Pisgah Road
Page 11
The cab stops at the Gore, a small posh hotel. The doorman opens the cab door and stands politely while I pay the cabby. He takes my bag and leads me through a heavy brown wooden door that opened with the slightest touch from him. The lobby is purple and gold, the colors of royals, and is devoid of any traditional hotel counter. There are ornate desks and chairs and several large couches. A man stands up from his desk as soon as I walk in and greets me by name and introduces himself as Mr. Johnston. He welcomes me several times and asks if I’d like a glass of wine or champagne, while two other men look at me expectantly. I look confused and it shows. They’re not used to guests like me, but they are polite and professional. I tell them that I had reserved the Tutor Room. Mr. Johnston nods with the assurance of a father and welcomes me for the third time and shakes my hand. The valet shows up and takes my small bag and asks me to follow him. I’d just put my hand in my pocket to give Mr. Johnston my credit card but then it struck me that such mundane ceremonies are not performed at the Gore. I walk behind the valet as he takes me to my room. Along the way he points to several reading rooms and billiard rooms and instructs me to call him if I need anything. Finally he opens a door and tells me it is mine, making it sound like I’m a weekend guest at a friend’s house. It’s not a large room but it’s fancy. It has a four-poster bed and a high ceiling. The valet assures me that the Minstrels’ Gallery is from the 15th century and the open fireplace is Portland stone. I don’t know what Minstrels’ Gallery is, but I give him a ten-pound note and he leaves. I lie on the bed and close my eyes for a moment.
When I open them again, it is five-thirty!
Gabrielle was supposed to meet me in my hotel by five. There is no message on the phone so I call the front desk to be sure. She had emailed me the name of her hotel. It’s only a few blocks away, but now I can’t remember the name. It was some color, Azure or Indigo or something. I call the front desk again and they immediately know. It is Cerulean Hotel on Princes Garden. I take a quick shower and change. I walk to the lobby and Mr. Johnston greets me and the doorman asks if I want an umbrella. The attention was disconcerting. I decline his offer and walk out. There isn’t a single cloud in the sky but the air is cool. I walk towards Gabrielle’s hotel. I am nervous.
I had two options: take it on face value or read more into it. Gabrielle and I were friends, but that world has been over for more than a decade. The email communications have been good. Her call after my mother’s death was sweet. Her call after my father’s death was even sweeter. Now, why would a married woman fly to another country to see an old high school friend? Gabrielle doesn’t have many female friends. Except, there’s her best friend, Fionna Blake. Gabrielle loved football and never missed a single game. Fionna was the complete opposite. Daniel loved to say, Gabrielle, you’re one of us. That was the biggest compliment we could give someone.
Gabrielle has a two-year-old son. Why would a married woman with a child fly all the way to London to meet a high school friend? Gabrielle still likes to hang around with boys. She told me so in her emails.
“…Oh, yeah. A friend of mine from Israel was staying with us for a week and he…” It was never our friend or John’s friend. It was always her friend and it was always a he.
“Come to Berlin instead, and stay with us,” she said in her email after I told her I was going to London.
She misunderstood. It was about spending ten grand in London. My father didn’t say London, but my mother did. And that’s how I chose to interpret the white envelope full of money. I told Gabrielle it was about London. She was not insulted. She knew why. She offered to join me. It’s about London. Gabrielle is just the icing on the London cake.
I had decided to take it on face value even though I love the icing.
II
I turn the corner and Cerulean Hotel is right in front of me and I can see her. She’s checking in. The sun is still high up but the air is getting cooler. I’m nervous again. She looks good. She looks better than before. She looks like a woman, not a girl. She is not tall but she wears high heels, which add two more inches. She’s still not very tall. She’s wearing black pants with a red empire waist shirt. She had changed her hair again. It’s still layered but more burgundy than brown. She is wearing a pair of wire-rimmed sunglasses. I still can’t shed the nagging uncertainty of her presence.
I stand outside for a moment. She takes off her sunglasses and puts on reading glasses to sign the registry. I didn’t know she needed reading glasses. I wonder if I know her at all. Is she the same person as the one in Green Park? I have changed. I’m more certain, with more fortitude than the boy who left the city in tears. I’m less gentle, if at all any more. I wonder if she has developed sharp edges as well or if ten years have tempered her even more.
She’s smiling at the receptionist and I wonder how I managed to forget about her smile. She hands the paper back and immediately takes off the reading glasses. She has become more vain. For some reason, her self-conscious behavior appeals to me now. I don’t want her to be perfect.
I’d just claimed that I took it on face value but now I’m not certain. What was the point of all this? She was married and had a son. I had my own life. What was the point? Of course, there’s a point even though I try to deny it to myself while staring at Gabrielle. But all of it could wait. I’m already here and I’m not about to walk out. She would seek me out anyway. I decided all the insecurities could wait for later.
I enter the lobby and walk close to her. She’s talking to the receptionist and doesn’t notice my approach. I call out her name. “Gabrielle.”
I startle her and she jumps and then recognition. “Marty!”
My name is not Marty.
