Whitegirl

by Kate Manning

  I stood myself up, blinked and straightened. He saw that he’d said something that bothered me somehow.

  “Listen, how about if I call you and we go hear some music or maybe go for dinner?” he asked. “Next week?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, to erase the chance he thought I was cheap.

  “Hey, I don’t know anybody else in this town.”

  “Okay,” I said. We walked outside.

  “Hullo! Well, there she bloody is! We’ve been hunting all over the bloody place for you!” It was Simon, with some friend of his. “Where’ve you been?” he said, coming toward me and taking my arm and glancing at Milo. The friend hung back and Milo did, too.

  “It’s bloody late,” said Simon. “Let’s get going.”

  “This is Milo Robicheaux,” I said.

  “Oh, right, skiing chap, right?” Simon said. “We’ve heard of you. You’re an Olympian. A medalist—” He was going on and on.

  “Si-mon,” I said.

  Milo smiled. “I’ll see you, Charlotte,” he said, and waved at us, striding ahead down Eighth Avenue, sticking his hand out to get a taxi. A taxi passed him. And then another one. I didn’t see him after that; he was swallowed up in traffic, and Simon was revved up, talking and talking, rubbing his hands together as if he were cleaning them.

  “I’m going home,” I said. “Good night, Simon.” I stuck my hand up for a cab and one pulled over. I got in without Simon and went home and went to bed, lying in the dark with my head hurting and thinking about all kinds of things I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about. Lips. Eyes with girlish lashes.

  9.

  Three days later, a Friday, he called me up. “Charlotte Halsey? Milo Robicheaux here.” He asked would I kindly please excuse him for calling at the last minute? He inquired was I free that very evening? He wondered might he pick me up in front of my building? At 11 P.M.?

  When I hung up I was happy. Which made me nervous.

  So there he was in the lobby, sharp in a dark blazer over a white shirt, loafers with no socks, silver buckle on his belt. There was me in my silvery silk Von Furstenburg jumpsuit cut low to the navel revealing a white bandeau underneath, getting off the elevator with blotches of shyness blossoming on my chest and neck. I was expecting him to say something—You look lovely—along the lines of what was usually said.

  But Milo said just, “Hey, Charlotte.” His face split into a smile I remembered. As if he thought everybody was downright delightful or privately amusing.

  “Your doorman here has been most hospitable,” Milo said on the way out, but his voice now had a little tang in it, so I wondered what hospitality Paulie had offered, exactly.

  “That doorman?” I told him, “Paulie. Well, he’s kind of a real skankball.”

  Milo laughed at me. “Skankball,” he said with his eyebrows up. “That’s a nice one.” He opened the door of a waiting car and climbed in after me. “By the way, this party? I don’t really know anyone there.” He’d been invited by the hotshot winner of last year’s U.S. Open Tennis Championship. “We don’t have to stay long,” he said. The party was in a new club housed in a former church, with the original sacred detail still intact, down to the stained-glass windows showing the Baby Cheese grown up into Christ, people and sheep gathered at his knees. It was the closest I had come to any kind of church in a long time, and as we pulled up, Milo cryptically said, “Be prepared.” I was half expecting some kind of a biblical moment.

  A searchlight beamed at the car as we stepped out and a popcorn of flashbulbs went off all around. The bouncer beckoned us and the people parted as if Moses were going dancing. As we passed, one or two called, “Heeyyyyyy, Milo!” and put up their hands to high-five him. Holding my hand on his left, he slapped their outstretched palms on the right. He had a smile for everybody.

  “Way to go,” they said. “All right, Milo.”

  I pushed up on my toes to whisper by his ear, keeping my face turned by habit out to the cameras: “I had no idea!”

  And I didn’t. That he was known, yeah, but not how it felt, angling through a crowd like that, stares of hunger, people wanting something. Who’s she? I heard someone say, his celebrity splashing onto me. Oooooh, look at the girlfriend. Is she somebody?

