Читать книгу Last Woman Standing - Amy Gentry - Страница 11

4

For a few days after the prelims, I kept my head down, skipped the open-mics, and focused on showing up at Laurel’s on time. I was sure now that I would need this job for the foreseeable future, and it wouldn’t be a good idea to lose it with my upcoming rent hike. I dug up the lease renewal from the pile of papers on my filthy kitchen table—though I made a point of being coiffed and heeled in public, my house was a mess—and scanned through it again. There was a fifty-dollar rent break if I paid first and last on signing. I studied the numbers in my checking account, trying to figure out how much I could conceivably save in the next month by cutting all bar tabs, eating only rice and beans, and curbing my Zappos habit. It was time to set a real budget, like an adult. I wished I had asked Jason about the software he used to keep track of the grocery budget when we lived together. I hated computers.

I hadn’t yet decided what to do about the semifinals, but at first, the mere fact of having told someone about Neely made me feel almost as if the problem had been solved. Austin was in full spring mode, the perfect crystal-blue days strung one after another like beads on a necklace, each one seventy degrees Fahrenheit with just enough breeze to ruffle the crape myrtles. It was easy weather to love and feel loved by. March had already slipped by, and April was about to do the same. With the weight of secrecy lifted slightly, I wanted to enjoy myself at last. At times it felt as if I had dreamed it all up—not just Amanda, who seemed unreal when she wasn’t right in front of me, but even Neely himself. I’d been sick, after all, which had made the whole thing feel like a nightmare. How likely was it that what had happened had really happened, at least the way I remembered it?

Of course, I knew perfectly well that everything with Neely had happened just as I remembered, and that the feeling wouldn’t last. But the temporary relief was so welcome that I indulged it for as long as it lasted, responding graciously to the handful of well-wishers texting me congratulations and pretending to all and sundry, including myself, that my surprise advancement in the contest was good news and only good news. I even banged out a few scenes for the lifestyle guru pilot, feeling momentarily unblocked.

After a day or so, though, the relief wore off, and a half shade of brightness leached out of the spring days. When I glanced at my text messages, I couldn’t help wondering whether any of them would be from Amanda, though she’d made it clear, in her conspiratorial way, that we wouldn’t be in touch for a while. What could she possibly have meant by “I’ll take care of it”? Now, after almost doubting her existence, I caught myself fantasizing that any minute I’d get a text from her saying it was done, whatever it was, and Neely wouldn’t be at the semifinals. This was nonsense and I knew it. Still, I wished I had Amanda’s number, so I could call and find out what she had meant.

But I didn’t have Amanda’s number, and she didn’t call or text, so I kept polishing brass bowls and folding linen napkins at Laurel’s, and then it was the weekend before semifinals. I began to feel less worried about Amanda than about the upcoming competition. Would I be able to perform or not? Could I even trust myself to walk onto the stage at Bat City, much less make it through an entire set without glancing Neely’s way? A stray thought about him while I was on the mic could bring on another embarrassing stutter at best, total silence at worst. Whenever I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep, I anxiously tested myself, rehearsing the situation mentally again and again with my eyes squeezed shut. I’d imagine myself making my way through the parking lot, running the gauntlet of the other comics, checking the list by the door, settling down to a drink at the bar. But when the emcee called my name to go onstage, I’d always blank out and fall back into a deep, black sleep.

The answer hit me during a busier-than-usual Saturday shift. I’d just sold a three-hundred-dollar antlered recipe stand and was dusting the essential-oil display while Becca took over with customers. I remembered what Ruby had said about Becca’s arms and noticed that today, as always, they were sheathed in long sleeves despite the fair weather. I wondered if she, too, had a secret. If so, it seemed like a stupid and destructive secret to keep.

But wasn’t I being just as stubborn?

Telling Amanda had brought instant relief. But Amanda didn’t matter—even she knew that. Once she’d faded into the background, the relief had faded with her, and I was left alone to anticipate another confrontation with Neely. What if I just needed to tell someone else? Not my mom, who would freak out, or Ruby, who would gossip about it, but someone closer to my world, who would understand?

Kim, for instance. After prelims, Kim had checked in with me to ask after my imaginary illness. She’d even offered to bring me soup and Gatorade. It wasn’t the first time she’d made friendly advances, and I wasn’t quite sure why I’d never responded to them before. Okay, it annoyed me that she played up the sexy-baby thing onstage, and maybe she really would laugh at the idea of Aaron Neely, the Aaron Neely, masturbating furiously at me in the back of an SUV. Maybe I needed someone to laugh, to break the spell of it, at least for long enough to get me through the semifinals. Anyway, hanging out with Kim would give me something to do other than dread Neely and wonder about Amanda.

