Cyclorama, page 16
“Naw, I’m beat. Just gonna go home and crash.”
“I’m so sorry for all this; it’s all my fault, really.”
Ray said nothing. Apparently he agreed with her.
Fiona stalled her car on Juneway Terrace in front of Ray’s house; Ray had told her never to come to this block alone after dark, and if she ever did, to stay in the car with the doors locked. Tonight he didn’t tell her anything.
“I’ll make Da get you a lawyer,” Fiona said. “He has contacts all up his arse. They’ll defend you from these bloody ridiculous charges; they’ll sue the Newsons and the police. There might even be a bit of money in it by the time it all gets sorted out.”
Ray just shook his head and laughed.
“What’re you laughing at?” Fiona asked.
“You have no idea how this works,” said Ray. “Some things you just can’t fix, no matter how much money you have, no matter who your pops is. Sometimes things happen and there’s nothing you can do about them.”
Ray got out of the car. “You got a good heart, Fiona,” he said. “You take care of yourself, and I’ll take care of me.” He slammed the door and didn’t look back.
Fiona looked at her clock: nearly three in the morning. Some things you just can’t fix, Ray had said. Yet that was how she had lived her whole life, wasn’t it? Fixing things, pretending. Like Mrs. Bloody Van Daan, making believe her marriage wasn’t a sham and that her husband wasn’t hoarding food and that a stupid bloody fur coat was worth worrying about when the fucking Nazis were waiting outside. All her life she’d made excuses for people: her brother, her family, poor, pathetic Lloyd. Oh, Jesus, God—Lloyd: What time had she said she would meet him? She took her foot off the brake.
Driving south to the Drake hotel, Fiona didn’t catch a single light, just glided along Sheridan Road, then Lake Shore Drive, and found a parking space right on Michigan Avenue in front of Stuart Brent Books. Displayed in the window was a stack of copies of Sophie’s Choice: THIS MONTH’S TOP SELLER.
The Drake had the aspect of faded luxury: a nearly empty seafood restaurant, just a few drunks and old-timers at the bar, a shuttered florist, a barbershop. A bloodred carpet led up to the lobby. At the front desk, a man in a dark suit appeared to have nodded off. She had planned a story if he tried to question her on the way up to Lloyd’s room, so he wouldn’t waylay her as if she were some Piccadilly tart, but he didn’t stir, and the elevator operator didn’t say a word to her.
Fiona knocked lightly on Lloyd’s door. Nobody responded. She took out the key Lloyd had given her, turned it in the lock.
Flickering light illuminated the gray walls, a mirror, and an open window. “Lloyd?” Fiona felt for a light switch and flicked it on. “Oh, bloody hell.” The bed was made as if no one had slept in it. No luggage. The bathroom door was open, but the shower and sink were dry and all the towels were arranged neatly on the racks and shelves.
On top of a lacquered wooden dresser, a circle of lit candles flickered in foggy tea glasses. The lights were reflected in the mirror behind them; leaning against that mirror, a photograph with charred edges. Fiona recognized the picture: it was one of her and Lloyd. Or it had been. A hole had been burned through Lloyd’s face. Now there was only a headless body in tan slacks and a blue blazer, a hand on her shoulder. The photograph looked like a memorial offering. The sight chilled her, but she felt more afraid for Lloyd than for herself. She went to the open window and looked down. The hotel’s black canopy strained against the breeze; there was no sign that anyone had fallen or jumped. And when she went back downstairs and outside, no one was on the sidewalk beyond that canopy, no one walking, no one splayed on the pavement. All she could hear was the traffic and the lake.
Fiona briefly considered going back into the hotel and asking if Lloyd had checked out; she considered asking the police if anyone had reported a man missing from the Drake. Instead, she drove home still thinking in spite of herself how she might fix things.
The party, she thought, settling on the first idea that gave her hope. God, she needed that party to take her and everyone else’s minds off their troubles. There would be drinks and dancing and maybe afterward a walk down to the rocks and the lake to watch the sunrise. Somehow, she thought, a party could make everything better.
Margo Frank
Amanda was on her way to the high school after teaching her last dance class at the Gus Giordano studio. She was walking from alley to alley so her young students wouldn’t see her smoking and have their idyllic image of her ruined, when a car slowed down alongside her.
