The Lake Shore Limited (15 page)

The spell was broken when the curtain rose for the applause: there was Rafe, his face still wet with tears. She felt almost stunned with gratitude to him. She wanted to see him, to speak to him. To say thank you. To offer him her pleasure in what he'd done. Maybe even to say she was sorry.

Sorry for what?

She wasn't sure.

The way he'd looked as he'd left her the other night came to her--the untransformed Rafe. She had sensed that he was already heading into guilt and sorrow, feelings that probably always lay in wait for him in his sad life with his wife. Instantly she'd thought that it was a mistake to have slept with him--that they shouldn't have done it.

They:
no way. She was the one who had made it happen. It was she,
she
, who shouldn't have done it.

But now she was glad she had. She had been glad doing it, too, but that had been private, purely sexual. She'd been lonely, sexually lonely. It had felt like water to her thirst. But she was glad now because it had brought her--and him--this moment on the stage, she was sure of it. Something had opened in him, had changed. Something that made Gabriel say his wife's name as though it were a blessing and a penance at the same time--to be welcomed, to be suffered.

She stood up. She threaded her way through the last stragglers, heading toward the front of the theater. She mounted the steps and pushed the curtain aside. As she moved backstage, she heard voices and, turning, saw Edmund and Nasim, one of the lighting guys, onstage, talking. For a moment she was almost startled to see anyone else there, in Gabriel's living room. She spoke Edmund's name.

He looked over to her, and instantly his wide face opened in a grin. His head had already started moving up and down: yes.

"Did you see it?" she asked him. He nodded more. "Wasn't it fantastic?"

"Yep," he said. "It sure was." His hand rose and caressed his beard in pleasure.

"Where is he? Where's Rafe? I wanted to speak to him."

"Gone. Absent. He must've left about the second the curtain came down. He was so out of here."

"Hey," Nasim said. "I'm gonna check out this lightboard problem, see what's going on."

Edmund turned to him. "That's the ticket," he said.

Billy had come onstage, too, and now she sat on the arm of the overstuffed chair. "Why?" she said to Edmund. "Why did he leave?"

"I think he was ... upset by it in a way." Edmund lifted his shoulders. "I suppose he sorta stunned himself, too."

"You told him how amazing it was, I hope. Before he took off."

"I did. We all did." They sat for a moment, smiling foolishly at each other.

"God, I was just so ... moved," she said finally.

"It was fantastic."

She let a little silence gather. Then she said, "I should have slept with him much, much sooner."

His face changed. "Billy, you didn't!"

"Nah." She was shamed, suddenly. "Nah," she said. "Just kidding."

"Good! 'Cause, you know, his life is ... really complicated."

"I know. I know. He told me about it."

Edmund watched her. She knew he couldn't tell whether she was lying or not. He shook his head. "It could really do some ... bad, bad stuff to him," he said.

"I know. I was kidding." But his face was stern. The scary Edmund, the one they all dreaded. "It was funny, Edmund," she insisted, trying to make him happy again.

"Only
mildly
funny," he said.

"I apologize then." She put her hand on her heart for a moment. "I only said it 'cause I was just so ... thrilled. It's actually almost embarrassing, I'm so happy. For him, and for me."

"For us."

"Right. For all of us."

Now Edmund set his bulk down on the couch, grunting a bit. Here they were, the two of them, relaxed and happy in Gabriel's sad world. Incongruous.

He was frowning suddenly. "The big question is, will he be able to do it again?"

"Oh, now that he has it, I bet yes."

"Yah? But without that sense of surprise, maybe." He took his glasses off and began to polish them with the hem of his immense and shapeless T-shirt. It said SONOMA JAZZ FESTIVAL.

"But we were the only ones surprised," she said. "I mean, who else knew he'd never done it before?"

"Well, he was surprised, too, that's the thing. He surprised himself. That'll be hard to replicate."

"Oh, try not to be such a pessimist, Ed."

"Hard for me," he said. He put the glasses back on, and his pale, washed-out eyes got big again.

