Butterfly (32 page)

handed it to her he gave the emerald-green caftan a critical look.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking down at herself and talking quietly so that the

others didn’t hear.

“When did you buy that?”

“Last week. I thought it would be comfortable after a day in the snow. Don’t you like

it?”

“Green isn’t your color, honey. You know that. Anyway, come on. Bonnie and Ray are

waiting for us to start a new game with them.”

They sat on the carpet and played on a low coffee table. As they took turns laying tiles

out on the board, the four talked amiably, drinking their wine and enjoying the fire.

Jessica didn’t say much; Bonnie and Ray were John’s friends, and she hardly knew them.

“I tell you, John,” Ray said as he played four tiles and scored thirty points, “I can sell

this place today for
three times
what I paid for it. You can’t buy anything in Mammoth

anymore for what Bonnie and I paid for this place a few years ago. I get offers all the time.

But we would never sell, would we, Bon?”

Bonnie turned to Jessica. “How did you do out there today?”

Jessica was only now learning to ski. She wasn’t sure yet that she liked it. Before she

could reply, John patted her hand and said, “I think Jess had better go back to the begin-

ners’ slope. You sure took a tumble today, honey.”

“I tell you,” said Ray, playing and scoring high again, “skiing isn’t for everyone. I got

my first skis when I was seven. Can’t even remember what it was like not to know how to

do it!”

Jessica said quietly, “I would imagine it’s easier for a child to learn it than an adult.

Kids don’t have the fears we do.”

“Honey,” said John. “Look what you just did. Why didn’t you play the Double Word

square? You had a perfect opportunity. You don’t gain anything by the move you just made.”

Yes I do,
she thought.
Now I’ve blocked Bonnie from playing on Triple Word and I haven’t

placed my “u” out where whoever has the “q” can score on it.

“Jessica,” said Bonnie, “what’s Mickey Shannon really like?”

Jessica glanced at John and then at the game board. “He’s a nice person.”

“My sixth-grade girls are absolutely mad about him. When I told the class that I was

spending the weekend with Mickey Shannon’s lawyer, they went positively crazy. I prom-

ised them I would ask you if you could get his autograph for the class.”

“Jessica is trying to avoid notoriety,” said John. “She isn’t Mickey Shannon’s publicity

agent.”

“Well, I just thought—” Bonnie looked for a place to put her “q” and saw that the

only “u” on the board was unplayable. “I mean, what’s an autograph?”

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137

“I don’t mind doing it,” Jessica began.

John said, “Don’t you see, honey, what getting Mickey Shannon’s autograph would do

to your image? It lacks dignity.”

She looked at her husband. “Yes, you’re right,” she said. “Besides, Bonnie, he’s on tour

right now…”

The fire roared and crackled; sparks flew up the chimney. Jessica won the game, out-

distancing Ray by twenty points.

When the tiles were spread out and turned over again, she said, “I don’t really feel like

playing this anymore. How about cards?”

John cast her a look. “You’re outvoted, honey. Why don’t you go upstairs and take a

nap?”

“But I’m not tired.”

“Well, you look tired. And you did take a nasty tumble on the slope today. Come

on”—he took her hand—“I’ll go up with you.”

Upstairs in the bedroom John took her in his arms and kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll

wake you for dinner,” he said quietly.

“We played Scrabble for six hours last night,” she said, drawing away. “There are other

games. Why can’t we take a break from it?”

“Because this is their house and they were kind enough to invite us. Besides, you won.

Why are you complaining?”

“I’m not complaining, John—”

He patted her arm. “You take a nap and you’ll feel better. There’s my girl.”

As she watched him go, she thought,
I’m not your little girl.

When the rumble of laughter rose from below, Jessica went to the bed and sat on it. She

was beginning to think she had been right in the first place, in not wanting to come here.

She didn’t care for Bonnie and Ray, didn’t like skiing, hated Scrabble, and was worried about

all the work piling up on her desk. She also felt, despite the company downstairs, lonely.

She looked at the phone, thought a moment, then dialed Trudie’s number.

“Hi!” came a voice on the other end of the line. “You’ve reached Gertrude Stein. No kid-

ding, that’s really my name. I’m away from the house right now, buying dog food for my

three hungry, vicious Doberman watchdogs, but if you leave your name and number—”

Jessica hung up. She hadn’t really expected to reach Trudie. This was, after all,

Saturday night. So she stretched out on the bed, pulled the quilt up over her and listened

to the muffled conversation down by the fire. She closed her eyes. She pictured Lonnie.

In the two weeks since that incredible night in Butterfly’s Western bar, Jessica had

been able to think of little else. Her fantasy had come true, it had actually taken form and

been real. It had left her high for a while, but then the elation had worn off and she had

found herself thinking:
Now that my cowboy is no longer a fantasy but reality, I don’t have a

fantasy anymore.

She realized that she had entered into some sort of bargain and had paid an unex-

pected price. It had been an unanticipated trade-off: her fantasy for reality. It was difficult

to fantasize about him now, knowing that he was really there, that she could see him in

the flesh, be with him anytime she wanted.

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Kathryn Harvey

But…was that what Jessica wanted? To visit a male whore every time she felt lonely or

angry or in the mood for sex? Was that going to solve any problems? Or was it only going

to compound them?

Compound them, yes…

In the two weeks since her evening with Lonnie, Jessica had found herself unfulfilled

after having sex with John. And that wasn’t fair to him. He had no idea he was being com-

pared with a stud skilled in the art of making love. The realization of it had made her feel

guilty, and so, wanting to make it up to him, Jessica had responded warmly to John that

morning, surprising him a little with her uncharacteristic enthusiasm. And the sex had

ended up being good.

