Screaming Divas (14 page)

No one in America would think less of her if she were in a rock band. Probably no one in Japan, either. Things had changed since her mom was a girl. The neighbors must have thought her perverse for spending so many years playing the violin. Harumi remembered hearing Esther's mother cluck her tongue and say, “This is your childhood. Tell your parents that you need to have fun.” Who were they keeping up appearances for, anyway?

Cassie barged into the house with her guitar banging against her hip. “Hey, I'm home,” she called out. She'd seen the sports car in the driveway and knew that one of them was there.

It was Johnette. She was sitting on the sofa with a pile of wadded tissues in front of her. A box of chocolates sat on the coffee table. Half of them had been eaten.

“Umm, is something wrong?” Cassie didn't want to get involved with Johnette's problems, but she couldn't think of anything else to say, considering the circumstances.

“Hi, honey.” Johnette sniffed loudly, then patted her tear-streaked face with a fresh tissue. “You got a minute? Can you talk?”

Cassie set the guitar against the wall. “What's up?”

“I think—I think your daddy is having an affair.”

Already?
“Why do you say that?”

“Someone—and I'm not going to say who—saw him in a hotel lounge when he was supposed to be working late.”

“So?” Cassie could feel a headache coming on. She resisted an urge to jump up for aspirin.

“So, number one, he lied to me. And number two, he was with someone. A woman.”

“Maybe it was his secretary and they were working late in the hotel lounge.” Cassie had heard of men who were incapable of fidelity. It was wired into them or something. She didn't know the details of her father's sex life, of course, but she wondered if he was some kind of addict like President Kennedy.

“No, no. This woman had on a low-cut dress. Her hand was on his thigh.”

What was she, some kind of marriage counselor? Was it her job to warn off her father's lovers?
Don't marry this man. He'll cheat on you.

“Well, are you sure it was Daddy? You ought to ask him directly. It might be some huge mix-up.”

Johnette started crying. She covered her face with her hands and Cassie saw that her nail polish was chipped. Her hair was oily, too, as if she'd given up on bathing. She began rocking, her keening rising to the ceiling.

Cassie felt dizzy all of a sudden. Johnette's crying was getting all mixed up with her mother's voice. She could hear Mama yelling, “You bitch. You whore. You home wrecker.” She could hear the ice clinking in her mama's glass. Sobs. Screams. The squeal of tires.

“I'm sorry,” Cassie murmured, gripping her head. Drills were biting into her brain. The living room went blurry. She ran for the door, knocking over a basket of laundry on the way. The door was so heavy, but she managed to push it open. Johnette was calling after her. She didn't turn back. She rested on the front porch for a moment, sucking in fresh air, until the pain subsided. Slowly, everything came back into focus—the black mailbox at the end of the driveway, the birdbath centered on the lawn, the brick house across the street. Then she got into her car and drove away.

Where to go? She stopped by Trudy's house, but no one was home. Esther and Harumi were both at work. She kept driving till she found herself in front of Adam's house.

When he opened the door, she thought she had the wrong place. All surfaces—the tables and counters and chairs—were cleared. The floors, too, were spick and span and free of clutter.

“What happened here?” Cassie asked, throwing herself on the sofa. “Did you hire a maid?”

Adam laughed. “No, my parents came to visit.”

How weird to imagine Adam with parents. It was even stranger to realize that he cared what they thought of his lifestyle and that he was willing to clean up for them. They must all be close.

Cassie had never tried to impress her daddy with housekeeping. They'd had someone come in twice a week to run the vacuum over the plush carpets and dust the tables for as long as she could remember. Even if she had cleaned her own room, it's not like Daddy would have noticed. He didn't really give a damn about what Cassie did or didn't do.

Back when she was fifteen, he'd come across Cassie and a boy both naked in the den. Instead of going for the shotgun like a normal father, he'd turned red and excused himself. The boy had fled the house with his shirt untucked and his shoes untied. Cassie had waited and waited for a reprimand or at least a chat about safe sex, but the issue never came up.

In this cleaned-up room, even Adam looked better. His skin had more color. He was wearing a white cotton shirt and faded jeans. His hair had been trimmed.

