Authors: Christina Baker Kline
I loved the movie so much that I don’t trust myself to respond without sounding foolish. “Yes,” I say, unable to translate into speech the emotions swirling through me.
Back in my room, I change into my other outfit, a chiffon skirt and floral blouse with butterfly sleeves. I brush my hair over my head and toss it back, then shape it with my fingers and spray it with lacquer. Standing on my toes, I look at my reflection in a small mirror above the bed. In the late afternoon light I look scrubbed and serious. Every freckle on my nose is visible. Taking out a small zippered bag, I spread butter-soft moisturizer on my face, then foundation. A smear of rouge, a pat of powder. I slide a brown pencil along my upper eyelids and feather my lashes, apply Terra Coral lipstick, then blot my lips, apply it again, and tuck the gold vial in my purse. I scrutinize myself in the mirror. I’m still me, but I feel braver somehow.
Down in the lobby, Lillian is holding hands with a guy I recognize as her fiancé, Richard, from the photograph she keeps in her purse. He’s shorter than I expected, shorter than Lillian. Acne scars pock his cheeks. Lillian’s wearing a sleeveless emerald shift dress, hemmed just above the knee (which is three inches shorter than anyone wears in Hemingford), and black kitten heels.
Richard yanks her close, whispers in her ear, and her eyes go wide. She covers her mouth and giggles, then sees me. “Vivie!” she says, tearing herself away. “Look at you! I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with makeup. You clean up nice.”
“You too,” I say, though actually I’ve never seen her without.
“How was the movie?”
“It was good. Where were you?”
She glances at Richard. “I got waylaid.” They both start to giggle again.
“That’s one way to put it,” he says.
“You must be Richard,” I say.
“How’d you guess?” He claps me on the shoulder to show he’s kidding around. “You ready for some fun tonight, Vivie?”
“Well, I sure am!” Emily’s voice comes from over my shoulder, and I smell jasmine and roses—
Joy,
I recognize from the perfume counter at Nielsen’s. Turning to greet her, I’m startled by her low-cut white blouse and tight striped skirt, her teetering heels and crimson nail polish.
“Hello, Em.” Richard grins. “The fellas are sure going to be happy to see you.”
I am suddenly self-conscious in my prim blouse and modest skirt, my sensible shoes and churchy earrings. I feel like exactly what I am: a small-town girl in the big city.
Richard has his arms around both girls now, pinching them on the waist, laughing as they squirm. I glance at the desk clerk, the same one who was here when we checked in. It’s been a long day for him, I think. He’s leafing through a newspaper and only looks up when there’s a raucous burst of laughter. I can see the headline from here: “Germans and Soviets Parade in Poland.”
“I’m getting thirsty, girls. Let’s find a watering hole,” Richard says.
My stomach is rumbling. “Should we get dinner first?”
“If you insist, Miss Vivie. Though bar nuts would do it for me. What about you girls?” he asks the other two.
“Now, Richard, this is Viv’s first time in the city. She’s not used to your decadent ways. Let’s get some food,” Lillian says. “Besides, it might be risky for us lightweights to start drinking on an empty stomach.”
“Risky how?” He pulls her closer and Lillian smirks, then pushes him away, making her point. “All right, all right,” he says, making a show of his acquiescence. “At the Grand Hotel there’s a piano bar that serves chow. I seem to remember a pretty good T-bone. And I
know
they got a nice martini.”
We make our way out onto the street, now humming with people. It’s a perfect evening; the air is warm, the trees along the avenue are swathed in deep green leaves. Flowers spill out of planters, slightly overgrown and a bit wild, here at the furthest edge of summer. As we stroll along my spirits lift. Mingling in this wide swath of strangers shifts my attention from myself, that tedious subject, to the world around me. I might as well be in a foreign country for all its similarities to my sober real life, with its predictable routines and rhythms—a day in the store, supper at six, a quiet evening of studying or quilting or bridge. Richard, with his carnival-barker slickness, seems to have given up on even trying to include me. But I don’t mind. It is marvelous to be young on a big-city street.
