Twenty-Four
A COUPLE WEEKS LATER, THERE’S a knock at the door of my booth.
I glance up from my drawing and Ginny’s here.
White button-down shirt and blue jeans, back straight, hair tucked neatly behind her ears, accentuating the line of her jaw.
My body hums at the sight of her. “There’s a flaw, I think,” she says, holding up a record.
All I can do is make room for her, close the door, even though it goes against the rules I’ve set for myself.
We aren’t supposed to be this close to each other, let alone in here, where there’s no hope of keeping distance.
She holds the record by its edges. There’s no label on it yet but I know what it is.
All week, we’ve been pressing Doris Day.
“Which song?” I ask.
“‘Secret Love.’”
“Where?”
“Let’s listen from the beginning.” She draws the curtain shut.
Dimmer now, my pulse racing. I know which side to play based on the space between the deeper grooves, know where to place the needle for “Secret Love.” I’ve listened to the record dozens of times, but still—when Doris Day’s voice fills the booth, the lyrics are torture.
A secret love, impatient to be free. Too much with Ginny here.
I try to hear without listening—to make the notes only sounds, not a declaration of love.
A minute passes, two. Ginny’s hands rest on her knees, her nails short and smooth.
Listen to the song, I remind myself. But also—don’t.
The music swells—I’m sure I’ll hear it soon, a pop or a skipped note.
But then it ends. “I didn’t hear anything,” I say.
“How odd,” Ginny says, but she’s hiding a smile.
A flare of anger. I’ve been trying so hard. “‘Secret Love’? This is a joke?”
“Not a joke. An excuse.”
“Ah.”
“You avoid me.”
“I try my best to.”
“Why?”
“Apparently you know why.” My heart is pounding, I might be sick, my body is frantic with trying to tell me something.
“Come out with me tonight. Let me take you to dinner.”
“I have children, remember? And a husband.”
“Don’t you ever leave them for a night?” She waits. I don’t answer her, don’t trust myself to speak. So quiet in here now. With each shift and breath, we’re on the verge of something. “Let me know if you change your mind,” she finally says.
She opens the door. A sweep of light. Noise rushes in as she steps out—people talking as they walk by, the distant sounds of machinery—and then she presses the door shut. A click and it’s quiet again.
“They don’t let girls like you keep their babies.” I say it out loud. But the threat sounds hollow, doesn’t grip me like it once did. Instead, I hear Felix, telling me I’m still young, urging me not to give up on romantic love forever.
But Bayard Rustin in the paper. Names printed in black ink for all of Los Angeles to see.
Dinner is hardly sex in a car, though. And really, is anyone watching me all that closely? Could I give myself this, just once? I’m losing hold of my resolve. First painting. Now this.
In the restroom, I splash water on my face, dry it with a towel, study myself in the mirror. My reflection is flushed, full of hunger, thrilled, afraid.
Oh, hello. I know you.
She’s there at lunch, in the cafeteria, sitting next to Al, making it easy for me to join her. I take a tray, aware of her gaze on me as I choose salad and soup, top my coffee with cream. Instead of fleeing as I usually do, I take the spot directly across from her, next to Bernard.
“I can’t remember the last time you joined us for lunch,” he says. “We’ve missed you.”
“She works too hard,” Al says. “You feel pressured to do it? If we unionize, all that would be taken care of.”
“You don’t feel pressure, do you?” Bernard asks. “The company gives us all a fair lunch. Forty-five minutes and high-quality food. Al, you’re smoking something.”
“Well,” Al says, “I do enjoy a smoke now and then, brother. Not all of us are so straightlaced.”
Ginny catches my eye, smiles.
“Look,” Bernard says. “The girls are amused by us. We’re bickering like husband and wife.”
“I agree that Odette works too hard,” Ginny says. Her dark eyes are all over my face. “In fact, I invited her out tonight—some of us are going for drinks—and she said no.”
I say, “The trouble is, Felix is away. No one would be home with the children.”
“Send them over,” Al says. “You go out with Ginny and the others. You deserve it.”
“What do you say?” Ginny asks.
“All right,” I say. My body is strangely calm, my voice easy when I add, “Only thing is, I don’t want to disrupt their bedtimes. I’m bound to be out late.”
“Pack their overnight things,” Al says. “You can come for breakfast in the morning, pick them up then.”
Loud voices rise all around us, the clinking of glasses against the Formica tables, the scrape of chairs pushing back, a swell of laughter from one corner, and then from another.