“Do you want a drink?” Adam asked. “Smoke some pot?”

At first Cassie had thought that she wanted to talk, but now it didn't seem worth the bother. Plus, if she mentioned Johnette, her stepmother would always be between them, shared knowledge hovering like a spirit. She just wanted to be oblivious for a while. “No, thanks.” She crooked her finger at him.

Adam grinned. He pulled the blinds, and the room became darker, like twilight. Then he prowled toward her, a cat going after a bird.

Cassie stayed still, watching him with amusement. When he was within her reach, she yanked him toward her by his belt loops. He lost his balance and fell on top of her.

Cassie squirmed out from underneath and straddled his hips. She began unbuttoning his shirt, leaning down to kiss his brown nipples. When she got to the last button, she tried to slide it over his shoulders.

He sat up to help her out, wriggling out of his shirt and attacking her buttons at the same time. When his arms were bared, Cassie sucked in her breath. The soft insides of his elbows were black with bruises. Track marks. He was a junkie.

Maybe she should have been repelled, but she wasn't in a way. It was cool. A turn-on. It made him seem tragic and dangerous, like Jim Morrison or Billie Holiday. She wondered what it would be like to stick a needle in her veins. Just once.

Harumi watched the taillights of the taxi until they were out of sight, then heaved her suitcase and bass case onto the porch. She could hear Diana Ross belting out “I Hear a Symphony.” Trudy was home.

She banged on the door, but no one came. Finally she tried the doorknob. It was open. She waited till the song died down and stuck her head inside. “Hey, Trudy?”

A few seconds later, she popped out of her room. “Harumi!” A smile lit up her face. “What's up?”

“Can I crash here for a few nights? My dad went psycho. He's about to lock me in the attic—without Zelda—and throw away the key. I had to get out of there.”

“Yeah, I know how parents can be. I've sent mine invitations to all of our gigs so far, and they haven't shown up once.” Trudy grabbed the suitcase by the handle and started dragging it into the middle of the room. “My new motto is ‘Make Your Own Family.' So welcome, sister. The sofa is yours.”

“Thanks.” Harumi sank into the cushions. She was suddenly overcome with exhaustion. Well, tomorrow was Saturday. Maybe she could sleep in. “I owe you one.”

Trudy disappeared for a moment. Harumi thought she was off to get sheets and a pillow, but no. She returned with two bottles of beer and her guitar.

“I want to learn to play this thing for real. Could you give me some pointers while you're here?”

Really, all Harumi wanted was to curl up on that plaid acrylic and go to sleep, but she didn't want to be rude. Trudy was being really nice and she had to respect her desire to become a better musician. A lot of people thought that Trudy was just fooling around, but Harumi knew that she was totally serious about the band and their music.

“Yeah, okay.” Harumi rubbed her eyes and straightened up. “Get ready for lesson one.”

The look on Trudy's face was pure bliss. “Oh, thank you, thank you.”

Harumi had to admit that it was nice to be appreciated.

The next morning, after four hours of sleep, Harumi woke to the crashing of pots and pans.

“I hate you!” It was Madeline, Trudy's apartment-mate.

“What are you doing? You're going to take my head off with that thing.” Harumi guessed it was Madeline's boyfriend speaking.

“That's the point!”

And then came the sound of a cast-iron frying pan thudding on the floor.

Harumi's head hurt. She wanted to ask Gil to turn down the stereo. The jazz was making everything worse. It was weird in a way, a musician craving silence. But music wasn't the problem. It was a lack of sleep, an overabundance of stress. After spending the last few nights on Trudy's sofa, she knew that she had to find another place to live, and fast.

All she could afford with her tips from Goatfeathers was a little attic room somewhere. Or maybe she could find roommates who were a little less dramatic. There was no way she was going back home with her tail between her legs.

Harumi saw Chip come in through the door. He loosened his tie as he made his way to his favorite stool. Goatfeathers was like his living room or something. Harumi wondered what his real living room looked like. His cuffs and collars were always neatly pressed, his trousers expertly creased. He seemed the type of guy who'd fold his old newspapers and stack them in a corner for recycling. He'd have a great stereo system, and a leather modular sofa and thick cream-colored carpet to cushion every step.

