Nice Piano
A Novella
Part One of Two
B.J. Atwood-Fukuda
Though they'd had only a quickie—on the rug behind the copy machine in his tiny 11th-floor office—the encounter had left Claire woozy and spent, as always. She laughed to herself as she stumbled out the building's heavy front door onto a street in the West Forties strewn with garbage burst out of black plastic bags waist high, the pitted concrete of the sidewalk smeared with dogshit whose odor smacked her in the face and continued to taunt her as she headed for the upper west side where she'd agreed to meet her "family of origin" for dinner.
One cab after another ignored her hail in favor of clique after clique of rush-hour escapees in bespoke big-shouldered suits and sneakers, who seemed to lurk always just ahead of her—long arms held out ever higher than hers—as she scurried in fits and starts up Sixth Avenue.
After a few blocks she just decided to walk the whole way, as she did almost everywhere now. Hoofing it was invariably faster than waiting twenty minutes plus for a bus that arrived in a cluster of three and slowed to a stop at every green light—to sit through the red, on purpose, so as to lag far enough behind its siblings to carve out a niche in a city where every being seemed hellbent to make its own scene. Was there any other reasonable explanation? Then again, what did reason have to do with it? Claire had decided—no, observed—that the city ran on a kind of energy whose momentum, fast or slow to no discernible end, resisted any attempt to analyze it—unless it was just that her own stabs fell so short of the mark, whatever that might be.
So yes, she found it safer to proceed on foot, less filth-enticing too than to linger in the fetid, sweltering air of the subway—not too close to the platform edge!—and watch a rat dart into one hole and out another along the base of the opposite wall as she craned her head for a glimpse of the approaching train. You could hear it, of course, long before it blasted into view. Claire had learned to push her middle fingers into her ears just in time for it to screech to a stop, even as she found herself amazed at the small percentage of her fellow detainees who seemed even slightly aware of the sound, let alone all but wounded by it. In fact, the few who covered their ears did so with such urgency that she figured they too must be musicians. No doubt, or so she liked to imagine, headed to pre-war buildings in the West Seventies on up, famous for thick walls and high ceilings, where you could play and sing as loud as the music called to you without enraging the neighbors. Meantime, half the train doors didn't open. The cars, splattered with graffiti, swelled with men on the grope, and the floors looked as if they'd been chewed away by who knew what.
So no, Claire felt relieved to have made the right decision in this moment of so few choices, amid the tumult of a city that appeared to offer so many even as it trashed so many of those.
As she approached Broadway along 52nd Street, she gazed up the avenue for any sign of the Telephone Terrorist, who had a habit of holding his left fist to his ear and shouting at his elbow phrases like I TOLD YOU NOT TO FUCK WITH MY BLANKET, then turning his head to the other side, right fist on right ear, and shouting at the corresponding elbow GET OFFA MY CASE OR I'M GONNA TURN YOU IN. He'd become a kind of fixture in the area, ranting up and down block after block as his two parties argued with each other on their separate arm-phones. Like so many people on the street these days, the TeleTerrorist was beyond random: once, when Claire had stopped at a payphone to tell her boss, her shrink, or some friend that she was running late, she heard a bellow behind her that could have passed for an elephant's trumpet—a sound so incongruous on the city street, so close, that she gasped and whirled around to catch the TT's face right up in hers, his mouth in full growl, lips curling off teeth stained with something that might have been blood, for all she knew.
She cried out, fully expecting him to clobber her one. But no: suddenly meek, he mumbled something incoherent as he lowered his gaze. She thought she detected a flicker of fear in his eyes, a spark of sadness as he backed away, both of his arm-phones gone mute—if only for the moment.
Never mind. To her relief, Mr TT was nowhere to be seen tonight—and in any case, yes, Claire still preferred to move on her own power through this tough, pissed-off grossout of a city, a place she hated no more than she loved, though the balance could tip at any moment. While she'd already been mugged three times, she felt just as much shame as anger in the aftermath of each incident. Her fault, surely, to be targeted on three separate occasions, when her attackers had so many marks to choose from. Her fault for not waiting till she was home with the door bolted behind her to break into the bag of dark chocolate cookies or salted mixed nuts she'd plucked from one of a myriad arrays glutting the city's vast internal terrain; her fault for not deferring gratification long enough to explore those treasures in private, but rather opting to savor them out in the charged air, oblivious, for all to see, to watch her rip open the bag with her teeth and devour the little prizes piece by piece, fingers to mouth as she drifted along gazing dreamily at the dramas unfolding all around her; her fault for allowing her eyes to ease their instinctual surveillance if even for just a few seconds, to drop her guard and divert her attention from the constant drumbeat of threat to her person.
Her fault for freeing her gaze to rise, her eyes to relish the architecture, the clouds, the sunset, the occasional hawk or flock of geese soaring by—features of the city that seemed to envelop its misery in a translucent stardusty beauty that shimmered over the mess as if to reassure it: no worries, whatever happens we got your back. A restive glow riffed upon sometimes by the mourn of an unseen airplane approaching altitude, a tonal phenomenon that bestowed nonetheless a sense of stability, even solidity, however paradoxical, hovering just above the chaos. Yes, we move on, it seemed to say. Not unlike you, we follow a rhythm that predates all of this. We watch you, and all of it, not quite fall apart. Hover just short of cataclysm, time and again.
The crimson awning appeared to beckon her all the more defiantly as Claire drew closer to her destination, to taunt her as if it could sense her reluctance. Whether she wanted to or not, she could spot it from almost two blocks away as she waited for the light at 79th and Broadway. With its grease-stained tablecloths and poster-size, multipage menu, the Shiny Fortune was a longtime fixture of the neighborhood, capacious even for an uptown Chinese restaurant.
In spite of her appetite—she'd had just a fruit salad for lunch, over six hours earlier—Claire found herself dawdling at the corner through another light change. Was there no way she could get out of this? she pleaded silently to no one in particular. Too late now for a credible excuse, she realized, even as she heard her mother razz her from deep inside her mind's ear: Claire, don't be such a damn fool. You should have thought of that before your father made the reservation.
As she waited for the light to turn a third time, she checked the front of her blouse yet again for stray cumdrops; you could never be too careful. Administrator, read the title in boldface under her name on a thousand wallet-sized cards her priapic soon-to-be-ex-boss, Mel, had bestowed on her the last time he'd given her a raise. She giggled at a sudden shudder of pleasure and glanced around to make sure that Tony, her on-again off-again boyfriend who lived a few blocks away, was nowhere in evidence. "Boyfriend" being a bit of a stretch, since they'd never been out on an actual date. Not outside. But still.
Fact was, Claire and Mel had been making love—well, servicing each other, but still—on a strip of carpeting behind the xerox until just last Thursday, when his wife had caught them pants down, redfaced; just let herself in with her own goddamn key. Why Mel had allowed Anthea free access to his sole proprietorship without a word of warning to Claire was a mystery she couldn't fathom. What the hell use would she have for those cards now? He hadn’t fired her, nor had he offered her enough severance to make quitting worthwhile until she found another job.
Was she a glutton for punishment or what? Could she think of a single friend who would have lingered there, under those particular circs? Let alone become involved with Mel in the first place, he with two strikes against him—boss! married! married boss!—the whole thing an accident waiting to happen. Claire supposed she deserved to be shamed. Better in her shoes than his, though—at least she didn't have to go home every night to a marriage she'd betrayed. Hadn't Anthea once been the love of his life? Claire wanted to believe that as much as she didn't. She didn't want to think about Mel's marriage, which he'd already told her way more about than she'd thought she wanted to know.
Let alone marriage in general. From what she'd observed, it was something to be carefully avoided. A fate which, if you were a woman, could happen to you almost behind your back, and then you might as well kiss the rest of your life goodbye.
Come to think of it, Claire's ex-colleague Valerie was one who might well have jumped at the chance to stand in her current shoes. While Claire had fled after just two months on the job she and Valerie had ended up sharing—to Valerie's none-too-happy surprise, via the weirdo who'd hired them both for the same position—poor V had stayed, enticed by their boss' promise to set her up in a rent-free apartment. There she cringed, trapped both at work and at home, until the pig—also married, with multiple sides—found a new squeeze and kicked her out.
A bargain at half the price, as Mel might have said.
Whatever his shortcomings, Mel was no pig. The attraction had been instantaneous. So well did he and Claire hit it off that they'd become not just lovers but pals, almost overnight, as only two people who spend all day alone in the same room for weeks at a time can.
If it's not a prison cell, if they don't end up wasting each other first.
Of course it was freighted, how could it not be? Would she miss him? She dared not gaze into that abyss, so the flip answer was: sure. . .until she fell for someone else who seemed as eager as she for erotic exploration; until she fell in love, however unwisely, once again. Hell, the two of them had spent five days a week, eight to ten hours a day for almost three years, working all but literally side by side, and sometimes that, too, while Mel made real-estate deals over the phone, drew plans on paper, discussed every detail of his business and personal life with Claire. She kept the books, drafted what needed to be written, ran errands, ran interference over the phone: as he liked to tell his friends and associates, she was the one who "put out the fires" for him.
Even as he ignited them inside her.
And vice-a versa. As the man himself might have said.
Unbeknownst to any of those friends and associates, or so the two of them hoped. However naively.
To her great pleasure, he too got off on the inherent corniness of the situation —and its potential for linguistic flourishes. Grace-notes, there for the taking. Rubati! Not that he called them that.
How did Claire even end up with Mel?
Her previous boss, the same one who conned her friend Valerie, had bullied Claire verbally, relentlessly, as if he felt entitled to abuse his "personal assistant" even as he paid her well. The day he laid a hand on her, though—a move Claire had dreaded from the outset—she ran to the nearest payphone in the pouring rain, the ad from the Times going soggy in her fist. How was she to know Mel would offer her the job within moments of her arrival at his office, before he'd really 'interviewed' her at all?
How long had he been waiting for her? Years surely, and didn't realize it until she stood there in his doorway, dripping with rain, inundated in his gaze.
And she? Forever. She fell into his arms like a drowning soul thrown a lifeline, even as he trembled in hers.
That Claire would become not only Mel's lover but his confidante in all things, that he would be the sole reason she stayed in such an otherwise unpromising position for so long seemed to her now, as she waited at the corner of 79th and Broadway on this muggy June evening, a stroke of luck—a bonus, an improbable adventure. Truth to tell, she was not slightly interested in real estate, not in any deep psychological way. Not the way Mel and his wife seemed to be. Not the way she was interested in music.
