Shi-it.
The men are clustered near the driveway when we get outside.
Shay and I stand side by side, looking at Christopher’s BMW and the space behind it where I’d parked my Escort. At the curb is Eli’s Honda and a pickup truck I’ve never seen before. Of course, I think. Barney must have traded in his Jeep for a raggedy redneck pickup now that all the yuppies are into Jeeps. He’s still got to do his own thing. Fleetingly I wonder if he’s got a baby seat in the truck and whether Christopher will remember to remind him to feed Amelia when he takes her home.
“Thanks for everything,” Shay says, walking over to plant a polite kiss on Christopher’s cheek. Then she turns to Barney. “I’ll come by for Amelia around five, but I’ll call you before then.”
Assuming an almost militant posture, she walks purposefully down the stairs to the street.
4
We drive in Eli’s Honda to Adams-Morgan, which is the Upper West Side of D.C. Although it is located in the predominantly white northwest quadrant of our still color-coded city, in the mid-sixties it became a truly “tan” community. Residents who stuck out several racially tense eras eventually found themselves living in a politically, culturally and artistically integrated area. On alternately quiet and raucous streets, haves and have-nots live next door to each other, constantly surprised by their coexistence.
Real District residents (not transients, like elected officials, who use the city as a temporary playground or a pit stop for getting their cleaning done between junkets) call their hometown D.C. They know a totally different place than the Washington recognized as the nation’s capital. Real residents view the Federal Triangle—with its famous government buildings—as something, like the Colosseum in Rome, that has to be gone around on the way to the airport.
In the twelve years since Eli and I bought a house here in Adams-Morgan, real estate values have tripled and political ones changed. A tidal wave of Hispanics arrived to adjust the color-contrast button on our neighborhood and tone down some of the edgier differences. Now yuppies kill to live here and affluent shrinks from Chevy Chase bring their wives and teenaged kids to Eighteenth Street to sop up atmosphere and eat Ethiopian.
Eli parks and we walk past a crazy cantata of commercial storefronts to reach Café au Lait, the sexiest bar in Adams-Morgan, maybe in all of D.C. The semi-outdoor café is the hangout for Washington’s stylish Eurotrash, the handsome progeny of sixties jet-setters and Beautiful People. The major assets of this new generation are long legs, lean behinds, cinnamon complexions, corrupt eyes and a working knowledge of French, German and Farsi. When they get cold sweats during the middle of the night, they get up and go to a disco.
Café au Lait makes people feel like they’re somewhere else. Maybe down in the Big Easy. Maybe down in the islands. Maybe Down Under, having a few drinks. The place produces a laid-back attitude, as if life is easy come, easy go, easy does if. Every few months the management changes the decor and its pricey menu to imitate another exotic place … Rio, Istanbul, Khartoum.… Tonight, a huge papier-mâché dragon coiled above the stone raw bar announces Bangkok. Both inside and out, the place gives off heat. It’s a moist, warm environment in which germs of intrigue can hatch and grow.
Wearily we hoist ourselves up on wrought-iron stools set around a small but tall marble-topped table situated half inside and half outside the building. With its wall of warehouse windows and protective grating retracted up against the ceiling, Café au Lait has only its potted palms to indicate where the city sidewalk shifts into private property.
“Should we stick with wine or switch to something else?” Eli asks, looking at Shay.
I’m used to that.
Jealousy #823: Shay’s always the one who sets the tone and picks the poison for our evenings together. She’s the first to be consulted because she’s in the know; she senses what’s in and what’s out. The Washington Post’s New Year’s Day “In” and “Out” lists always feature some stylish item from my sister’s repertoire that is about to become either a trend or a has-been.
“Let’s drink wine until Mickey gets here,” Shay decides.
Her face is glistening with perspiration and, even though her hair is still lassoed at the nape of her neck, some short curls have escaped their binding. Frizzed up by the humidity, they create a halo effect that offers Shay yet another dimension. Suddenly she begins a semi-hysterical inventory of her situation.
