Archibald Full Frontal, page 18
Carolina smiles at me, radiating friendliness. We find ourselves alone as Sam and Dan go to collect our drinks from the bar when the Playboy Bunny fails to return.
“So,” Carolina yells from her seat across the table. She has a surprisingly large voice for such a little person. “I heard you were dating an older guy.”
I blush beneath my wig. They had discussed me. “Yes,” I say flatly, looking at my hands.
“Was he an instructor in one of your art classes?” She scratches the edges of her beard.
“No. He’s a writer.” I better not lie; who knew what Sam had told her? Perhaps he had spilled everything in a post-coital bonding session, trying to reassure her that their intimacy could never be dented by the presence of little old me.
“How long were you together?”
Was she trying to make conversation or twist the knife in a little deeper? “A year and a bit,” I say casually, tasting a sourness that reminded me of old tequila.
“A girlfriend of mine dated her professor. Biology.”
“Really?” I say, thinking, of course, she’s too perfect to have any war stories of her own, so she’s borrowing one.
“We were undergrads at U of T. Anyway, it blew up on her.”
“That’s unpleasant,” I say politely.
“It turned out he was married.”
“Surprise!” I say, not quite companionably.
She doesn’t seem to notice. “It was. In fact, she was so depressed she swore off men altogether.”
Is that what she thought I had done? Was she giving me advice? “So what happened to her?” I ask, hoping there’s a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.
“Oh. She changed teams and came out as a lesbian.” She shrugged. “Not with me, of course.”
“Of course,” I say, suppressing a sigh.
“Sometimes, being with one person for a long time can be…”
Fantastic? I think.
“…hard work. I’ve been really distracted these past few years. Not getting into medical school was really tough.” She plays with a napkin. “Rejection forces you to … re-evaluate. I’m going to try and be around more. Be a better girlfriend, get a life, that kind of thing.”
I swallow my surprise. She was admitting to being less than perfect? She was less than perfect. I feel a twinge of sympathy. It is becoming harder to resist liking her.
Sam and Dan return with their arms full of drinks.
“Don’t ask,” says Sam. He sets the glasses down. I grab my mug, which is slick and cool in the heat-drenched room.
“Here.” Sam pulls out a gift, wrapped in pink paper. “It’s just a little something.”
I move to open it, but he stops me. “Open it later.”
“Hey, Maggie, want to hit the dance floor?” Dan asks, standing up and fluffing his blonde mane femininely and surreptitiously adjusting one of his lumpy breasts.
“Just don’t knock my eye out with one of those girls,” I say, eyeing his boobs. We dance three or four dances. Dan does okay for a guy in his first set of heels. He hams it up and swishes his skirt as he dances. He knows me well enough by now to know I enjoy a spectacle. A slow Eric Clapton tune comes on. We are crushed in. I take a few steps towards Dan.
“May I have this dance, Miss?” I ask.
“Well, certainly,” he says in his female voice. I reach up around his linebacker shoulders. He is a big bear of man. “Call me Danielle.”
“Don’t let us interrupt,” Carolina says across from us. “We wondered what happened to you guys.”
“We’re just a couple of girls having fun. Anything can happen,” Dan says. I look over at Sam and Carolina. She comes up to his shoulder and presses her cheek into his chest. Sam kisses the top of her head. I have to admit they are cute together.
I glance up at Dan, who is watching me watching them. If Sam was like a brother, then he was like a cousin. I enjoyed his good-natured optimism even if I didn’t always share it. He was handsome in a blue-eyed, dirty blond, Dutch way. Sam’s best friend, but my friend too. I smile up at him. He grins back, his blond wig lopsided. A few buttons have sprung free from his blouse, revealing a white T-shirt underneath. He smells like laundry detergent, beer, and something else. Maybe the wheat fields of his ancestors.
“Will you give me a lift home?” I ask. I suddenly want out of this place, away from the clutter of people, to be far away from every living thing.
“Sure. Is everything okay?” he asks.
