The technicians returned at the appointed hour and helped me into the suit. Renee and Jeff watched this procedure wordlessly, with such huge, haunted eyes that I might have been entering a space capsule. I think their growing awareness of the people in the other room had begun to lend an unexpected weight to the task ahead of us. I snapped them out of it—or rather Mr. Woods did—with an electronic wink and the cutest smile in his arsenal. Renee squealed with such conviction that even Mrs. Fortensky must have heard her.
“I can’t believe this!” she said.
“Believe it,” I said.
“You sound like you’re under about a zillion mattresses.”
I told her that’s what it felt like too.
“Oh, gah, I’d get so…”
Jeff found the word for her. “Claustrophobic.”
“Excuse me there,” said one of the technicians, needing access to the elf’s beard.
Renee jumped back. “Oh, excuse me.”
“Maybe we’d better give them some space,” Jeff suggested.
“No,” I said. “You’re OK.”
“You sure?” asked Renee.
“I think so,” I said. “Aren’t they, guys?”
“No sweat,” said the younger and cuter of the technicians as he wove twigs into the beard.
“My friends have never seen the suit before,” I explained.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Well, Jeff has—I think you guys have met—but this is Renee’s first time.”
I couldn’t see Renee, of course, but I could feel her, blushing extravagantly. “I am the biggest fan of…this,” she said, indicating the shell that encased me. “I can’t believe I could just reach out and touch it.”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Really?”
“Touch away,” said the technician.
Renee knelt and probed delicately at the pebbly flesh on the elf’s elbow. “It’s so amazing.”
“Every one of those hairs was hand placed,” the technician told her.
“You swear?”
“Every one of ’em.”
“How amazing!”
“Isn’t it?”
The technician knelt and joined Renee in her examination of the elf’s features. They were so close together, Renee and this guy, that I could see both their faces at once through the gauze peephole in the beard. Their heads were tilted at wacky angles, like those shots you get when two people cram into a photo booth. The guy had that look too; there was no mistaking it. I wondered how long he’d been hot for Renee, and if Renee had noticed, and what this might mean to us now.
At first I was worried because I thought he’d never leave. Long after his partner had declared Mr. Woods in tip-top shape and retired somewhere for coffee, Cutie-pie remained, hopelessly smitten, chatting up Renee about every fucking wart and nodule on the elf’s nobbly little body. It became chillingly apparent that Renee was loving all this and had no idea whatsoever she might be fatally complicating our plans.
Jeff knelt in front of me and gave me a long, loaded look through the gauze.
“I know,” I said.
“What now?” he asked through motionless lips.
“Hang on.” I toddled over to the side of the room where Renee and the technician were lost in each other. “I hate to be a spoilsport, guys, but I need a little time to myself.”
“Oh, sorry.” Renee looked mortified. “What time is it?”
“Time for me to meditate.”
“Huh?”
“You know,” I said pointedly. “My preshow meditation?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Maybe you guys could finish your conversation outside.”
“Oh, no,” said Renee. “I’ll stay here.”
By this, of course, she meant that she wanted to help with my transformation, blithely ignoring the fact that, somehow, we had to get the technician out of the room. I gave her the dirtiest look I could muster through the gauze.
Then, mercifully, the stage manager poked his head through the door and called: “Ten minutes, Mr. Woods.”
“All set,” I said.
“Uh oh,” said the technician. “Better let you meditate.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“It’s just a way I…get myself together.”
“That’s cool. Nice meeting you all.”
“Nice meeting you,” Renee said a little wistfully.
As soon as the technician was gone, Jeff knelt before my beard again. “What now?”
“Does that door lock?”
“I think so.”
“Lock it.”
Within seconds, I heard the reassuring sound of a bolt being slid into place.
Renee rushed to my peephole. “Cady, look, I’m really sorry if I…”
“Forget it,” I said. “Get your kit. We’ve got nine minutes.”
