Vida (23 page)

“Did you get good coverage?” she asked him.

“Pretty good. Cop chased me at one point trying to get the recorder, but I got away. Natalie’s still on the phones downtown.”

She began running the water for a bath. “God, I’m tired.” She carried a tumbler of wine into the tub with her and set it in the soap dish. Her shoulder was livid, too sore to touch. The phone was ringing all of the time. Let the others deal with it.

Leigh burst in. “Lohania’s busted. Caught inside with a stink bomb. She’ll have heavier charges than the others. We have to zip down to night court.”

Still moist and swollen, she shoved herself into respectable clothes, dressing as she would for work. Leigh took the emergency kitty and their bankbook. They rode downstairs in the elevator, leaving Fred and Pelican getting stoned on the living-room floor, happy as a couple of linebackers after winning a high school game. They could answer the damned phone.

“Daniel got busted too” Vida suddenly remembered as they stepped onto Broadway. The air felt cold, abrasive. She tasted her exhaustion like bile in her throat.

“They beat him”

“I don’t think Natalie knows. We have to find out where they took him” Leigh stepped off a curb and hailed a cab. She was startled but glad, stumbling in after him. He put his arm around her and she nestled close. “Did they say anything about Larkin?”

“Larkin? Who’s he? Don’t think so … Oh, yeah, Natalie mentioned that somebody’s come back down to help her out and maybe she could get off by midnight. Lark, I think she said.”

“That’s him.” So he got out of the Hilton safely. Had he reached the air ducts with his stink bomb? She’d know soon enough. She was not sure quite what they might have done to him in jail, but she had a few vivid ideas. Closing her eyes, she saw Daniel go down under the three policemen, and she wondered how to tell Natalie so that she would not be terrified. Maybe she would simply say she had seen him arrested.

“Tired, baby? Just lean on me … Let’s see, Natalie said Sammy was sleeping just fine … I’ll wake you up when we get there”

By and by, by and by they would be home again together, at rest under the Cretan embroidery. In the meantime, Lohania and Daniel must be located and if possible bailed out. From somewhere she must squeeze the energy to function. But not now. In the cab she collapsed against Leigh and shut her eyes. His flannel shirt was soft to her cheek. He put his leather jacket over them. Close she curled, smelling him—sweat, the funky lingering smell of dope, a trace of Lohania’s sandalwood, the spicy bath oil, all blending with a faint smell of leather and perhaps wood smoke from their last camping trip on Mount Marcy. His chest was firm and warm; his arm, with its curly thick fur, encircled her. She moaned as he touched the bruises, but was too tired to explain. She only moved his hand to her waist and snuggled closer. Soon enough she would be in the dingy environs of night court among the prostitutes being shunted off, the plea-bargaining lawyers, the drunks thrust into the tank. Then she must wake up and manage, talk coherently, argue, plead, save her people. Now she could doze against Leigh. How wonderful to be connected widely and richly to people all over the world, she thought—people trying to change things, move them forward—to a web of the caring in every city and college town. How wonderful to have family and friends and lovers, community and meaning. How wonderful to have him.

PART III

October 1979

9

Filene’s was a big department store in downtown Boston, jammed with shoppers on a Saturday in mid-October. No downtown abandonment here. She located Lingerie on the chart, then parked Joel in Men’s Wear. “So try things on.”

“Men don’t do that” he said sullenly. “They expect you to buy something”

“I’ll pick you up right in front of the Levi’s at two. If something goes wrong, we’ll meet at six on the north side of Faneuil Hall”—another landmark she had found on the map.

“I don’t care if I meet her or not”

“Baby, that has to depend on how things are. How she feels.”

“She’ll feel hostile. Why shouldn’t she?”

“Ah, Natalie’ll be tickled pink I’m with somebody for a change. Now I have to rush.”

“Sure. You have to. I don’t drag you off to Sacramento to meet my parents and park you in a shopping plaza somewhere. I think it’s dangerous for you to see your sister. I didn’t expect you to be so sentimental.”

