I'd Rather Be in Philadelphia (22 page)

“So what can I do for you?” she said.

“Tell me his name.”

She blinked. “Mackenzie?”

“Not that one. His first name. His middle name.”

“You don’ know?”

I shook my head and waited, but she seemed to have lost the need to do anything to make me feel better. I tried to reactivate her compassion button. “It would mean a great, great deal to me. Especially today.” I even smiled after that. A Yankee smile, to be sure, but emphatic.

“Wish I could,” Jinx said. “But if he hasn’t trusted you with it, it’d be a breach of confidence.”

Bitch. “What’s so bad about a breach now and then? It’s just a joke, anyway. It’s not like I’m going to publish it in the newspaper.”

She shook the blonde coiffure again, smiling.

“In the name of sisterhood?” I said. Given enough stress, I’ll even imitate Eve Wholeperson.

Jinx’s expression was blank enough to suggest she’d missed the women’s movement altogether, even as a subject in a history text.

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?” I said.

She smiled, brilliantly, every gleaming tooth on display. “I couldn’t, honey. Not to that sweet man. Besides, I always had my own name for him.”

I closed my eyes. “Which was, is?”

“I call him Snuggles.”

“I call that nauseating.” I stood up. “Tell…Snuggles…I couldn’t stay.”

“But he’s…isn’t he…won’t he be…what should I say?”

“You’ll think of something, sweetie pie. I’m sure you always do.”

I went out into the frigid night, coat dripping feathers, head aching, feeling even more intensely that dreadful revelation that I was in this alone.

Eighteen

TIMES LIKE THESE, STANDING AND SHIVERING ON A SIDEWALK, KNOWING THAT Snuggles and trouble would resume reminiscing and wineglass clicking while I leaked feathers, a person can use a friend. Luckily, I had a usable one only two blocks away.

“Where
were
you?” she demanded on the intercom after I announced myself. “Come on up!”

When she opened her apartment door, she looked beyond me, down the hallway. “Sasha,” I said, “what’s wrong?”

“Where is she? This isn’t my definition of after school, Mandy. You said three-thirty, not eight P.M. I left a message hours ago. Jeez, I was afraid to leave.” She looked like she had conquered the fear, because along with her black tunic with an enormous white lace collar, black tights, and snakeskin boots, she wore her camera on a black leather strap like a massive lavaliere. But then, you can never judge Sasha’s destination by her ensemble.

“I’m sorry, “I said. “I’ll explain.” And I did. “Of course, she’s innocent,” I said, but with less conviction than I’d had earlier. I’d have felt a lot better if I’d been sure that Lydia was still being unfairly detained. I knew I shouldn’t have stormed out of the restaurant.

Sasha looked concerned. She is always willing to be troubled on my behalf—unless, of course, she is preoccupied with being troubled on her own behalf—which is one reason our friendship has survived seriously different personalities and interests. I wallowed in her sympathy for a moment, then decided to play on it. “Somebody shot at me tonight. Twice.”

She was great. None of Mackenzie’s rational observations. Within one minute, no more, she took the Lord’s name in vain several times and asked for enough details to write a major news story. And not only that, she suggested that there was a silver lining—and it would be on top of my car. The insurance company would probably replace my convertible hood. I was cheered.

“Mackenzie thinks I’m paranoid.” I had no shame. Sasha’s ready to discount anything Mackenzie thinks anyway, and her emotions are always at flood level.

She reacted wonderfully, operatically, cursing him in a manner no English teacher would dare. Then she stood up. “Okay,” she announced to an invisible audience. “Okay, then. We both need a change of scene, so we’re out of here.”

My turn to ask questions, but she said it was a surprise, something new for both of us, and that my coat and body should gather themselves up and follow, because we could walk there.

Outside, it was still bitter cold, still windy, but I was not still alone, which made all the difference. We walked, hunched against the elements, and I described, probably unfairly, my dinner date with the Dixie duo.

“
Snuggles!
”
Sasha shouted in megadecibels. “
Snuggles!
”

I hoped Mackenzie could hear the hooting.

“Men,” Sasha said, “have an infinite potential for being sickening. I have personally experienced nine million, twelve thousand and seven variations so far, and
I suspect I’m only at the beginning of the list.”

