Maniac Drifter

by Laura Marello

  “I told you, Elaine, I’m a mysterious guy.”

  While Elaine and Whitney teased Joe about being jealous, I looked around the room. Some of the skateboarders had come inside, and were playing the Space Invaders machine, with their skateboards propped up against their legs. At the espresso machine the tourists had surrounded a few of the bocce players and were fingering their chest plates, leather skirts and lace up sandals. The TV camera crews were shining spotlights on the bocce players, and trying to interview them, but the crowd kept getting in the way, and the players really couldn’t hear the questions in all the noise, so they just squinted into the bright lights, smiled, and showed off their headdresses.

  The Mother of the Year had just arrived and was standing in the entranceway, dressed in the most outrageous costume. She was Tlacolteotl, the Goddess of Sin, as that deity had been shown in pictures from the Codex Borbonicus on one of Dan Rather’s Temple of the Jaguar Reports. She was wearing a skirt that had mussels and small crabs sewn onto the fabric. A belt of fish heads was wrapped around her waist several times, so it criss-crossed and draped her hips. She was barefoot, and wore bracelets of shark’s teeth around her ankles and wrists. Her hair was tied up in a white muslin turban. On the front of it was a brass pendant of two snakes, their necks intertwined and their jaws locked on each other so their fangs collided. A halter-top made from the same white muslin as the turban was wrapped around her chest like a gauze bandage, leaving her stomach and shoulders bare.

  Cosmo appeared in the doorway, disappeared in the crowd around the Mother of the Year, and then reappeared by the Space Invaders machine. Joe motioned him over to the table. “I thought you were going to play on our team,” Joe said.

  Cosmo shook hands with Joe and Elaine, then stood in front of the booth, looking around at all of us as if he were assessing our worth. Whitney and Elaine moved in to make room for Cosmo on their side of the booth. He sat down and then looked around at the crowd as if he were trying to locate a waiter to serve him. “Well, I’m sorry I missed Nich­ole,” he said. “When did she leave?”

  Joe and Whitney looked at me. I said Nichole didn’t come. “It’s my fault,” Whitney said. Elaine took the cigarette out of her mouth and made a clucking noise.

  “No, it’s my fault,” I said.

  “You’re very kind, both of you,” Cosmo said. Obviously he thought we were just being polite, and he was really to blame.

  When Cosmo looked around again for a waiter, Joe took the opportunity to look suspiciously at me. Then Joe asked Cosmo if he would like something to drink.

  “A slice please, thank you, Joe,” he said, and continued to look around distractedly.

  After Joe left Elaine shot me inquiring glances and Whitney appeared bewildered. Finally Elaine said she wanted to get a closer look at the Goddess of Sin, and asked Whitney to go with her. Cosmo let them out of the booth. When they were gone, he sat back down again and said to me: “I’m really sorry I’m late. At the last minute I had to check in a wine shipment. I was afraid I’d miss her.”

  I looked down into the dregs of Whitney’s espresso cup. Perhaps he had arrived late on purpose, so if Nichole had come he would have appeared nonchalant. And he would have made her wait.

  “She really didn’t come at all?” Cosmo said. He didn’t seem to believe this.

  Joe brought Cosmo’s slice of pizza to the table on a napkin, told them he had been asked by the reporters to pose in his Mayan ball player’s costume with the Goddess of Sin, and left to be photographed. Cosmo turned to watch him go, as if he wished he could be Joe at that moment instead of himself, with Joe’s looks and occupations, Joe’s circumstances and history, Joe’s own set of gossip and rumor, legend and myth.

  “I went over to the house and talked to her this morning,” I said. “She got mad at me. I’m the wrong person to try to help anyone. I think I just made things worse.”

  “That’s kind,” Cosmo said.