She was suspicious of even the term. Maybe because real estate ruled the world so irredeemably, because it was finally only and all about money. Once all the land became 'real property', everything that mattered was over, wasn't it?
The triumph of culture over nature, in the darkest sense. The co-optation of the planet. Ultimately, the death of every species but us.
Never mind that Claire lived on a piece of fake-estate herself, along with just about every other human on earth.
Not to say she hadn't gleaned a few fascinating tidbits on the job—little gems of capitalist detritus she figured might be of use someday, in a future that still seemed open-ended to her.
Who knew the language of the trade could be so sexy? Was there ever a term more rife with metaphoric spice than easement?
But the real adventure had been Mel himself. The wonder of their attachment such as it was, the depth and delicate negotiation of all of their daily interactions.
How could it continue, now? Where did they go from here? Questions neither he nor she seemed ready to face, full force.
Not yet.
In spite of this, if not because of it, Claire had been looking for another job. She now found herself facing the next three months with Mel—or not? Either way, in a kind of limbo—while she waited to start work as an interpreter for what the ad phrased as "the wife of an Italian wine magnate". The gig was cushy, almost air-headed: if Claire understood it right, she would be a butler-slash-"personal shopper" paid big bucks to schlep-n-fetchit for a pesce grosso who lacked for nothing but New York English. All she had to do was to translate back and forth while La Signora threw overpriced schmatas around the fitting-rooms of high-end Madison Avenue boutiques whose rent she’d be helping to pay, via the package of perks the head office in Milan showered on her marito for the "hardship" of having to endure the splendor of this city, home of Son of Sam and the crumbling South Bronx, for the next four years.
Porca miseria! With hardships like that, who needed luxury?
But Claire had yet to deliver the news to Mel. Assuming he kept her on, she'd have to find the least wrong of all the non-right moments, neither too late nor too soon.
Meantime, pazienza: while she couldn’t change the locks without gifting her lover with a shiny new key which he would feel compelled to copy, lock-step, for his wife, she did install a safety bolt she vowed to ram shut whenever things got hot behind the copy machine . . .
. . . So it was that forty-five minutes after leaving her office, Claire sidled into the Shiny Fortune, "late as usual". No longer woozy and spent, but invigorated by the journey.
Suddenly, despite her best efforts, sad. . .and, let's face it, in a watchful mode.
* * *
Her eyes darted fitfully around the crowded, cavernous space. Ah, there they were, her parents Aldo and Leah and her sister Sylvie, ranged around a table big enough for eight, toward the restaurant's back wall. If she knew them, they'd ordered vodka martinis, and were halfway through round three by now. As she hurried toward them across the paisley’d carpet, her father looked up quizzically from his chopsticks, his mouth full of ja-chai. Her mother gave a squinty smile and reached out to hug her firstborn.
“Oh Claire, look at you, in a suit! Just like a real--businesswoman. But you've got to do something about your hair."
Sweating in her office clothes, Claire winced. Her father, standing now, glanced tentatively toward her, holding back to allow her mother emotional free rein. Or so it might appear in the photo.
Claire knew better. Aldo curbed his impulse toward effusiveness in public only so that, when Leah caused a scene owing to her nonexistent sense of scenario, he could shrug his shoulders and turn up his palms as in Hey, I’m clean, don’t look at me. Leah, for her part, tended to wax mousey around strangers, at least in the company of her husband. Thus could he appear controlling and magnanimous at the same time, a combination (Claire had noticed) strangers found irresistible, much to his wife’s annoyance. Tall and hale, his white hair billowing around his big sun-browned face, his raptor eyes ranging over every detail of a scene, Aldo Buzzati was often mistaken for somebody famous.
Even as Leah was never taken for anyone but herself—all but willfully nondescript in the shadow of her husband and her rife, unfathomable daughters.
Sylvie got up and moved around to the front of the table to hug her sister. "Don't listen to Mama, your hair looks great," she said as they embraced. She’d just blown in from Paris where she lived and worked, as the blurbs liked to put it. She looked paler than usual to Claire, her nose and cheeks ruddy with a spidering of broken blood vessels. She’d pulled her hair back in a severe bun, no doubt because she'd had no time to wash it before being dragged, jet-lagged, out to this dinner.
Her floral skirt fluttered unevenly around her calves. If Claire knew Sylvie, she was cursing herself for having worn it. So unlike her not to sample, first, what she wanted to pack; if she were sober, she would have noticed that the fabric had stretched here and there, no doubt from the weight of it hanging in her closet.
Alas, rayon: so unstable, despite its convenience for travel. So had Sylvie once admonished Claire, years ago, as she eyed the stretch marks bisecting the seat of Claire's own too-tight skirt, as if she thought her sister didn't know any better, or worse, didn't care.
Well, when you were a model like Sylvie, you had to pay attention to every detail. Or so Claire supposed.
Which is why she found herself pondering Sylvie's sorrowful aspect now. Even her top, a navy blue knit hanging loose at the waist, appeared to drag her down. Her blood-red lipstick glared from the pallor of her face, which otherwise wore no makeup. It occurred to Claire that she had never seen her sister so thin.
As protective of her as she felt in general, Claire wondered whether knowing in advance how Sylvie would look would have lessened in any way the agony she'd put herself through to appear presentable to her family on this much-anticipated, dreaded occasion. She was aware that she came across as Sylvie's opposite to everyone who knew them both, or had even merely seen them together. Claire had her mother's compact, curvy body and her father's dark eyes; alas, she'd been gifted with neither the silken calm of Leah's curls nor the dense, rich surround of Aldo's quasi-afro. Nope, her dark hair spiked out from her head in a storm of random squiggles that confronted her with a vision of chaos whenever she passed a mirror. When the boys in eighth grade in Iowa called her Buzzy, for her born fright-wig and a last name they garbled—O mean double-whammy!—her father joined right in, as if Claire were a cartoon character, not his daughter; as if he were not her father, but one of those boys. Ashamed of this, ashamed to look the way she did, how Claire had envied her sister who, tall and lean like Aldo, with Leah's gray eyes and amber waves, managed to escape such casual indignities through the luck of the genetic draw in a culture that derived affirmation, even comfort, from a certain confluence of traits—the paler the face they defined, the sleeker the hair, the better. No one cared what your last name was, let alone how to say it, when you looked like some thirteen-year-old white boy's dream.
Claire had set her alarm an hour and a half early to get ready for this evening. That she felt she had to dress like a Republican to be taken seriously by parents who, however unwittingly, had fashioned her an anarchist was a paradox only to the uninitiated. Her own theory was: you’d better look like a striver if you want to crawl through life like the maggot you are, undetected. Just let people think you’re making money. For most of them, that’s the sole marker of success.
Oh well. Surely this time, for once, her father wouldn’t rave about her sister’s looks in front of Claire. Surely not, when it seemed so obvious—tonight, at least—that there was nothing to rave about.
Though she couldn't help feeling ashamed of that thought as she considered Sylvie's appearance again. So rare of her sister, not to take great care of that.
Sylvie could turn heads. Claire had seen it as she'd scuttled alongide her, struggling to keep up with her long strides as the two of them hustled from one of Sylvie's modeling gigs to the next. In Paris.
Fact was, Claire distrusted the random attention of strangers, while Sylvie seemed to seek it and manoeuver to attract it whenever she could. Unlike Claire, she had a well-honed sense of the impression she made in public, all the better to manipulate it to her advantage, at least when she was sober. Claire couldn't help admiring this, even as she found it risky. Surely such a gift must serve to protect its owner from the predations of random sleazoids! And yet. . . Sylvie walked a fine line. Claire knew that she, too, had had her moments. She didn't seem to have learned, or perhaps she needed somehow not to see, that attention was never neutral, and nearly always tricky—tainted, as it so often proved to be, with an ulterior motive. When Claire was the target, she felt herself razzed by a cloying sense of obligation, however craven, however abject. What, after all, could she possibly owe some loser in the street, never mind what he appeared to want from her, how desperate to claim it? Why did she find it so hard to just walk on by? More often, run—not that she didn't do that, time after time.
Meno male.
The difference was that Sylvie felt secure in her appearance, no matter how she looked: a level of self-confidence Claire could only dream of. Shouldn't it render a woman instinctively savvy, if not quite invulnerable?
But no—no matter how careful you were, or sought to be, the wrong attention could drag you by the hair into a cave of horrors from which you might never emerge. Look at Valerie! More often than not, you didn't have to ponder its nature at all. It was just out there screaming, right up in your face.
Aldo Buzzati shifted his weight like an animal testing its legs for the first time—a baby giraffe, perhaps, though nothing else about him suggested either baby or giraffe. "How did you get here, kid? Some coolie pull you in a rickshaw?"
"Aldo, hush! we're in a Chinese restaurant," sputtered Leah.
"Oh, I thought it was Eye-talian." He grinned and winked at Claire.
His wife frowned. "Don't be such a damn fool."
"What the hell took you so long?" said Sylvie. "Oh, lemme guess. You had to have the cab drop you off at Lincoln Center so you could go to the bathroom."
"I couldn't get a cab," Claire said. "I walked."
"All the way!" said Aldo. "Good for you. I hate exercise. Almost as much as I hate water. Speaking of that, I could use another drink. Waddya say, Claire?" He was leaning toward her to embrace her, kiss her on both cheeks, when her sister jerked the sleeve of his liver-colored sport jacket. “Daddy, Daddy, look!” Sylvie was just a year younger than Claire, but she affected the voice of a four-year-old. “An iguana! And it’s turning green, look—”
“Oh Al honey, you’ve got to see this.”
Aldo’s hands froze on Claire's shoulders. He shut his eyes and sighed.
“—it’s that woman over there, right over there, Daddy, look! She’s got him on her shoulder.”
“On a leash! Al, for heavensake turn around.”
“Wha— what is it?” He turned slowly away from Claire. Behind her father’s receding presence she could see five waiters and a small crowd of other diners gathered around a couple, three tables away. Several tables around them sat abandoned mid-meal as if a disaster had bailed them out, food half-finished, soy-sauce-stained napkins hastily thrown down on red tablecloths.
Claire peered toward the crowd, straining to catch a glimpse.
“I see it,” Aldo announced, as if he’d just sighted a yeti after months of death-defying quest on the Western Cwm.
