Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

“ ‘I’m Afraid to Go Home,’ ” said Maggie instantly. When he looked puzzled, she reminded him, “It was the B side to ‘Tiger Lily.’ ”

“Yeah! Yeah! I almost got an award for that one.” His eyes crinkled with pleasure.

Another round he wanted to know if she’d seen him in the beach movie he made for Buena Vista. She remembered the movie and didn’t say that she couldn’t place him in it. It had been a bit part, leading nowhere. After that he went back to singing, mostly in Vegas. Now in Atlantic City. “They love me in the casinos,” he told her. “The folks from the ’burbs go wild over me-makes ’em remember the good times, they tell me.”

Maggie tried to remember some good times, but all she found was stills of her and Kathy Ryan listening to records and talking about the future. She was going to be a fashion model and live in Paris. Kathy would be a vet in an African wildlife preserve. They would spend holidays together in the Bahamas. “You want some peanuts to go with that drink?” Maggie asked.

At two o’clock the Red Lion was closing, but Devlin Robey had not budged. He kept nursing a Dewar’s that was more water than scotch, hunched down like a stray dog who didn’t want to be thrown out in the street. Maggie wondered what was wrong with the guy. He was rich and famous, right?

“Are you about finished with that drink? Boss says it’s quittin’ time.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m a night owl, I guess. All those years of doing casino shows at eleven. Seems like the shank of the evening to me.” He glanced at his watch, and then at her: the red velvet tunic, the black fishnet stockings, the cleavage. “You’re getting off work now?”

The smile never wavered, but inside she groaned. Tonight had seemed about two days long, and all that kept her going was the thought of a hot bubble bath to soak her feet and the softness of clean sheets to sink into before she passed out from sheer weariness. So now-ten years too late to be an answer to prayer-Devlin Robey wants to take her out. Where was he when it would have mattered?

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Thanks anyway, but not tonight.” Maybe ten years ago, but not tonight.

The one answer she wouldn’t have made back when she was Devlin Robey’s vestal virgin turned out to be the only one that worked the charm. Suddenly his halfhearted invitation became urgent. “I’ll be straight with you,” he said, with eyes like stained glass. “I’m feeling kind of down tonight, and I thought it might help to spend some time with an old friend.”

Is that what we were? Maggie thought. I was twenty-five rows back at the concert; I was on the other side of the speakers when WABC’s Cousin Brucie played your records, and while you were airbrushed and glossy, I was wearing Clearasil and holding the fan magazine. We were friends? She didn’t say it, though. If Maggie had learned anything in seven years as a cocktail waitress, it was not to reply to outrageous statements. She shrugged. “I’m sorry,” she said, thinking that would be the end of it. Wondering if she’d even bother to tell anybody about it. It wouldn’t be any fun to talk about if you had to explain to the other waitresses, bunch of kids, who Devlin Robey was.

“At least give me your phone number-uh-Maggie.” Her name was signed with a flourish on his check: Thank you! Maggie. “I get to the city every so often. Maybe I could call you, give you more notice. We could set something up. You’re all right. You ever think about the business?”

No. Show business offered the same hours as nightclub waitressing, and besides she couldn’t sing or dance. But Lana Turner had been discovered in a drug store, so maybe… After all, who was Maggie Holtz to slap the hand of fate? She tore off the business expense tab from the Red Lion check and scribbled her name and phone number across it. “Sure. Why not,” she said. “Call me sometime.”

She patted the autographed cocktail napkin folded in the pocket with her tips, wondering if Richie would like to have it for his scrapbook. Or maybe she should put it in his baby book: the guy I was pretending to make it with the night you were conceived. Two scraps of paper; one for each of them to toss. She figured that would be the end of it.

It wasn’t, though. Four nights later-four A.M.-the Advil had finally kicked in, allowing her to plunge into sleep, when the phone screamed, dragging her back. She’d forgotten to turn on the damned answering machine. She grabbed for the receiver, only to reinstate the silence, but his voice came through to her, a little swacked, crooning “I’m Afraid to Go Home,” and she knew it was him.