“Everything is fine,” I say. “I’m just really tired. It must be all the beer.”
I turn to say goodbye to Sam and Carolina, but they have drifted out of earshot. I watch as they are swallowed up by the mass of brightly costumed, drunken bodies.
“Take it easy, Maggie,” Dan says as he squeezes his jeep into a vacant spot in front of the Pink Palace. “You look wiped out.” He glances at me momentarily, then down at the wheel. The motor putters beneath us.
“I am, but I doubt I can sleep. I’ll try, though.” I smile and yawn at the same time. “Dan, do you like her?”
“Who, Pedal?” He reaches inside his shirt and pulls out a boob.
“Carolina.”
“Sure. She’s good people.” He pulls out the other boob. I take it from his hand and drop it when I realize it’s a mass of toilet paper. “I don’t know her well … but they are tight, pretty much a done deal. You know?”
“I know.” I sigh. He could make anything sound simple, even the most complex computer programs. And I knew he was right. I wonder what he would have made of Michael and me. It would have probably sent him running for cover. And yet, I had the feeling that Dan ran deeper than that. It was just a feeling, mind you, but a good feeling.
He leans in front of me and flips open his dashboard. He reaches inside and grabs a small package wrapped in tinfoil. “Here. This might help.”
“Ah, the green stuff,” I say, smelling the familiar herb.
“If I know you, you’ll be snoring away in no time.” He grins. “Happy twenty-fifth, Pedal.”
“Thanks, Dan,” I say and peck him on the cheek. “Do you want to come up? I could put on a bad horror movie. We could make popcorn.”
He hesitates. “I would like that but some other time. You need some sleep. Flight attendant’s orders.”
I linger outside the apartment building. Lit from the inside, the lobby appears especially seedy and garish, furnished by a brownish carpet, a damaged art deco mirror, and a coffee-stained green sofa that’s been reupholstered umpteen times. I don’t feel like going in. It’s a crisp night, cool but not cold. The air is aromatic with old leaves, burnt caramel, men’s cologne, with a hint of cat piss. I tuck my fingers in the sleeves of my coat and sit on the front stoop.
Closing my eyes, I slump against the face of one of the peeling stairs. A firecracker pops and hisses in the distance. I open my eyes. A ragtag pack of teenagers clomp together, carrying goody bags. In the distance, their strange hats and costumes turn them into goblins from a parallel universe. I close my eyes again, this time suspended in a familiar silence. I open them. He is standing a few feet away, in jeans and a long tailored coat I recognize. How long has he been there? I blink a few times.
“Maggie,” he says. “I didn’t want to wake you from your dream.”
“Michael,” I sit up, unsure I am really awake. He smiles, a hint of mouth and teeth in the night, and comes towards me. “Is that you?”
“In the flesh. I took a chance you might be home.”
“Is everything okay?” I ask, concerned.
“More or less.” He sits beside me with a heavy sigh.
“I thought you’d be out on a night like tonight.”
“I wasn’t in the mood,” he says. “How have you been?”
“Fine, I guess. You?”
“Busy, you know, with work and everything else.”
“Sure. Why are you here?”
“I just wanted to see you. I guess, to check up on you.” He glances over his shoulder at the apartment building. “Can I come in?”
“I don’t know, Michael. I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” I am a fly hovering in his bright nimbus, soaking in the warmth of him. It is starting to feel so familiar.
“Okay.”
More teenagers cross the street. I see they have spiked blue and red hair. I steal a sideways glance at him. He looks tired, too. I quickly shift my gaze to my pointy black boots. I had reached for the phone dozens of times. I had hesitated in the elevator every time it stopped on Archibald’s floor. I had gazed at the ceiling of Archibald’s apartment so often I could have burnt a hole through it. I had searched myself and tried to find a way to return to him and keep some semblance of my self-respect. But each time I did, I knew I had made the right decision, that if I continued on with him, I would be besieged. I would become someone who waited by the phone, who rifled through his laundry, who prayed for rain on a sun-drenched day, who yearned for one more smile.
