Works and Days
Spent Hen
Conclusion
“Jackie, I thought you knew where we were going?” Felice said.
“I did. I mean I do!”
“Then how come I’m stepping over this bum for the third time?” Patti demanded.
“We don’t know where the hell we are!”
“It could be worse,” Sharon said. “We could be that bum.”
“I guess your life has hit rock bottom when you turn into a landmark,” Patti allowed.
“It’s all starting to look the same to me,” Felice said. “Tall grey buildings, can’t see the sky, nothing but El tracks vibrating overhead. People walking in and—oh, my’God, Cousin Sharon, look!”
Felice ribbed Sharon and the two Black women saw, stepping out of a Saturn, a woman with black, Flashdance hair, gold lamé top, black handbag, micro mini skirt, legs covered in matching black hair, a bobbing Adam’s apple, and a look of fierce determination as she closed the car door and walked into the club.
Jackie tittered, but Patti hit her with a handbag, “I don’t want to die tonight. He’s probably packing heat.”
“I couldn’t help it,” Jackie said as they passed the club and the transvestite’s car. “He—”
“They prefer to be called she,” interjected Sharon, and Jackie stared at her in surprise.
“Well, whatever she prefers to be called,” Sharon remarked, “those pumps were fabulous. Even in a size fourteen.”
“You don’t see that in Geschichte Falls,” Patti remarked.
“You do,” Sharon disagreed. “But you don’t usually see it on Breckinridge.”
“Should we go to that club?” Felice asked.
“But that’s not our club,” Jackie protested. “The club we’re going to is on Wabash.”
“Well, how the hell can you tell?” Felice demanded. “Shit, I don’t care what people say, all these streets look alike.”
“It makes me remember why we left Chicago—” Sharon spoke and the El train passing over them roared over her words.
Privately Patti agreed.
“Let’s just find the first club that we see, the first one that looks like a good time,” Jackie said at last. Then, “How about that one?”
Jackie pointed across the street. A yellow taxi whizzed by.
“The one called...?” Patti’s voice faded in disbelief as she touched the side of her mouth.
The entryway was plain, and so was the lettering of the sign, but the sign itself was a long pink, indisputable penis which Felice now read.
“The Big Nasty,” she pronounced the name dubiously.
“The first meeting of the Geschichte Falls....” Faye had not really bothered to think of an official name until now, “Literary, Poetic and Artistic Society is hereby called into order.”
“Aren’t poets and writers artists?” Diggs asked.
“Well... yes,” allowed Faye who had been in the process of banging a hammer on Chayne’s kitchen table.
“Well then shouldn’t it just be the Artistic Society?”
While Faye pondered this, Chayne reached across the table and took the hammer from Faye’s hand.
“Well, I imagine...” said Faye.
Chayne looked around. Aside from Diggs, Faye and himself, there was Russell as well as Ted Weirbach who lived out near Route 103 and had just published a poetry collection a few months ago. Also there was a fortiesh looking woman with brown hair wearing a purple business suit name Elaine Reardon.
Faye looked to Chayne who cleared his throat and said, “I suppose we should all introduce ourselves. Most of us know each other, but Elaine is new to us and Ted’s been a long time out of our company.”
“Well,” Elaine shifted and crossed one leg over the other, “As you know my name is Elaine Reardon. I’m a stay at home mom right now—”
“We love stay at homes,” Ted interjected, beaming. He was a not unhandsome man, blondish, with a prominent nose and happy blue eyes that blinked through glasses. Chayne was glad to have him there.
“Thank you,” Elaine smiled, blushing. “I have three children, Casey, Benjamin and Tiffany—she’s only two. She’s... heaven. What they say about terrible twos isn’t really true. I—ah, wrote a little poetry back in college, in high school and all that but I hadn’t really started again until I was home with Tiffany. It was hard at first.... It still is. But I feel that if I have a sort of... support group, you know, people who really take my writing seriously, then maybe I can take my writing seriously too.”
