“Odd choice,” said Iris.
“Does Venus have moons?” said Jay.
“Dunno. Could be a space station, I guess. Anyway, instead of an aging professor having a fling with a beautiful freshman, I’m thinking of an aging Gangroid with three heads, huge talons, and… well, you know. The rest.”
“Eeuw, kinky,” said Iris.
“And the beautiful freshman?” said Jay.
“Natalie Portman,” said Mimi.
It was just then that a rowdy customer arrived, already three sheets to the wind, and it turned out to be good old Rudy Slater. Mimi shook hands, did the intro thing, smiled nicely, and then sank back into her chair, talked out-out of practice-and glad to be saved from any more dishing. Rudy, Jay, and Iris caught each other up-she wasn’t listening. He left a few hearty moments later, but he had done the job of putting the Lazar Cosic Horror Show out of her dinner mates’ minds. Good! And, she thought, a great ploy to remember for screenwriting. Noisy guy arrives. Wipe.
“Oh, I love being home,” said Iris, leaning back in her chair and staring out at the water. It was dark now, rippling with reflected light. Then she smiled at Mimi and made her feel as if she, somehow, was part of what Iris meant about being home.
“You love it for about three weeks,” said Jay. “Then you go, ‘Wait a second-there is absolutely nothing happening here.’”
“Harsh,” said Mimi. “And not true. I saw a poster for a hoedown, somewhere. The Oompah something.”
“The Ompah Stomp,” said Jay, “and don’t knock it.”
“I wasn’t knocking it. I want to go, just as soon as I get a ball cap.”
“True,” said Iris. “There’s the Ompah Stomp; the Blue Skies music festival; the amateur theatrical production of Gilbert and Sullivan every fall; hockey, of course; and… what was that other thing, Jay?”
“Monster car rallies at the fairgrounds?”
“Right. Oh, and golf. Everybody golfs.”
“My mother doesn’t golf.”
“Oh, right. All the lesbian doctors in Ladybank abstain from golf, but everybody else plays.”
“I like it here,” said Mimi. “It’s so…”
“Pretty?” said Jay.
“Pretty,” said Mimi, curling up in her chair and cradling her drink. Her sixth? Her hundredth? There was a lull in the conversation, and she listened to the voices around her, happy vacation voices. Except the accent was all wrong. And her thoughts drifted, inevitably to New York and humid evenings, sun filtered through dust and crowded sidewalk cafes. Suddenly she felt an intense stab of homesickness.
Had she really let herself be driven out of the city by a professor? No, there was more to it than that. Getting away was a good thing. And look what she had found! She glanced at Jay chatting with Iris. This… this was something she had never experienced. Something to hang on to. And yet…
“You okay?” Jay asked.
“Homesick,” she said. “But I’ll survive.”
Iris poured the rest of her drink into Jay’s glass. “Ladybank is a wonderful place to be from, ” she said. And made a toast with her empty glass. “Here’s to being from somewhere and getting away!”
“And visiting,” said Jay. Mimi caught his glance and wondered if he was telling her something. That this was just a visit and she shouldn’t get any ideas about staying. Great, she thought, homesick and paranoid, a winning combination.
“Hey,” he said, leaning across the table to rest his hand on hers, “what’s up?”
Mimi shrugged. “I’m rethinking Natalie Portman. Maybe Keira Knightley is more the coed-from-Venus type.”
And on the conversation wobbled, veering away from anything serious and punctuated by laughter. Liberating laughter, thought Mimi, when she allowed herself to be liberated from her feelings of being out of place. There was something else bothering her… What was it? Ah, yes. They had left the house unguarded. Christ! She shook it off. She had locked the place up. It would be safe. Except that they wouldn’t be going back there tonight. Couldn’t. Whatever transportation Jay had planned, he was in no better shape to drive than she was. It really was time to go.
Jay picked up the tab. Mimi left the tip. She found a five-euro note in her purse left over from Italy, hiding like a secret in the detritus at the bottom of her purse. She was drunk enough to leave it-a very big tip. But Iris wouldn’t let her.
“Nikki will think it’s play money and throw it away,” she whispered.
The three of them wound their way up the staircase from the river, hanging on to the railings. The happily reunited lovers had their heads together nattering about how well Rudy Slater’s skin had cleared up but how his love life sucked, and Mimi looked up into the night sky for a friend of her own, like the moon, for instance. This was something she was only just learning how to do-look for heavenly light of one kind or another. Apparently, there were stars and planets, too, and you could actually see them sometimes. Who knew?
So she looked up and… Ta-da! There it was-well three-quarters of it, anyway.
“Hello, moon,” she said.
Then she felt Jay slip his arm around her waist. “You’re staying at Mom’s house tonight,” he said. This was his plan. A taxi.
“What about Ms. Cooper?”
“Leave Ms. Cooper to me,” he said. She looked into his brown eyes, suddenly flashing golden in the headlights of a passing car. She started to protest, but then Iris slipped an arm around her, too, so that she was a Mimi sandwich.
“We can all have breakfast together,” said Iris, “and I can tell you about the Intermarium, and Romanian- Hungarian politics prior to World War Two.” She cackled in a most indelicate way, then burped. Mimi was pretty much in love with her by now.
“I’ve always had a thing about Romania,” said Mimi. “It’s, like, right next to Beatlemania, isn’t it?”
Maybe it was the alcohol, but she wondered if she was going to cry. How maudlin. She hated maudlin. She hadn’t simply scored a delightful brother; she’d scored his delightful girlfriend, too. And eventually? Delightful nieces and nephews!
“Okay,” said Mimi, stopping to look around for her car. “So, Mr. Transportation-is-under-control person. What do we do about my vehicle?”
“We’ll leave a note for the traffic guy.”
“Is it still Bob the traffic guy?” asked Iris. Jay nodded, and Iris turned to Mimi. “He’s been around so long, he used to ticket horses.”
They found the Mini and Jay wrote a note.
Dear Bob,
Inebriated. Took a cab.
Back in the morning.
Yours respectfully,
A responsible driver
“God!” said Mimi. “In New York that would be an invitation to trash the car!”
Meanwhile, Iris pulled a cell phone from her purse and called a cab. She seemed to know the number by heart. Then they all sat on a bench at the corner of Forster and Kane, arm in arm, and waited.
Mimi was rapidly losing the pleasure of being a Mimi sandwich. She had the feeling that the two lovebirds would rather be in each other’s arms than in hers. She got up, saying she needed to stretch.
There weren’t many traffic lights in Ladybank, but there was one at Forster and Kane, and a moment later it turned red to the traffic on the main drag. Only one car pulled up at the intersection, a cherry-red Chevy with its back end up like a dog in heat and a muffler that needed serious attention.
There was a lone driver in the car, a greasy-looking guy with a mullet who leered at Mimi and then revved the motor to make his point.
“For me?” cried Mimi, clasping her hands to her breast. “That is so sexy. Can you do it again?”
