Screaming Divas (7 page)

Esther took a deep breath and followed Harumi into the apartment. Harumi had said “party” and “college.” Although Esther was nervous about the whole thing, she was tired of staying at home, always the uninvited one, while her brother Mark went to bash after bash. If nothing else, she told herself, she'd have a chance to work on her social skills. She was grateful to Harumi for asking her along. And although they hadn't been all that close lately, she was glad that they were still friends. She'd missed Harumi.

This wasn't the usual party where all the breakables and valuables were locked up in the master bedroom so Mom and Dad wouldn't get upset when they got home from their cruise. The thrift shop furniture was already wrecked.

“Is there anybody that I know here?” Esther asked, hovering a little too close to Harumi.

“There's me.” Harumi was messing with her bass, too distracted to give Esther much attention. “Look, you said you wanted to come. Get in line at the keg. Mingle.”

Esther was hurt, but tried to hide it. Somehow, she'd thought that they'd be hanging out together. “Okay. Have a great show.”

Harumi rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. This is show biz, all the way.”

Ever since her audition at Juilliard, she'd been a bit harder, a bit colder. Esther wished she'd just talk about it, but Harumi never brought up New York or her violin. She probably thought that Esther, who'd never been north of Virginia, or a master of anything, was incapable of understanding. Maybe in time Harumi would go back to being her old self.

If only Esther could play a musical instrument. Then Harumi would think of her as more of an equal. They could even be in a band together. Maybe Esther could be a backup singer, or a songwriter. She could learn to play the guitar! Yeah, right.

Esther worked up a smile and found her way to the bathroom where the keg was chilling in the tub. “Hi,” she said to a tall guy with a black T-shirt and squiggly hair. He winked and moved on. Esther pretended that she belonged there and that she was comfortable.

No one spoke to her while she waited in line to get a plastic cup filled with beer. They all seemed to know each other. Across the room, she spotted a thin woman with bleached butch-cut hair. She was leaning against the wall, hip cocked, like a model in
Vogue
. Why couldn't Esther look like that? Tall and thin and exotically beautiful.

The woman caught her staring and raised her drink in a toast.

Esther looked away quickly, embarrassed. She felt odd with her ordinary reddish-brown shoulder-length hair and her plain face. She wished that she had dabbed on some lipstick, at least. And maybe she should have worn something other than jeans and a flannel shirt. These women were like tropical birds, dazzling and rare in their finery. Esther looked like a roadie for the third-rate garage band warming up.

“Hey there, dear. You look lost.”

The British accent jarred Esther out of her gloom. She improvised a smile for the model-thin woman with white hair, now standing before her. Her cotton dress was so tight that Esther could see her nipples. She obviously wasn't wearing a bra.

“I'm Rebecca,” she said, holding out a hand.

“Esther.” Rebecca's hand was bony and cool.

“Did you crash the wrong party, darling? You look a little muddled.”

Esther's back stiffened. “I'm here with my friend, Harumi. The band, I mean.”

“Ahh.” Rebecca's thin penciled eyebrows rose. “So you're in high school.”

“Well, yeah. I'm a senior.”

“Ahh.”

Esther had finally reached the bathtub. The most gorgeous guy she had ever seen was now pumping beer into her cup. He was wearing cut-offs, no shirt, and even though it was October, he was amazingly tanned. His belly was taut and segmented.

“There you go,” he said. For a split second, she had the pleasure of looking into those chocolate eyes, half-hidden by the wavy hair that fell to his chin.

“Thanks.” She wanted to talk more, but he had already forgotten her, his attention on the next cup.

Esther moved out of line, a little shaken by her brush with beauty. Rebecca was still there, watching her with an amused twist of the lips.

“You can't have him,” she whispered, pulling Esther out of hearing.

“What?”

Rebecca ushered her onto the balcony where a few people were smoking and talking. “That's Tony,” she said, nodding her head toward the keg. “You can't have him. Don't waste your energy.”

Esther blushed. She hadn't been thinking of making a play. Someone like that was obviously beyond her grasp. She'd never presume to want him. He was just nice to look at, like a statue of David or something.

