“It’s the dykes,” Nichole said. “This is where we exit. Want to dance, Frank?” They went off and blended into the crowd. They had positioned themselves near the Turkish Belly Dancer and Extra Terrestrial when Whitney and Elaine sat down with me. “So who’s the Alligator and the Fox?” Whitney said.
“They’re traveling incognito,” I said. “What’s in the sack?”
“Paint rags.”
“Some burglar,” I said. “Aren’t you supposed to climb over rooftops and steal jewels, like in To Catch a Thief with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly?”
We sat there for a while and watched the people come in. Grace arrived in a gray and orange striped djellaba from her store. Getz and Dominic arrived in their wet suits. The Mother of the Year showed up in the Voodoo Woman’s leopard outfit. The Voodoo Woman was wearing layers of white pull over blouses and gathered skirts, a black turban on her head, and black rings around her eyes.
“So why won’t Nichole talk to me?” Whitney said.
“What?” I said.
“The Alligator and the Fox. What — do you think I’m blind?”
“She was trying to spare your feelings,” Elaine said.
Joe sauntered over in his Indiana Jones costume, set his coiled whip down on the bench and pulled two magazines out of the back pocket of his blue jeans.
Joe usually wore tight black short-shorts, and a black t-shirt that had Bad Attitude emblazoned in magenta script just above the right breast pocket. He wore his pack of Gauloises rolled up into his right sleeve. Joe also wore a black glove on his left hand. He used the gloved hand at the Bad Attitude Cinema to slow the uptake reel when the film slipped off and sent it spinning. At first he only wore it in the projection room, but after awhile this became his trademark and he never took it off. The morning I woke up in bed with him he was wearing the black glove. At the time, I checked myself for cuts and bruises, but I didn’t have any. I also inspected the glove. It had no buckles, snaps or clips. The seams were sewn on the inside so the edges were smooth. The fingers were cut out of the top, like racing gloves. I tried to remember if he had worn the glove all evening or if he had put it back on right before he went to sleep. I had wondered if this were his trademark in bed as well as the Cinema, and on the streets, and if so what the innovation was. But of course I couldn’t remember.
Joe also worked at Animus Pizza, across from Paradiso’s. I bought my chocolate egg cream there each day. He took pride in making it for me, and always made sure it had a luxurious head of foam on it. He often stood there admiring it, before he sold it to me. Joe had sandy hair in a short brush cut, tawny skin, and as Ruth had remarked, a nice build.
“Look, Kate,” he said, showing me the magazines. “AIDS made it to the cover of both Time and Newsweek, and there’s even an inset photo of Rock Hudson on the Newsweek.”
“I wondered when that whole story was going to break,” I said. “Gay men have had the disease for five years, but it doesn’t make the cover of Time until an actor gets it.”
“You can’t get it from saliva,” Whitney said. “But I hear you can get it from tears.”
We looked at the magazines, which showed the virus under a microscope, some of the cadaverous patients, the research laboratories, graphs and statistics of how many people had contracted the disease and the percentage of those who had died. They showed one family in which the husband had given it to the wife, the wife to their baby in the womb, so their three-year-old daughter was the only one who didn’t have it. She would be an orphan within a few years.
“This epidemic is going to ruin anorexia as a fashion,” Joe said. “Look how skeletal these people are.”
“It really wastes you,” Whitney said. “I wish they’d find a vaccine.”
“It’s like syphilis in Europe in the 19th century,” I said. “Everyone was dying of it, no one would talk about it. After awhile syphilis was the leading cause of death there.”
“And to think, all they needed was some penicillin,” Elaine said. “Since gays have it they think it’s the Wrath of God or something.”
“They thought the Plague was the Wrath of God,” Joe said.
“That was the Age of Darkness,” Whitney said.
“Welcome to the 20th century,” Joe said.
“I never thought this would upset you, Joe,” Elaine said.
“I’m a mysterious guy,” Joe said, winking. Then he put his hat over his heart and said to me: “Would you and Whitney and Nichole be willing to judge the Bocce Tournament on Wednesday at Animus Pizza? It’s for the Harper Martin Defense Fund.”
