“Open the door, Gretchen.”
“You fucking little snot, can’t you leave me alone?”
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m all strung out and I’m shaking.”
“Open the door.”
He waited, and just as he was about to give up and turn from the door he heard the bolt. She held the door open a crack and peered out at him.
“Well?”
“I want to see you.”
She opened the door further and supported herself by leaning against the jamb. “Anybody who wants to see me,” she said, “has got to be crazy.” She tried on a smile but it wouldn’t play. “Oh, Jesus,” she said. “Oh, I’m so fucked up. How did I get so fucked up?”
He looked at her face and felt tears welling up behind his eyes. She was such a beautiful woman and none of the beauty showed now. Her face was ravaged, haunted. The circles under her eyes looked unreal, like make-up amateurishly applied. Her dirty blond hair was uncombed and lifeless. There were tiny sores in the corners of her mouth. The yellow cotton housedress she wore had been tight on her body when she bought it. Now it hung like a tent.
“Peter, I’m dying,” she said. “Oh, poor Peter, poor poor Peter.”
She lurched forward and he caught her, let her head drop to his shoulder. He stroked her hair and the back of her neck, making automatic calming sounds. He couldn’t get over how thin she had grown. She was eating herself up, melting the flesh from her bones.
She said, “I look like hell, don’t I?”
“You could straighten out. Get off all this shit, put yourself back together again.”
“I can’t do it.”
“You can try. I’ll help.”
“You can’t even help. Nothing can help. I hate those fucking pills and I’m worse without them.”
“What are you on?”
“What do you think? Speed.”
“Just pills?”
“I was going to shoot but I didn’t.”
“Thank God.”
“I don’t know which is worse. Shooting might have been better. Now I’m all strung out. I can’t get off and I can’t get back on either. You know what it is, I’m overamping. My brain is burning too fast for my brain to keep up with it. You can’t understand me, can you? I don’t know if I can, either. Some of the time I can—”
She ran out of words and he held onto her. “I have some grass,” he said, “but I don’t know if that would be better or worse for you.”
“Worse. I’m on a bad trip and it would just make the colors brighter. Where did you get it?”
“From Marc. Well, from Linda. Marc’s halfway to Chicago by now.” He told her briefly about the note Linda had found and that he was going to light the show. It was hard to tell whether she was interested or not. She seemed to be listening but not reacting.
She said, “Maybe that’s a good idea.”
“What?”
“Chicago.”
“You want to go to Chicago?”
“You could go. To Chicago or Kansas City or Acapulco or Tel Aviv or, oh, some place.” Her eyes fixed on him suddenly. “Why don’t you leave me, Petey?”
“I like it here.”
“Oh, shit. Nobody likes it here. I don’t know how you stand it. I can’t live with myself, how can anybody else stand to live with me?”
“Sometimes it’s good.”
“It is, isn’t it? But not very often. I haven’t been any good for you in a long time.”
“You will be.”
She lowered her eyes. “I don’t know.”
“Sure you will.”
“I just don’t know. It’s a hard corner to turn this time. It isn’t a matter of getting straight. The pills, all of that shit. You know it’s not just that.”
“I know.”
“It’s wanting to be straight. If I could work. But lately all I can think is who on earth gives a shit if a pot has a lip or it doesn’t, or what fucking glaze I put on it, or whether I sell it or give it away or throw it in the canal. I mean it’s not an art. I mean go ahead and name twenty famous Italian Renaissance ceramicists. Shit, all it is is making pots by hand that they can make better than by machines, and idiots buy them because they think they’re supposed to. So they can surround themselves with craftmanship and escape from the Plastic Age. I mean who fucking cares, baby?”
He stood awkwardly for a moment, then put a quick kiss on her waxen forehead.
“I have to go. I’m sort of late.”
“Oh, the show. Yeah, you’d better do. Break a leg and everything, huh?”
“Sure.”
“You’ll be beautiful, baby, I know you will. I’m proud of you.”
“Because Marc ran off and left them hanging?”
“Just because. Because I want to be proud of you, so let me, huh?”
“Sure.” He started for the door, then turned. “Hey,” he said, “you had dinner yet?”
“Oh, sure. I spent the whole day eating and sleeping. Can’t you tell by looking at me?”
“I just—”
“I mean for Christ’s sake, Petey, do I look like I had dinner? You know how I get, you know I couldn’t swallow anything and if I did it wouldn’t stay down, and—”
“I was thinking about Robin.”
“Oh.” Her face fell. “I forgot.”
“Christ.”
“I think I gave her a sandwich for lunch. Robin? Honey, did you have any lunch?”
“Fix her some dinner, Gretch.”
“I can’t.”
“Jesus, Gretchen—”
She stood hunched forward, her fingernails digging through the sheer housedress into the scant flesh of her thighs. Tears welled out of her eyes and coursed down her cheeks. She said, “I can’t, Jesus, I can’t, I just can’t, I’d vomit, I swear I would vomit, I can’t do it—”
He looked at Robin. The girl was wide-eyed, expressionless, taking it all in. God, what that kid had to take in. The whole trip, he thought. Everything but food.
“Okay,” he said. He bent over, scooped the child up in his arms, perched her on her shoulders. “Let’s go, Robin Bluejay Nightingale Vann. Let’s get moving, Moving Vann. We’re going to a tacky little restaurant where you can have a tacky big dinner, got it?”
“Moving Vann,” Robin said, and began to giggle.
He took Robin to Raparound, an outdoor coffeehouse around the corner from the playhouse. He put her in a chair and took one of the waitresses aside.
“A large orange juice and all the milk she’ll drink, and whatever else you can stuff into her. She usually likes French toast. Then you can take her back to the Shithouse or else keep her here until after the show.”
“I didn’t think you were in it.”
“I’m doing the lighting tonight. And I’m late, I really have to run.”
The waitress was a heavyset girl named Anne. She had olive skin and prominent white teeth. She said, “I don’t mind taking her home, Peter, but is it all right?”
“Huh?”
“Is it safe?”
“Gretchen’s not a monster.”
“I know, I only meant—”
“Gretch has never been bad to the kid. It’s just that sometimes she can’t cope.”
“I know. I was thinking she could sleep in the back room here. There’s a cot.”
He thought for a moment. “All right,” he said. “Maybe that’s best if Danny doesn’t mind.”
“Why should he?”
“Okay. I’ll pick her up whatever time it is. Eleven, eleven thirty.”
She nodded and looked about to say something. He could guess what it probably was and didn’t have time to listen to it. He turned, darted outside, jogged off toward the playhouse.
Anthony Bartholomew wore his standard uniform of white duck trousers, a black shirt open at the throat, and a white linen ascot. He looked at his watch and whistled soundlessly.