Revenge of the Cootie Girls (12 page)

“You're the one who called. How did Julie contact you?”

“I got a FedEx this morning.”

“I wish I had stock in FedEx.”

“She said that you'd be here, and I was supposed to tell you these words: ‘neon hand.'”

Neon hand. That was a clue. Ah, she had used this guy to deliver a clue and to test me, see if I'd rat her out. That hurt.

“Does that mean anything to you?” he said.

“Yeah, it's what you find in a fortune-teller's window.”

“Does this mean anything?” he said, handing me a tear sheet.

It was from a local sex newspaper, dated 1983, which showed an ad for an escort service. Male escorts. I couldn't figure out what the hell this was about, until I looked a little more closely at the black-and-white picture in the ad, which showed four handsome men. One of them was Gabriel, the guy George had fixed me up with on our last night in New York, at the end of our week of dining, dancing, and getting free stuff from fashion designers. Gabriel wasn't an important character in the trip for me at all. We didn't hit it off. I didn't hit it off with any of the guys George had brought along when we all went out together.

Now that I thought about it, Gabriel forgot George's name a couple of times, and George paid for everything.

George had bought me a date.

This was the kind of thing Julie would have thought funny, but I just felt humiliated. Oddly enough, I've never had that much trouble getting dates on my own. But I guess it's a little harder to set someone up with a girl from out of town, sight unseen, who won't put out because she's being faithful to her asshole back-home boyfriend.

I looked at the guy sitting next to me with even more suspicion now. For all I knew, he was a male escort. That would play on Julie's sense of irony, to hire a male escort to deliver news about a male escort. Maybe he used that fake badge in his work for customers with a law-enforcement fetish—Hello, boy store? Send over a nice clean-cut-looking young man with handcuffs and a badge.

“What's the significance of this clipping?” asked “Special Agent” Walter.

“It's all just part of Julie's joke,” I said.

“You sure you don't know where she is?”

“As I said, I haven't spoken to the woman since 1979. Are you sure you don't know where she is?” I asked, wiggling my eyebrows.

“Have you been drinking?” he asked.

“Two sips of a wine spritzer.”

“Do you know Johnny Chiesa?” he asked in a whisper.

“Who the …” I began, and then stopped. No, I wasn't going to fall into this one. “Never heard of him.”

“Special Agent” Walter gave me his card. “If you hear from her, call me. It's very important.”

“Oh, sure,” I said, paying the bartender and leaving. Yeah, wouldn't Julie love that, if I called up the FBI and asked for a nonexistent FBI agent. Or maybe there really was an agent by that name, who would listen to me and not have a clue what the hell I was talking about.

For a fleeting second, as I walked somewhat aimlessly towards the Bowery, I wondered if maybe that fed really was a fed. He was humorless enough to qualify.

“And a gang of wig-wearing women in Groucho-nose glasses are holding my intern Kathy hostage in order to get their granny back. Oh, right, Robin!” I said to myself, possibly aloud. “You're as bad as that guy leaning in the doorway there in the tinfoil earmuffs, cocking his head from side to side, humming, with a dazed look in his eyes.”

“Moody's my friend,” he said. “I came to see Moody.”

He hummed some more, put his hands on his earmuffs like he was turning the dials on his head, and said, “Shadow Traffic.”

“I'm probably crazier than he is.” Then I realized I was talking to myself and shut my mouth.

Maybe the tinfoil guy wasn't nuts. Maybe he was just ahead of the curve. There used to be this guy who stood in front of the Jackson Broadcasting System building shouting about how our signals were frying his brain. Now, we know that people who live too close to transmission towers and big satellite dishes have a higher risk of brain cancer. And you've heard about people picking up radio signals in their fillings. So who knows. Maybe this guy was just one walking high-fidelity unit, trying to tune in a clear signal amidst all the static. Going from static to a faint country-Western signal to a news station to static to a taxicab dispatcher talking in rapid Hindi to a radio preacher whom he mistakes for the voice of God. I hoped he got an easy-listening station soon. Five gets you ten he had serious cooties when he was a kid.

Neon hand. That rang a bell in the back of my head. Or maybe it was the sound of my phone ringing again.