Whitney and I looked at each other. “I don’t see why not,” I said. “I’ll tell Nichole.”
“Wednesday afternoon at Animus Pizza,” Joe said.
“We’ll be there,” Whitney said. Then she and Elaine ran off to dance. Whitney carried her sack with her, and kept bumping it against people’s shoulders. She tried to edge closer and closer to the Fox and the Alligator, but Elaine kept pulling her away.
Joe and I watched from the bench. Men in jumpsuits were unraveling cable along the edges of the dance floor, erecting tripods and clamping spotlights on them. Other men hoisted video cameras on their shoulders, carried microphones and worked their way onto the dance floor, pointing the cameras and microphones at the Giant Squid and the Turkish Belly Dancer. Another one headed for the bar, where he attempted to interview the Empire State Building.
“They’ve arrived,” Joe said, motioning with his hand at the camera crews.
“I see that,” I said.
“So do you miss me?” he said, kissing my ear. I looked at him, startled. “What?” he said. “You look like you saw a ghost.”
I patted his knee. “I thought I remembered something,” I said.
“Do I remind you of someone you used to know?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“The shadow of my former self perhaps?” I laughed. “You just miss me. You need another dose.” He kissed my ear again and whispered into it: “I know your weaknesses. I’ll be there.” Then he got up, picked the whip up off the bench and strapped it through his belt loop. “Later,” he said. “For now I have to drop down into the snake pit in order to retrieve the volcanic rock that preserves life, brings rain and restores the harvest to the villagers. Isn’t that the plot-line of that stupid movie?”
“Sequels are never any good,” I said.
Joe returned to his station at the edge of the dance floor and watched the Extra Terrestrial court the Turkish Belly Dancer. Getz sat down beside me and positioned his scotch glass on the bench between us. “Aren’t you hot in that,” I said, fingering the wetsuit.
“A little,” he said, unzipping it. “This better?”
I smiled ruefully. Getz had one of the nicest bodies I had ever seen, and he knew I thought so, the devil. “You haven’t been out lobstering lately.”
He picked his scotch up off the bench, swirled the swizzle stick around in the short glass, and poked at the twist. “That’s over.” He cracked a smile and his eyes twinkled.
“What?”
“I can’t tell you more. You might be a cop or something.”
He looked up from his drink and caught my eye, then stared at me for a long time, until I ached all over. I wished I could remember the nighttime. I thought he must be the sweetest, the tenderest, the one who drove me crazy. But I didn’t know. I guessed it from the way I felt when he sat close to me. It was as if I knew something about him, as if I could remember, not the details, but the way he made me feel. I shook out my arms and legs like someone who has been immobile too long and has let his limbs go to sleep.
“A lot of things are different now,” he said. He was watching Indiana Jones watch the Extra Terrestrial and the Turkish Belly Dancer enact their courting ritual on the dance floor.
He wandered off in the direction of the dance floor. He stood at the edge talking to the two men dressed like Harper Martin. Dominic was dancing with the Turkish Belly Dancer now; Indiana Jones
and Getz were watching; the Extra Terrestrial circled the circumference of the dance floor like a security guard at a high school senior prom.
Lance came in dressed as Yul Brenner in The King and I, in gold lamé balloon knickers, an embroidered vest, and gold sequined slippers. He had painted on slanted eyebrows and wore a hoop earring in one ear. I worked with Lance at Cosmo’s restaurant. He was accompanied this evening by a Giant Lobster. The lobster was a deep rose madder, with black and rust specks on its claws and tail. Its claws were huge, made out of padded cloth like boxing gloves, and its chest was padded with a shield like a suit of armor. The lobster’s head reached way up past the man inside’s head, with a hole cut underneath for his face to peer out. At the crown of the lobster head were the bug eyes and tentacles.
Lanced walked up to me and bowed. “Shall we dance?”
“Very funny,” I said.
He sat down beside me. “Would you refuse the King of Siam?” He pointed to the Giant Lobster. “That guy must be broiling.”
