seventeen
I hated gigs like Frontage. I had to sing songs someone else wrote to people who weren’t there to see me. I had to sing through waiters taking orders and customers being seated. I couldn’t sing too loud or I’d disturb everyone, and I couldn’t improvise at all. Ever. I was background.
But it was money, if not a lot, and it was practice. It wasn’t as if Vinny had shown up and booked anything fabulous. It wasn’t as if he’d shown up at all in the past two weeks. I simply had nothing else going on.
We had a dressing room with a smudged mirror and filth on everything. Sometime in the eighties, a tube of lipstick had been jammed into the seam between the two pieces of plywood that made up the counter, and the red goo that was out of reach of a folded paper towel had turned brown and crusty. The carpet stank of beer vomit, and the bathroom had been casually wiped down a few days previous. I felt like a superstar.
Gabby was already out there, tinkling the piano. She had a jazzy way of rolling her fingers across the keys, creating a melody from nothing, building on it, and landing into something else without a hitch. Her bag was open on the counter, and I did what Darren and I always did. I took out her meds and made sure she had one less Marplan than she had last night. Ten milligrams, twice a day. Eleven pills in the bottle. Darren had texted me this morning with the number twelve. Good.
I called him. He was headed out for another date with this girl whose name he wouldn’t reveal.
“Hey, Mon,” he said.
“Eleven,” I said.
“Thanks.”
“What are you doing tonight?” I asked.
“Date.”
“Are you going to tell me her name?” I sat on the torn pleather chair, letting my short skirt ride up since I was alone. My hair was up, and red lipstick coated my lips like lacquer. I looked like a 1950s pinup.
“Not yet,” he said.
“Is it an early date or a late date?” I swallowed hard. I was about to ask a lot.
“Maybe both. Why?”
“I wanted to…” I drifted off, because I wanted to meet Jonathan and relieve the ache he created, but I didn’t want to get into too much detail with Darren.
“Ask. I’m shaving and it’s messing up the phone.”
“I wanted to see Jonathan Drazen tonight. After the gig. Right after. I can be home to watch Gabby by eleven.”
“Can’t. My date’s boss got us tickets to Madame Bovary.”
Great. A date including a musical would go from dinner at seven p.m. to curtains at eleven thirty. He must like this girl.
“Sorry,” he said. I heard the water running.
“No problem.” I hung up.
Eight months before I ever worked at K, I found Gabby sitting at the kitchen sink, on the high stool I’d used to get cereal as a kid. Her head was on the counter and one wrist had flopped over, spilling blood onto the floor.
I’m so sorry I messed up the floor, Monica, she’d said the next day, in her hospital bed. That was what she was worried about: That I would be mad I had to clean up the floor. I’d just ripped up the whole thing and put in new press-on vinyl tiles. I couldn’t find another way to think about something besides how dead and cold she looked when I pulled her off the stool, or the blood trapped in the drain catch, or the way I’d screamed at her the day before for eating graham crackers in the living room, or the way she’d wept when Darren and I broke up, eons ago. I cried over cracking linoleum flooring because the ambulance had arrived a full nine and a half minutes after I called, and I spent them slapping her because it made her groan and I didn’t know what else to do to prove she was alive.
So though I wanted Jonathan to treat me like his own personal toy for a few hours, I had to get Gabby home and stay there until the next morning, when Darren would show up.
The lights kept me from seeing any of the diners. I smiled at a bunch of silhouettes because even though I couldn’t see them, they could see me.
Gabrielle hit the first song, Someone to Watch Over Me, then went to Stormy Weather. I had my groove on then. I sang with the feeling she and I had practiced, but as I got to the middle of Cheek to Cheek, I caught a whiff of cologne I recognized: Jonathan’s. Someone was wearing his cologne, and the weight between my legs came back from the memory of the afternoon. I sang about his cheek on mine, about the scent and feel of him. Under My Skin came out like a seduction. I sang the words, but all I could feel was sex, the need for it. I begged for it with the lyrics, the snappy little Sinatra tune gone, replaced by a moan for gratification.
