Orfe Read online

  “No, I wouldn’t mind, if you want to,” she said.

  For a long second it was as if the rest of us were invisible, the way they looked at one another. I didn’t know how I felt, watching that look; I felt uncomfortable, and I wanted to get away. It was too perfect to stay in the same room with, although also it was so perfect that I never wanted to have to leave.

  “It’ll be great,” Yuri said, drawing us all in with his smile. “It’ll be the best time anyone has ever had, we’ll invite everybody.”

  “And we’ll be the music,” Grace Phildon said.

  “I’ll sing,” Orfe said.

  “No you won’t, you’ll be getting married,” Raygrace reminded her. “We’ll walk you down the aisle with Yuri’s Dreams, and back up the aisle with Yuri’s Dreams.”

  “A church?” Orfe asked. “You didn’t say a church. I was thinking the park.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Yuri said.

  “I just want to know what you want,” Orfe said.

  “We’re going,” Tommy said, and he looked at his watch. He waited for me to scramble up beside him. “Thanks for the dinner, Orfe, Yuri. Nice place you’ve got here. Good luck with the wedding. Are you ready?” he asked me.

  I put our plates and chopsticks and fork into the sink. We left the apartment.

  Out on the street he reached for my hand. “You’ve got some wacko friends.”

  I had both my hands in my pockets and walked along.

  “I mean—that’s no time to propose. A proposal’s supposed to be private. Just for starters. And then it got so—Jesus, emotional—deep thought, that pseudophilosophy. It was all so sweet my teeth started to hurt.”

  “You don’t like emotions, do you? They make you squirm, don’t they?”

  “Don’t get on my back just because you’re jealous.”

  “Jealous? Of you?”

  “How dumb do you think I am, Enny? It’s her you’re jealous of. Orfe. Because of him. Yuri. Oh, I’ve seen you, the way you sometimes look at him. You want him for yourself.”

  I stopped, lamplight on my face and on Tommy’s face. It didn’t matter that he was about a foot taller than I was. I felt as if I could punch him senseless and as if I were about to do that. Starting with his cute little nose. “You call that jealous?”

  “Come off it.” He laughed, more confident now that the odds were even or weighted in his favor.

  I said what I said next more bluntly than I might have, because I was disappointed, in myself more than in him. “You come off it,” I said. “I think I’ll say goodbye here.”

  He wasn’t so thick as not to know what I meant. He thought for a minute, anger and chagrin mixing with the embarrassment on his face. “Just because I told you the truth about yourself? Just because I saw through you?”

  “Because you saw into me and thought you were seeing through me,” I said.

  Which was the end of that. I turned around and walked away, back to the apartment. When I opened the door they were busy talking about the wedding, when and where, what kind of ceremony, what to eat. I took my plate and chopsticks out of the sink and sat down to join in.

  * * * * *

  When Orfe was grieving over Yuri, she reminded me of that evening. “I always meant to say how glad I was when you broke up with Tommy,” she said. “I like Michael,” she told me. “I’d like it if you fell in love with Michael.”

  I already had.

  “I think,” Orfe said, “that love is like being alive, in this respect, or peace too. Yeah, all three of them have the quality of—you never feel as if there has been enough. You never say, okay, that’s my fair share, that’s good enough for me. You always say, More. More, please. I want more, I need—there’s never enough, that’s what I mean, that’s what I think. You get to the end, I—”

  Here Orfe stopped speaking for a minute, lowered her face, and then raised it to look out with sorrow like tears but without them, and the worse for that.

  “I got to the end and I don’t feel like it’s been enough. Love. Even though I know it’s fair, that love for any amount of time, however little time—to be deeply loved ever is more than any of us has a right to. I know that. But I feel like I could use more, need—”

  And she was gone, following her music, her head bent over the guitar.

  FOUR

  It’s not that I can remember so clearly. I only remember shreds, shards, patches. But what I can do is re-create, from these fragments, the memory; and the re-creation becomes memory itself.

