Conchita’s was down a flight of wooden stairs to a deck suspended only a foot or two above the river, shallow at this point, offering little risk of drowning if one happened to fall drunk over the railing. Or if you accidentally pushed someone. Now, now, Mimi, she muttered to herself. I’m sure Iris will be lovely.
The restaurant was tucked into what was once the basement of a building constructed by Scottish stonemasons a hundred and fifty years ago, never knowing that the building would one day serve quesadillas and killer margaritas.
Blue-and-yellow Corona umbrellas were open above every table on the crowded deck but served no real purpose, for the setting sun was blocked from the patrons’ eyes by the massive old place that housed the restaurant, a craft store, and bookstore as well.
Jay and Iris had already ordered a pitcher of margaritas when Mimi arrived, Thursday evening. She arrived late, on purpose, determined not to be the one sitting there alone and waiting. She had only packed a couple of dresses for her trip, and she dressed in the flirtiest of them before remembering that it was hardly a date. So she changed, a little reluctantly, back into her black capris and a black V-neck. She wore a lime-green plastic belt and a button that read IMPEACH NIXON. A girl had to show some style.
Jay actually stood to introduce the two women. Could he be more chivalrous? Iris Xu was petite, but her handshake was firm. Her smile dissolved her face into a glinting array of smooth and burnished plains. Her long hair shimmered; her eyes were warm. Mimi laughed with relief. Liking her was not going to be hard at all.
“Are you beat from the drive?”
“No, it’s just three and a half hours,” said Iris. “Except that Jay drives exactly at the speed limit!”
“How boring is that.”
“I know,” said Iris, and patted Jay’s hand affectionately. High-school sweethearts now old-marrieds. Mimi wasn’t sure if she felt very young or very grown up in their company.
Then a waitress arrived, smiling-mostly at Jay. And Mimi got carded.
“I can vouch for her, Nikki,” said Jay while Mimi fumbled for her ID.
“Okay, Jay,” said Nikki, blinking and winking at him and stumbling away with her tray clasped to her chest.
Iris leaned forward, with her hand to the side of her mouth. “Nikki’s been in love with Jay since third grade.”
“Poor thing,” said Mimi. “What does she see in him?”
Iris shrugged. “Back then I think it was his Han Solo action figure. But now I think she’s after his kayak.”
“Well, it is a really long kayak,” said Mimi, and Iris cracked up.
“All right, ladies,” said Jay. “Let’s keep it down.”
Nikki soon returned with the beer and a plate of nachos with jalapenos, sour cream-the works.
“Restraint is so last year,” said Iris, who was as thin as a rail. And then leaning against the table, she whispered, wide-eyed, “So how weird is it to find you have a brother you never knew about?”
Mimi poured herself a drink. “Oh, it’s right up there with getting arrested in the Uffizi,” she said. And she told them all about it.
They talked about travel misadventures and then history, which was Iris’s major, and art and music and New York. Spent napkins piled up around them.
“Sour cream alert,” said Iris, and taking Mimi’s face in her hand, she removed a smear from her cheek. They exchanged smiles and, unless Mimi was imagining it, blessings.
“Jay was telling me you left New York in a bit of a hurry.”
Mimi frowned. “What exactly did he tell you?”
“A predatory prof?”
Mimi glared at Jay.
He threw up his hands. “She forced it out of me,” he said.
“Yeah, right.”
“Dish!” said Iris.
Note to self, thought Mimi. Keep secrets from Jay. But Iris was not about to be put off and so Mimi dished. She didn’t mind. In fact, she was a little amazed at how crazy hungry she was to talk about it. So she told them about the exhilaration in the early days of the affair, the clandestine dates, the off-the-beaten-track venues, the surprising places one could find to be totally alone together even in an academic establishment. Then she told them how it all came undone, as Lazar got more and more infatuated.
“It got kind of surreal,” she said.
“Like melty?” said Iris.
“Huh?”
“You know, that picture by Salvador Dali with the melting clocks hanging from dead trees or whatever.”