“Well, I’ve lost everything. Everything. I had four articles and a bunch of research in my laptop. My September-sex article was half finished, but I hadn’t made a hard copy of it yet. And it was damn good because I wrote it on the plane.”
Shay likes to believe she does her best writing aboard airplanes or in the coffee shops of hotel lobbies. Once she flew from New York to Acapulco just to break a writer’s block. Another time, when she was staying with us, she drove out to Dulles and rode the bus that ferries passengers between terminals in an effort to trick herself into thinking she was catching a flight. She said it was like taking a placebo except that it worked because her creative juices began flowing again.
Although Shay insists she is inspired by travel and travelers, I happen to know what really turns her on is the male attention she attracts in highly charged environments. Ever since she left Christopher, she’s been racing around and making all the scenes so as to maintain her fighting weight. Shay doesn’t have to diet or exercise if she goes where the action is and runs with a fast crowd.
“I’ll never be able to rewrite it the same way,” she complains. “And all the clothes I liked best were in those bags. My jewelry. The B-fifty-two-bomber-tire bracelet I got in Ho Chi Minh. My favorite shirts. Everything. I can’t believe it. I was really organized for a change so I could travel light. Mickey’s finally convinced me traveling light’s important. I’d even bought two great new dresses for the convention.”
Shay doesn’t mention my car. Eli bought it for me last year on our nineteenth anniversary.
Inside Café au Lait, all the pipes, electrical boxes and other infrastructural elements on the walls and ceiling are painted black and left exposed. The compact Salvadoran shucking oysters at the raw bar is wearing a black T-shirt and tight jeans like the rest of the male staff. Waitresses appear in black miniskirts, black spandex tops, spiked heels and spiked hair.
A Home Away from Home is only half a block away. But tonight the door is locked, with a chain that winds through the security gate, even though there is nothing inside to steal except a pile of thin old mattresses and some ratty pillows and blankets. In the small annex behind the main room are several coat racks hung with rummage-sale clothes that our homeless women study for hours before making a selection. But tonight my clients are sleeping elsewhere—in the park or on the street.
Again Shay starts up.
“But it’s that damn interview of Fawn Hall’s that’s the real tragedy. Really. It could have been as important as the Pentagon Papers. It might have finished Reagan off. The Democrats could have won hands down in November.”
She shrugs, stands up and trots off toward the back of the building without excusing herself.
I lean against the table and look at my husband.
My husband looks away.
I have lost Eli.
Or maybe I’ve only lost touch with him. I can see he is feeling logy from drinking too much, that he’s tired and ready for bed. Instead, thanks to me, he’s sitting here on the edge of an emotional abyss, oil the brink of chaos, in the middle of Eighteenth Street, which at the moment offers him all the amenities of Cuba and all the charm of Panama.
Eli is sitting in a steaming open-air bar on a feverish night in a sweltering city trying to deal with my kooky sister. Chasing some classified document, floating around loose somewhere within the greater metropolitan area, which is still melting in a merciless three-digit heat that made the top of the evening news on all three networks last night, is not Eli’s idea of a terrific way to spend an evening.
<
br /> I have plugged my husband into this insanity and he is not happy. All Eli wanted was a little peace and quiet after a long day’s work. Actually, Eli wants to be alone. Without Shay. Without Mickey Teardash. Without me, no offense intended. Eli just wants to go home. Our house is only a five-minute walk from here but, given our current situation, it might as well be in Baltimore. And I haven’t even told him yet that Shay and Teardash are coming for the weekend.
Shay returns. Her face, lit like the flame atop a candle, announces she did a little coke while in the powder room. Shay loves all controlled substances and the sneaky thrill of getting an illegal high in a public place.
The waitress delivers three big balloons of white wine. Shay lifts her glass, drains it like ice water and then stares morosely out at the parade of people walking past. Eli and I watch Shay watching the street scene.
Jealousy #841: People surreptitiously study Shay when they’re with her. Given the opportunity, people will watch Shay’s eyelashes flick shadows across the high ridge of her cheekbones. They will watch her long lips part to reveal perfectly scalloped white teeth. They will watch her short sweet nose wrinkle up when she laughs. They will watch her Tiffany-blue eyes express all her expensive emotions.