“Your hair has grown,” he says.
“I know. It’s weed-like.”
“I miss you,” he says so quietly I barely hear him.
“Me too.” It tumbles out of me. He presses his hand on my arm. It is warm and persuasive. I chew the inside of my lip and keep my eyes averted.
“Well, I’ll leave you, then.” He stands up. My eyes follow him. He turns around suddenly. “I almost forgot. Happy Birthday. It’s today, isn’t it?”
I nod. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small box, wrapped in paper covered with tiny rosebuds, and offers it to me.
“Michael, I can’t,” I say and shake my head. “It’s nice but…”
“Just open it. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to keep it. Do this much. For me.”
I survey the box and feel a twinge. It is so small. I take it. It’s light in my hands. I peel the paper off and open a small dark blue box. I knew it would be jewellery. Inside are two emerald earrings, tiny teardrops. I hold them in silence.
“I bought them in Thailand. I thought I’d give them to you as a surprise. For a special occasion. But…”
“They’re beautiful.” I run my finger over them. They are cool and hard. He has moved closer. I can see bits of silver threaded through his hair. “I can’t.”
I reach out to give them back, but he grasps my hands.
“Your hands are cold,” he says. He leans in closer, presses them to his mouth. His lips are against mine before I can react. He kisses me again, and I am inside a warm, ambrosial dream. I don’t want it to stop.
“That was how I remembered it,” he says, his face still close.
“Yes.” Our thousands of kisses flip through my mind, cellophane pages in a book, overlapping to form a single image. “Michael, you can’t be here. Why are you here?” I ask, pulling back abruptly, trying to ground myself.
“I just wanted to … to make sure it was still goodbye.”
“And now you have,” I say. I tuck the earrings back in his lapel pocket.
“But I bought them for you. I came here for you.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Maggie? Is everything okay?” I look up. It’s Dan, a few feet away, approaching us with long strides. I pull away from Michael even farther, collecting myself, surprised to see him.
“Everything is fine,” I say, agitated. “Michael was just leaving.”
“And who might this be?” Michael asks, spikes in his voice.
“This is a friend of mine, Dan,” I say automatically.
“My, my. He looks more like a transvestite bodyguard.”
Dan glowers at him, skirt and dishevelled blouse peeking out from his leather bomber jacket, in his stocking feet, his contempt visible. His hands are tightly clenched. The effect would have been comical if it weren’t so intimidating.
Michael takes a step back. “Well, I am a former ‘friend’ who just came by to wish Maggie a happy birthday.”
“I know who you are.”
“Really?”
“Really.” There is a long moment when no one moves, three points on a suspended triangle. Dan stands rooted like an enormous tree. And then Michael is gone, striding down the street.
“Michael,” I say suddenly, racing after him. I don’t want to leave things this way. I want one more touch or look, something. But he has disappeared into the night like an apparition. I turn towards Dan, a tall, thick shadow beneath a street light. Angry at him for interfering, but even more incensed that I might have needed his assistance. I take a deep breath.
“What are you doing here?” I ask. I don’t like the idea of being spied on.
“You forgot your present.” He holds up Sam’s still-wrapped present. “I got halfway home and noticed it by the seat.” I feel embarrassed. Dan has always been good for his word. I reach out and take the package from his outstretched hands. He shuffles uncomfortably, no longer a tree.
“When did you get here?” Maybe he had missed the worst of it.
“In time to see you needed some company.”
“I was doing okay!” My voice booms in the darkness.
“I know okay. That was not okay,” he replies with resolve.
I turn to walk away, but his hand is on my shoulder, pinning me in place, and then gently releasing me. “Maggie, no one is okay all the time. No one.”
How much did he know? Had Sam told him or had he figured it out by himself? It didn’t matter, not really. I exhale a cold breath into the night, and my anger goes with it. I know Dan has done me a great service, loaned me his will. A steward of goodness, patron saint of lovelorn women, he helped me close a door.