  He ate his pizza while I watched quietly, affording him his private thoughts. He could have been wishing that he had never had an affair with Nello’s wife, that he had never been so attentive to Dominic and Getz, never treated them like sons, that he had involved more deeply Nichole in the restaurant business. Maybe he was dreaming of the reconciliation between them, of his daughter breaking her resolve and coming to him in tears. But maybe not. Perhaps he was wishing that he had run off with Nello’s wife instead of relinquishing her and staying with his own, that Dominic and Getz were in fact his own sons. In any case, he had come today to see his daughter. He had arrived late to preserve his dignity, and now he was there, sitting in the booth with me, eating a slice of pizza. His daughter hadn’t come.

  I wanted to suggest that he go to Nichole’s house and talk to her, that he make a gesture toward her, but I didn’t know how to circumvent his pride to make the idea seem tenable. Nichole was only doing what he had once done; maybe she was a lot like him; but I had tried that argument at the restaurant, and it seemed to be part of what was bothering him.

  He finished eating his slice of pizza and wiped his hands on a napkin. “You could go over there,” I said. “To her house. Something. You know.”

  “I know,” he said. He wadded up the napkin and dropped it in Elaine’s ashtray, then he reached across the table and clasped my shoulder. People were always trying to comfort me. He slid out of the booth, brushed the crumbs off his pants and looked around. “I have to get back,” he said.

  After Cosmo left, I stretched out on my side of the booth and watched the proceedings. Joe was still posing with the Mother of the Year, though the TV crews had stopped filming. A reporter was tapping on Joe’s black glove and asking him what it meant. At the soda fountain Grace was talking with Elaine and Whitney. The skateboarders had abandoned the video machines and gone back outside to stage another exhibition on the front patio.

  Elaine sat down in the booth with me. She had left Whitney at the counter with Grace. I watched Grace yell and gesticulate wildly. Whitney was nodding sympathetically and trying to break in to explain something, but Grace would not let her. Whitney waited patiently, and then tried again.

  “So what’s the bad news?” I said.

  Elaine lit a Player and removed Cosmo’s napkin from her ashtray. “Whitney told her parents she has a girlfriend.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I said.

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  I shook my head. “So what did they say? How did they take it?” I looked at Elaine and reconsidered. “Maybe you shouldn’t tell me. Maybe I don’t want to know.”

  “They refuse to ever see or talk to her again.”

  “Charming,” I said. “They disown their only daughter at the age of 30, because she has a girlfriend. Stunning. Expert. That’s just perfect.”

  “You’re angry.”

  “Angry! Of course, I’m angry!” I reached out for Elaine’s cigarette.

  “What?” Elaine said, pulling it away.

  “Give me the cigarette.”

  “You don’t smoke.”

  “I do now. I want the cigarette. Give me the cigarette.”

  Elaine watched me suspiciously for a moment, then slowly passed the cigarette over to me. I took a long drag and let the smoke out. “You’re smoking a cigarette,” she said. “You don’t smoke. You’re smoking a cigarette.” I took another long drag. I watched the smoke curl up off the burning tip. Elaine reached for it, but I pulled away, so Elaine took out another one and lit it.

  “So how is she taking it?” I said. “Is she hurt?”

  “She’s stunned. She thought they’d be upset, but she didn’t have any idea they would ostracize her. How are you taking it?”

  I twirled the cigarette in the ashtray. “Me? I’m her friend. I’m mad as hell.”

  “But you’re not blaming yourself, are you?”

  “Why not? Nichole already blames me. Add it to the list.”

  “The list?”

  “I deprived Mary of her last visit to her dy
ing mother; I’ve ostracized Whitney from her family. It’s a list.”

  “Oh, you mean Grace,” she said. She chuckled. “Don’t worry about her. She’s just jealous.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Sure. It’s just a little Dyke Drama. She thinks Mary would get involved with her if she wasn’t interested in you. But she wouldn’t. Mary’s never gone for anyone her own age.”

  “Interested in me? Mary’s not interested in me. Mary could care less about me. She never acts like she likes me. She doesn’t like me.”

  Elaine squinted behind the smoke from her cigarette. “She let you drive her to her parents’ house.”

  “Nothing happened!”

  Elaine laughed. “Calm down. Nobody said anything happened. Mary’s friends just know what it means. What it means. You see? And Grace is jealous.”

  “Jealous?”

