At the Bad Attitude Café and Cinema, I found Antaeus in his office, flipping restlessly through a pile of receipts. He turned now and then to make an entry in the account book on his right, but paused each time, as if he were trying to decide whether to falsify it or not. When he saw me he jumped up and greeted me like an old friend, patting me on the back and shaking my hand simultaneously. Perhaps he considered my arrival propitious, since it saved him from committing a felony.
“Kate, Kate, welcome,” he said, pumping my hand more times than was acceptable.
I wondered why people often said my name twice, as if the monosyllable was not substantial or someone had forced them to recall me after a long absence: Yes, Kate, Kate. I remember her well.
“Did you come to see the new gallery?” he asked, looking up at the ceiling.
“Actually, I came with a message from Ruth.”
“From Ruth!” Antaeus said, giggling as if he were embarrassed. “So what did Ruth want to tell me?”
I launched into my speech about how Harper had been indicted for U.S. Trade violations but none of the collaborators had been indicted, Ruth had left for New York to work as a consultant to the defense attorney, that they hoped to settle in pre-trial arbitration, and Ruth would do everything in her power to preserve the stockholders’ investments.
When I reached the part about the stockholders’ investments, Antaeus started laughing uproariously, his reckless, violent, uncontrolled laugh. “I know,” I said, “you’ve heard this all on television already but — ”
He put out his hand, as if to stop a car that was approaching. “No,” he said, still laughing, but more calmly now. “It’s not that. Don’t you know what’s going on?”
“What’s going on?”
“Don’t you know how much money we’re making off this thing?” he whispered and looked around.
I looked, too.
“Well with all the publicity from the Temple of the Jaguars story, and Benefit Week, and everyone in town — ”
He started chuckling to himself and beat his fist quietly against the wall like a drum beat. It reminded me of the investors meeting — he beat on the pool table when he finally got the joke. I didn’t get it yet.
“So you don’t know,” he said.
I shook my head. Antaeus shut the door to his office. “He gets royalties,” he said. He looked at my blank expression and tried again. “Don’t you understand? He gets a percentage of the profits from the thing, like royalties.”
“Profits from the exhibit?”
Antaeus nodded. “For the first 50 years. He convinced them he should be paid for the publicity he would cause — he used his painting the murals as an example. He told them a flat rate for the artifacts and his work painting the mural wouldn’t be a fair assessment of his contribution if the thing really became popular. So he’ll receive royalties, the way an actor will take the percentage of the profits on a movie, instead of being paid a flat fee to act in it.”
“Jesus, can he do that?”
“He did it. And the Getty Museum’s attendance has tripled in the last three weeks since the story broke. The Temple of the Jaguars exhibit hasn’t even opened yet! Think of when he gets out of jail and he’s painting that mural. Imagine how many people are going to show up there!” He let loose another great laugh, larger than himself, as if the universe had played a joke on him, and by a stroke of luck he had profited by it.
“So the investors get part of that money?”
“We’re the stockholders in the company,” he explained. “And our stock just keeps going up.” He chuckled to himself again, and fluffed the stack of receipts on his desk, as if, now that he remembered his impending wealth, they meant nothing to him.
“What if Harper gets thrown in jail, or they have to give the artifacts back, or they won’t give the confiscated crates back or — ?”
Antaeus waved his hands to stop me. “The government can’t afford the backlash. Public opinion is against them now. There would be demonstrations in the street. It would be like the Sixties again. And the funny thing about it is, do you think Harper cares about Nicaragua? I don’t think so. I don’t think he even considered the moral issues of the war there, or our part in it. But my god, look how he’s used it in his favor, to get public opinion on his side so he can have what he wants. They can’t lock him up, they can’t take the artifacts away from him. The public would be outraged. Harper’s made himself into a hero. A real American outlaw hero.” Antaeus shook his head. “I just thought I was investing a little money so some artist in town could get an even break. I didn’t know what I was doing. This guy is a genius. He’s a gold mine. He’s absolutely incorrigible.”
He sat down at his desk and held his head in his hands. He looked devastated.
“So what’s the matter?” I said.