“This whole thing is turning into a real mess,” she says suddenly. “I mean, I was home free before that goddam car got stolen. The whole thing was a wrap. It was in the can. It was just a question of distribution. And then—”
“I’m going to report that my car was stolen to, the police,” I interrupt her.
Shay looks at me with a sour expression. “What is it with you, Nat? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Either the FBI or the CIA took the car. We’re not talking any of your basic everyday street hoods here. We’re talking about the Big Boys.”
I help myself to one of Shay’s cigarettes. I am furious. I hate when she lectures me in that know-it-all tone of voice, as if she’s got the inside track on the truth. That tone in her voice tortures me like the scratch of a fingernail on a blackboard.
But Shay has to think big. She has to think CIA or FBI. She always has to go top-of-the-line: Cartier, Concorde, Harvard, Mercedes, the Plaza, Trump Tower, La Grenouille, Canyon Ranch, Chanel, Gstaad, Louis Vuitton, Dom Pérignon, Sotheby’s, Petrossian, Corsica, Chase Manhattan, Sister Parrish, Leo Castelli or Mary Boone.
She can’t help it. She programmed herself to process life that way. Chic is Shay’s Higher Power.
My sister, the “recovering” Quaker.
My sister, the Neiman Marxist.
“To tell you the truth,” I say with a sudden surge of venom, “my only interest in this now is how to get my car back. I work too, Shay, remember? I need a car. It doesn’t matter who took it, but when the cops find it, they’ll think it’s weird I never reported it stolen.”
“I wish you’d lighten up, Natalie,” Shay hisses. “Chill out a little.”
Suddenly Eli smacks the palm of his hand on the marble tabletop. Our wine goblets shake atop their long stems like tulips in a spring breeze.
“Okay, let’s get this over with right now,” he orders. “I can’t stand this kind of fighting. You both acted like schmucks—Nat for leaving her keys in the car and Shay for leaving the goddam papers. You both acted like flakes. Airheads. Turkeys. So enough with the blaming already, all right? You were both wrong, but it’s a hundred degrees out here, we’ve got a real problem on our hands, and you’re squabbling like kids. Do me a favor and knock off that crap, right now, wouldja? I’d really appreciate it.”
It’s like when our father used to yell at us.
First we are stunned.
Then we fall silent.
Grieve.
Repent.
Turn over a new leaf.
I could never bear it when my (her? our?) father got angry at either of us. I would instantly start to panic.
Cringe. Cower. Collapse.
SNAPSHOT
That’s Shay in her cap and gown after her high school graduation. I am the only one in the football stadium who knows that under her gown Shay is wearing a slim gold ankle bracelet—expressly forbidden by her mother—two hickeys on one breast and no underwear. At nine that night, she left with her date for the senior prom and didn’t return or even telephone until the next evening. My parents called half the city trying to locate her. At noon, Dad called the police. Marge was so hysterical that at one point in the afternoon she fainted. It was already getting dark when Shay, still wearing her pink strapless prom gown with its matching wrist corsage, sauntered in through the back door, as high as a kite. I then witnessed a fight between her and Dad that knocked my socks off. Dad kept yelling that Shay was grounded for the entire summer and she just kept laughing in his face. Dad saw Shay’s behavior as distinct from her character, while I saw all her actions as expressions of her megalomania. Because I wasn’t a problem to him, Dad didn’t engage with me the way he did with Shay. He didn’t have enough time to.
But Shay has never scared easily and she is certainly not frightened now. Oh, no. She is simply eager to make some amends, some minor adjustments, so she’ll look good again. That’s all that interests her—looking good.
But I cannot bear to have Eli angry at me. It breaks my heart. It makes me remember when Dad used to yell at me all the time for not playing better tennis.
