She sat behind the steering wheel, her hair all big and shellacky, her eyes weighted with fake lashes, her mouth glistening with deep pink lipstick…and she looked great.
“Hey,” I said, and swallowed hard.
Laughing, Kristi leaned over in the seat to kiss me full on the mouth.
“So how long’s it been, Joe?” she asked.
With her face inches from mine, with her perfume going up my nose and into some receptor part of my brain that shouted, Yahoo!, all I could answer was, “Too long.”
“Nice house,” she said, ducking her head to look out the passenger window.
“Thanks, I bought it when—”
“I’ve got an eight-thirty flight tomorrow morning,” said Kristi, pulling away from the curb. “So let’s have some fun while there’s fun to be had. Some real fun.”
Her implication was obvious.
“Are you talking about visiting another county?” I asked, using our old sexual shorthand.
Kristi made her voice husky. “I hear it’s beautiful in Ottertail County this time of year.”
“But Ottertail’s way up north!”
“I’m kidding, Joe,” said Kristi with a laugh. “I told you I’ve got a morning flight.”
She turned the car on the parkway, heading east.
“We’re going to St. Paul. At least it’s in a different county than Minneapolis.”
Val, my latest girlfriend, had been a new teacher at my mother’s school, and while she initially seemed pretty nice, she began showing odd personality quirks. Anytime we had sex, she’d giggle and say things like, “Now don’t tell your mother—that’d be telling tales out of school!” or “After that performance, young man, I’d put you at the head of the class!” Once when I picked her up, she looked me over and said, “What, no apple for the teacher?”
Val started calling me more than I was comfortable with, and began sending me “report cards” (I got an A in foreplay and a D in remembering our first-month anniversary), so you can imagine my relief when she told me she was transferring to a school in Duluth and I’d no longer have to deal with her. She was beginning to rival Kelly, my old Love Story girlfriend, in the nut department, and nuts were not what I was looking for in a woman.
So you’d think I’d be wary of strange women, but Kristi’s strangeness was an old friend to me, and the invitation to revisit our carnal knowledge of the past was too tempting to ignore.
“Do you always wear so much makeup?” I asked, noticing the pillow-case smeared with color.
“Very gallant of you to ask,” she said. Laughing, she pulled the sheet off me and wrapped it around her. “But no, only when I’m onstage.”
I watched as she went into the bathroom. “When aren’t you onstage?”
This elicited another laugh. “That’s what I love about you, Joe—you always tell it like it is.”
“I noticed you’re not denying it,” I said, raising my voice as I heard the sound of water.
A minute later she emerged from the bathroom, tying the belt of the hotel bathrobe around her waist, her face scrubbed.
“Why should I?” she asked, opening the minibar. “‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.’ You want a beer?”
“Please,” I said. We were staying in Kristi’s downtown St. Paul hotel, in a fancier room than any of our motels had offered.
“You know what else?” I said, watching as she opened the beer. “We just had sex and your hair looks exactly the same as it did when you picked me up.”
“Are you familiar with the adage ‘If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything?’” asked Kristi, climbing back into bed.
I took the bottle she offered with my right hand and touched her hair, an elaborate blond cascade that was stiff to the touch.
“Do you know they’ve discovered hairspray’s bad for the ozone layer?”
Kristi managed to smirk at me, even though she was in the middle of taking a long draw of beer.
“So,” I said, “you’re still allowed to have nonmarital sex and drink beer, huh?”
“Oh, goody,” she said, clinking my bottle with her own. “The insults about my appearance are over and now it’s time to start making fun of my life’s work.”
On the way to the hotel, she had told me why she was in town, bragging about how attendance had risen more than 17 percent since she’d joined the Shout Hallelujah! revival, and complaining about her position following Mother Olive (“Really, there are only two women in the whole show, and what do they do? They put us on right next to each other!”), but when we passed Shannon Saxon’s parents’ house on River Road, we laughed about the stupid bull costume Shannon had had to wear, and our conversation veered back to high school.
But now I wanted to know just where the hell she’d been and what the hell had gotten into her.
“Your life’s work,” I said, sitting up against the headboard. “Am I allowed now to ask about how a girl who used to give me blow jobs in school is now on tour with the fucking Shout Hallelujah! revival?”
“Don’t talk like that,” she said quickly, a blush tinting her face.
“What’s it you object to? Blow jobs or fucking? ’Cause you’re pretty good at both.”
Kristi took a swig of beer. “Do you want to hear about my life or don’t you?”
I shrugged. “Fire away.”
“Okay,” she said, pulling the covers up and wriggling closer to me. She was going to talk about her favorite subject—herself—and her excitement was palpable.
“Okay, remember when we saw those northern lights up in Grand Marais?”
“Sure.”
“Well, I think that’s when I first saw God.”
“What?”
She nodded, as if the tone of my voice suggested agreement rather than incredulity.
“I didn’t know it right then—it took me a couple of weeks to figure out what it was I saw.”
“Kristi, we saw the northern lights. It’s a scientific phenomenon. Something about sunspots or something.”
