| Lines by Tima Smith |
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I see Katerina’s black VW coming down the street just as the rain they predicted starts. She said when she called earlier today she’d be outside at seven, and the church bells down the street are just beginning to clang when she double parks out front. Katerina is a dancer, but to pick up extra money she works as a waitress at a trendy upscale new restaurant near Beacon Hill. When I get into her car, the first thing I notice are her long legs. Then I notice her smile, which is slow, but real. And her hair, which is piled in a circle on top of her head. The legs, I remember. But her hair is different today, and I’d forgotten the smile. It hits me I don’t know her last name, but then she doesn’t know mine either. It was the long legs that made me notice her when she served our drinks at Runyon’s. I had never been to Runyon’s, but my brother Seth, who’s a musician, was in town for a sales meeting. Seth sells lighting equipment so he can pay his rent and go to expensive restaurants until he gets enough gigs to quit and be a musician full-time. He was wearing a dark blue tie with small red circles. The circles are really light bulbs but you wouldn’t know that unless he told you. His company thinks it may have a subliminal effect. Seth makes a lot of money selling light bulbs. He’d been doing it for six years, but he still says it’s only temporary until his music career gets off the ground. As usual when Seth and I get together, we ended the night with a fight. Until he was fourteen and I was twelve, the fights usually produced blood. Mine. But I had a growth spurt the summer before I turned thirteen, and after that our fights became non-physical, as though neither one of us wanted to risk a total redistribution of the balance in our relationship. Basically, Seth is unhappy with the way I live. He says things like, “You’re crazy. Your life stinks. So why don’t you do something about it? Why don’t you get a job?” I don’t think my life stinks. It’s just full of small crises. Especially toward the end of the month when all my bills come due. It’s these crises that keep me lean and hungry, that make my writing so full of what my agent calls muscle. Although sometimes the crises have an opposite effect, though I’d never admit that to Seth. Sometimes they make me want to stay in bed with my eyes closed, curled up. They make me wonder if Hemingway or Roth or Mailer ever lay curled under their covers seriously questioning the sanity of their chosen profession. “I have a job,” I told him, “I’m a writer.” He snorted. He leaned toward me. “Tell me,” he said, “what you made last week writing.” “Fuck off, Seth, I said. “Words aren’t lightbulbs. You don’t add them up and multiply by five to get the amount on your Friday paycheck. Art doesn’t work that way and you know it.” He sat back. He looked satisfied, as though he’d scored a point. We were silent while he changed his method of attack. “Look,” he said, “you need something to do while you’re waiting to become successful. Look at me.” He grabbed the edge of his tie and shook it a little. “If I didn’t have this job, where would I be?” I picked up the roll the waiter had just placed on my bread dish. There were two indentations from the pressure of his tongs. “Playing the drums?” I said. His neck and face went slowly crimson. After all these years of physical and non-physical fights, I know where his soft meat is. Even though we didn’t speak all through dessert, Seth pulled a box out of his attaché case and stuffed it at me before we went our separate ways. I looked inside after he walked off. Four bulbs. Long-life, 60 watts. They were guaranteed in the socket a year and a half. I went into the bar and hung around for a while, talking to Katerina whenever she came to fill an order. I also talked to the bartender, who turned out to be a creative photographer waiting for one of the galleries on Newbury Street to offer him a show. Katerina drives expertly through the narrow rainy streets. We’re going to a party at her dance instructor’s. I’ve been looking forward to this party for three days, because I haven’t been out much lately and I’m going melancholy. Artist-types, she said. You’ll fee right at home. She tells me her instructor is considered a genius in the field of interpretive dance. She tells me his name and I nod. He must be famous, because I know hardly anything about interpretive dance, yet I recognize the name. When we arrive at the party, Katerina takes me full circle. he introduces everyone, using first names with a vocational tag. I am Michael, writer. There is Iris, singer; Vanessa, actress; Richard, weaver; Molly, sculptor; Ben, another writer. The last person we come to is her instructor, and this time she gives me both his first and last name, perhaps as a sign of respect. Alex Vermidgeon. I repeat it silently as we shake hands. He has an enormous amount of white hair and wears a sash instead of a belt. He gives me a satisfied smile and says he knew Katerina was bringing someone even though she hadn’t told him. “Every time I thought of you today,” he tells her, “you weren’t alone.” It’s the rain, he explains to me. He taps the center of his forehead. It makes him particularly receptive. He offers me a glass of Japanese wine and a plate of squid he says are leftovers from last night’s catering. He tells me he personally caters only his very best customers now, and lets his crew handle the rest. That’s when I realize I was mistaken about recognizing his name. It wasn’t familiar to me because of his genius in the field of interpretive dance, I recognized it because I’ve seen it on the side of vans all over the city. Alex Vermidgeon Caterers in black letters underneath the black outline of a chef’s hat. It’s the sort of name I need to pronounce under my breath whenever I see it. Iris, singer relieves me of one of my squid. Her speech is musical. She’s very animated. She bobs, she smiles, she bubbles. And while