Sub Rosa, page 12
Fauxnique was the first to visit our booth. Her hair was the same colour as the cream soda she drank. She sat with a casual leg draped over the corner of our table as she spoke. Like her Second, Second Man, she complimented me on my quick time in and out of the Dark, a hint of contempt in her flattery. I didn’t care; the Dark was old news to me.
“If you could only see her earnin’s from the last few nights. She was made for Glorydom, I swear,” beamed First.
Fauxnique twisted her lip, then flattened it into a wide smile. “My Dearest is filling our vault with riches too. These young things, huh, Candy. I spend so much time in the city entertaining at parties and nightclubs, then the live ones turn around and come for Dearest.” The two of them nodded at each other vacantly. I had earlier peeked at Dearest, the Third from next door, as she was watering the potted plants outside their track patch with a pink plastic watering can. She was as small as me but with no hips or tits. I didn’t like being compared to a child.
Only one of the younger Glories had gained my admiration. Well, three actually—the triplets. Ling’s Thirds, identical blondes, could always be found sitting in a booth by the front window of the diner. I bet First was hoping that they’d come to us, like Fauxnique, and say “hi.” But after picking at onion ring crumbs a few times over, First took me by the hand and led me to the triplets’ booth. Embroidery hoops and glass beads, old Vogue magazines and crime novels were strewn across the table. The window was plastered with cut-out pictures of pop stars. The triplets themselves, glossy and airbrushed, resembled pop stars. I imagined a ton of effort had gone into making them look identical; matching shades of blonde hair and blue eyes and beach-tanned skin. Their breasts were D-cup peas in a pod. The story goes that they weren’t always alike. One was once white as bone china. The other two came from northern towns, had slow-paced intonation, heavy eyebrows, and working folk’s ruddy cheeks. It was on Sub Rosa that they morphed into teen queens, holding court at the front of the Mayflower. They couldn’t be bothered standing out on their track patch. Live ones would seek them out. They’d tread softly up to Ling and whisper when they asked after the triplets, as if the girls were a threesome of unicorns that they didn’t want to scare away. Lady live ones were the triplets’ specialty; after a visit with the triplets, live ones would leave looking more beautiful. It was said they could take the weary, the bowed-down, the bookish and turn them Cosmo, or at least Cosmo for a day. Likka, Portia, and Myra were their names. First had to introduce them to me, for all they could seem to do was stare at me with their heads tilted atop their swan necks. She said their names slowly, probably to avoid making a mistake over who was who.
“I like your black hair,” Likka finally said.
“I like your black ring. It’s, like, so mysterious,” said Myra. My awkward thank you was followed by a more awkward pause. Making conversation with them was about as easy as trying to make friends with the popular girls at high school. This would have been a great time for First to jump in with an anecdote about how wonderful I was. She was distracted by something outside the window. Beyond the collage of glossy paper pop stars, a black town car made its way down the street.
“The Widower. Why bother?” said Likka, rolling her eyes at me. I rolled mine back, eager to show I knew who she was talking about, even if my knowledge was only from First’s lectures.
“He’s probably headed straight for the Dowager’s house,” I said.
“Too bad he wasn’t coming for Candy. Then we could hang out,” Portia said under her breath. She moved over so I might sit beside her, but First turned to me with a rushed set of hasty instructions as to how to woo the Widower. “Go!” She shooed me out of the restaurant and the second I hit the pavement the Widower’s car reversed and stopped for me.
As First had instructed, I didn’t greet him as I opened the passenger door. “Have I seen you before?” he asked, though he hadn’t taken as much as a quick peek at me. I didn’t look at him either, only out of the side of my eye, only enough to see the sad sag of skin at his jaw. I could, however, see the triplets pointing as we passed by the Mayflower. I was sure that First was bragging then.
“No,” I told him, monotone. “I haven’t seen you.” Not “No, sir” or “I would certainly remember you, honey.”
