I caught my breath.
“They were able to stop the hemorrhaging,” I said. “He’s watching game shows.”
That sluggish, cloudy afternoon, things were just as weird at home. There was no judge show blaring, it didn’t smell like Funyuns, and I thought this must be what heaven was like.
Q was gone!
Oh, he left behind the clutter, but that I could tend to, and I did. I got out the happy broom and the happy dustpan and the happiest of all, my vacuum cleaner.
In the middle of my cleaning groove, the doorbell rang.
“Hi,” Jeff said, dressed like he was auditioning for a boy band.
My bones froze. A cloud of fuzziness passed over my brain.
“How did you know where I live?” I asked.
“Steph’Annie told me. I hope you don’t mind.”
I would have brought him in, but the place was at that point only one-eighth clean.
“Let’s go for a walk,” I suggested.
I smelled not of lipstick and perfume but of Lysol and rug shampoo. Jeff had caught me in patched jeans and an old shirt. It was just as well that this, my first date ever, was impromptu. What was I planning to wear on that scheduled day? I didn’t own anything yellow or pink. Everything I owned was brown or black, so what was the difference, right?
We walked farther into town and I talked about Mr. Brook.
“He must be a great teacher,” Jeff said.
“He means everything to me,” I confessed.
“Everything? I’ve never had a teacher that meant all that to me. I didn’t even think that was possible. He’s just your teacher, right?”
“Right,” I said, which wasn’t a lie, technically.
He touched the side of my face. “Here.” He lifted a plant from a bag he’d been carrying. “I know it’s awfully bare in those hospital rooms.”
I pushed it back to him. “Jeff, I won’t be going back.”
“Why not?”
“He doesn’t want me to visit him.”
His eyebrows drew together, but then he said, “People get real batty in the hospital. A lot of guys of that generation—they don’t like a lot of fanfare. He probably doesn’t want students visiting him. He’s got a family to come visit him.”
“He doesn’t have a family.”
“Well, maybe he was just talking off the top of his head. Everybody wants visitors.”
“Everybody?”
“You know the saying, no man is an island.”
As we sat in the park, we couldn’t help noticing the proliferation of canines. The dog-to-human ratio was nearly even. People walked precious little Fifi dogs, medium-sized Lassies, and great big Marmaduke dogs. Companionship abounded. I guess I could have taken solace in that, but unfortunately, from that park I had a direct view of Mr. Brook’s building.
“Are you looking for something?” Jeff asked.
“No. I’m listening.”
“No, you’re not—” He turned so he could see what I was seeing, only to find an apartment building.
“That’s his place.”
“Must be nice.” He nodded. “He must have a pretty good grip for a teacher.”
“He’s retired. He earned a lot in his old career.”
Jeff shook his head. “You know way too much about this old dude. You better watch it before something happens.”
Jeff’s warning struck me as painfully funny. Suddenly, all I could think of was the last time I’d seen Mr. Brook. How weird and distant he was.
“Why don’t we go somewhere else?” Jeff said. He said his apartment was not too far away and explained that it was a sublease and he had a roommate.
“What’s your roommate like?” I asked, trying to get back to the present.
“Hardly there. He has a girl.”
Jeff lived in a three-room apartment, in space not taken up by splayed CDs and Pringles cans. Not as meticulously tended as Mr. Brook’s was, I’m sure, but dusted with some regularity.
Someone had left a clear bottle of orange juice on the table, with a bowl and a box of cornflakes.
I pointed. “This yours?”
“Yep.”
“You’re a cornflake eater?”
He squared off with me. “Yeah, you want to make something of it?”
“What I don’t like about cornflakes is that they don’t crackle. They just lie there.”
“Exactly.” He nodded, signifying that that was precisely what he liked about them.
He told me that he had moved here because it was close to New York City. But he was on cornflakes in Philly, and there was no cheaper cereal, so what would he be on in NYC?
He was originally from Kansas City, which he assured me was not in Kansas.
“Mo,” he stated.
I didn’t know what he was talking about.
He went on to say that he had actually been in community theater productions back in Missouri and presently he was a fill-in reenactment actor in the new Constitution Center on Fifth Street. Mostly, though, he went to auditions on a moment’s notice.
“So you have to be ready to go the same day.”
“Yep.”
“Do you like that?” I asked.
He shrugged. “That’s the game. A commercial can give you money that can float for a good couple of weeks.”
“Weeks? Then what?”
“Then I audition again. The thing is to get momentum. Have them ask for you.”
“That’s always nice.”
“Yeah. You know, I didn’t even get that ape part.”
“What ape part?”
“The children’s play. The one I was up for when I met you. I was studying for it at the zoo.”
“So that was for a play?”
“No, I always talk to orangutans.” He grinned, then coaxed me, “Tell me more about yourself. I’ve done most of the talking.”
“I don’t have any hobbies.”
“Sure you do. I saw you at the zoo.”
“I was just visiting Dru.”
“Dru?” he asked. “Is that her name?”
“His,” I corrected him.
“Her,” he insisted.
“His!”
