What had occurred with Tiffani he could not begin to understand and could not even think about without starting to feel guilty. While he was putting back on his Navy uniform, he allowed himself to taste again her kisses on the bed in the play and to feel the sexual tension while they smoked together in the alley. But beyond his awareness of his arousal he would not go. Guilt was a depressing emotion, and on his successful opening night he did not want to be depressed.
When Commander Winters walked out of the men’s communal dressing room, Tiffani was waiting for him. Her hair was back in pigtails, her face scrubbed free of makeup. She looked again like a little girl. “Commander,” she said, almost with servility, “would you do me a favor, please?” He smiled his assent. She beckoned to him and he followed her out in the hall that was adjacent to the backstage quarters.
A red-haired man about the commander’s age was standing in the hall, nervously smoking a cigarette and pacing. It was obvious that he felt uncomfortable and out of place. Next to him was a tawdry brunette, early thirties perhaps, chewing gum and talking to the man in a whisper. The man noticeably relaxed when he saw the commander in his uniform.
“Well, sir,” he said to Winters when Tiffani introduced him as her father, “it’s good to meet you. I don’t know much about this acting business, but I worry that it’s unhealthy for my daughter sometimes.” He winked at his wife, Tiffani’s stepmother, and lowered his voice. “You know, sir, with all the wimps and fags and other weirdo actors, a man can’t be too careful. But Tiff told me there was a real Navy officer, a bona fide commander, as part of the cast. At first I didn’t believe her.”
Mr. Thomas was definitely getting signals both from Tiffani and his wife. He was talking too much. “I’m regular Navy myself,” he blurted out as Winters remained silent, “almost twenty-five years. Signed up when I was just a boy of eighteen. Met Tiff’s mother two years later — ”
“Daddy,” Tiffani interrupted him, “you promised that you wouldn’t embarrass me. Please just ask him. He probably has things that he needs to do.”
The commander had certainly not been prepared to meet Tiffani’s father and stepmother. In fact, he had never for a moment even thought about her parents, although as he stood there, listening to Mr. Thomas, it all made sense. Tiffani was, after all, only a junior in high school. So of course she lives at home, he thought. With her parents. Mr. Thomas was looking very serious. For about a second Winters felt fear and the beginning of panic. No. No, he thought quickly, she can’t have told them anything. It’s all much too soon.
“My wife and I play bridge,” Mr. Thomas was saying, “duplicate bridge, in tournaments. And this weekend there’s a big sectional in Miami. We’ll be leaving tomorrow morning and coming back very late on Sunday night.”
Winters was puzzled. He was lost in this conversation. Why should he care about what the Thomases did with their free time? At length Mr. Thomas came to the point. “So we had called Mae’s cousin in Marathon and asked her if she would pick my daughter up after the show tomorrow night. But that would mean Tiff would have to miss the cast party. Tiff suggested that maybe you would be willing to see her home safely from the party and,” Mr. Thomas smiled pleasantly, “keep a fatherly eye on her while I’m off playing bridge.”
Winters instinctively glanced at Tiffani. For just a few milliseconds he saw a worldly look in her eyes that tore through him like a fireball. Then she was a little girl again, entreating her father to let her go to the party.
The commander played his role well. “All right, Mr. Thomas,” he replied, “I’ll be glad to help you out.” He patted Tiffani fondly. “She deserves to go to the party, she’s worked hard. “He paused for a moment. “But I have a couple of questions. There will certainly be champagne at the party and it will probably go real late. Does she have a curfew? How do you feel about — ”
“Just use your own judgment, Commander,” Mr. Thomas cut him short. “Mae and I trust you completely.” The man reached over and shook Winters’ hand. “And thank you very much. By the way,” he added, as he turned around to leave, “you were great, although I must admit I was worried when you were necking with my daughter. The fag that wrote the play must have been one weird dude.”
Tiffani’s stepmother mumbled thanks over her chewing gum and the girl herself said “See ya tomorrow” as the three of them walked away. The commander reached in his pocket for another cigarette.
