Maniac Drifter

by Laura Marello

  Getz and Angelo picked up the arms of my director’s chair, carried me out onto the balcony and set me down facing the screen. Lance waved his arms like a flagman directing a jet down onto an aircraft carrier, then lapsed into some fake karate punches and kicks, and fell down, supposedly insensible, on the balcony floor.

  “I’ve never seen him so happy,” I said.

  “He has a job,” Angelo said. He readjusted my blankets. “Warm enough?”

  I nodded. “So how did the filming go? Getz here told me you saw some whales after the Rescue Squad carted me away. And why do the whales like that clarinet player so much?”

  Angelo shrugged. “One of the Mysteries of Life.”

  Getz had been twirling his cigarette between his fingers and fidgeting as if he wanted to object. “Come on, Kate,” he said. “You told me yourself that after your mom died your cat used to sit in the front windowsill and wait for her to come home, and when she didn’t it would whimper.”

  I nodded my head. Of course, I didn’t remember.

  Getz and Angelo leaned against the half-wall of the balcony and watched the people come into the movie theatre, carrying the props they needed for their role in The Rocky Horror Picture Show: squirt bottles filled with water, toilet paper, flashlights and cigarette lighters, powdered baby laxatives, and copies of the Herald Tribune. Some were dressed as the transvestite in a black corset, garters, tights, and stiletto heels; others came as the servant, copying his hunchback and domed bald head, with the yellow hair sprouting out at ear level down to his shoulders. They arrived in large parties of six or even ten more, and sat in clusters by the aisle, so it would be within close reach when the moment came to dance the Time Warp or run up onto the stage to run their fingers along the screen when Susan Sarandon sang “Toucha Toucha Toucha Touch Me.”

  “Here they come,” Lance said.

  “Whoopeee,” Joe called from inside the projection room.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Angelo. “I got started on the clarinet player and never gave you a chance to tell me how the filming went.”

  “It went well. CBS took some great footage of you with the dolphin. They want to use it in the documentary.” He adjusted my blankets again. “With your permission.”

  “Don’t do it, Kate,” Lance said. He swaggered up to us, carrying a small wooden box in his hand. “I’ll make a whole movie of you with the goddamned dolphin. A major feature film. We’ll go to Hollywood together, you and me, no shenanigans. We’ll make those fans do some serious groveling at your feet. What was that film they made with Sophia Loren in Greece? The Boy and the Dolphin? That’s where we’ll film it. In Greece. To hell with these cold climates.” He opened the box and offered everyone a cigar. “From Savannah. Can’t beat ‘em.” He put an unlit cigar in his mouth, chewed on the end, and practiced swaggering around like a gangster.

  “He’s too much,” I said.

  “Will you think about it?” Angelo said. I nodded. “I bet no one’s told you the Mother of the Year’s news either. She’s been hired by the Casablancas modeling agency in Paris. Someone must have seen her on the news in those clips of the Bocce Tournament, or the Fashion show.”

  Joe had run downstairs, leapt on stage and delivered his warning speech: No baby laxatives, no open flames, no touching the screen. Then he had run back and started the movie rolling. A large pair of disembodied red lips had appeared on the black screen, and they were singing the homage to sci fi and horror flicks, of which this movie was both a tribute and a parody.

  “Where is everybody?” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Getz said. “The theatre is full.”

  “Where’s Lydia Street, Antaeus, and all those people?”

  “Antaeus is getting his new gallery ready for Cosmo’s show,” Angelo said. “The rest of them are just tired. They’ll be at Cosmo’s opening tomorrow.”

  We watched the movie for a while. Brad and Janet, two all-American kids, had a flat tire driving to see Brad’s professor Dr. Scott (the audience launches their rolls of toilet paper and yells: Great Scott! when he’s mentioned). So they get out of the car in the pouring rain, put copies of the Herald Tribune over their heads and walk to the ghoulish mansion that all the bikers have been driving past them to get to, where the servant is waiting in an upstairs window, singing “There’s a Light Over at the Frankenstein Place.” Brad and Janet join in. Tonight the audience assisted as usual, covering their heads with newspapers, squirting water into the air to fall down on the papers, and illuminating flashlights or candles, while they sang along. Getz leaned over the balcony to watch them. “And to think this has been going on for ten years,” he said.

