Up All Night Page 5

“What?” she says through a mouthful of bread. “I’ve got the munchies.”

  A maid has left the door open to room 617. They stand on the threshold and peer in at the neat double beds, the matching bedside tables, the lamps turned to low. Justine is the first in, always up for a dare.

  “Close the door,” Diana whispers, and Holly locks it.

  Maggie is afraid to touch anything. Her mother would be beyond disappointed if she knew what Maggie was up to. She knows her mother is asleep right now, nestled under her flowered comforter. Snug. Safe. A part of Maggie wishes she were there, too.

  Justine falls back onto the bed with her arms outstretched. “This is sooo comfortable. What do you suppose it costs to stay here?”

  “A gajillion dollars,” Diana says. She flips the light on in the bathroom. “There’s good stuff in here.”

  They congregate in the bathroom, where Diana rips the sanitized paper doily from the water glass and fills it with water from the tap. “Ew, Dallas water is so hard. Too mineraly. Look, little soaps.”

  She pockets one, and then they take the complimentary bottles of shampoo and conditioner, the body lotion, and two more tiny boxed soaps, dropping them into Holly’s purse.

  Justine pulls the plastic shower cap from its paper sheath and tucks all her hair up into it till she looks like a giant mushroom.

  “Now, don’t be home late,” she says, adopting a motherly tone.

  “Oh my god,” Diana laughs. “That should be your senior picture.”

  “It IS gonna be my senior picture—just you wait,” Justine says. “In fact, I’m gonna wear this in pictures from now on. You will never see me without it.”

  Diana falls back on the bed laughing, and that’s all the encouragement Justine needs. She squinches up her eyes and makes her voice funny again. “Have you girls been smoking marijuana? Hmmm? Don’t you know it’s the devil’s weed?”

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” Maggie says. “I’ll never do it again. It’s strictly cocaine from now on.”

  “That’s better,” Justine says.

  Holly leafs through the hotel’s tourist guide, with its vivid ads for steak houses and high-end dress shops. “Does your mom wear one of those, Jussie?”

  Justine shrugs. “How would I know?” She takes the cap off and combs through her hair with her fingers, patting it smooth. “Where the hell is the band, anyway?”

  “David said they’d be here,” Maggie assures them, but she’s begun to wonder herself.

  “Can’t you call him up, ask him?”

  “I don’t know where he is,” Maggie says, and for the first time she realizes she hasn’t talked to her brother since Tuesday.

  Diana opens the minibar. Inside is a dazzling array of doll-sized liquor bottles. “Oooh, Tanqueray,” she says. She takes four bottles and hands them out like party favors. Maggie gets a bottle of bourbon, which is her dad’s drink. She unscrews the top and takes a quick sip. It goes down hot and bitter but fades to a full-body warmth. The four of them lie on one bed, drinking and staring at the ceiling, talking about the concert, which songs were best.

  “Mags, doesn’t your dad live somewhere around here?” Justine asks suddenly.

  “In Oak Lawn,” Maggie answers.

  “Oak Lawn.” Holly yawns. “Isn’t that where all the queers live?”

  Maggie’s heart beats a little faster. “Not everybody who lives there is.”

  Justine chucks her empty rum bottle toward the trash can, and it lands on the carpet. “Shit.”

  She sits up and Diana pulls her back down. “Just leave it for the maid.”

  “What do you suppose two guys do together?” Justine asks.

  “What do you think?” Diana makes a hole with her thumb and index finger and slides her other index finger in and out of it quickly.

  Holly and Justine shriek. “Ewww, grody!”

  “You are so disgusting, Diana,” Justine says, but she’s laughing.

  Maggie curls up on the bed with her knees to her chest and imagines herself sinking down to the bottom of the pool. She closes her eyes and sees the shadowy sanctuary taking shape—the shiny diamonds of light in the water, the prickly white concrete floor, the thick black numbers around the sides showing the depth, letting you know where you stood.

  “Maggie!” Holly snaps.

  Maggie opens her eyes. “What?”

  “I said does your dad have a new girlfriend yet?”

  “No. Not yet.” Maggie sits up. She starts to tuck the bourbon into her jeans, thinks better of it, and leaves it in the nightstand drawer. “I have to whiz, and then we should probably get out of here before we get caught.”

  “I don’t think the band’s gonna show,” Justine says, yawning again.

  Diana checks the bedside clock radio. “Fifteen more minutes.”

  “If I stay here, I’m gonna fall asleep,” Justine mumbles.

  The girls ride the glass elevators to the top of Reunion Tower. The city falls away beneath them. From up where they are, everything looks squashed, flung from the hand of a disappointed god. Maggie has seen pictures of other cities—New York and Singapore, London, Paris. She likes the way the buildings look all pushed against each other, each one holding the others up whether they like it or not. Dallas isn’t like that. It’s more a big marbles game, houses and malls and glass office buildings thrown out in a random pattern, nothing touching. There’s so much space, you feel like you could drown in it.

  Maggie presses her face against the glass and peers out at the night—the blurry neon lights, the cars streaming over the network of freeways, the neat yellow test pattern of house windows lit against the dark. She wonders if she could pick out her dad’s condo in Oak Lawn, the one he shares with a man named Bill, who is his lover and has been for six months now.