She drifted off to sleep and was awakened two hours later by John telling her that din-

ner was ready. They ate French bread and cheese fondue in front of the fire, and decided

to have another round of Scrabble. Jessica begged off, despite John’s displeased look, say-

ing she had a book she couldn’t put down.

So she waited for John in bed, lying awake while the game went on downstairs, won-

dering if she should join them, if she was being unfair to him. But when he did finally

come quietly into the bedroom Jessica decided she would make it up to him.

He climbed under the covers and she reached for him. He kissed her on the cheek,

said, “I’m tired, honey,” and rolled over.

While her answering machine was taking phone messages Trudie was surveying the

Saturday-night crowd at Peppy’s, a popular nightclub on Robertson Boulevard. With her

was her cousin Alexis, the pediatrician friend of Dr. Linda Markus.

Alexis had come out for an evening of drinking and people-watching, but had no

intention of going home with a stranger as Trudie intended. For Alexis, Butterfly served

her sexual needs, until she found someone she wanted to settle down with. Ever since

medical school, she had never had much luck in places like this, even though she was

pretty in a dark Eastern European way, and had a nice personality. The reason was her

profession: Alexis had discovered that, for some unfathomable reason, men were turned

off by a woman doctor. Perhaps she was a threat to them, she decided, or possibly her inti-

mate knowledge of human anatomy made them vaguely uncomfortable. Whatever the

reason, Alexis rarely got far with someone at a pickup place. Usually, once she told them

what she did for a living, the interest cooled.

But she liked going out with her cousin anyway because Trudie was a lot of fun. And

a refreshing change from going out with other doctors, with whom the conversation

invariably turned to medicine.

What amazed Alexis tonight was that Trudie seemed to be so urgently on the prowl.

Why, she wondered, was she doing this when she could go to Butterfly and be a lot better

off?

What Alexis didn’t know, and what Trudie herself didn’t even really know, was that

Trudie was looking for something. She was looking for a way to re-create her Butterfly

fantasy with a real man. Her evenings with “Thomas” were wonderful, but she knew they

were only interludes bought with cash. He wasn’t real, their relationship wasn’t real.

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139

Trudie wanted to re-create that magic in real life, to find that same spell with a flesh-and-

blood man to whom she could pledge herself and thereby put an end to the search. But

the problem was, Trudie had not yet figured out just what it was about her evenings with

Thomas that made them unique. She had been with a few pickups since starting at

Butterfly, but none had generated that special “spark.” If only she knew what it was that

was lacking, what it was she was seeking….

Trudie could have had her pick of any guy in the place. With her looks and personal-

ity, the game was all hers. Men, it seemed to Trudie, never had any problems deciding

whom to go home with, or what to do with her once they got there. It also seemed to

Trudie, she thought now as she smoked a Virginia Slims and stared at a guy who was lean-

ing against a pillar staring back at her, that single men didn’t seem to have any of the

problems single women did. She didn’t see them as searchers, as seekers for a permanent

relationship. As far as she could discern, men were out for quick sex and that was all.

There were so many things that hung women up that men seemed to be free of. As she

caught sight of an appallingly thin woman out on the dance floor, Trudie recalled her col-

lege days with Jessica when, in the middle of the night, she would waken and hear girls in

the bathroom throwing up. Those same girls would be stuffing themselves in the dining

room the next day—riders on a carousel of bingeing and starving. Just as Jessica had

done. But only women, Trudie noticed, suffered from bulimia and anorexia. How come

men never did?

The man leaning against the pillar now slowly straightened and started to walk across

the crowded dance floor toward her. He and Trudie had been looking each other over for

the past hour, and apparently she had passed some sort of visual test. He, too, had passed

a test. Trudie liked his looks. He reminded her in a way of Bill the pool plumber, whom

she had shouted at last month and who had been frosty with her ever since. It was too

bad, too, because Bill was a good-looking, sexy guy. Certainly in another time, another

incarnation, Trudie decided, she and Bill might actually have been able to make contact.

But her position as the contractor who hired him for jobs placed them both outside the

normal man/woman relationship.

“Hi,” said the stranger when he reached her table.

Trudie smiled up at him. He was tall, with an interesting way of filling out a shirt. He

wore wire-rimmed glasses, the kind hippies wore back in the sixties, and it gave him an

interesting, intellectual look. College grad, she speculated. Certainly the academic type.

“Hi,” she said, and offered him a seat.

He sat down, turned to Trudie and said, “So—should I call you or nudge you tomor-

row morning?”

The electric-blue Corvette sped down Wilshire Boulevard, squeaking through yellow

lights and making zigzag lane changes. Trudie had the top down so that her hair and

Alexis’s blew in the wind. The signal ahead turned red; she slammed on the brakes and

came to a cursing halt.

Alexis looked at her cousin, and the angry profile, and said, “There was a time when

you would have gone home with him.”

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Kathryn Harvey

“Is that
all
men can ever talk about? I am so tired of the same old phony come-on

lines!”

“You go to pickup bars, you get phony lines.”

Trudie slumped in her bucket seat and shook her head. “I’m thirty years old, Alexis. I

want to find a guy to spend the rest of my life with. But I don’t want just any man. He has

to be…oh, I don’t know.”

“He has to be like your Butterfly companion?”

“I guess. I don’t even know what I want anymore.”

A car pulled up next to them and waited for the signal to change. Trudie glanced at

it—it was a white Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, the late-fifties classic kind. The windows

were darkly tinted; even the chauffeur was unseen. “Nice car,” said Alexis.

The light turned green and Trudie stepped on the gas. “Probably owned by some rock

star!” she said into the wind and they sped away.

The Rolls moved sedately through the intersection and turned into the driveway of a