Cherry Money Baby (10 page)

“I hate Danny,” said her date.

“Totally,”
said Cherry. “So we pull up real slow and quiet like we’re just another car looking for a spot . . .” She paused for dramatic effect. This story had slayed the Aubrey football team at last year’s homecoming. “And then I just let loose from the passenger seat. I’m throwing them under his car, on the roof. M-80s are going off —
bang! Bang!
” Cherry made explosion shapes with her hand. “It sounded like a drive-by. They were
shitting
themselves.”

The crowd applauded. A woman in a frosted bob held her hand against her chest. “Oh, that is too much.”

“Serves him right,” said the director of photography.

“It was
sick,
” said Cherry, flush with attention and booze. Everything she said was fucking
fascinating.
And once you got past the goofy accents and conversations about cheese, these people weren’t so bad. Cherry said so and got a big laugh.

Ardelia appeared at Cherry’s side, putting an arm around her waist.

“Ardy,
where
did you find her?” asked the frosted bob.

“In a burrito place,” Ardelia said. “And she’s
all
mine, so none of you go and steal her. Anise, don’t give me that look. I know you’re searching for a new PA.”

The teal cocktail dress fluttered her eyelashes. She leaned toward Cherry with a confidential air. “Well, I
am.
”

“Tough!” Ardelia said, snapping her fingers. She did that a lot, Cherry noticed. She imagined Ardelia snapped things away, or snapped them into existence, all day long.
Quickly, more wine!
Snap-snap.
Bring the serving boy to my boudoir!
Snap-snap.
Take this girl away — she is vulgar and boring.
Snap.

Just then the music cut out. Maxwell was standing by a grand piano in the corner, waving.

“Ardelia! Come do the thing.”

“Oh, yes!” someone shouted. “Come on, do it!”

Ardelia waved them away, but the crowd wouldn’t let her go, urging her toward the piano. She resisted for all of ten seconds.

“Fine! Fine.”

The room applauded.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Maxwell announced, “as some of you may know, our little Olive”— Cherry guessed this was the name of Ardelia’s character —“recently had a scare.”

The crowd went,
“Awww.”

“We’re just so happy she’s all right,” Maxwell said. By now Ardelia had reached the piano. “So let us celebrate the fragility and sanctity of life,” Maxwell added with mock reverence, “with a private performance.”

“Stop! Stop!” Ardelia waved at the cheering crowd, laughing. “What do you want to hear?”

“Do ‘Night and Day’!” someone shouted.

“Do ‘Love for Sale’!”

General laughter. Ardelia’s eyes found Cherry.

“Cherry! Any requests?”

The room’s eyes were on her. What were they asking her, exactly?

“Uh . . .” She cleared her throat. “How about ‘Superb Ass?’”

She’d meant this as a joke, but the room went nuts. Ardelia shrugged.

“Well, if it’s all right with Cynthia . . .” She gestured to somewhere in the room. The yellow feather, its owner obscured by the crowd, bobbled.

Maxwell sat at the piano and began pounding out the bass line. Ardelia climbed onto the grand’s glossy top, Cherry’s sneakers squealing. When the vocals came in, Ardelia began to sing, and Cherry was surprised by the sweetness and emotion she was able to wring from a song about a nice ass. Ardelia hammed it up, turning the hip-hop anthem into a torch song, about love and loss, and when she sang,
“‘I’ll die if I don’t get it, I’ll cry if I don’t get it, I need you . . . !’”
Cherry believed her.

She was the brightest spot in the room. Even among the rich and famous, Ardelia Deen was important.

She finished to wall-shaking applause. Ardelia curtsied and let Maxwell help her down. Cherry clapped — difficult while holding a beer bottle — and let out a wolf whistle.

“So, what is it you’re doing here, exactly?” said a pert voice in her ear. Spanner was at her side, smoking a slender brown cigar. It smelled awful.

“Sorry, what?”

She exhaled a jet of blue smoke. “I mean, it can’t be fun for you. Being a party favor.”

Cherry waved the smoke from her eyes, her stomach turning queasy, her fingertips going tingly with the realization that she was being insulted. At school, digs were hurled down the hall, unmistakable. Spanner’s words
seeped,
like poison. The toxins detected, Cherry shifted into Fightin’ Mode. She didn’t take shit from jokers like Olyvya Dunrey, and she sure as hell wouldn’t from a copper-bottom bitch in a too-tight dress.

“All right. You got a problem with me?”

“Problem? I
have
no problems. I fix other people’s.”

“Ooh, good one,” said Cherry. “How long you been sitting on that little gem?”

“Right now I see
one
problem,” Spanner continued. Her coolness flustered Cherry a little. “And I plan to solve it,
pro bono.
Do you know what
pro bono
means?”

Cherry didn’t, though she’d heard it on
CSI: Miami.
“N-no . . .”

“Not surprising.
Pro bono,
from
pro bono publico
or ‘for the public good.’ Colloquially, ‘for free.’ I’d explain what
colloquial
means, but we’d be here all night.” Spanner sighed. “I’m guessing they don’t teach Latin at your school.”

Cherry’s face was on fire. Was it uncool at Hollywood parties to savagely beat another guest, or would it be considered part of the general mayhem?

“Ardelia
asked
me to come, okay?”

“Oh, you’re not
her
problem,” said Spanner. “You are
utterly
inconsequential.
She
is
your
problem.”

“How is she my problem?”

Spanner tapped her cigarillo. The ashes drifted toward the floor and seemed to disappear.