I finished up the oil display and got back to my phone, which was tucked under the counter in my purse. I had just enough time to send a text to Kim—Ran out of puke, all better now. Hang out before shows?—before the next wave of customers. I heard the buzz of a text, but I didn’t get a chance to look until the shift was nearly over. Kim had replied, Meet me at the lake @6?

I’d been thinking more along the lines of happy hour than exercise, but since I was supposedly recovering from food poisoning, it wouldn’t hurt me to play along. See you there, I texted back, trying to remember if I owned a single pair of walking shoes.

“The lake” was Ladybird Lake, which I still thought of as Town Lake, the homelier name it had worn when I first moved to Austin. By either name, it wasn’t a lake at all but a fat stretch of the Colorado River running through the heart of the city just south of downtown, flanked on both shores by hike-and-bike trails and kayak-rental places. Since coming back to Austin, I’d spent more time sitting in my car in traffic on the bridges over the river than down among the annoyingly healthy trail runners and dog walkers. But no matter how backed up the bridges were, the broad, rippling surface of the water, glinting at rush hour in the slanting sun and dotted with paddleboarders like gondoliers, made for a pleasant view.

That said, parking by the river was a bitch. Already late from having stopped by my apartment to change into a more walkable outfit, I maneuvered the car up and down the clogged one-way streets and cursed the no-left-turn signs until I found a spot a quarter of a mile away. I texted Kim I was on my way and hustled toward the trail under the powerful six o’clock sun, marshaling the last vestiges of bounce in a pair of ancient tennis shoes I’d found buried in the piles of heels in my closet. I was already pouring sweat when I got to our agreed-upon meeting place, where Kim, clad in a threadbare Eagles T-shirt over a lime-green sports bra, was executing an isosceles downward-dog in a sunlit patch of grass. She sprang up when she spotted me, her cheeks perfectly flushed, like an actress in a movie about working out. Panting, I waved in lieu of saying hello.

“Hey, late-ass bitch,” she said.

“Namaste, slut,” I said, still catching my breath. “You’re looking very white-lady today.” The snarky greetings among comics used to throw me before I accepted them as just part of the job. Remembering that I was supposed to be convalescing, I added, “You’re lucky I came at all. If I die out here, I’m suing you.”

“You want to walk or run?”

“Did I stutter?”

“What, you mean at prelims?” she said with a nasty grin, and I bowed sarcastically. “No, seriously. Congrats, though.” She steered us toward the path, at this hour a slow-moving river of people and bicycles and dogs swathed in a low cloud of reddish dust.

“You too,” I said. Kim had placed in her preliminary round the week before mine. “But the prelims are old hat to you, right?”

“Yeah, this is my third year,” she said with a quick sidelong glance at me, like I’d touched a nerve. She’d never placed at finals.

“Third time’s the charm, they say,” I said, to make nice.

“It’s so fucking exhausting.”

“Skip it,” I suggested. “Go sailing.”

“Are we even allowed to do that?” I knew what she meant. Since Funniest Person had gotten so big, standups in Austin referred to it as the “comedy tax.” It ate up months every year. “Let’s just bitch about it and pretend we don’t care who wins instead.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“I mean, it’s going to be the same dudes who place every year.”

“And the Funniest Person in Austin goes to . . . a guy with a handlebar mustache!” I said in my announcer voice.

“Second place . . . a guy with a slightly smaller handlebar mustache—and a neck tattoo!”

“Third . . . some woman, so nobody can accuse us of sexism!”

“I’ll take it,” Kim said. “I’m your token, right here.” I wondered if I should make the next joke but Kim took the words out of my mouth, cocking an eyebrow at me. “Maybe they’ll double their money and put a Latina comic in third.”

“I fully endorse that idea, since I’m the only one in town.”

“May the best token win . . . third, that is. If they even throw us a bone this year. I mean, last year it was three white dudes.” She smirked. “Speaking of that, I want to buy a drink for whoever gave Fash firsties last week. He nearly pissed his pants when he saw the order.”

“May the first slot always go to a white man.” I cast my eyes heavenward.

“Amen.”

We walked for a little while in silence. I watched the dogs trotting along the path and imagined what they were thinking. A golden-haired collie: I’m trying to spend less time on Instagram and more time really living. A pit bull running next to a septuagenarian in butterfly shorts: I love this man, and when he dies, I am going to love eating him. A chow chow: Sometimes I pretend I’m a cat. What, you don’t have any kinks?