she does all this, her slanted bangs keep falling in her eyes. She notices my hair is still damp from the rain and we talk about the end of winter in the city. How grinding it gets. She asks if I’ve been away. “Away?” I ask. It reminds me of my Aunt Sylvia who went ‘away’ on such a regular basis that family and friends who inquired about her usually said, “And is Sylvia away?” Iris bobs her head at me and pushes at her bangs. “From the winter doldrums. You know.” Her ‘you know’ seems to scale an entire octave. I shake my head no. I tell her I haven’t been out of the city in four years. She frowns. Or maybe it’s more of a pout. “You writers,” she says, “always buried in your garrets.” She fishes around in her pocket and pulls our a business card. She insists I call her when I’m ready for a change of scenery. She says if I reserve early, she can save me a bundle. Then she cocks her head and pokes me in the chest. “A bundle,” she repeats. I ask her about her singing. She says she did back up for Tom Jones once, but since then things have been slow. “Probably it’s just a matter of time until it happens for you,” I say, and then I wonder why in hell I said it because I always think ‘what an asshole’ whenever someone says it to me. She shrugs. “Maybe,” she says, bouncing a little, not seeming to take it the way I do at all. I read her card after she goes off to find more wine. I slide it under some napkins on a table. I think about the few travel agents I’ve known and decide they must all be required to pass a test for bubbliness. Vanessa, actress and Molly, sculptor drift toward the food, talking. I watch them struck by their dissimilarity. Vanessa, slinky in silk, acknowledges me with a smile while she listens to Molly, whose head and body are wrapped in wrinkled cotton. “Try and get there early in the afternoon, okay?” Molly says. “The show isn’t going to be any good without you. You have such perfect hair.” She takes a sip of her drink. Her round face looks admiring and wistful at the same time. I look at Vanessa’s hair. It is perfect. Long, shiny, deep auburn. I don’t see how a sculpture can take advantage of hair, and I wonder how Molly’s going to do it. “How did the audition go?” Molly asks. Vanessa makes a face. “I didn’t go. I mean, I wouldn’t have got it anyway. But even if the miracle did happen, then what would I do?” She runs one hand through her perfect hair. “I mean, even if it never went past opening night, there’d still be six weeks of rehearsal, right through April and May.” She looks at Molly. “April and May, I mean, just when every woman in town shows up in a leotard and expects me to exercise thirty pounds off them before the first of June.” Molly nods as if she understands perfectly. Vanessa sighs. “I mean, there really was hardly any decision to make at all.” I feel let down, almost as though Vanessa’s decision is a personal betrayal. Something that will make it harder for the rest of us to keep going. Alex and Richard are on their hands and knees staring at the carpet, which reminds me that Richard is a weaver. The carpet is an oriental with a busy pattern in deep shades of red and I wander over to see if they’re looking for something I can help them find. “It’s a special process,” Richard is saying, “brand new. Most people just let them get dirty because they’re afraid of harming the carpet. But dirt is hard on the fiber, too, you know.” His tone when he says this is slightly accusing. As though he knows too many people guilty of sinning against their rugs and has decided to speak out. “So what do you say?” he continues. “I can send the truck over Tuesday or Wednesday. Whichever you say.” Alex sits back. He doesn’t look quite convinced. He keeps running one hand over the rug, back and forth as if he’s waiting to pick up a sign from it. “Look,” Richard says, “I’ve personally used it on sixty-nine Orientals without one problem. I’ll come over and do it myself if that makes you feel better.” That seems to be the sign Alex was waiting for. He nods. “Wednesday,” he says. I go over and stand by the window. The rain distorts the street. I think about wanting a horse when I was a kid and all the plans I made around it. How I was going to keep it in the basement, ride it to school and tie it to the bicycle rack until three every afternoon. How, at first, everyone humored me, and then, gradually, started to point out the difficulties. Then the impossibilities. How I ended up settling for a white mouse, and even though at first I was disappointed, how after a while, that was okay. I go in search of Katerina and more squid. I find them both in the kitchen. Katerina and Alex are having a conversation, but she waves me in and pats the counter beside her. I pile squid on a plate, refill my glass, go over and lean against the counter beside her. “If you promise me the end of the month,” Alex is saying, “I’ll give you the Heights.” Katerina laces her long fingers together against her thighs. She looks down at them. She has an olive complexion and very long eyelashes. I picture her with her black hair loose across her back. I think about her legs. I need consolation. “I don’t know,” she says. Her head is still pointed down and I try to figure out what they’re talking about. Dance routines? Can she have invited me to eavesdrop on a proposition? I try to keep my eyes on my squid. “You’re getting lopsided,” he says, “carrying those trays. How many chances like this ever come along? It’s a good business, Kat. And it’s the right time for you.” He narrows his eyes and looks very intent. “Everything’s pointing to it. Just think about it. First, you don’t get the chorus in that show. Second, two of my people quit in the same week. Third, your landlady raises your rent.” Katerina looks at him and shrugs. He raises his hands, lets them drop. “Tune into it Kat. Three signs like that ...” he snaps his fingers three times, “... is not something to ignore.” I take my wine and my squid and go back into the living room. Molly, sculptor is