“What’s the matter?” He took his hands away and looked up at me. He shrugged. “What’s the matter?” He looked around vacantly, as if he were in shock, or had been unfrozen after 200 years and had no idea what the world was like anymore. “It’s bigger than all of us. It’s out of control. Look what’s happening here in town. Everyone’s building, real estate prices are going up, everyone’s renovating, different kinds of people are coming here, people with more money.”
“Gentrification,” I said.
“Exactly. In a few years no one will remember Harper Martin, but the whole town will be different. Some of us locals will have made it through the change alright, sure, but the fishermen and the Portuguese and the old townies won’t be able to afford to live here anymore.” I nodded. “Say every year you take a vacation in Vegas, and you’ve been playing at the five dollar black jack table all your life. Then one day, some guy named Harper Martin walks in, and moves you over to the twenty-five dollar blackjack table without you even realizing it. You play well there, it’s not that, but you’ve never played at this table. It’s bigger than you. You feel you don’t belong there. Do you understand?”
I nodded. “I think so,” I said. I looked at my watch and said I had to go.
“Raphael next?”
I said yes and wondered if he were thinking of the hit and run accident in which his mother killed Raphael’s mother.
“Raphael understood what Harper was doing,” he said. “Right from the very beginning.”
I nodded, remembering Raphael’s contented, Buddha-like composure at the Beachcombers investors meeting. Antaeus stood up and shook my hand.
“I never thanked you for helping with the liquor license appeal for the gallery,” he said. “I appreciate it.”
“It was nothing.”
“Well, there will be liquor served from the new bar at Cosmo’s opening. And I insist on serving you personally, by way of thanks. Don’t try to slip by me in the crowd.”
“It was really nothing. I just notified the abutters.”
“I can’t stand a person who won’t accept gratitude,” he said, and waved me out the door, as if he were fanning air.
***
It was not only women who came to see Paula and Christianne’s cabaret performance to benefit the Harper Martin Defense Fund. Most of the crowd at Paradiso’s on Thursday night were locals who came to demonstrate their support for the Benefit, pay tribute to the performers, and signal the importance of the occasion with their presence, the way they would come on the opening and closing nights of the season.
When I arrived, Joe Houston was leaning against the bar, talking to Mary. He had changed out of his Mayan Ballplayer’s costume, and was wearing his regulation black jeans, black t-shirt with Bad Attitude written in magenta script across the chest, a pack of Gauloises rolled up in his sleeve, and of course, the black take-up-reel glove. Raphael Souza sat at a back table talking to Antaeus, as if to show publicly that he bore no grudge against him over Mrs. Souza’s death, and in bearing none, upheld his status as Town Martyr. Elaine and Whitney sat at the table opposite center stage, where Whitney had sat the first night she met Elaine. Whit
ney was wearing the same tiger shirt and tiger-striped socks that had attracted Montana Devon’s attention that night, and caused Elaine to notice her. They sat leaning against each other with a smug satisfaction, almost contemptuous of the idea that they could have ever been apart, anticipating Montana’s surprise when he would see them together and realize they had taken his advice. On the table in front of them their beer bottles touched. Elaine lit a Player’s and after she blew out the first drag of smoke, whispered something in Whitney’s ear.
The night that Whitney met Elaine, I hadn’t planned to take Whitney to Paradiso’s. It just happened. We were sitting on the steps of Animus Pizza. I was drinking my chocolate egg cream. The front door to Paradiso’s was just across the street and down the alley. Christianne, the French-Canadian singer who performed there, was standing at the door in her tuxedo, leaning on a cane. Her chestnut hair was cut short to show off her high cheekbones and green eyes. When she sang her voice was powerful and sad, as if she’d dredged up some solitary, private grief. Before a performance she would linger at the doorway like that, all sad and dreamy, looking up at the stars.