“You see, this is what Ardelia
does.
A new production, a new city, a new friend. She likes
new
things. Year after year, I have seen new friends, like you, come and go. But none of them
lasted.
” She pronounced the word like something sharp and unbreakable. “So, when this production is over, Ardelia will go home, and you will stay in your awful town, in this awful country. You will go back to the trailer where she found you, and your life will snap back into shape like a rubber band. And it will
hurt.
” Spanner’s eyes met Cherry’s, and they were smoky and blue. “So, this is my professional advice. Cut out now, and save yourself the heartbreak. There’s a good girl.” She glanced at Cherry’s beer. “Are you old enough to have that?”

Spanner removed the bottle from Cherry’s fingers and dropped it in a wastebasket, then disappeared in a puff of smoke.

After her performance, Ardelia was absorbed by the crowd. Cherry searched for her, feeling like Invisigirl. Bodies didn’t part for her the way they did for Maxwell and Ardelia. Nobody seemed to hear her say “Excuse me” or “Coming through.” Women threw back their hair in fits of laughter and struck her in the face. Men swept their arms like batteries in a gauntlet. She wished Vi were here. No, she wished
she
were wherever Vi was.

Something large and yellow bumped her elbow.

“Excuse you!” snapped a woman with a feather jutting from the top of her hairdo. She was covered in feathers. A sexy Big Bird. Disturbing on many levels.

“Have you seen Ardelia?” Cherry asked.

“Ardy? In there.”

Big Bird nodded toward a far door, her feather dipping into Cherry’s face before returning to the full upright position.

Cherry wedged herself through the crowd and at last reached the bedroom door. It stood ajar, the room beyond dark. Cherry knocked once, praying her friend was alone.

Ardelia stood in a rectangle of yellow window light, holding a cigarette. She’d removed Cherry’s sneakers, which lolled half under the bed. It was quieter here. The view from both windows was stunning, but it was the painting on the wall that Ardelia was looking at. She jumped when Cherry cleared her throat.

“I’m gonna bounce.”

“Oh, no! Are you bored?” Ardelia’s pout fell. “Sweetie, have you been crying?”

Cherry wiped her eyes.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Smoke makes my eyes watery.”

“Oh, sorry.” She held her cigarette away. “I was just thinking about what Maxwell said. About life being fragile. Max was just being Max, but . . . he’s right. Life
is
fragile. You know what I thought that day, when I was choking? I had a full thought, apart from, you know,
I can’t breathe.
”

Ardelia’s eyes searched the middle distance. She licked her lips. “I was sitting there, choking, convinced, you know,
this is it.
And I thought,
I’m all alone.
Isn’t that silly? What a thing to think when you’re dying.” She looked at Cherry. “Do you ever feel that way?”

She thought about Lucas, about Pop and Stew, about Vi. Her life was full of people. But why did it sometimes feel like she was constantly gathering sand into her arms? Sand that was always rushing away from her, through her fingers, between her arms, no matter how much she scooped, no matter how hard she squeezed?

“I worry a lot. About people.” She’d never realized this before. But she did. She worried. All the time.

“Intelligent people always do,” said Ardelia. Before Cherry could ask what this meant, she’d turned back to the painting. It was just a boring watercolor, like the kind hanging in the Aubrey Public Library.

“I love this painting. It’s an Edward Hopper. His paintings always make me cry. So many lonely women.”

The painting
was
lonely. A woman in blue leaned against an orange wall at the back of a theater. The back of an audience member’s head was visible, the stage obscured.

“Who is she?”

Ardelia shrugged. “I always thought an actress. Waiting for her cue.”

Cherry looked closer. “She’s an usher.”

“Hmm?”

Cherry pointed to the girl’s trouser leg. “She’s got an orange stripe down the side of her pants. That’s a uniform.” Cherry thought about this. “She can’t see the show from where she’s standing.”

Ardelia looked again. She traced the band of tangerine down the girl’s side. She turned to Cherry and seemed to consider her with the same surprise, the same interest, as if there were a colored band on Cherry she hadn’t noticed before.

“Listen, stay, won’t you? You and I will have fun. Fuck everybody else.”

Cherry laughed. “It’s weird hearing you swear.”

“I don’t usually. You bring it out of me.”

Cherry considered the blonde in the painting. She looked bored. She looked sad.

“All right,” said Cherry. “Back in a sec. I gotta do something.”

She found Spanner amid a circle of girls, speaking in a low voice through cigarillo smoke. The girls hung on her every blue word.

“Hi,” said Cherry with a grin. The others smiled politely.

Spanner turned with exaggerated slowness. “Yes?”

Cherry leaned in so only she could hear. “Fuck with me again, and I’ll break your face. Got it?”

The other girl swallowed. She looked even paler, if that were possible. Cherry was all grin. She nodded to the others. “Ladies.”

She crossed to the bar and drummed on the counter. “Another one of those German beers, please, and keep ’em coming! It’s a party!”

Cherry woke hours later in the bedroom with the Hopper painting on the wall. Light from the partially drawn curtain crisscrossed the bed like rays from a heat lamp; she felt like she’d been sleeping in a boiled, damp, loosely rolled burrito.

She kicked off the soggy sheets, revealing Ardelia, still in her party gown and curled in a fetal position, clutching one of Cherry’s sneakers like a teddy bear.

“What time is it?” Cherry asked in an unrecognizable voice. An investigation of her phone revealed six missed calls from home. She didn’t bother to check the voice mails. Pop was going to flay her for being out all night.

Ardelia opened her eyes with visible effort. She glanced up at Cherry, raised herself on one elbow, and looked around. “Well,” she mumbled, “I’m all sunshine and rainbows.”