  I was not his girlfriend. But I liked their thinking it, liked the giddy feeling of the crowd pressing around us, the lights glaring. It was thrilling, and reminded me of that first time Kevin took me to be photographed, how that made me bold, freed me up from being ordinary. They thought Milo was so important; they seemed to love him.

  Way to go. All right, Milo.

  The bouncer led us up some stairs and then behind some velvet ropes where the private part of the party was happening. The Tennis Hotshot was there, in fact, with a model I recognized from the catwalk at the spring Saint Laurent show. She had her seventeen-year-old hand on his red-haired arm. In a corner I recognized the Post columnist, who was a friend of Simon’s, wearing a cowboy hat. I blew her a kiss to see if she remembered me and she waved. People were checking out Milo through the murk of smoke and low light. We got drinks. He shook a couple of hands, introduced me by shouting. He and the Tennis Hotshot gave each other an elaborate high-five.

  The Saint Laurent model said, “Hey, Charlotte—”

  “You girls know each other?” the tennis player asked.

  “Charlotte and I worked together?” said the girl. Her name was Vanessa.

  Tennis Hotshot looked at Milo with an eyebrow lift, followed by an eyeball roll. Translated into English, it meant: these model babes.

  “So New York’s treating you well, Milo?” the Hotshot said. “You meet Charlotte here?”

  “No, actually,” Milo said. “Charlotte and I have known each other for a while. Since college, in fact.”

  Hear that, Vanessa? I am not some runway rodent, as we say in the trade, not like you, darlin’. I am Milo’s old friend from college. It felt good to be the old friend from college, instead of having Vanessa’s part, a little something just picked off the rack, which was my usual assignment.

  Milo got more drinks and led me to a table by the entrance. Everybody who came in stopped to say hello, and he introduced me by saying This is Charlotte Halsey, the face of the eighties. He smiled when he said this, as if he was kidding me. For a while, it was like the Milo Robicheaux Booth at the county fair. There wasn’t room for anyone to sit with us. People squatted down on their haunches or leaned over the table. Sometimes, in between getting slapped on the back and smooched by all the arriving guests, Milo looked at me with smiles complicated by appraisal. Sometimes he put his hand on my arm. His touch was dry like a doctor’s, fingers long with knotted knuckles. His knee was crowded warmly against my leg under the small round tabletop. The tequila was making me dangerously cheerful. My smiles were starting to go all over my face.

  But out of the blue Milo got up. “Excuse me for a moment,” he said, and left. He crossed the room and disappeared into the party.

  I waited. I smoked.

  Men came over to me, kept appearing like ants on a cake crumb, saying May I join you? so that I was forced to repeat pathetically that my date would be right back.

  Maybe he’s not coming back.

  The party, except for me, was milling and mingling around, laughing and dancing. After twenty minutes I got up and walked out, past the velvet ropes, into the public part of the club, wallflowering myself along the outskirts of the crowd. Maybe I was not fascinating enough for Milo. Maybe I was merely shiny in my silver jumpsuit, like tinsel. I saw him by the dance floor, talking to a woman I recognized as some new actress. She had an exotic name like Cassandra or Mignonne. She had almond-shaped eyes and Slavic cheekbones, and also her hand on Milo’s waist. She was laughing and pulling him to dance with her. She was go-going all over the place, and he was Mr. Suave, Mr. Small Steps with the Music, slowing her down with his arms around her and looking at her through desire-lidded eyes. Or was he looking at me? I saw him see me.

  It
got me. It made me want him, to get him. I bit through the skin of my lip so blood salted into my mouth. You chump, Charlotte, liking the pressure of his knee. I was hurt, plus furious, ingredients that with me are a recipe for recklessness and bad judgment.

  As Milo was dancing, Tennis Champ passed me. I smiled at him. He wheeled around and circled my waist with his arms. He shouted something about beautiful in my ear, over the music: “… Always, always thought that, since I saw you tonight.” I leaned on him on purpose. “Worship you,” he mumbled. I closed my eyes as if I were falling asleep, and he pulled my head down, dancing with me, way too slow for the music. He kept sniffing, the sharp sniffs of a coke-nose.