Betty and Hap were both asleep, as Commander Winters knew they would be, when he finally arrived home around eleven o’clock He walked softly past his son’s room but then stopped outside of Betty’s. Basically a considerate man, Winters spent a few seconds weighing Betty’s sleep against his need for an explanation. He decided to go in and wake her up. He was surprised to find that he was nervous when he sat down on the side of her bed in the dark.
She was sleeping on her back with a sheet and a very thin blanket both pulled up neatly to within about two inches of her shoulders. He shook her lightly. “Betty, dear,” he said. “I’m home. I’d like to talk to you.” She stirred. He shook her again. “It’s Vernon,” he said softly.
His wife sat up in bed and turned on the light on the end table. Underneath the light was a small picture of the face of Jesus, a man wise beyond his thirty or so years, with a full beard, a serious look, and a glow approximating a halo behind his head. “Goodness,” she said, frowning and rubbing her eyes, “What’s going on? Is everything all right?” Betty had never been particularly pretty. But in the last ten years she had ignored her looks altogether and had even put on twenty pounds of ungainly weight.
“Yes,” he answered. “I just wanted to talk. And to find out why you and Hap left the show just after the intermission.”
Betty looked him directly in the eyes. This was a woman without guile, even without nuance. Life was simple and straightforward for her. If you truly believed in God and Jesus Christ, then you had no doubts. About anything. “Vernon,” she began, “I have often wondered why you choose to perform in such strange plays. But I have never complained about it, particularly since it seems to be the only thing that has excited you in a good way since Libya and that awful beach incident.”
She frowned and a cloud seemed to cross her face momentarily. Then she continued in her matter-of-fact way. “But Hap is no longer a child. He is becoming a young man. And hearing his father, even in a play, refer to God as a ‘petulant old man’ and a ‘senile delinquent’ is not likely to strengthen his faith.” She looked away. “And I thought it was equally disturbing for him to watch you groping with that young girl. All in all,” she said, glancing back at her husband and summarizing the entire issue, “I thought the play had no values, no morals, and nothing worth staying for.”
Winters felt his anger building but struggled with it, as he always did. He envied Betty her steadfast faith, her ability to see God clearly in every daily activity. He himself felt disjoint from the God of his childhood and his fruitless personal searches had not yet resulted in a clearer perception of Him. But a couple of things Winters did know for certain. His God would laugh with and have compassion for Tennessee Williams’ characters. And He would not be pleased by bombs falling on little children.
The commander did not argue with Betty. He gave her a brotherly kiss on the cheek and she turned off the light. For just a moment he wondered. How long has it been? Three weeks? But he couldn’t remember the exact time. Or even whether or not it had been good. They “fooled around,” as Betty called it, whenever her awareness of his need overcame her general lack of interest. Probably about normal for couples our age, Winters thought, somewhat defensively, as he undressed in his room.
But he was not able to sleep as he lay quietly in the dark underneath the sheet. The feeling of arousal that had been so intense first during the play and then again out in the alley continued to call to him. With pictures. When he closed his eyes he could again see Tiffani’s soft and flirtatious lips blowing out the last of the smoke that had b
een deep within her lungs. His mouth could still taste those passionate kisses that she had forced upon him during the bedroom scene. And then there was that special look when her father had asked him to take care of her at the party. Had he imagined it?
Several times Commander Winters changed positions in his bed, trying to dispel the images in his mind and the nervousness that was keeping him awake. He was unsuccessful. Eventually, while he was lying on his back, he realized there was one possible release from this kind of tension. At first he felt guilty, even embarrassed, but the waves of images of Tiffani continued to flood into his brain.
He touched himself. The images from the day sharpened and began to expand into fantasies. She was lying on top of him on the bed, as she had been in the play, and he was responding to her kisses. For a brief second Winters became frightened and held himself in check. But a desperate surge of longing removed his last inhibition. He was again an adolescent, alone in his rich imagination.
