from Looking Good
KEITH MAILLARD

1969–1970

The girl’s voice: “Hey, hero.”

John clung stupidly to the phone, trying to orient himself in the chaotic dark. His glow-in-the-dark clock told him it was four-ten in the morning. He pumped the words out fast: “Wait a minute. Just wait a minute. Don’t say my name, OK?”

“Cool,” Cassandra said. “Don’t say mine either.”

“Can I call you back? Say in ten minutes?” Long enough to walk to a phone booth in Central Square. The phone line extended to God knows where—tiny unintelligible gremlins back of the hiss. He didn’t know for sure that the line was tapped, but he always operated on the assumption it might be. “Fuck, man,” she said, “this is the only time I’ve got.”

“OK, but watch your mouth.”

He heard a tense laugh. “Don’t I always? Listen… If I fly in, will you meet me?”

“Of course I will.”

“You got something to write on?”

He always had something to write on. “Yeah. Go ahead.”

Speaking just above a whisper, she told him she was coming from Los Angeles, changing planes in New York. He heard the fear in her voice, felt a response like a ghostly tuning fork—that familiar icy vibration. She told him her arrival time and the flight number. “Dig it, if I don’t show up, you call my father, OK? Like my father?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell him some heavy shit’s going down.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell him he better try to find me. Tell him to call the number he’s got for me, raise holy hell. And he shouldn’t believe anybody unless he talks to me. And if he does talk to me, tell him to motherfucking listen. Because if it’s not cool, I’ll find a way to let him know. And if anything’s weird, then he better fly out and look for me. You got that?”

“Yeah, I got that. It’s what I do if you don’t show up. But what if he asks me…?”

“That’s all you need to know, man. Hey, and give me a little leeway on that arrival time… like an hour. But when that hour’s up, you call him. Like before you leave the airport. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

He waited, listening to the gremlins. “Try not to look too freaky, OK?” He heard the line go dead.

What was not too freaky? With all his goddamn hair, he’d definitely look freaky in his crossing-the-border suit, so he chose one of his other standard disguises, the I-go-to-Harvard look—jeans and the Harris Tweed jacket he’d bought from a used clothing store. He added a striped necktie just the way the Harvard boys did it—as a joke. The day was iron-blue and cold; the air smelled like snow, but it wasn’t snowing yet.

He got to the airport early, and the New York flight was on time. He watched the passengers coming out in clusters, walking past him— businessmen with attaché cases, two middle-aged couples, a younger couple with a baby, a trashy little blond in a mini-skirt, a cluster of hip kids with knapsacks, more businessmen, but not a sign of Cassandra. He lit a cigarette. His hands were shaking.

All the passengers were out; he could see back the entire length of the hall. He looked for an ashtray. None anywhere. He flicked his ash onto the floor and looked around to see if anybody had noticed—flash fantasy of alarms going off, a hundred Keystone cops springing out of the woodwork—but everything was cool. And the blond in the mini-skirt was walking directly toward him. Weird image for the Bostonwinter. Wrap-around sun glasses, long skinny legs in shiny stockings, patent leather shoes. Trying for Mod or some damned thing, all gleaming surfaces, but coming off sleaze and plastic. Junk store dolly, waitress on vacation. “Hey, hero,” she said, “you’re looking good.”

He couldn’t speak. “Don’t stare, for Christ’s sake,” she said under her breath. “Come on, asshole, walk. You don’t know me, OK? You’re just trying to score.”

He fell into step with her. “Don’t fuck around, man, I mean it. I get stopped, you keep right on going. They stop you, you don’t know me.” Just as they entered the main building, John saw that two large gentlemen in fedoras and dark overcoats had interrupted the hip kids. The men could have been insurance salesmen, a pair of uncles, high-school football coaches. “Don’t even look,” Cassandra said under her breath.

He glanced at her. She was as impossibly blond as a rock star’s girl-friend. She bit her upper lip, an involuntary gesture. “Shit,” she said, “paranoia’s got to stop somewhere.”

“Does it?” he said. “You got any luggage?”

“Just this.” The ordinary looking blue carry-on bag in her hand.

“OK, stop talking to me… Make like you tried to score and I told you to piss off. Walk on ahead, and I’ll follow you to the car.”

“What car?”

“Shit… OK. Get us a cab… Not to your place. Some other part of town. Some place real crowded.” He told the driver Government Station.

In the cab she took off her sunglasses, shoved them into a patent leather purse, grabbed some bills that seemed to be floating loose in there and handed them to him. He counted two tens and six twenties, folded them into his jacket pocket. “Fuck, man,” she said under her breath.

