John Domini - Highway Trade and Other Stories

“Babe? You straightening up in here?”

Stanley stood in the hallway door. A speckle of hallucination fled across his jacket as she came out of her last pirouette. She tasted hair at the corner of her mouth, she realized how she must look. At least Stanley had kept the others from coming through the hallway door, they hadn’t seen. Now his jacket was mere gray planes of reflection. Keeping her feet in fifth position, her sanctuary snug, Nonie bent and brought up one of the chairs.

“No no, babe. Don’t bother.” The Marcellas were in when she came up. “The father’s got a little program in mind.”

Fifth position, tight but comfortable. She fingered the hair off her face, she nodded when Stanley explained that the parents wanted to look at some slides. Something to do with the movie, babe; nod nod. Still she almost lost her balance as the kids darted round finding the curtain pulls, turning the room dark. The sweat from her workout became oppressive when the father banged shut the door.

The kitchen was normal again, Stanley had moved the table back. Kitchen chores were better still. Holding patterns older than Elements of Dance. But instead of Mom, today she had Lucy. Lucy had insisted on helping, and as they chopped up the vegetables and cheeses the woman talked about Hollywood. The gossip threaded the surface tension with dangerous color. Apparently Anthony had a lot riding on this movie. He was the primary editor, his first shot at that kind of responsibility. The slide show now was something the director had insisted on; the director had a particular kind of horror movie in mind.

The wife paused, Nonie tried to pitch in. She told the story she knew best, about the day when Stanley had come in to photograph her dance troupe. You should have seen him, this slinky old guy in a biker’s jacket and cap, getting off all these East-Coasty one-liners. Nonie managed to giggle without losing control. When Stanley found out she had Indian blood, she said, he’d called her Princess Summerfallwinterspring.

But Lucy didn’t follow up. In here she didn’t look nearly so old as she had standing next to her husband. She was hardly older than Nonie. And yet with these kids, this fast-track position — Nonie turned from her stare. She took the mugs from the dry rack and held them under the faucet.

“Well.” Lucy fell in beside her, took the nearer mug. “I’m sure in Stanley’s business, there are times when he’s under a lot of pressure.”

Nod nod. She started on the spoons.

“I’m sure you know what that’s like, when a man’s under pressure — say, where are your dishtowels?”

“I think there’s one in the bathroom,” Nonie said.

God, how had that popped out? When Lucy returned from the downstairs can, towel in hand, her stare had deepened. Then the light went out in the living room; Lucy’s face turned to stark makeup, geisha makeup. The idea took over, too fast for Nonie’s inner radar. Both of them might as well be geishas. They could have been doing this kind of thing anywhere on the globe. They’d fallen into the scutwork shoulder to shoulder, and yet at the same time they’d avoided anything more intimate. When the stories ran out, they could only stare. Girls from the escort service. Their men were waiting for them to finish.

Stanley called, Lucy moved. Still Nonie went into the living room carefully. She couldn’t trust what she could see of how they’d rearranged the furniture.

Anthony Marcella at least was grateful for the guacamole, she’d figured that right. He was drinking tequila, he’d commented on the Inca design in her skirt. But she chose to sit on the floor. Stanley perched against the sofa arm like a daddy long-legs. He’d lent the boy his jacket, but he looked worse than cold. He looked as if he’d been giving away pieces of himself forever, as if that were his own geisha-vision, his own global nightmare. Even on the floor Nonie found the paranoia hard to shake. The children were two more ruptures in the safety place. They played at the edge of the projector’s funnel of light, quick as puppets. The boy was huge in Stanley’s coat and the girl was squeally. Nonie tried to stay with the father’s explanations.

“That’s Pompeii,” he was saying. “That sort of burnt, smudged look, that’s what he wants for this picture.”

“Sure,” Stanley said. “A horror flick, everything should be smudged.”

The father dolloped more liquor into his glass. How could he drink so much? Nonie’s one sip had tasted like she was licking a match-head.

“And those props on Main Street, man, those looked nice.” Stanley was desperate; the chatter had to make up for what he’d given away. “It looked like the ’50s out there.”

Nonie didn’t want to hear it. She put her head against the heater and closed her eyes. But with that another landscape appeared, its colors secure, its weather simple. She pictured the mockups Stanley was talking about, the props and trimmings just a few short blocks away. Out there — she didn’t want to think about it. But the slides kept changing, the click and whir kept her mind from wandering: out on Main Street, she could have gotten into some truly freeform craziness. What was she doing in here? Why hadn’t she gotten out when she had the chance?

Click, regret, click, regret. The two kids appeared to be dancing in time, their carefree hops and tumbles mocked her. A romp out on Main Street would have been perfect craziness. Those period sets were made for a trip like this. When she and Stanley had come through town yesterday, the Datsun itself had seemed nuts, a foreign car in Mayberry RFD. Storefronts dark for years were decorated with awnings bright as a clown-face. In one window there’d been a poster, Christmas-colored: Try the latest rage — WHAM-O FRISBEE! The barber pole was spiffed and revolving again. The bench in front of the pharmacy was spiffed, and the man sitting there wore a bow-tie and the gap-toothed smile of a lunatic. Well how did Nonie look herself, now, huddled and uptight on a strip of fake-brick sheeting? How many opportunities to get out was she going to fumble? On the set, she would’ve been able to stay in her holding pattern forever. On the set it was only natural for a person to go crazy.

“Will you stop it about the set?” The father was loud, his voice rang inside the tin heater like an alarm. “You know that isn’t a playground out there, that’s a movie!”

When had this happened? All she could see of Stanley was his shirt, aglow in this dark.

“They’re eating people alive out there,” the father said.

Tonto came motoring between her and the others. The boy had zipped up the jacket and scrunched down inside; his feet were out of sight and only his eyes showed over the collar.

“You think the ’50s are fun? To me, when you talk about the ‘50s, it’s mean, mean talk. You don’t know how those bastards keep us stuck on the ‘50s.”

Lucy laughed. The noise was worse than the father’s carrying on, totally irrelevant, a dent in the atmosphere.

“I swear to God, every goddamn movie they make, it’s got to be the ’50s. Never mind if you had some ideas of your own for the picture. Never mind how all the little girls have their tits hanging out.”

Lucy again, like a lawn mower catching and dying. And Stanley laughed too: hey, what a party. Nonie squinted against the projector beam. When had this happened? When had they started…covering up, or whatever this was? It wasn’t funny, certainly. But the couch presented a solid front, three adults. The mother was the least visible, and already her laughter changed shape in Nonie’s memory, it started to sound sincere. Nonetheless the nerves and raw talk were getting to the kids. Tonto’s engine had stopped, he sagged at the beam’s edge. Posey sat cross-legged beside Nonie, and somewhere the girl had found a set of rubber stamps. Now as Nonie watched she began to print one repeatedly, mechanically across her face.