“On the dash is $500 for you.” I took the plain letter envelope without opening it to spare us both the sound of money being counted. Five hundred was also the amount First had quoted. “Fastest five bills you’ll make,” she’d said. I figured there was no reason to question that it would add up to anything but that amount. He left the radio off and kept to the side streets as we drove. I forgot how humid city summer nights were. I wanted to open the windows more than the crack he had them at, but I knew better than to touch the power windows. I also noticed he kept the automatic doors locked. This made me nervous, but I sat perfectly still and quiet. First said the Widower lived in the Lakeshore Properties about twenty minutes away from Sub Rosa; I was grateful she’d told me or else I’d have grown hot and anxious on those meandering roads. Why do rich people need such wide and winding streets? It was so quiet. We only passed two, maybe three, other cars. I caught myself making my breath shallower, making myself as silent as possible.
His house was perched on top of a hill. The driveway was steep and lined with tufts of decorative grass. The Widower walked like he drove—on autopilot—to his front door. The house was smaller than I expected, but still way too big for one person to live in alone. He held the door open, eyes cast down, as I entered. We stood uncomfortably together in a large foyer with a giant painting of grey with strokes of darker grey bleeding through. I tried to see a storm in it or a slab of granite. It resembled nothing.
“Please, use this washroom to undress.” He limply pointed to a slate grey sliding door, then to a room down the hall. “In the living room, I’ve placed a blanket in front of the TV. You can go there and lie face down and wait for me. Quietly, please,” he added as he left me.
I was naked and wondering where to put my clothes and purse. There was nowhere to put them in his undecorated bathroom except in a bundle on the floor under the pedestal sink. I stood on the toilet to check myself in the undersized circular mirror, only seeing a segment at a time; my face, my breasts, my hips.
Salt and pepper static filled the TV screen. As I waited for him on the blanket, I stared at the TV and thought I saw a woman’s face behind the static. Like me, the Widower came to the room naked, and I sank my head into the pillow he’d laid out for me. He touched me in cautious strokes before his hands moved to their position on the blanket above my head. I was relieved when the sound on the TV came on, as it drowned out the squish of his body on top of mine. Soon I realized he was watching a recording of himself having sex with some other woman. I figured this out listening to him grunt and moan in time with the TV, like an old movie that he’d memorized line for line.
I should have been proud of how still I kept. I was so still I felt traces of my makeup ooze into the pillowcase. I considered all the phrases and strokes First had taught me; it hardly seemed fair to waste all that training. I had hoped to never again end up face to the floor. This date was not so different from my rank in the city—a vague stand-in for something better.
The Widower’s “something better” was his wife. “Happy anniversary,” she repeated, hiccupped and low. He slowed after this; his dead weight pressed into me until I could hardly breathe. First forgot to mention that sex outside of Sub Rosa was heavy and dull. I inhaled deeply, my back expanded with the breath and pushed against his body. I wanted my exhalation to inflate him, make him somehow more buoyant, but my deep breathing only relaxed him more. I was smothered by him and his replayed memories. Just when I thought I couldn’t bear it a second longer, the TV flicked off.
“Susan,” the Widower called what must have been his wife’s name. The room was almost black, but I could see the phantom hand floating near the bottom of the TV. “Susan,” the Widower said again and began to tremble. I wasn’t sure if it was a strangely timed orgasm or grief, but his trembles became a quake, so hard that I shook too. My hands, which had been tucked beneath me so long that they’d lost circulation, quivered and danced on top of the blanket. I felt pins and needles through my fingertips; my arms had gone numb, and I couldn’t have held my hands still if I wanted to. The Widower grabbed my wrists. By the way he squeezed I guessed he was angry. I almost fought against him. I had a strong impulse to bite his arm. Then I saw phantom hand fingering the buttons on the DVD player. I took another deep breath.
“Susan,” I whispered. “If you are here, give us a sign.” The Widower gasped at me as I spoke, and gasped again as the DVD player ejected the disc, which shone in its mechanical tray like a full moon. Even though it was, in part, my own doing—this trick—I stared, wide-mouthed and in awe. There was a presence in the room. I sensed something beside our two bare bodies. Phantom hand lifted my chin slightly, tenderly. My ring finger surged, electric. The Widower fidgeted and choked a little, but he stayed on top of me as if his passion was paused in time. When movement returned to us it was animated enough that a flicker of air rushed between us, then his chilly skin slid over my own. I did lift my hips, despite what I’d been instructed, and I made the faintest “mmm.” And, just before he got up to leave, I laced my fingers through his and squeezed.