Their favorite waiter, Steve Chan, came bounding toward them. “Professor,” he shouted. “Doctor Buzzati. That big lizard, what do you call it? She says guano—”
"Guano?" Claire giggled. "That's seagull shit, isn't it?"
She instantly regretted the comment, to which no one paid any mind. She was in the process of deciding whether to feel relieved or annoyed when she heard a loud voice just off her left ear.
“Ah so,” Aldo intoned. “Iguana, spell with ah. Live in West Indies—” His wife and daughters twisted their mouths and lowered their eyes toward the carpet-stains.
“What’s the matter, Claire?” Leah finally blurted. “Why don’t you sit down? Oh— Sylvie, don’t let what’s-that-boy’s-name? Chan—don’t let Chan leave us so fast. Chan—Chan!” she called, waving her fingers in the air, “I’d like another martini, please.”
Sylvie and Claire rolled their eyes.
“Make that two,” Sylvie said. ”No, three. One pour le papa".
“You bet, my beauty!" said her father. "Ex-kyooz-mi, Meestah Chahn, we have maybe summoh Chi-nee pickle—”
“Ja-chai? Right away, doctor.” Steve, who had told Leah and Aldo on a previous occasion that he was studying architecture at Columbia, was from the Midwest—Cleveland or Cincinnati, Claire wasn't sure. She’d eaten here with Mel and his daughter a couple of times when Anthea was out of town, and Steve had been their waiter. He and Mel’s daughter were taking the same lighting class.
Claire sat down, hand on mouth, careful not to raise her eyes above the level of the soy-sauce dispenser. "And for you?" Steve said to her. She looked up. He smiled at her so warmly she felt her eyes blur. "Nothing to drink?"
"Just tea," she said. "And. . .thank you."
Leah and Sylvie glowered at Aldo. “Why do you have to do that,” Leah hissed. “Jeeziz Al, you make me want to crawl under the table.”
“I forgot," Sylvie said to Claire, her voice laced with contempt. "I told myself after the last time. I’ll never go to a Chinese restaurant with Daddy again.”
“You mean, unless the place has Occidental waiters, heheh!” He downed half his drink in one gulp.“Wassamatta, yu woo-man no laik mah akh-sent? Hoo-hah—” he staged a goofy grin, bobbling his head like a puppet on a stalk to the three women in his life, each in turn, as they kept their eyes fixed on their napkins. “Well, in that case, ffffuck yyyou,” he shouted, spreading his arms wide and pumping the air as if he'd just scored a touchdown.
A family of tourists at the next table began to stare. A small boy and his sister, maybe five or six years old, decked out in Statue-of-Liberty headgear, ogled the professor as if he were a turkey from outer space.
“Here you go!” The red-jacketed Steve laid the dish of ja-chai on their table with a flourish. He clasped his hands behind his back and clicked his heels together, military-style. "Three vodka martinis, coming right up! Oh, and one pot of smoky tea."
Claire gave him a thumbs-up. Sylvie hooted.
“Oh look, here comes the iguana,” Leah burbled, half to herself, as if unsure whether to take some kind of stand against the animal’s presence in the restaurant or not.
Steve hung back, visibly intrigued by such a promising development. As Claire watched his eyes widen, she pictured him regaling his roommates later that night—over pizza?—with what had to be the most interesting story to come out of his job in weeks, if not ever.
The lizard ventured out on a stretch metal leash whose other end, lost in the deep heart of the room, linked up to someone's wrist. That somebody turned out to be a tall blonde in a trenchcoat the color of pondslime, who stood across the room with her back half turned, talking to a shorter man in khakis and a yellow sweater-vest. The iguana wandered away from her, moseying along on its shiny tether, picking up scraps and pausing to sample them as it meandered across the carpeted floor. There was nothing it didn’t investigate, not even used kleenex, which it picked at with long, dark, clawed, dainty fingers. Its gunmetal back glinted dully in the light of chandeliers cloudy with grease.
The creature headed straight for the Buzzatis' table.
“She loves me,” said Steve, eyeing it with affection. “It’s a girl, you know.”
Aldo studied the iguana as it crawled toward them, his face dark with drink-induced effort. “He’s right. You can tell by the coloring and the size of the tail,” he stage-whispered to Sylvie. "Immature. Une jeune fille!"
“Uh-huh...” She picked up her glass, plucked out the olive with a too-long, maroon-chipped fingernail. “What if I give this to her? Will she eat it?” She flashed Steve a quadratic smile.
“Probably.” Ignoring her, he kept his eyes fixed on the lizard. Momentarily miffed, Sylvie left her seat to get a closer look. Leah sighed loudly. “Sylvie, where are you going? Get back here and keep me company.”
Claire gazed at their waiter, speechless with wonder at his sang-froid. Or was it amour-propre? Grace under pressure, composure under fire.
“Mahtini, mahtini. . .Meestah Chahn, please—” Aldo sing-songed over the other voices in the ballroom-sized restaurant, putting Claire in mind of a carnival barker (though she'd only ever seen one in the movies).
Sylvie ignored her mother and hunkered down, half-kneeling, in front of the iguana. Her father eyed her with a feral curiosity as the animal planted its little hands on her bare, stubbly shin. She flinched.
Before it could climb any farther, she held her palm out, the olive poised on the tips of her fingers. The lizard eyeballed it briefly; then, with a flick of its crimson tongue, lobbed it into its mouth. The girl and boy at the tourists’ table, who’d been jumping and squirming in their chairs, tried to run over for a closer look, but their parents were having none of it and now the kids were howling in protest.
“Oh, aren’t you cute!” Sylvie said to the iguana. She picked it up and held it against her shoulder while she got to her feet, legs trembling. So much for three vodka martinis.
Her eyes shone as she stroked the lizard's back with two fingers. "Ooh, your skin is so soft! I never would have guessed. It looks pebbly." She gazed into her father's face as a wave of bliss wafted across her own. For a moment, eyelids half closed, she appeared to lapse into a kind of trance.
“Yes, it is. But you better be careful with that creature, cara.” Aldo's curiosity deepened into a quasi-prurient fascination as he tracked Sylvie's ecstatic face, her slender hands nestling the iguana in the crook of her neck.
But only for a moment.
“Yiyyy!" she cried. "What’s happening to my ear?” She flashed her father a damsel-in-distress look.
Aldo gasped, jolted by her abrupt change of mood—and as exasperated at her apparent lack of common sense as he was alarmed at the possibility that the animal might be causing his daughter injury.
“Really, Syl," said Claire, sotto voce. "You might want to put her down before she rips it off. Your earring."
“Literally,”announced their mother, dragging the word out. She sniffed, then peered around the room, whistling tunelessly under her breath.
Steve, who had yet to go for their drinks, eyed the proceedings as his face clouded over. “Miss, I think you’d better put her down. The lizard, I mean. She doesn’t understand, she doesn’t know her own strength—”
“Aaaughh! Somebody help me quick,” Sylvie pleaded. “It’s eating my earlobe.”
“Sylvie, don’t be such a damn fool.” Leah held up a piece of pickled cabbage in her chopsticks, studied it, and popped it into her mouth.
“Jeez, it must be the jade in your earring," said Aldo. "Just wants to see if it's edible, that’s all.” He got up and shambled over to his daughter. "They're attracted to bright colors, you know."
He peered at the iguana's magnificent, inscrutable face, its perfectly-proportoned claws. "Sylvie, you should take your earring off, right now. It'll leave you alone if you do that."
Was this true? Claire marveled at their father's flawless instinct when it came to the lower fauna, how he just seemed to know how a lizard would behave.
"No way! It'll nibble my fingers, won't it, Daddy? You take it off for me."
"Well, I don't know about that." Truth to tell, his hands had always reminded Claire of a couple of catcher's mitts. "Maybe your sister could help you out—"
"Of course!" Claire said to her. "I mean, if—"
Sylvie shot her a look of desperation tinged with doubt.
Aldo shrugged at their waiter, who nodded and dashed away as if he'd just remembered he was at work.
Claire got up to help her sister. Suddenly, or so it seemed to her, the couple and their two small children from the tourists' table headed straight for their own, the girl bounding gleefully in front, the boy in hot pursuit. The grownups, though they'd paid their check, initially seemed in no hurry to leave. They bumbled along behind the kids, staring wide-eyed around the room before zeroing in on the drama unfolding before them. The father, white and beefy, sported a backwards Yankees cap and a Dodgers jersey. His forearms looked to Claire as if they'd been rubbed with car grease, until she realized they were covered with tattoos sloping down, it seemed, all the way from his shoulders and peeking out the sleeves of his shirt. The mother—petite, Black and elegant in a style Claire decided must be L.A. casual—wore large pink hoop earrings, a flowy top and pink track pants with a lime-green stripe down each side. Both the kids were dressed in mini baseball outfits, their Statue-of-Liberty toppers bobbling gently as they ran.
“O look, Mommy! That baby dinosaur's chewing that lady’s ear! Oh please, can we watch, please Mommy! Daddy, please?” The kids' words spilled over each other as they jockeyed for their parents' attention.
“No! absolutely not," roared their father as their mother attempted to herd them past the Buzzatis' table. "Now stop it, both of you, or we’re gonna give the twice-cooked pork to Red Fang."
"Come on!" said their mother. "We can’t keep him waiting any longer, you know how he gets when—" As if on cue, the kids changed course without a peep and hurried to push their way outside. The clang and clatter of dishes swallowed the grownups' departing words.
Marveling at the family's wondrous unity of purpose, however fleeting, Claire sensed they had played this scene many times before. She watched the door glide shut behind them as they disappeared into the night.
Turning to her sister who, along with their parents, hadn't noticed the family at all, Claire said "Sylvie, let me do this, you know Daddy's fingers are too fat."
Aldo sat down, visibly relieved.
She lifted a spindly claw off her sister's ear. "It has your earring in its mouth! It's pulling on it, that's why it hurts."
"No way!" Sylvie whined. "Please, just make it let go!"
Claire tickled the creature's leathery jaw, its skin soft and cool to the touch. "Come on, funny one, you know that's not a soybean. You can spit it out now."
As if on cue, the iguana dropped the bauble. The jade shimmered on the deep rouge of its tongue as the stone slid flawlessly free, causing the earring to swing, for a moment, like a tiny pendulum from Sylvie's lobe.