I followed her, as requested, dumbly and without question until we stopped in front of a once-grand, slightly down at its baseboards hotel. I fit right in with my lopsided coat—one arm plump and insulated, the other unstuffed and flimsy.

We went through the revolving doors, into a lobby designed with the space-wasting largesse of a dead era.

There was an announcement board which Sasha studied. “This way to the Grand Ballroom.”

I peeked at what was playing there and saw only, NACHPA Festival. “Is that Spanish?” I asked her retreating form.

“Initials,” she said.

“North American Chief Honchos Professional Association?” I guessed. She didn’t whirl around and gasp with admiration. “Non-Agnostic Churches’ Holy Prayer Alliance?” She kept walking. I hurried faster. “Nubile, Adorable, Cute Hustlers, Pros and Amateurs? Netherlands Antilles? New Amsterdam? Neuters, Abstainers, Cold and Hot Potatoes of America? Am I close?”

I wasn’t. We had reached the open double, quadruple doors of an enormous ballroom filled with noise and bodies. I was handed a program for the New Age Festival of Conscious Healing and Personal Actualization.

Well, hey. I’d just read the results of a study that listed the three top desires of visitors to Philadelphia. In order, they were finding a bathroom, visiting the Liberty Bell, and running up the art museum steps like Rocky did. But here were scores of people seeking personal growth, not a toilet.

“Isn’t New Age kind of old now?” I asked over the strains of Muzak played on synthesizer and trilling bells.

“Who are you, the delegate from Trend Central?”

“At least tell me when you joined this crowd,” I grumbled.

“I’m trying it out. This guy I’m seeing said I should. You ever hear of tantric sex?” Her smile was somewhat smug.

“What guy could you possibly be seeing? Didn’t you give up men forever last night? Decide to try clean living?”

She brushed away the suggestion with the back of her hand. “I probably meant I gave up men
for
last night. And this is part of getting into clean living.” We drifted into the New Age carnival.

Sasha stopped at a booth that insisted upon the universal healing power of mung beans. She listened to the vendor hype legumes, but the whole time her eyes scouted the crowd.

It’s an annoying trait, but she defends it on the grounds that she’s a professional looker, as she puts it, collecting goodies for that lens of hers.

“Quick—stand over there,” Sasha said. This was a familiar ploy. She’d position me near what interested her, then pretend to be taking my picture while she moved the camera slightly and captured somebody else altogether. She snapped once, then adjusted the lens and snapped again.

I caught up to her next to a Breatharian who subsisted completely on air. “I spent a lot of time today at the health food store,” Sasha said. “No more MBAs, no more escargot at La Pomposity.” It seemed cruel to discuss French food in front of a man who wasn’t even connected to the food chain, but Sasha nattered on about organic vegetables and complementary grains. She stood on tiptoe, which made her taller than most of the crowd, and scanned the room. This was extreme behavior, even for her wandering eye.

“What are you looking for?” I asked as we moved on, undoubtedly to the Breatharian’s great relief.

“You think these things actually heal you?” Sasha asked, lifting a watery pink crystal from a display.

The crystal healer looked anxious until the stone was put back in its velvet case and Sasha went en pointe again. “Who?” I asked. But I knew, without her answering. Tantric sex, that was who. New Age or old, Sasha has a good time.

“There he is!” She pointed at a pale, lanky fellow who looked like an outtake from a dour Ingmar Bergman film. There is no accounting for taste, the Breatharian’s or Sasha’s. “Lars,” she said. “I’ll be back.” And she was gone.

I was traveling solo again. Alice in Actualization Land. I passed a jester, two magicians, a lion tamer, a penguin, and an enormous green pepper. Their costumes had a relevance I was too unenlightened to grasp.

A lot of attention, pamphlets, and therapies seemed devoted to dependents and co-, folks addicted to a multitude of things that sounded like fun. There were also globs of healing aimed at the child within, a concept that reminded me of that movie where space creatures incubate inside earthlings, then burst out of their bellies.

It appeared those kids within had heard about emancipation and needed to be freed. I’m all for equal rights, but I’m keeping the child within me in cold storage. For starters, who’d babysit it?

The other pressing problem of our age appeared to be loving too much. I’ll be honest. I don’t think it’s possible. I think you can love stupidly, yes. Futilely, yes. But too much, no. I think people who hate too much need the workshops, but maybe I’m missing something.

