Zelda brings both of her hands atop Elisa’s, gentling them like tussling pigeons and bringing them into the comfort of her bosom.
“You’re not signing anything worth my time, and we both know it.” Elisa quits resisting, but her face stays hard. Not unkind, just hard, as if holding a wall before a secret too big to show. Zelda exhales. “Haven’t I always tried to understand whatever bothered you? From the first day you came? I remember that poster Fleming hung up in the locker room when you first started. Picture of some Marilyn Monroe type with a mop, all these arrows pointing out her attributes. Hands willing to help. Legs ready to run the extra mile. Remember that? Remember how we laughed and laughed? That’s when we became friends. Because you were so young and so shy and I wanted to help. That’s still all I want.”
Elisa’s forehead ripples in turmoil. She starts at the crunch of gravel, a half-dozen workers adjusting their feet while digging out bus tokens. That means the bus is in sight. Zelda can’t hold her friend here much longer. She constrains Elisa’s hands as tightly as she can in the cage of her own hands; she can feel the rustles of Elisa’s delicate pigeon wings.
“If you’re in some trouble, don’t be frightened. Don’t be scared. I’ve seen all sorts of trouble in my life. And if it’s a man—”
Elisa’s eyes dart back toward Zelda’s. Zelda nods, tries to encourage her, but Elisa’s pulling away, and the snort and hiss of the bus can’t be ignored. Zelda’s eyes go bleary all at once, a sluice of tears that she despises; it’s every emotion she doesn’t want to show when trying to display strength. Elisa breaks away, but Zelda calls out. Elisa stops, half-turns. Zelda wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.
“I can’t keep asking you, hon,” she moans. “I’ve got my own problems. My own life. You know one of these days, I’m leaving this place and starting my own thing. And I always pictured you coming along. But I got to know—do we just clean together? When we take the uniforms off, are we still friends?”
The swelling sun brings glistening definition to the tears that, in perfect match to Zelda’s, begin rolling down Elisa’s cheeks. Elisa’s face twists, as if she wants to speak, but she clenches her hands, her method of biting her tongue, and can only shake her head before breaking toward the bus. Zelda turns away, purposefully blinding herself with the sun, and wipes her wet face with a quaking arm, then leaves it there, cover against the glare, the grief, the loneliness, all of it.
24
TAKE YOUR PICK of the city’s army of ad men, and after a tough day they’ll have their bellies to a bar, washing down the hard luck, cursing the iniquities of their chosen racket. But what is Giles Gunderson doing? First off, he’d delayed mourning until the following day because he was old and tired. Second, it’s not beer he’s throwing back, it’s milk. Third, he’s alone.
He thought he’d never get out of bed again. No work, no money, no food, no friends if Elisa remains furious. Why elongate the inevitable? Then morning light had crystalled through his bedroom window, the resultant rainbows remindful of the chromed display cases at Dixie Doug’s. If anything could extricate Giles from the briar patch of doom, it was the attentions of Brad—unless the alternate name tag was correct and he was actually JOHN. Giles had dressed in clothes that, for the first time, seemed not permeated with character but simply old and put on his toupee, an exercise in disgrace. Then he’d attempted to ignore the Pug’s mortal chokes and tape together the shredded ribbons of his pride so that he might enter Dixie Doug’s with a soupçon of his usual verve.
But Brad wasn’t there, and the queue, a rattlesnake, had him coiled. Forced to order, and mindful of his destitution, he smiled wanly at a perky young woman name-tagged as LORETTA and ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, a pitiful glass of milk. Now he sits at the counter, despite how stools play hell with his hip. Gulp down the milk, make a quick getaway, get on with the business of dying.
He swivels to the right so he might distract himself with the black-and-white TV lodged between tureens of plastic utensils. The reception is snarled, but ropes of static can’t hide the familiar contrasts of Negroes toting signs in circles. Milk goes sour on Giles’s tongue. Oh, this is just what he needs! Giles considers calling for Loretta to turn the dial, but she’s in high flirt, transmogrifying winks and wiggles into whole fleets of ordered pies. At least Dixie Doug’s blares country-western music; he can make out only snatches of the news report. Something about William Levitt, the pioneer of “suburban” living. Something about how Levitt won’t sell plots to Negroes. Giles aches at the file footage of Long Island’s Levittown. He imagines himself in one of the pastel abodes, exiting each dewy morning in a snug house robe to water magnolias. It’ll never happen; he’ll serve a life sentence in that mice-ridden shoebox above the Arcade, and that’s if he’s lucky.
Elbows fold themselves onto the counter. Giles looks up and there he is, an angel floated in from short-order Elysium. Even Brad’s comfy hunch can’t hide a height that must be taller than Giles’s previous estimates. Six-foot-three. Six-foot-three at least! Brad leans across the counter, smelling of sugar and dough. He loosens one big, lazy finger from the knot of his arms to indicate a plate of bright green pie that has manifested alongside the milk.
“Remembered how much you like that key lime.”
Brad’s fake Southern accent is back, and Giles melts. Fake accent, fake hair, what’s the difference? Are we not allowed our little vanities, especially when they please someone about whom you care?
“Oh!” Giles pictures his emptied wallet. “I’m not sure I brought enough cash to—”
Brad scoffs. “Forget it. It’s on the house.”
“That is far too kind. I won’t hear of it. I’ll bring by the money later.” An idea strikes him, a deranged one, but if this, his lowest point, isn’t the time for insane acts, what is? “Or… you could give me your address, and I could swing it by?”
“Now who’s being too kind? Shucks, working here, it’s like tending bar. You get to know people. Hear their stories. And I can tell you, mister, most people? They hold a conversation about as well as I can hold a bag of cats. We don’t get a lot of customers like you. Smart, educated. All that stuff you told me about the big food launch whatchamadoodle? You got a lot of real interesting things to say, and I’m obliged. So eat up, partner.”
Bernie must be right, Giles thinks. He’s old, he’s sentimental, he’s trapped in a different time. Why else is it that, at this meagerest generosity, tears have begun to gather along his eyelids.
“I can’t tell you what it means to… I work alone, you know, and conversation… I talk to my friend, of course, my best friend, but she’s…” Elisa’s parting signs are still branded into the flesh of his back. “Well, she’s not much of a conversationalist. So… I thank you. From the bottom of my heart. And you must call me Giles.” He forces a smile, and it feels brittle, his whole skull feels brittle, a thing as shatterable as Andrzej. “You can’t be bankrolling my key lime habit and calling me ‘partner.’”
Brad’s laugh is sunshine, lemonade, mowed grass.
“Heck, I never knew a Giles before, if you want the truth.”
Giles can see it in the purse of Brad’s lips, his real name about to be divulged with the same easy affection with which he’d confessed his Canadian heritage. After this, thinks Giles, there will be no more prying for clues; there will be no more paging through phone books like a lovesick schoolboy; there will be no more humiliation in this life that has been filled with nothing else. On this worst morning of his life, all will be saved.