“I have to go! I’m going to be late” Like pulling off sticky flypaper, she had to tear loose from him, not finish the conversation but rip loose of it and flee. As she rode down the escalator, she felt peeved. Really, what did she want to drag around with him for? Sulking, sullen. As soon as he was out of her sight for the first time in days, she felt a swell of panic. She wanted to run back upstairs. Fear of losing. Fear of never seeing him again—him too, one more lost. From moment to moment, what could she take for granted except the need for vigilance?

She went all the way down, walked a slow circle and then rode up. On edge, on guard, watching now, her skin all eyes. That woman, wearing a drab green raincoat. The coat was unnecessary. Shoplifter, probably. For a minute they eyed each other; then both turned away. Slowly she cruised past the flimsy pastel nightgowns toward corsets. A woman near the bikini panties was going through the sale bins without looking at anything. Although she remained standing there, the salesgirl did not come to her. Pig, yes, but what kind? Watching the other women. Now sauntering off in the wake of the woman in the raincoat, whom she had at once noticed as Vida had. Store dick, okay. Keep away from her, don’t finger the merchandise.

Past the bras Vida ambled, turning in slow arcs of reconnaissance. At the far wall, Natalie was zinging dressing gowns along a rod. She was actually looking at them, pulling out a filmy bronze wrapper to peer at it, then shaking her head and passing it along. She knew suddenly that Natalie was thinking of her, her love of sleazy dressing gowns that slithered in the boudoir, that invited touch. When her hair had been red, she would have looked superb in that shade, and Natalie had suddenly realized that and therefore rejected the wrapper. Now she was fingering a soft mauve. Better, Natalie, better, she thought; maybe I’ve finally taught you some feeling for clothes. Small cute pinchable Natalie with her round ass sticking out of the dressing gowns peered at the buttons on the mauve satin. Her curly hair was cropped close to her head, the Afro of several years shorn. She wore a dark blue bulky sweater with tan cords, boots, suede jacket some years old and her oat-bag purse both slung over her shoulder.

Softly, softly she stepped up behind Natalie. “It won’t do, Natty. Daniel would have a heart attack if you sailed out of the bathroom in that”

“He wouldn’t notice” Natalie covered her surprise with a matter-of-fact tone. “Besides, he’s not around in the mornings nowadays … Can’t I even kiss you?”

Briefly, fiercely they hugged. Natalie’s hot soft dear body bumped her; her fuzzy curls tickled Vida’s nose. Natalie’s eyes teared, and she ran her finger hard under her nose, scowling, and pinched the dressing gown. “Wouldn’t you look great in this?”

“Sensational. But if you really want to get me something, I desperately need boots.”

Natalie fingered the material. “We’ll go right to the shoe department … but you’d look fine in this”

She disentangled the price tag. “Natty, it’s sixty-five dollars. I know you don’t buy yourself sixty-five-dollar bathrobes. Let’s go get me some winter covering for my soon-to-be-bare tootsies.” Yet she felt contrarily tugged as she marched arm and arm with Natalie away from the rack. She wanted the mauve; she wanted it to entice Joel, her lover; she wanted to parade in it to and fro looking sumptuous. All the pleasures she had taken for granted with Leigh, never to be shared with Joel.

The shoe department was crowded. They sat side by side waiting for a salesman, with a list of numbers and styles to try, while all around them women and girls were shoving feet into bright clunky high-heeled shoes. “I hate to see high heels coming back” Natalie said, looking where Vida was looking. “Remember those killer spikes? Always getting caught, always snapping off”‘

“Remember when you were in love with that supercilious Trot? You walked five miles with him in your heels and you were crippled for a week?”

“I was a jerk,” Natalie said. “A masochistic jerk. Now they are trying to bring back all that foot-binding torture from the ‘50s”

“They want to abolish the ‘60s. Take back everything we gained. Concessions they made under threat. Close the system tight again.”

Natalie leaned close, pointing at her overblouse. “Hey, wasn’t that a dress?”

She looked down: her moss green velour pullover. “Hard to believe now. We all had this dress, you and me and Lohania, in different colors … Do you still have yours?”