“I was sitting in the student union,” she continued, as if she hadn’t heard me, “when all of a sudden this big chill—you know, the kind you get if you drink a Slushie too fast—rushed through my body and I knew, I just knew that what I’d seen was a message from God.”
“No, I remember,” I said. “It’s solar particles smacking into gas molecules.”
“I knew right then that somehow, some way, I was going to dedicate my life to Christ.” She took another sip of beer, nodding at the memory. “And then, I swear to God, I got another chill, thinking, My name is Kristi.”
It wasn’t exactly a spit take, but some beer that had been heading down my throat came up through my nose.
“I know it sounds weird,” she said, acknowledging my reaction, “but if you think about it, Kristi’s the female of Christ. I mean, I know it’s a popular name for girls right now, but I believe it was all in His plan, that I should know He touched me because I was named Kristi.”
The schoolteacher girlfriend I’d just broken up with was starting to seem a little more sane. I searched Kristi’s face, expecting to find something in the tension of her mouth or a look in her eyes that let me know she was joking, but the face that stared back at mine was guileless, on her an expression I wasn’t used to seeing. I finished my beer and set the bottle on the nightstand.
“What about everyone who’s named Jesus?” I asked. “Or Christian? And there’s gotta be some Amish guys named Jehovah. Should they all start thinking they’re somehow touched?”
“I’m only explaining my experience,” said Kristi impatiently. “Now are you going to make fun of me, or are you going to listen?”
I’m going to make fun of you, I thought, just not out loud.
“So why didn’t you tell me any of this while it was happening?” I said instead. “I mean, considering I was a witness to you witnessing God.”
“Are you kidding me? And p
ut myself up to your ridicule?”
“What do you think you’re putting yourself up to now?”
“Ha-ha,” said Kristi. “And I thought time might have the odd effect of maturing you.” She drained her beer and let out a loud, protracted burp.
“You should talk.”
“Okay,” I said after we’d shared a laugh, “keep going. Tell me how you got from A to…Z.”
“Well, you can figure, if I couldn’t tell you—’cause I can tell you just about everything—I couldn’t tell anyone. And then, remember, I only saw you a couple times after that, before I graduated and left.”
“Yeah, where did you go? It was like you vanished into thin air.”
“I’m hungry,” said Kristi, getting up and opening the minibar again. She took out a bag of M&Ms. “This stuff is so expensive, and if you think Shout Hallelujah! pays for it, the answer is n-o.”
“Okay, enough about your expense account,” I said as she settled back into bed and poured a little mound of M&Ms into my hand. “Where’d you go after school?”
“Where does anyone like me go after school? California. North Hollywood, to be exact. It was cheaper to live in the valley than in L.A. proper.”
“Were you trying to get into acting?”
“I didn’t know. I was trying to get into something…public. I mean, I knew I was supposed to be famous, I just wasn’t exactly sure if I should be a movie star or have my own TV show or be a news anchor or what. And then on top of everything else, I had to deal with that religious experience. I mean, as much as I was awed by what happened to me, I was scared too, you know? After all, I was only twenty-one years old when it happened! What twenty-one-year-old wants to devote herself to God? Well, what normal twenty-one-year-old? I began thinking maybe I’d just dreamt the whole thing, or maybe it was a reaction to all the drugs I’d taken—you know, some strange…well if not flashback, then flash.” She eyed me carefully. “I haven’t done drugs for years, by the way.”
“Bummer,” I said.
“It was like I knew I had seen the light, but I kept having to pull the shades. You know, when God points His finger at you, it’s a big responsibility.”
“Which finger?”
Kristi pulled a pillow out from behind her and swatted me with it.
“Are you going to heckle me all night or are you going to listen?”
I pretended to consider my choices for a moment, but she ignored me, plunging back into her story.
“So I’m struggling with everything, and you know me—I am not used to struggling. I tried to get an agent and eventually did, this old guy who said he was going to make me a big star, but I don’t think he could make a peanut butter sandwich, let alone a star. I got sent out to crap auditions that I didn’t get—sure, I might get a callback, I might get this close to some under-five part on a lousy sitcom, but did I ever get a job?” She shook her head, but not her immovable hair.
I could understand her disbelief. “Well, maybe you gave up too early. Maybe your big break was right around the corner.”
Kristi’s eyes blazed. “I never give up, Joe. I just explore other options.”
She reached for her purse on the night table and fumbled around inside. She stuck a cigarette in her mouth and lit it.
“You’re still smoking?” I said, waving away the smoke. “That’s nasty.”
After exhaling, she said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
“Some preacher,” I said.
“Judge not lest ye be judged.”
I snorted. “I bet you have a biblical quote to excuse any kind of behavior.”
Kristi smiled. “Just about. Now before I go on, you’ve got to promise me something, Joe.”
“What, to tithe at least ten percent to Shout Hallelujah! every year?”
“I’m serious, Joe.” She took a long drag of her cigarette but, sensing how it bothered me, turned her head to exhale and stubbed the cigarette out.
She changed position on the bed so that she was sitting facing me, her legs tucked under her. “Joe, I think more than anyone else in the world, I trust you the most.”