SNAPSHOT
That’s Dad on one of the courts at North Commons. He coached Shay and me several times a week and at least twice on weekends. Here’s how he taught us strategy: He saved all the cardboard stiffeners from inside his laundered shirts, numbered them with a marking pen and then put them in strategic places on his side of the net. Shay and I would stand in the opposite court dropserving balls until we could hit each cardboard marker three times in a row. Shay had better aim than I did and quickly got the hang of this exercise; Dad took great pride in her prowess. He could never understand why this practice was hard for me, why I lacked Shay’s coordination—or was it concentration? Or was it her keen sense of competition?
Curbside, little sports cars roar at each other like animals in a forest. The street is a military motor pool of cars, trucks, Domino’s Pizza delivery vans and #90 Metrobuses that ferry maids home from their daylong cleaning jobs in Maryland before taking aliens, without green cards, off to their nighttime jobs. Because I’ve turned my back on Shay, I’m the first to see a District taxi stop at the curb and launch a large but agile man from its backseat. The man is carrying an overnight bag and a Valpack. Like a heat-seeking missile, he sights us and starts to cross the sidewalk. The crowd parts in front of him like the Red Sea.
This has got to be Mickey Teardash. He’s blond and handsome, early Burt Lancaster-ish. Clearly a high roller from the Big Apple. A great hard-on of a man, a high-IQ Fortune 500 jock.
“Hey!” he calls, striding toward our table.
I can see him inhaling the essence of this club like a line of coke, drawing it inward and upward to his brain, so he can get off on the hot restless crowd milling around looking for action.
“This is terrific. Great bar! Hey,’ Shay!” He throws a hefty arm around her shoulders. “No wonder you like this place.”
Now he is nuzzling her long lean neck, dipping down to drink a patch of brown shoulder exposed by the stretched-out neckline of her skimpy little dress. Shay smiles and blushes, lowers her eyes. She’s acting or actually feeling shy. Shay shy? Shy Shay?
Shi-it.
A second later Mickey Teardash is pumping Eli’s hand and smiling across the table at me.
“You have got to be Shay’s sister. No way around it. You’re like two peas in a pod.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Split peas.”
Shay is visually devouring Mickey Teardash. Shay worships anyone with style, and this guy oozes it. This man is style incarnate. A world-class stylist. He’s a mixture of myths. Daddy Warbucks, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kennedy, Robin Hood, Richard Cory, King Midas, Dick Tracy, Sonny Crockett, Davy Crockett, Dirty Harry, the Lone Ranger. H
e’s a star, a superstar, a golden prince, a great lover. Sexcess, like strobe lights, radiates around him.
Mickey Teardash is a hard-core showman. A male Auntie Mame. He’s got caramel eyes and butterscotch hair. He’s a sweet sundae of a ladies’ man, younger than Shay, maybe in his mid-thirties. His eyes don’t pause for a second. They dart around, deliberately tasting everything, skimming across surfaces—speedy, greedy. This is a guy who knows what he wants and waits for it to come to him. I don’t like him. I am too tired to deal with him, too weary even to try. He’s too much for me at this moment.
“Find yourself a seat, Teardash,” Shay says in a smoky, sexy voice. “It’s time for the eleven o’clock news and you’re not going to like what you hear.”
He cops a stool that belongs to someone temporarily away from a nearby table. Then he sits down close beside Shay. He is savoring the razzmatazz setting, emotionally trolling for new sensations. He watches Shay’s face as she speaks. When she tells him my car was stolen with all her luggage inside, he looks properly concerned. He is Sir Launcelot, a knight inspired by his lady’s distress. He lays hot eyes on her.
“I’ll help you shop for some new stuff,” he promises.
He is Mr. Fixit. Harry Homeowner. Dr. Feelgood.
“Mickey,” she says, “the Fawn Hall papers were in the car too.”
“Whaaaat,” he yodels, genuinely stunned. “Whaaat are you saying? Where was the car? Where were you?”
Shay gives him the details.
“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you this was gonna get you in big trouble, Shay. It was wrong from the get-go. You knew Jerry’d done some work for me and that I didn’t want to piss him off. I told you that. And stealing from a friend … Shit. I can’t believe you did this.”
“It wasn’t my fault, Mickey.”
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