  Elaine laughed again, put out her cigarette, and lit another one. She leaned back in the booth. “I’m telling you this so you won’t let Grace bother you. But I see you’re just more upset. I thought you were tougher than that.”

  “Tough as nails. Hard as a ball bearing.”

  “Come on, Kate. Lighten up. Whitney has a problem. Cosmo has a problem. My brothers have a problem. You do not have a problem. Mary has befriended you, and you’re taking some flack for it. That’s all.”

  “That’s all. Dyke Drama.”

  “Now you’re catching on,” she said.

  I finished my cigarette and rubbed out the cinder in the ashtray. “So is Whitney going to be alright?” I said. “What can we do?”

  “She’ll be alright. It won’t help if you go blaming yourself.”

  “Hey, why would I blame myself when I have Nichole to do it for me?”

  Elaine shook her head. “I thought you were tougher than this,” she repeated. She got up. “Mary’s back from Boston, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “You should go see her.”

  She went back to the counter and left with Whitney. The Mother of the Year had retired to the back yard. Some reporters were filming her around the bocce court. Joe had returned to the soda fountain, and was trying to keep his chest-plate out of the way while he scooped ice cream cones.

  I climbed out of the booth and stood in line at the soda fountain. When I reached the counter, Joe winked at me, and made me a chocolate egg cream without asking me what I wanted. He held the cup at eye level and inspected the foam. “A work of art,” he said, handing it to me.

  I thanked him. “Hey, you,” he said. “What do you say we go to my house, watch the news, catch the Temple of the Jaguars Special Report, grab a bite, and then run down to the Fashion Show at Grace’s Djellaba store? Whatta you say?”

  “I have to work.”

  “You don’t have to work,” he said. “It’s Benefit Week.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on. I’ll make you dinner.”

  He came around the soda fountain, took me by the elbow, and led me toward the door. Joshua skateboarded into the pizza parlor, executed a triple spin, and catapulted off the backyard porch. When both he and his skateboard were in the air, he kicked the board into his hand and landed flat on both feet on the backyard lawn like a gymnast executing a dismount. The crowd cheered. Then he saw me and Joe walking away.

  “Gotta light?” he yelled at me. “Hey Kate, I said, Gotta light?”

  ***

  Joe’s apartment was more like a painting studio with a bathroom than a place to live. The large rectangular room with high ceilings and north windows had no furniture except for a mattress on the floor with some clothes thrown over it for bedding, and a card table in the middle of the space filled with tin cans holding brushes and sticks, jars and tubes of paint, and assorted metal lids. The television sat on the floor at the foot of the mattress, plugged into the socket inside the bathroom — the only electrical outlet on the walls.

  “You live here?” I said.

  Joe turned the TV on. “Only in summer,” he said.

  He explained that he could not afford the summer rates on his apartment, so he sublet it and had moved into this, his painting studio, for the season. He was at work all day and all night anyway, and just came there between Animus and the Bad Attitude to watch the CBS news and Temple of the Jaguars Report. Then he went back to work.

  “Your landlord doesn’t charge you year-round rates?” I said.

  “Why would he charge me year-round what he can get from a tourist for the summer? There’s no more year round rates. Just summer and winter.”

  “I have year-round rates.”

  “Well hang onto the place. There aren’t going to be anymore year-round rentals in a few years. The whole town’s getting gentrified, like Soho. Like the Lower East Side.”

  The minute I began to wonder where the promised dinner was hidden, Joe recognized the bewildered look on my face, went into the bathroom, opened the small refrigerator underneath the sink, and pulled out a giant cracked crab and a bottle of White Zinfandel. He brought them out to me, and set them down at my feet, where I was sitting on the mattress. Then he pulled a pair of jeans under the plate to serve as a tablecloth.

  “Where did you get this?” I asked, pointing to the crab.

  “The fridge,” he said. He went to the coat closet and pulled out a loaf of French bread.

  “Before that?”

  “Alaska. Alaskan King Crab.”

  He went over to the card table, fiddled in the tin cans of brushes and sticks, and brought back a plastic scraping tool, a wooden mallet and a twisted wire.

