Maniac Drifter

by Laura Marello

  “Why don’t you get out?” I said.

  “Out of town?”

  “Out of the relationship with Frank.”

  “I think I’d rather leave town.”

  “You could reconcile with your father before Frank makes a decision.”

  Nichole got up and began to walk around the room, taking her juice with her. First she went over to the desk and looked at the empty blotting pad and calculator. Then she accosted the tape player, popped the Jane Fonda tape out, flipped it over, and put it back in place again. She approached the south window and looked out. “I don’t want to reconcile with my father. Why do you want me to reconcile with my father? He wants me to apologize to him in public. Well, I won’t.”

  “What about the Bocce Tournament? Can’t you come with us, judge it, see him, and not apologize?”

  “No. He will take it as an unconditional surrender, and so will everyone else. And what difference does it make if I’m at the Bocce Tournament?”

  “Well, you can’t stay cooped up in this house forever. You are going to end up like one of those old ladies in Oakland who gets caught keeping twenty 20 dogs and cats locked in their house for eight years without ever leaving to empty the garbage. Anyway, we need all three of us to judge the tournament — you, me and Whitney.”

  Nichole sat in her overstuffed chair again, set her glass on the end table and sighed. She had an air of resignation about her, not just concerning Frank, but about life in general, as if her spirit had been broken, and she could not pretend any longer.

  “Whitney is a dyke now,” she said. “You’ve started a fad. Whitney is hanging around with lesbians.”

  “Well, we’re not all gay. You’re not gay. I’m not gay.”

  “I hear you drove a lesbian to Boston,” she said. “Overnight.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Did you sleep with her?”

  “She won’t have me.”

  “That’ll be the day,” she said. “So since when have you been hanging around with lesbians?”

  “I drove her to Boston,” I said. “Her mother was dying.”

  “Oh, so now she’s a charity case?”

  “She didn’t want me to do her any favors — I insisted. But I didn’t sleep with her.”

  Nichole threw her hands up and let them fall on the arms of the easy chair.

  “You!” she said. “You! You’d sleep with a woman if you felt like it. You’d sleep with anyone you wanted. You! You’re pan-sexual! Ubiquitous! Ambidextrous! Omnipresent! Polymorphously perverse! You’re a nymphomaniac!” Nichole got up again and began to pace around the room, without pretending to have any purpose except to vent her aggravation.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “You’ve made your point.”

  “Look, I’m sorry, Kate, but we’re really just too different.”

  “Too different to judge the Bocce Tournament?”

  “Too different to be friends.”

  “What?” I said. “You stop painting, you stop going out, you won’t see anyone, you’re threatening to leave town, and now we’re not friends?”

  “I’m sorry, Kate. This town has just gone too far. I have to get out of here. It used to be just fishermen and painters.”

  I was too caught up in my own crimes to see what the town had to do with it. “I sleep with a few people,” I said. “Whitney takes up with a woman, and you don’t want to be friends anymore?”

  Nichole let her jaw drop in disgust, then closed her mouth and cocked her head when she looked at me, as if she knew better. “A few people?” she said. “You sleep with more people in a week that I’ve slept with in my lifetime. And Whitney didn’t just take up with Elaine Barry; you took her to Paradiso’s and introduced her! Don’t you think I know? You corrupted her. You’re friends with that dyke bartender. And then, the crowning insult, you take my father’s side and ask me to grovel at his feet in public.”

  Nichole went into the kitchen and poured more cranberry juice. I turned in my chair to follow her movements.

  “I don’t believe this,” I shouted from the other room. “I really don’t believe it. So this means I can’t come over? I can’t come visit you anymore?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, with that same resignation she had shown in her expression, in her movements, in the fastidiousness of the house. “I’ll probably leave town anyway.”

