Fools Paradise (27 page)

And she would see Tony tossed out on his ear. Tonight.

But Tony didn't come home after his gig at Navy Pier ended. Drinking his paycheck, his grandfather guessed. Instead of waiting up for him, Marty drafted Wesley to come to the copy shop with him and then to the office on Caldwell Avenue, where they threw out the old letter and replaced it with the folded new letter, carefully inserting the fresh copies in the prepared envelopes. In the morning Marty would buy stamps, and then he would seal and send the letters.

He shivered, thinking of the permanence of this step.

If Bobby didn't receive his gesture positively—his chest tightened—well, fuck Bobby Morton, as Badger said. This was for his granddaughter.

He brought Wesley home at ten o'clock, past the kid's bedtime for a school night, and surprised Daisy in his kitchen.

“Angelina,”
he said hesitantly.

She held still, facing the freezer door, not looking at him.

Marty reminded himself that she didn't have to believe in him tonight. By Friday she would. Maybe tomorrow, once he threw Tony out of the house.

“Good night,
preziosa,”
he said to her back.

“Good night, Goomba.” She came away from the fridge and kissed him softly on the cheek. Her eyes were reddened and, for once, free of makeup.

They stood facing one another for a moment.

She was as tall as her Goomba now. Twenty-one years old and engaged, with a fast track entry into stagehand work. “I love you, Daisy,” he said, feeling suddenly desperate.

Her eyes brightened with tears. “I love you, too,” she said. Quickly she went out the kitchen door and climbed the back stairs to her own flat.

Daisy was packing when her mother stuck her head in the bedroom door.

“What on earth are you doing?”

“I'm moving out, Mom.” Daisy tossed a pile of underwear into a box. Her chest was hot and sore from refusing to cry.

“Honey?” Mom came into the room and shut the door. “Honey, what.”

Daisy threw herself into her mother's arms. “I hate him, Mom. I love him and I hate him and I can't stay here any more.”

She felt her mother nod slowly. “Baby.”

Daisy sucked in a shuddering sigh. “I think I'll go to Bobbyjay's apartment.”

“Does he know you're coming?” Mom sounded so careful.
Be careful, Mom. I'm about to fly apart.

“Not yet.” Daisy sniffled.

“I'm sure he'd love to have you. How about you call him first, hm?”

The past eight hours had left Daisy full of gloom. “Give him time to get all his other girlfriends out of the place, you mean?” She pulled out of Mom's arms and went back to throwing bras and socks on top of the underwear.

“Well, time to shovel the pizza boxes out the back door.” Mom sat on the bed.

Daisy didn't answer. She folded the box lid over her underthings and put a second box on the bed. Jeans, tops, tee-shirts. That little dress she was wearing the night Bobbyjay climbed into the fish with her. She choked on a sob.
I should put that on before I go over to his place. He won't turn me away then.
She paused with her hand on her makeup carrier.

Lose the makeup,
Bobbyjay had said,
and you'll look like a stagehand.

She left the makeup carrier on the dresser. A second glance into the box next to Mom reminded her of Bobbyjay saying,
Wear something you can work in. That won't do.
With a sigh she dumped the box out on the bed and sifted it for slutwear. When she was done, the box was empty and everything was on the floor.

She owned one pair of overalls and two tee-shirts to work in. All dirty.

“Dammit!” She sat down with a bump next to Mom.

Mom put her arm around her and didn't say a thing.

“He'll go along with anything I want,” Daisy said defensively, as if Mom had been scolding.

Mom squeezed her. “He loves you.”

“I don't want him taking me in just because I asked. He does whatever I ask,” she said, lifting a hand helplessly. In frustration, thinking of the bruise on Bobbyjay's cheekbone, she wailed, “He's such a
pushover!”

Mom squeezed her again, and Daisy thought how great it would be if she could bury her face on Mom's shoulder and everything would go away. Goomba's disappointment in her. Tony, who would be furious with her for squealing on him to Goomba, and whose payback would suck. The look on Badger's face when she made him see that she couldn't be seduced by his lazy affection anymore. The hassles at work from brother stagehands, subtle but never-ending, and from the Mortons, unsubtle and dangerous. She stared ahead, feeling Mom's arm around her like a distant wind.

I'm not ready to give up.

She sniffled. Oh, but this part was hard. “I'll ask him at work tomorrow.”

So in the morning she made breakfast like always. She couldn't stonewall Goomba again, that was too painful last night, so she tried for pleasant and in-control, and that worked.

He ate his breakfast looking at his watch the whole time.

As she poured the last cup of coffee, Wesley muttered, “You gonna show—?”

Goomba shook his head, lifting one finger to his lips. “We finish it first. Lovely breakfast once again,
angelina.”

“You're welcome,” she said coolly. She did her best not to feel paranoid.
What are they cooking up?
It wouldn't matter, ultimately, not really. If Bobbyjay couldn't take her in, she would think of something.

I'll have to.

She walked out the door just as Tony came home, unshaven and raucous, but she didn't even turn around when he slapped her on the ass.

As she got into Bobbyjay's Jeep, the sound of yelling came from inside the house.

Halfway through the morning, Corky Finn called her from the union office. “They's a big ‘in' at the Pavillion. Gitcher ass out there A-sap.”

“I'm at the Opera today,” she said, feeling stupid, holding her cell phone with one hand and coiling cable with the other.

A sout'wes'-side sigh of exasperation hissed in her ear. “I know that. I'm takin' you off the call.”

“But what do I do about—”

“Tell Tanny I called. Don't dawdle. This is a twenty-four hour call, so I hope you gots clean clothes inna trunk,” he added and hung up, apparently feeling he had sufficiently prepped the new kid for an “in-run-out.”