Whitney had been complaining about the men she was trying to see, so I suggested she might try women, and pointed down the alley. Whitney asked me if I liked cross-dressing and said that androgyny was just a fad. I told her that Christianne was no fad, and asked if she’d ever heard her sing. Whitney said she hadn’t. It was my night off from Cosmo’s restaurant, so we decided to go. Whitney asked me if we should go get Nichole, but I told her Nichole got upset about the gay scene and wouldn’t want to. I threw away my chocolate egg cream and we got up. That’s when I noticed Whitney’s tiger-striped knee socks for the first time. They went with her growling tiger shirt.
While I was inspecting the socks Lydia Street rode up on her bicycle. She was wearing her khaki safari shorts, a Hawaiian flowered shirt, a denim railroad cap and tennis shoes. She had strawberry blond hair, green eyes and freckles. Her bike was a royal blue, decorated with red plastic poinsettias and green plastic leaves. Both the poinsettias and leaves could be popped off the vines at their joints and snapped back in again. In the front basket of the bike she carried her pet parrot Sydney Greenstreet, in a wicker birdcage. Lydia wrote the weekly gossip column for the Provincetown Express and played in the annual tennis tournament. The previous winter she had taken a trip to Africa where, she claimed, a lion chased her into her tent.
Whitney and I walked down the alley to Paradiso’s. The show was not scheduled to start for a half an hour but a line had already formed at the door. The women liked to arrive early so they could select the best seats. Inside, the dance floor was filled with tables and chairs. Whitney chose one center stage. I asked her if she wanted to sit in the back where she could get the full effect, but she said she preferred the front row. I went to Mary at the bar and got Whitney a Heineken and myself a club soda. Falzano was leaning on the counter at the waitress station, wearing a black silk bowling shirt with beige, red and yellow rectangles on it like a Mondrian painting. She wore a gold chain around her wrist and she smelled like Pierre Cardin. Falzano didn’t remember me so Mary introduced me as Ruth Allen Esquire’s assistant. Then Falzano noticed I was drinking club soda and raised the price because it was show time. When Mary tried to explain I didn’t drink, Falzano said that nobody drank. She runs a nightclub in the sleaziest town in the country and nobody drinks. She asked us if we thought she could make money from the nightly cover charge. She told us not to be ridiculous. A nightclub made money from liquor. And nobody drank. So club soda cost a dollar fifty during show times. It was a new rule. Mary was to tell the waitresses.
Falzano left and Mary wouldn’t take my money, so I put it in the tip jar. I apologized for getting her in trouble but she said she wasn’t in trouble; Falzano just got nervous before the show started. Then we arranged a meeting place and time because that was the night I was driving her to Boston to see her mom.
Falzano came back to the bar with Christianne. Christianne had her tuxedo on for the show and was smoking a Gitanes. She smelled like men’s Givenchy. She asked Mary for a scotch and soda and asked who the beautiful girl was. She stole a glance at me, looked away, and took a drag on her cigarette. Falzano said I was Ruth’s assistant. Mary introduced me as Kate. Christianne said she was enchanted and kissed my hand. Falzano complained that I didn’t drink. Christianne said well of course not, she’s so sweet and pure. Then she told me not to let Falzano upset me, and patted the hand she had kissed. Falzano asked where Paula was and Christianne said she was putting on her makeup. She rolled her eyes and pointed upstairs at the dressing room. She took her scotch from Mary and twirled the swizzle stick around in it, rattling the ice. She asked me if I was here for the show. When I said I was she said she was happy now. She picked up her scotch and Gitanes, said goodbye darling to me, I miss you already, and left. Mary laughed and called her a ham.
When I got back to the table the room was full of people and Whitney already had a Heineken. I asked her where she got it and she pointed to Slashette, the cocktail waitress with the stingray haircut. It was shaved close to the head on the left side and was long on the right. It was dyed blond, but the roots showed underneath. It was not fashionable to pretend your hair color was real. Slashette wrote the Fashion Espionage column for the Provincetown Express and appeared in a photo above the copy in a trench coat, fedora and sunglasses.
Whitney told me Slashette wanted to be a fashion model. Then she pointed to Elaine Barry, who was sitting to the right of the stage and asked who that thin, pretty, fortyish woman with the exquisite silver hair might be. I told her she was Raphael Souza’s sister, she worked at Ethan’s Pharmacy, she was a friend of Mary’s and she was gay. Whitney said she looked like Lauren Bacall but didn’t believe she was gay. I said she was also divorced and had two kids in college. Whitney pointed out Lydia and called her the Bike Lady. Lydia had stationed Sydney Greenstreet on the bar counter and was straddling one of the high stools in the back.
