18

The Lake Sumner motel

“Bishop.”

“Me again. Lots of updates.”

“Oh, good. I don’t have any bothers going on today, I’m all yours. Start from the top.”

I was smoking the back half of a cigarette in the phone booth with my hair in rollers and my good girdle on under my robe. I’d already done up my face for the party we were all invited to later that night. Handwritten notes had been delivered under our doors that morning: Be ready at 8, don’t be late!!! Party outside town. Vans leave 5 after.

“They switched the show. It’s not Titus anymore, we’re doing the Scottish play.”

“Oh, dear. How are—”

“I’m doing the Lady again.”

“Oh, dear.” Edie paused and let the weight of silence settle. “Are you…?”

“I’m alright with it,” I said briskly. “Truly. I’m—excited, and nervous, sure, but it’s been nice to relive it. Our folios are all different editions, they had to go four towns over to find a bookshop with enough copies.”

“Do you trust yourself?”

The sun was too low to show me a whit of my reflection in the booth siding, so I stared out at the faraway mountains and thought about that through another mouthful of smoke. “I do.”

“Well, you certainly are having an eventful summer. How’s the Austrian?”

“Athletic.”

“Rehearsing feels good?”

“It feels great.”

“Maybe the secret to getting you back on even keel really was just getting yourself regularly stuffed.”

“You could be an analyst.” I tapped out my cigarette on the side of the telephone unit and smeared the end on the ground under the toe of my shoe. “And tonight, finally, we’re going to a party.”

“With whom, the coyotes?”

I snorted. “I know. We got invitations this morning written on napkins from the bar across the highway. Lisette said she heard the house it’s hosted at is positively vulgar.”

“Is that a good thing? How does the beauty queen of Wisconsin know that?”

“I think she’s been getting stuffed by one of the caravan drivers.”

“Good for her.” There was a smile in Edie’s voice. She had a soft spot for Lisette.

“They have more money than God out here,” I said. “Would you believe it?”

“Of course I believe it. Money is the national religion, and you’re playing among its most devoted.”

We chatted for a few more minutes, until the line pinged its hunger for another nickel. I groaned. Edie laughed.

“Go have fun, poss,” she told me. “Thanks for checking in—let me know how it goes, will you? The whole of it.” She paused. “I’m proud of you.”

Warmth bloomed through my chest. “Thank you. I’m proud of me, too.”

Returning to the room to finish getting dressed, I felt more like myself than I had in ages.

We drove out to a sprawling ranch about an hour north in another prosaic patch of empty desert. The massive, hyper-modern slab of a house rose from the night as our caravan approached.

All of us were dressed to the nines. Kline had told us the hosts for tonight were fine people, so I was wearing a black silk cocktail dress and a pair of shoes nice enough that I cared to avoid any mud on the winding walkway up to the house.

I’d been to my fair share of parties, and maybe more than that. But apparently, fine people in Western parlance meant unhinged libertines by New York City standards.

As the company stepped over the threshold, a petite woman in a pink negligee and little else proffered a silver dish. Instead of appetizers or glasses of champagne—which I could see elsewhere, offered by handsome men in crisp shirts and vests—an array of pills and tidy hand-rolls were arranged for the taking.

“Jesse hopes you all enjoy your night,” the woman said with a dazzling smile.

Jesse. The elusive cowboy. As Wesley and I politely refused anything from her tray and he led us into the churn of the party, I peered around for a glimpse of the pepper-haired man and his boots, the wink of the silver rings encrusting his fingers.

The wide walls of the house were decorated with avant-garde spatters of art. Low, sleek furniture sat packed with carousing bodies, and the crowd was so eclectic I wouldn’t have been surprised to discover they had all been living in a bunker under the clay on layaway to simply attend parties. The fact this many people existed out here baffled me.

My nerves started humming at the back of my neck. Wesley passed me a glass, and I quaffed it in one go without even tasting it.

“I was wondering when you’d arrive,” Haas said from behind me—I turned to find him cutting in smoothly between us. He kissed me hello, and then Wesley as well without a single care of being seen. Safe company, then.

“Have you been here long?” I asked. Haas lifted a glass from a passing tray and plucked away my empty to replace it in one fluid movement.

“I was on setup committee,” he said breezily, steering us forward. “Come, there’s fun to be had.”