“I’m sure it went to the Goodwill years ago … We won’t let them take all our hard-won gains back. We push, they push back, we push, they push back. We never expected it to be easy.”

“Oh, sure we did.” Vida grinned. “Don’t worry, I’m less depressed than I was. Guess what?”

“You met somebody?”

“How did you guess?” She felt transparent.

“When you grin like that? You haven’t made that face in years. Years and years.” Natalie poked her. “So
who?”

“
A man. A
young
man.”

“Somebody who’s sheltering you?”

“No … He’s … like me.”

“Do I know him?” Natalie’s eyebrows came together; she was thinking, no doubt, of all the macho hardheaded hardhearted know-it-alls she had detested in SAW in its last foaming loudmouth stage.

“He didn’t move in our circles. Natty, he really is
young.”

“You keep saying that with tongs. Fifteen?”

“Twenty-seven. I’m serious about him. I’m crazy about him … Are you shocked? Speak to me. Am I completely nuts?”

“No, love, no. It’s very young men or women, that’s the only choice we all get now. The men our age won’t change with us, won’t let go of the old privileges. They’re scared of our changes … so, it’s younger men with less stakes in the old roles, or women.”

Vida giggled. “You make it rational. You always say, There, there, falling out the window with your nightie on fire is a frequent occurrence in elevator buildings with this kind of population density”

“Okay, what can I do for you ladies today?” The salesman smiled without looking at them. He glanced at his watch. Natalie had the numbers ready to read to him. Vida felt oddly excited, a child getting new shoes. She could not remember the last time she had been in a department store. Did they have department stores in L.A.? When she thought of shopping, she remembered May’s in Cleveland when she and Ruby had gone downtown to get her a few things for school, September jaunts clutching hands and every penny figured. Then she thought of Natalie teaching her to use the first charge card she had ever seen and certainly Ruby also. Natalie and she stood in Marshall Field’s picking out sweaters together and feeling so haughty with adulthood they giggled all the way home on the El.

Mainly when she thought of department stores … “Too wide. I need it in narrow. Do you have these in narrow?” … she thought of the different pleasures of Bloomingdale’s and Alexander’s, cheek by jowl and different worlds; of Altman’s, of Macy’s, of forays into Lord and Taylor’s, Bonwit’s, Bendel’s. The days of casual shoplifting, a scarf, even a minidress carried off. Her own purse full of charge cards and the pleasant rustle of packages filled with little treats for Leigh, for Lohania, for baby Sammy, for Natalie.

“Do they fit now?” Natalie peered at them suspiciously. “Be sure they’re comfortable.”

Back and forth in the new boots she marched. “Natty, I trust him. I am trusting him. What do you say?”

“You want me to meet him?”

She flexed her foot. “How does that feel to you?”

“I have some business with you. If you’re going to travel with him, I guess it’d involve him. Think he’d be into exporting a woman for us?”

“If not, then I should find it out now.” The salesman was tapping his foot impatiently. “Yeah, hi, we’ll take this pair. All right, Natty? You satisfied?”

“You’re the one got to be satisfied”

“They’re not too expensive?”

“Vinnie! When do I get to buy you a present anymore?” Natalie fumbled for her wallet. “I wonder do they take Master Charge?”

“Cash. Pay cash.”

“Okay.” Natalie did. When the salesman went to ring up the charge, she said, “I just wanted to save as much cash as I can to give you.”

“Charging leaves a record. Not a good idea.” She looked at her watch. ”We’ve got an hour. Let’s wait to eat with him; he’ll be hungry. Where can we sit and talk?”

“Outside the beauty salon on the mezzanine. As if we’re waiting for someone.”

Side by side they sat down, facing each other. She pushed the cropped curls from Natalie’s face, tweaked her turned-up nose that had been the envy of their high school class, squeezed the plump hand on which the ring was suddenly missing. “Did you lose your wedding ring?”

“You might say I’m in the process.” Natalie pulled her lips down in a wide arc. “At long last, I suppose.”