T. Boyle - T. C. Boyle Stories

I chewed, swallowed, washed it down with a swig of wine. “Sounds good, I said. I’ll be there.”

Later, after Joey had gone to bed, Cindy and I sat side by side on the plaid sofa and listened to a tape of Swan Lake I’d gone next door to fetch (“Something soft,” she’d said. “Have you got something soft?”). We were drinking coffee, and a sweet yellowish cordial she’d dug out of one of the boxes of kitchen things. We’d been talking. I’d told her about Judy. And Fred. Told her I’d been feeling pretty rotten and that I was glad she’d moved in. “Really,” I said, “I mean it. And I really appreciate you inviting me over too.”

She was right beside me, her arms bare in the peasant dress, legs folded under her yoga-style. “No problem,” she said, looking me in the eye.

I glanced away and saw Elvis. Crouching, dipping, leering, humping the microphone, and spraying musk over the first three rows, Elvis in full rut. “So how do you feel about all this”—I waved my arm to take in the posters, the guitar and amp, the undefined space above us where Joey lay sleeping—“I mean, living with the King?” I laughed and held my cupped hand under her chin. “Go ahead, dear — speak right into the mike.”

She surprised me then. Her expression was dead serious, no time for levity. Slowly, deliberately, she set down her coffee cup and leaned forward to swing round so that she was kneeling beside me on the couch; then she kicked her leg out as if mounting a horse and brought her knee softly down between my legs until I could feel the pressure lighting up my groin. From the stereo, I could hear the swan maidens bursting into flight. “It’s like being married to a clone,” she whispered.

When I got home, the phone was ringing. I slammed through the front door, stumbled over something in the dark, and took the stairs to the bedroom two at a time. “Yeah?” I said breathlessly as I snatched up the receiver.

“Pat?”

It was Judy. Before I could react, her voice was coming at me, soft and passionate, syllables kneading me like fingers. “Pat, listen,” she said. “I want to explain something—”

I hung up.

The club was called Delvecchio’s, and it sat amid an expanse of blacktop like a cruise ship on a flat, dark sea. It was a big place, with two separate stages, a disco, three bars, and a game room. I recognized it instantly: teen nirvana. Neon pulsed, raked Chevys rumbled out front, guys in Hawaiian shirts and girls in spike heels stood outside the door, smoking joints and cigarettes and examining one another with frozen eyes. The parking lot was already beginning to fill up when Cindy and I pulled in around nine.

“Big on the sixteen-year-old crowd tonight,” I said. “Want me to gun the engine?”

Cindy was wearing a sleeveless blouse, pedal pushers, and heels. She’d made herself up to look like a cover girl for Slash magazine, and she smelled like a candy store. “Come on, Pat,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “Don’t be that way.”

“What way?” I said, but I knew what she meant. We were out to have a good time, to hear Joey on his big night, and there was no reason to kill it with cynicism.

Joey had gone on ahead in the van to set up his equipment and do a sound check. Earlier, he’d made a special trip over to my place to ask if I’d mind taking Cindy to the club. He stood just inside the door, working the toe of his patent-leather boot and gazing beyond me to the wreckage wrought by Judy’s absence: the cardboard containers of takeout Chinese stacked atop the TV, the beer bottles and Devil Dog wrappers on the coffee table, the clothes scattered about like the leavings of a river in flood. I looked him in the eye, wondering just how much he knew of the passionate groping Cindy and I had engaged in while he was getting his beauty rest the other night, wondering if he had even the faintest notion that I felt evil and betrayed and wanted his wife because I had wounds to salve and because she was there, wanted her like forbidden fruit, wanted her like I’d wanted half the knocked-up, washed-out, defiant little twits who paraded through my office each year. He held my gaze until I looked away. “Sure,” I murmured, playing Tristan to his Mark. “Be happy to.”

And so, come eight o’clock, I’d showered and shaved, slicked back my hair, turned up the collar of my favorite gigolo shirt, and strolled across the lawn to pick her up. The baby (her name was Gladys, after Elvis’s mother) was left in the care of one of the legions of pubescent girls I knew from school, Cindy emerged from the bedroom on brisk heels to peck my cheek with a kiss, and we strolled back across the lawn to my car.

There was an awkward silence. Though we’d talked two or three times since the night of the braciola and the couch, neither of us had referred to it. We’d done some pretty heavy petting and fondling, we’d got the feel of each other’s dentition and a taste of abandon. I was the one who backed off. I had a vision of Joey standing in the doorway in his pajamas, head bowed under the weight of his pompadour. “What about Joey,” I whispered, and we both swiveled our heads to gaze up at the flat, unrevealing surface of the ceiling. Then I got up and went home to bed.

Now, as we reached the car and I swung back the door for her, I found something to say. “I can’t believe it”—I laughed, hearty, jocular, all my teeth showing—“but I feel like I’m out on a date or something.”

Cindy just cocked her head and gave me a little smirk. “You are,” she said.

They’d booked Joey into the Troubadour Room, a place that seated sixty or seventy and had the atmosphere of a small club. Comedians played there once in a while, and the occasional folk singer or balladeer — acts that might be expected to draw a slightly older, more contemplative crowd. Most of the action, obviously, centered on the rock bands that played the main stage, or the pounding fantasia of the disco. We didn’t exactly have to fight for a seat.

Cindy ordered a Black Russian. I stuck with Scotch. We talked about Elvis, Joey, rock and roll. We talked about Gladys and how precocious she was and how her baby raptures alternated with baby traumas. We talked about the water-colors Cindy had done in high school and how she’d like to get back to them. We talked about Judy. About Fred. About guidance counseling. We were on our third drink — or maybe it was the fourth — when the stage lights went up and the emcee announced Joey.

“Excited?” I said.

She shrugged, scanning the stage a moment as the drummer, bass player, and guitarist took their places. Then she found my hand under the table and gave it a squeeze.

At that moment Joey whirled out of the wings and pounced on the mike as if it were alive. He was dressed in a mustard-colored suit spangled with gold glitter, a sheeny gold tie, and white patent-leather loafers. For a moment he just stood there, trying his best to radiate the kind of outlaw sensuality that was Elvis’s signature, but managing instead to look merely awkward, like a kid dressed up for a costume party. Still, he knew the moves. Suddenly his right fist shot up over his head and the musicians froze; he gave us his best sneer, then the fist came crashing down across the face of his guitar, the band lurched into “Heartbreak Hotel,” and Joey threw back his head and let loose.

Nothing happened.

The band rumbled on confusedly for a bar or two, then cut out as Joey stood there tapping at the microphone and looking foolish.

“AC/DC!” someone shouted from the darkness to my left.

“Def Leppard!”

The emcee, a balding character in a flowered shirt, scurried out onstage and crouched over the pedestal of the antiquated mike Joey had insisted on for authenticity. Someone shouted an obscenity, and Joey turned his back. There were more calls for heavy-metal bands, quips and laughter. The other band members — older guys with beards and expressionless faces — looked about as concerned as sleepwalkers. I stole a look at Cindy; she was biting her lip.