  “Do you know about this movie?” Lance said. “It wasn’t making any money at all when it first came out. That guy there, the blond who plays the servant, he wrote it. He sings the first song, the one with the lips, that’s his voice. Anyway, it wasn’t making any money, so they gave the movie to a different marketing guy, and he decided to put it on at midnight. Bam, instant success. A cult movie for teenagers. Then the whole participatory ritual developed. And the guy, Tim Curry, who plays the transvestite, he’s with the Royal Shakespeare Company.”

  The revelers at the party had already danced the Time Warp, and the dedicated participants in the audience had danced it in the aisles with them. Now the transvestite in question was descending from his laboratory in the elevator. Janet screamed when she saw him prance out of the elevator. He threw off his cape and belted out his “I’m Just A Sweet Transvestite from Transsexual Transylvania” number, slithered back into the elevator, from where he delivered his famous speech, inviting Brad and Janet to: come up to the lab, and see what’s on the slab.

  “Listen to that modulation, pacing, tonal quality,” Lance said. “What control. Only a guy from the Royal Shakespeare Company could deliver those lines like that.”

  “That’s my favorite part,” I said.

  “Well scrape my uterus,” he said, and offered me a cigar. But I didn’t take one because I was about to fall asleep. I slept through the whole movie; Lance wanted to wake me up for the very end, where the transvestite and the muscle man he had created in the laboratory fall off the RKO tower into the pool, and swim around like water sprites with Brad and Janet, while they sing: “Don’t Dream It, Be It”; but Joe wouldn’t allow it, so they let me sleep.

  ***

  Saturday

  When I woke up Saturday morning I was at home, in bed with Joe Houston. Joe looked peaceful curled up on his side, his black-gloved hand resting on the pillow close to his face. I started to get up when I noticed Gabriel standing in the doorway between the bedroom and kitchen.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I really don’t know how this happened.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Gabe said. “Just get dressed. I want to show you something.” He sounded resigned, and this made me feel even worse.

  The voices had wakened Joe and he turned over on his back. When he saw Gabe, he said, “No scenes this time” — and held up his hands as if he were at gunpoint.

  Gabe shook his head. “No scenes,” he repeated, and disappeared into the kitchen. Joe and I heard the skylight crank open, then the tap water began to run in the sink and the dishes crashed and clattered. “Sorry, babe,” Joe said, and kissed me lightly on the tip of the nose. He turned over and went back to sleep. When I got out of the shower I found him in the same position, curled up and snoring. Gabe was waiting in the newly cleaned kitchen, standing next to the dish drainer, watching the plates drip dry. He asked me if I was ready to leave.

  To get where we were going we had to ride in Gabe’s truck. He drove us out beyond the Beech Forest through the dunes of the Provincelands to the edge of the National Seashore, and across some newly laid roads. He did not say much, and I did not feel inclined to talk. I enjoyed driving, the limbo of being nowhere, just moving forward, leaving things behind. Gabe parked the truck in front of a vacant lot, in one of the new tracts adjacent to the Provincela
nds. I followed him past the scrub pines and flagged markers up a grade to a leveled area about the size of a one-car garage. Then he disappeared behind a pile of sand, and reappeared above me, on the hill to the west, which was also level on top. “You can even see the water,” he said. I followed him.

  The view was spectacular. From up there you could see everything: the beige and cream colored dunes, the rust and burgundy brush of the Provincelands, the grey-green water of the bay beyond. To the north the ranger station at Race Point was in view on the horizon line, and to the south, following the highway down cape, the water towers on the edge of town could be seen. Only the town itself was hidden by a new house, which was being built across the street. Standing there in the wind, looking out across the dunes to the sea, I could almost believe this was the end of the world, somewhere peaceful, where I could be happy.