When my voice fell off the last note, I was ready for that hotel room.
They applauded, quiet but earnest. You weren’t supposed to clap at all at these types of gigs, and I said, “Thank you” with an embarrassed smile. I was convinced they could see my arousal like a dark patch soaking through my dress. I looked back at Gabby, and she gave me a thumbs up. I think I must have been a hundred shades of blush. I put the mike down and the spotlights went out. The diners started up their conversations again, and I headed back to the shitty dressing room.
Jonathan was in a booth, staring at me.
Of course that was where the cologne smell had come from. The source. It wasn’t like he’d gotten it at Barney’s. If it wasn’t a handmade scent, I’d eat my shoe. But I hadn’t even thought of that until I saw him in a booth at Frontage with a gorgeous redhead sipping a cosmopolitan. He tipped his glass to me.
He leaned toward the redhead and whispered something to her. Right into her ear. Like tipping his glass to me and breathing on her in any ten second interval was perfectly okay.
I was going to run and get as far from him as possible. I couldn’t believe what I’d almost done. I wasn’t kidding myself into thinking monogamy was on the table, but I’d think a day would pass before he’d put his hand up someone else’s skirt, or that he’d take the trouble to not shove it right in my face.
But instead of running away like a sensible person, I walked up to the booth. “Hi, Jonathan.”
“Monica,” he said. “This is Theresa.”
I nodded and smiled, and she held her glass up to me. “That was beautiful.”
“Thanks.”
“You were incredible,” Jonathan said. “I’ve never heard anything like that.” I stared at him. Something had changed in his face. I couldn’t pin it down. Softer? Was he tired? Or did Theresa have a relaxing effect on him? His happiness made me feel evil and sharp.
“I’ve never heard of a man trying to sandwich another woman between fingering me and fucking me in the same day.”
Theresa, who looked as though she was one hundred percent lady, almost spit out a mouthful of her cosmopolitan. Jonathan laughed too. I personally didn’t find any of this funny. I stepped back, and Theresa stood as well. Maybe she was pissed. Maybe her laugh was the nervous kind or maybe I’d just shocked her. But she was as composed as possible as she turned to Jonathan and said, “I’m going to the ladies’.”
He nodded, then scooted over once she was gone. “Would you like to sit?”
“No.”
“For someone who doesn’t want to get involved, you have a way of being involved.”
“Even I have limits.”
“She’s a natural redhead.” His look was full deadpan, and though what he said had a hundred filthy connotations, the one non-pornographic one became apparent with the straight-faced look.
“She’s your sister,” I said.
“Two years between us. She’d appreciate it if you assumed I was older.”
“I’m so embarrassed,” I said. “I have to apologize to her.”
“Are you going to sit? Or am I just going to stare at your body without touching you?”
I slid in next to him, and he put his arm around me, his fingertips brushing my neck.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I was having dinner with my sister. No, I was not stalking you, though I have to say again, I think you have a gift. I think I felt a half a tear, right here.” He touched the inside corner of his eye.
“Are you making fun of me?”
“No. I promise you. You were… I don’t have a word big enough.” He looked at my face, and I noticed his eyelashes were copper, like his hair. I was overcome by his presence. “Now I know what you’re protecting by not getting entangled.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate that. I really do.”
He ran his finger over my collarbone with just enough pressure to make me breathe a little more deeply. “Am I seeing you tonight?”
I tried to stay cool, but I wanted him all over again. “I don’t think I can. I’m not avoiding you. I have something else going on. Tomorrow?”
He shrugged. He must have thought I was playing games with him, which he’d probably be exquisitely sensitive about after the cheating wife. But I wasn’t playing a game. Not at all.
“I have a flight out at five tomorrow. After two weeks, you might forget me.”
“I should do to you what you did to me this afternoon,” I said.
He let out a short snort of a laugh into his whiskey. “You don’t have the self-control.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Wanna bet?”
“Yeah. I wanna bet.”
He pulled me close and spoke so softly I could barely hear him. “You get me to beg for it, and tomorrow I will take you to Tiffany on Rodeo Drive where you can pick out anything you want.”