  God, he said. What’s your name again?

  He smelled of new tennis balls and aftershave. His ears were freckled as birds’ eggs and his arms were feathered with reddish hairs. While he was shuffling around he managed to offer me what was in his breast pocket, flashed a foil packet like a fish lure and danced me in the direction of the bathrooms. I smiled at Tennis Champ and told him, Not right now. But I kept dancing with him and let him kiss me a little bit, when he tried it, kissing back mechanically. It was for spite, getting back at Milo. As if you are so famous you can dump me before you even have me. You don’t have me. I got away as soon as I was sure Milo had seen me with my lips on the other guy.

  Maybe an animal behaviorist could tell me the scientific reason I do these things, committing follies of jealousy like throwing down gauntlets. All I knew was, Milo started it.

  Also, maybe it worked.

  That time, anyway. I tried it again, years later, which may have something to do with where I am now, here at my downfall.

  I went to stand off by myself, looking down from the choir loft of the disco church into the mess of dancers below. Forget this place, I thought. Go home and find Claire. Then I felt breath on the back of my bare neck, warm and scary so the baby hair stood up all along my arms.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Milo whispered. His hands cupped my ear and his words condensed in steam on the skin of my temple. “We’re leaving.”

  “Okay.”

  Outside, Milo hardly said anything, just shot me a tight smile as we strolled through a neighborhood of shuttered warehouses and loading docks. I didn’t know where we were. The streets had foreign names: Gansevoort and Lispenard.

  “Look,” said Milo, “I have no idea where we are. I’m just walking, okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Kind of like, just dancing?”

  “Exactly like just dancing, right?” he said. “Or maybe, like just kissing Tennis Boy back there, or last week just dumping your English ‘bloke’ at that restaurant.”

  “Or your date? Moi. Tonight? At a nightclub?”

  We were sort of kidding and sort of not.

  “So?” I said, sliding my jawbone in a boxer’s grin.

  “So,” he said, “come with me.” He pointed to a bar across the street and hustled me against the light and in the door. The bar seemed to be for truck drivers and loading-dock workers and was nearly empty that late at night. We sat in a dusty booth and ordered beer.

  “You were supposed to dance with me,” I said.

  “Sorry,” he said. “People come up to you. They want—who knows what they want? Once in a while I can’t deal with them.”

  “Actually I did dance with you once,” I said after a minute.

  “Did I ask you or did you ask me?”

  “I think it just … we both, I don’t remember. I think I asked you.”

  “Well well well,” he said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I hadn’t remembered you as that sort of person.”

  “What sort?”

  “Who would ask,” he said. “You were—how shall we say?—taken.”

  “No, I wasn’t,” I said. Taken. It had a hard sound to it, like describing a seat or a parking space. “I wasn’t. Not when I danced with you. Not—”

  “It was a long time ago,” he said, smiling. “It’s hard for me to remember details, after all that time on the road.”

  “Seven years?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you miss it?”

  “Nah,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “The road is the road.” He shrugged. “Basically it’s a skanky VW bus full of eight guys. Tons of equipment, waxing and sharpening every night, team meetings, dirty laundry, beers and bars and broken bones. See this?” he said, and leaned in across the table as if he was going to show me something secret.

  I sat forward.

  “Look, there,” he said, and gave me his hand. A dark scar creased the side of his right pinky finger and ran down the edge of his palm. I traced it with my nail, but as a nurse would. I felt his hand thawing where I held it. He shifted in his seat and pointed to a dark metallic dot by the tip of the finger. “That’s a piece of wire,” he said. “Holding together the bones. Feel it.”

  I did, wincing. The wire was hard under the skin.