It was almost like being back in a warehouse party. If I shut my eyes, the noise was the same—music, chatter, laughter and raised voices, all the pressing sweat of human abandon. I marked a massive set of plate-glass doors thrown open to the night, and a long hallway disappearing into low light where a number of rooms sat ready for stealing privacy as the night unraveled. Several were already occupied.

Haas took us around on his arms through the ocean of splendor—rich men, beautiful women, escorts, and eccentrics; the full gamut of privilege under one roof, and I wouldn’t have known it from three miles off. This was ten times the outfit I had known in Lexington, all of whom could fit at my mother’s dinner table.

I realized for the first time that summer the kind of freedom that existed in a nothing-place: I thought we lived quite openly in the city, but in comparison we were practically puritan. Here was the real abandon, the true American underbelly amid the dust and rust and the empty cry of the country’s parched throat.

When Haas offered me a hit of his powder, I took it without thinking. Wesley raised his eyebrows.

“You sure you should be mixing that stuff?” he said, low at my ear, more amusement than concern. I patted him on the shoulder and straightened the lay of his collar.

“It’s all the same from here,” I said, and planted a friendly peck on his mouth.

I tried to settle into the rhythm of the debauchery as we moved through it, but my social tolerance had been weakened by the weeks of solitude. After emptying my third glass, I set it on another passing tray and excused myself neatly to find a quieter spot.

The kitchen was at the end of the house, still bustling but certainly less crowded than most of it. There was chrome everywhere, with sparkling-clean tiling on the floor and bright yellow cabinetry stretching across one whole wall. It was spotless. This wasn’t a kitchen made for use.

“Well, fancy meeting you here, Mrs. Shoard.”

I looked up from tracing the sleek, modern edge of the refrigerator to find Jesse, hatless, leaning on the island counter behind me. He gave me a smile. I pointed a finger at the ceiling and twirled it in a wide circle.

“Is all of this yours?” I asked.

Jesse shrugged. “Most of it.”

He was making himself a drink. He offered me the first pour after jostling the shaker, but I demurred and leaned back against the cutlery drawers. “I suppose I should have brought a hostess gift.”

“What do you get the gal who has everything?” Jesse mused. He poured over the ice in his glass and set the shaker in the sink without emptying it, among a scatter of other used glasses and plates.

“Are you the gal?” I asked.

Jesse smirked and raised the glass at me. “Ask me after a few more of these.”

We watched each other as he sipped.

“I saw you up on that stage the other day,” Jesse said, perfectly conversational.

I frowned. “You watched a rehearsal?”

“I’ve watched several. That’s the beauty of owning the only theater in these parts, I can show up anytime I please.” He grinned at me. “Learned that one from our pal Ezra, although I don’t like to make such a fuss about it as he does. I prefer to observe—just let the top spin after dropping it.”

Unconsciously, I drew my posture up slightly. “And what do you think of it so far? The pivot?”

Jesse’s sharp, gold gaze flashed, pinning me to the spot. “You make a hell of a leading lady. You got hungry eyes in that head of yours, you know that?”

“Is that a compliment?”

“Absolutely.” Jesse sipped from his drink again and smacked his lips. “What do you think of Vaughn?” he asked, swinging broad.

I snorted. “He’s a piece of work,” I said without thinking. The drugs and drink had set me apart from my own shame.

Luckily, Jesse laughed. “You think this dog and pony shit is enough penance for him losing track of two hundred thousand dollars of my product?” My brows shot up. Jesse mocked a wince and nodded. “Yep. Been trying to track it down since Christmas. Ho-ho-ho.”

“I wouldn’t trust him to look after a half-dozen eggs,” I admitted.

Jesse grinned and sipped again, eyeing me over the cup. “I like you, Cherokee Park,” he said, pointing at me with the hand holding his glass, his grip easy.

“Is that why you pivoted the play?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“From Titus to Macbeth. Is that why you changed it, because you like me?”

Jesse furrowed his brow, pleasantly baffled. “Kline’s the one who changed it.”

I looked down and fussed subtly with the wire of my girdle digging into my waist. “Does Kline change his mind very often?”

“Well, he’s got a spine made of milk. He’s an easy son of a bitch to persuade.”