CHAPTER NINE
I
Gabrielle’s party was strange.
It was already in full force by the time Daniel and I walked in, and the house was packed and noisy with music and dozens of simultaneous conversations. “Hey, Daniel,” someone called out and Daniel nodded but didn’t stop. A few others shouted his name too and he waved back without pausing and no one approached him either, as if everyone knew that they needed his permission before getting an audience. He took the stairs to the top floor. I followed him.
The house had a similar look to the flat my parents had rented, though this place was much larger and with three floors. The first floor had the dining room, a large sitting room and the kitchen. The bedrooms were one floor below, and a private sitting room with another bedroom on the top floor. The rooms were in rather minimalistic decor, which gave the place a spacious feel despite the presence of so many people.
Upstairs was less noisy with a dozen people sitting on several couches that surrounded a large but low coffee table. The curtains were pulled and there were only a few lamps turned on, which created an eerie ambiance. They were all talking at once and would only stop to take a drink or suck on their cigarettes. We walked in but for a moment no one noticed us, each so immersed in his or her world. They were all talking, except one girl. She seemed to be involved in every conversation and yet not part of any. She casually sipped from her bottle and gave the illusion of listening but you could tell she had no interest in any of them.
She was sitting rigidly on the edge of the couch unlike others who more or less were lying around, some practically on top of one another. Their rapid conversation made them all look blurry to me with the exception of this girl. She stood out and I could see every contour of her body. She was wearing a purple knitted dress with spaghetti straps and a thin leather necklace. She looked simple with her narrow oval face and small red lips. Her long brown hair had fallen lazily over her thin dress, hiding her small breasts, but it was her eyes that caught my attention. They had a certain depth to them that I had never seen on anyone else before. Her eyes looked tired as if they had been dancing all night and now they just needed to stand still to catch their breath. They were resolute, neither attentive nor aloof, but abstractly steady.
“Yo’ Daniel.”
“You made it,” she said softly as Daniel walked over and hugged her affectionately.
“Of course, Gabrielle,” he said and then started to greet each one in turn.
It was somewhat of a formal ritual, with Daniel kissing each girl and shaking hands with, and at times hugging, each boy. I had never seen such general affection among teenagers. They were relaxed with each other and they were in a group rather than being exclusive. In my world, either a boy had a girlfriend — which meant spending the whole party necking on the couch — or there was no girlfriend — which meant spending the whole night talking about them with other boys. No one in my old school ever hugged another boy without being called something nasty and girls and boys were never so casual and relaxed.
It was unreal to me and that made me feel more out of place than before. Daniel introduced me and then he followed up the introduction with a narrative of his encounter with my mother. He wasn’t making fun of her, not overtly anyway, but rather using it as an excuse for our tardiness. Though they all had a good laugh about my ten o’clock curfew.
“It’s London, you know…right?” a boy named Davies asked.
“Ten? Wha’re ya’ five?” a girl named Mithra Rodrigues added.
Mithra had dark brown skin but her eyes were green. She was sitting on a boy's lap; he had introduced himself as Daniel Carpenter — though everyone called him Dan. Dan had a handsome soft face and shook my hand when he introduced himself. He had a moustache and goatee and although his brown hair was cut short it was messy, as if he had just woken up. “Ignore this silly girl. Enjoy the party and go home when it’s time to go,” Dan offered.
But that didn’t stop the others.
Daniel finally said, “It’ll be al’righ’. Leave the man alone.”
I was happy when they all stopped focusing on the curfew and when I thought they were done they picked on another subject.
“Hey, did Sue Ellen die in the fire?” A large boy with massive hands and a crew cut asked. He looked like an actor from an action movie with his square jaw, short blond hair and a scar on the side of his left eye. His name was Tony Morrison and he asked the question with such a serious tone that I thought someone had really died in a fire.
“What?” I asked.
“Wha’the fuck, Tony.” Daniel said.
“Jus’ watched the las’ episode of Dallas,” Tony Morrison said.
“Y’re a messed up boy, Tony,” a new girl said.
“Don’t be so ‘oity-toity, Fionna. You watch Dallas and I’m sure you wan’ to know wha’ ‘appened to J.R., Sue Ellen and John Ross.” He then added, for others’ gratification, in his baritone voice, like the announcer in the movie previews, “There’s a major fire in Southfork, and they’re all trapped in a fucking’ inferno.” He sounded way too enthusiastic for the TV Soap than he wanted to appear so he added in a casual voice, “That Sue Ellen, wha’ a babe!”
“Wha’ the fuck is Dallas? And why in the ‘ell are we talking abou’ it?”
“It’s a great show,” Dan and Fionna said in unison and a few others nodded in agreement.
“I just started watching it and it’s not bad,” a girl named Joyce Chen added.
Joyce’s mother was English and her father Northern Chinese, a combination that gave her an atypical Eurasian look. She was tall and muscular with high cheekbones, a pointy chin and a long nose. She was sporting a stylish short haircut and was wearing a long red beaded necklace with each bead progressively getting larger. She wore a thin cream blouse underneath a purple lacy cardigan. She was clearly very proud of her getup as she sat in a way as if displaying her wardrobe in a photo shoot.