Claire felt her sister's body go slack against hers. "You're not going to faint, are you honey? The lizard's not even moving now."
"How did you do that? It obeyed you like a dog."
Steve hurried back to their table with three more vodka martinis, the tea, and the blond woman in the trenchcoat, to whose wrist the iguana was tethered. As she appoached her pet, the leash retracted: two beings, one vertical, sleek and tall, on two legs; the other horizontal, rubbly and petite, on four, appeared to reintegrate like disparate components of a single form of life gone awry and now flowing back together again.
"Oh, thank you," the woman gushed to Claire as she hurried toward the sisters. She plucked her pet off of Sylvie's shoulder. “Are you alright, sweetheart?"
"I'm okay." Sylvie eyed her briefly. The woman held the iguana up with both hands and air-nuzzled it, nose to nose.
"Come on, Beatrice! You bad bad girl. Look what you did to this nice lady’s ear.” She kissed the air in front of the lizard's head and chucked her under the chin.
Beatrice stuck out her tongue. Her back had turned a brilliant green.
The woman settled her in the crook of her elbow and poked around in her bag for a tissue. "Here, take this, honey."
"Thank you." Sylvie offered a wan smile and blotted her ear with the tissue. Sneaking a look at the speckles of blood it came back with, she let out a howl.
The woman gasped. "What did my little girl do to you? It can't be that bad, she's a vegan."
Beatrice closed her eyes and slowly opened them again.
Her owner inspected Sylvie's ear. "Just a few flecks. You're not bleeding anymore." She held her pet close against her raincoat the color of pondslime. Its skin darkened into a shade that reminded Claire of cardboard boxes left in the rain.
“Beatrice loves jade,” the woman said.
She grinned ruefully at Claire and Sylvie. "I'm Hester, by the way."
"Claire." Hester gave her hand a flaccid shake. Claire touched Sylvie's arm. "My sister, who also loves jade. Sylvie."
"What a pretty name! I'm sooo sorry. Are you gonna be all right now?" Hester stroked her shoulder.
"Fine. I'll be fine." Sylvie started to pull out her chair.
"Let me help you with that," said Hester.
She glanced at Leah and Aldo as if noticing them for the first time. Her eyes lit up when Aldo met her gaze, his own eyes eager, voracious. Leah smiled uncertainly and looked away.
"Our parents," said Claire.
Aldo got up and, with a flourish, kissed Hester's outstretched hand. "Complimenti," he said, as if she had just brought down the house with a brilliant performance. She flashed him a quizzical, delighted look.
For a moment the two figures stared into each other's face, eyes shining. Suddenly elegant, larger than life—the muted colors of their clothing, to say nothing of Beatrice's back, complementing the glow of their expressions—they might have been a movie poster from the forties.
The Maltese Iguana?
Claire couldn't help wondering what her sister would think, if she were paying attention.
Hester cleared her throat. "Come on princess, let's say goodnight to these lovely people." She took one of Beatrice's claws between her thumb and forefinger and waved the Buzzatis goodbye with it.
Sylvie stared. Leah frowned into her lap. Aldo beamed.
The two of them, owner and pet, sashayed off together, putting Claire in mind of a Pietà as Hester held her baby close and burbled sweet nothings in its ear.
She looked back over her shoulder once, her eyes seeking Aldo's, or so it seemed to Claire.
No one noticed.
"Al, where's our food?" Leah blurted. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm famished."
"Me too!" Sylvie had removed her earring and was rolling it around in her fingers. "But I won't eat shrimp, it makes me vomit."
"Yes-dear-we-know-that. And you know damn well we ordered it. With garlic sauce, because we happen to love it. But you don't have to eat it."
"I can't believe you did that! Where was I when you guys put that in?" Sylvie cast a pleading look at her sister.
"Calm down honey, I wasn't even here yet."
"You were in the ladies'," their mother said to Sylvie, "for so long we were beginning to wonder what was the matter. Your father didn't want to wait any longer."
Sylvie ignored her. "Right, I forgot," she razzed Claire. "Of course you weren't here yet, you're always late. Why did I dare to think it would be any different this time?"
"Sylvie, it's no big deal. I'll eat your share of the shrimp, and you can eat my Kung Pao chicken."
"No way! That stuff is way too greasy for me. I don't know how you Americans can stomach all the glop they serve in Chinese restaurants over here."
"So you're not American now, eh?" Leah narrowed her eyes at her second-born. "Just because you live in that beautiful place—look, if you don't like it here, why don't you just go back where you came from."
"Mama, what are you saying!" cried Claire.
"Damn. Why does it always have to get like this." Sylvie threw her napkin down on the table. "I'm outta here. Claire, do you have the key to your apartment?"
"Wait Syl, please don't do this. If you leave I have to come with you. I'm not staying here by my—"
"For chrissake Leah, must you always find a way to make a brutta figura?!" bellowed Aldo. "Just stop it, alla you females! Enough is enough, punt'e basta!"
His wife bared her teeth at him. I hate you, she mouthed, leaving a space between each word.
Then, in full voice: "Aldo, how can you be so unfair. You're so drunk you don't even know what you're say—"
"In-deed! I think that calls for another drink. What do you think, Claire?"
"Me?! Daddy, that's the second time you've asked that. I still don't drink. Can't we just have our dinner now?"
"If it ever deigns to arrive," Leah snorted. "Meantime, honey, you'd better go easy on that I-don't-drink routine. We've had quite enough of your holier-than-thou shit." She turned to her husband. "I think we should order a bottle of wine, don't you, dear?"
"Claire! Let's go!" Sylvie pulled on her sister's arm. She was already out of her chair.
"Wait, here comes Steve with our food. Please Sylvie, let's just get this over with."
"OK guys! Here you are. Just what the doctor ordered!" Steve sang out, delighting in the serendipitous aptness of his pronouncement. He introduced each dish by name as he placed it on the table; by the time he'd finished, the surface was covered with enough food for several families of four, let alone just one.
"Who ordered the pupu platter?" Sylvie pouted. "I don't eat fattening junk like that anymore."
"And I suppose you're the only one eating here tonight, too," sneered her mother. "Sylvie, don't be such a damn fool. You know your father loves the deep-fried lotus root."
"Me too, actually!" Claire said. "Wish I didn't."
"Yecch." Sylvie grimaced, eyeing Aldo as if he'd just confessed to a fondness for candied water bugs. He stared back at her until she looked away and appeared to search the room, eyes glazed and vacant.
"You--you, old girl—" Leah zeroed in on Claire—"you should stay away from fried food altogether. You still have a halfway-decent figure, don't let yourself go any farther, huh? Huh? Claire, you listening?"
In fact, Claire had to wonder how her mother felt about her own size at this late date in her life, she who claimed—as the old photos showed—that the last time she'd been at her "ideal weight" was just before she got pregnant with Claire.
For a moment, the family ate and drank in silence. . .but only for a moment.
"Hester. What a strange name," said Sylvie. "Sounds very old-fashioned."
"Well, you know where it comes from, don't you?" Leah lowered her voice as if she were about to pass on a juicy rumor.
"No. Should I?"
"Hester Prynne, Hester Prynne, howzabout a glass of gin?" Aldo chanted, gazing around the room.
"The Scarlet Letter. Didn't you read that in high school? I thought everyone had to. In English class."
"Not anymore, Mama," said Claire, pre-emptively rising to her sister's defense. "Not necessarily."
"If we had it, I don't remember." Sylvie picked up a snowpea. Anchoring it with one of her chopsticks, she proceeded to cleanse it of oil with the other before lifting it to her mouth. Claire couldn't help noticing how thoroughly she chewed before she swallowed, before she picked up another piece. How few pieces she ate, how she repeated the ritual with every one.
"Because you didn't read it, of course," said Leah. "I can't imagine why any mother would want to give her daughter that name."
"She was a Puritan who committed adultery with the minister of her church," Claire stage-whispered to her sister.
Was that even true? She couldn't be sure. She heard it echo in her own ear like a line from a Cliff Notes synopsis.
"What?" shouted Sylvie. "I can't hear you!"
"Never mind," said Claire.
"The town elders made her wear a red "A" on the front of her blouse for fucking the reverend," said her father. "A 'scarlet letter'."
"And he got off scot free!?" Sylvie wailed.
"Always the way," huffed her mother. She popped a huge shrimp dripping with garlic sauce into her mouth.
"Always the way, always the way." Aldo leered at his daughters.
"Ooffah," Claire blurted, despite her best efforts.
"A. . . for aguana?" said her sister. "It works. . ."
"Sylvie, don't be such a damn fool."
"'Aguana!'" said Claire. "That's great! I wonder what Hester would think of it. Beatrice's mother, I mean."
"Owner." Leah chided Claire. "She didn't give birth to that animal." Then, to Sylvie, "Don't you know how to spell the word, dimwit? You had just as good an education as—"
"Sorry, guess I missed class the day they talked about Latin American lizards." She pushed a few peanuts around her plate. "Il professore said "iguana with an A", waddya want from me."
"Ah, Claire amended. "'Iguana, spell with Ah.'" She jerked her head toward their father and rolled her eyes. Sylvie grimaced conspiratorially.
"Where is that nice Chinese boy? He needs to bring the check," said their mother.
By the time they left, all the plates were bare. Even Sylvie noshed away several dishes of those crispy noodles no one eats unless they're drinking—or already drunk.
Needless to say, they washed it all down with a fifth round. . . except for Claire, who guzzled her way through three pots of smoky tea.
While Sylvie was in the bathroom, Aldo floated a proposition.
"How about we come up to your place when we drop your sister off? I hear you've got something to show us," he said to Claire.
"And what would that be?" She felt the breath catch in her throat.
"I hear you have a gorgeous new piano. Sylvie told us. Is that right?"
"But why, dear? You don't play anymore, do you?" Leah gave her an incredulous look, then rummaged in her bag for her lipstick. "Why don't you go see what's taking your sister so long? This is the second time tonight she's pulled this stunt."
"There was a line when I came out," said Claire. "Didn't you notice? Only two stalls, a big restaurant like this—it's outrageous."
"Never a line at the men's room," Aldo put in. "Why don't you females use it?"
Leah made a face. "Claire, just get over there and have a look. Please."
She was about to push her chair back however reluctantly when Sylvie returned, her face flushed.
"Really, Sylvie, I've never known you to take this long," Leah fumed. "Your sister was the one we always had to wait for, not you. She used to read whole books on the toilet. Didn't you, old girl."