“So you persuaded him?”

Jesse finished off his drink and put the glass in the sink as well. “I dunno what he changed it for, but I gave him free rein to do whatever he sees fit to give me one good show of Shakespeare out here.” He held up a single finger with a huge chip of turquoise on his knuckle and grinned. “I don’t mind the difference. I happen to love the Scottish play, all that delectable superstition.”

“Jesse?”

A young man I recognized from the stage crew stood with polite hesitation at the entrance to the kitchen. I didn’t know him by name, but he was always sure to give me a Hello, Mrs. Shoard when we passed in the wings. He was holding an empty beer bottle in one hand, peeling at the label with a nervous thumb, and looking at Jesse with the reined heat of bravery drummed up by way of several drinks swimming around in his big blue eyes.

I gave Jesse an expectant look, which made him smile slyly at me.

“Shit, I said I like you, Margaret, not your skirt.” Jesse sketched a bow. “You enjoy your night, won’t you?”

He retreated with his arm slung easily around the stagehand’s waist, melting back into his party. I took up the bottle of liquor on the counter and stole down a mouthful. It was a fragrant, with a label in Spanish and a bite like a mouthful of smoke. I kept it with me as I went to find Wesley.

I wandered until I’d explored the entirety of the house, sipping occasionally from the bottle in hand—expensive trinkets, shiny furniture, room after room packed with life and finery—and finally came to the hallway of doors. I ambled down the narrow corridor and peeked into rooms that weren’t shut all the way, cadres of people split off from their cavorting to sit in a quieter place; some still holding conversation, and others done with conversation entirely.

“There you are.”

I looked away from what seemed to be a card game attended by six women and two very drunk men. Haas leaned on an open jamb at the end of the hall. His jacket was gone, his cuffs unbuttoned, and his eyes bright in the low, ochre light.

Behind him, Wesley was sitting on an armchair across from a wide bed. He looked rumpled and upset, his face mottled with angry flush. I frowned and looked past Haas’s shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“Everything is fine,” Haas said in Wesley’s stead. He took up a drink already on the dresser and held it out to me, switching it for the bottle in my hand. “Will you join us?”

I accepted the cup but angled still for Wesley’s eyes. Haas shut the door behind me, and I sipped at the drink without thinking.

When Haas slipped a hand around my hip from behind, I turned to stop him gently with my shoulder. “Whose idea was the switch?” I asked, still stuck on my conversation with Jesse.

Undeterred, Haas reached for my garters under my dress with one hand while the other tipped another sip of the cup into my mouth. “What do you mean?”

I swallowed reflexively and swiped at a droplet on my chin. I twisted away from Haas and tried again to meet Wesley’s eyes, but he looked tired and faraway. Haas unclipped my stockings. “The—changing the plays,” I said, and blinked owlishly as my words slowed. I stalled. My thoughts began oozing through their own grip. “Lady Macbeth, it—who was it?” I pushed my hand softly, uselessly against Haas’s chest. “Kline, or—was it Jesse?”

Haas kissed me as I fell away from myself, into complete and utter darkness.

It was just like falling under that afternoon in Haas’s workshop: one moment, here; then gone in an instant; and then back up again, as though simply blinking my eyes.

I was only aware next of my own feet, the sight of them blurring into focus as I stumbled carefully down the front walk.

Wesley had me stabilized against his side, his mouth drawn in a thin line.

We stepped carefully down the spooling driveway. One of Wesley’s hands was at my back. The other held gently to my arm as though I was an invalid again. He called over his shoulder at someone, maybe Chap, who was asking about his bow tie, something about picking it up tomorrow at rehearsal.

Haas was standing ahead of us beside a sleek-looking Ford I had never seen before. It had rained while we were inside—the air smelled heavy and metallic with a damp, persistent cling. I was exhausted.

“Are we met?” Haas asked brightly. I reached around in my own head for a moment to remember how to respond but came up dry. I made a soft sound as Wesley opened up the door and bent to crank the front seat forward.

“I have a headache,” I grunted.

Haas reached into his pocket and flashed his kit. “Care for a pick-me-up?”

Wesley’s head was bowed in the shadow of the car, working at the seat lever. I swiped an errant fall of hair back from my forehead. “Sure.”