“I’ve already got it.”
“Where’s Jeff?”
“Right here,” he said, from somewhere behind me.
“Remember where the snaps are?”
“Sure.”
“Go for it.”
Within seconds, I felt the pressure of his fingers as they worked their way deftly down my back, peeling the rubber away like some horrid cocoon I was about to lose forever. I leaned forward to let the thing fall from me slowly, feeling the sweet coolness of the air against my already sticky T-shirt. In the process a piece of wiring snagged in my hair, but Jeff untangled it with brisk expertise. I was no sooner out of the suit than Renee was all over me with a towel, mopping up the sweat and sighing elaborately at the enormity of the reparation job that lay ahead for her.
“You OK?” asked Jeff.
“Fine,” I said. “Turn around.”
“I’ve seen you naked before.”
“I know,” I said. “Humor me.”
Grumbling about my latent bourgeois streak, Jeff faced the wall while Renee shucked off my T-shirt, blotted me again, and enveloped me in a dust storm of baby powder. “Go easy on that stuff,” I told her, screwing up my face.
“You don’t want to shine,” she said.
I told her I didn’t want to suffocate, either.
She grabbed the green gown from her bag, stuffed my arms into it, fastened it up the back with Velcro.
I told Jeff he could look.
“Are you sure nobody’s coming back?” he asked.
“Hell no,” I said.
Renee had moved to my hair now, ratting furiously, activating her spray can in fits and starts like a renegade graffiti artist with the cops in hot pursuit. It was oddly impressive to see her like this, operating in her pageant mode, a study in grace under pressure. She knew this turf thoroughly, I realized, and it lent her an air of strength and dignity I had never seen before.
“Nice dress,” said Jeff.
“Merci.”
“Do you remember your song?”
“Yes, Mom, I remember my song.”
He smiled at me.
Someone rapped on the door.
“Shit,” I whispered. “Ask who it is.”
“Who is it?” called Jeff.
“Is everything OK in there?” It was the stage manager.
“Just fine,” said Jeff.
“Three minutes,” said the stage manager.
“She’s ready.”
“Break a leg.”
“Thanks,” yelled Renee, answering for me. She knelt and held a hand mirror so I could fix my lips and check my existing eye makeup. The general effect was raucous up close, but it would read well on the risers, I decided.
“What if he’s still outside?” Renee murmured, meaning the stage manager.
I shrugged.
“You’re just gonna walk right by him?”
“You got it.” I started for the door and stopped. “Shit!”
Jeff went pale on the spot, imagining the worst. “What?”
“The award.”
“Oh.” He retrieved the phallic monstrosity
off a shelf and handed it to me. “Good idea.”
“Well,” I said, taking it, “here goes something.”
“Piece o’ cake,” he said.
I stood at the door and waited for him to open it.
“Wait,” said Renee, falling to her knees next to me. “There’s just one teeny little…” She fussed for a moment with a heavily varnished curl at my temple. “There. You’re perfect now.”
Our eyes met in a moment of sisterly bonding. “Thanks,” I said.
“You’re welcome.”
I took a good deep breath, and Jeff opened the door. For the moment, at least, the coast seemed clear, a straight shot to the wings without a watchdog in sight. I celebrated this small miracle with a cavalier wink to Renee and Jeff and set off in the direction of the music—Bette Midler at this point—clutching Philip’s trophy in my hot little hands. Soon Fleet Parker would begin the longish speech that would end in my cue: “So here, to present the award, is someone as old as all the rest of us put together.”
Within twenty feet of freedom, I saw the stage manager round a corner out of nowhere. “There you are. Holy shit! Where’s the suit?”
“We’re not doing that,” I told him.
“What?”
“This is something new.”
“I’ll say.”
“The producers know about it. They just called.”
“Called where?”
“The dressing room.”
“There’s no phone in there.”
“There is now.”
“Since when?”
“We had one put in.”
“What about Mr. Woods, then?”