“Please tell them what happened so we can stop talking about this freaking show,” Daniel instructed me and once again he enunciated each word so there wouldn’t be any confusion.
My heart sank. I really wanted to belong and I’d have given anything for another question. Now I knew what Richard the third felt when offered his kingdom for a horse. I wasn’t allowed to watch Dallas.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Y’don’t know?” one of them asked.
“I’m sorry, but I haven’t watched the show.”
“’aven’t watched the show? Don’t ya’ live in America?” Tony asked in such an incredulous voice that I thought he might sit down and cry.
It wasn’t going well and they were all looking at me as if I was an alien who had just landed on Earth.
“I’m not allowed,” I blurted out and I knew it was a very wrong thing to say. I knew what was coming.
“Y’re not allowed? This time it was Fionna and they all laughed. “How old are you?”
I was going to die, but then Gabrielle spoke up. “What do you watch in America, Marty?”
I looked over to see who this Marty person was, but Gabrielle was looking at me. She’d stood up as though wanting to take the unwanted attention off me. She wasn’t very tall, perhaps five-five but she stood so erect that she appeared taller. Daniel had introduced me earlier and I clearly remember he hadn’t said Marty. My name doesn’t rhyme with Marty nor does it resemble Marty. Though to be fair, I could see a scenario where one has woken up in the middle of the night after not sleeping for days and hears my name could confuse it with Marty.
I wanted to be fair and more than that I wanted to belong. I asked for a horse and Gabrielle had given it to me, so what if the horse’s name is Marty.
“There’s this great show called the A-Team with Mr. T.”
“Oh, I think I’ve heard of it. It sounds very exciting,” she offered graciously.
I told them about the A-Team. The boys were impressed but that little belonging cost me my name. Gabrielle called me Marty and it stuck.
II
They all went back to their respective conversations and I was left alone, while Daniel and Fionna took Gabrielle away to the side bedroom for a long time. I sat on the corner of the couch trying to listen and understand their conversation without any success. No one paid any attention to me and I felt awkward again.
After a few a minutes, I stood up and walked around the room pretending to enjoy the pictures on the wall. I went downstairs where most of the people were dancing rather roughly to acid rock. I was pushed and shoved a few times so I went back upstairs. There was a bucket full of bottles and cans of beer, but I’d never had alcohol before and I felt everyone was watching me eyeing the bucket. I walked pass the bucket a few times before I found the courage to grab one. I took a bottle, thinking I looked more sophisticated but that was a mistake because I couldn’t find the opener. I had the bottle in my hand but didn’t want to go back and change it for a can, so I sat down with the unopened bottle in my hand.
“Let me get it for you.”
I looked up and it was Gabrielle holding a bottle opener. I handed the bottle to her but she simply put it on the table. I thought she was admonishing me but to my delight she said, “I know you guys like it very cold.”
“Thanks,” I said and then nodded to confirm though I had no idea.
“We’re goin’ down to dance.” Fionna said. “Are ya’ coming?”
Gabrielle nodded. “Yeah, in a bit. You guys go down.” And then to the boy, who was sitting on the couch pretending to read the newspaper, “John, why don’t you go down too and dance with Fionna.”
John looked up and pushed his long blond hair out his face as if annoyed by the interruption. “I’m reading this great article…”
“Yeah, right,” said Daniel. “Go and fuckin’ dance. The offer won’t last, man.” He then turned to Gabrielle and said, “I’m going down too. You’re coming, right?”
“Yeah…Yes. Soon.”
“Okay. I was jus’ askin’.” He then leaned over a girl with short blond h
air and asked, “Cybil, why don’t you come down and dance with me?”
Cybil Albright was dressed in a long skirt and pink fuzzy sweater and to complete it, she was wearing a white pearl necklace and very pink glossy lipstick. She had been talking to Mithra but looked up and said, “Okay.”
Gabrielle looked at me and said, “Come with me and I’ll get you a cold beer.”
She then stretched her hand to encourage me to get up. I held her hand and she pulled me up with surprising strength. She walked back to the bedroom and I followed. She went straight to the back of the room and opened a large French door and I followed behind quickly, not getting a chance to look the room over carefully though it was clear that the room belonged to her parents. The door led to a small balcony and a spiral metal staircase. We walked down the stairs that came behind the kitchen.
“Here we are and we avoided the obnoxious dancers,” she said triumphantly. She was right, though the music still penetrated through the kitchen walls and she had to shout over the sound for me to hear her. I stood in the middle of the kitchen waiting for her to do or say something.
“What do you want?” she asked as she leaned against a large stainless steel refrigerator that might properly belong to a restaurant.
“Whatever…”
“What’s your favorite?”
The only beer commercial that I could recall was my answer, “Coors?”
“Coors? You’re not a beer drinker, are you?”
It wasn’t an accusation. She said it with such a lilt that I simply confessed. “I’ve no idea what I’m talking about. I’ve never had beer before…You know…”
“No TV, ten o’clock curfew and no beer. Are you a Mormon, Marty?”