"There was a line," Sylvie said. "Gimme a break."
One cab after another ignored her hail in favor of clique after clique of rush-hour escapees in bespoke big-shouldered suits and sneakers, who seemed to lurk always just ahead of her—long arms held out ever higher than hers—as she scurried in fits and starts up Sixth Avenue.
After a few blocks she just decided to walk the whole way, as she did almost everywhere now. Hoofing it was invariably faster than waiting twenty minutes plus for a bus that arrived in a cluster of three and slowed to a stop at every green light—to sit through the red, on purpose, so as to lag far enough behind its siblings to carve out a niche in a city where every being seemed hellbent to make its own scene. Was there any other reasonable explanation? Then again, what did reason have to do with it? Claire had decided—no, observed—that the city ran on a kind of energy whose momentum, fast or slow to no discernible end, resisted any attempt to analyze it—unless it was just that her own stabs fell so short of the mark, whatever that might be.
So yes, she found it safer to proceed on foot, less filth-enticing too than to linger in the fetid, sweltering air of the subway—not too close to the platform edge!—and watch a rat dart into one hole and out another along the base of the opposite wall as she craned her head for a glimpse of the approaching train. You could hear it, of course, long before it blasted into view. Claire had learned to push her middle fingers into her ears just in time for it to screech to a stop, even as she found herself amazed at the small percentage of her fellow detainees who seemed even slightly aware of the sound, let alone all but wounded by it. In fact, the few who covered their ears did so with such urgency that she figured they too must be musicians. No doubt, or so she liked to imagine, headed to pre-war buildings in the West Seventies on up, famous for thick walls and high ceilings, where you could play and sing as loud as the music called to you without enraging the neighbors. Meantime, half the train doors didn't open. The cars, splattered with graffiti, swelled with men on the grope, and the floors looked as if they'd been chewed away by who knew what.
So no, Claire felt relieved to have made the right decision in this moment of so few choices, amid the tumult of a city that appeared to offer so many even as it trashed so many of those.
As she approached Broadway along 52nd Street, she gazed up the avenue for any sign of the Telephone Terrorist, who had a habit of holding his left fist to his ear and shouting at his elbow phrases like I TOLD YOU NOT TO FUCK WITH MY BLANKET, then turning his head to the other side, right fist on right ear, and shouting at the corresponding elbow GET OFFA MY CASE OR I'M GONNA TURN YOU IN. He'd become a kind of fixture in the area, ranting up and down block after block as his two parties argued with each other on their separate arm-phones. Like so many people on the street these days, the TeleTerrorist was beyond random: once, when Claire had stopped at a payphone to tell her boss, her shrink, or some friend that she was running late, she heard a bellow behind her that could have passed for an elephant's trumpet—a sound so incongruous on the city street, so close, that she gasped and whirled around to catch the TT's face right up in hers, his mouth in full growl, lips curling off teeth stained with something that might have been blood, for all she knew.
She cried out, fully expecting him to clobber her one. But no: suddenly meek, he mumbled something incoherent as he lowered his gaze. She thought she detected a flicker of fear in his eyes, a spark of sadness as he backed away, both of his arm-phones gone mute—if only for the moment.
Never mind. To her relief, Mr TT was nowhere to be seen tonight—and in any case, yes, Claire still preferred to move on her own power through this tough, pissed-off grossout of a city, a place she hated no more than she loved, though the balance could tip at any moment. While she'd already been mugged three times, she felt just as much shame as anger in the aftermath of each incident. Her fault, surely, to be targeted on three separate occasions, when her attackers had so many marks to choose from. Her fault for not waiting till she was home with the door bolted behind her to break into the bag of dark chocolate cookies or salted mixed nuts she'd plucked from one of a myriad arrays glutting the city's vast internal terrain; her fault for not deferring gratification long enough to explore those treasures in private, but rather opting to savor them out in the charged air, oblivious, for all to see, to watch her rip open the bag with her teeth and devour the little prizes piece by piece, fingers to mouth as she drifted along gazing dreamily at the dramas unfolding all around her; her fault for allowing her eyes to ease their instinctual surveillance if even for just a few seconds, to drop her guard and divert her attention from the constant drumbeat of threat to her person.
Her fault for freeing her gaze to rise, her eyes to relish the architecture, the clouds, the sunset, the occasional hawk or flock of geese soaring by—features of the city that seemed to envelop its misery in a translucent stardusty beauty that shimmered over the mess as if to reassure it: no worries, whatever happens we got your back. A restive glow riffed upon sometimes by the mourn of an unseen airplane approaching altitude, a tonal phenomenon that bestowed nonetheless a sense of stability, even solidity, however paradoxical, hovering just above the chaos. Yes, we move on, it seemed to say. Not unlike you, we follow a rhythm that predates all of this. We watch you, and all of it, not quite fall apart. Hover just short of cataclysm, time and again.
The crimson awning appeared to beckon her all the more defiantly as Claire drew closer to her destination, to taunt her as if it could sense her reluctance. Whether she wanted to or not, she could spot it from almost two blocks away as she waited for the light at 79th and Broadway. With its grease-stained tablecloths and poster-size, multipage menu, the Shiny Fortune was a longtime fixture of the neighborhood, capacious even for an uptown Chinese restaurant.
In spite of her appetite—she'd had just a fruit salad for lunch, over six hours earlier—Claire found herself dawdling at the corner through another light change. Was there no way she could get out of this? she pleaded silently to no one in particular. Too late now for a credible excuse, she realized, even as she heard her mother razz her from deep inside her mind's ear: Claire, don't be such a damn fool. You should have thought of that before your father made the reservation.
As she waited for the light to turn a third time, she checked the front of her blouse yet again for stray cumdrops; you could never be too careful. Administrator, read the title in boldface under her name on a thousand wallet-sized cards her priapic soon-to-be-ex-boss, Mel, had bestowed on her the last time he'd given her a raise. She giggled at a sudden shudder of pleasure and glanced around to make sure that Tony, her on-again off-again boyfriend who lived a few blocks away, was nowhere in evidence. "Boyfriend" being a bit of a stretch, since they'd never been out on an actual date. Not outside. But still.
Fact was, Claire and Mel had been making love—well, servicing each other, but still—on a strip of carpeting behind the xerox until just last Thursday, when his wife had caught them pants down, redfaced; just let herself in with her own goddamn key. Why Mel had allowed Anthea free access to his sole proprietorship without a word of warning to Claire was a mystery she couldn't fathom. What the hell use would she have for those cards now? He hadn’t fired her, nor had he offered her enough severance to make quitting worthwhile until she found another job.
Was she a glutton for punishment or what? Could she think of a single friend who would have lingered there, under those particular circs? Let alone become involved with Mel in the first place, he with two strikes against him—boss! married! married boss!—the whole thing an accident waiting to happen. Claire supposed she deserved to be shamed. Better in her shoes than his, though—at least she didn't have to go home every night to a marriage she'd betrayed. Hadn't Anthea once been the love of his life? Claire wanted to believe that as much as she didn't. She didn't want to think about Mel's marriage, which he'd already told her way more about than she'd thought she wanted to know.
Let alone marriage in general. From what she'd observed, it was something to be carefully avoided. A fate which, if you were a woman, could happen to you almost behind your back, and then you might as well kiss the rest of your life goodbye.
Come to think of it, Claire's ex-colleague Valerie was one who might well have jumped at the chance to stand in her current shoes. While Claire had fled after just two months on the job she and Valerie had ended up sharing—to Valerie's none-too-happy surprise, via the weirdo who'd hired them both for the same position—poor V had stayed, enticed by their boss' promise to set her up in a rent-free apartment. There she cringed, trapped both at work and at home, until the pig—also married, with multiple sides—found a new squeeze and kicked her out.
A bargain at half the price, as Mel might have said.
Whatever his shortcomings, Mel was no pig. The attraction had been instantaneous. So well did he and Claire hit it off that they'd become not just lovers but pals, almost overnight, as only two people who spend all day alone in the same room for weeks at a time can.
If it's not a prison cell, if they don't end up wasting each other first.
Of course it was freighted, how could it not be? Would she miss him? She dared not gaze into that abyss, so the flip answer was: sure. . .until she fell for someone else who seemed as eager as she for erotic exploration; until she fell in love, however unwisely, once again. Hell, the two of them had spent five days a week, eight to ten hours a day for almost three years, working all but literally side by side, and sometimes that, too, while Mel made real-estate deals over the phone, drew plans on paper, discussed every detail of his business and personal life with Claire. She kept the books, drafted what needed to be written, ran errands, ran interference over the phone: as he liked to tell his friends and associates, she was the one who "put out the fires" for him.
Even as he ignited them inside her.
And vice-a versa. As the man himself might have said.
Unbeknownst to any of those friends and associates, or so the two of them hoped. However naively.
To her great pleasure, he too got off on the inherent corniness of the situation —and its potential for linguistic flourishes. Grace-notes, there for the taking. Rubati! Not that he called them that.
How did Claire even end up with Mel?
Her previous boss, the same one who conned her friend Valerie, had bullied Claire verbally, relentlessly, as if he felt entitled to abuse his "personal assistant" even as he paid her well. The day he laid a hand on her, though—a move Claire had dreaded from the outset—she ran to the nearest payphone in the pouring rain, the ad from the Times going soggy in her fist. How was she to know Mel would offer her the job within moments of her arrival at his office, before he'd really 'interviewed' her at all?
How long had he been waiting for her? Years surely, and didn't realize it until she stood there in his doorway, dripping with rain, inundated in his gaze.
And she? Forever. She fell into his arms like a drowning soul thrown a lifeline, even as he trembled in hers.
That Claire would become not only Mel's lover but his confidante in all things, that he would be the sole reason she stayed in such an otherwise unpromising position for so long seemed to her now, as she waited at the corner of 79th and Broadway on this muggy June evening, a stroke of luck—a bonus, an improbable adventure. Truth to tell, she was not slightly interested in real estate, not in any deep psychological way. Not the way Mel and his wife seemed to be. Not the way she was interested in music.
She was suspicious of even the term. Maybe because real estate ruled the world so irredeemably, because it was finally only and all about money. Once all the land became 'real property', everything that mattered was over, wasn't it?
The triumph of culture over nature, in the darkest sense. The co-optation of the planet. Ultimately, the death of every species but us.