Dan has become Dan again, calm and undemanding, staring awkwardly at his stocking feet, hands clamped in his pockets. His skirt makes a swooshing noise in the October wind. Was it so wrong to admit a weakness, to need another person’s help? My mother would have pushed Dan away and stalked off in lonely independence. But now I could see clearly that I wasn’t her. I took a step forward, reached up, and hugged him.
“Thank you. You are a southern gentleman. Or a superhero. Now walk me to the door.”
“That will cost extra, Miss.”
“How about a bad horror movie, a bucket of popcorn, and a seat on an unbearably lumpy couch?”
I wake up the next morning on my couch, the taste of stale, salty popcorn in my mouth and an afghan tucked around my knees. Sam’s unopened present sits on the table beside me. Dan is gone, having let himself out at some point in the wee hours of the night, but more importantly, so is Michael.
Survivors
“Maria!” I gasp. “You have absolutely outdone yourself.” I survey the cake she holds before me approvingly. She has reproduced the drawing I gave her perfectly. There is Archibald in his gardening cap and gloves, spade in hand, kneeling amongst the irises and lavender, captured in the glory of butter cream in vivid purple, magenta, and eggshell. Across the top of the cake, it reads, “Happy Birthday, Archibald!” I had polled everyone, but no one knew exactly how old he was. Apparently, he had stopped counting at seventy-two, several years earlier.
We are in the final stages of planning a surprise birthday party for Archibald. He has recently given me a raise and has been in relatively good spirits — his new book seems to be going better than the book of poems he was working on previously — and I figured it was now or never. We have planned a tea — complete with pots of Earl Grey and chai and dozens of finger sandwiches — to be hosted in the apartment building’s recreation room. Carolina insisted on helping, and once Carolina was involved, we could not keep Dan away. He has long been dropping hints about meeting Archibald, which Sam and I have been studiously ignoring. We’re hoping that Archibald will be distracted enough by the party and leave Dan unmolested.
Sam, Dan, and Carolina have done a beautiful job of setting out little tables, pristine in their white linen tablecloths with scalloped edges. The sandwiches are arranged, teapots and kettles ready. Three buckets of ice filled with bottles of champagne repose in the corner (Archibald will tolerate champagne for the sole purpose of toasting). Lavender streamers and balloons descend gracefully from the corners of the room. I survey their work admiringly. A collection of Archie’s cronies, increasing in number by the minute, are waiting upstairs for the cue to come down. Leo has lured Archibald for tea on the pretense of asking him for help with his “lady troubles,” a subject Archibald can never resist. After their counselling session, Leo will deliver Archibald home on the pretext of needing a good game of bridge to take his mind off matters. When arriving, he will buzz Sam’s apartment “accidentally,” signalling Archibald’s impending deliverance.
“I’m going to collect the troops,” I remark to Sam.
“I’ll check the front door for stragglers,” Sam replies. “Are you ready for this?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I say like someone about to face an ambush from Mexican bandits.
“Surprise!” the forty plus guests bellow as Archibald makes his entrance. I can tell from the tilt of his head and the placement of his hand over his breast that something in Leo’s performance has tipped him off.
“Dear God! Gracious me! Heavens to Betsy!” he shouts. People cheer and giggle as the tension breaks. “Leo, you delicious old git! And all of you, what an unanticipated surprise!” He fingers the lace tablecloths and surveys the room. “I almost forgot that it’s that time again.” I meet Sam’s eyes and we share an amused smile. Fat chance.
He practically dances around the room, the belle of the ball, greeting and hugging friends and admirers. It’s a good turnout. The Deliahs make tea as people take seats and start sampling sandwiches. Sam introduces Carolina to Archibald.
“Well, aren’t you just a charming porcelain doll!” He takes both her hands in his, like an approving den mother. “Skin smoother than alabaster. Have you ever posed before? Considered being an artist’s model?”