“Please let yourself out. A taxi is waiting,” he said before I returned to the washroom to retrieve my clothes. I expected more; hadn’t I just made his wife contact us from the dead?
I wobbled down the Widower’s steep driveway with stiff legs to get to the cab. Without asking where I wanted to go, the driver took the freeway back to Sub Rosa.
“Take exit 130,” I told him, unsure how far off route it would take us. “I’d rather go down West Way.” My visit to the Widower’s had left me wistful. I wanted to drive past my old haunts. The streets there were narrower than on the lake shore, and the traffic comforted me. People crowded the sidewalks; some shot out into traffic, too impatient or too reckless to wait for the light to change. I saw women in their miniskirts and big bauble-jewellery and figured I had beaten them at their game. I’m beautiful, I told myself. I’m a miracle. I considered stopping somewhere for a drink and to flaunt myself. A couple of times I asked the driver to pull over. But when I opened my door the city seemed so noisy. It was nearly the end of summer, and droves of frat boys on bar crawls infested the streets, girls following with drunken whines. I hated this time of year. From the curb I craned my neck to see through bar windows, imagining them filled with seasonal workers drinking down their almost-last paycheques, fathers unwinding from family barbecues, everyone going full tilt to nowhere. I smelled pub food scraps rotting in the dumpsters, urine in the lanes. I heard a hazy guitar solo playing on a patio, and I couldn’t think of one thing I liked about the city. I get paid for my time here now, I reminded myself, reaching into my purse to tear into the Widower’s envelope.
I counted the money four times before we reached Sub Rosa, shredding the envelope. The driver rushed through Advent Alley, old bouquets crunching under his wheels. I tried to see if Arsen’s little rose was still stuck in the phone booth coin slot, but we passed by too fast. “Since I’m here, I may as well stay,” said the driver. By the way he smiled stupidly at me I thought he wanted my company. He parked in front of the Mayflower and rushed in to one of Ling’s girls instead.
“The cabbie always takes dates with my Second,” said Ling when she saw me let myself out of the empty taxi, dejected. She had peacock feathers woven into her straight black hair. They seemed to stir, lifelike, as she spoke. “But I see you already have your own regular.” The Widower’s car sat in front of our track patch, again. How did he get back here so fast? He must have left right after I did. I wished I could have pretended I never saw it. I wasn’t up for another hour of playing a mute. First was waving me over.
“Little, what did you do to him?” she asked as she quickly fixed my eye makeup with a spittle-covered finger, guiding me toward his car as she rubbed and dabbed. “He never visits twice in a night.”
Everything looped again, but worse. The lake shore road was darker now, his instructions shorter, the word “please” missing from his vocabulary altogether, the TV smudged with fingerprints. I saw an imprint of my mascara on the pillow before I pushed my face into it.
Before the same DVD came on he said, “I don’t know how you did it, but this time we’re doing it right.” This time he was late delivering his grunting lines. My part was off too; I refused to keep still. If he was going to accuse me of mischief, then mischief I’d give him. I moved as though it was him making me move, sneaky-like. I let my legs spread further and further as he thrust. I exhaled in short rhythmic “ah, ah, ahs.” I inched forward, toward his firmly rooted hands, until my hair touched his fingers, then my forehead, my eyelid. I felt the cold gold of a wedding band graze my cheek. He played right along, adjusting his once rooted hands so they, by pseudo-coincidence, became wrapped up in my hair. Letting his face lower down until it rested on the back of my head.