“Ah, melty,” said Mimi. “I guess.” But what she guessed was that Iris was getting pretty drunk. Come to think of it, so was she. Nikki had come back with a second pitcher of margaritas. Mimi had tried to decline, but Jay guessed her only real concern.
“Nobody’s driving,” he said. “Transportation is under control.”
She didn’t bother to ask what that meant, mostly because she wanted to keep drinking. Wanted to let go. And she had let go. Except that letting go had led to this discussion about her love life.
“Is he dangerous, this Lazar Coatrack?”
“Cosic,” said Mimi. She shrugged and shook her head. Then thought a moment and nodded. Iris stared at her a little cross-eyed.
“Could you be slightly more definitive?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” said Mimi. And what she meant was she had run away, but they already knew that. Hell, half the people at Conchita’s probably knew it by now, she realized. Her voice had gotten quite loud. It did that.
Jay looked serious, and she was about to apologize when he said something that stunned her. “He was stalking you, wasn’t he?”
She felt panicky as if Jay must have been stalking her himself. “How did you know that?”
“Your documentary. There was some dude standing outside the apartment, on the corner.”
Mimi stared at Jay and nodded slightly, a little unnerved. “Good eye,” she said.
Jay shook his head. “Not really. You zeroed right in on him, swore, and then went into this dissolve. If I was writing the score, there’d be cellos.”
“Cellos?”
He nodded. “Playing a lot of sharps.”
Mimi was a little lost.
Luckily Iris was there to move things along.
“So tell us about the film treatment.”
Mimi poured herself another margarita. “The script is so-so,” she said, waggling her hand as if she was screwing in a lightbulb that didn’t quite fit. “Actually, I’m thinking of turning it into a sci-fi thriller, set on one of the moons of Venus.”
“Odd choice,” said Iris.
“Does Venus have moons?” said Jay.
“Dunno. Could be a space station, I guess. Anyway, instead of an aging professor having a fling with a beautiful freshman, I’m thinking of an aging Gangroid with three heads, huge talons, and… well, you know. The rest.”
“Eeuw, kinky,” said Iris.
“And the beautiful freshman?” said Jay.
“Natalie Portman,” said Mimi.
It was just then that a rowdy customer arrived, already three sheets to the wind, and it turned out to be good old Rudy Slater. Mimi shook hands, did the intro thing, smiled nicely, and then sank back into her chair, talked out-out of practice-and glad to be saved from any more dishing. Rudy, Jay, and Iris caught each other up-she wasn’t listening. He left a few hearty moments later, but he had done the job of putting the Lazar Cosic Horror Show out of her dinner mates’ minds. Good! And, she thought, a great ploy to remember for screenwriting. Noisy guy arrives. Wipe.
“Oh, I love being home,” said Iris, leaning back in her chair and staring out at the water. It was dark now, rippling with reflected light. Then she smiled at Mimi and made her feel as if she, somehow, was part of what Iris meant about being home.
“You love it for about three weeks,” said Jay. “Then you go, ‘Wait a second-there is absolutely nothing happening here.’”
“Harsh,” said Mimi. “And not true. I saw a poster for a hoedown, somewhere. The Oompah something.”
“The Ompah Stomp,” said Jay, “and don’t knock it.”
“I wasn’t knocking it. I want to go, just as soon as I get a ball cap.”
“True,” said Iris. “There’s the Ompah Stomp; the Blue Skies music festival; the amateur theatrical production of Gilbert and Sullivan every fall; hockey, of course; and… what was that other thing, Jay?”
“Monster car rallies at the fairgrounds?”
“Right. Oh, and golf. Everybody golfs.”
“My mother doesn’t golf.”
“Oh, right. All the lesbian doctors in Ladybank abstain from golf, but everybody else plays.”
“I like it here,” said Mimi. “It’s so…”
“Pretty?” said Jay.
“Pretty,” said Mimi, curling up in her chair and cradling her drink. Her sixth? Her hundredth? There was a lull in the conversation, and she listened to the voices around her, happy vacation voices. Except the accent was all wrong. And her thoughts drifted, inevitably to New York and humid evenings, sun filtered through dust and crowded sidewalk cafes. Suddenly she felt an intense stab of homesickness.
