Dancing in the Dark (12 page)

The warehouse john had broken down around 7 o’clock for some reason and Hayden, tall, sardonic, affable, dark pigmentation American, also the composer for the group, since he was in the area, commandeered the telephone and got in touch with a Spanish guy over on 7th who could apparently fix anything with threads at either end.

“You look after this lady’s dog,” Hayden tells him. “I’ve got to go and get myself a cold beer and talk to Bats.” Bats Ekberg is the drummer for the Desperados; like Tom, he’s originally from Toronto.

Tom smiles at her. “You seem to be at the head of the line,” he says.

“I think I’m first, I’ve been here for hours,” says a plump girl with steel rims and a shaven head with neat little cross-lines running back and forth across her head like drunken Xs & Os. Sort of a grid haircut, suggesting
some sort of affinity with gridlock, street maps, office floor designs, urban planning,
UFO
s, or radar screens.

“You have indeed,” says Red very graciously. She brushes an imaginary white Borzoi from her gorgeous unbuttoned suit.

The young woman fiddler across the room, 75% obscured by moving blurs of multicoloured people, is leaning with her back against one of the large industrial windows. She’s not participating in conversation very much with Whitney any more. Whitney is talking with her hands now, quite enthusiastic about something. The guy called Henner, important enough, well, he’s the group’s manager, older guy, suit; stupid name, Tom can’t quite see his face, just a corner of it from where he is standing, but the guy is obviously pitching something with a bit of a slant to Whitney. He looks a bit like a much older cousin. Sort of an interesting face, but weathered, slightly distorted. Tom has an odd flash of a Korean War veteran’s face, but very brief, fleeting, wonders about him.

Mason licks a flake of Durham from his lip and nods as he picks up on Tom’s attention.

“I really like your dog. He looks athletic,” Tom says to the girl.

“My name’s Laura,” she says, “Laura Redfield.” She holds out a calm gloved hand.

“Tom Garrone. I’m the songwriter.” He feels proud. The subtle shaded V at the top of her top button, she has no blouse underneath, is beginning to excite him.

Tom gets excited easily, but it’s mostly walking on fences. People are very loose about sex in the group. They’re hard on drugs but they’re pretty loose on sex. He feels he should try out a few numbers, but doesn’t know himself how serious he is.

“I’m a graphic artist,” she says, “actually, right now at least, I do a lot of photo research. Weird things.” She gestures airily, mock airily. “
UFO
s for a magazine article. Southern poor families who live on tinned possum meat.” She laughs, she thinks this last remark is apparently funny, almost daintily at first, and then breaks up; when she breaks up laughing she strikes Tom as extremely sexy, he wants to get into bed with her right this minute, what the hell, maybe the washroom, at least it’s got a door. He’s slightly drunk.

He should probably go back to nothing but Lite beer. Meanwhile of course he’s still watching Whitney. This whole business of being so stacked on Whitney, and, at the same time, there being always so many other people around is beginning to faze and fumble on him. His big head is beginning to slip. It makes him a little dizzy.

“Woops,” she says gustily as the plump girl comes out of the john and a young guy with romantic chestnut brown hair down past his shoulders, 60s revival neo 60s Sassoon, not hip at all, is about, glancing at Laura as he does so, to Gabriel into the can.

She puts one gloved hand gently on Sassoon’s shoulder. “Do pardon me,” she says to the Gabriel look-alike, “I simply must pee. Otherwise,” she grins at Tom, whom she obviously likes but it’s all so crazy, what does it all mean, people floating about glancing off each other like atoms bombarding the inside of an accelerator, “my dog will get upset.”

She leaves Borzoi to guard the door and sails in smoothing her skirt very deliberately across her buttocks for no apparent reason other than flair or flirtation.

“Mason,” says Tom to Mason, sounding more like Mason than like himself, “my nostrils are full of Opium by St. Laurent.”

“Easy boy,” Mason has a long draw on his handrolled cigarette and grins philosophically at Tom, almost squinting, “you’ve got to loosen up a little. You’ve got the star over there. What’s your problem? You heard what Hayden said,” he adds, “you’ve got to open up the bass notes on those songs. Got to cool down. We’re pulling out tomorrow. Tour bus galore. This is a big tour,” he says, “you’ve got to walk easy unless you’re busy on stage.”

