Why had she not just brought the boy up to his dressing room? Why hadn’t she just phoned to say that George, to her dismay, had reached the age when identifying his father was essential? Why, indeed, had she brought the boy to see him act in this dimwitted and untesting comedy, out of all the plays he’d been in? Revenge was not her only motivation, surely. She wanted rather to embarrass him as much as possible, to make him seem at once as weak and feeble as she would already have described him. “He’ll try to bluff it out,” she would have said. “He’ll do some actor stuff. He’ll carry on as if meeting a magnificent son like you was something that he’d performed a hundred times. To mad applause, of course. Your blood father only does it for applause.”
So Lix’s “Come to the zoo!” had been a comically ill-judged suggestion. Lix had seen the smirking triumph on Freda’s face. He’d also seen the look of hope and panic in the young man’s eyes, and had tried to claw the offer back.
“Perhaps. We’ll let you know. We’ll phone,” Freda had said, evidently unable to control her smile. We’ll let you know. We’ll phone. The we was wounding, as she must have known, as she must have intended.
Lix should, of course, have been more spontaneous. A hug, perhaps. A firm handshake. Some tears. Or an apology. But there was still audience about. A couple of persistent girls with unsigned programs were waiting in the theater lobby, within hearing distance of anything their hero said. He had to be controlled, he had to be wary, at least until he could escape into the street, his collar up against the weather and the fans, when there would be an opportunity to try again, to ask this George to join him in a bar, perhaps, to be more passionate and brave, to sob and kiss and laugh with fearful joy. At once.
By the time he’d reached the street and had dispatched the two impatient girls with his worst of signatures and shaken one or two more hands, George and his mother and his mother’s cousin whose name he did not catch, their duty done, were already walking off, down one of the crowded Hives toward the riverfront. Were almost out of sight, in fact. Were almost lost to him.
Lix followed them, of course. He needed time to think, and time to study this new son. If he hung on to them but kept his distance, then he could decide a further strategy, and one that left him looking wise and fine instead of stumbling and foolish. He could go up at any time while they were in the street and say … well, say whatever he’d rehearsed while he was dogging them, say something that would wipe away the wasted eighteen years, quickly find that fine line that scriptwriters might take a week to perfect. Oh, yes, he was ashamed. How had he let the moment pass those many years ago? He should have said, “Your pregnancy. Your body, yes. Your private life. But this is not your private kid! I have responsibilities, and needs.”
How had he also let that second moment pass, when he had first encountered George, his mouth made clownlike by the castor sugar of his unfinished cake, as Freda fled the Palm & Orchid, their son in tow? Some restitution had to happen in the next few minutes. Lix could not squander this last chance.
The city was not on his side, not on the side of courage and fine lines. The old millennium had only twenty minutes left to run, and everybody was anxious to reach the embankment sidewalk for the light and fireworks display. Revelers, dressed both for warmth and for ostentation, a comic combination, shared cannabis and wine with strangers. Whole families were holding hands in comfort chains lest anyone got swept away by the crowds. Old couples from the neighborhood, decked out in their best suits, last used for funerals, did their best despite their bones to be young and contemporary, yet had not dared to venture outside into these unruly streets without their good-luck pebbles in their pockets to frighten off misfortune. Perhaps the foreign math curmudgeons had been sensible to stay away from crowds. The multitude was hazardous. The Hives were one-way streets of pedestrians, too crowded for Lix to catch up with anyone. He simply had to fix his eye on Freda’s unmistakable hair and follow from a distance, separated from his son by a shuffling and unnegotiable throng.
He did not entirely lose sight of George and Freda and the cousin. He lost sight of his resolve. He found a place where he could stand on the embankment steps and watch the three of them from behind. At first, of course, he stared and stared at George’s hair and ears, waiting for the boy to turn his face and offer him a profile. Then, inevitably, he turned his attentions to Freda, seeing how she’d aged — not much — and whether being forty suited her. It did. She’d broadened slightly, and her hair was peppery. Otherwise she was still young and eye-catching, still dangerous, of course, but sexier than he remembered her. If he hadn’t made her pregnant, was it possible that they would still be together, he wondered. Fertility’s a curse. He could imagine taking off her clothes and lying underneath her on a bed while she pressed down onto his wrists and made him do as he was told.
Thank goodness for the fireworks and the midnight bells. 1/1/01. The first cascade of light exploded like a drum solo. Everybody’s chin went up. All the revelers, children to the core, let out a whoop a sigh a wow. Everybody smiled at once. That’s what we come to cities for.
Even Lix was animated now and happy in a complicated way. Whatever his personal turmoil, the turmoil of the old town was for the moment more insistent and exuberant. Being there amongst the crowd was more cheering than any Best View from a private balcony. No one bothered him. Nobody seemed to recognize his muffled face. Nobody asked for signatures. If anybody shook his hand, and many did, it was just the greeting of another wine-fueled celebrant who’d shake the devil’s hand and not care less. Goodwill to everyone for this New Year. A fine beginning. Not a curse. Lix would start the new millennium with an extra son. (An extra daughter, too.)
Then the oddest thing occurred, a piece of choreography, perfect and synchronous. Lix had dropped his chin an instant down from the fireworks just to check that his son George was seeming as happy as his father truly felt. But it was the cousin who turned her face to his and recognized that telltale birthmark on his cheek, and smiled the briefest, perfect smile again, as if she had expected him to be there, watching them. Perhaps this was the moment he truly fell in love with her, not in the lobby of the theater but underneath the cracking skies amongst the populace. Hers was a smile which promised that she’d let him stay undiscovered if that was what he wanted. She’d not embarrass him. She’d not say, “See who’s followed us.” It was a smile that blessed her face, that transformed her plainness into something more lasting than beauty.
And as he offered up a smile himself, secure that there would be no betrayal, he felt a pair of arms wrap around him from behind. A pair of stage-trained hands, with digging fingernails, a scent he recognized. A chest that couldn’t jiggle when it danced pressed against his back.
“I’ve caught you now,” she said. Here was an invitation for the second time that night to be An’s Devotee.
BOTH LIX AND AN understood at once that these were kisses for a lonely New Year’s Eve, a small gift for the coming century, and not the start of anything. So a visit home to her strange rooms or his high river-view apartment was not in the cards. This encounter would be short and desperate, a fireworks show. They’d not repeat themselves on other nights. They’d not refer to it before their next performance, when, no doubt, their kisses would once again be chaste onstage. The only wagging tongues would be the gossip columnists.