  “A guy offered me a quarter of a million dollars for this property yesterday,” he said.

  “This is your land?” I said, incredulous, spreading out my arms to fan the air. “This?”

  He nodded. “Last month it was only worth 50,000.”

  “Are you going to sell it?”

  He knelt down and examined a sapling that was growing at the edge of the property line. “I’m going to start selling my designs again, and use the money to build a house. I should have done it a long time ago.”

  He stood up, walked to the front edge of the hill, and inspected the house that was being built across the street. Then he walked toward the back, examining the old trees and brush along the leveled hill. When he reached me he stopped and scanned the horizon. Then he took my hand. I decided right then that if he asked me to marry him I would say yes, and never cheat on him again.

  “I brought you here to tell you that I can’t see you anymore,” he said. He sat down in the sand and pulled on my hand until I sat down beside him.

  “I’ll try the phenylethylamine if you want,” I said. He had been so nice to me; he had tried so hard, and now, suddenly, he looked so lost, as if someone had died and left him alone. So it was the same predicament after all, the one I had faced with Cedric. Gabe could not continue with me knowing I did not remember our intimacies. So I had been right in sleeping with Joe and Getz and Harper, in distancing Gabe. He would have left me anyway.

  “It’s not the amnesia,” he said. He put his arm around me. “I don’t mind that.” He looked me in the eye. He could tell I did not believe him.

  “Then what is it?”

  “I’m jealous,” he said matter-of-factly. “You keep sleeping with other people.”

  “I intended not to sleep with other people after you asked me. But it just kept happening. I just kept waking up with other people. Since I can’t remember, I don’t know how it happens.”

  “It doesn’t matter now. My feelings are too hurt. Don’t you understand? Hasn’t anyone ever made you jealous?”

  “Of course. A million times.”

  “Not here. Not in Provincetown.”

  “What about Cedric? He left me for someone else.”

  “Did you cheat on him?” I shook my head. “Then why did you cheat on me so much?” I said I didn’t know. “Is it because Cedric left you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  We sat for a while, huddled next to each other against the wind, and did not say anything. Finally I asked: “So that’s it? There’s nothing I can do? I can’t try again?”

  He shook his head. “My feelings are too hurt. I can’t take it anymore.”

  I leaned my head on his shoulder. He asked me what I was thinking. I said, “This never would have happened if only I could remember.”

  “It’s not the amnesia, Kate. That doesn’t matter. But I can’t live with being jealous and having my feelings hurt all the time.” He looked at me and saw that I still did not believe him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said weakly.

  “I know. I don’t hold a grudge.”

  I looked at him. I knew he didn’t. “Can I ask you something?” He nodded. “What happened that night with you and Joe that everyone’s always referring to?”

  Gabe laughed and brushed the hair out of his eyes. “I walked you home. When we got there Joe was asleep in your bed with just his glove on. I woke him up and we yelled at each other for a while, then I left. That’s all.” He looked down and poked his finger into the sand under his foot.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. I shook my head. “I’m really sorry.”

  He took his finger out of the sand and looked over at me. “I’ve already forgiven you,” he said. I leaned my head on his shoulder and he kissed it.

  ***

  Sunday

  By the time Cosmo’s show opened, every wall in Antaeus’ new gallery was hung with Cosmo’s paintings. Even after the guests had arrived for the opening, and were milling around with glasses of champagne in their hands perusing the new canvases, Antaeus and Cosmo were still shuttling the modular walls into different positions, like young boys continually changing the layout of the tracks on their new train set. Antaeus’ carpenter followed them around diligently with a ladder, readjusting the ceiling lights so the paintings would be properly illuminated. Eventually the gallery was so full of people it became dangerous to try to move the walls and ladder through the crowds, so Antaeus relinquished his plans, and they left the modular walls where they were. The carpenter retired his ladder behind the door next to the bar, and poured himself a bourbon.