Never mind that Claire lived on a piece of fake-estate herself, along with just about every other human on earth.
Not to say she hadn't gleaned a few fascinating tidbits on the job—little gems of capitalist detritus she figured might be of use someday, in a future that still seemed open-ended to her.
Who knew the language of the trade could be so sexy? Was there ever a term more rife with metaphoric spice than easement?
But the real adventure had been Mel himself. The wonder of their attachment such as it was, the depth and delicate negotiation of all of their daily interactions.
How could it continue, now? Where did they go from here? Questions neither he nor she seemed ready to face, full force.
Not yet.
In spite of this, if not because of it, Claire had been looking for another job. She now found herself facing the next three months with Mel—or not? Either way, in a kind of limbo—while she waited to start work as an interpreter for what the ad phrased as "the wife of an Italian wine magnate". The gig was cushy, almost air-headed: if Claire understood it right, she would be a butler-slash-"personal shopper" paid big bucks to schlep-n-fetchit for a pesce grosso who lacked for nothing but New York English. All she had to do was to translate back and forth while La Signora threw overpriced schmatas around the fitting-rooms of high-end Madison Avenue boutiques whose rent she’d be helping to pay, via the package of perks the head office in Milan showered on her marito for the "hardship" of having to endure the splendor of this city, home of Son of Sam and the crumbling South Bronx, for the next four years.
Porca miseria! With hardships like that, who needed luxury?
But Claire had yet to deliver the news to Mel. Assuming he kept her on, she'd have to find the least wrong of all the non-right moments, neither too late nor too soon.
Meantime, pazienza: while she couldn’t change the locks without gifting her lover with a shiny new key which he would feel compelled to copy, lock-step, for his wife, she did install a safety bolt she vowed to ram shut whenever things got hot behind the copy machine . . .
. . . So it was that forty-five minutes after leaving her office, Claire sidled into the Shiny Fortune, "late as usual". No longer woozy and spent, but invigorated by the journey.
Suddenly, despite her best efforts, sad. . .and, let's face it, in a watchful mode.
* * *
Her eyes darted fitfully around the crowded, cavernous space. Ah, there they were, her parents Aldo and Leah and her sister Sylvie, ranged around a table big enough for eight, toward the restaurant's back wall. If she knew them, they'd ordered vodka martinis, and were halfway through round three by now. As she hurried toward them across the paisley’d carpet, her father looked up quizzically from his chopsticks, his mouth full of ja-chai. Her mother gave a squinty smile and reached out to hug her firstborn.
“Oh Claire, look at you, in a suit! Just like a real--businesswoman. But you've got to do something about your hair."
Sweating in her office clothes, Claire winced. Her father, standing now, glanced tentatively toward her, holding back to allow her mother emotional free rein. Or so it might appear in the photo.
Claire knew better. Aldo curbed his impulse toward effusiveness in public only so that, when Leah caused a scene owing to her nonexistent sense of scenario, he could shrug his shoulders and turn up his palms as in Hey, I’m clean, don’t look at me. Leah, for her part, tended to wax mousey around strangers, at least in the company of her husband. Thus could he appear controlling and magnanimous at the same time, a combination (Claire had noticed) strangers found irresistible, much to his wife’s annoyance. Tall and hale, his white hair billowing around his big sun-browned face, his raptor eyes ranging over every detail of a scene, Aldo Buzzati was often mistaken for somebody famous.
Even as Leah was never taken for anyone but herself—all but willfully nondescript in the shadow of her husband and her rife, unfathomable daughters.
Sylvie got up and moved around to the front of the table to hug her sister. "Don't listen to Mama, your hair looks great," she said as they embraced. She’d just blown in from Paris where she lived and worked, as the blurbs liked to put it. She looked paler than usual to Claire, her nose and cheeks ruddy with a spidering of broken blood vessels. She’d pulled her hair back in a severe bun, no doubt because she'd had no time to wash it before being dragged, jet-lagged, out to this dinner.
Her floral skirt fluttered unevenly around her calves. If Claire knew Sylvie, she was cursing herself for having worn it. So unlike her not to sample, first, what she wanted to pack; if she were sober, she would have noticed that the fabric had stretched here and there, no doubt from the weight of it hanging in her closet.
Alas, rayon: so unstable, despite its convenience for travel. So had Sylvie once admonished Claire, years ago, as she eyed the stretch marks bisecting the seat of Claire's own too-tight skirt, as if she thought her sister didn't know any better, or worse, didn't care.
Well, when you were a model like Sylvie, you had to pay attention to every detail. Or so Claire supposed.
Which is why she found herself pondering Sylvie's sorrowful aspect now. Even her top, a navy blue knit hanging loose at the waist, appeared to drag her down. Her blood-red lipstick glared from the pallor of her face, which otherwise wore no makeup. It occurred to Claire that she had never seen her sister so thin.
As protective of her as she felt in general, Claire wondered whether knowing in advance how Sylvie would look would have lessened in any way the agony she'd put herself through to appear presentable to her family on this much-anticipated, dreaded occasion. She was aware that she came across as Sylvie's opposite to everyone who knew them both, or had even merely seen them together. Claire had her mother's compact, curvy body and her father's dark eyes; alas, she'd been gifted with neither the silken calm of Leah's curls nor the dense, rich surround of Aldo's quasi-afro. Nope, her dark hair spiked out from her head in a storm of random squiggles that confronted her with a vision of chaos whenever she passed a mirror. When the boys in eighth grade in Iowa called her Buzzy, for her born fright-wig and a last name they garbled—O mean double-whammy!—her father joined right in, as if Claire were a cartoon character, not his daughter; as if he were not her father, but one of those boys. Ashamed of this, ashamed to look the way she did, how Claire had envied her sister who, tall and lean like Aldo, with Leah's gray eyes and amber waves, managed to escape such casual indignities through the luck of the genetic draw in a culture that derived affirmation, even comfort, from a certain confluence of traits—the paler the face they defined, the sleeker the hair, the better. No one cared what your last name was, let alone how to say it, when you looked like some thirteen-year-old white boy's dream.
Claire had set her alarm an hour and a half early to get ready for this evening. That she felt she had to dress like a Republican to be taken seriously by parents who, however unwittingly, had fashioned her an anarchist was a paradox only to the uninitiated. Her own theory was: you’d better look like a striver if you want to crawl through life like the maggot you are, undetected. Just let people think you’re making money. For most of them, that’s the sole marker of success.
Oh well. Surely this time, for once, her father wouldn’t rave about her sister’s looks in front of Claire. Surely not, when it seemed so obvious—tonight, at least—that there was nothing to rave about.
Though she couldn't help feeling ashamed of that thought as she considered Sylvie's appearance again. So rare of her sister, not to take great care of that.
Sylvie could turn heads. Claire had seen it as she'd scuttled alongide her, struggling to keep up with her long strides as the two of them hustled from one of Sylvie's modeling gigs to the next. In Paris.
Fact was, Claire distrusted the random attention of strangers, while Sylvie seemed to seek it and manoeuver to attract it whenever she could. Unlike Claire, she had a well-honed sense of the impression she made in public, all the better to manipulate it to her advantage, at least when she was sober. Claire couldn't help admiring this, even as she found it risky. Surely such a gift must serve to protect its owner from the predations of random sleazoids! And yet. . . Sylvie walked a fine line. Claire knew that she, too, had had her moments. She didn't seem to have learned, or perhaps she needed somehow not to see, that attention was never neutral, and nearly always tricky—tainted, as it so often proved to be, with an ulterior motive. When Claire was the target, she felt herself razzed by a cloying sense of obligation, however craven, however abject. What, after all, could she possibly owe some loser in the street, never mind what he appeared to want from her, how desperate to claim it? Why did she find it so hard to just walk on by? More often, run—not that she didn't do that, time after time.
Meno male.
The difference was that Sylvie felt secure in her appearance, no matter how she looked: a level of self-confidence Claire could only dream of. Shouldn't it render a woman instinctively savvy, if not quite invulnerable?
But no—no matter how careful you were, or sought to be, the wrong attention could drag you by the hair into a cave of horrors from which you might never emerge. Look at Valerie! More often than not, you didn't have to ponder its nature at all. It was just out there screaming, right up in your face.
Aldo Buzzati shifted his weight like an animal testing its legs for the first time—a baby giraffe, perhaps, though nothing else about him suggested either baby or giraffe. "How did you get here, kid? Some coolie pull you in a rickshaw?"
"Aldo, hush! we're in a Chinese restaurant," sputtered Leah.
"Oh, I thought it was Eye-talian." He grinned and winked at Claire.
His wife frowned. "Don't be such a damn fool."
"What the hell took you so long?" said Sylvie. "Oh, lemme guess. You had to have the cab drop you off at Lincoln Center so you could go to the bathroom."
"I couldn't get a cab," Claire said. "I walked."
"All the way!" said Aldo. "Good for you. I hate exercise. Almost as much as I hate water. Speaking of that, I could use another drink. Waddya say, Claire?" He was leaning toward her to embrace her, kiss her on both cheeks, when her sister jerked the sleeve of his liver-colored sport jacket. “Daddy, Daddy, look!” Sylvie was just a year younger than Claire, but she affected the voice of a four-year-old. “An iguana! And it’s turning green, look—”
“Oh Al honey, you’ve got to see this.”
Aldo’s hands froze on Claire's shoulders. He shut his eyes and sighed.
“—it’s that woman over there, right over there, Daddy, look! She’s got him on her shoulder.”
“On a leash! Al, for heavensake turn around.”
“Wha— what is it?” He turned slowly away from Claire. Behind her father’s receding presence she could see five waiters and a small crowd of other diners gathered around a couple, three tables away. Several tables around them sat abandoned mid-meal as if a disaster had bailed them out, food half-finished, soy-sauce-stained napkins hastily thrown down on red tablecloths.
Claire peered toward the crowd, straining to catch a glimpse.
“I see it,” Aldo announced, as if he’d just sighted a yeti after months of death-defying quest on the Western Cwm.
Their favorite waiter, Steve Chan, came bounding toward them. “Professor,” he shouted. “Doctor Buzzati. That big lizard, what do you call it? She says guano—”
"Guano?" Claire giggled. "That's seagull shit, isn't it?"
She instantly regretted the comment, to which no one paid any mind. She was in the process of deciding whether to feel relieved or annoyed when she heard a loud voice just off her left ear.