Had she really let herself be driven out of the city by a professor? No, there was more to it than that. Getting away was a good thing. And look what she had found! She glanced at Jay chatting with Iris. This… this was something she had never experienced. Something to hang on to. And yet…
“You okay?” Jay asked.
“Homesick,” she said. “But I’ll survive.”
Iris poured the rest of her drink into Jay’s glass. “Ladybank is a wonderful place to be from, ” she said. And made a toast with her empty glass. “Here’s to being from somewhere and getting away!”
“And visiting,” said Jay. Mimi caught his glance and wondered if he was telling her something. That this was just a visit and she shouldn’t get any ideas about staying. Great, she thought, homesick and paranoid, a winning combination.
“Hey,” he said, leaning across the table to rest his hand on hers, “what’s up?”
Mimi shrugged. “I’m rethinking Natalie Portman. Maybe Keira Knightley is more the coed-from-Venus type.”
And on the conversation wobbled, veering away from anything serious and punctuated by laughter. Liberating laughter, thought Mimi, when she allowed herself to be liberated from her feelings of being out of place. There was something else bothering her… What was it? Ah, yes. They had left the house unguarded. Christ! She shook it off. She had locked the place up. It would be safe. Except that they wouldn’t be going back there tonight. Couldn’t. Whatever transportation Jay had planned, he was in no better shape to drive than she was. It really was time to go.
Jay picked up the tab. Mimi left the tip. She found a five-euro note in her purse left over from Italy, hiding like a secret in the detritus at the bottom of her purse. She was drunk enough to leave it-a very big tip. But Iris wouldn’t let her.
“Nikki will think it’s play money and throw it away,” she whispered.
The three of them wound their way up the staircase from the river, hanging on to the railings. The happily reunited lovers had their heads together nattering about how well Rudy Slater’s skin had cleared up but how his love life sucked, and Mimi looked up into the night sky for a friend of her own, like the moon, for instance. This was something she was only just learning how to do-look for heavenly light of one kind or another. Apparently, there were stars and planets, too, and you could actually see them sometimes. Who knew?
So she looked up and… Ta-da! There it was-well three-quarters of it, anyway.
“Hello, moon,” she said.
Then she felt Jay slip his arm around her waist. “You’re staying at Mom’s house tonight,” he said. This was his plan. A taxi.
“What about Ms. Cooper?”
“Leave Ms. Cooper to me,” he said. She looked into his brown eyes, suddenly flashing golden in the headlights of a passing car. She started to protest, but then Iris slipped an arm around her, too, so that she was a Mimi sandwich.
“We can all have breakfast together,” said Iris, “and I can tell you about the Intermarium, and Romanian-Hungarian politics prior to World War Two.” She cackled in a most indelicate way, then burped. Mimi was pretty much in love with her by now.
“I’ve always had a thing about Romania,” said Mimi. “It’s, like, right next to Beatlemania, isn’t it?”
Maybe it was the alcohol, but she wondered if she was going to cry. How maudlin. She hated maudlin. She hadn’t simply scored a delightful brother; she’d scored his delightful girlfriend, too. And eventually? Delightful nieces and nephews!
“Okay,” said Mimi, stopping to look around for her car. “So, Mr. Transportation-is-under-control person. What do we do about my vehicle?”
“We’ll leave a note for the traffic guy.”
“Is it still Bob the traffic guy?” asked Iris. Jay nodded, and Iris turned to Mimi. “He’s been around so long, he used to ticket horses.”
They found the Mini and Jay wrote a note.
Dear Bob,
Inebriated. Took a cab.
Back in the morning.
Yours respectfully,
A responsible driver
“God!” said Mimi. “In New York that would be an invitation to trash the car!”
Meanwhile, Iris pulled a cell phone from her purse and called a cab. She seemed to know the number by heart. Then they all sat on a bench at the corner of Forster and Kane, arm in arm, and waited.
Mimi was rapidly losing the pleasure of being a Mimi sandwich. She had the feeling that the two lovebirds would rather be in each other’s arms than in hers. She got up, saying she needed to stretch.