My workshop of choice would have been what was called belly-goddess-dancing because I liked the costume, the hat with the spire and baggy pants over bare feet, golden coins encircling the waist and forehead. I felt better just thinking about it until I didn’t feel better about anything. Abruptly, my muscles and mind both sagged and remembered that I’d been ready for bed hours ago, when it was still broad daylight.

If I could have found Sasha to say good night, I would have. Instead, I listlessly hung around Booth 419, which at least smelled good. To one side, a humidifier spewed eucalyptus steam, to the other, something grassy and soothing. “Nice,” I murmured, with an uncomfortable sense that the aromas should mean something to me.

A passing woman handed me a flyer hawking a reflexology massage of my feet. “Ten percent off,” she said.

“Does that mean you only do nine toes?”

She flounced on, but was replaced by Sasha. “I keep losing him,” she said, eyes still doing up-periscope maneuvers.

“You sound like a country singer. And I’m awfully tired. I still have the key to your place, so you can stay. I’m sacking out.”

“In a minute—one more pose for me, would you?” she asked. I obliged, like an automaton.

“They shouldn’t allow picture taking in here. It’s not professional-looking.”

The voice carried like all seventy-six trombones, and I turned and saw the fuchsia hair and sausage torso, today in lime Day-Glo casing. And that’s what the eucalyptus steam had meant. “Hey, aromatherapy!” I pushed through the crowd.

“You’re ruining my shot,” Sasha called after me.

But I was in pursuit of the missing link. “Fay!” I shouted. “Mrs. Teller!”

She turned and craned and didn’t seem to spot my raised hand until I was nearly next to her, and then she looked as if she might take flight. Straight up.

She was very short. The twins took after their daddy, I thought, and then wondered at what point I’d accepted Fay’s claims about their paternity.

“Mrs. Teller.” I put out my hand to shake hers.

She pulled away. “The last name’s Elias! Who are you?”

I obviously hadn’t made as strong an impression on her as she had on me. “Amanda Pepper.”

Her chin pushed out pugnaciously. “Why’d you call me that other name?”

“I’m sorry, I thought…the other day, at the Learning Center, you said…” My words dribbled off under the pressure of her peacock-blue squint. “Didn’t you?”

“You were there?”

I nodded. “You told me I was an autumn. You told me about yourself.”

Her lids lowered like Technicolor shades drawn over her eyes. “Me and my big mouth. Who are you and what do you want with me?”

It wasn’t easy explaining what I wanted, since it was to entrap her, find a new suspect, so I fumbled, spluttered, and stumbled until she held up a hand.

“Enough already!” She led me past physical fitnessland. Not the yuppie world of Nautilus machines or weights, cute workout clothes and aerobics. We were surrounded by Birkenstocks, yoga demonstrations, embarrassing testimonials to colonic cleansing, and free samples of peculiar foods. We walked slowly, working toward our real topic while accepting handouts. The tapas had given me indigestion and left me hungry, so I accepted all curative offerings from people whose wardrobes and edibles both were earth-colored. I scarfed sticky make-believe ice cream and tofu-gluten imitation sushi and a wheat-berry burger. I drank ersatz coffee made of obscure plants and munched salt-, sugar-, fat-, and taste-free cookies.

“They could call it Mock Donald’s,” I said. Fay didn’t laugh.

We wound up at a juice bar unpopular enough to have available seats. It was in front of a booth occupied by a woman who channeled an Abyssinian potter.

“I use the name Elias for professional reasons,” Fay said. “So my kids don’t suffer. I am also a body worker, a masseuse—that’s what kept a roof over us. Not the dirty kind, but you know how people are about masseuses. Elias was my maiden name.” She blinked and bit her shiny pink lip. “So my big mouth got me in trouble, did it? All those people at the office heard me.”

A giant carrot-waiter with a ferny green tuft on top and black Nikes at the bottom put a bowl of raw sunflower seeds on the table, handed us each a discount coupon for a juice extractor, and took our orders—guava muskmelon mash for Fay, mint tea for me.

“Listen,” she said as soon as the carrot turned its tuft away. “Bottom line is, the case is already solved, so there’s no reason for further conversation, is there?” Her brassy voice turned whiny and strained at the higher registers.

“I think there is. I think Lydia’s innocent, and I don’t think the case is closed.”