She hung up, perplexed.

But John Tannyhill only shook his head. “He's taking a third of my running crew,” was all he said. “Come back whenever, if the job ends in the middle of our workday.” With a look she saw a lot these days, he added, “If you feel up to it.”

Daisy set her teeth. “I'll be here.”

“What's with Corky calling me out of the Opera House?” she said to Bobbyjay that afternoon as they met for a quick hot dog out of a roach coach behind the Pavillion, in between unloading The Piddlies' electrics trucks and the hang-and-focus.

Bobbyjay wiped mustard off his mouth with the back of his hand. “Bigger show than they expected. The producer tried to cheap out, only ordered sixteen guys, and thirty trucks showed up. We'll probably get paid in cash tonight.”

Daisy looked around the roach coach at the rest of the crew wolfing their lunch, calculating overtime plus meal penalties in her head. It made her feel like a real stagehand. “Wow. Lot of cash. Can they do that?”

“They better. Scooby's the steward. He knows what it means when the producer tries to fake out the office.”

“What does it mean?”

“Means they're running broke on the tour.” He eyed the rows and rows of empty tractor-trailers over his third hot dog. “They better sell out tonight.”

“So, when we're done here, we go back to the Opera House and finish whatever's left of the day? When will that be?”

“Friday sometime.”

Daisy groaned. It was only Thursday afternoon and she ached already.

She was focusing lights when her cell phone rang. She answered quietly so that her partner on deck wouldn't hear.

It was Wesley, sounding jubilant. “You'll never guess what! Grandpa threw Tony out of the house again! He actually saw Tone slap you on the butt today and, boy, you should of heard the yelling. This time it's for good! Woo hoo!”

Daisy dogged down her parcan with her crescent wrench and signaled to the house man on deck to move her lift to the next row of electrics. “Groovy. Can he throw Tony out of the Opera House too? I have to work with him every day.”

“At least they have rules over there about what you can do to people.”

She rolled her eyes. Boy, was this kid in for a surprise when he made apprentice.

“What time you coming home? Uh, Grandpa really wants to talk to you.”

And you want to know what's for supper.

“No clue,” she said cheerfully. “I'm running the show and doing the take-out, and by then it'll be tomorrow, so we have to head over to the Opera House and finish out the day. Just thaw some lasagne, okay, buddy? I have to go now,” she said and thumbed off the phone before the lighting designer could see it.

God, I love work.

They finished unloading the trucks. They hung the electrics. They focused the electrics. They put up the speaker towers. They put up the performance stage. They tested the fog pots and the lasers and the sound system and the audience trickled in and Daisy wore down past tired into a state of zombification. Around eight in the evening Bobbyjay brought her another bag of crappy little hot dogs just as she was mounting the monkey-ladder to her follow-spot, and he kissed her so hard that even her feet, numb inside her steel-toed sneakers, woke up and tingled.

“Gonna make it?” he said, and she grinned at him. She sprang up the ladder, slithered into her truss-spot cage, snapped on her safety, hung her headset over her ear, and waited for her first cue, gobbling down hot dogs, squirreling away the wrappers in the pockets of her overalls, and watching Bobbyjay move around on stage, hunk-and-a-half, all hers, kinda.

The music woke her up, anyway. At soundcheck she put in her earplugs and the noise still lifted the hairs on her arms. Two thousand more audience members arrived. The band came out, late of course, and rattled her fillings for three solid hours.

As the audience was filing out and the first trucks pumped diesel fumes in the loading dock, Daisy had her first bad moment. Her department head had sent the electrics crew for a potty-and-smoke break while the carpenters cleared the deck. Rob the Snob Morton and his son Raybob were carpenters, so Daisy didn't expect to see them lounging outside the restrooms, smoking.

They saw her and smirked. She went cold.

All she had to do was walk past them to the toilet.

Her courage failed. Her bruises were livid from the fall Bobbert had arranged for her at the United Center.

Wimp,
she chanted to herself as she climbed the bleachers to the public part of the Pavilion.
Wimp wimp wimp wimp wimp.
There had to be another girl's bathroom here.

She forced her way through the exiting audience that jammed the corridor.

Elbows jabbed her, and the din of voices came through her earplugs. Finally she fought free into an empty corner and realized she had come all the way to the front of house, across the crowded corridor from the box office.

A big, big, very big guy with a shaved head and a too-tight sport coat stood with his back to the box office door.
That's where they're keeping our money,
she thought.
I'm actually gonna see green tonight.
Her pulse quickened.

The crowd thinned. The producer, a ferret in a ponytail and Vegas-talk-show-host suit, stepped up to the big guy and spoke to him, sliding his hand into his coat. The big guy opened the door and leaned inside. The producer fidgeted, eyeing the departing crowd. The big guy handed the producer a red dufflebag with the band's logo on it, shut the door, and resumed his guard pose.

The producer walked quickly after the audience.

Heart thudding and bladder bursting, Daisy followed him. He went straight down the bleachers and walked out on the main floor. Daisy followed, trying to look busy. He skirted the mess of platforming being disassembled and loaded onto a truck, and ducked into the area backstage, under the bleachers.

Daisy hung back a moment.
If he asks me what I'm doing, I can tell him I'm lost. Truth.
She followed.

She entered a narrow, dim, empty corridor. The producer came empty-handed out of a doorway in the corridor and brushed past her as if she were invisible. Then he was gone, onstage.

The corridor was all doors. Which door was it?

She put her ear to the first door. Hoots and murmurs came from inside, and the unmistakable smell of burning marijuana. Dressing room. She listened at each door until she came to a door where no sound came from inside. She opened it. Another dressing room, empty and dark. A toilet flushed next door.