No wonder he hadn’t recognized her—her face was plastered with makeup, even false eyelashes. But the grey eyes were so much the same he was kaleidoscoped instantly into the unreconstructed and convulsive past. He could see how scared she was. Outside on the bleak streets, the daylight was gone.

John paid the driver. They got out at Faneuil Hall on the cusp between afternoon shopping and dinner time, a million straights wandering the markets—a corny New England winter scene, nostalgic postcard, the snow piled up at the edges of the sidewalks, travelogue of blue ice, cheery yellow lights, hard laughing Boston voices. Right, he thought, the cradle of liberty. “Crowded enough for you?” he said.

“Yeah, perfect… What would you do if you were here?”

“Shit.” He pointed at the line-up for Durgin-Park. “I’d eat some fish.”

“Well, do it. I’ll find you.”

With her carry-on bag in her right hand, her purse over her shoulder, she went striding off into the crowd. John watched the men react to the miniskirt, check her out, run their eyes up her shiny legs, over the curve of her ass. He could, if he let himself, get just as paranoid about her sleazy sexual charge as he was about the pigs. He added himself to the line-up. Once inside, he nailed down a corner table for two, ordered a pitcher of lager and two clam chowders. Here he was outside the student ghetto once again, surrounded by the good old proletariat; they probably took him for a college boy just the way he’d meant them to. He could feel the abrasive edge of their distaste—it was always the long hair that did it.

After ten minutes Cassandra slipped in quietly next to him, slid her carry-on bag under the table. Blond wig gone, the makeup gone. Now in jeans, a ribbed sweater, and beat up Frye boots, her burnt-sienna hair cut like a Beatle’s. “You got a smoke?” she said. He passed her one. “Thanks,” she said. She looked straight at him. “I mean, you know, thanks for everything.”

The strain had pinched the corners of the eyes; her skin looked pale, yellowish, and sick. He took her hands. They were freezing. “Cass, you OK?”

“Shit, yeah. I’m indestructible. I’m fucking Wonder Woman.”

“Eat some chowder.”

“Yeah, OK… I haven’t been eating much lately.”

“So eat some chowder.”

“Yeah… Jesus, I’m rank. Getting on the fucking plane, I fucking pissed myself. Can you dig it? It’s amazing how your body doesn’t want to cooperate… you know, like fuck your mind, Jesus, in a fucking miniskirt. It wasn’t a gallon or anything, just a few drops, but fuck. All the way across the country, I’m thinking, oh fuck, can people smell me? Hey, you’re looking good, man. You’ve lost a lot of weight… and Jesus, all that hair. What the hell you doing in Boston? Right up till I called your mom, I thought I’d be flying into Toronto. Woke her up in the middle of the night, and she was nice as pie. Hey, I’m sorry about your dad.”

“Thanks.”

She was smoking her cigarette in quick short puffs. She stubbed it out. Her hands were shaking. “Did you like my disguise?” she said. “I didn’t have time to be cute, just thought, OK, let’s just see how motherfucking ridiculous I can get… Jesus, I don’t want to be a bring-down, but I’m afraid… I’m afraid I’ve kind of run it out.”

“It’s OK. Eat some chowder.”

“I’ll be OK.”

“Yeah, I know you will. Did you ditch the disguise?”

“Yeah, in a garbage can in one of those markets.”

“Good. You want to keep running this secret agent shit?” he said. “Then we better go back to my place on the subway. A cab leaves a record.”

On the subway, he put his arm around her and she lay against him like a girlfriend. “I could sleep, man.”

“Go ahead,” he said.

She didn’t say anything walking from Central Square. It was turning bitter, and she wasn’t dressed for it. He took off his overcoat, draped it around her. She didn’t object. At his apartment he unlocked the front door, led her down the stairs and back the long narrow hall by the furnace, unlocked his door. “Jesus, man,” she said, “what do you do? The minute you hit town, say, ‘Show me to the nearest rat hole’?”

“That’s me… the rat in the woodwork. Every building needs a rat in the woodwork. Hey.” She was shaking all over.

He put his arms around her and held her. “Fuck,” she said, “I’m losing it.”

“Go ahead. Lose it all you want.”

“Shit. I’m OK. Can I have a bath?”

“Sure.” He turned on the water in the tub. He hadn’t seen her since he’d left Raysburg for Canada. He couldn’t stop looking at her. She unzipped her carry-on bag, took out half a dozen flat blocks of a black waxy substance that looked like congealed tar and threw them onto the floor. “Holy fuck,” he said, “that’s the most hash I’ve ever seen in my life.”

<LBJ and the Majorettes

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