“Margo F.,” Rob called out from the window of his father’s Mercedes. “Lemme give you a ride.”
Amanda kept walking in and out of the shadows cast by the fire escapes at the back of the old Tinkertoy factory.
“Come on,” Rob said. “Just one more show; it’s time to negotiate some détente.”
“That’s all right; I’m good.”
“Yo, I got something to talk to you about, and I’m pretty sure you’ll find it appealing.” He had taken off his sunglasses and was smiling with uncharacteristic sweetness. Probably Amanda should have seen a sign in that. If she had known this would wind up being Amanda Wehner’s last night on Earth, would she have done anything differently? Doubtful. She sighed and got in the car.
Rob was playing his usual pretentious bullshit on his tape deck: Sun Ra. He never seemed to actually listen to music as much as use it to make other people feel stupid. “You comin’ to Fiona’s party tonight?” he asked.
“I don’t know. If my dad comes to the show, I might wind up doing something with him.”
But of course Amanda’s dad wouldn’t come. As of eleven in the morning, when she left for the dance studio, he was still crashed out on the living room couch after having returned at four from banging Tammy or Jeannie or Lexie or Barbie or whichever twenty-three-year-old waitress, hostess, or manager he had picked up at one of his restaurants, all of which he had named after Led Zeppelin songs, e.g., Whole Lotta Lox; Stairway to Hummus; the Bagel of Evermore.
“I was scoping out Fiona’s place. It’s pretty decent; you should come,” Rob said. “And you should come with me.”
“Oh, should I, now?” asked Amanda.
“Yeah. You should.”
“And why’s that?”
“’Cause before the bash, we’re gonna make a pit stop at Dave Blumberg’s place in Skokie to pick up a little bit of the old yayo.”
“A little bit of the what?”
“Cocaína.”
“For real?” Amanda asked.
“Most definitely,” said Rob. “Most definitely for real.”
At the Annex, before the house opened, Mr. Densmore gave notes to the cast. The man’s temper seemed to be getting worse each night, because of something about his son, rumor had it, or because of something that had or hadn’t happened with Calvin in New York, and on this night he seemed less interested in motivating his actors than in simply humiliating them. Fiona needed to stop gaping at the audience like some slack-jawed yokel, he said; there was a fourth wall, and unless Mrs. Van Daan had supernatural powers, she couldn’t see through it; Miep Gies had to stop looking like she had just had an orgasm and start looking like she was about to have a baby. Mr. Van Daan was supposed to seem frustrated and afraid, Declan, but only because the Nazis were coming, not because his ex-girlfriend was “fucking some young, hot stud.”
“Oh, and Anne.” Carrie looked up, puzzled: all through high school, she had been exempt from these tirades. “Yes, you, Miss Hollinger.” Densmore lasered his eyes at Carrie and made breast-squeezing gestures. “You need to wear an undershirt and a thicker brassiere or stuff something in it,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s cold in your room or if you’re just happy to see Peter, but nobody needs to see Anne’s nipples on the rise.”
Amanda’s face ignited. Mocking her or Rob or Declan was fine, but she couldn’t fathom the cruelty of anyone speaking that way to Carrie. When she and Carrie had been in elementary school in Wilmette and lived next door to each other, the two of them were inseparable: they ran through each other’s sprinklers, played hide-and-seek in the summer, board games in the winter. But after the divorce and the move, she didn’t see Carrie anymore. And when the two of them had run into each other at West Side Story auditions, Amanda felt awkward, as if fourteen-year-old Carrie was the same sweet, optimistic girl she’d known, while fifteen-year-old Amanda was already past her prime. During the entirety of West Side Story rehearsals, the only words she’d mustered in Carrie’s presence were “Hey,” “What’s up,” “Cool,” and “If you want, I can pick you up a pair of tights from Capezio.” Even so, Amanda felt protective of her, as if Carrie were still the younger sister she’d always wanted but never had, as if Carrie represented something she wished she’d hung on to but lost years ago.
“Leave her alone, you fucking asshole,” she told Densmore. “What is wrong with you? Get some fucking therapy.”
Eileen gasped.
Calvin laughed.
Rob stifled a snicker.