There weren’t many traffic lights in Ladybank, but there was one at Forster and Kane, and a moment later it turned red to the traffic on the main drag. Only one car pulled up at the intersection, a cherry-red Chevy with its back end up like a dog in heat and a muffler that needed serious attention.
There was a lone driver in the car, a greasy-looking guy with a mullet who leered at Mimi and then revved the motor to make his point.
“For me?” cried Mimi, clasping her hands to her breast. “That is so sexy. Can you do it again?”
She watched the driver’s eyes grow wide with expectation. But even as he revved the motor, the laughter broke from her, seeping and sputtering out like water over a dam. The driver’s euphoria turned sour.
“Bitch!” he shouted.
“Damn straight!” yelled Mimi.
Mullet rolled up his window. He squealed away from the corner as the light turned green, and Mimi headed back toward the bench, not in a completely straight line but with her fist raised, triumphantly. She dragged her canister of mace out of her purse and turned toward the Chevy, now a block away, holding it up, ready to fire.
“Bite me!” she shouted.
“Whoa,” said Iris when Mimi rejoined them. She reached over and took the canister to look it over. She’d obviously never seen one before.
“Jay told me about the creep,” she said. “The other one, I mean. Up at the snye.”
“He’s gone,” said Mimi. “We scared him off. Right, partner?”
Jay shoved his own fist in the air. “Woo-hoo,” he said with as much energy as he could muster.
Mimi plumped herself down on the bench. “I leave one stalker creepoid behind in New York and- bam! — walk right into another. Well, kind of. ”
Then they sat, waiting, until suddenly Iris sat up straight.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s like that kid at school, remember?”
“Huh?”
“The guy who used to follow you around.”
Jay looked puzzled. He glanced at Mimi and shrugged. “She’s a history major, what can I say?”
“No, really!” said Iris. “I can’t remember his name. But he was always around.”
“See?” said Mimi, poking Jay in the shoulder. “You had a stalker, too.”
“Well, it wasn’t really like that,” said Iris. “I mean it wasn’t truly creepy.”
“It wasn’t truly anything,” said Jay. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Iris’s forehead bunched up in deep thought. “What was his name? He was one of those totally forgettable people, you know?” Then she covered her mouth. “That was shitty, what I said.”
“What do you mean?”
“About him being a totally forgettable person.”
“Well, it must be true,” said Jay. “I don’t remember him.”
“We talked about this,” said Iris.
“I don’t remember that, either.”
Iris turned to Mimi. “You know the kind of guy I mean?”
Mimi nodded. A nobody. Sure. But one who had a thing for Jay? She turned to him, a question on her face.
He held up his hands in surrender. “She’s on crack. I swear to God, I don’t remember any of this.”
The cab turned onto Forster and slowed down. Jay waved and it pulled a U-turn, stopping at the curb. They were all snug in the backseat heading out toward Riverside Drive when Iris said, “I remember why he freaked me out.”
“Who?” said Jay.
“The stalker,” said Mimi impatiently, and turned her attention back to Iris. “Go on.”
Iris leaned back in the seat, looking straight ahead and talking quietly as if not wanting to jar the memory. “There was this time I was trying to catch up with Jay. I don’t remember why-I mean why I was behind him, but I was. Anyway, my point is, there I was and I didn’t feel like running, so I just followed. And that’s when I realized that he-this kid-was following Jay, too. He was between us.”
“And he didn’t just live out that way?” said Mimi.
Iris shook her head again. “I don’t think so. I know it sounds lame, but I felt sure he was following Jay.”
“Get out of town,” said Jay.
“Actually, the guy looked like he had been bused in from Hick Holler, if you want to know the truth. Oops! I’m being a snob again. But really…”
“And?” said Mimi.
“And… nothing,” said Iris. “I mean he didn’t do anything. He was just always there, a little way off. Wherever our boy Jackson Page was so was the Fan.”
Jay chuckled. “Are you sure it wasn’t you he had the hots for?”
Mimi turned to Iris. She was gorgeous. It would be easy for some lonely guy to have a big-time crush on her. But Iris just kept shaking her head. “Uh-uh,” she said. “It was you, honey-bunch.”