“I was like that a long time,” Ted ventured. He was tall and lanky, his skin reddened rather than tanned, and he had pale blond hair, brass rimmed spectacles and a thick, ponderous voice. He pressed the tips of his very long fingers together as he spoke. “I didn’t really start writing until college, and then there were workshops. And then one day a professor of mine said ‘Hey, you should probably publish this,’ I had to have my hand held the whole way through.”
“I’m glad they held your hand,” said Eliane. “I love your first book. I mean, I love all your poems. But I think my favorite is ‘With Me On the Waters’.”
“Oh, yes,” Ted chuckled, laying a long finger to the side of his face. He was a man who looked at the ground and seemed to be always be talking just to the person in front of him. “There’s a funny story about that....”
But Chayne did not hear the story. He’d gone to high school and junior college with Ted and never known quite how to feel about him. His mother was Catholic, his father a Jew, and he had a fuzzy, often quiet voice. Gentle was what Ted was. He had always been sort of goodlooking, but now Chayne was surprised to realize he seemed very goodlooking,
Woody Harrelson meets Woody Allen, Chayne joked to himself.
“So where do you live?” Ted asked her.
“Out in Keyworthy.”
“Oh.”
“My family goes to Evervirgin—”
And just like that, Chayne’s musings about the feel of Ted’s slightly rough, long hands touching his, and his placid, blue eyed smile falling on him swung to a deep dislike of Elaine Reardon.
“So are you with the bride or the groom?” a weedy white boy asked Felice.
Felice turned back to Jackie for some sort of answer, took a sip from her gin and tonic, said, “Um hum,” and walked off.
“Eyyy!” they heard Patti scream from the dance floor as some college kid spun her around, then dipped her, and she kicked up her leg.
“I didn’t know,” Jackie told Felice and Sharon as they gathered around the bar, “this was a wedding reception.”
“Well,” Sharon shrugged, “at least the drinks are free.”
“So what’s our story gonna be?” Jackie demanded.
“We’re the bride’s family,” said Sharon.
“The bride’s white,” Jackie said.,
“Well then you be her mother.”
Jackie blenched at Sharon.
“Shit!” swore the other woman, “I can’t.”
“Bridal shot! Bridal shot! Bridal shot!” roared some guy who jumped on the bar and tossed off his jacket.
“Drink! Drink! Drink!” roared the crowd, and Patti ran over, breathless with the young man who had just dipped her.
“Bridal shot?” Sharon whispered to Patti.
“I don’t remember one at my wedding,” Patti shrugged.
The boy who’d been holding her hand impulsively kissed her on the mouth. She stared back wide eyed.
“You’re beautiful, baby!” he hooted.
“She’s old enough to be your mother—” started Jackie, but no one heard her as the bride was brought forth, all in white and the crowd roared, “Drink! Drink! Drink!”
The bartender, took out a bottle of something, filled an exceptionally large shot glass with it, affixed to it a peach colored plastic cock and then shoved it into the bride’s mouth while the crowd showered her with condoms.
“Oh, my God,” Jackie murmured, her voice flat, and then she screamed as some biker smacked her ass and shouted, “Let’s dance, Mama!”
Jackie stared at him wide mouthed, then back at Sharon and Felice.
“Girl, why not?” Felice said. “He and Chip could be cousins.”
Felice had stolen Jackie’s cigarettes, and was contenting herself with a gin soaked olive while Sharon was looking forlornly at her daiquiri when she heard someone say, “Whazzup, whazzup, hot mama!”
She looked to Felice, and then heard, “No. You, pretty Mama!”
“It’s all you, girl,” Felice said, and Sharon beheld a white boy, no more than twenty-five, in a back turned ball cap, jeans sagging, with three gold chains and black shades.
“Um! Um! Um!” he declared. “You are sooo FINE!”
Sharon looked at him, incredulous.
“A’know a’know a’know, you’re probably looking at this white boy saying, ‘How’s he gon try to mack with me? And you right, you right. I ain’t got no right. You are SUCH a Nubian goddess. I’d like to take you home with me, but if it’s alright by you, I’ll just have this dance?”
He offered his very white hand.
Sharon looked back at Felice.
“Com’on, Brown Sugar,” he urged.
Sharon looked back at Felice who shrugged.
“You heard him,” she said. “Go on, Brown Sugar.”