“Someone told me if you don’t get to L.A. by twenty-six, you’re never going,” Kim said suddenly.

“I heard it was twenty-three,” I said, not asking Kim’s age. I didn’t feel like reminding her I was two years past the expiration date. “But then, I also hear you have to spend six years out there to make it. So if you do the math, it’s really seventeen.”

We had reached a shaded part of the path bent around a stagnant outcropping of the river. The overgrowth blocked out the sun, but it also shut out the breeze so completely that it felt like an airless room. We weren’t walking fast, but I was drenched, and Kim’s forehead was beading up at the hairline. She pulled a strand of sweat-darkened gold off her temple and fanned her cheeks with her hand. “Sometimes I think I’d rather off myself than keep slogging through it year after year.”

I didn’t know what to say except “Yeah.”

“Well, anyway,” she said with a short laugh. “I said the same thing last April, and the April before that. But it’s April again and I guess I’m still alive, so.” She shrugged. “April, man. Funniest Person, South by Southwest, Moontower . . . all those festivals. It’s just fucking . . .” She trailed off.

“The cruelest month?” I said. I’d had one good class in college, and it was modern poetry.

“Totally. The fucking cruelest.”

We emerged from the overgrowth and shared a moment of silent enjoyment as the breeze dried the sweat off our skin.

“Anyway,” Kim continued, putting her game face back on. “I got to talk to Aaron Neely after prelims.”

My blood froze in the full sunshine. Surrounded by people on every side and distracted by the exercise, I had almost forgotten why I was there and what I’d wanted to talk about.

“Oh, really?” I said cautiously.

“Yeah, he was great,” she said. “I’ve heard he has some weird thing with female comics, but who doesn’t? Anyway, he liked my set, and he said he wanted to talk shop sometime.”

A panicky feeling started up in my gut. I had to tell her. At the same time, an equal and opposite force was telling me to keep my mouth shut, not to insult her by suggesting that she and I were in the same category, that what Neely had done to me, he was planning to do to her. Maybe he really did like Kim’s set. And even if he did give her the Aaron Neely special on the car ride home—would she care? Kim was one of the cool girls. Half her set was about awkward stuff that happened during sex. Maybe men did this type of thing to her all the time, and she knew how to laugh it off. Maybe I really was the only one who couldn’t take the joke.

We stepped onto a large pedestrian bridge that hugged the underbelly of the street bridge, a shaded breezeway suspended by concrete pillars like massive tree trunks over the glistening river. From here, even the noise of cars passing overhead felt calm, a soothing whoosh of white noise that complemented the sounds of rustling branches from the riverbanks. I struggled with what to say until we reached the very center of the double-decker bridge. The long, low sun stretched all the way across the bridge between the twin layers of concrete. From this vantage point, we could see up and down the whole pewter-and-gold span of the river, crisscrossed with graffitied railroad tunnels, pedestrian walkways, and log-jammed traffic bridges. The hoods and windshields of the cars suspended over the river looked like they were on fire in the slanting sun. We both paused involuntarily and then drifted to the railing, taking in the view.

Kim had stopped talking and was staring out over the water. It was now or never.

“Kim,” I said.

“Don’t get too jealous.” She sighed. “It’s not actually going to happen.”

“I’m sure he liked your set,” I said, and I was drawing a breath to say But when she cut me off.

“Yeah, well. He’s gone now, so it doesn’t matter.”

“What?” I swiveled to face Kim, whose forehead was crinkled up in the glare.

“Neely took off all of a sudden. Nobody knows why. Family emergency or something? Or maybe he just got bored with Austin. God knows I am.” She plucked a leaf out of her hair and threw it over the railing.

My eyes went wide. Neely was really gone, and not because of any family emergency. I felt certain that Amanda had done what she’d set out to do. A tidal wave of relief hit me. Neely was gone, and I was free.

I saw Kim’s face and checked myself. “That’s—wow, bad luck,” I said, trying to sound normal.

She turned toward me, still dejected. “It just sucks to feel like you’re so close to something, you know? And then have it yanked away.”

In my giddy state, I had to stifle a laugh. Yanked was the appropriate word in my case. “Yeah, I know what that feels like.”

“He gave me his card, though. With his direct line. Maybe I’ll get out to L.A. this year after all, while he still remembers who I am.” She laughed shortly.

I didn’t trust myself to answer. The urgency of warning Kim and unburdening myself had passed, and I was now consumed by the desire to see Amanda. Maybe I would still tell Kim about Neely—but later, after I found out what was really going on. In the meantime, she was in no danger of being trapped in a back seat by him any time soon.

And me? I was going to the ball.