During the part when the wife says, “Happy anniversary,” I concentrated on pausing the DVD. Phantom hand messed this up at first, pressing the search button and speeding up the movie. “Happy anniversary” ended up sounding warped and non-human. Then the pause shocked the room. I tried to imagine the frozen picture. Rashly, I lifted my head to see. Susan took up most of the screen with her soft folds of flesh. She had short hair that flipped up at the ends; I couldn’t make out her face because his hand cupped her cheek. His thumb covered her mouth—he must have been tracing her lips with it. At that paused moment, however, Susan looked mouthless and strangled, and I regretted what I had done. Why couldn’t I have stopped the DVD while she was smiling? Behind Susan was our reflection on the screen. “Why,” he whimpered. He looked like a soul rising out from my body in his slow attempt to get up.
“Please,” I said. I don’t why that word. Maybe I said it because earlier he refused to. More likely I said it because of Susan. I watched his reflection lower back down: a soul returning to the body.
He walked me to the door, coldly, no afterglow grins or winks. His tension poked my back as I stepped outside. He did say, “I’d like to hire you again,” before slamming the door.
The cabbie flashed his high beams at me from the bottom of the driveway. I walked down, squinting in the light.
XII
What I did, pretty much all I did for days on end, was practise my phantom hand. Who knew what it was capable of? I’d lower it outside the Wifey Wing window, calling it back just before it touched down upon our track patch. I switched lights on and off. Pushed doors shut. I often poked at Second while she slept. She developed a bad case of the jitters; I had her jumping at the slightest sound.
At Babycakes Bakery I discovered I could taste whatever phantom hand touched if I stuck my ring finger in my mouth. I scooped a bit of meringue from a pie. I plunged phantom hand into a vat of bubbling fudge and sucked the warm chocolate from my finger. And one night at the Mayflower, I dipped it into Dearest’s vanilla milkshake and stole a taste. Like everyone else, she was oblivious; that moonstruck smile didn’t leave her face. From a distance, I developed a low-burning hatred for her smile. It was too juvenile and hasty, as if her mouth was a tattoo she’d gotten when she was too young or too drunk to know any better.
Phantom hand wasn’t always naughty. When First and I would eat our corned beef hash at the diner in the morning, I would dust the ships in bottles. I wanted to spare the old waitress, and her osteoporosis-bent back, from climbing on the tabletops with her dust cloth. She did this every morning out of habit more than cleanliness. Phantom hand wasn’t actually helping her; she still routinely reached and stretched to get to her bottles. But I tried. Sometimes an older, even more bent woman would emerge from the kitchen to polish the booths with orange oil. For her, I’d flick large crumbs and crumbled napkins to the floor, clearing a path for her oncoming sponge. I felt sorry for these women. I figured they had been through some bad sort of trouble to be looking so elderly even though they lived on Sub Rosa. If they lived in the city, they’d probably be dead by now.
The live ones benefited from phantom hand, that was certain. I tickled earlobes and traced spines with both my hands busy. I used it the most with the Widower. He came for me so many times that I grew used to the desolate drive out to his house. I started noticing things along the lake shore: a tree fort built in a low-slung willow, geese sleeping in someone’s front yard. I started talking too, mostly to Susan. “Susan, are you with us tonight?” and, “Susan, your husband says he misses you.” I was soon familiar with every second of that DVD. I paused and rewound to capture a breathy bit of dialogue, a “yes” or an “I love you.” I suppose he would have paid me solely for my psychic ability, but I had just gotten good at sex, and I couldn’t image myself anywhere other than on the Widower’s neatly laid blanket.
I didn’t tell anyone about phantom hand. If I had, then Second would have figured out who was playing tricks on her while she slept. Plus, I couldn’t risk one of the Glories sneaking a message to the Widower or my other regulars about it. We weren’t supposed to act out of jealousy, we Glories, but—let’s be honest—I attracted a mess of rival sideways stares each time I rode off in the Widower’s passenger seat. Phantom hand was more powerful as a secret. And it was powerful; I figured it was the best Glory magic I’d seen on Sub Rosa. I came close to confessing once when I overheard Arsen and First planning my debut party.
They’d locked themselves in the ladies’ bathroom, not knowing, I guess, that every sound from the bathroom leaked into the library— where I sat with my ear against the vent.
First, always in my corner, wanted the party right away. “She’s earned it,” she said. “And we should have it before her fame dies down.” I agreed. I didn’t understand what exactly a debut party involved, but I was certain I had earned it.