I glared at him. “Who is that guy?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know. Look at you, giving him the hairy eyeball like that. You oughta be ashamed.” We turned our attention to the side of the dance floor where some of the revelers seemed to be fighting with the cameramen. The dance music went off. When the crowd stepped back, Lance and I could see the Voodoo Woman in her layered scarf outfit, with snake bracelets around her arms and legs, and the turban on her head. She was wailing some song that sounded like an Egyptian dirge, in hard, metallic syllables, and a foreign accent. At the same time she was rattling a gourd, fiddling with a chain of beads in her and, and hopping around the cameramen.
“Look at her,” Lance said, pointing to the Voodoo Woman. “She’s doing some Hindu-Yuppie-Hopi-Moonie-Krishnamurti-Matahari dance to ward off the spread of AIDS to heterosexuals.”
“It looks like she’s trying to put a hex on the reporters,” I said.
The Voodoo Woman stopped dancing and bowed, and the disco music went on again. The reporters asked the Extra Terrestrial if the Voodoo Woman were performing some ritual Mayan dance. E.T. said he didn’t know anything about it.
“She just wants to get on Dan Rather’s Temple of the Jaguar Report,” he said. “Everyone does.” Lance saw Whitney pull Elaine off the dance floor and head toward us. “The clam stuffers,” he said. “Be back later” — and he was off to the bar.
Whitney sat down next to me, slung her bag off her shoulder and settled it between her feet. She pulled her eye mask off. “Tell me why Nichole won’t talk to me,” she said, pointing to the Alligator and the Fox on the dance floor.
“You know why,” Elaine said. Then to me: “I told her why.”
“I want to hear it from Kate,” Whitney said. “I want to hear it from a neutral third party.”
I did not want to tell Whitney what she already knew. It would only hurt her to hear it straight. It was like Gabe telling me that my inability to make a commitment was just an excuse for my sleeping around. I knew I slept around. Gabe knew it; Joe knew it; everyone knew it. But it still hurt me to hear Gabe draw conclusions about it.
“Nichole won’t talk to you because you have a girlfriend,” I said.
“Okay?” Elaine said. “Now you’ve heard someone else say it.”
“But she’s breaking up a marriage,” Whitney said. “She’s affecting other people. This is my own private matter.”
“Not in Provincetown,” Elaine said. “Nothing’s private.”
“She told you at the Bad Attitude,” I said. “Remember the Polish joke?”
“Yeah,” Whitney said. “What she’s doing is immoral, but what I’m doing is sick.” Whitney kicked the bag of paint rags at her feet. “I remember. I thought she was just joking around, giving me a hard time, trying to get the upper hand so I wouldn’t come down on her about Frank. You know, jockeying for position, painter to painter.”
“Oh, is that how it works?” Elaine said, lighting a Player.
“I told you at the beginning this gay stuff upsets her,” I said. “She was born here. She takes everything that happens here personally.”
“So I’ve lost a friend because of my private life? I take that personally.”
“Is she really your friend if she’d drop you for that reason?” Elaine said.
Whitney looked at her. “She’s really my friend,” she said. “She’s just screwed up in the head, that’s all. Too much gesso and turpentine. It creeps up on you and then all of a sudden it attacks. You’re afflicted.”
“Sounds like love,” I said, patting her on the shoulder.
Elaine sat down next to Whitney. “You’re too generous,” she said. “Now you’re paying for it.” Whitney leaned against her and shrugged.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder from behind. I turned around. It was the Giant Lobster. “Would you like to dance?” he said.
The dance floor was humid and close; it had that thick, claustrophobic feeling of a swamp or bayou. The Voodoo Woman was dancing with the Mother of the Year, running her braceleted arms up and down the Mother’s sleek thighs. The Liza Minnelli transvestite was dancing with Uncle Sam; when he shook his head the sweat flew off his hair and spotted Uncle Sam’s top hat. Lance was dancing with Grace, and was trying to climb inside her djellaba, but she kept batting him away. Nichole was next to me on the dance floor. I grabbed her arm. “So what’s going on?”
Nichole looked at me through the eyeholes in her Alligator head. “You mean with Frank?”