Judith, Fiona, and Franklin burst into applause while Amanda sat, waiting for Densmore to—what? Kick her out of the show? Smack her in the face?
Instead, he looked her up and down as if weighing his options, then laughed. “Well, at least we know which of you would have stood up to the Nazis,” he said. “Okay, places, people. Places!” When Amanda and Carrie found themselves in the Franks’ apartment, checking their props, Carrie caught her eye and said, “Thanks,” but Amanda just shrugged. “No big deal,” she muttered. “You’d do it for me.”
“I’d like to think so,” said Carrie. “Maybe the next time he talks like that to you, I will.”
“Or someone else,” Amanda said. “I’m used to it.”
*
There was a different energy to the show this night. The more they performed this play, the more Amanda disliked just about all the other actors save for Carrie; if she had to perform it for a year, maybe she’d get a sense of what it would have been like to be the Franks and Van Daans. Or maybe that was just Amanda’s cynicism, the characteristic that had probably led Densmore to cast her as Margo, whose last line in the play was one Amanda could relate to all too well: “Sometimes I wish the end would come,” Margo said. “Then at least we’d know where we were.”
These days that phrase summed up Amanda’s life philosophy. It was the same sort of feeling that had led her to date guys like Rob, whose main attribute was his ability to procure good drugs and concert tickets; it was the feeling that led her to patrol the el in her GUARDIAN ANGELS jacket, primed to use the self-defense techniques she was sure would never do any good if some Vice Lord pulled a knife; and it was the same feeling that had led her to say yes to Rob when he asked if she wanted to drive with him and Eileen to Skokie to get some coke.
In the final moments of the play—before the sounds of the SS marchers—Carrie spoke the line that made just about everyone in the audience choke up: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” Amanda could hear the gasps and sobs. But the more she considered those words, the colder they left her. That was what Anne said before she was taken away, before her mother and sister died. Anne’s words weren’t the point of the play; Margo’s were: “Sometimes I wish the end would come; then at least we’d know where we were.”
At the curtain call, Amanda was the only actor who didn’t bow. Acknowledging applause for playing people who’d been murdered by Nazis seemed stupid and shameful. She didn’t even step forward, didn’t look out to the audience to see if her dad had shown up; she knew he hadn’t. She just stood frozen, waiting for the end to come so she would finally know where she was.
*
Rob’s car smelled a little like sweat, a little like old spunk, a little like lemon-scented air freshener, and a lot like Eileen’s baby powder and L’Air du Temps perfume. Amanda sat in front while Eileen rode in back as they drove to Skokie with Rob blasting Herbie Hancock’s “Magic Number.” Eileen bopped along, playing air bass and imitating the music—“Bayaouuh-baou-buh-baouu-baou-buh-baouu-baou-buh-baoubuhbaouh.”
Amanda wondered how the two of them could seem so cheerful, why the play hadn’t affected them more. Had either Rob or Eileen ever seen death up close? Had they ever experienced anything like she had when she was nine and had let herself into her grandmother Asya’s apartment as usual, then saw Baba Asya lying on her kitchen floor by the refrigerator that must have been open for hours, maybe even days, because it smelled like spoiled milk and everything in it was warm? She couldn’t get in touch with either her mom or dad, so she called 911 and sat there shivering until the paramedics showed up and one gave her a blanket. He asked if she wanted to go to a different room or wait in the ambulance. “She’ll still be dead those places too,” Amanda had said.
“So,” Amanda asked Rob, “what’s up with this alleged cocaine?”
“Next stop on our itinerary.” Rob drove with one hand on the wheel and the other out the window, slapping the side of his car while Eileen gnawed a piece of beef jerky and made suggestive remarks: “Oooh, this jerky is so good—so stiff, thick, meaty, hahahahahahahaha.”
Skokie was a strange place. Whenever people talked about it or mentioned it on the news, it seemed peaceful, geriatric—a village of old, retired Jews who had survived the Holocaust and, just a few years earlier, had stood up when the Nazis wanted to march downtown, then ate smoked fish and lox at Sam & Hy’s or Barnum and Bagel. But every memory Amanda had of this town was exceedingly fucked-up: smoking hash in the storeroom every afternoon when she was working one summer at Just Pants; sneaking a flask into Scanners at the Old Orchard and vomiting in the women’s room before the movie was half over; jerking off and getting jerked off by some guy she had met waiting in line for Styx tickets at Record City.