  On the morning of the day Orfe and Yuri got married, sunlight filled the air. Even the asphalt paths that criss-crossed the park sparkled under the sunlight or shone under shade. Celebrants in their wedding-guest finery brought forward platters and bowls of food, set them on the table, and stepped back to become a crowd. Brightly colored skirts—red, blue, yellow—and brightly colored shirts—purple, green, orange—milled about.

  I can see how it looked, see the Graces all in a cluster, turning and waving and smiling. I can see Orfe in the dress we found after hours of searching the used clothing stores, a long-sleeved, long white dress with a broad lacy collar. A crown of white flowers floated in the cloud of her red hair. I can see Yuri in a slightly oversize tuxedo jacket, also found in a used clothing store but requiring fewer hours of searching, and the pleated shirt underneath, stiff with starch, white with bluing. I can see his black broad-brimmed felt hat, with the high curved feather rising from its band. I can almost see myself, leading the wedding pair forward into the center of the circle.

  Until I remember how the sounds ceased when Yuri turned to Orfe and Orfe turned to Yuri, I don’t remember the sounds. But they were there, conversations and laughter, the wash of wine pouring into paper cups, the clink of fruit punch being served out of a glass punch bowl. Some of the guests were uninvited. They were strangers caught up into the occasion as they were sitting around or walking by; some of those were glad to have the adventure added to their day or grateful for the hour’s distraction; a few waited patiently to eat, their eyes not on the wedding couple but on the table of food. It seemed as if everybody must be talking—voices pitched loud and louder, soft velvet voices, gruff, rough voices, piercing nasal voices, high and low voices, musical or flat, pompous or serene, eager, laughing, sarcastic, flirtatious, intent—a babble of sounds that ceased when Orfe turned to Yuri and Yuri turned to Orfe, at the center of the circle.

  “I promise myself to you,” Orfe said to Yuri, “my heart and all the works of my hands.” “I promise myself to you,” Yuri said to Orfe, “my heart and all the works of my hands.” Orfe held out her hand, and Yuri put a ring onto her finger. Yuri held out his hand, and Orfe put a ring onto his finger. They were married.

  They turned around, facing away from each other, standing back to back, and opened their arms out. The circle moved around them.

  It was a song and everyone was singing. The Graces had gone to their instruments. Music filled the sunlit air. We sang the song through and then unclasped hands, to clap in applause for the occasion and the wedding couple and ourselves. Orfe laughed and curtsied low, almost sweeping the ground with her arm. Yuri laughed and swept his hat from his head to bow to the four points of the compass.

  The bowls and platters were uncovered. The guests, invited and uninvited, helped themselves to cakes and little cookies, to paper cups of wine or fruit punch.

  * * * * *

  They came in a parade, holding a square metal cake pan overhead, as if it were the platform with the god riding on it. These were the people from the house, and they were too late for the exchange of vows, the ceremony itself, if they had ever intended to be in time for it. Yuri and Orfe had signed the back of the marriage certificate, and the Graces and I had witnessed the signatures, before the little parade ever entered the park and came toward the wedding—cake tin held high, garlands of honeysuckle and ivy hung over their shoulders.

  I was with Michael. He and I were serving drinks when they arrived. I lad
led out fruit punch and he poured red or white wine. We listened to the music, Orfe and the Graces, and watched the dancers, Yuri with various partners. I had danced with Yuri once myself that day, he danced with every woman there, sometimes just one, sometimes gathering two or three or four around him for the dance. Michael and I watched and sometimes commented. The music wasn’t amplified and neither were the voices.

  Watching Yuri dance, Michael said, “If I were the jealous type, I’d be jealous of him.”

  “But you’re not.”

  “Nope. I’m the scientist type. The weedy scientist type. So I’m only almost jealous.”

  “Not over me, I hope,” I said.

  “No. Although I could be—”

  “If you were the type.”

  “If I were the type. This is just sort of a general jealousy. I don’t even know what it is that he has. Do you?”

  “Sort of.”

  “It’s not the usual attraction he has, except for his good looks. I’m not putting him down as unmasculine or anything,” Michael said. “Just observing.”

  “I’ve never heard you put anybody down.”

  “What’s the point?” Michael asked me. Then, “Who’s that? Looks like—I don’t know what it looks like. Look.”