I nodded. “He and his wife are negotiating,” she said. “Like Harper Martin and the Feds.”
“Joe wants us to Judge the Bocce Tournament Wednesday afternoon at Animus. Can you make it? Whitney and I said we would.”
“Whitney’s a dyke.”
“Come on, Nichole. Whitney and I are judging the Bocce Tournament. If you want to join us, show up.”
“My dad will probably be there anyway.”
“You can’t spend your entire life avoiding your father,” I shouted.
“Can’t I?” she said, took Frank’s arm and led him off to the far end of the dance floor.
I looked around the floor. It seemed like it was getting even hotter, there was less and less air, and everyone was moving in tandem, without even being aware of it. While Getz and Dominic watched from the sidelines, Joe was taking his turn now with the Turkish Belly Dancer. Joe stayed close and, while the belly dancer slithered around, he wrapped her, very carefully, in his whip, until it was crossed in elaborate patterns over her veils. Lance had succeeded in getting inside Grace’s djellaba with her, and she was trying to pull it over his head to get him out again. Joshua was circulating among a group of Harper Martin look-alikes, a group that had grown so large I wondered if perhaps they were a hockey team come to look in on the fun, or if a cult was actually forming.
“Can you take yourself off scan for a minute and talk to me?” the Giant Lobster said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Joshua skated up to me with a Sherman in his hand.
“Gotta Light?” he said. I shook my head. “I thought you always had a light,” he said. “I thought you kept one hidden.” He skated off into the crowd.
Someone put his arms around me from behind. He felt familiar. I turned around and buried my face in Getz’s warm neck, until I could feel his pulse against the bridge of my nose. I shut my eyes and put my hand in his wetsuit, feeling along his collarbone to his shoulder. “What is it?” he said.
“I don’t know. I feel funny, like this has happened before.”
“A déja vu?”
“I don’t know.”
We danced close for a while with my face in his neck and hand on his collarbone. “Will Gabe be mad I took you away from him?” he asked.
“Gabe? Is Gabe here?”
“The lobster.”
“Gabe is the Giant Lobster?”
“You didn’t know?” he said. He lifted my shirttail and ran his fingers along the small of my back. “You seemed
so sad. So I took you away.”
I listened to the music, felt Getz’s fingers against my back, and his pulse against my eyelids, and I tried to forget everything. But it all seemed so strangely familiar, the way he felt, as if I had dreamed it. I lifted my head.
“I feel dizzy,” I said. “I have to sit down.”
He left me on the bench with my head between my knees, and went to get me some water. I didn’t feel bad actually, just loose, as if I might float apart. Getz said it was the lack of oxygen, like when a scuba diver gets too much nitrogen. Raptures of the Deep, he called it.
“Hey, babe,” a man’s voice said. “I never got a chance to thank you for delivering that statement.” I looked to the side without lifting my head. Harper Martin sat down next to me on the bench. “I told you Dan Rather would grant you an audience. He’s not the Pope you know.”
I sat up. “Dan must be harder to see than the Pope by now,” I said. “Thanks to you.”
“I like your costume.”
“Yours is more original. Imagine, if there’s any Feds here looking for you they’ll think you’re the Giant Squid or the Empire State Building or something. No one would ever have foreseen that your best camouflage would be to come as yourself.”
“I wanted to come as Liza Minnelli. But look, doll, we haven’t got much time. I’ve got more messages for you to deliver. Will you be a sweetheart?” He pulled two envelopes out of the inside pocket of his leather jacket.
“Are there two?” I said. “I’m dizzy.”
“This one is for the Maniac Drifter Inc. investors. They’re having a secret meeting tomorrow at the Beachcombers. The second is for Dan Rather. Now don’t get them confused. Dan’s is a bio sheet. It would be completely useless to the investors.”
I took the envelopes and tucked them in the inside pocket of my leather jacket.
“I like your style,” he said. I nodded. “There’s one hitch, babe. The Beachcombers Club is men only. You’ve gotta go in there dressed as a man — for the sake of decorum, you know?”
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