“Very good,” said the voice on the phone. It was the head woman from the Groucho-nose-glasses gang. “You did very well. You passed the test.”

And she hung up.

“Well, goody for me,” I said. How did she know that guy had … Well, of course. They were all in cahoots with Julie and she'd set it all up. Duh.

Unfortunately, this clue wasn't going to do me much good. After Cafe Buñuel, I remembered, George and his friends had taken us back to our hotel, and along the way we made a couple of stops. While we were at a red light, Julie had caught the eye of a fortune-teller who was just about to turn off the giant neon hand in her window. She waved us in and on a lark we went, while George and his friends parked and patiently waited outside for us. It was irresistible, a real New York gypsy fortune-teller, with a big, heavy crucifix around her neck and a babushka scarf around her head, just like in the movies.

For five bucks, she read my palm and told me I'd be a television reporter. Lucky guess, right? Actually she wheedled it out of me, though I didn't realize it at the time. Being a
tad
naïve, I thought she was gifted, but she just baited the hook and reeled me in. “I see you with a long stick of some kind,” she said at one point. I responded, “A microphone?” “Yes, yes, a microphone. You're performing or …” “Reporting?” “Reporting, yes, you're a reporter, and I see you in a place with lot of grand old buildings.…” “Washington?” “Washington, yes.”

The old gypsy told Julie she was going to be a great painter. Probably used the stick line on her too. A lot of people use sticks in their work, but if I hadn't responded to the stick, she could have kept prodding until some imagery connected with my secret dream. I'd seen Sally do this with people. Now that I was older and wiser, etc., I knew the tricks.

So, yeah, I knew where we'd gone next. But, damn, I'd never find that fortune-teller in this city, which has thousands of them. She was pretty old then. She was probably dead by now.

9

T
HE PHONE RANG AGAIN.
Jeez, I was turning into one of those jerks who walk around talking on their cell phones all the time. I have a love-hate relationship with the telephone and have mixed feelings about people being able to reach me any time of the day or night no matter where I am.

“What now?” I said.

“Robin?”

“Claire! I'm so happy it's you!”

“I'm through. Where are you?”

“On Canal, heading towards the Bowery.”

“Where can I meet you guys?”

“Singular. Tamayo got swept away by the Halloween Parade. Hmmm. You know the No-Name Diner on the Bowery, around Great Jones Street?”

“You know I hate burger joints.”

“I'm tired and hungry and I have to have some red meat. I haven't eaten in a couple of hours.… So much stuff has happened.…”

After I gave her the headlines, she said, “Some friend, fucking up your night like this. Are you sure there's a reconciliation waiting for you at the end of this and not a confrontation?”

“You have to know Julie,” I said. “And her sense of humor. I'll fill you in later.”

“Okay. I'll meet you at the No-Name and bring the stuff I pulled for you. I just have to pick it up from the library.”

“Do you have a costume? Because I'm in costume and if I look like a dork you have to look like a dork too.”

“I checked out something from JBS props and costumes. I'll change into it.…”

“Please. And do me another favor.…”

“Okay.”

“Do you still have the spare key to my place?”

“Yes.”

“Can you stop at my place and bring me something?”

“Yeah, sure,” she said. “What do you want?”

“It's a gold Godiva chocolate box in the bottom of my trunk at the end of my bed.”

“Okay,” she said.

“You're a pal. You sound blue. Are you okay?”

“Madri Michaels has read Solange's manuscript and she told me that I'm chapter fifteen.”

“I heard.”

“It's the second time in as many days Solange has directly or indirectly … Why do I care what she thinks? It's just, I have a few doubts myself still.…”

“I know you do.”

“But I just couldn't see myself being a Washington political wife, you know? Dealing with all the reporters and the backstabbing, not to mention the asskissing.”

“I know.”

“Everything you do or say is completely picked apart and/or twisted.”

“I know.”

“Oh God. Did I do the right thing? Jess wasn't always so intransigent, you know. I was in love with him. He's going to be a great, great man and …”

In five minutes, if Claire continued this line of thought, I knew she would completely reverse herself, and be cursing her job and her own selfish dreams for taking her away from Jess, a good guy whom she had loved once, until you were convinced she wanted to go back to him. But if you suggested this, she'd reverse herself again, and end up crying. It was tiring, having to be so supportive on both sides of an argument.