Rebecca was staring at her, watching her every reaction. “You can't have him, Esther, because he's gay.”

“What?” Esther had never met an openly gay person before. Sure, there was talk about certain kids at school, such as Lewis Dalton who'd once been spotted purchasing needlepoint supplies. Everyone knew, but he was still in the closet.

“Are all of these guys … gay?” Esther asked. She couldn't imagine the straight boys at school drinking alongside a self-declared queer.

“No, but some are,” Rebecca said. “Some of the women, too.”

Esther turned and looked at her then, a little frightened. “Are you?”

“What if I am?”

Esther didn't reply. Her head was suddenly too light, as if it were about to drift from her shoulders into the starry sky. She could smell Rebecca's perfume. She could feel the heat of her body.

Rebecca lowered her voice. “What if I told you that I think you're really beautiful and I want to kiss you?”

Esther brought her beer to her lips and drank like a horse in the desert. She set her empty cup on the railing. “Do you think I'm gay?” she whispered.

“There's just something about you that I really like.”

Esther wondered what it would be like to kiss this woman. What would her lipstick taste like? What would it be like to run her fingers over Rebecca's ribs, her back, her pea-sized nipples? What would it be like to be kissed in return?

When Rebecca took her hand and pulled her back into the living room, she didn't resist. She followed her to the tub and got her cup refilled. She drank and drank, and then she didn't care when Rebecca led her into a dark room and nudged her onto the bed. She closed her eyes and felt Rebecca's lips brushing hers. A shiver went down her spine. And then the light came on and she looked to see Harumi standing in the doorway.

Her face was totally expressionless, but Esther knew that wild thoughts roiled underneath. “I'm leaving now,” she said in a frosty voice. “Are you coming or not?”

Esther nodded. She couldn't speak. This was the most embarrassing moment of her life. When Harumi left the room, she looked toward the window, seriously considering jumping. Everyone would stare knowingly when she emerged from the room. They probably knew that Rebecca was queer and that the two of them had gone off together. She might as well commit suicide right now.

“Sorry about that, luv,” Rebecca said, still lolling on the bed. “I should have put a chair under the doorknob or something.”

Esther didn't answer. She heaved herself off the bed and smoothed out her clothes. The room was spinning. Behind her, Rebecca was scrabbling through the drawers of the nightstand. When she turned, Esther could see that she was writing something.

Rebecca prowled across the room and draped her arm over Esther's shoulder. “Here's my phone number, darling,” she whispered, tucking a folded piece of paper in Esther's shirt pocket. “Call me.”

Esther felt Rebecca's lips on her neck before the other woman moved away. She crawled under the covers and closed her eyes. Esther tucked in her shirt, turned off the light, and went to find Harumi.

All the way home, they sat in total silence. Harumi didn't even turn the radio on. Maybe she was sick of music for the night. Maybe she was waiting for Esther to explain. But she couldn't. What had happened had been beyond her control. It was as if Rebecca had hypnotized her. Well, actually she'd been drunk. And it hadn't been bad. It had been really, really nice. No one had ever told Esther that she was beautiful or desired. And no one had ever kissed her like that. What was so wrong with it? Of course she wouldn't call Rebecca. No, she'd wad up that little piece of paper and put her out of her mind. Someday it would seem like a dream.

When the car reached Esther's house, Harumi parked at the curb. She stared straight ahead and waited.

“Thanks,” Esther said. “For the ride, I mean. And for taking me with you.”

Harumi acted as if she hadn't heard. She kept her eyes on the windshield until Esther had slammed the door and run across the yard to the front porch of her house. Then she drove home, two blocks away.

Esther wasn't sure what would happen next. Part of her was afraid that Harumi and her fellow band members would broadcast her little adventure all over school. She'd be ostracized, maybe tarred and feathered. People would paint rude slogans on her locker. Call her a dyke.

But it wasn't like that at all. Everyone treated her the same as before, except for Harumi who acted as if she didn't exist. If their eyes happened to meet in the hallway, Harumi looked right through her.

