This was never going to happen to me. I don’t suppose that’s something a person can ever really say but I said it anyway. This will never be me. I took comfort in that.
A good ten minutes went by before a member of the staff arrived with a security guard to let me out. My bag was searched for a second time and then he checked my pockets and shoes. I signed the visitor log and was escorted to a large den full of ratty couches and little tables. It was like one of those beautiful old mansions that had been destroyed by generations of fraternity abuse. Duke was sitting on the floor in a circle of men, a two--liter bottle of diet raspberry ginger ale in the center of the group with little paper cups all around. The last time I’d seen him he was up onstage, making his exit in Fool for Love. He was wearing spurs. He said, “I’m only gonna be a second. I’ll just take a look at it and I’ll come right back. Okay?” Not to spoil anything but he doesn’t come back.
“Cricket’s here!” He gave me a wave, then he patted an open space on the carpet beside him. “Alex was just telling us about a halfway house in Illinois where he found a friend in Jesus.”
Alex didn’t look up but he nodded. I remained standing. “We listen to one another’s stories,” Duke said.
“Sure,” I said. I didn’t know how long he’d been in there but he looked better than his compatriots, which probably had more to do with the fact that he looked better going in. He was a famous undercover cop on television and I was a seamstress and very likely the biggest fool God ever made. I wondered if it would be easier to exit through the fish tank than it had been to arrive.
“We need to finish,” he said, as if it were surgery they were performing with their little paper cups.
“I’ve got a book.” I went off to a free spot on a couch on the other side of the room.
“She’s always got a book,” he said to his friends, and when I turned to shoot him a look I saw that the men in the circle were watching my retreat sadly, pulling on their cigarettes while Alex resumed his tale of love.
The room was smoky and crowded with people hunched into corners, trying to exchange sentences without being overheard. It was the saddest bar in the world, the one in which no alcohol was served and everyone was waiting for the check so they could settle up and go home. Two women with clipboards were making the rounds, asking questions, marking people off. Magazines were piled on every surface and I picked one up because no one could find communion with George Eliot in those circumstances. The caption beneath the picture of the famous model on the cover said she was looking for honesty. Beneath the room’s only floor lamp I thumbed through the pages that had already been thumbed to thinning velvet: an article about a former child star fallen on hard times; an article about a beagle who nursed an orphaned chipmunk in with her own litter of puppies; a picture of Peter Duke on the Santa Monica Pier, eating an ice cream cone and holding hands with someone named Chelsea who was identified as his wife. The only gossip I knew about Duke I knew from standing at the checkout in the grocery store. I didn’t buy the magazines because they were not good for me, but a certain amount of information entered my consciousness by proximity. Somehow, miraculously, Chelsea had not come in. I closed the magazine, closed my eyes.
“You could have been friendlier.” Duke dropped down beside me, taking my hand.
“I could have been—-” I started and then closed my mouth, suddenly overwhelmed by the knowledge that I would cry.
He leaned over and kissed me, missing my mouth by several inches. Let it be known that the last person to kiss me with romantic intent was this same man. Despite the daily offers I received while walking to fittings in Times Square, I had remained alone. “I’m glad you came,” he whispered.
I could not say I was glad. He seemed to understand this.
“Do you want to smoke?”
I shook my head. I asked him how the marriage was working out.
His fingers gently picked at the knee of my tights. “The marriage is no more. The lawyers have seen to that, or they are seeing to that.” He tilted down his head. “Where’s my girl?” he said quietly. “Where’s my birthday girl?”
Truly, I did not think I would survive.
He pulled me up from the couch. “Come on, I’ll show you around. The full ten--cent tour.” He kept his arm around my shoulder, pressing me into his chest as if to keep me safe. We went back to the reception area. A man who looked like someone’s sad father was in the fish tank now, and when I caught his eye he looked away. Duke stopped in front of an empty room with a circle of yellow folding chairs and an enormous chalkboard. “This is where we have the meetings. Lots and lots and lots of meetings. And that’s the snack pantry.” He pointed to a wide closet. “They’re very generous with snacks but we aren’t allowed to take them ourselves. We have to ask for them so that everything can be properly inventoried and recorded. I would like a bag of Cheez--Its, please.” He steered me back across the lobby to stand outside the open door of a large, dark room where seven single beds were arranged in a haphazard manner. “This is where the dwarves sleep. I’m Happy, but only compared to the other six. We’re not allowed to go into the bedroom until bedtime. We may not put our foot in there. Sleeping in the daytime is bad for depression. Did you know that? No closing the door either because there is no door.”
A yelping came from the room we’d just been in and I was glad I wasn’t there to see who it was.
“That’s the bathroom.” He pointed to a white door. “No lock there either but people are respectful about knocking. Make a mental note of that.” He walked me in a slow circle around the reception again.
“Do you have to stay here?” I asked, when what I meant was, Do I have to stay?
Duke nodded vigorously. “Oh, I do, I do. If I don’t stay I lose my job. I lose my contract. I become uninsurable, which means the movie can’t start, which means I can’t be in the movie. I’m going to be an astronaut. Did I tell you that? I’m going to be in a big white suit with a glass bubble on my head, floating in the darkness. Every single day feels like research for that one. People start taking you seriously once you’ve been an astronaut.
Have you noticed that? It’s a rite of passage. It means you’ve really got something going on.”
“I never thought about it.”
“Well, you need to. You need to get back in the game. They’re plenty of good parts for women in space these days but you’re going to need to put yourself out there.”
“I’m done,” I said, though I imagine the scope of those two words were lost on him.
He shook his head. “I saw Singularity.”
“You did?” I couldn’t imagine it.
“You’re very beautiful, cricket, and by that I don’t just mean you’re pretty, which you are. You have a real beauty that shows up on the screen. Pow. I found you mesmerizing. I find you mesmerizing.” He was pressing me closer now, holding on to me like a raft. I was holding him up.
“We’re going to go back and sit on the couch,” he said in that same low voice used by every inhabitant of the room who wasn’t screaming. “In two minutes you’ll get up and go to the bathroom and I’ll stay where I am. We get checked off every fifteen minutes. It’s almost time. Once I get checked off I’ll come and meet you there.”