Tom imagines he can hear the sound of the beautiful red-haired girl’s golden urine tinkling against the dusty white porcelain toilet bowl over and above the multiple sounds of the revelry.

Although last night with Whitney more than satisfied Tom’s basic carnal drives and animal needs, he’s wired for erotic signals, maybe as a result of living a quiet life on small dollars per week at the 12×16 container on East 16th, and seeing Barbara, wonderful but not bizazzy, 4 or 5 times a week. Whatever the causality, metaphysics doesn’t really have to come into it. Tom was a little on the shy side in late high school, or so he remembers,
but has been somewhat wired fritzed shunted for erotic pulselights since sometime after college.

The girl’s perfume, red hair, she said her name was Laura, lingers in the air as he stands leaning against the wall outside the loft washroom talking to Mason. Tom is a little drunk, that’s one thing, well, almost drunk, one big double belt of Scotch that Yvonne gave him from a fifth in her handbag, “You’ll like this,” she said, “this is what you guys drink up north isn’t it?” and 4 or 5 Gallos have certainly made him a little loose. And parties seem to affect him this way, they rub him one way, he feels smothered, who are all these people, he’d like to be back in his favourite bar talking to his friend Jack, who is here somewhere now, or he’d like to be back in the Widener Library at Harvard, reading some of the material on the first Italian writers in New York, in the 1920s; but parties also affect him in the second way, they rev him, stoke him, shake him around, make him feel like doing various odd crazy manic things.

So here he is, it’s a bit late in the evening, it’s getting dark outside, this party is probably going to go until the small hours although the Desperados themselves have to get up fairly early in the morning and pull out for Chicago (but that won’t stop them from partying all night if they feel like it, the crazy guys); and Tom is leaning against the wall talking to Mason who is actually talking to somebody else and Tom has all sorts of pretty colours going through his big head: party colours, sounds, the girl with red hair, that’s how he thinks of her, Laura. He leans down and pats the dog’s head, Borzoi, is that his name? The dog slants his head to the side and looks at him quizzically. Blue eyes, Tom thinks, since when do dogs have blue eyes?

When Laura comes out, surrendering the washroom to Sassoon, Tom leans against the wall and talks to her very intimately. “I think we should probably get together,” he says, “have lunch,” forgetting that he and the Desperados, and Whitney, whom he seems to have forgotten about for the moment, are all going to be packing up and out of town by tomorrow afternoon, “someplace outdoors and sunny. I think we both have a lot to talk about.”

“And what about Borzoi?” she says. “I never have lunch without him.”
She smooths her thick glossy red hair back with one hand, thrusting her upper body forward slightly. Tom takes this in. Her hips swivel a titch. Tom reacts. He puts one hand on her shoulder.

“I think you’re really lovely,” he says, “marry me.” The dog growls. It’s a very soft low sibilant growl, not what you would normally think of as a dog growl at all.

“O not yet,” she says perkily, “shouldn’t we have some sort of courtship, go to Hawaii for a couple of weeks first or something like that? This guy over at the Buster Keaton Advertising Co. on 57th asked me if I’d like to go to Bermuda to go marlin fishing a couple of weeks ago. And I said, Marlin fishing? I don’t even know how to fish for trout. My father goes fishing,” she says sadly, as if this fact is a momentary blister on the otherwise perfect face of reality. She has a very fine line of light brown freckles across the bridge of her nose. Tom has a momentary semi, just a shift of emphasis, a faint bulge, nothing serious as yet. Besides he has loose pants on, must stop wearing jeans, no one else does any more, and the loose white jacket with the flap pockets is quite concealing, discreet.

He puts a hand on each of her trim black linen shoulders and kisses her, quite a long kiss, right there in front of everybody outside the washroom door. Hey, marry her, fella, somebody anonymous calls from out of the crowd.

She kisses back, this is true, mouth slightly parted, hips loose, hands half-raised, but doesn’t open her mouth, doesn’t put her tongue, no, that would be a bit much, in his handsome mouth.

Borzoi rises to the occasion and jumps up with his feathery white front paws on their shoulders, as if either trying to separate them or perhaps enter their embrace. Tom’s hand brushes her breast as they disengage. She kisses his hand.

Tom is not totally unaware of most of the party, exactly where they are, has forgotten about Whitney, who is obviously here somewhere, and has totally forgotten about the fact that they are going out of town tomorrow.

