‘Not in this car, you don’t,’ he sulked. Handkerchief held to his head, blood-soaked.
‘Whose fault is that?’
No answer. Was this their first fight? It was their honeymoon, and they were bickering and bloody. Ah, and there was the sun setting to their left. All that beauty wasted, because now they hated each other. Especially, there was nothing erotic between them with Jacko in the passenger seat. Billie thought: Oh heck. Now what should I do? Jacko wondered what Ernie would do, if Bernice drove his car like this. He couldn’t imagine Ernie feeling this bad, or Bernice driving this badly.
And then they reached the little hospital, and they were talking to the nurse, then to the other people in the waiting room. Just small talk at first, then Billie listened while Jacko told the story of the exploding bottle for the first time. Everybody laughed. How funny, to be getting stitches on the most passionately romantic night of their lives! How amusing to be arguing about her driving his car! But wasn’t that life for you, one step forward, two steps back. Something had to go wrong, and it may as well be a bottle exploding. Everyone had their own stories about disastrous honeymoons. One fellow patient told a story about running out of gas on the way to his own wedding, and hitchhiking in his tux. Billie stopped thinking how wrong everything was, and started to be proud they had joined this fraternity of adults who took small catastrophes in their stride. Someone called it a hiccup. As if their smooth lives had literally jerked in a spasm. Ouch! Oops! Then normality and easy breathing again. Have a cup of coffee, and here, have a swig of this too. Need a smoke? Here’s a light.
And then more time passed, and they were back in their lovely hotel room. What else could they do, but curl up to sleep like two overexcited, exhausted toddlers. Billie’s last thought was one of wonder. So far, marriage was not what she’d anticipated. Not even a teensy bit. This didn’t dismay her, though it did make the future feel like a bowl of Jell-O now. What on earth would happen tomorrow? And the day after that?
Jacko snored beside her, smelling of antiseptic, and looked for all the world like a sixteen-year-old. She curled up next to him, and fell sound asleep.
BILLIE MAKES COFFEE FOR JACKO
ONE YEAR EARLIER
Friday, February 12th 1950
San Francisco, 8:12am
‘Hurry up! You’ll make us late again!’
‘Coming! Sorry, Loulou. Ready now, let’s go.’
‘Jiminy-crap-cricket, Billie. That’s my sweater, you know.’
‘Yeah? So what? Whose heels are you wearing?’
‘Oh, all right. Come on!’
‘And are those my stockings?’
The two sisters run down the street, with five minutes to cover two blocks. They don’t look at all alike, but there is something sisterly about them anyway. Something in their clumsy tandem run, and their laughter. They both laugh in a helpless way, as if even now – as they run – they have to surrender to a delicious, mysterious mirth. Don’t ask them what’s so funny, you’d never get it. They laugh because the very thought of themselves late for the bus again, arguing about clothes again, tickles them. They’re laughing at the very idea of themselves as friends, when the obvious truth is they can hardly stand each other.
The fog is dense, but they hardly notice. They live by the bay; it’s foggy nearly every morning and every summer evening about five. But the fog horn is still exotic to them because they are from the valley. It makes San Francisco feel like a foreign country. Just plain better than Redding, that’s all. Every darn thing is better here. Especially the boys.
The bus driver teases them by closing the door just as they reach it. It’s part of the ritual. He’s their age and flirty.
‘You’re just plain mean,’ scolds Billie, dropping her dime in. Her voice is high and soft.
Before they reach Market Street, the sun has broken through. A hard blue sky, no clouds. People get on and off, and the air is full of cigarette smoke and See you later alligator and In a while crocodile and Not if I see you first, sweet potato. Just before Embarcadero, Billie and Louise get off the bus and join the throng of office workers. This is Billie’s favourite time of the day. Here we are, here I am, she thinks. Will you just look at me? A stylish young secretary, rushing to work. Her face has shut down, despite her inner joy, because part of the joy is in blending in, and they are surrounded by workaday faces. They head up Post, and are in shadow. The sky scrapers block the sun. It’s cold. Thinner crowds, and more serious. Still the seagulls, though. Like the fog horn, the sisters can never quite take a seagull for granted. They know seagulls are like pigeons here, pests, but they adore them. Adore all the different squawks they make, like confused, emotional human cries. Nope, nothing melodic about a seagull.