Bernard and Al go back to the company union debate and Ginny’s eyes are locked to mine. For the first time, I see her blush.
It’s still light when she pulls up in her little white car. “You aren’t going to invite me in?” she asks as I slide onto the seat.
“It isn’t enough that we’re going out together?”
“Honestly,” she says, “you make it hard not to want everything.” I should laugh, it’s such a line, but she’s earnest, and I long to give her everything.
Her car smells faintly of soap, also of a grassy field, and flowers, and she reaches into the back seat and hands me a small bouquet. “Wildflowers on your kitchen table.”
Forget-me-nots and daisies and California poppies, tied together with a piece of twine. Years later, and she remembers our conversation, what I pictured for my life. “You picked them for me?”
She nods.
“They’re so pretty. Thank you. I’ll run them inside.”
Back down the steps I go, the flowers in my hand.
I find my smallest vase and set them in.
Then I’m in her car again, dizzy from my lack of resistance, nothing tethering me to my good sense, feeling like the balloon Nathalie wanted for her eighth birthday, slipping from her hand, set loose and drifting higher and higher.
It was so beautiful floating away like that, so right that she didn’t even cry.
“Have you been to Rick’s Place?” Ginny asks. I shake my head. “You’ll like it.”
The host greets us at the door, shows us to our table.
It’s in the middle of the dining room, set for two with a tablecloth and a candle in a red holder between us.
Ginny takes her seat, her face and body in low light.
So close to me. Like one of my secret paintings, mine just for tonight.
“This is the only time I can do this,” I say.
“I want to tell you now, so you don’t get the wrong idea, or wonder later. ”
Her brow furrows. “Okay.”
My ribs press against the table as I lean in. “What have you had to give up to live the way you do?”
“A big question before the drinks have even come.”
“It’s just that I have this fear that the night’s going to be over and I won’t have found anything out. Or at least not enough. But I can start smaller. Where do you live now?”
“Near Lionel, right off Central Avenue. In a fourplex. Just a one bedroom but it’s plenty. Your neighborhood is pretty. Lots of trees.”
I can’t help smiling. “Yes,” I say. “Lots of trees.”
She laughs. “Well, I don’t know what to ask or say about the other parts.”
I cock my head. “What would those parts be?”
“The husband, to start.”
“He isn’t—” I say. “It isn’t—” I stop myself before saying it isn’t a real marriage. It’s real in its own way. Our companiable days and nights. Sleeping in the same room, tending to the children and the home. More than simple friendship.
The waiter is here now, hovering over us. I haven’t even glanced at the menu.
“The gin punch is good here,” Ginny says.
“Sure.”
“We’ll have two gin punches. And the shrimp cocktail?
” She looks to me, I nod, and the waiter is gone.
The tables are far apart, the music just loud enough to drown out the other diners’ words.
Ginny chose well for us. I’m suddenly fascinated by everyone here, wondering who they are to each other.
Wondering how they see us. “So you were saying … about your husband?”
“He’s like us.”
“Oh.” She studies me in a new way, like she’s reevaluating all she’d assumed before.
I like that I can surprise her. I lean back, fish a cigarette from my purse. She lights it for me from across the table. “This way,” I say, “we can have it all. Family and church, good jobs, a house.”
She’s watching me closely. “Why have you avoided me for so long, then?”
I take a drag. Smoke in my throat. A tremble starts in my hand as I lower the cigarette. “I don’t date.”
“But Felix wouldn’t stop you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
I see her puzzling. My head spins. “It’s just … I haven’t told him. About me.”
“Really? Why not?”
“It isn’t relevant,” I say.
“What isn’t relevant?”
She’s being obtuse. I want to cry. The ups and downs of this, the confidence turning to foolishness. Too much. I’m with her here, now, aren’t I? I’m not hiding. The waiter comes with our drinks. Sets them down. Leaves us. “Felix would be fine with it,” I say. “But the world is still the world.”
“You’re upset,” she says. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I was just trying to understand.”
“It isn’t you,” I say. I could tell her more.
That in certain light this life I’ve assembled looks like enough, but there are cracks in it.
That I thought it was fine, but now she’s back and my heart is a tangle of wanting and terror.
I shake my head, can’t say any of it. She spares me.
Lifts her glass and sips. I do the same.
When I place my glass on the table again, she’s watching me. “What is it?” I ask.
“Dates don’t usually go this way,” she says.
“How do they go?”
“Well, for one thing, I’ve never had a girl call things off so early.”
“I haven’t called it off. We have hours and hours.”
“That many?”
“We’re just starting.”