Next thing I knew, he pulled a book from the shelf and paged through it to find a picture. He showed it to me.
“Male orangutans have these flaps on their face.”
I studied the picture and its caption: sure enough, Jeff was right.
“I have to return all these to the library. I used them to study for my role.”
“I guess Dru is a girl,” I said, surprising myself with how disappointed I sounded. It wasn’t like I’d ever seen a future between us.
“That could still work. Dru is one of those names that goes both ways, like Jessie.”
“You don’t understand,” I mumbled. “I went to the primate center all the time to see him—”
“I don’t understand? What’s the big deal, so what? So he’s a she? What are you, in love with an ape?” he asked, and laughed heartily.
Silently, I pleaded the Fifth. I went back to his books, which were mainly on acting.
“Who’s Stanli—” I tried to sound the name out.
“Stanislavsky. He was this acting coach. He worked with all the greats. Marlon Brando. Marilyn Monroe.”
“Marilyn Monroe was a great actress? I thought she was just pretty.” I flipped through the pages. “So what part are you up for next?”
“There’s a dinner theater revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”
“A businessman? You?” I asked.
“And you can see me as an ape?” he asked me. “Hey, would you like to audition, too? There are a lot of girl parts.”
“I would like to get a gig going, but something stable. No offense.”
“No offense taken. Why do you think they usually put the word ‘starving’ before the word ‘artist’?” He snapped his fingers. “I got it. I’ll ask at the Rocket. Maybe there’s an opening.”
>
“You don’t have to,” I quickly said.
“I know I don’t,” he told me, and winked. “I want to. . . . Mind if I put on some music?”
“Music?” I asked, as if I’d never heard the word before.
He turned on the player, and I was surprised he listened to that fifties stuff at home, as well.
“Where would the world be without Leiber and Stoller?” he asked.
“Who are they?”
“Samara, they’re playing now.”
“They sing pretty good.”
“This is the Drifters featuring Ben E. King. They’re not singing.”
“You just said—”
“Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller were songwriters.”
The song was called “Dance with Me.”
Jeff spun me around and dipped me till my back ached. I felt his palm in the small of my back. It felt nice. I got to thinking that he could do anything.
And then he started to sing very flat, soullessly.
And then I thought, Well, he can do almost everything.
He spoke again about the songwriting duo and he reminded me of Mr. Brook in the way he lapsed into lecture. I learned that Leiber and Stoller wrote “Hound Dog” when they were only twenty years old, and later composed hits like “Jailhouse Rock,” “Love Potion No. 9,” and “On Broadway.”
The song Jeff had put on was one of those shoop-shoop, doo-doo songs. I didn’t mind the shoop-shoop, shoop-shoop-de-doop, but the doodoos really got on my nerves. The actual lyrics were so simple they were practically transparent. “Dance with me, / Hold me tighter.”
“I love this music,” he told me. “You know, a hundred years from now at car shows, what will they have? Toyotas? Hyundais? Volvos? No, Cadillacs, Mustangs, Chevies. Rock and roll will never go out of style.”
nineteen
The next day, Jeff set up an interview at the Rocket, and like magic I was a hostess. I was the most content minium-wage-earning American ever.
My uniform wasn’t as corny as the poodle-skirted waitresses’. I got to wear my own jeans and a pink shirt with my name embroidered at the chest. Only they spelled it wrong, so for the first week I was Sahara.
Every tenth customer asked, “Were you named after the desert?”
Time galloped when I was at work. It seemed that no sooner did I punch in than I would look up and see that it was quitting time.
Every now and then someone would slip me a tip, like once these two Armani-suited guys came in with their briefcases and accordion folders and spreadsheets. When they were leaving, they asked me to hail them a cab, and I walked a few steps out the door and put up my hand.
The taller one placed a bill in my palm. I opened it and found a ten—not bad for two minutes of work. If only I could run into sixty guys like that. I could make three hundred dollars per hour.
I wouldn’t mind being a hostess for the rest of my life. I would never want to be a waitress; that’s too much of a long-term relationship. By being a hostess, I flitted in and out of the customers’ lives. It never got deep. I never asked them searching questions like “Fries with that?” “Rare, medium, or well?” Just greet and seat, and I was done.
The few who came in testy I showed to the table with the wobbly leg.
On nights that both Jeff and I worked, he walked me home. Jeff always insisted we go the scenic route: what I knew as Broad Street, but postgentrification it was known as the Avenue of the Arts. One night he put his arms around me and drew me close.
He leaned over to kiss me, and I didn’t lean back to avoid it. I leaned in a little, let his lips linger on mine. He was taller than me, but not by a whole lot.
We would always catch this percussionist on the street, a kid about Jeff’s age. He didn’t play a regular drum. Instead, he used pots and pans.
That night we stood and listened for a while.
Jeff gave him a dollar. “Got to support the arts.”
That Friday, my favorite customers came in: Steph’Annie, Kath, and the text messager, Roxanne.
They took a booth, and when it was slow, Steph’Annie waved me over and patted the seat next to her.
“You look so cute!” Steph’Annie played with the flip in my hair as I sat down.
Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” was playing on the jukebox.
“This place is ridiculous!” Kath exclaimed.
“What’s so ridiculous about it?” I asked.
“It’s too nostalgic.”
“What’s so wrong about taking a stroll down memory lane?” Steph’Annie asked in her usual sunny voice.
“Like the fifties was such a great time? Memory lane? Segregation alone makes it worth the trip,” Kath said sarcastically.
“If you feel that strongly about it, why do you come here?” Steph’Annie asked.
“I like the milk shakes,” Kath told her.
Chuck’s song ended and Jerry Lee Lewis played “Great Balls of Fire.”
“I know you’re going out with Jeff, but how’s your other guy doing?” Steph asked me.
I played dumb. “Who?”
“You know who.” She punched me on the arm. “The one with the je ne sais quoi. Old dude. Was he up, that last time you saw him?”
“I haven’t seen him since he nearly cussed me out.”
The text messager looked up from her phone and asked, “Really?”
“The nice old man didn’t mean it, Samara.”
“He told me to beat it, Steph’Annie.”
Kath nodded. “That’s the medication talking.”
“Yeah, he probably didn’t know what he was saying,” Steph’Annie said.
“He was serious.”
“You have to see him again,” Steph’Annie insisted.
“No, she doesn’t,” Kath said flatly.
“You don’t know the electricity,” Steph’Annie said.
“You said he was seventy years old,” Kath said.
“Age is just a number,” Steph’Annie said.
Kath gestured to me. “She’s freakin’ fifteen—”
“He’s her soul mate,” Steph’Annie said.
“He’s my what?” I asked.
“S-o-u-l m-a-t-e,” Steph’Annie answered.
“Not if he’s going to flip on her,” Kath reasoned. “There’s no need to get twisted over him.”
“But the electricity—” Steph said.
“There’s other fish in the sea, Samara.” Kath turned to me.
“Samara, ‘There’s so many fish in the sea / That only rise up in the sweat and smoke like mercury.’ ” Steph’Annie let the words set in. “Elvis Costello.”
“She means Presley,” Kath corrected her.
They argued like cats over a ball of yarn. It was Presley! Costello! Back and forth for the next few moments. Steph’Annie had told me she had known Kath all her life. They were cousins on her mother’s side. Blood relations work like that sometimes. I got the feeling they could argue about anything but still end up loving each other.
Luckily a customer came in, and I had an excuse not to think of fish in the sea, primates in the zoo, or buses passing by every twenty minutes.
“I got to get back to work,” I told them.
Roxanne looked up from her phone for a split second and smiled at me.
A haze fills my bedroom from just one cigarette; it curls in ribbons, and my mother bursts in. “When did you start smoking?” she gasps.
I play dumb. “What?”
She points. “In your hand.”
“Oh, this . . . I don’t really smoke. This is my first time. Ever.” As if on cue, I cough once. Then again and again. She rushes over, takes me in her arms, and pats me furiously on the back.
Weeping, she says, “We’ve grown so far apart. When did you get a job, Samara?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“And who’s this Jeff who keeps calling?”
“A boy I’m seeing.”
Tears are thick in her eyes. “You have a job, you’r
e seeing a boy, and you smoke.”
She sounds so warm. So loving. I have to bring her up to speed. I hold her and confess, “I have a crush on a seventy-two-year-old man and I visit the primate center!”
The preceding sequence was a fantasy. It never happened. In those Q-less days, Mom wasn’t drawn closer to me. In her hours off, she took to television. She especially liked to watch infomercials. One night, there was one about speed-reading techniques. It promised you could get through books in a flash, and thus you could watch more TV, preferably more infomercials.
Mom barely acknowledged my presence as I walked past her to the kitchen to reheat some Rocket food (a burger and onion rings—it beat microwaving popcorn).
Still, this Q-free zone was pure. If I wasn’t where I wanted to be, at least I wasn’t back where I had been.
twenty
Some say love is like a light switch: it goes on and off. However, I believe that love is much more nuanced. Love is a clock. When you are in half love, it’s six straight up. If you are not in love, it’s quarter to three. When he starts to grow on you, it’s a little past nine.
Jeff called at 9:15 p.m. with word that he had landed a role. He would have two whole lines in a chain restaurant commercial.
“That’s great news!” I exclaimed.
Jeff went through more details of how he nailed the competition to the wall with his delivery of: “There’s nothing in the world like a toasted submarine sandwich” and “Mmm—that’s good.”
I laughed.
“We’ll have to go out and celebrate this weekend.”
“They paid you already?”
“No, but what the hell, let’s just celebrate.”
“Okay.”
We decided on Saturday, since we were both off that night. Then he told me he had to go. He wanted to call his mother.
After I hung up, he danced in my heart till ten-thirty, when I went to bed.
That night I stared out my window and looked at my old friend, the moon. Though alone, she was surrounded by stars. They kept her company all night long.
The next morning in first period, Flanders was back, sporting long, wide black blotches on her arm. She had contracted this sort of flesh-eating staph infection from a cut-rate manicure salon.
Life Is Fine Page 7