  She brought the juice jar in, and poured me a glass. I looked up at her from where she was sitting. It seemed a shame to lose such a good friend, such a smart, witty friend. And for a moment I wished I had not known Mary; that I had not taken Whitney to Paradiso’s to hear Christianne sing; that I had not slept with so many men. It occurred to me that I might tell Nichole about my amnesia, and set the whole thing straight again; but then I decided no, it would not solve anything. Nichole was too smart for that. She could see right away that, though the amnesia might be real, it was just an excuse. Gabe knew as much and he did not even know what the problem was.

  Nichole was back in the easy chair now, with a new glass of juice in her hand.

  “My father did exactly what I’m doing now. But was he criticized and shunned? Of course not. He managed to get sympathy out of it. They thought he was arty, compassionate, and he did what his heart told him to do, so people felt sorry for him. Then he became a legend and those people wanted to be his friend, so they came to the restaurant. Everything works in his favor. He can do whatever he wants, and it’ll work in his favor.”

  “He wants to reconcile with you, and you won’t. That’s not working in his favor.”

  “He never wanted me. He wanted a son. He wanted someone to run the restaurant. That’s why he brought Getz in from Rhode Island and brought Dominic into the restaurant after Dom’s father died. If his son had done what I’ve done, it would be a whole different story. Anyway, I hated the restaurant: all the pettiness and gossip and intrigue, everyone treating you some fake way because you’re the boss’ daughter, kissing your ass because you’re the boss’ daughter, wanting to sleep with you because you’re the boss’ daughter. I should have never come back here when I inherited this house. I should have stayed in New York, where people don’t know me from when I was five. Where people aren’t petty and vicious. Where people don’t know I’m my father’s daughter.”

  I did not know what to say. I had never lost someone before by their own volition. I got up. I had to leave; I was already late for the Bocce Tournament.

  ***

  The inside of Animus Pizza seemed too small to accommodate all the different foods it served and the various clientele it housed. The entire right side of the room was used to prepare the food. The pizza was made in the front by the window and set out on the counters to cool. This was also where, in the morning, the pastries and croissants were laid out. Behind the pizza area was the soda fountain, with its freezers of ice cream, taps for soda and pumps for syrup. The espresso machine sat on the serving counter. On the walls above the food area Joe Houston had painted a mural of little devils, with horns, tails and pitchforks. The devils sat on a wall in various attitudes, some with one leg slung casually over the wall, some holding their pitchforks upright, others glaring straight at the viewer so that at times it startled the customers, who mistook them for real people in costumes. The sky Joe had painted around the devils was such a pale, celestial blue, and the clouds so close and wispy and ethereal, it seemed that the devils had taken over Heaven. If you asked Joe if this was what he meant by it, he would just stroke his black signature glove and chuckle evasively.

  The other half of Animus Pizza was occupied by booths and video machines. The walls above the booths were used as gallery space to house photography shows. In the back of the pizza parlor, a door led out to the rear patio and yard. In the very back, there was a bocce court, made professionally by real Italians, and smoothed down with an authentic cement roller machine, the kind that was used to pave streets. The three brothers who owned Animus Pizza were serious bocce players, and v
ery proud of their court. They said it was the only legitimate court on Cape Cod.

  When I arrived at Animus Pizza, a crowd had already gathered to watch the bocce tournament to benefit the Harper Martin Defense Fund. They seemed to be mainly tourists; I did not recognize anyone who was standing outside on the front patio, watching the skateboarders perform their leaps, twirls and dives off the curb.

  The TV camera crews had also arrived. The vans were parked out front, with their right wheels up on the curb, to leave room for the traffic on the narrow street. They were laying out cables everywhere, in the front door, through the pizza parlor and out the back, along the side yards and across the front patio. The cables created quite an obstacle course for the skateboarders who were jumping over them.

  The tourists seemed to be just as interested in the camera crews as they were in the upcoming bocce game. Many of them were inspecting the camera and lighting equipment, playing with the microphones and talking to crew members. Perhaps they weren’t so interested in the bocce game or Harper Martin as they were in being on the spot where some media event was happening, the way people rush to a fire or airplane crash or other accident. Or maybe they wanted to see themselves on the evening news.