“Devlin Robey,” she said, wondering why wishes got granted only when you no longer wanted them.

“Maggie doll.” He slurred her name. “I just wanted a friendly voice. I got the blues so bad.”

“Hangover?”

“No. That’ll be after I wake up-if I ever get to sleep, that is. Thought I might get sleepy talking about old times, you know?”

“Old times.”

“I lost big tonight at the tables. I played seventeen in roulette a dozen times and it wouldn’t come up for me. Seventeen-my number!”

She caught herself nodding forward, and forced the number seventeen to roll around in her memories. Oh, yeah. “ ‘Seventeen, My Heaven Teen,’ ” she murmured. “That was your big hit, wasn’t it?”

“I got a Cashbox Award for that one. S’in the den at my place in Vegas. Maybe I’ll show it to you sometime.”

“Wouldn’t your wife object?”

She heard him sigh. “Jeez. Trina. What a cow. She was a showgirl when I married her. Ninety-five pounds of blonde. Now she acts like giving me a blow job is a major act of charity, and she’s in the tanning salon so much she looks like a leather Barbie doll. Not that I’m home much. I’m on the road a lot.”

“Yeah. It’s a tough life.” She pictured him in a suite the size of her apartment. Maybe one of those sunken tubs in a black marble bathroom.

“It’s not like I’m too keen to go home, you know? I have a daughter, Claudia, but jeez it breaks my heart to see her. She was born premature. Probably ’cause Trina was always trying to barf up her dinner to stay skinny. She’s never been right, Claudia hasn’t. Brain damage at birth. But she always smiles so big when she sees me, and throws her little arms out.”

“How old is she?”

“Twelve, I guess. I always picture her when she was little. She was beautiful when she was three all over. Now she’s just three inside. Her birthday is the seventeenth of June. My lucky number. Seventeen.”

“Not tonight, though, huh?”

“No. Tonight it cost me plenty. I shouldn’t bet when I’m loaded. Loaded drunk, I mean; the other kind is never an issue. I like to be with people, though. I’d like to be with you. You don’t have an ax to grind. You’re not like these glitter tarts here, running around in feathers, can’t remember past 1975. You’re good people, Maggie. Look, can I come over sometime?”

“I bet you get lotsa offers,” said Maggie, hoping somebody else would take the heat.

“I like you,” he said. “You’re real. Like my kid. Not just some hard-ass in the chorus line with a Pepsodent smile and an angle. I’ve had a bellyful of them.”

She shouldn’t have let him tell her about his kid. It made her think of Richie, and made her think that maybe Devlin Robey hadn’t had it all his way like she’d figured. All of a sudden, he wasn’t just some glossy poster that she could toss when she tired of it. He was a regular guy with feelings. And maybe she owed him. After all, she had used him as her fantasy all those years ago. Maybe it was time to pay up.

“Okay, like Tuesday? That’s when I’m off.” She could send Richie to her folks in Rockaway. They kept talking until his voice slurred into unconsciousness.

“Your monogamous John is here,” said Cap the bartender, nodding toward table seven.

“Yeah,” said Maggie. She’d already seen Devlin Robey come in, trying to look casual. He came three days a month now, whenever he could get away from his casino gig. Sometimes it was her night off, and if it wasn’t he’d sit at number seven until closing time, nursing a Dewar’s-water, and trying to keep a conversation going as Maggie edged her way past to wait on the paying customers.

On her nights off they’d eat Italian, which meant mostly vino for Devlin Robey, and then go back to her place for sex. Robey was only good for once a night, so he liked to prolong it with kinky stuff, strip shows, and listening to Maggie talk dirty, which she found she could do while her mind focused on planning her grocery list for the coming week, and thinking what she needed to take to the cleaners. She felt sorry for Robey, because he had been famous once, and the coddling he’d received as a star had crippled him for life. He couldn’t get used to people not being