different kind of Celia. This Celia was a country I’d never visited, a language I could not speak. I could not find my friend hidden anywhere in this dark stranger of a woman, whose eyes never opened, and whose body never stopped moving—driven, it seemed, by some ferocious sexual incubus that was equal parts fever and wrath.
In the midst of all this—in fact, right at the white-hot center of it—I had never felt more lost or lonely.
I must say, Angela, that I had almost backed out of this arrangement at the door of the hotel room. Almost. But then I’d remembered the promise I’d made to myself months ago—that I would never again excuse myself from participating in something dangerous that Celia Ray was doing.
If she were engaged in wildness, then I would be, too.
While this promise now seemed stale and even confusing to me (so much had changed in the past few months, so why did it even matter to me anymore, to keep up with my friend’s exploits?), I stuck with my vow anyway. I hung right in there. With no small amount of irony, I can say: consider it an expression of my immature honor.
I probably had other motives, as well.
I could still feel Anthony shoving my hand away from his arm, and saying that I wasn’t in charge of him. Calling me sister, in that contemptuous tone.
I could still hear Celia talking about Edna and Arthur’s marital arrangement—“They’re continental, Vivvie”—and looking at me as if I were the most naïve and pitiable creature she’d ever encountered in all her days.
I could still hear Edna’s voice, calling me an infant.
Who wants to be an infant?
So I proceeded. I rooted about that bed from one corner of the mattress to another—trying to be continental, trying not to be an infant—digging and pawing at Arthur and Celia’s Olympian bodies for proof of something necessary about myself.
But all the while, somewhere in the only remaining corner of my brain that was not drunk or sorrowful or lusty or stupid, I perceived with unblurred clarity that this decision was going to bring me nothing but grief.
And boy, was I right.
NINETEEN
What befell me next is quickly told.
Eventually our activities ended. Arthur and Celia and I immediately fell asleep—or passed out. Awhile later (I had lost track of time) I got up and put on my clothes. I left the two of them sleeping in the hotel room and ran the eleven blocks home, clutching at my shaking, underdressed body, trying and failing to stay warm despite the cruel March wind.
It was well after midnight when I opened the door to the third floor of the Lily Playhouse and rushed in.
Instantly, I could see that something was wrong.
First of all, every light in the place was blazing.
Secondly, people were there—and they were all staring at me.
Olive and Peg and Billy were sitting in the living room, surrounded by a cumulus cloud of dense cigarette and pipe smoke. With them was a man I didn’t recognize.
“There she is!” cried Olive, leaping up. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Peg. “It’s too late.” (This made no sense to me, but I didn’t pay the comment much mind. I could tell by her voice that Peg was very drunk, so I didn’t expect her to make sense. I was far more concerned about why Olive had been up waiting for me, and who was this strange man?)
“Hello,” I said. (Because what else do you say? Always helpful to start with the preliminaries.)
“We have an emergency, Vivian,” Olive said.
I could tell by how calm Olive was that something truly terrible had happened. She only became hysterical over insignificant matters. Whenever she was this composed, it had to be a real crisis.
I could only assume that somebody had died.
My parents? My brother? Anthony?
I stood there on my shaky legs, reeking of sex, waiting for the bottom to fall out of my world—which it subsequently did, but not in the manner I was expecting.
“This is Stan Weinberg,” said Olive, introducing me to the stranger. “He’s an old friend of Peg’s.”
Nice girl that I was, I made a polite move to approach the gentleman and shake his hand. But Mr. Weinberg blushed as he saw me nearing him, and turned his face away. His obvious discomfort at my presence stopped me in my tracks.
“Stan is an editor on the night desk at the Mirror,” Olive continued, in that same disconcertingly flat tone. “He came over a few hours ago