  I wove my way through the crowd, trying to get inside the pizza parlor, and then beyond it to the backyard, where I thought I would find Joe Houston and Whitney. Some of the people I passed were dressed as Harper Martin, in beige chinos, white shirts, string ties, leather jackets and fedoras. Others were dressed in Mayan ball player costumes: naked except for a belt around the waist with a flap hanging down in front, a stone chest plate, leather straps laced up their arms and legs.

  The crowd was so thick I could hardly move through it. I had reached the Space Invaders machine when something stopped me. It was a smell, that talc-y smell. It was Grace.

  “Borrowed anyone’s car lately?” Grace said.

  I thought Grace was referring to my trips down to New York to deliver Harper’s statements to Dan Rather at the CBS News. Then it occurred to me that, after that morning’s broadcast of Harper surrendering himself to the Feds from my skylight, the whole town probably knew I was Deep Throat, the Informant.

  “No,” I said.

  “You haven’t borrowed anyone’s car? Not even someone’s who might have needed it to drive to Boston and see her mother before she died?”

  “Oh that,” I said, relieved that Grace did not know I was the informant. Then I realized what she meant.

  Grace was a friend of Mary’s and she was mad because, after I had driven Mary to Boston and we’d both come back again, Mary loaned me her car. Mine was broken. I didn’t return it promptly and in the meantime Mary’s mother died. If she had had her car, she would have been able to get back up there in time. But I had her car.

  “Oh that!” Grace had been saying. “Oh that! As if it doesn’t even matter that your carelessness prevented Mary from ever seeing her mother again. As if it doesn’t matter that you let Mary buy your drinks, take you out, give you her car to use, and then you take it when she needs it most, sleep with eight different Joes while she’s gone, and when she comes back into town you don’t even bother to go see her, or call her up on the phone even. I can’t believe it. You oughta be locked up. Kate! Kate! Are you listening to me?”

  When I looked up again, I was standing in the backyard near the bocce court with Joe Houston. Joe was wearing the traditional Mayan ball player’s costume: a belt around his waist with flaps hanging down the front and back, a stone chest plate made from paper maché, leather straps up his arms and legs, and a special leather pouch to carry his Gauloises cigarettes.

  “How’d I get out here?” I said.

  “You walked out with me,” he said.

  “But where’s Grace? Wasn’t I with Grace?”

  “We left her in there,” he said. “Are you epileptic?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Because Grace was talking to you, and you didn’t seem to hear any of it, and now you don’t even remember how you got outside.” He put his hand on my shoulder, as if to make the news more palatable.

  “It was too crowded inside. I couldn’t get enough air.”

  “Maybe you’re claustrophobic then.”

  “Maybe.” I looked him up and down, scrutinizing his costume as if I had not seen it yet.

  Elaine and Whitney came up to us at the court. “Aren’t we supposed to judge this game?” Whitney said. “Where’s Nich­ole?” She looked around. Whitney had on reflector Vuarnet sunglasses and she had just gotten out of the shower. Her hair, which she hennaed, had been turning a rust color, but now its seemed to be headed toward a shade of magenta. She was wearing her signature white t-shirt with the tiger lithoed on the front, and her tiger-striped knee socks.

  “She’s not coming,” I said. “And it’s not your fault, Whitney.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Elaine said. “She’ll blame herself.”

  “I said forget it! Forget it!” Whitney yelled, and walked closer to the bocce court.

  “She’s had some bad news,” Elaine explained when Whitney was out of earshot.

  Some of the players had assembled and were practicing pitching the balls from one end of the court at the stationery ball at the other end. Whitney stood watching them. I came up and stood next to her. “I think somebody better tell me how this game is played,” she said, “before I have to judge it.” I explained that each player tried to get his ball as close to the stationary ball as he could without touching it. I said if there were any dispute as to which ball was closest, we would have to rule on it. Then I confessed I had never really played, and had just learned the rules from Joe.