  The people from the house, in a procession, came up to the music. They had long hair and many had bare feet. They wore ragged jeans and belts with studs, black T-shirts, denim vests with studs. Their colors were black and silver or black and steel—like the night sky with safety pins and zippers and studs for their stars. Their eyes were dark and shadowed. Their parti-color hair looked dark, whether it was hennaed, bleached, or blackened, or arose in a crest of green or orange spikes. Twisted vines lay across their shoulders, trailed down their chests and backs, swayed with the dance.

  They danced up to Yuri and cut him out from among the women. He became the center of their circling dance. It was a dance of giving, the presentation of the cake they carried, which three women held out to him, then drew back, then offered again, as if it were some ceremony of its own. Among all the milling guests, invited and uninvited, strangers and friends, I don’t know if Orfe saw Yuri among the people from the house. I saw them dancing, saw them move gradually to the side, saw a silver knife blade flash, saw a square of cake in Yuri’s hands, saw him eating, as they watched, saw him licking the frosting from his fingers and taking the pan into his hands, to become the leader of their procession. The people from the house, with Yuri at their head, moved through the crowd in a long sinewy line, toward where Orfe and the Graces played.

  But Yuri turned away and the others followed. They wound among the dancers up to the table behind which Michael and I stood. Yuri meant to set the cake down on the table, I thought, but he misjudged where the edge was and it fell, upside down, onto the grass. I moved to pick it up, but Yuri was faster than I. Only he was clumsy, and the cake was left on the ground, its naked chocolate back exposed. Yuri straightened up and looked at me, and his eyes were darker than I’d ever noticed them because the pupils had expanded; he looked helpless, like a baby, with those darkened eyes. He had a tender lift to the corners of his mouth, and he was looking into my eyes, and I thought he might kiss me—thought it with an eager swelling of the heart, a longing upward—just for a second, before I was afraid he would kiss me, and his eyes filled with water, with tears, and he moved away, along a line of music, and the people from the house followed him. The cake was trampled under their feet, but they didn’t notice. I stood holding the empty cake tin and didn’t hear it when Michael said my name. Yuri’s hat moved into and among the crowd, the bright feather curved and waving.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Michael. “I wasn’t listening. Dance with me, do you want do dance? Let’s be guests for a while. Let’s celebrate.” I wanted to put my hands on Michael’s shoulders and I wanted to feel his warm hands on my back. I wanted to touch Michael’s reality.

  Later, when most of the guests had gone home, Orfe asked me if I knew where Yuri was. I didn’t. I hadn’t seen him for a while, I wasn’t sure how long. Had he gone to the apartment to go to the bathroom? I suggested.

  A while after that, as Michael and I were filling yet another plastic bag with crushed paper cups and empty frozen fruit juice containers, Orfe asked us again. “He isn’t at the apartment,” she said.

  “I haven’t seen him since—,” Michael started. He stopped to think before he said any more. You could see him, behind round glasses, following the ideas to their logical conclusions, before he would say any more.

  “Since he was with that group of—looked like street people, you remember,” he said to me.

  “What street people? What group?” Orfe asked.

  “They brought a cake and Yuri had a piece,” Michael said. “Then they all came by the table. He dropped the cake. It was ruined, it was underfoot, stepped on—the cake they’d brought.”

  “He dropped it on purpose,” I said.

  “That’s what I thought,” Michael said.

  The Graces were behind Orfe, listening.

  “He was sorry,” I told Orfe.

  “He was dosed,” Willie Grace guessed, her voice sharp, harsh.

  “You think on purpose?” Raygrace asked her. He held her hand, it looked like tight. Michael gripped my hand and I gripped his. Grace Phildon’s fingers were fitted close around Cass’s little shoulders.

  “Sons of a bitch,” Willie Grace said. “Sons of bitches.”

  “I wouldn’t think on purpose,” Grace Phildon said. “Or I’d think, not so much on purpose as carelessly, as if it were a joke.”

  “It can’t be a joke for Yuri, for someone like Yuri,” Raygrace said, puzzled.