The scene in his mind changed. He was lying naked on a huge king-size bed in an opulent room with high ceilings. Tiffani approached him from the lighted bathroom, also naked, her long auburn hair cascading over her shoulders and hiding the nipples of her breasts. She took a last languorous pull from her cigarette and put it out in the ashtray beside the bed, her eyes never leaving his as she slowly, almost lovingly, expelled the last of the smoke from her mouth. She climbed into the bed beside him. He could feel the softness of her skin, the tingle of her long hair against his neck and chest.
She kissed him gently but passionately, with her hands behind his head. He felt her tongue playing enticingly across his lips. She moved her body into position next to him and pressed her pelvis into his. He felt himself rising. She took his penis in her hand and squeezed lightly. He was completely erect. She squeezed again, then gracefully raised her body up and inserted him deep inside her. He felt a magical moist warmth and then exploded almost immediately.
Commander Winters was staggered by the power and the intensity of his fantasy. Somewhere inside him a voice cried for caution and warned of dire consequences if he let this fantasy become too real. But as he lay spent and alone in his suburban home, he pushed his guilt and fears aside and allowed himself the unrivaled bliss of post-orgasmic sleep.
9
SLOPPY Joe’s was an institution in Key West. The favorite bar of Hemingway and his motley crew had managed to adapt quickly to the multifaceted evolution of the city that it had come to symbolize. Many denizens of the old city had been almost apoplectic when the bar had forsaken its historic location downtown and moved into the vast shopping complex surrounding the new marina. But even they grudgingly admitted, after the club reopened in a well-ventilated large room complete with sound stage and excellent acoustics, that the Tiffany lamps, long wooden bars, narrow mirrors from ceiling to floor, and memorabilia from a hundred years in Key West had been tastefully rearranged in a way that retained the spirit of the old bar.
It was altogether fitting that Angie Leatherwood should perform as the headliner at Sloppy Joe’s during her brief and infrequent returns to the city of her birth. Troy’s glib tongue had originally talked the owner, a transplanted fifty-year-old New Yorker named Tony Palazzo, into giving her an audition when she was still nineteen. Tony had heard her sing for five minutes and then had exclaimed, punctuating his comments with wild hand gestures, “It’s not enough that you bring me a black girl who’s so beautiful she takes your breath away. No, you bring me one who also sings like a nightingale. Mama mia Life is not fair. My daughter Carla would kill to sound like that.” Tony had become Angie’s biggest fan and had unselfishly promoted her career. Angie never forgot what Tony had done for her and always sang at Sloppy Joe’s when she was in town. She was like that.
Troy’s table was front and center, about ten feet away from the edge of the stage. Nick and Troy were already seated at the small round table and had finished their first drinks when Carol arrived about five minutes before ten-thirty. She apologized and mumbled something about parking in Siberia. As soon as she arrived, Nick pulled out the envelope of images and both men told her that they had found the pictures fascinating. Nick began asking questions about the photographs while Troy summoned a waiter. Nick and Carol were involved in an earnest conversation about the objects in the fissure when the new drinks reached the table. Nick had just mentioned that one of them looked like a modern missile. It was ten thirty-five. The lights flashed off and on to announce that the show was beginning.
Angie Leatherwood was a consummate performer. Like many of the very best entertainers, she never forgot that it was the audience that was the customer, that it was they who both created her image and enhanced her mystique. She began with the title song from her new album, “Memories of Enchanting Nights,” and then sang a medley of Whitney Houston songs, according a tribute to that brilliant songstress whose talent had sparked Angie’s own desire to sing. Next she showed her versatility by blending a quartet of songs with different beats, a Jamaican reggae, a soft ballad from her first album, Love Letters, a nearly perfect Diana Ross imitation from an old Supremes song, “Where Did Our Love Go?” and an emotionally powerful, lilting encomium to her blind father entitled “The Man with Vision.”