  He withdrew his hand and told me the story of how he caught a glove on a gate in ’79, shattering the finger and nearly ripping it right off, and how he kept skiing anyway, finishing with just the one pole. He kept talking, loosening up, telling about his racing life. Mountain towns. Groupies. Ski bums. All those Euros with their unfiltered cigarettes and that great beer. “Really great beer,” he said. “Plus the unbelievable cult of the sport, like baseball is here. I loved that,” Milo said, softly now. “How people had skiing in their bones.”

  “You do miss it,” I said. “Why wouldn’t you live there?”

  “It’s not part of the plan,” he shrugged. “If you’re not moving forward, as my father would say, you’re standing still. You don’t think about what’s behind you. Just like you don’t think about crashing.”

  “How can you not think about crashing?”

  “If you think about crashing,” he said, “you’ll crash.”

  “What do you think about, then?”

  “Aggression,” he said, grinning. “Aggression. Control. Attack.”

  Milo was waiting to see what I would say now, watching me so I was nervous and wished for props, matches and smoke. I began stacking up packets of sugar in towers, arranging them in rows like cards.

  “So what do you miss?” he asked.

  “Me?” I said. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nah.”

  “No one?”

  “No one.” I wondered if he was fishing somehow about Jack, checking me about the old days.

  “Not even your family?”

  “If you’re not moving forward,” I said, “you’re standing still. Right?”

  “Forward toward what?” he asked. “What’s your plan?”

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Whatever happens, happens.”

  It sounded weak and careless. Milo seemed to think I should have a plan. He clearly had one, with his eyes glittering, hooded by smiles, some expression I couldn’t for the life of me understand, whether it was playful or mocking. A twist of his mouth.

  “Surely Charlotte Halsey has a plan,” he said.

  “Look—I’m still working on the not-thinking-about-what’s-behind-me part. The not crashing. I’m trying—it’s not like I have any—”

  “What’s behind you that you’re not thinking about?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I said, flustered. “Nothing interesting, anyway.”

  “I doubt that,” he said.

  “Whatever happens, happens!” I said gaily. “That’s my plan and it’s fine with me as long as it’s not—”

  “Not what?”

  “Not where I come from. Not—” His questions filled me with panic, as if I had only a few seconds to hide all the evidence, dress in something presentable. “I don’t really want to go into it,” I said, and saw with dismay that I had shredded one of the sugar packets so it was spilled all over the table.

  Milo smiled at the mess. “Well, when you’re
ready,” he said kindly, “then you’ll tell me.”

  Kindness was not something I expected. It made me want to tell him, the whole story, about the family fire and brimstone, all of us Holy Halseys terrified of damnation, eyes closed, hands raised. Milo was watching me with his lips on the rim of his glass. Don’t think about lips, I thought. I played with my hair and tried to think of something to say that would save me from all my unreliable ideas about kindness and lips, the question of what would happen next. I was suddenly tired and I shivered from nerves, wondering about him.

  “Here,” Milo said, and sat forward to take off his jacket, starting up to put it around my shoulders.

  “I’m not cold,” I said.

  “No?” he said slowly, and sat back. “Sorry, I thought you were.”

  “I’m sorry if you thought I was,” I said.

  “No,” he said, “that’s not what I meant. I—”

  I swallowed and without warning my eyes glazed briefly with tears so I looked away.

  “What?” he said, concerned. That kindness in his face. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  I could see Milo was surprised by me. His eyes were bright as the Emerald City of Oz. I don’t know what he had thought I was like, but it was something different from what he found out about me now. We were quiet. I ran my tongue across my mouth, nervous and fast. Milo looked away.

  “It’s late,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  We left without speaking. At the light out front, a Checker cab was loitering, and Milo flagged it. I waited to see where we were going. Milo said, “First stop,” and gave his address to the driver. Then he looked to me to give mine, so I did. Okay then, I’ll go home. The quiet was thick and strange. Milo’s face was worked up with something he was thinking, or deciding. He turned and looked at me just as we got to his block and spoke, but his words got lost in the siren of an ambulance passing.

  You’re too scary, I thought he said.

  “What?”