A
S WE APPROACH THE HEAVY GLASS
-
AND
-
BRASS FRONT DOOR OF
the Grand Hotel, a liveried doorman opens it wide. Richard sails in with Lil and Em, as he calls them, on his arms, and I scurry behind in their wake. The doorman tips his cap as I thank him. “Bar’s on the left just through the foyer,” he says, making it clear he knows we’re not hotel guests. I’ve never been in a space this majestic—except maybe the Chicago train station all those years ago—and it’s all I can do not to gape at the starburst chandelier glittering over our heads, the glossy mahogany table with an oversized ceramic urn filled with exotic flowers in the center of the room.
The people in the foyer are equally striking. A woman wearing a flat black hat with a net that covers half her face stands at the reception desk with a pile of red leather suitcases, pulling off one long black satin glove and then the other. A white-haired matron carries a fluffy white dog with black button eyes. A man in a morning coat talks on the telephone at the front desk; an older gentleman wearing a monocle, sitting alone on a green love seat, holds a small brown book open in front of his nose. These people look bored, amused, impatient, self-satisfied—but most of all, they look rich. Now I am glad not to be wearing the gaudy, provocative clothing that seems to be drawing stares and whispers to Lil and Em.
Ahead of me, the three of them saunter across the lobby, shrieking with laughter, one of Richard’s arms around Lil’s shoulder and the other cinching Em’s waist. “Hey, Vivie,” Lil calls, glancing back as if suddenly remembering I’m here, “this way!” Richard pulls open the double doors to the bar, throws his hands into the air with a flourish, and ushers Lil and Em, giggling and whispering, inside. He follows, and the doors close slowly behind him.
I slow to a stop in front of the green couches. I’m in no hurry to go in there to be a fifth wheel, treated like I’m hopelessly out of it, old-fashioned and humorless, by the freewheeling Richard. Maybe, I think, I should just walk around for a while and then go back to the rooming house. Since the matinee nothing has felt quite real anyway; it’s been enough of a day for me—much more, certainly, than I’m used to.
I perch on one of the couches, watching people come and go. At the door, now, is a woman in a purple satin dress with cascading brown hair, elegantly nonchalant, waving at the porter with a bejeweled hand as she glides into the foyer. Absorbed in watching her as she floats past me toward the concierge desk, I don’t notice the tall, thin man with blond hair until he is standing in front of me.
His eyes are a piercing blue. “Excuse me, miss,” he says. I wonder if maybe he is going to say something about how I am so obviously out of place, or ask if I need help. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
I look at his golden-blond hair, short in the back but longer in front—nothing like the small-town boys I’m used to, with their hair shorn like sheep. He’s wearing gray pants, a crisp white shirt, and a black tie and carrying a slim attaché case. His fingers are long and tapered.
“I don’t think so.”
“Something about you is . . . very familiar.” He’s staring at me so intently that it makes me blush.
“I—” I stammer. “I really don’t know.”
And then, with a smile playing around his lips, he says, “Forgive me if I’m wrong. But are you—were you—did you come here on a train from New York about ten years ago?”
What? My heart jumps. How does he know that?
“Are you—Niamh?” he asks.
And then I know. “Oh my God—Dutchy, it’s you.”
Dutchy drops the attaché case as I stand up, and sweeps me into a hug. I
feel the ropy hardness of his arms, the warmth of his slightly concave chest, as he holds me tight, tighter than anyone has ever held me. A long embrace in the middle of this fancy lobby is probably inappropriate; people are staring. But for once in my life I don’t care.
He pushes me away to look at my face, touches my cheek, and pulls me close again. Through his chambray shirt I feel his heart racing as fast as mine.
“When you blushed, I knew. You looked just the same.” He runs his hand down my hair, stroking it like a pelt. “Your hair . . . it’s darker. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked for you in a crowd, or thought I saw you from the back.”
“You told me you’d find me,” I say. “Remember? It was the last thing you said.”
“I wanted to—I tried. But I didn’t know where to look. And then so much happened . . .” He shakes his head in disbelief. “Is it really you, Niamh?”
“Well, yes—but I’m not Niamh anymore,” I tell him. “I’m Vivian.”
“I’m not Dutchy, either—or Hans, for that matter. I’m Luke.”
We both start laughing—at the absurdity of our shared experience, the relief of recognition. We cling to each other like survivors of a shipwreck, astonished that neither of us drowned.
The many questions I want to ask render me mute. Before I can even formulate words, Dutchy—Luke—says, “This is crazy, but I have to leave. I have a gig.”