  Whitney nodded, and watched the players again. Then she asked me if they could knock each others’ balls out of position. “Now you’re catching on,” Joe said. He had come up from behind and was standing between us.

  “I’m not sure you want us to judge this thing, Joe,” Whitney said. “Neither one of us has played. It’s like the blind leading the blind.”

  “That’s the way of life,” he said.

  “Mr. Eastern Philosophy,” Whitney said.

  So the official game started. Whitney and I judged it as best we could. While the teams were playing, the tourists wandered around the backyard and pizza parlor, drinking sodas, shakes and coffee, eating pizza and ice cream. The camera crews filmed the game, and stopped the tourists from eating in order to ask them what they thought about Harper Martin and the Nicaragua question, or about their costume, their background, their home town, their reasons for attending benefit week.

  After the game was over everybody continued eating and drinking, the TV crews kept on with their interviews. It wasn’t the bocce game that mattered, it was the party; the game was just an excuse to have one.

  Joe made me a complimentary chocolate egg cream to thank me for my participation. We took a booth with Whitney and Elaine, who were drinking espressos, and the four of us watched the crowd. Joe took a pack of Gauloises out of the special leather pouch he was wearing on his hip for that purpose, and Elaine lit it for him against the tip of the Player’s she was smoking with her coffee.

  “So tell us some good news, Whitney,” I said, “if you won’t tell us the bad.”

  “There isn’t any good news,” she said. Judging the bocce Tournament had not distracted her from her gloomy self-absorption.

  “There is, too,” Elaine said. She and Whitney glared at each other. “I’ll tell them myself if you don’t.”

  “Alright,” Whitney said. She pushed her espresso cup to the middle of the table. Joe leaned forward and looked into it, then he looked at me as if he were astonished at what he had read there.

  “A CBS camera crew came to Days Studios today,” Whitney said. “They’re working on a profile of Harper Martin, for one of those Special Reports. They interviewed me, and they filmed my studio.”

  “And the Incident in Fialta was mounted on the wall when they did it,” Elaine said
, triumphant. “They filmed that, too.” She beamed at me, and took another drag on her cigarette.

  Whitney worked in primary colors mostly, but lately she had added black. Incident in Fialta was a diptych that had to be mounted in a corner of her studio at Days so the canvases were perpendicular to each other, making an L-shape on the two walls. The canvases were six-by-six feet and filled with swirling cyclone shapes that set sparks flying in arcs across the canvas. It looked very much like an incident.

  “The Incident in Fialta!” I said. “On the National news!”

  “Congratulations,” Joe said gravely, and reached over the table to shake her hand.

  “So now can you tell us the bad news?” I said.

  Whitney and Elaine looked at each other. “I guess not,” Whitney said. Whitney brought her cup toward her and looked down into it. When Joe asked her if she wanted another one on the house, she nodded. So Joe got up, brought two espressos back, and set them in front of Elaine and Whitney. Then he and Elaine lit fresh cigarettes.

  “Your Incident in Fialta on national television,” I said.

  “You were on National television this morning, don’t forget,” Whitney said. “Well, your house anyway, and your, your — ” Whitney looked at Joe and suddenly seemed guilty.

  “Go ahead, say it,” Joe said. “Her Joe. But it wasn’t Joe at all, was it, darling?” Joe said it to me with mock sweetness, put his arm around me as best he could with his chest plate on, and kissed me.

  “So when is this Special Report going to air?” I said.

  “You mean the profile on Harper Martin?” Joe said.

  “In a few days, I think,” Whitney said.

  “I’ve never seen you jealous before, Joe,” Elaine said. She reached across the table to light another Gauloise for him, then watched him take a drag on the cigarette. Joe exhaled, stroked his glove, and returned her look.