“Ah so,” Aldo intoned. “Iguana, spell with ah. Live in West Indies—” His wife and daughters twisted their mouths and lowered their eyes toward the carpet-stains.
“What’s the matter, Claire?” Leah finally blurted. “Why don’t you sit down? Oh— Sylvie, don’t let what’s-that-boy’s-name? Chan—don’t let Chan leave us so fast. Chan—Chan!” she called, waving her fingers in the air, “I’d like another martini, please.”
Sylvie and Claire rolled their eyes.
“Make that two,” Sylvie said. ”No, three. One pour le papa".
“You bet, my beauty!" said her father. "Ex-kyooz-mi, Meestah Chahn, we have maybe summoh Chi-nee pickle—”
“Ja-chai? Right away, doctor.” Steve, who had told Leah and Aldo on a previous occasion that he was studying architecture at Columbia, was from the Midwest—Cleveland or Cincinnati, Claire wasn't sure. She’d eaten here with Mel and his daughter a couple of times when Anthea was out of town, and Steve had been their waiter. He and Mel’s daughter were taking the same lighting class.
Claire sat down, hand on mouth, careful not to raise her eyes above the level of the soy-sauce dispenser. "And for you?" Steve said to her. She looked up. He smiled at her so warmly she felt her eyes blur. "Nothing to drink?"
"Just tea," she said. "And. . .thank you."
Leah and Sylvie glowered at Aldo. “Why do you have to do that,” Leah hissed. “Jeeziz Al, you make me want to crawl under the table.”
“I forgot," Sylvie said to Claire, her voice laced with contempt. "I told myself after the last time. I’ll never go to a Chinese restaurant with Daddy again.”
“You mean, unless the place has Occidental waiters, heheh!” He downed half his drink in one gulp.“Wassamatta, yu woo-man no laik mah akh-sent? Hoo-hah—” he staged a goofy grin, bobbling his head like a puppet on a stalk to the three women in his life, each in turn, as they kept their eyes fixed on their napkins. “Well, in that case, ffffuck yyyou,” he shouted, spreading his arms wide and pumping the air as if he'd just scored a touchdown.
A family of tourists at the next table began to stare. A small boy and his sister, maybe five or six years old, decked out in Statue-of-Liberty headgear, ogled the professor as if he were a turkey from outer space.
“Here you go!” The red-jacketed Steve laid the dish of ja-chai on their table with a flourish. He clasped his hands behind his back and clicked his heels together, military-style. "Three vodka martinis, coming right up! Oh, and one pot of smoky tea."
Claire gave him a thumbs-up. Sylvie hooted.
“Oh look, here comes the iguana,” Leah burbled, half to herself, as if unsure whether to take some kind of stand against the animal’s presence in the restaurant or not.
Steve hung back, visibly intrigued by such a promising development. As Claire watched his eyes widen, she pictured him regaling his roommates later that night—over pizza?—with what had to be the most interesting story to come out of his job in weeks, if not ever.
The lizard ventured out on a stretch metal leash whose other end, lost in the deep heart of the room, linked up to someone's wrist. That somebody turned out to be a tall blonde in a trenchcoat the color of pondslime, who stood across the room with her back half turned, talking to a shorter man in khakis and a yellow sweater-vest. The iguana wandered away from her, moseying along on its shiny tether, picking up scraps and pausing to sample them as it meandered across the carpeted floor. There was nothing it didn’t investigate, not even used kleenex, which it picked at with long, dark, clawed, dainty fingers. Its gunmetal back glinted dully in the light of chandeliers cloudy with grease.
The creature headed straight for the Buzzatis' table.
“She loves me,” said Steve, eyeing it with affection. “It’s a girl, you know.”
Aldo studied the iguana as it crawled toward them, his face dark with drink-induced effort. “He’s right. You can tell by the coloring and the size of the tail,” he stage-whispered to Sylvie. "Immature. Une jeune fille!"
“Uh-huh...” She picked up her glass, plucked out the olive with a too-long, maroon-chipped fingernail. “What if I give this to her? Will she eat it?” She flashed Steve a quadratic smile.
“Probably.” Ignoring her, he kept his eyes fixed on the lizard. Momentarily miffed, Sylvie left her seat to get a closer look. Leah sighed loudly. “Sylvie, where are you going? Get back here and keep me company.”
Claire gazed at their waiter, speechless with wonder at his sang-froid. Or was it amour-propre? Grace under pressure, composure under fire.
“Mahtini, mahtini. . .Meestah Chahn, please—” Aldo sing-songed over the other voices in the ballroom-sized restaurant, putting Claire in mind of a carnival barker (though she'd only ever seen one in the movies).
Sylvie ignored her mother and hunkered down, half-kneeling, in front of the iguana. Her father eyed her with a feral curiosity as the animal planted its little hands on her bare, stubbly shin. She flinched.
Before it could climb any farther, she held her palm out, the olive poised on the tips of her fingers. The lizard eyeballed it briefly; then, with a flick of its crimson tongue, lobbed it into its mouth. The girl and boy at the tourists’ table, who’d been jumping and squirming in their chairs, tried to run over for a closer look, but their parents were having none of it and now the kids were howling in protest.
“Oh, aren’t you cute!” Sylvie said to the iguana. She picked it up and held it against her shoulder while she got to her feet, legs trembling. So much for three vodka martinis.
Her eyes shone as she stroked the lizard's back with two fingers. "Ooh, your skin is so soft! I never would have guessed. It looks pebbly." She gazed into her father's face as a wave of bliss wafted across her own. For a moment, eyelids half closed, she appeared to lapse into a kind of trance.
“Yes, it is. But you better be careful with that creature, cara.” Aldo's curiosity deepened into a quasi-prurient fascination as he tracked Sylvie's ecstatic face, her slender hands nestling the iguana in the crook of her neck.
But only for a moment.
“Yiyyy!" she cried. "What’s happening to my ear?” She flashed her father a damsel-in-distress look.
Aldo gasped, jolted by her abrupt change of mood—and as exasperated at her apparent lack of common sense as he was alarmed at the possibility that the animal might be causing his daughter injury.
“Really, Syl," said Claire, sotto voce. "You might want to put her down before she rips it off. Your earring."
“Literally,”announced their mother, dragging the word out. She sniffed, then peered around the room, whistling tunelessly under her breath.
Steve, who had yet to go for their drinks, eyed the proceedings as his face clouded over. “Miss, I think you’d better put her down. The lizard, I mean. She doesn’t understand, she doesn’t know her own strength—”
“Aaaughh! Somebody help me quick,” Sylvie pleaded. “It’s eating my earlobe.”
“Sylvie, don’t be such a damn fool.” Leah held up a piece of pickled cabbage in her chopsticks, studied it, and popped it into her mouth.
“Jeez, it must be the jade in your earring," said Aldo. "Just wants to see if it's edible, that’s all.” He got up and shambled over to his daughter. "They're attracted to bright colors, you know."
He peered at the iguana's magnificent, inscrutable face, its perfectly-proportoned claws. "Sylvie, you should take your earring off, right now. It'll leave you alone if you do that."
Was this true? Claire marveled at their father's flawless instinct when it came to the lower fauna, how he just seemed to know how a lizard would behave.
"No way! It'll nibble my fingers, won't it, Daddy? You take it off for me."
"Well, I don't know about that." Truth to tell, his hands had always reminded Claire of a couple of catcher's mitts. "Maybe your sister could help you out—"
"Of course!" Claire said to her. "I mean, if—"
Sylvie shot her a look of desperation tinged with doubt.
Aldo shrugged at their waiter, who nodded and dashed away as if he'd just remembered he was at work.
Claire got up to help her sister. Suddenly, or so it seemed to her, the couple and their two small children from the tourists' table headed straight for their own, the girl bounding gleefully in front, the boy in hot pursuit. The grownups, though they'd paid their check, initially seemed in no hurry to leave. They bumbled along behind the kids, staring wide-eyed around the room before zeroing in on the drama unfolding before them. The father, white and beefy, sported a backwards Yankees cap and a Dodgers jersey. His forearms looked to Claire as if they'd been rubbed with car grease, until she realized they were covered with tattoos sloping down, it seemed, all the way from his shoulders and peeking out the sleeves of his shirt. The mother—petite, Black and elegant in a style Claire decided must be L.A. casual—wore large pink hoop earrings, a flowy top and pink track pants with a lime-green stripe down each side. Both the kids were dressed in mini baseball outfits, their Statue-of-Liberty toppers bobbling gently as they ran.
“O look, Mommy! That baby dinosaur's chewing that lady’s ear! Oh please, can we watch, please Mommy! Daddy, please?” The kids' words spilled over each other as they jockeyed for their parents' attention.
“No! absolutely not," roared their father as their mother attempted to herd them past the Buzzatis' table. "Now stop it, both of you, or we’re gonna give the twice-cooked pork to Red Fang."
"Come on!" said their mother. "We can’t keep him waiting any longer, you know how he gets when—" As if on cue, the kids changed course without a peep and hurried to push their way outside. The clang and clatter of dishes swallowed the grownups' departing words.
Marveling at the family's wondrous unity of purpose, however fleeting, Claire sensed they had played this scene many times before. She watched the door glide shut behind them as they disappeared into the night.
Turning to her sister who, along with their parents, hadn't noticed the family at all, Claire said "Sylvie, let me do this, you know Daddy's fingers are too fat."
Aldo sat down, visibly relieved.
She lifted a spindly claw off her sister's ear. "It has your earring in its mouth! It's pulling on it, that's why it hurts."
"No way!" Sylvie whined. "Please, just make it let go!"
Claire tickled the creature's leathery jaw, its skin soft and cool to the touch. "Come on, funny one, you know that's not a soybean. You can spit it out now."
As if on cue, the iguana dropped the bauble. The jade shimmered on the deep rouge of its tongue as the stone slid flawlessly free, causing the earring to swing, for a moment, like a tiny pendulum from Sylvie's lobe.
Claire felt her sister's body go slack against hers. "You're not going to faint, are you honey? The lizard's not even moving now."
"How did you do that? It obeyed you like a dog."
Steve hurried back to their table with three more vodka martinis, the tea, and the blond woman in the trenchcoat, to whose wrist the iguana was tethered. As she appoached her pet, the leash retracted: two beings, one vertical, sleek and tall, on two legs; the other horizontal, rubbly and petite, on four, appeared to reintegrate like disparate components of a single form of life gone awry and now flowing back together again.
