Part 5 (1/2)

Alice was fitting Lois, a young extra, into an Indian Girl costume, feathered headband, short tunic straight from a gladiator picture, pure Hollywood. When she was adjusting the hem, she saw the abrasions on the insides of Lois's thighs, shallow like slightly large pockmarks.

”So glamorous,” Lois had said, not even looking down at Alice, kneeling beside her, needles in her mouth. ”I didn't know the skirt would be so short.”

”It won't pick up on camera,” Alice had said.

”I thought that once, and the next thing I knew, the camera was moving under my spread legs.” Alice hadn't said anything but smiled just enough to keep the needle in her mouth as she pinned the hem.

”You can never tell when a camera's going to be between your spread legs,” Lois had continued, seeing Alice's smile.

”You sure can't,” Alice said, dropping the pin too fast. ”Oops! Did you get poked?” At that, Lois had let out a long, quiet, drawllike laugh, and Alice had laughed too.

”You have a lot of history,” I say.

Alice sighs and raises her eyebrows. ”That we do.” Then, suddenly, ”I'm sorry about earlier, though. About what Lois said about the scar.”

”What do you mean?”

”I don't want you to think I tell her all kinds of private things about Bill.” ”I don't,” I say, even as, for the first time, I wonder if she does exactly this.

”Truth is, Lora ...

Truth is, Lora...

Don't think I'm trashy ...

Truth is, I think his scars are beautiful, Alice whispers, face red.

I think they're beautiful, she repeats. Don't you?

Then comes the first step from which there is no turning back. As the final bell rings for the day, Alice grabs my arm in the corridor.

”I know we have a staff meeting, but can we miss just this one?”

”You go on. I'll make excuses and get a ride home with Janet,” I say, wondering what arch looks will fly at Alice missing yet another faculty meeting.

”Actually, Lora, I was wondering if you could come with me.

”Come with you?”

”I have to go see Lois. She's sick and I want to check in on her.”

”That's fine, but why do you need me?”

”Please, Lora? I'm worried. It would be such a relief to have you there.” I look over at her, fingers clasped tightly over the clipboard in her hand. There is such forceful concern that I can't help but agree. I feel glad that Alice would go to such lengths for her friend, that the intensity with which she approaches being my brother's wife is not the only force surging through her.

It is a long drive that involves threading through a series of s.h.a.ggy and ominous neighborhoods. Alice talks the entire time, almost as though trying to distract me from the gray-boxed bars and barred-window p.a.w.nshops that stud the roadways as we finally land on Rosecourt Boulevard. She sings along to the radio when she isn't talking, mostly about the shopping she needs to do and how late she is going to be for dinner guests but that fortunately she has prepared everything in advance, from the cold potato soup to the slow-cooking roast.

”What a horrible name for a place to live,” I murmur as I notice a thickly painted apartment complex to our right. Its targe, red-lettered sign darts out from behind a heavy blur of swaying pepper trees, ”Locust Arms Apartments.”

Alice laughs loudly and suddenly, like a bark. Covering her mouth, she says, ”That's where Lois lives.” I feel my face redden but say nothing as Alice pulls the car into the small lot. We step out and begin walking toward the courtyard.

Watching Alice three steps ahead of me, gliding serenely past each blistered door while I find myself sneaking only furtive glances, I wonder about the places she's lived. Places even worse than the Bunker Hill rooming house.

The place is run-down, but it isn't that. It's something else. Something I can't quite name. The paper-thin doors, heavily curtained windows, the faint sound of someone chipping ice, relentlessly, the winding drone of a radio playing music without rises or falls, just a sporadic beat, the vague murmur of a neglected cat. Behind all these doors there is something finis.h.i.+ng. Dead ends.

Alice knocks pertly on the door marked 7.

”Lucky seven,” she says to me unreadably.

There is the sound of feet running anxiously, and the door flings open so quickly that Alice and I both jump back with a start.

Lois's white face pokes out of the dark interior with an energy I've never seen in her.

”Get in, get in.” She half-stumbles backward, waving at us furiously.

It is hardly larger than a hotel room: a small seating area with a chair and settee, both covered in thick, lime-colored bark cloth, a tiny kitchenette with a counter and two stools, a sagging bed. My eyes keep s.h.i.+fting from one detail to the next: the chipped, brown-ringed porcelain sink, the upturned liquor bottles in the corner, the two chalky gla.s.ses that seem, as far as I can tell, to be stuck to the shelf paper adhered to the counter.

Alice, as if to shake me out of it, grabs my arms and sits me down beside her on the unforgiving couch.

”How are you feeling?” she asks as Lois, wearing an expensive-looking appliqued kimono, paces before us anxiously.

”How do I look?” She turns to us, sweat streaked on her face and neck, racc.o.o.n eyes. I can hear the ice chipping again. And a long, low drip tapping from Lois's bathroom.

She turns to Alice. ”Why did you bring her here?”

I look at Alice embarra.s.sedly ”You called and said you were running a hundred-and-four-degree fever. I thought she could help.” Alice seems eerily calm, even opening her purse and tapping out a cigarette.

Lois's eyes narrow. ”I know why you brought her.”

Alice lights her cigarette and shakes the match out, tossing it on the coffee table.

Standing on the b.a.l.l.s of her bright white feet, Lois waits for a response.

Alice merely smiles and exhales a long curl of smoke.

The silence becomes unbearable, and I venture, ”Alice was worried about you.” Lois looks at me for a second, then fixes her gaze back on Alice, cool, implacable Alice.

”That's not why she brought you, Sis,” Lois says, as if turning something over in her mind. ”She's just calling a bluff.” She rubs the side of her face with the back of her hand, then adds, ”You think you can leave us alone for a minute?”

Although she doesn't look away from Alice as she speaks, she seems still to be talking to me.

Alice's and Lois's eyes are locked, Lois's are working, Alice's possessed of an unreachable calm.

”Okay,” I say, dreading the thought of waiting in that courtyard. I rise and walk to the flimsy front door, shutting it behind me.

I take a few cautious steps to the old concrete fountain in the courtyard's center, bone dry. I have the vague sense that I'll never approach an understanding of what I've just witnessed. Something between women who've known each other for centuries.

Waiting, I watch a tiny, birdlike woman with one shoe in her hand and none on her feet make her quiet way from the parking lot, through the courtyard and to Number 4. Walking with purpose, her eyes focused on the ground, with the funny gait of the barefooted. She pushes on the door with the hand that holds the shoe, and it pops open like the top of a hatbox.