Everything but the Squeal

“No,” the friend said. “We don't.” She said it very slowly, as though she were talking to a tourist from very far away, someone with several heads and suction cups at the tips of his fingers. She wore a fringed buckskin jacket that had probably been her father's pride and joy in the heyday of the Buffalo Springfield.

“Pity,” I said. “But you may go.” Congratulating myself on my gallantry, I picked up the phone and fumbled around in my pocket for a quarter. “Hello, pay phone,” I said.

Something touched the center of my back, and I snapped around. The skinny one had stepped back but the fresh-faced friend in the buckskin jacket stood her ground, looking up at me with clear, brave eyes. “Um,” she said, “you okay?”

To my bewilderment, my eyes filled with tears. “I'm fine,” I said. “What the hell are you doing on this street?”

“Nothing,” the friend said. “You know, just messing around. What's the matter with you?”

“The human condition,” I said, for want of anything else.

“Well,” the girl in the buckskin said, “as long as it's nothing serious.” She took her friend's arm and led her away from me.

“He talks to phones,” the skinny one hissed. “Leave him alone.”

“Chill out, Tabitha,” the friend said, “relax, would you?”

“Tabitha’s right,” I called after them. “Leave me alone. And get off the street. Here there be monsters.”

“You're the one who's monstered,” Tabitha said. Having gotten in the last word, something she probably never did at home, she led her friend away. The friend turned back to look at me once and then both of them floated into the crowd.

Since I had a phone in my hand, I dropped the quarter and called my number. The machine happily played back two hang-ups while I rested my forehead against the cold metal of the kiosk. The third call wasn't a hang- up.

“Damn you,” a girl's voice said. “Don't you ever go home? Get over here right now, my mother's acting crazy and I don't blame her, considering what I found in her purse. Oh, yeah, this is Aurora Sorrell, and you know where I am.”

When I stepped out of the kiosk the drizzle hit me in the face, but I didn't need it. I was as sober as Walter Cronkite. I sprinted for Alice, and people looked after me, hoping I might be something they'd see tomorrow on the news.

“Well, what a treat,” Aurora said as she opened the door to the bungalow. “So glad you could find the time.” Her mother was nowhere in sight.

“Where is she?” I said.

“Asleep. And it took long enough for you to get here.”

“Honey,” I said, “I've been working.” She started to bridle, and I said, “Sorry, sorry, not ‘honey.’ Aurora. Miss Sorrell, if you like. I've been looking for Aimee.”

“I've been calling you for hours.” She stepped back to let me in. She was wearing a long white shirt that looked like it belonged to her father, and her legs were bare, as they'd been created to be. There were weepy little smudges under her eyes.

“What's happened? Can she get up to talk to me?”

“She took a sleeper,” Aurora said. “She never takes a sleeper. She doesn't even take an aspirin. This is a woman who gets her teeth drilled without getting put out. It was one of my father's. He never packs right, you know what I mean? He left his whole overnight case here, razor and everything. I don't know how he stays in business.” She turned her back to me and walked to the couch. Her shoulders were as straight as a T square and she moved as though she would break if she bumped into anything. When she sat down she crossed her long brown legs and said, “I hope you're good.”

“I'm as good as I can be,” I said, following. “What's happened?”

She pulled out the crumpled pack of Marlboro Lights and lit one, avoiding my eyes. “We've heard from Aimee,” she said, fanning the smoke away with one hand. She made a sound that was midway between a sneeze and a laugh. ” ‘Heard’ is the word, all right. My, oh my, have we heard from Aimee.”

“What are we talking about?” I said. “What do you mean, you've heard from Aimee?”

“I didn't believe it,” she said, drawing on the cigarette. “I didn't believe anything was wrong. They always worried more about Aimee than they did about me. Aimee's the baby. Aimee's the last thing left between my mother and menopause. Aimee's the pot of gold at the end of the hairbow. Sibling rivalry and then some.”

“Stop acting like Tallulah Bankhead and tell me what happened.”

She closed her eyes slowly and then opened them again. She was drunker than I was. “Who's Tallulah Bankhead?” she asked.

“A dangerous amphibian,” I said. “Aurora. Tell me what happened.”

Her chin crumpled up like aluminum foil and she dropped her head. Two wet spots fell onto the brown skin of her thigh and glistened up at me. Without having any idea what I was doing, I reached out and brushed them away. Her hair hung forward, masking her face.

“My mother's purse,” she said in a muffled voice. “Over there, near the chair. Can you get it, please?”

Acting on automatic pilot, I got the purse and came back to the couch. I put the purse on the coffee table. “And?” I asked.

She took a shaky drag off the cigarette. “And open it, stupid,” she said without looking up. “It's right on top.”

I pulled the purse open and found myself looking at more stuff than the average man packs when he's going abroad for the rest of his life. “You've got to give me a hint,” I said. “This is King Tut's tomb. This is a time capsule. Anybody who finds this purse a thousand years from now will know all there is to know about Western civilization.”

“Western civilization is a joke,” she said. “There's no such thing as civilization. There's just table manners.”

She grabbed the purse and dug into it. “You want to see civilization?” she asked in a strangled tone. “You want to hear civilization?” She pulled out the little tape recorder and a cassette and fumbled around with them, trying to insert the tape into the player.

“I've heard this,” I said.

“Just shut up. I'm so damned sick of people who know what's going to happen next. You don't know which way your rear end is pointed,” she said, snapping the cassette player shut with a nasty little click. “Not that anyone cares.”

“Slow down,” I said. I touched her hand. “And before you play that thing, give me a drink.”

She tilted her face toward me. It was wet and shiny. “Good idea,” she said, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand like she was trying to rub off a tattoo. “Oh, Jesus,” she said, reaching to the floor behind her and coming up with a bottle. “We're both just kids.”

“Who?”

She drank deeply. She'd graduated to cognac. “Everybody,” she said, passing the bottle. “Aimee and me. You and me. Why would anyone think you could find anything? My mother and me. She's not so old either, you know.” Her face wrinkled and she collapsed backward onto the couch. “Ohhhh, foooey” she wailed, covering her eyes with a forearm. “Fooey, fooey, fooey.”

The cognac was rawer than scraped bark. I had to swallow twice to make sure it would stay down, and even then it reached up with little fingers of fume to chin itself on my uvula. After it subsided and went about the business of lighting up my stomach, I leaned forward and pressed the button that made the little black machine play whatever it was that needed playing.

There was nothing. Just a hiss like a long-distance phone wire. Aurora made a little choking sound and waved at the machine, and I pushed Rewind.

The tape snicked into place and I looked up to find Aurora staring at it as though it were something fanged and poisonous. “Do you want to go into the other room while I play it?” I asked.

She shook her head, her underlip caught between her teeth. Her face was a mask of taut muscle. “Play it,” she said.