“A ‘gig’ ?”
“I play piano in the bar here. It’s not a terrible job, if nobody gets too drunk.”
“I was just on my way in there,” I tell him. “My friends are waiting for me. They’re probably drunk as we speak.”
He picks up his case. “I wish we could just blow out of here,” he says. “Go somewhere and talk.”
I do too—but I don’t want him to risk his job for me. “I’ll stay till you’re done. We can talk later.”
“It’ll kill me to wait that long.”
When I enter the bar with him, Lil and Em look up, curiosity on their faces. The room is dark and smoky, with plush purple carpeting patterned with flowers and purple leather banquettes filled with people.
“That’s the way to do it, girl!” Richard says. “You sure didn’t waste any time.”
I sink into a chair at their table, order a gin fizz at the waiter’s suggestion, and concentrate on Dutchy’s fingers, which I can see from where I’m sitting, deftly skimming the piano keys. Ducking his head and closing his eyes, he sings in a clear, low voice. He plays Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw and Glen Gray, music that everybody knows—songs like “Little Brown Jug” and “Heaven Can Wait,” rearranged to draw out different meanings—and some old standards for the gray-haired men on bar stools. Every now and then he pulls sheet music from his case, but mostly he seems to play from memory or by ear. A small cluster of older ladies clutching pocketbooks, their hair carefully coiffed, probably on a shopping expedition from some province or suburb, smile and coo when he tinkles the opening of “Moonlight Serenade.”
Conversation washes over me, slips around me, snagging now and then when I’m expected to answer a question or laugh at a joke. I’m not paying attention. How can I? Dutchy is talking to me through the piano, and, as in a dream, I understand his meaning. I have been so alone on this journey, cut off from my past. However hard I try, I will always feel alien and strange. And now I’ve stumbled on a fellow outsider, one who speaks my language without saying a word.
The more people drink, the more requests they make, and the fuller Dutchy’s tip jar grows. Richard’s head is buried in Lil’s neck, and Em is practically sitting in the lap of a gray hair who wandered over from the bar. “Over the Rainbow!” she calls out, several gin fizzes to the wind. “You know that one? From that movie?”
Dutchy nods, smiles, spreads his fingers across the keys. By the way he plays the chords I can tell he’s been asked to sing it before.
He has half an hour left on the clock when Richard makes a show of looking at his watch. “Holy shit, excuse my French,” he says. “It’s late and I got church tomorrow.”
Everyone laughs.
“I’m ready to turn in, too,” Lil says.
Em smirks. “Turn into what?”
“Let’s blow this joint. I gotta get that thing I left in your room,” Richard says to Lil, standing up.
“What thing?” she asks.
“You know. The
thing,
” he says, winking at Em.
“He’s gotta get the thing, Lil,” Em says drunkenly. “The
thing
!”
“I didn’t know men were allowed in the rooms,” I say.
Richard rubs his thumb and forefinger together. “A little grease for the wheel keeps the car running, if you get my gist.”
“The desk clerk is easy to bribe,” Lil translates. “Just so you know, in case you want to spend some quality time with dreamboat over there.” She and Em collapse in giggles.
We make a plan to meet in the lobby of the women’s hotel tomorrow at noon, and the four of them stand to leave. And then there’s a change of plans: Richard knows a bar that’s open until two and they go off in search of it, the two girls tottering on their heels and swaying against the men, who seem all too happy to support them.
J
UST AFTER MIDNIGHT
,
THE STREET OUTSIDE THE HOTEL IS LIT UP
but empty, like a stage set before the actors appear. It doesn’t matter that I barely know the man Dutchy has become, know nothing about his family, his adolescence. I don’t care about how it might look to take him back to my room. I just want to spend more time with him.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
“More than sure.”
He slips some bills in my hand. “Here, for the clerk. From the tip jar.”
It’s cool enough that Dutchy puts his jacket around my shoulders. His hand in mine as we walk feels like the most natural thing in the world. Through the low buildings, chips of stars glitter in a velvet sky.
At the front desk, the clerk—an older man, now, with a tweed cap tipped over his face—says, “What can I do for you?”
Oddly, I am not at all nervous. “My cousin lives in town. All right to take him up for a visit?”
The clerk looks through the glass door at Dutchy, standing on the sidewalk. “Cousin, huh?”