All right, she was projecting. She was imagining the opposite of Trudy's apartment because that's what she craved at the moment. In reality, she knew next to nothing about Chip. She knew that he was a stockbroker, and that he liked Red Stripe and Sapporo beer, and, sometimes, chips with guacamole dip. He probably worked out, because she could see that he had muscular forearms when he rolled back his sleeves and he didn't have a gut hanging over his waistband like a lot of post-college grads. She figured he was close to thirty. His brown hair was just beginning to recede, but he was basically a handsome guy.

He smelled good, too. Harumi caught a whiff of his citrusy cologne when she got close to the table. “Hey, Chip. The usual?”

He looked up from his magazine and smiled. “Naw. I think I'll try something different today. Bring me a Tsing Tao.”

“Coming up.” Harumi felt a little bit better now that Chip was here. She knew he'd leave a good tip and he was unfailingly polite, unlike the frat boys who often crowded in. Plus, he was obviously a guy in control of his destiny, and after all of the disorder of the past week or so, that was somehow reassuring.

She took a bottle of the Chinese beer out of the refrigerator, pulled a chilled mug from the freezer, and put them both on a tray. When she was arranging the cocktail napkin at Chip's elbow, he said, “So do you work all the time? Or do you get a night off?”

Harumi kept her eyes on the beer bottle. “I get time off.”

“Would you be interested in having dinner with me?”

Harumi froze for a moment, then hurried to finish her business. She set down the frosted mug with a little more force than she'd intended. “I don't know,” she said. “I'm in a band. We have to practice a lot.”

“I see.”

Harumi looked at him then. He was trying to smile, but his eyes flickered away from hers. She'd embarrassed him. Oh, no. “Do you want some peanuts or something? A piece of cheesecake?”

“No, thanks.”

She lingered for a moment longer, but he just nodded and picked up the magazine he'd been thumbing through earlier. There goes my tip, she thought. She slunk behind the counter and started to mop up imaginary spills.

No one had ever asked her out before. She wouldn't even know what to do on a date. Chip probably thought that she was blowing him off, or that she had a boyfriend stashed away somewhere, but really, she was scared. She wanted to tell him this. She even thought of writing a message on the back of his check, but Gil asked her to do something in the stock room, and when she'd finished arranging bottles on the shelves, Chip's stool was empty and two dollars were on the table.

Harumi picked up the money and studied it for a moment. It was just ordinary money, of course, George Washington and a pyramid with an eye, but she folded it and stuffed it into her skirt pocket instead of stuffing it into the tip jar to be divided evenly among the members of the wait staff. It was silly, she knew, junior high school behavior, but suddenly Chip was a looming presence in her life.

A couple came into Goatfeathers, a guy with long blond hair in a crisp white shirt with his mini-skirted date. They crawled into a booth, both on the same side, so they could sit thigh to thigh. Harumi watched them, watched their fingers grapple and cling under the table. They were so easy with one another, so possessive of one another's bodies. Was this behavior natural? Harumi tried to imagine sitting like that with Chip. She imagined him brushing the hair from her ear and whispering against her skin.

She brought a menu to the couple, but they barely noticed her. They were locked in their own world. Harumi remembered a story her mother had told her about an invisible string connecting the little fingers of those who were fated to be lovers. She looked at the young woman's pinky. It was long and slender, and now it was in the blond guy's mouth.

“I'll be back in a minute,” Harumi said. She didn't think they were paying attention.

When the last of the customers had disappeared and her shift had ended, Gil offered her a ride home on the back of his motorcycle.

“No, that's okay. But thanks.” She knew it wasn't safe to wander the streets at one
A.M
., but a walk home would give her a few minutes of solitude. She needed a bit of peace before walking back into Trudy's realm.

The stars were dimmed by clouds. Harumi dragged her feet, kicking up pebbles. From the yard, she could hear the blare of a Supremes record. She sat on the edge of the porch, trying to build up enough energy to get through the door. Trudy would probably spew advice freely, if asked, but Harumi had already heard the stories—how she'd spent time in the juvenile home, how she'd set Adam's room on fire. Trudy's life was a mess, and Harumi didn't want to model her love life after hers. She'd have to play it by ear.