“Kristi,” I said, taken aback, “I haven’t seen you for over ten years. We—”
Holding her finger to her lips, she shushed me. “Time or distance hasn’t changed how I feel about you, Joe. Now, I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone, but you’ve got to promise me it will be our secret, okay?”
“What am I, a priest?” I said, uncomfortable with the gravity in her eyes.
She was unmoved by my joke. “Because everyone needs a confidant, Joe, and you’re mine.”
Well, of course there was no way I was going to deny being Kristi Casey’s confidant. I was curious as hell to hear what she was about to tell me, even as I felt a shadow of queasiness.
“I tried for three years,” she said, “three long years, and I didn’t get one job. Not one job—can you believe that, Joe? For the first time in my life, people weren’t begging to do me favors, weren’t bowing every time I passed. I didn’t know who I was—but it sure wasn’t Kristi Casey. So that meant to pay the rent in my crappy little apartment on Lankershim, I had to waitress, I had to temp—I mean, I was going into a serious depression! This wasn’t how my life was supposed to be!
“So one day, I’m waiting tables at this semifancy steakhouse in Toluca Lake and this guy leaves me a fifty-dollar tip with his card paper-clipped to it. It wasn’t the first time I’d been hit on at work, but this guy’s card said he was a movie producer. So I called him.”
“And did he give you a job?” I asked, for some reason wanting this story to have a happy ending. “Were you in anything I might have seen?”
“Not unless you hang out at triple-X theaters,” she said, and laughed at my reaction. “No, I’m just kidding—they weren’t really triple X. Per called them ‘art films.’”
“Per?” I said, practically spitting out the name.
Kristi laughed again. “He was Danish. He was about fifty when I met him—yeah, I know that sounds gross, but he had all his hair and wore a long scarf and was very dashing in a European way.”
“So what did you do when you found out what he did?” I asked, hoping her answer would be something along the lines of Adiós, schmuck.
“I said, ‘If you think I’m ever going to be in one of your “art movies,” think again.’”
I blew out a blast of air, more relieved than I could explain. “And so that was that?”
“Well, not exactly. I mean, I never was in one of his movies—I might be wild, but I was never a pervert—but I did wind up…living with him. He was my boyfriend.”
“Kristi—ugh!”
“My little-old-lady friend Joe,” said Kristi, kissing me on the nose. “I can always count on you to be more uptight than my own grandma ever was.”
She sighed and made a move as if to inspect the minibar again, but on second thought sank back against the headboard.
“I didn’t have to work—Per paid for everything—but there was only so much entertainment to be gotten by lying around the pool all day or shopping on Rodeo Drive. Eventually luxury gets a little boring if that’s all you’ve got going on. So when he offered a certain little excursion, I agreed to it.”
My head moved back and forth, back and forth. I did not like where this was going.
“See, he had a couple of sideline businesses, and one was importing a little cocaine.”
I opened my mouth, but formulating words was a task beyond me at the moment.
“You…you were a drug runner?” I said when I remembered how to talk.
Kristi’s look of shame didn’t last long before a big smile broke through it.
“Just twice. Once to Central America and once to Denmark.”
“My God—you were doing cocaine?”
“Me?” Kristi laughed. “Nah. Well, I had to try it to see if I liked it, but I never really got its appeal. And besides, I knew there were people
who’d blown out the insides of their noses with cocaine and I…Well, I have such a pretty nose, I didn’t want anything to mess it up. I wasn’t a user—just a pickup and delivery girl.”
“What if you had gotten caught?”
“Well, see,” said Kristi, smiling, “I didn’t. But you know what they say, a good poker player knows when to fold, and even though it was a little exciting, I knew it wasn’t worth sharing a cell with a five-hundred-pound welfare cheat from Compton.”
I had to laugh, thinking that of all the things I had imagined Kristi up to during the years she was MIA, making international drug runs for a porn king was not among them.
“Are you making this up? This is all a joke, right?”
“I wish,” said Kristi. “I wish none of it had ever happened.”
There was enough of a quaver to her voice to make me invite her into my arms. She was happy for the invitation and laid her head against my chest as I held her close.
“See, Joe, it was all right that I didn’t want to be in his movies—I mean, I think he thought I was sort of classy—but when I told him I couldn’t help him anymore with the drug stuff…Well, I guess he started thinking that I felt I was better than him. Which I did, by the way, but I was smart enough to pretend otherwise. But you know how it is—if you don’t participate in something, you’re condemning it, you’re saying you’re better than it. At least that’s how Per thought. And he started getting mean. Name-calling, threats, and when he got really frustrated that he couldn’t control me—”
She made a fist and slammed it into her open palm.
“He hit you?”
“Worse than that, Joe.” She pulled back some of her shellacked bangs to show me the very fine scar that ran just under her hairline from the middle of her forehead to her temple.
“It took about a billion stitches to close that up,” said Kristi. She bared her pretty white teeth at me and tapped the front ones. “And these are fake. At least the jerk had a great dentist.”
“Kristi,” I said, and it hurt to push her name up my throat. “How did you…Why didn’t you leave him?”