And, invariably, although pot was easy to get from Sammy, whenever anyone wanted something actually good, they wound up at the house of some random Jewish kid dealing out of his mobbed-up parents’ house.
Rob left the keys in the ignition and the radio on; it was now tuned to “Blues Breakers” on WXRT. Junior Wells was singing “Ships on the Ocean.”
“Back in a minute with the ‘fine Colombian,’ ” Rob said.
“You need money?” Amanda asked.
“Nah,” said Rob. “There’s other ways to pay me back.”
“Hahahahahahahaha,” said Eileen.
Amanda had little to say to Eileen, but it didn’t really matter; Amanda knew well the odd equalizing effect drugs had, forcing you into awkward social situations with people you had nothing in common with except for the product you were buying and consuming.
“Ever done coke before?” Eileen asked.
“Just twice, but I kinda loved it,” said Amanda. “What about you?”
“Too scared,” said Eileen. “But I love cutting it up and dividing it into those cute little lines. Same thing with pot. I don’t really do it, but packing it into bongs or rolling it up in joints is so fun. You excited about Fiona’s party?”
Amanda shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. What about you?”
“Oh, yeah, baby,” said Eileen. “It’s gonna be one to remember.”
*
Fiona’s house was packed. Burnouts in jeans and concert jerseys had wandered over from the beach, apparently guided by the sound of Prince thumping out of Bang & Olufsen speakers. “Con-tro-versy!” Polo-shirted Northwestern frat guys had slowed their cars at the sight of the illuminated mansion and felt drawn by the promise of free hooch and underage tail. “Con-tro-versy!” Seniors from North Shore who were generally unseen outside the cafeteria, the gym, and the smoking area, and routinely called Annex actors “dykes” and “fags,” had nevertheless sat through two acts of Anne Frank to secure their invitation. “Con-tro-versy!” Punks wearing ironic Chicago Police Department jackets patrolled the premises, scoffing at the sellout assholes among them. “Con-tro-versy!” Sammy Doulos worked the turntable, well aware that if you wanted a party to rock, you had to put your King Crimson and Procol Harum records away for the night and get people up and dancing. “Con-tro-versy!” A delegation of Black kids, members of a church social club called Fly Girls ’n’ Fellas, were dressed nattily in white shirts and blouses and dark pants or skirts to make sure no one mistook them for gangbangers; they were clapping and line dancing to “Con-tro-versy!” Mr. and Mrs. Grenfall’s friends sipped cocktails, munched hors d’oeuvres, and joked about politics in the kitchen, apparently oblivious to the pot smoke and the booze. “Con-tro-versy!” The entire Anne Frank cast was here save for Calvin, who had told Fiona he feared drinking too much, choking on his vomit, and never making it to New York; and the first Mr. Van Daan, aka Trey, who had made only a brief appearance, leaving shortly after Fiona told him he had a lot of nerve showing up after all the trouble he’d caused on opening night; he’d mumbled a “Sorry” that couldn’t be heard over all the “Con-tro-versy!”
Declan was at the piano, playing and singing show tunes, putting everything he had into “Hey, Look Me Over,” every so often shifting his eyes to see if Carrie and Franklin were still holding hands out on the lawn, then surveying the scene for mousy underclass girls he could wow into submission. When he had first asked Carrie out, he didn’t realize that he would wind up dating an equal; he wouldn’t make that mistake again.
Fiona, barefoot, already pretty trashed, in a short, black-and-white zigzag-striped dress, was at the punch bowl, ladling pink fluid into crystal glassware. Off to one side of the main staircase, in a dimly lit room, Judith was on the phone with her mother: “No, I won’t be able to ‘pop by the hospital’ at least until morning,” she was saying. “No, they said you have to stay at least one more night”; “Yes, I’ve been drinking”; “No, not nearly enough!” She slammed down the phone, exhaled dramatically, then flipped both of her middle fingers and moved them in a quick up-and-down motion that suggested the aggressive milking of a cow. She grabbed two glasses of punch from Fiona, poured one into the other, and glugged it like Gatorade.