“My career is important. I couldn't be a reporter
and
a political wife. At first it was okay, it was a new world, Jess was great.…”

“It's okay, Claire. There, there …”

“Robin, don't do that,” Claire said.

“Do what?”

“Be so … sympathetic, so.…”

“Nurturing.”

“Yeah. If I want sympathy I'll call my grandma or my sister.”

“Well, what do you want from me, then?”

“I don't know. The usual. It's like the … Okay, you know that diplomatic dinner I went to? The disaster? After I pound my fist to make a point, sending my salad fork somersaulting through the air towards an unsuspecting waiter, I'd much rather have you or Tamayo say, ‘You nailed him! Good shot!' than have an oh-so-diplomatic wife pat my shoulder and whisper—discreetly, for heaven's sake—‘That's okay. We'll get you another fork.' Then resume discussing the business at hand.”

“I think I know what …”

“She was trying to be kind, but I felt more embarrassed, more awful. Do you understand?”

“Yeah.”

I'd rather be loudly embarrassed and get a laugh out of it, than quietly embarrassed by someone who is too well meaning, though I'd rather not be embarrassed at all, and I am much more of an expert on this subject than Claire, for whom a flying fork is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Claire, for example, has never risen to accept an award, tripped over the hem of her dress, and accidentally pushed the mayor's face into his soup.

“When people feel sorry for me …”

“I dig, Claire.”

“I'll see you in, say, a half-hour,” she said, sounding irritated.

Boy, was she touchy these days. But she was going through a hard time, so I had to cut her some slack.

I wasn't always so extra-sensitive. You know, when I first heard about Claire's troubles that summer, the first thing I felt was a little schadenfreude rush. I hate to admit it, but I felt a bit relieved. I didn't want to feel that way, because she's a terrific person who got where she is by sheer force of will and talent and I love her blah blah blah, but there you go, that's the first thing I felt. I couldn't help it. Her life looked so perfect, and knowing it wasn't and she wasn't made me feel just a tad less inadequate next to her. One of the reasons I felt so inadequate next to her was racial. She had to overcome sexism
and
racism, whereas I only had to overcome one big external obstacle, and yet I hadn't done nearly as well as she had. That meant … omigod … some of my career problems had to come from … me, perhaps a few more than I had originally estimated. Not only that, but she had been doing very well in areas of failure for me. She's been a star Washington correspondent, a job I had tried and blown. Until it went kerblooey, she had been in a seemingly perfect love affair with one of the most eligible men in America.

After I got over that first thrill of shameful joy, my empathy kicked in, so much so that hearing her miserable made me miserable too. It also shook my confidence, because, if someone as supremely confident as Claire could get shaken like this, what hope did a neurotic like me have? Even though she was younger than me, Claire, I realized, had become one of my role models—in some ways, not all. I'd learned a lot about confidence from her.

(I also learned a lot about national politics, synthetic languages, exotic diseases, and rural Southern folk magic. Her mother wrote quasi-anthropological books about folk magic, some of which was pretty wild. For instance, if you want to keep a man faithful, cook a little of your menstrual blood into his food. Eeuw. As Tamayo said, it may not keep a guy faithful, but just mention it and he'll think twice before he asks you to fetch his dinner.)

Long story short, what I learned was, schadenfreude aside, it's better to have happy, successful friends, because unhappy friends are a lot more grief. Plus, it's easier to borrow money from happy, successful friends, should the need arise.

How much the whole Jess thing tore Claire up became clear to me when I went to visit her in Washington, just after it all happened, and we rented
Casablanca
. Claire took
Casablanca
very personally. Did she defy her own nature and stay with Jess for the good of the nation, like Ingrid Bergman? Or did she choose television news, which would be the Humphrey Bogart character in this scenario? Or was it the other way around, was it better for the nation if she was a reporter and Jess was Humphrey Bogart? What about her needs? But it wasn't just
Casablanca
, it was shots of happy couples on television, even TV commercials in which supportive wives did laundry, cooked, or otherwise fussed over husbands and kids. Everything she watched, heard, saw seemed fraught with meaning for her, pricking a different question in her head.