  “You’re living in a fishing village; you’ve got ocean on three sides of you, and you buy Alaskan King Crab?”

  “We don’t have crabs here. Not big crabs.” He held his arms wide apart, as if he were about to embrace someone, to show me the size of the crab he wanted. Then, using the twisted wire, he extracted the cork from the bottle of White Zinfandel.

  “But we have lobster, squid, cod, scallops …”

  “People always want what they can’t have, don’t they?” he said gently. Then he poured the wine into what appeared to be a paint mixing cup — the sawed off bottom of a quart milk carton.

  “I guess so,” I said.

  Joe showed me how to use the soft wooden mallet and plastic prying tool to break the crab shells open and pull the meat out. Then he went back to the card table and found me a sharp stick to use as a fork, in case I did not want to hold the crab meat in my fingers. When he was halfway back to the mattress, he returned to the card table, found a second stick, and brought them both back to me. I could use them like chopsticks if I wanted.

  “Crab from Alaska, wine from California, French bread, a nutcracker and chopsticks. I’m confused,” I said. “Where are we?”

  “In America.”

  He sat down next to me on the mattress and watched Dan Rather report the CBS Evening News. “It’s American, this dinner. Mixing everything up, combining cultures. It’s patriotic. Don’t you think?” He kissed me on the cheek again.

  While Joe watched the CBS Evening News, I leaned against him, ate crab, drank wine, and looked at the paintings that were in progress along the walls of his studio. They were all done on masonite boards, six feet high and ten feet long. The boards were gessoed white, and painted over with black and red acrylic paint. Only black and red. Figures were etched in to the paint with implements, like crude finger painting. They were nothing like the meticulous Escher in Instanbul mural at the Bad Attitude Cinema, or the dreamy Devils Occupy Heaven mural above the soda fountain at Animus Pizza.

  Joe grabbed my arm and shook it. “Look, Kate, Kate,” he said. “There’s your house. There’s your skylight. There’s Harper surrendering himself to the Federal Marshal.”

  I watched the footage of Harper climbing out of the skylight and falling into the arms of the helicopter pilot. I barely recognized the scene. It didn’t look anything like what had happened that morning, what I heard, what I saw, what I
remembered. The sound of the helicopter had frightened me. The house shook like an earthquake. Harper might have fallen off the roof. Harper might never be coming back. He had said, Remember what we talked about, and I couldn’t remember. I felt guilty. I had stolen the skin-suit man. Then the reporters had swarmed my apartment, beating on the doors, and I had hidden inside the bed, underneath the covers, after piling the furniture against the door to keep them out. It was like a siege.

  But this television broadcast of the event looked pleasant enough. Sure, it was exciting, slightly dangerous, but in a glamorous way, the way James Bond dangling from the Eiffel Tower in a 007 movie was dangerous. James Bond would never really fall off the roof, but Harper might. James Bond would always film a sequel, but Harper might not come back.

  “Look, Kate, he’s climbing into the copter. He’s waving to the crowd. Kate, Kate the crowd’s cheering. Where were you? Inside, watching on TV?” I just looked at him. What if they put Harper in jail? What if he never came back? What had we talked about that I was supposed to remember? “Kate, why don’t you answer me?”

  “The questions you’re asking, they aren’t even in English.”

  I stood up and went over to the walls to examine his paintings at close range.

  Joe took me by the shoulders and pulled me back, away from the paintings.

  “You’re too close,” he said. “You can’t see anything so close. You don’t have any perspective. Stand here. What do you think the room is so big for?”

  On the television, Dan Rather was saying that sources close to the federal government had revealed that negotiations had begun between Harper Martin and Federal representatives, but no other information was forthcoming.

  “These are so different than your murals,” I said.

  “So, are you bummed?” He stroked his black signature glove.

  “No, I like them. They’re just different.”

  “I’m a versatile guy. Full of surprises.” He put his arms around me. “You know, when Harper gets released he’s gonna have to go to the Getty Museum and paint that replica of the Temple of the Jaguars mural.”