Entering the Perkins Petroleum Products building, they quickly dash into the bathroom. Silently comb their hair again and reapply rouge with old soft brushes. Billie curls the ends of her page boy with fingers dampened in the sink, so her face is perfectly framed by two butter-yellow curly cues. A side parting, so a hank of hair keeps falling across her face, till she clips it back with a red rose barrette. Louise yanks a brush through her kinky hair, shoulder length, then slides in two bobby pins on either side, so from the top of her ears it bunches straight out like, well, like the hair of that girl Talithia, who used to sweep the floor in their mother’s hair salon. (Looka you, you should be Talithia’s child, her mother used to croon affectionately.) In fact, it was Talithia who first showed Louise how to turn frizzy hair to her advantage. Billie would hate frizzy hair, but she’s jealous watching her sister nonchalantly twisting her hair back. It should look ridiculous, ugly, but Louise carries it off. Billie feels uninteresting, next to her.
‘Got that new lipstick on you, Loulou?’
She covets this lipstick, which costs $2.99 from I. Magnins. As soon as pay day comes, she’s going to buy some. But wait – pay day is today. How absolutely wonderful. And tonight, Tommy White from Pacific Heights, if she remembers right. Her obligatory Friday night date. Billie has been in the city for three years now, since she was eighteen. She’s had three Friday nights without a date. Louise has been seeing Chuck for almost five years now, but Billie’s still shopping. She’s looking forward to Tommy White. Or is his name Timmy?
‘See you at five?’
‘Nah, going home tonight, remember? Chuck’s picking me up early to skip the traffic.’
‘Nuts, Loulou! Driving all the way to Redding? Well, just remember the Alamo.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Louise snorts. ‘That had a happy ending, right?’
Louise often snorts, is often irritated or bored or sarcastic, but somehow her life remains something mysterious and glamorous to Billie. She frequently has to remind herself Louise is a year younger.
Jacko is drinking a cup of black coffee at Mike’s Meals, his new leather briefcase leaning against his legs. He lights a Viceroy and gets a little light-headed. Love that first smoke of the day! He gives a quick thought to Lizbeth and the way she dumped him last year and ran off to Paris. Crazy girl. She’ll be sorry one day, but it’ll be too late then. He’s decided to get married, start a family. Ernie and Bernice made it look so good. So easy. It’s all waiting out there, he just has to grab it. Like aiming for a college degree and getting one. All a person has to do, really, is just put their mind to something.
Maybe Jacko looks too young to be smoking, because a middle-aged woman sitting nearby stares pointedly at his smoke. This reminds him of the way his mother used to make a face at him whenever he swore, even mildly. Even Oh God. He blows smoke her way, as if to say: What’s it to you, lady?
‘Cocky kid!’ she says, with disgust, and looks away.
And then because he’s noticed that she’s not all that old, and she’s wearing a low-cut sweater and now that she’s blushing with anger, she actually looks kind of pretty – he smiles at her.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Just, I’m a bit nervous.’
‘Oh! Okay, I get it. Trouble?’
‘Nah. Just my first day at a new job.’
‘Ah, but you’ll be great. You will! Here, let me pay for your coffee. A good-luck gesture, yeah?’
That’s how charming Jacko can be. And how much he needs even cranky ladies he’ll never meet again, to like him.
Billie is sitting in front of her typewriter, clacking away a mile a minute. She is not in the typing pool with Louise and all the other girls, because she can type eighty words a minute correctly, take shorthand and has the sweetest legs in the office. Not too thin, not too short or muscular. And she has a way of whistling softly when she works.
‘What’s that you’re whistling?’ her boss asks now.
‘Was I whistling? Well, I don’t know. Probably Dream a little Dream of Me. Was it?’