It was weird. They'd played together all through childhood, spending the night at each other's houses in each other's beds. And then suddenly, nothing. Esther had never been so lonely in her life.

At night, she cried herself to sleep. Then she had dreams—vivid erotic dreams—about Rebecca. Or sometimes she dreamed of Cassie, of licking her scar and wrapping her in yards of pink silk. She was haunted by all the wrong things. Maybe some kind of exorcism was in order. A visit to a shrink. But how could she bring this up with her parents? This kind of problem didn't appear in
Good Housekeeping
or
Family Circle
or the other magazines her mother read. Whenever her father saw a guy with an earring, he muttered “homo.” She was alone.

When Jack threatened to send Trudy back to Sarah, she lit out on her own. She was living now in a rented house. Every month her grandparents sent her a check for eight hundred dollars to cover living expenses. She wouldn't come into her trust fund until she turned twenty-one, but her Charleston grandmother had taken pity on her. She didn't want the girl eating out of garbage cans.

Trudy's room was at the back of the house, off the kitchen. At the moment, the sink was filled with a week's worth of dirty dishes, some of them furred with grey. Trudy tried to mask the odor by burning incense.

She was stuck with a slob—Madeline—but at least she had her own room. She had a futon in the corner and a few milk crates for her books and candles.

She'd met her apartment-mate at The Cave. In between slamming and dancing and taking turns in the DJ booth, Trudy took breaks in the Pink Room and became intimately acquainted with the clientele. She'd decided to start a band.

Trudy got her hands on a guitar. Actually, it was her father's guitar, the one he'd played back in the day, with Swamp. The instrument had a history of smoky bars, fields of wildflowers, park benches, Greyhound buses. It had been all over the place, probably even Dahomey.

She was going to ask to borrow it, but when she dropped by Jack's apartment, he wasn't home. Trudy decided to cart the guitar off anyhow. He never played it anymore and besides, he might say no if she asked him to loan it to her. He didn't trust her so much since all the trouble with Adam.

She'd practice and innovate and turn herself into a brilliant performer. And then she'd start a band. It would be the most exciting thing to hit the town since General Sherman. Yeah, these were good thoughts.

By day, she practiced. By night, she hung out at The Cave, playing records or slamming on the dance floor. During breaks, she looked for musicians in the Pink Room.

“Hey, Maddy. I'm starting a band. Wanna join up?”

Madeline tossed a lock of black hair out of her eyes. “You must be out of your mind.”

Trudy shrugged. She asked Jeff, the David Bowie lookalike. She even asked Johnny Fad. People laughed, blew smoke in her face. Sometimes they just turned away as if they hadn't heard her at all.

Why did everyone treat her proposition like some sort of joke? She was as serious as she'd ever been. The more she practiced, the more she knew that her dreams lay in music. She closed her eyes and saw herself on the stage, crooning into a mic while a huge crowd lit and lofted their Bics in tribute.

When people were drinking and dancing, they weren't in the mood for serious talk. She had to find another way to put her band together.

Trudy made a flyer with scissors and magazines and Elmer's glue. When she was finally satisfied with her work, she rode her housemate's rickety bicycle to Kinko's and made a hundred copies. Then she ran around Five Points, where all the college kids hung out, and plastered them to every telephone pole in sight with a staple gun. When she was finished, she went back to the apartment, picked up her guitar, and waited for the phone to ring.

“Hey, what's this?” Madeline barged into her room just after midnight, smelling of booze and smoke. She waved one of Trudy's flyers in the air between them.

“I'm starting a band,” Trudy said. “I told you already.”

Madeline shrugged. “Yeah, whatever. I wish you hadn't put our phone number down, though. We'll get half a million calls from creeps.”

Trudy didn't answer. Why was Madeline being such a bitch? She looked really cool with her tattooed shoulder and asymmetrical haircut, but sometimes she could be totally square.

“I'll get my dad to buy us an answering machine,” Trudy said. “That way we can screen calls.”

Madeline nodded, seemingly consoled, and wandered off to her room.