“He’s toast,” I said, and continued walking.
When I reached the wings, I gazed out at the little stage, where Miss Midler was in her stately mode, wringing something heartbreaking and ethereal out of “I Remember You.” I set the trophy down and caught my breath, fretting that the stage manager was contacting the director at that very moment to check on the truth of my story. I let Bette’s ballad soothe me as much as it could, taking comfort in the darkness and the warming nearness of a mellow and responsive audience. This will work, I told myself, the worst is behind you.
Unless…
The microphone! Jeff was supposed to get it down for me!
Already computing the time it would take to get back to the dressing room and find Jeff, I spun on my heels and ran smack into…Jeff’s legs.
“Jesus,” I whispered.
“I’m here,” he whispered back.
“I completely forgot.”
“When does it go black?”
“After Bette finishes.”
“Shit, that’s her, isn’t it?”
“That’s her,” I said.
“Which mike do you want?”
“The one in the middle.”
“The one she’s using?”
“Right.” I gave him a faint, ironic smile as if to say I deserved it.
“It’s yours,” he said.
When I was little, Mom used to read to me from a novel called Memoirs of a Midget, by Walter de la Mare. It was written in the twenties, I think, though its flowery, slow-going style was strictly Victorian. The narrator, known only as Miss M, was an over-wrought little prig whose chief object in life was to disappear completely from the public eye. Given all that, you’d think I’d have detested her, but I didn’t. I related completely to the endless abuse she received at the hands of cruel bourgeois patrons and under the wheels of speeding carriages. She was such a deity around our house, such a defining force, that I actually thought she’d cut an album the first time I saw her nickname applied to Bette Midler.
I tell you this because it’s what I was thinking as I stood there in the wings, waiting for my turn in the spotlight, just behind that other Miss M, feeling a curious, wet heaviness begin to spread in my chest. My first thought, silly as it seems, was that I was somehow in that suit again, enduring its weight and heat and confinement. My second thought was the right one, the one that has circled my consciousness, buzzardlike, ever since Mom bit the big one in the parking lot at Pack ’n Save. I put my hand against Jeff’s leg to steady myself.
“What is it?” he asked.
I remember trying not to scare him, trying to say something flip about my fabulous timing as usual, but there wasn’t breath for words, or the strength to form them. I was a block of hardening concrete—or a fly caught in the center of that block. The pain, however, was something polished and metallic, something completely new. Before Bette had finished her song, I was on my back and Jeff was on his knees next to me, blowing into my mouth and yelling into the blackness for Renee.
The last thing I remember was the sound of Velcro being torn.
26
OBVIOUSLY I’M NOT DEAD. I WROTE THAT LAST ENTRY YESTERDAY morning—my first morning here—in secret defiance of my doctor, who gave me strict orders to vegetate. According to my nearest neighbor, a grumpy old Greek in the next bed, they always say that to people in the cardiac unit, and almost never enforce it, so I’m having another shot at it, knowing they can’t do shit to me if I get caught. I’m writing sheet by sheet on pink three-hole paper Renee found in the hospital gift shop. She didn’t want to get it for me at first, putting up a big fight, until I reminded her sweetly that the movie of our lives will never be made if nobody knows how the fuck it turns out.
I’ve had a “mild heart attack.” Nothing to be terribly concerned about, they say, unless I have another one in the next few days or so. Swell. I feel pretty good, except for a sort of shadowy ache in my chest—more like a lingering body memory, I think, than anything else. I was wheezing like a calliope when they brought me in, but I’ve since had regular hits of oxygen and seem to be pretty much back to normal.
In case you’re interested, my untimely collapse never made so much as a ripple at the tribute. Before Fleet Parker had finished his speech, the stage manager delivered a note to him explaining my indisposition, and Fleet ended up presenting the award himself; the audience never even heard that line about “someone as old as all the rest of us put together.” Since Philip sent a mammoth pot of hydrangeas to the hospital, along with an unusually sweet note, I harbored the hope that he might have told the press about me, but there was nothing in the paper this morning and zilch on Entertainment Tonight last night. The event itself was covered in scrupulous detail, right down to the gowns in the audience, but there was no mention of the minor medical crisis in the wings.
