keeping score of the match. Sir Guy of Gisborne is way ahead so I have to cheat the results in order for Robin Hood to win. It’s terrible to have to do this in front of children. The kids in the audience start booing Robin Hood. On his third attempt Robin shoots the arrow straight up in the air; it comes down and hits Pauline, who is playing the Sheriff’s daughter, right in her wimple hat. Pauline dives for the floor and the kids roar with laughter.
It’s a train wreck. Dee-Honey is standing in the wings shaking her head and pulling at her hair. I run offstage and bring back the target, which is preset with an arrow, stuck in the bull’s-eye. I declare Robin Hood the winner, explaining that the last arrow went up, came down, hit the Sheriff’s daughter, ricocheted off the wimple hat, turned left, and hit the bull’s-eye. A little like the magic bullet theory in the JFK assassination. The audience grumbles, a few girls applaud, and the show goes on.
After Robin Hood and I sing our final duet and the curtain comes down, Wally Greig gives me a hug and says, “Great show.”
“Not only is he fat,” I say in an aside to Randall. “He’s also stupid.”
Pauline and I retire to the dressing room. She hands me the roll of Tums.
“Maybe you should take a couple. It’s a long trip back.”
“Thanks.”
By the time we hit the road it’s almost five o’clock. We stop at a Taco Bell on the strip outside of town. I order two chicken tortillas and a large Coke. We all sit at a big table and chow down. Wally is a sport about the archery contest.
“Next time, wear your glasses, for Christ’s sake,” Randall says. “Don’t you have contacts?”
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