Beautiful Girls (15 page)

The next night I made stuffed cabbage, and after dinner Chuck washed the dishes and the kids dried them. Frankie was still in her white X-ray technician uniform and white clogs as she peered out from behind the living room curtain. Lord Anderson stood on his lawn, one hand on his hip, the other holding a cell phone to his ear as he made a wide circle on the grass. The sun was setting and gave the neighborhood
a warm glow.

“Just look at him,” Frankie said.

“And?” I said.

“I bet he can get it up,” she whispered to me. “I bet he does the Lady just fine.”

The Lord bobbed his head in elaborate nods, as in:
Of course, just fine, sure buddy, you bet
. “Yes, yes, yes,” Frankie said. “The magic word at the palace.”

“Frankie, he’s kind of an ordinary guy, if you ask me.”

She snickered. “He’s gonna get grass stains,” she said, referring to his socks. Then, as if on cue, Lady Anderson appeared on the steps holding his sneakers. “See, she intuits his every need,” Frankie said. The Lord turned and gave his wife a wave and continued nodding his ordinary head. Lady Anderson threw one of his sneakers and it landed next to him, and as she tossed the other he moved in her direction and got clocked on the ear.

“Huh!” I said, elbowing Frankie, who almost looked disappointed.

Frankie was convinced that the Andersons always did the right thing. Once when the town had wanted to open the dead end at the end of their development to make an alternate route for traffic, the Andersons held a block meeting in their creamy home and served wine and brie while they outlined a plan of action against the proposal. Frankie believed because
their lives were blessed they could afford such generosity. My sister had once held a block meeting herself. She stood on her crumbling stoop handing out flyers while snow fell from the clouds. I remembered this; I took the train from New York to spend the day with her, and I wound up watching her through the window from my seat on the couch as she yelled about zoning ordinances, her teeth chattering. “Why didn’t you invite them in?” I later asked. “The house’s a mess.” But her house was always a mess, and at least people would have been warm. “
Who
would invite the whole block in?” she asked. Well, a year later the Andersons would, and it was just another blow to my sister, proving that she would never have membership in that elite league to which the Andersons belonged.

A couple days before I had stopped in Wawa for an ice pop. I was standing over the freezer, debating between orange and piña colada when this flirty guy swooped in next to me and reached for a toasted almond bar. As we both stood in line at the counter, the guy in front of me pulled out a gun and aimed it at the young slack-jawed clerk. “Keep it quiet. Open the drawer. Empty the bills,” he said.

The clerk did just that, handing a short stack of bills to the thief, who thrust them into his pocket. “Everybody,” the thief said as he reached the door,
“Hands where I can see them, hands where I can see them.” I held my ice pop in the air and so did the guy behind me. “Count to sixty,” he instructed us as he darted through the door and into the sunshine.

“That S.O.B.,” the flirty guy said. The clerk was mouthing: three, four, five. “Where’s the alarm?” the flirt asked, taking charge and unpeeling his toasted almond bar. “We have to stay, we’re witnesses,” he said to me with a smile, as if being held up in Wawa was a regular occurrence for him, and he extended his hand and introduced himself as Derek Head.

My brother-in-law Chuck was the first on the scene, weighted down and jingly with the crackly radio, the billy club, the handcuffs, the gun and the holster. “Hey, look who it is,” he said, coming up beside me. “Causing trouble?”

“Just a regular stickup in suburbia,” I said.

Chuck and his partner took down our accounts, but when they wanted a physical description I was at a loss.

“He had a blockish head, don’t you think?” Derek Head said.

“Mmmm,” I said. Somehow staring at the gunman didn’t seem to be the right etiquette, and then I had spotted the Toblerone bar in front of me and was thinking that under the circumstances, which seemed like life or death ones, there was no reason I shouldn’t indulge my urge. I hardly noticed the guy.

While we talked, I returned my ice pop to the freezer and reached for the Toblerone, opening its nifty box and beginning to eat the luscious chocolate. “The guy sounded irritated,” I volunteered. “Like maybe he was ready for a new line of work.” Derek Head and I laughed. He had a wet mouth and shiny teeth and was pretty handsome, even with vanilla ice cream dotted on his chin. Chuck watched me tolerantly, his radio emitting small squawks.

We rode in the back seat of Chuck’s squad car—neither of us having paid for our purchases, I’d realized—to look at pictures at the station house. As Derek talked to me, he touched my hand, my arm. Chuck was enjoying this, looking from me to Derek Head in the rearview mirror.