  Of Cosmo’s new paintings the nudes drew the most commentary, because they were unexpected. Blaine said Cosmo hadn’t painted nudes since Nello’s wife left him, and their restaurant partnership dissolved. There was a considerable amount of speculation on who modeled for the new canvases, since, as Lance pointed out, the same woman appeared in all of them, like a recurring theme. Raphael and some others said they recognized The Voodoo Woman in the pictures, but Lydia and Edward the real estate agent thought a stranger from out of town had posed. The seascapes of Long Point and Hatches Harbor were predictable, the same flat blue and grey washes that he had been painting since his art student days in Rhode Island, but the locals expected these pictures, and Angelo was not alone when he said he was fond of them despite his esthetic judgment. Discussion was brisk and pointed around the still lives. He had developed a new style reminiscent of Picasso and Braque, with disembodied heads sitting on tables, pedestals and guitars thrown in haphazardly, slabs of color, dividing lines, chairs and window frames giving the composition a geometric flavor. Some of the critics, including Joe and Getz, said these canvases showed too much homage to the early Cubists.

  Those who weren’t examining the paintings, taking air on the porch, or arguing around the hors d’oeuvres, had congregated at the bar, where the television was on, and tuned to the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather. On the Temple of the Jaguars update the day before, Dan had told the viewers that the pre-trial arbitration for Harper Martin continued, and that reliable sources had told CBS News that the judge and two teams of lawyers had literally remained in the conference room day and night, only stopping for brief rests, and sending out for coffee, sandwiches, and extra files and papers. This had raised some people’s hopes, among them Elaine Barry, that the federal government wanted to settle the case as quickly as possible, to quell the growing sentiment against United States military involvement in Nicaragua, a sentiment they believed was strengthened by the press coverage of the Harper Martin case.

  I had been standing at the bar watching the CBS News, but when I noticed Grace was heading toward me, I slipped away, through an adjacent door. The area inside seemed like an entryway with supplies stacked along the walls. Another door opened in to a small room where a desk and file cabinet had been arranged — the office for the new gallery. Across from it, a brand new stairway led up to the new roof.

  Except for the Pilgrim’s Monument, no building was higher than the roof of Antaeus’ new gallery, so when I ascended the stairs and emerged on the landing that had been built at the to
p, I could see all the other rooftops below me. I had expected to find the roof tarred, with perhaps a layer of wood planks over that to make a sundeck, but instead the entire roof had been subdivided with wooden beams, like the foundation to a house, and in among the divisions, pipes, tubes and wires had been installed. I didn’t know what to make of it.

  “It isn’t code,” someone said from down below me. I looked into the stairwell and saw Grace coming up, carrying two glasses of champagne. When she reached the top, she handed one glass to me, and then clinked it against her own. “Cheers,” she said.

  “Fire code?” I said, looking around.

  “Building code,” she said, surveying the plumbing and wiring. “He barely got permission to build the gallery on top of the cinema. I mean, just look, he’s already higher than anyone else in town. Nobody knows he’s building a penthouse apartment on top of that. Jesus Christ, it’s like the Empire State Building. I call it the Antpire State Building. In private, of course.” She clinked her glass against mine again, as if to seal the pact of secrecy.

  “A penthouse apartment!” I said. “Is that what this is?”

  Grace put her index finger to her lips to assure silence, and then, balancing carefully on the crossbeams, walked through the apartment, pointing out the kitchen on the north side, the living room to the south, the bedrooms on the west, each with its own bathroom, the private screening room for films, the mini gallery, and exercise room to the east, and porches all the way around. “Imagine the view from this bathtub,” she said, stepping gingerly onto a spot and waving her champagne glass at the view. “But you can’t tell a soul, not a soul. They won’t know a thing until the wall frames go up, and by then it will be too late.”

  “Why are you protecting him?” I asked. I was more curious to know why Grace was confiding in me, but I was afraid to ask that.