The lights went down and the women started clapping, cheering and screaming. Christianne emerged from behind the curtain and the screaming got louder. A few women tossed roses onto the stage. “Girls, girls,” Christianne said into the microphone and held up her hands. She asked everyone to stay calm and told them she would sing to them later, but first, she wanted to introduce her good friend Montana Devon.
Everyone clapped. A very tall, gorgeous woman in a skin-tight silver-lamé dress walked out onto the stage. The dress was slit almost all the way up her thighs on both sides, showing off her long, slender, curvaceous legs. Her red hair was swept up in a French twist, and the color matched her long red fingernails. She gave Christianne a kiss on the forehead. Christianne pretended to swoon, then blushed, bowed, and left the stage.
Montana took the microphone off its stand. She said hello and waved at the audience. The women said hello. Montana said she couldn’t believe how many girls they had in the audience that night and patted the back of her French twist in a mock primping gesture. Then she set her hand on her hip and asked if anyone had been to any Tupperware parties lately. Her voice resembled Mae West’s, rude and vampy.
Whitney leaned toward me and scolded me for not telling her there was a warm-up act. She asked me if Montana was strictly a comedian or if she might sing. I told her Montana was a guy. Whitney said, No way. I said, Swear to god.
Montana asked the crowd if they liked her dress. The women hooted, clapped and cheered. Montana ran her hand up and down her silver-lamé thigh. She said the dress was beaded by 423 Portuguese lesbians. Then she asked the technicians to turn the spotlight off and the house lights up. She wanted to see all the beautiful girls. She called to Lydia in the back of the room and asked if Sydney Greenstreet was with her. Lydia coaxed the parrot off the bar counter and onto her hand. She held him up so Montana could see him. The crowd clapped. Montana asked if Sydney was enjoying the show. Lydia whispered something to Sydney and the parrot squawked, “Stunning! Stu
nning!”
Montana thanked Sydney and told Lydia she wanted to ask her a personal question. She said she didn’t have to answer in front of all those people, but Montana hoped she would tell her in private after the show. She said the question was about Sydney. She said Lydia and Sydney had been together for a long time now and people said it was the only ongoing monogamous relationship in town. But Montana said she was worried. She’d seen Sydney Greenstreet at the White Sands a few times and he wore those funny carves and his cage was all decorated with poinsettias, and she didn’t know how to break it to Lydia, but did she think maybe Sydney Greenstreet was gay?
Montana circulated among the front tables, taunting the people she knew. She made a few jokes about Falzano, Mary and Slashette. Then she spotted Elaine Barry’s hair. She approached Elaine and touched her hair. She remarked on what a beautiful color it was and asked the crowd what they thought. The women clapped. She asked Elaine if it were real. Elaine shook her head. Montana wanted to know if it were Sassoon or Cardin or Yves Saint Laurent. Elaine said it was Clairol. Montana gave the crowd a knowing look. That’s when she spotted Whitney. She lifted a shock of Whitney’s hair and displayed it to the audience. She asked them if it wasn’t exquisite and asked them what color it was, perhaps fuchsia. She stepped back, appraising the hair. She asked the crowd if she should dye her hair that color. The crowd hooted. She said she would. Then she said that Elaine and Whitney should get together. The crowd applauded and shouted things like, Right On! and, Go for it!
Then Montana stepped back and pointed at Whitney’s ankles. She made her put her leg up on the table. She had them shine the spotlight on Whitney’s ankles. She had forgotten to roll her jeans back down and her tiger-striped knee socks were showing. Montana asked the audience if Whitney were a hot number or what. She asked them to look at the tiger legs. She said that Whitney was hotter than Tina Turner in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. The crowd howled. Whitney put her head down and buried her face in the table. When she looked up again, the spotlight had been turned off and Elaine Barry was smiling sympathetically at her.
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