  “It’s never a joke,” Michael announced. “It’s chemical, it’s a measurable and re-creatable reaction, like a laboratory experiment, it’s—putting things into the cells of a body changes the cells. That’s no joke.”

  “Fucking sons of fucking bitches. Sandbagged him.”

  Orfe stood with her arms hanging down at her sides and her hands empty.

  “They don’t think, though,” Grace Phildon said. “I don’t think they can, anymore. So they don’t really do it. Whatever it is they do, it’s not as if they really did it.”

  I was the one who was weeping. Orfe stood absolutely still.

  “And the victim?” Willie Grace demanded. “What about the victim? The victim is still real. He’s still there, what’s left of him. It’s just, there’s nobody responsible.”

  “All that’s real is a victim?” Raygrace said. “Because that means there’s no way to prevent it happening again. That means all you can do is try to help the victim out, after. After it’s too late.”

  “As if people were an act of God,” Willie Grace said. “Like tornadoes or tidal waves.”

  “What are we going to do?” Grace Phildon asked.

  Orfe shook her head, as if to clear it. “I’m going to go get him.”

  “It’s dark,” we told her. “Wait until morning, it’s not safe around there. You can’t tell how—wait until the stuff has worn off a little,” we asked her. “We’ll all go,” we said.

  “No. He won’t—you can’t,” she said. “If you do, he’ll never come with me, he’ll be too ashamed.”

  “They’ll try to keep you out,” Raygrace said.

  “He was really sorry,” I said to Orfe. She knew what I meant.

  “I’m the only one who has a chance,” she explained to everybody else. “My only chance is alone, if I’m alone. They won’t be afraid of me. Yuri won’t be afraid.”

  “Yeah, but what about getting there?” Michael asked. “What about being there, and also what about getting back?”

  Orfe bent her head.

  “You can’t tell what the shits will do,” Willie Grace said. “Be real, you know that’s true.”

  “Irrational behavior is characteristic, Michael agreed. “Unpredictable behavior.”

  “Even if what they do isn’t what they want to
do, still, if they do it,” Raygrace said.

  Orfe stood with her head bent.

  “Except it is what they do, and if it was Cass there now—,” Grace Phildon said.

  Orfe raised her face and, just for a second, I could see in her eyes a catch-me-if-you-can expression. I’d seen it before, in games of red rover. It was there for just a second before she had it hidden behind a hand that brushed hair out of her eyes. When she lowered her hand, her eyes were full of resolution and good sense. If you looked at her, if the glance of her eyes fell over you, you would know that she had resolved on sensible action, which was what we’d advised. The Graces relaxed, and Michael relaxed.

  I knew better.

  I knew better and I didn’t blame her: If there is someone like Yuri in your life, the only sensible line of action is to do everything you can to keep him or get him back. Anything else is nonsense. Is cowardice or a failure of love. If you can climb Annapurna, then there is no other mountain you want to set your feet on, no matter how much good sense people talk to you, about habitable. Knots of people stood around cars under the yellow streetlights, stood around in doorways, stood around on corners. They watched us without curiosity, without interest—flat eyes in expressionless faces. By then I had taken off my shoes and went barefoot. Shoes in your hands might be weapons, with their sharp, narrow heels.

  The house was one of a row of houses, each with its six-step stoop, each with its broken windows, some of them patched with tape, some boarded over, some bare sharp glass. Orfe went up the steps and I followed her. She pushed the door open.

  There was a hallway with closed doors. At the far end there was a little blue light and the sound of voices and the sound of music and moving shadows. Orfe went down the hallway without hesitating. I hesitated.

  I heard them greeting her. The music—drums and guitars—broke off, unevenly, then stopped. I heard clapping, whistles, feet stamping. “ ‘Sick,’ ‘It Makes Me Sick,’ ” I heard that requested, and “Satisfaction.” “Where’s the rest of you?” someone asked, “Are you alone?” “ ‘Black and Blue.’ ” “Yeah, that’s a good one, do that too.” I couldn’t see into the room from where I stood, just the long dim hallway and a tall rectangle of light. I pressed myself into the cracked plaster of the wall. I inhaled the smells of the house.