I lined up a dose and sniffed it down before handing it back to Haas. Wesley avoided my eye as he helped me into the back seat.

Haas keyed the engine, and Wesley settled in beside me. He let me rest my head back on his leg. The car was a much smoother ride than the vans as we made our way down the main road back to the motel.

“Wesley, are you sure you don’t want more?” Haas offered from behind the wheel. I watched from my backward sprawl as the streaks of rainwater on the windows traced themselves into long threads.

I glanced up at Wesley and his uncharacteristic silence. He was staring out the window as well. I wondered if he could find the same patterns in the raindrops.

“No, thank you,” he said delicately.

I reached up to pet a hand along the back of his neck. His hair was always so baby-soft there, so I made my touch as gentle as I could.

“Did you have a nice night?” I asked him.

“Of course I did.”

He didn’t sound like it, but what did I know? I was tired and stoned and needed to sleep. My body ached faintly as one singular organ. I wound a lock of Wesley’s hair around the tip of my finger. He looked rakish and unbound when he let his hair grow a little longer. It suited him.

“I’m proud of us,” I said. A yawn stole away most of the last syllable. Wesley reached up and pried my hand from his hair with patient tenderness before carding our fingers together. He rested our hands over my heart, nestled in his lap.

“Yeah,” Wesley murmured.

He was avoiding Haas’s gaze. It was purposeful, wide as the swing of a turning freighter.

I took stock of Haas in the driver’s seat. There was a mild smugness in him, and his gaze was clear and virile.

You got hungry eyes.

I tightened my grip on Wesley’s hand in mine. “Tell me how much you love me,” I said over the car’s rumbling, intent on bringing a smile back to his pretty face.

Haas’s gaze flicked to mine through the mirror. I shut my eyes.

“I love you as I love myself,” Wesley murmured, which I felt more than heard in the shape of his mouth pressed to the back of my hand, running one knuckle over and over the bow of his lips like the edge of a well-loved security blanket.

---

◆ ◆ ◆

Our Macbeth scripts totaled up to three different editions with varying pagination. The rest of the cast did the best they could. I still had the entire text memorized.

“…Thou wouldst be great, art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend—”

The front doors of the theater heaved open, stopping me mid-sentence. The prop letter in my hand fluttered gently with a swirling breeze. Daylight streamed in through the doors as Kline stood up from the front row of benches, turning with tightly wound fury to shout at the interruption of our run-through.

“Vaughn Kline?” called a voice before he could erupt, and two silhouettes made themselves known: the broad hats and shiny badges of two lawmen.

Kline ran a hand along his comb-over and strode confidently down the center aisle on his stocky legs. The rest of the cast, scattered in the wings and the house, stared in pin-drop silence.

“Welcome, gentlemen!” Kline gestured broadly at the empty theater and offered a hand to shake, for which neither of the men took their thumbs from their belts. “How can we be of assistance?”

The taller of the officers gawped subtly at the playhouse like he’d been transported into a different layer of reality. The shorter one, an older gentleman with a walrus mustache, peered at Kline. “We’d like to speak with the proprietor.”

Kline bowed with a flourish. “Speaking; Vaughn Kline, at your service. If you’d care to step into my office—would you like something to drink? Parched out there, isn’t it?”

“It’s been a rainier summer than usual.”

Clearly on the back foot, Kline led the officers toward the wings. I wondered idly if he was taking them to the place I’d first seen Jesse, and whether they would emerge again. “Take a ten!” Kline called over his shoulder before disappearing.

The company broke to mill into the house. I remained onstage, fussing with the prop letter. I was still drained from the party.

Wesley drew up beside me and pawed his cigarette case from his back pocket. “It’ll probably be at least a twenty,” he said, and pulled out one for each of us.

We sat down in the first row of benches. Neither of us said anything for a long stretch. The rest of the company looked just as scoured to the bone as I felt—trounced by a night out, bleary-eyed and slow. Wesley had the stares. I jogged his heel with a few taps of my foot.

“Are you alright?”

Wesley blinked and ashed the long tail of his cigarette to the ground, grinding it away with his heel as he pinched at his eyes. “I’m fine. Fucking exhausted.”

“I know.”

“I shouldn’t have taken that shit.”

“What, from Felix?”