Jeff and Renee rode with me in the ambulance to the hospital, so we’ve since lost track of the world back there, knowing only what we learn from the media. I’m not even sure if Philip is aware of my heretical change of costume. I’m assuming the stage manager told him, or told someone who told Philip, so it’s a little perplexing that he’s being so sweet now. Taking a wild guess, I’d say he knows the score but is nervous I’ll blab to the tabloids, thereby tarnishing his moment of glory (THE REAL MR. WOODS IN BIZARRE BACKSTAGE MISHAP). Which, come to think of it, wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world. The Star pays big money, I hear.
There hasn’t been a peep out of Callum. Jeff thinks Leonard may have advised him against contacting me, since he, Jeff, is here most of the time, and that could only mean trouble. Who knows? You’d think he would’ve called, at least—for the news-grabbing symbolism of the act if nothing else.
Renee and Jeff have been here from the beginning, though they spell each other occasionally, dashing off for hot showers and fast food. They’re both plagued by varying degrees of guilt, each holding himself personally responsible for the heart attack, since, in their eyes, they abetted the activity that seems to have brought it on. I haven’t wasted a lot of energy dispelling this tiresome notion, because there isn’t energy to spare, but I told them to lighten up in no uncertain terms.
Renee and Jeff seem to have formed a sort of shaky unofficial partnership, based solely upon this turn of events. In less than three days I’ve seen them learn to
catch each other’s eyes and finish each other’s sentences like an old married couple. They accommodate one another in ways I wouldn’t have believed possible. Jeff doesn’t yell anymore when Renee reads to herself from her little white Bible—even though her lips move just as much—and Renee no longer winces at Jeff’s Keith Haring throbbing-dick T-shirts. We have a system, the three of us, now that one of us is in the hospital. Jeff and I had a system like that with Ned once, so there are curious echoes all the time, moments of shared déjà vu that pass without acknowledgment, between the two of us.
There are five cardiac patients in this room, each with his own curtained cubicle. I’ve met only the old Greek guy and a southern-sounding lady on the other side, who seems to think I’m an extremely precocious child, judging by the tone she uses with me. I haven’t seen the others, since their curtains are always closed. I hear them, though—sometimes in the middle of the night—and the sounds are not encouraging.
No, I have not called Neil.
Renee and Jeff have both been pushing for that, but I’ve resisted so far, since I never told Neil about the plan and he would probably think I’m looking for validation after the fact. I have no strength for explanations at the moment. There’s also the chance he might try to convince me that what happened at his house that morning wasn’t a true measure of his feelings. Or, worse yet, the chance that he might not. I’m sorry, but I can’t open that can of wienies right now—not for a while.
I don’t blame him for anything, really. The mere fact of my sexuality is tough enough for most people to handle, so there’s no reason to think that Neil would be any different, especially when it comes to defending his own role in that uncomfortable reality. Because of who he is and what I’m not, he’s made deviate by a culture that claims to regard sex as the union of kindred souls but doesn’t really believe that—and never will.
Renee is in a chair by the bed, standing guard while I write. She is reading a back issue of Highlights for Children she found in the waiting room. She looks quite lovely today, wondrously soft and peachy, even without her makeup. There’s a becoming new light in her eyes I can only attribute to a certain Mike Gunderson, that Icon technician we evicted from the dressing room the night of the tribute. Mike, I’ve learned, helped Jeff fend off the curious after I dropped, staying close by Renee’s side and calmly reassuring her until the ambulance arrived. Renee has remarked more than once about how sweet and kind and absolutely adorable he was, so it doesn’t take a genius to see what’s happened.