“It’s really hot in here,” says Tom uncomfortably, a little flushed, “why don’t we get some fresh air and a cool drink down the street?” He doesn’t know exactly where they should go, he simply has the automatic impulse
that he would like the two of them, uh uh, 3, counting Borzoi, to get out to the freedom of the street. Freedom of the street, he thinks to himself, clichés, this is a cliché and I’m acting it out.

“I’ll be a second,” she says, “don’t go away, just wait here and I’ll be right back. Riiight back,” she adds. Borzoi trots dutifully behind Red’s gorgeous derrière as she sashays through crowds of people in the general direction of the improvised long table and planks and packing cases bar.

Of course she never comes back, and by the time that Tom realizes she was probably on her way home for the evening when she stopped for a quick pee in the first place, several other things have changed. He is a little soberer, a little dulled, and he has a small fierce little triphammer of a headache starting up somewhere in the far left side of his head.

He sees Mason standing a few feet away, leaning against the rough plaster wall and hopes he doesn’t look foolish.

“You are completely right, Mase,” he says. He slaps Mason on the shoulder. “Ok,” he says, “I think I’ve had too much to drink. I’m gonna get some air.”

“You’ve got to drink Lightning more slowly,” says Mason, as Tom ambles, turning this way and that, across the room to where Whitney is talking to Henner.

But when he arrives at the far west side of the room, he finds, by the big industrial window, the fiddler woman with a bright Peruvian vest, talking to a couple of girlfriends about how great Maria Muldaur is, and how stupid men are about cooking. “I mean,” she says, “they’re so beautiful, and you really try to love them in the best way you can; but, fuck, they don’t even wash up the pots, not even the pots, after they do simple things like steak and mashed potatoes.”

“I never eat beef,” one of her friends says, “chicken, I eat chicken once or twice a week. I don’t even like to see a chicken get killed.”

“Ok, then, chicken. They don’t even wash up the pots afterwards after they’ve done some chicken.” She turns to Tom. “You’re looking for somebody,” she says.

“Yeah, uh, tall slim dark girl, bright lipstick, sort of classy looking. She was standing right here talking to some old guy.”

“Some old guy?” the country rock fiddler says. “You mean hen-killer Henner? That hawk-eyed fart. Grover, my boyfriend, was in a group he managed. I think they split.” She says this with a gesture of vague hopefulness.

“Split?”

“I don’t know. I think they were heading for the front door.”

So, Whitney has done one of her famous splits, this time with the vaguely degenerate manager of the group, an older guy, a coke user, and a guy Tom doesn’t particularly like, in contrast to the healthy 20somethings radical character of the Desperados themselves. Hayden is involved in some business deal on a different floor. Laura has apparently split also, with her impressive dog. And Tom himself feels strangely satisfied and also hungry. It’s about 10:30 or somewhere around there, the band is heading for Bloomington, Ind., and the Desperados’ farewell is beginning, for Tom, to collapse around his large handsome head like a crayon-coloured brown paper bag.

He hears the women’s laughter over his shoulder as he wanders through the group of people in the direction of the kitchen.

The scene in the kitchen, not a small room by any means, is not bizarre or spectacular, but, nevertheless, it knocks Tom for a loop.

The grey & orange tiled counter space around the double sink at the far wall has been supplanted by a long trestle table set up to accommodate a variety of plates and bowls eventually bound for the main room and hungry people’s happy mouths. A large plump French guy with marcelled blond hair in a tall floppy white chef’s hat and big over-size white apron is doing up 2 large frying pans of veal meatballs. An asst. sans floppy whites is washing mussels, or clams maybe, over by the sink. This is fragrant.

“Are the clams good?” he asks a young outofwork answer to Peter Townshend.

“Mussels. Fabulous,” he says, “they’re out of this world.”

He walks over to the main counter and gets a plate with a green stripe from one of 2 stacks that are sitting there. A guy with a pony tail, these guys must be ex sailors or navigators of something, gestures at a pile of clean forks & knives and Tom gets a helping of fresh mussels from the big cook
Marcel. The mussels look nice and fat inside the black crusty shells with little bits of onion, black olives and pimento and lots of red juice steaming up from the plate.

He leans against the wall with the noises of the stove behind him and somebody’s bass starting up in the next room (several groups are sitting in fooling around blues mostly to provide some live music for the send off) and he eats about ½ the plate of mussels slowly and feels refreshed.