Thunderous applause greeted the conclusion of each song. Sloppy Joe’s was sold out, including all the standing room along the hundred-foot bar. Seven different huge video screens scattered throughout the spacious club brought Angie home to those who were not close to the stage. This was her crowd, these were her friends. A couple of times Angie was almost embarrassed because the clapping and the bravos would not stop. At Troy’s table, very little was said during the show. The threesome pointed out songs they particularly liked (Carol’s favorite was the Whitney Houston song, “The Greatest Love of All”), but there was no time for conversation. Angie dedicated her penultimate song, “Let Me Take Care of You, Baby,” to her “dearest friend” (Nick kicked Troy under the table) and then finished with her most popular cut from Love Letters. The audience gave her a standing ovation and hooted noisily for an encore. Nick noticed while he was standing that he was a little woozy from the two strong drinks and was also feeling strangely emotional, possibly because of the subliminal associations created by the love songs that Angie was singing.
Angie returned to the stage. As the noise subsided, her soft and caressing voice could be heard. “You all know that Key West is a very special place for me. It was here that I was raised and went to school. Most of my memories bring me back here.” She paused and her eyes scanned the audience. “There are many songs that bring back memories and the emotions that go with them. But of all of them, my favorite is the theme song from the musical Cats. So, Key West, this is for you.”
There was scattered clapping as the music synthesizers accompanying her played the introduction to “Memories.” The audience remained standing as Angie’s mellifluous voice launched into the beautiful song. As soon as she began, Nick was instantly transported to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in June of 1984, where he was watching a production of Cats with his mother and father. He had finally come home to explain to them why he had been unable to return to Harvard after his spring break in Florida. But try as he might, he could not begin to tell the story to his disappointed father and brokenhearted mother. All he could say was, “It was a woman . . .” and then he would fall silent.
It had been a sad reunion. While he was visiting his home in Falls Church, the first malignant polyps had been discovered and removed from his father’s colon. The doctors had been optimistic about several more years of life, but they had stressed that colon cancer often recurred and metastasized to other parts of the body. In a long talk with his suddenly frail father, Nick had promised to finish his degree in Miami. But that was little solace to the older man; he had dreamed of seeing his son graduate from Harvard.
The performance of Cats at the Kennedy Center had been only mildly entertaining for Nick. In the middle he had found himself won
dering how many people in the audience really knew the author of the source material for the songs, this poet T.S. Eliot, who not only admired and enjoyed feline idiosyncrasies, but also once began a poem by describing the evening “spread out against the sky, like a patient aetherized upon a table.” But when the old female cat walked to center stage, her beauty faded into wrinkles, and began her song of her “days in the sun,” Nick had been moved right along with the entire audience. For reasons he never understood, he had seen Monique singing the song, years in the future. And in Washington he had wept, silent tears hidden quickly from his parents, when the achingly pure soprano voice had reached the climax of the song..
“Touch me . . . It’s so easy to leave me . . . all alone with my memories . . . of my days in the sun . . . If you touch me . . . you’ll understand what happiness is . . .”
Angie’s voice at Sloppy Joe’s was not nearly as piercing as that soprano in Washington But she sang with the same intensity, evoking all the sadness of someone for whom all the joys of life are in the past. The corners of Nick’s eyes filled with tears and one of them brimmed out to run down his cheek.
From where Carol was standing, the lights from the stage reflected off Nick’s cheek. She saw the tear, the window of vulnerability, and was herself moved in return. For the first time she felt a deep stirring, almost an affection for this distant, solitary, but strangely attractive man.
Ah Carol, how different it might have been if, for once in your life, you had not acted impulsively. If you had just let the man have his moment of loneliness or heartbreak or tenderness or whatever he was feeling, then you might have mentioned it later, at a quieter time, to some advantage. The sharing of this moment might even have eventually been part of the bonding between you. But you had to tap Nick on the shoulder, before the song was through, before he even realized himself that he was tearful, and break his precious communion with his inner self. You were an interloper. Worse, as so often happens, he interpreted your smile as derision, not sympathy, and like a frightened turtle withdrew completely from the evening. It was guaranteed that he would reject as insincere any subsequent overtures of friendship.