“No need to keep your voice down,” she said. “That child could sleep through a tornado if he has a full belly.”
“But you had no baby when I met you last night.”
“Perhaps your memory is at fault,” said Alice. “Or perhaps your sense of time?” She winked at the old man, and on her closed eyelid, the third eye appeared, just as it had on all of them. The witch tattoo streaked across her bosom and disappeared behind the red fabric over her opposite shoulder.
The old man gathered his robe more modestly and sat on the toilet seat. “Yes, you were telling us about last night. Something about a theatrical performance in your former brother’s former room? A woman singing.”
“Oh, yes, I remember where I was. I followed the sound of music and entered my house, drawn upstairs by the beauty of the singer’s voice and the unmistakably live piano, though as far as I know, there’s never been such an instrument in this house. There were seven women: the singer and her accompanist, and five more sitting in two rows of chairs, listening to the performance. But I don’t remember any baby.”
Dreaming of the breast, the child in the magazine rack sucked in his sleep, as real as any of us.
“The women took scant notice of me when I entered the room. The singer flinched but she did not stop her singing, and the pianist did not miss a note. Some in the audience halfheartedly looked my way, a quarter turn of the head and a glance over the shoulder. To a person, they were stunning, though they seemed oddly out of date. Dressed in the kind of costumes seen in old cowboy movies, where the fella comes into a saloon and there’d be dancing girls in petticoats and velvet, bright crinoline, fishnet stockings, and long gloves. Like Marlene Dietrich in Destry Rides Again, or Lili Von Schtupp in Blazing Saddles. Open trunks spilled over with sequined dresses and feather boas. In the scenes, the girls would be laughing, sitting on the cowboys’ laps, running their fingers through brilliantined hair, or perched atop an upright pianoforte, or leaning over the poker table, watching the action, waiting for some sap to buy them a free drink.”
“Barflies,” said Dolly.
“Working girls,” said Jane. “Remember Madeline Kahn: ‘Who am I kidding, everything from the waist down is kaput.’ ”
The old man slapped his knee, sending a cloud of dust and a pair of dazed moths into the air. “Tarts? Harlots? Ladies of the night?”
“Now, now,” I stammered. “They were more like cancan dancers.”
“It’s all code, boy,” the old man said. “Back in them days the films couldn’t come right out and say so, but those were pros. Flirt with the boys to buy more liquor, then a romp upstairs on some ramshackle cot with the old cowpoke. What you saw were seven strumpets.”
With an exaggerated curtsy, Alice flared the skirts of her dress. “Strumpets,” she said. “Oh, I like that. How wonderfully old-fashioned and misogynistic of you.” When she laughed, she exposed a set of flawless white teeth and a tongue that flared and fluted along its thin perimeter.
“Don’t get the wrong impression,” I said. “They weren’t prostitutes, just dressed that way. Like they were playing a part. Actually, aside from the costumes and makeup, they acted very refined. A spread had been laid out on the sideboard. Cakes and pastries, petits fours, a silver samovar piping hot with tea, and bone china cups. Cake forks and demitasse spoons. White cloth napkins. Bottles of cold ale clotted with drops of condensation. It was very formal and elegant and showed a great deal of careful preparation.”
Jane opened the medicine cabinet and drew out a small tray laden with leftover crumpets, which she passed around the room. When it reached the old man, he dithered over the options till choosing a mille-feuille, drizzled with chocolate, which he sampled with a delicate nibble. The moment the sweetness hit his taste buds, his eyes widened with pleasure, and he popped the whole thing in his mouth. Flakes of pastry sprinkled from his lips as he spoke. “So, these cancan dancers in their petticoats rode their bicycles to your house—pardon my dust—and they set up this piano recital in your former brother’s former room—this napoleon is to die for—and brought in full service for high tea?” He licked the icing from his fingertips. “And crumpets?”
I nodded meekly. A short cough allowed him to swallow the last and address Jane with a parched throat. “You wouldn’t have a spare bottle of that ale in the medicine cabinet, would you? Try behind the shaving cream.”
Anticipating his logic, I volunteered an answer to his next query. “Of course, such a strange situation ordinarily would provoke a more immediate reaction on my part: what kind of show is going on here? Or: what are you women doing in my house?”
“Precisely. A perfectly natural line of reasoning. Indeed, I was expecting such interrogatories well before this point in your narrative. Why didn’t you ask such questions right away?”