I didn’t think I’d be much help, so I ate the chocolate while my eyes glazed over page after page of assorted criminals. When Derek Head cried, “Here’s the little weasel,” I had to admit he was right; it was as if my brain had filed him away in some lower chamber and when the trigger came he was released back into memory. The guy was young and friendly-looking, and his mug shot easily could have been a yearbook photo. His previous arrests were for petty larceny, breaking and entering.

When Derek Head got ready to leave, he leaned in close to me and asked for my number. I scribbled away, as happy as a lark while Chuck pretended to
shuffle papers. When Derek left, Chuck let loose a laugh. “You like old lizard eyes?”

“I’d call them bedroom eyes. You know him?”

“Nope,” Chuck said, “But I’m gonna check him out.” A snapshot of Frankie was pinned to the bulletin board next to Chuck’s desk. She was squinting in the sun, her face hopeful and blameless and ten years younger. She wore, I realized, a similar expression to the gunman. I placed her photo next to his.

“Malcontent,” I said, making up her crime. I waited for Chuck to smile.

Chuck watched me. “Fiona, does Frankie like me?”

I tacked the photo back to the board and looked at him.

“I know she loves me…” he said.

On Friday, I took two hours getting ready for my date—showering, air-drying, and dancing naked to the Eurythmics, “Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves.” The kids banged on my door, and I shooed them away. I was looking forward to a whiskey sour and a little action, and I felt my body temperature rise. I had hung posters of flowers and bees and vines over the silvery insulation, but the apartment still looked crappy and messy, and everything that belonged in a drawer, on a hanger, or on a shelf, I threw into the cockeyed closet. I hoped we
could go to his place, but then again you could never foresee what the evening would bring.

I went downstairs in my robe, and as I came up the back steps of the house, I heard Frankie say, “Fiona wants to get laid.”

She and Chuck seemed to be murmuring sympathetically when I stepped through the back door. “What time is he picking you up?” Frankie asked.

“He’s not. I’m meeting him at the Chowder Pot.” Frankie and Chuck shared a look. They had the same ideas about mating rituals—the male is supposed to pick up the female in his swanky car.

“Bring a credit card, Fiona, or plan on washing dishes,” Chuck said.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “Did you get anything on him anyway?”

“Old bedroom eyes has a couple misdemeanors. Minor traffic violations. Lewd conduct, way back.”

“Have Fiona tailed,” Frankie suggested. “What if this character drags her into the woods and puts her in a pot?”

“Nah, Fiona wouldn’t make good soup.” He smiled.

“I didn’t realize living in suburbia could be such an adventure,” I said. What could Derek Head have done? Pissed in public?

“This is as good as it gets.” Frankie removed her eye makeup with a tissue. “I’m going to have my top
layer of epidermis sanded off, and did you know all this dipping, sanding and steaming takes four and a half hours?” she said, reading off a brochure from the salon. “I’ll be as smooth and as sleek as a seal.”

“I look forward to it,” Chuck said. “You need money, Fiona?” He dug through his wallet.

“Give her fifty,” Frankie said.

“Listen to you two!” I said. “I’m fine, I’m
fine
.”

A horn tooted out front. “That’s my ride. A good evening, all,” Chuck said, planting a kiss on Frankie’s head. I wondered if the support group chatter was all penis-based and I wondered what Frankie knew about it, but she looked almost pleased reading her brochure so I left her in peace and went up to the apartment to get changed.

When I was leaving for my date, Constance Poblanski was perched on Frankie’s couch, and Melody and Marcus were in their shorty pajamas, slumped over the recliner. “Hey,” I said, walking through the living room. Constance grunted hello. She had one of those plastic see-through purses, and I could see all her stuff. She had little pots and tubes and wands of makeup, a copy of
Sense and Sensibility
, some dollar bills and coins, a super tampon, and a packet of birth control pills, missing its lid. I could see that she had five of the white pills left before she’d take the brown ones; five days until her period, hence the super tampon. Constance
Poblanski was a girl prepared.

“Is babysitting cramping your style, Constance?” I said in a friendly way.

“Con, I go by Con,” she said, running her fingers through that hill of hair. She narrowed her eyes. “My mom’s got that dress.”