“Anything?”
“Anything.”
“And what if I don’t? Which I won’t, but just for argument’s sake.”
“Then you cancel whatever it is you’re doing, and I take you back to my house, where you will obey my every command until the sun comes up.”
“I am not scrubbing your kitchen floor.”
He smirked. “That’s not what I had in mind.”
I hadn’t noticed the piano had stopped until I mentioned the kitchen floor.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, getting out of the booth before I had a chance to explain that I wasn’t ditching him or manipulating him. I’d let Gabby go off by herself, and I didn’t know if she’d seen me with him and taken a cab home.
I ran into Theresa in the hall on the way to the dressing room.
“I am so sorry,” I said. “I was rude and unbecoming.”
“My brother’s an asshole, so I don’t blame you.” She said it with a smile, taking my hand and squeezing. “We both loved your voice.”
“Thank you. I have to go. I’ll try to see you on the way out.”
I got into the dressing room just as Gabby shouldered her bag.
“I was looking for you,” she said.
“I was talking to Jonathan. You ready to go? I want to see him on the way out.”
“He’s here? Oh my God, Mon, he can help us get an agent or something. Another manager. Anything.”
“He’s not in the business, Gabs, please come on.”
She tugged my sleeve. “Wait. First of all, everyone’s in the business, even if they’re not. Okay? And what are you hiding from me? What?” She was a few inches shorter and looked up at me like she could pierce me with her eyes.
“Nothing.”
“Monica.”
“I want to go home.” I took a step toward the door, but Gabby leaned against it. I dropped my bag, giving in. “Fine, he wants to make this bet, and it has to do with sex, and I’m not hanging out with him tonight, I’m hanging out with you.”
“Cancel with me.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because Darren would kill me.”
“God damn the two of you!” she shouted.
“Gabs, please. Give me a break.”
“No, you guys won’t leave me alone to take a dump and you think I’m too stupid to notice? Now you have the chance to get the ear of a major fucking player—”
“He’s not—”
“Shut up. Because you don’t know anything. He teaches business at UCLA where Janet Terova heads up the Industry Relations board, and you know who that is, right?”
I sighed. I felt like I was taking a quiz.
“Arnie Sanderson’s ex-wife?”
“Eugene Testarossa’s boss. Right. Him.”
“Gabby, if something happened because I went to have sex with some guy I barely even know…”
She put her hands on my arms and looked up at me with those big stinking blue eyes, the ones that had rolled to the back of her head and could only be brought back with a slap in the face, and said, “I promise I will not try to kill myself tonight.”
“Your word is the last thing I should believe.”
“I tried to kill myself because I felt hopeless. You do this, I have hope. Okay?”
“You’re whoring me out.”
“Am I taking a cab home or not?”
I had to admit, the temptation was painful, almost physically so. Here she was, not only giving me permission to leave her alone and promising not to hurt herself, but pushing me out the door.
The exquisite ache between my legs grew to a distracting level when I thought about being with Jonathan. The afternoon’s frustration had turned into a longing that seemed bigger than my body.
Right then Darren’s face showed up in my mind. He looked disappointed and angry.
I pushed past Gabby and went out to Jonathan and Theresa, who had moved to the bar. He put his hand on the back of my neck when I got close enough, and I whispered in his ear, “If I win, you cancel your flight and see me tomorrow night.”
“And no Tiffany?” he asked, smirking.
“Yes, Tiffany. If you win, I’m at your command until sunrise. And after the sun comes up, I’ll scrub your floors.” He laughed. I didn’t know exactly what he was laughing at, unless it was the presumption that he didn’t already have a team of people to sterilize his house, but I smiled back at him because it was a stupid offer and I knew it.
Gabby situated herself at the end of the bar and ordered something. I hoped it was soda. Alcohol’s a depressant, and she could assure me she had hope all she wanted. I didn’t believe she had as much control as she asserted.
“You drive a hard bargain.” He put his drink down. “And you’re funny. I never know what’s going to come out of your mouth next.”
I had a million jokes about what was going in my mouth, but I kept them to myself as I pulled him into the back room.