He hummed the affirmative and took a deep, punishing draw that burned down the paper quickly and bent his cheeks. Wesley shook his head. “Figured I’d see if I could stand it, he made it sound like—fucking lollypop land.” With a dry widening of his eyes, still staring at nothing, he heaved a shallow sigh. “Did not agree with me.”

“I wonder why it affects you so much,” I said, not quite looking at him.

“I don’t know how you do it. You’re sure it’s good for you?”

“What, his medicine?” I nodded at the stage and met Wesley’s gaze. “You see me up there, you tell me.”

Wesley sagged. The fight was gone from him. He shrugged with one shoulder. “I know. I just…worry.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know, Jack,” he said lightly. “A little bit of everything.”

I patted his hand on the bench between us. The soft, church-like muttering of the rest of the company killing time floated up and broke apart in the air along with the ghosting smoke at the ends of our cigarettes. Lisette was toward the back of the house flirting with her fling. Chap had made friends with some of the stage crew, and I noticed the blue-eyed looker from Jesse’s party in a small group standing with him just offstage. They all chuckled at one of Chap’s jokes with a muted, hungover cadence, and for just a moment I could have shut my eyes and been in any given bistro on a Sunday morning in the West Village.

“I’ll be glad to go home,” Wesley announced.

I sniffed in commiseration. “I know. I miss getting bumped into on the train.”

“If I hadn’t gotten blasted out of my own skull last night, that party would have healed me.”

“What do you miss the most?”

“The noise,” Wesley said without having to think about it.

“Really?”

“The quiet out here is…unsettling. Spend more than a few days on a submarine, you can’t help listening for silence like an ending.”

I nudged our knees together. “I miss the food.”

“God, I miss the food. I need a hot breakfast from the Old Chelsea.”

“I need a good bitch session with Edie.”

“Don’t you get those on the phone?”

“They’re not as much fun if I’m paying for it, hemorrhaging nickels makes it feel like I’m talking to Dr. French in drag.”

Wesley bit off a tart mouthful and gazed up at the sky through the roof as he exhaled. “I could do with a doctor or two of my own.”

I leaned into Wesley. He looped his arm around my shoulders and briskly rubbed one before leaning down and smudging out his spent filter in the dirt. “Oh, Jack…” He sighed, yawning, pinching at his eyes. “It’s certainly been a summer.”

“It’s been fun. Hasn’t it?”

Wesley crossed his legs and leaned forward, curling up to prop his cheek on his fist facing me, smeared up against his knuckles. “It has. I’m ready to be done, though. I don’t know. It was nice, but it’s a chapter I can’t say I’ll be sad to see closed.”

I gave him a sympathetic smile. He kept looking at me.

“You still feel okay with the role?” he asked.

“I feel good,” I said, nodding to myself and staring at the splotchy stage, its leftover bloodstains like spilled wine. “My mind is quiet.”

Wesley’s smile pushed against his hand. I stood up and kissed him on the crown of the head as Kline emerged from backstage with the lawmen in tow, laughing through the end of an adage about blondes. He ushered them to the back of the house, bid them a good afternoon, and shut the doors behind them with a firm bang.

“Jesus Christ, you’d think I had Vincent fucking Mangano shoved up my ass,” Kline groused, stalking back down the aisle to the stage. “Bastards wanted to sniff through every little nook and cranny in this shithole. Places!”

I pulled Wesley back up to his feet when he offered me a hand. “You can ignore his direction if you want,” he muttered, angling a surreptitious nod at Kline. “He hasn’t even read the play, so he won’t catch it if you just make your own choices.”

Wesley helped me up onto the apron, and I held his hand to steady him up after me. “Direct myself?” I said briskly. “How modern. Ezra would have a conniption.”

“Just do what feels right,” Wesley said, and crossed to take his place for the top of our interrupted scene.

Do what feels right.

From the back of the house, I noticed the lithe shape of Haas enter and seat himself on one of the benches. His lighter flared. I met his gaze even far from the reach of the long shadows cast by the tall, curved building. I tried to think of the party. I tried to remember what the three of us had done last night after I’d spoken with Jesse, and came up dry. That handful of hours had tripped away into nothing, like they never even happened.

Haas smiled.

We were set again for the top of the scene. I lifted the blank prop page once more.

It all felt perfectly fine.