"Oh, thank you," the woman gushed to Claire as she hurried toward the sisters. She plucked her pet off of Sylvie's shoulder. “Are you alright, sweetheart?"
"I'm okay." Sylvie eyed her briefly. The woman held the iguana up with both hands and air-nuzzled it, nose to nose.
"Come on, Beatrice! You bad bad girl. Look what you did to this nice lady’s ear.” She kissed the air in front of the lizard's head and chucked her under the chin.
Beatrice stuck out her tongue. Her back had turned a brilliant green.
The woman settled her in the crook of her elbow and poked around in her bag for a tissue. "Here, take this, honey."
"Thank you." Sylvie offered a wan smile and blotted her ear with the tissue. Sneaking a look at the speckles of blood it came back with, she let out a howl.
The woman gasped. "What did my little girl do to you? It can't be that bad, she's a vegan."
Beatrice closed her eyes and slowly opened them again.
Her owner inspected Sylvie's ear. "Just a few flecks. You're not bleeding anymore." She held her pet close against her raincoat the color of pondslime. Its skin darkened into a shade that reminded Claire of cardboard boxes left in the rain.
“Beatrice loves jade,” the woman said.
She grinned ruefully at Claire and Sylvie. "I'm Hester, by the way."
"Claire." Hester gave her hand a flaccid shake. Claire touched Sylvie's arm. "My sister, who also loves jade. Sylvie."
"What a pretty name! I'm sooo sorry. Are you gonna be all right now?" Hester stroked her shoulder.
"Fine. I'll be fine." Sylvie started to pull out her chair.
"Let me help you with that," said Hester.
She glanced at Leah and Aldo as if noticing them for the first time. Her eyes lit up when Aldo met her gaze, his own eyes eager, voracious. Leah smiled uncertainly and looked away.
"Our parents," said Claire.
Aldo got up and, with a flourish, kissed Hester's outstretched hand. "Complimenti," he said, as if she had just brought down the house with a brilliant performance. She flashed him a quizzical, delighted look.
For a moment the two figures stared into each other's face, eyes shining. Suddenly elegant, larger than life—the muted colors of their clothing, to say nothing of Beatrice's back, complementing the glow of their expressions—they might have been a movie poster from the forties.
The Maltese Iguana?
Claire couldn't help wondering what her sister would think, if she were paying attention.
Hester cleared her throat. "Come on princess, let's say goodnight to these lovely people." She took one of Beatrice's claws between her thumb and forefinger and waved the Buzzatis goodbye with it.
Sylvie stared. Leah frowned into her lap. Aldo beamed.
The two of them, owner and pet, sashayed off together, putting Claire in mind of a Pietà as Hester held her baby close and burbled sweet nothings in its ear.
She looked back over her shoulder once, her eyes seeking Aldo's, or so it seemed to Claire.
No one noticed.
"Al, where's our food?" Leah blurted. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm famished."
"Me too!" Sylvie had removed her earring and was rolling it around in her fingers. "But I won't eat shrimp, it makes me vomit."
"Yes-dear-we-know-that. And you know damn well we ordered it. With garlic sauce, because we happen to love it. But you don't have to eat it."
"I can't believe you did that! Where was I when you guys put that in?" Sylvie cast a pleading look at her sister.
"Calm down honey, I wasn't even here yet."
"You were in the ladies'," their mother said to Sylvie, "for so long we were beginning to wonder what was the matter. Your father didn't want to wait any longer."
Sylvie ignored her. "Right, I forgot," she razzed Claire. "Of course you weren't here yet, you're always late. Why did I dare to think it would be any different this time?"
"Sylvie, it's no big deal. I'll eat your share of the shrimp, and you can eat my Kung Pao chicken."
"No way! That stuff is way too greasy for me. I don't know how you Americans can stomach all the glop they serve in Chinese restaurants over here."
"So you're not American now, eh?" Leah narrowed her eyes at her second-born. "Just because you live in that beautiful place—look, if you don't like it here, why don't you just go back where you came from."
"Mama, what are you saying!" cried Claire.
"Damn. Why does it always have to get like this." Sylvie threw her napkin down on the table. "I'm outta here. Claire, do you have the key to your apartment?"
"Wait Syl, please don't do this. If you leave I have to come with you. I'm not staying here by my—"
"For chrissake Leah, must you always find a way to make a brutta figura?!" bellowed Aldo. "Just stop it, alla you females! Enough is enough, punt'e basta!"
His wife bared her teeth at him. I hate you, she mouthed, leaving a space between each word.
Then, in full voice: "Aldo, how can you be so unfair. You're so drunk you don't even know what you're say—"
"In-deed! I think that calls for another drink. What do you think, Claire?"
"Me?! Daddy, that's the second time you've asked that. I still don't drink. Can't we just have our dinner now?"
"If it ever deigns to arrive," Leah snorted. "Meantime, honey, you'd better go easy on that I-don't-drink routine. We've had quite enough of your holier-than-thou shit." She turned to her husband. "I think we should order a bottle of wine, don't you, dear?"
"Claire! Let's go!" Sylvie pulled on her sister's arm. She was already out of her chair.
"Wait, here comes Steve with our food. Please Sylvie, let's just get this over with."
"OK guys! Here you are. Just what the doctor ordered!" Steve sang out, delighting in the serendipitous aptness of his pronouncement. He introduced each dish by name as he placed it on the table; by the time he'd finished, the surface was covered with enough food for several families of four, let alone just one.
"Who ordered the pupu platter?" Sylvie pouted. "I don't eat fattening junk like that anymore."
"And I suppose you're the only one eating here tonight, too," sneered her mother. "Sylvie, don't be such a damn fool. You know your father loves the deep-fried lotus root."
"Me too, actually!" Claire said. "Wish I didn't."
"Yecch." Sylvie grimaced, eyeing Aldo as if he'd just confessed to a fondness for candied water bugs. He stared back at her until she looked away and appeared to search the room, eyes glazed and vacant.
"You--you, old girl—" Leah zeroed in on Claire—"you should stay away from fried food altogether. You still have a halfway-decent figure, don't let yourself go any farther, huh? Huh? Claire, you listening?"
In fact, Claire had to wonder how her mother felt about her own size at this late date in her life, she who claimed—as the old photos showed—that the last time she'd been at her "ideal weight" was just before she got pregnant with Claire.
For a moment, the family ate and drank in silence. . .but only for a moment.
"Hester. What a strange name," said Sylvie. "Sounds very old-fashioned."
"Well, you know where it comes from, don't you?" Leah lowered her voice as if she were about to pass on a juicy rumor.
"No. Should I?"
"Hester Prynne, Hester Prynne, howzabout a glass of gin?" Aldo chanted, gazing around the room.
"The Scarlet Letter. Didn't you read that in high school? I thought everyone had to. In English class."
"Not anymore, Mama," said Claire, pre-emptively rising to her sister's defense. "Not necessarily."
"If we had it, I don't remember." Sylvie picked up a snowpea. Anchoring it with one of her chopsticks, she proceeded to cleanse it of oil with the other before lifting it to her mouth. Claire couldn't help noticing how thoroughly she chewed before she swallowed, before she picked up another piece. How few pieces she ate, how she repeated the ritual with every one.
"Because you didn't read it, of course," said Leah. "I can't imagine why any mother would want to give her daughter that name."
"She was a Puritan who committed adultery with the minister of her church," Claire stage-whispered to her sister.
Was that even true? She couldn't be sure. She heard it echo in her own ear like a line from a Cliff Notes synopsis.
"What?" shouted Sylvie. "I can't hear you!"
"Never mind," said Claire.
"The town elders made her wear a red "A" on the front of her blouse for fucking the reverend," said her father. "A 'scarlet letter'."
"And he got off scot free!?" Sylvie wailed.
"Always the way," huffed her mother. She popped a huge shrimp dripping with garlic sauce into her mouth.
"Always the way, always the way." Aldo leered at his daughters.
"Ooffah," Claire blurted, despite her best efforts.
"A. . . for aguana?" said her sister. "It works. . ."
"Sylvie, don't be such a damn fool."
"'Aguana!'" said Claire. "That's great! I wonder what Hester would think of it. Beatrice's mother, I mean."
"Owner." Leah chided Claire. "She didn't give birth to that animal." Then, to Sylvie, "Don't you know how to spell the word, dimwit? You had just as good an education as—"
"Sorry, guess I missed class the day they talked about Latin American lizards." She pushed a few peanuts around her plate. "Il professore said "iguana with an A", waddya want from me."
"Ah, Claire amended. "'Iguana, spell with Ah.'" She jerked her head toward their father and rolled her eyes. Sylvie grimaced conspiratorially.
"Where is that nice Chinese boy? He needs to bring the check," said their mother.
By the time they left, all the plates were bare. Even Sylvie noshed away several dishes of those crispy noodles no one eats unless they're drinking—or already drunk.
Needless to say, they washed it all down with a fifth round. . . except for Claire, who guzzled her way through three pots of smoky tea.
While Sylvie was in the bathroom, Aldo floated a proposition.
"How about we come up to your place when we drop your sister off? I hear you've got something to show us," he said to Claire.
"And what would that be?" She felt the breath catch in her throat.
"I hear you have a gorgeous new piano. Sylvie told us. Is that right?"
"But why, dear? You don't play anymore, do you?" Leah gave her an incredulous look, then rummaged in her bag for her lipstick. "Why don't you go see what's taking your sister so long? This is the second time tonight she's pulled this stunt."
"There was a line when I came out," said Claire. "Didn't you notice? Only two stalls, a big restaurant like this—it's outrageous."
"Never a line at the men's room," Aldo put in. "Why don't you females use it?"
Leah made a face. "Claire, just get over there and have a look. Please."
She was about to push her chair back however reluctantly when Sylvie returned, her face flushed.
"Really, Sylvie, I've never known you to take this long," Leah fumed. "Your sister was the one we always had to wait for, not you. She used to read whole books on the toilet. Didn't you, old girl."
"There was a line," Sylvie said. "Gimme a break."
End Part One.
Part Two will appear in our April issue.
But if that’s too long to wait, feel free to email us and we’ll send you the complete story as a PDF.
Part Two will appear in our April issue.
But if that’s too long to wait, feel free to email us and we’ll send you the complete story as a PDF.