The thought of the squat and mustached pierogie-making Mrs. Poblanski in my little sundress, purchased with one of Frankie’s coupons, brought an uninspiring picture to mind. “
Con
, don’t flush your super tampon or you’ll be in for a super mess. The toilet backs up.” I made a sad face and waved goodbye.

The kids followed me to the door. “I hope he’s not a dork-a-matic,” Melody said, pressing her nose up against the screen.

“Thank you, honey.”

As I rode my bike the setting sun cast shades of pink and purple across the sky. It was a mild April evening and my flouncy sundress didn’t interfere with pedaling. I might never return to New York, I decided. I might stay here in the Garden State forever. Cars passed me silently and fresh air blew across the sea.

I locked up my bike and walked into the noisy Chowder Pot, where the tables were packed and a small, ornery crowd waited by the hostess station. I spotted Derek Head at the bar, drinking a martini,
and he spotted me too and moseyed over. “I’ve been waiting,” he said, giving me a squeeze.

“Here I am.” I smiled. He smiled back, half-lit.

“Come on, I’ve got a table reserved.”

Now I was impressed. We weaved through the crowded room, to the cut-off by the bathrooms, where there was a staircase I’d never noticed before blocked off with a velvet rope.

“After you,” he said, lifting the rope. I climbed the stairs, wondering what could be on the second floor of the Chowder Pot. We walked through a wall of beads into a smoky dark room with couches, end tables, fringy lamps, and smooching couples, like an orgy room. I looked at Derek Head and he smiled. “Never been up here?” I shook my head. He led me over to a couch with a reserved sign. He chucked the sign to the other end of the couch and grabbed me and gave me a hearty kiss. I laughed out loud, shaking my head at all of this. In seconds the owner of the Chowder Pot, a Seymour with a last name that sounded like soufflé, whose picture I’d often seen in
The Little Silver Herald
for sponsoring the Polar Bear Club’s annual April swim or judging the Easter egg hunt, took our drink order. I relaxed into the deep comfy couch. The music was smooth and bluesy, and everyone in the room shined. Derek Head held my hand.

“Is this room a secret?” I felt certain Frankie didn’t know about it.

“Some secret,” he said, waving his hand around the room. “Let’s get lots of appetizers. I’m an appetizers man.”

We ordered fried calamari, a stuffed artichoke, clams casino, and a shrimp cocktail from Seymour Soufflé. Derek Head and I slurped our drinks and kissed. Every time I put down my whiskey sour it seemed to refill itself. I spotted Lord and Lady Anderson several couches away, kissing, the Lord’s hands cupping the Lady’s glossy head. I was mildly buzzed, a pleasant hum moving through my blood. The food came, piles of it, and we spread it around the top of a small chest of drawers and dug in. In between bites and sips, we’d kiss some more. Derek Head took a bite of shrimp, nibbled on my neck, then placed the half-bitten shrimp into my mouth. He’d wait for me to finish chewing and then French-kiss me. I was having, I decided, the greatest time of my life, which made me like Derek Head.

“What’s your story, Fiona? You got a boyfriend?”

“Well, no.” He smiled, and I realized either way was all right with him.

We were working on the stuffed artichoke when he said, “My sweetheart gave me the old heave-ho.” I realized I didn’t care as I scraped a leaf against my teeth.

“Are you sad?” I asked, for something to say.

“Knife,” he said, stabbing himself in the heart
with a clamshell.

“A good friend of mine and my boyfriend fell in love with each other.” I wanted to shut him up and get back to the kissing. I didn’t want the appetizers to ever end. Derek Head dipped a piece of squid in cocktail sauce and fed me.

“Well, that’ll take the stars out of your eyes.” He looked into my eyes to see the state of the little universes. I batted them, wondering how I was progressing. I still wasn’t sure. We were making out again, this time falling sideways onto the couch while Seymour Soufflé cleared away our dishes.

After a time, Derek Head brushed hair from my forehead and said, “Let’s go to your place.”

“Can we go to yours?”

“This is mine,” he said. “This is my bed.” When I looked doubtful, he took a key from his jeans and opened a padlock on the chest of drawers, pulling out a pillow and a pair of boxer shorts. “This is the state of affairs after the old heave-ho.”

We ordered a drink for the road, smooching the whole while. Then Derek Head put the reserved sign back on his chest of drawers. “I don’t want anyone on my bed while I’m gone, you see.” Seymour Soufflé nodded to us as we left.