They sat in silence for a moment, both staring off at nothing. Billy sighed. She needed to get going. She stood up and began to pull on her coat, her
bat coat
, as she thought of it. It was black, it had big, loose arms, like wings.

"Want to get a drink?" Edmund asked. "Celebrate?"

"Can't. I'm meeting friends."

"Oh." And without missing a beat, "Well, maybe I could join you."

Billy imagined it quickly, the impossibility of the group. "They're kind of special, old friends," she said. "We'd be pretty boring to you, I think."

"... 'she said, brushing him off.'"

"I adore you, Eddie, you know that." She reached out and touched his cheek. The fur of his beard was surprisingly soft. "I hope you're as happy with yourself as I am with me."

"Oh, I doubt it."

She laughed. "I know. But do it, Ed--get happy." She picked up her bag. "I'll see you tomorrow, anyway."

He bowed his head ceremonially. "Good night, then, Wilhelmina."

Billy walked back out through the empty theater, empty but for the cleanup crew moving around in the rows of seats, picking things up. She turned at the opened doorway to the lobby and stood looking back at the slope of the seats, at the closed curtain, remembering it again--her Gabriel, his visible sorrow and joy and the way she had felt connected to that, to both feelings. Had felt, somehow,
comforted
by them, she realized now.

As she stepped outside into the chilly rain, as she put up her umbrella, she was aware of a dragging reluctance about this next part of her evening. She just didn't want to do it, to go and be with Leslie and Pierce and whoever their pal was. It was partly her usual hesitation about Leslie, fond as she was of her. But it was also because she was so stirred by the play tonight. She wanted to hold on to that, to think it through.

Instead she would go and sit and make the smallest of small talk with the person she most would have liked to talk to honestly about everything--but never had. And never would, she was certain of that.

The day Leslie called, Billy was at home alone, working. When she heard Leslie's voice at the other end of the line, she experienced immediately what she'd come to recognize as the usual mix of feelings about her. The pull of the old affection, and then the wish to be free of that pull. But when Leslie said that she and Pierce were coming down to see the show, Billy had said only how glad she would be to see them. She offered the name of a place to meet afterward. Then, just as it seemed that the conversation was over, that the next step would be to say goodbye and hang up, Leslie said, "I think we'll bring a friend along, too."

"Great," Billy had said.

As soon as she hung up, she started to worry about the play, about how Leslie would receive it. It wasn't about Gus and it wasn't about herself, but the feelings behind it were ones she understood because of Gus and herself. Leslie would probably wonder about that. She might even be wounded by it. Billy had wounded a number of people with her work, but she didn't want Leslie to join the club. There was something so open, so recklessly generous about her that it made you want to shield her from anything painful.

It was only a while later, fixing herself a snack before she headed to the theater for another rehearsal, that it occurred to her that the friend Leslie had spoken of might be a man, a man she was planning to
introduce
to Billy, in some old-fashioned sense of the word.

Surely not. Surely it wasn't a man. And even if it was, surely there was no sense in which an "introduction" would be made.

But standing in the kitchen, eating her crackers and cheese, Billy had thought,
How strange would
that
be?

She walked slowly through the misty rain down Tremont Street, trying to make the short trip last as long as possible. But of course the lighted windows of the restaurant had been visible from the moment she started out, and she was there in only a minute or two. As she waited on the corner for the cars to pass so she could cross the street, she could see Leslie and Pierce at their table, leaned in, talking to the third person, who was, indeed, a man.

Okay. Okay, maybe that would make things easier. A stranger, to let some air into this evening, to keep them all turned away from the topic at hand. The topic always at hand between her and Leslie.

She had barely stepped through the door--she was just shaking out her collapsed umbrella--when Leslie was embracing her, engulfing her in the citrusy scent she always wore. She was saying something, something about flowers. Billy didn't understand right away. She felt as confused as if she'd been waked from a deep sleep to a conversation already under way. But apparently, yes, Leslie had bought some for her, some flowers, and then forgotten them. She was apologizing for this.

Billy smiled. "Leslie, I wouldn't have known anything about it if you hadn't told me. Don't tell me, for God's sake."

"But I could kick myself."