leaving. She tells me she enjoyed meeting me. Although all we really did is nod at each other, I agree that I enjoyed it, too. I ask her where I might see some of her work, hoping she’ll invite me to her show. She tells me it’s all at her studio but she hardly gets a chance to be there anymore. “Now remember,” she says to Vanessa on her way out, “you’ve got to leave enough time for a wash and a blow-dry, so get there early. I want to do you myself and the show starts at seven.” As the door closes behind her, I’m standing next to Vanessa. “I mean, what she can do with hair,” she says, “is nothing short of a miracle.” I start to feel the way Davy Crockett must have felt at the Alamo once he realized things were going badly. Ben, another writer comes up to me. I notice his expensive jacket. The one I’m wearing is a cast off from Seth whose arms are shorter than mine. The way things are going though, the jacket must mean Ben is a writer who sells real estate or one who keeps the books of a large corporation. Maybe it’s the Japanese wine, but Ben’s jacket makes me feel combative. “So,” I say, “you’re a writer.” “Well, yes.” He smiles a little, looks down into his drink. His humbleness feeds my combativeness. He looks up. “You too, huh?” “Guilty,” I say. I decide to be merciless. “So what else do you do?” He looks at me. “Else?” “Besides writing.” He takes a sip of his drink. “Well ...” His eyes wander around the room as though he’s looking for the answer written somewhere on a wall. Then he shrugs. “I walk a lot. Three, four miles a day.” “Walk? You walk and write?” “Not at the same time.” He smiles. “Actually the walking is my wife’s idea. She comes in once a day and unplugs the computer, hides the cord. Does it Saturday and Sunday, too. Hides the cord the whole weekend.” I look at Ben. I feel chagrin. And love. He’s handed me back my conviction. He’s a man who writes and wears an expensive jacket. He has not compromised and that’s made him a success. Katerina puts her hand on my arm. “Do you mind if we leave?” she asks. She smiles at Ben, says she’s sorry to interrupt. We were so engrossed, she says, probably have so much in common. Ben and I shake hands. I ask where I can find his work and he looks down into his glass again and smiles. He’ll have his publisher send me something. I scribble my address on his napkin. When I say good-bye to Alex, he shakes my hand and tells me he knows I’ll come again, he can feel it. It’s still raining when we get outside, and by the time we’re in the car, Seth’s jacket is damp enough so it’ll probably shrink another half inch up my wrist. Sometimes I get into states where I covet things. A jacket that fits. Good credit. Two weeks where the only attire allowed is a bathing suit and my bills can’t be forwarded. Those are fits of confusion, and they aren’t happy. They are, in fact, the low end of existence. And I can tell that’s where Katerina is right now. We drive for a while. We don’t talk. When I look at her, I notice her chin is down, and that’s another thing I noticed about her at Runyon’s, besides the long legs, the way she held her chin high. Like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany’s. She smacks the steering wheel with the palm of her hand. “What should I do?” she asks. I get tongue-tied when people ask me to help them make important decisions. “I love dancing,” she says. “I feel it’s almost an aesthetic responsibility. But how can I give it the energy it needs if I have to spend most of my time doing something else? Can I do them both? Balance what I love against what I need to do to survive?” “I don’t know,” I say, “it’s a gamble.” I hate seeing her chin like that. “I’ve been living on three bucks an hour plus tips for three years,” she says. “I wear my sister’s old dresses.” “That’s a nice dress,” I say. “You look great in it.” “I deserve more,” she says. “You can probably do it. You can keep the right balance if you really want to.” She glances at me. We both know better. Science has proven that the human mind can only concentrate on one thing at a time. And I, for one, can pat my head and rub my stomach for no more than fifteen seconds at a stretch. I turn and look out the passenger window at the rain. Three days go by, then Katerina calls me early and wakes me up. She says she’s taking Alex’s offer and she’ll need help if I’m interested. “We’ll set a time limit,” she says. “Six months. No more than a year. Then we’ll have money to live on while we do what we really want to. What do you think, Michael?” I tell her I’ll let her know. After I hang up, I lie there and think about Katerina dancing and catering, dancing and catering. I sit up and pat my head and rub my stomach. I keep it up for about ten seconds before both motions deteriorate into a sort of identical half-rub, half-pat. But maybe with practice, I tell myself, I could get better. I hear the mail arrive while I’m cooking breakfast, and I put down the spatula, go out to hall and open my box. There are two things in it. One is a letter from Brian who used to take writing classes with me. He’s a computer programmer now. In the letter is a check for two hundred dollars, money he says he just remembered he owes me from that trip we took to LA when his car broke down and I paid for the repair. We both know he doesn’t owe me anything, but from time to time he pretends he does and I play along because I need it. And maybe, when it comes down to it, Brian needs it, too. Maybe it’s his way of maintaining balance. I decide to take the check as a sign. The other thing turns out to be a sign, too. But of a different kind. A book from a publisher with a printed card attached to the cover stating it’s a complimentary copy from the author. Ben’s book. Or one of them. On the first page there’s a list of his other books. Ben does write full-time. I open to the first chapter, Taking Those First Steps Toward Establishing An Investment Portfolio. I smell my breakfast burning.
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