"Well, don't. It was such a sweet thought, I'm glad you had it."

And then they were at the table, being introduced. Sam, the stranger's name was. He stood up--unfolded himself slowly and for what seemed to Billy like a long, long time. She felt like laughing. Leslie couldn't possibly be fixing them up. It would be ridiculous, the way they'd look next to each other. It would be a kind of visual joke.

Leslie sat down. Billy had to clamber up onto her chair--it was high, bar-stool height. She slung the big bag she was carrying over the post at its back. Leslie was still talking about the flowers, telling the friend, Sam, about forgetting them. Pierce, meanwhile, had started to speak to Billy, congratulating her on the play. After a minute or two, they were all turned to her. The Sam guy began to add his questions to Pierce's.
How had she thought it went tonight? When was the official opening? Had there been reviews yet?
Billy answered politely, fully, but nervously. As she slid her coat off, she felt the man--Sam--helping her, easing her sleeve away so she could extract her arm. It felt good, this small kindness. Maybe it would turn out that he'd be a refuge of sorts.

The waitress came over, tall and blond and cool, unsmiling, a tiny diamond blooming in the outer flesh of one nostril. Billy asked for water and red wine. Pierce ordered a plate of cheeses for the table.

After she left, they turned to Billy again. More questions. It made her feel jittery, more jittery than when she'd been walking over. When the wine came, she lifted it immediately and had a swallow. What she wanted was not to be at the center of things here.

She asked Sam where he lived.

Brookline, he said.

"Oh, I lived there when I first came to Boston!" she said. She talked about the apartment she had then, the horrible cats she was sitting for. They figured out where his house was in relation to hers. They talked about restaurants they liked, and the bookstore. They were both fans of the Coolidge Corner, the independent movie theater.

Movies. Always good. And it worked tonight, too. Pierce had seen
No Country for Old Men
recently and wanted to talk about it. He said he didn't know what to make of it.

This was so un-Pierce-like that Billy was curious: why not?

She was turned to Pierce, listening to his explanation of what was unreasonable in the film, when she saw Rafe's pale face float by outside. He was hatless--no umbrella, his collar turned up, his eyes squinted against the rain. He didn't look in, he didn't see her. She had the impulse to get up, to go to the door and call to him, but of course she didn't. She sat, nodding, being polite, listening to Pierce.

Leslie, who hadn't liked the movie at all, said the best thing about going was the moment buying the tickets when she got to say, "Two seniors for
No Country for Old Men."
Billy had turned to her when she started to talk. As she laughed now, she glanced over at Sam, at the end of the table. He was watching her with level, appraising eyes, as though he'd noticed her quick mental trip away, perhaps had seen where she'd gone in those few seconds.

But then Pierce was suddenly pointing to the back of the room. "Good Lord, what kind of place have you brought us to, Billy? It looks like a ... an,
abattoir
, for God's sake."

The others turned and looked toward the far end of the room to what they apparently hadn't noticed when they came in: past the tables and the big square chopping block, the three wide refrigerators sitting side by side, lighted brightly from within. Their clear glass doors revealed chunks of bloody, raw meat stippled with fat, hanging sausage links, indecent-looking birds--naked, plucked.

"Yes," Billy said. She curtsied her head to Pierce. "A charnel house, for the edible dead."

"The Oedipal dead?" asked Leslie, incredulously.

Billy laughed. "E-di-ble," she said. "Though who knows? Who knows how the capon feels about the hen?"

"Isn't there a joke that begins that way?" Sam asked.

"There should be," she said.

"I'll be working on it."

His face had a worn quality to it. She liked that. A
used
man, she thought. She turned to Pierce, said, "It
is
called the Butcher Shop. In its defense."

"Very original," Pierce said. "I don't think it would quite fly in Hanover. All those naked carcasses. Too much unbridled mortality for a polite college town."

"I like being reminded of mortality," Billy said.

"You're younger than we are," Pierce said. "We don't."

Billy smiled. Leslie smiled back at her, and for a moment she felt a spark of the warm connection that had once lived between them. It unnerved her. She had a little more wine to drink.