  After the divorce, Maggie and her mother moved into a California-style townhouse in a fading section of town where the streets were used as makeshift garages. There were always cars in various stages of repair parked in front of the houses, and when the cars were gone, or the men took off for good, they left behind patchy oil stains, black wounds in the asphalt that never completely healed.

  “It has a nice window seat,” her mother said cheerily when she showed Maggie her room—a long, narrow rectangle with a unicorn-and-rainbow mural painted on one wall.

  “That’s gotta go,” Maggie said, settling her milk crate full of albums, the only thing she didn’t trust to the movers, on the green shag carpeting.

  “The girl who lived here before was an artist,” her mother said. “She got a scholarship to a very prestigious art school in Oklahoma, I think. You could have an original by a famous artist on your wall!”

  It was so like her mother to try to erase it all with a comment, like putting a big yellow happy-face sticker on shit.

  “It is physically impossible to have an art school in Oklahoma. It would cause a ripple in time or something,” Maggie said.

  Her mother sighed. “Well, you don’t have to be ugly about it.” I’m not mad, just disappointed.

  Maggie took a good look at the room. Faint pencil marks were etched beside the doorjamb, small lines with height measurements and dates out to the side. Maggie followed the growth chart from three feet, ten inches up to five feet, four inches, which was Maggie’s height. There were whole years in those marks—a history that couldn’t be boxed up and taken along. Some parts of yourself you just had to leave behind.

  Maggie scratched at the marks with her thumb-nail, making them into an indecipherable smudge. “What happened to the people who lived here before?”

  “The mother got remarried to a man in the Air Force, and he got transferred to Kansas. Or maybe it was Nevada. Kansas or Nevada. I’ll have to ask Maureen about it.” Her mother pulled a KISS album from the crate, scowled, and put it back. “I think the mother was a registered dietician with the school system, so she can get a job anywhere. That’s a really smart thing to have in your back pocket. Something to fall back on, so if yo
ur husband gets transferred somewhere else, you can always get a job.”

  “I’m never getting married,” Maggie said.

  Her mother crossed her arms. “You know what happened is nobody’s fault, Maggie. There are no villains here.”

  “Wow, that’s great, Mom. Did you read that on a poster?” It was a terrible thing to say, but Maggie needed a villain. A villain would help.

  “I’m going to unpack the kitchen,” her mother said. She gave the milk crate a shove with her foot on the way out.

  Alone in her room, Maggie pulled a Magic Marker from her pocket and drew a mustache on the unicorn so that he was in disguise, just like everyone else.

  Her brother had called in the evening to see how the move went.

  “There’s a goddam unicorn on my bedroom wall,” Maggie said.

  “Horny Gas & Oil. Put a little unicorn in your tank and see what you’ve been myth-ing!” her brother shouted. Maggie could hear a party in the background. Drums. Girls laughing. A guitar string bent into a sweet pain of sound.

  “Where are you?” Maggie asked.

  “Some chick’s house in Houston. It was a great gig, man—you shoulda been here.”

  “Time Travel Airlines. For when you absolutely, positively have to be there yesterday.”

  “What?” her brother shouted.

  “TIME TRAVEL AIR—”

  “Hold on,” her brother said. She could hear him yelling at someone in the room. “Hey man, save some for me.”

  “David?” she said. She wanted to ask him when he was coming home. If he would take her with him. She wanted to ask him how he knew about their dad, if there were ways you could always know when it’s ending—signs to look for, insider information—so that you wouldn’t be caught off guard with a crate full of albums in a room that would never feel like yours.

  Some girl was laughing and telling David to come on, and Maggie had that feeling again, like she’d stayed too long on the bottom of the pool.

  “Hey, Mags, I gotta go,” he said. “Stay cool, man.”

  “Stay Cool Deodorant. Give your B.O. the cold shoulder,” Maggie said breathlessly, but the line had already gone dead.

  The girls canvas the lobby one last time, but there’s no sign of the band, and the fans who have been waiting around have mostly cleared out by now. Only a few remain at the doors, white scraps of paper in their hands, cameras at the ready. But they’re already talking about next month’s concert, and Maggie can tell their hearts aren’t in it anymore. They just don’t want to admit defeat.

  They stumble out to the car, tired, a little drunk, deflated. The adrenaline-fueled light-headedness Maggie felt early in the evening has been replaced by a heavy weight, as if she were trying to move underwater. She has a dull headache from the pot and the booze, and her eyes are scratchy. The parking lot of Reunion Arena is dotted with empty beer cans, trampled ticket stubs, bits of paper. It’s a ghost world, and it seems amazing to Maggie that only a few hours ago it was mayhem.

  “I could kill your stupid brother,” Justine grouses. She’s carrying her shoes in her hand.

  “They might still show,” Maggie says, even though she doesn’t believe it. It’s something her mom would say.

  Now that their high has worn off, they are hungry. Starving. Impossibly ravenous. They would eat whole plates of pancakes and French fries, burgers and omelets. They ride in search of someplace to eat, no mean feat at four in the morning. Just off Cedar Springs Road they find an all-night diner, the Sunrise. It’s a low, flat building with fake stone and boxy windows that look out onto traffic. They park in the back and take a booth in the corner near the restrooms.

  The only other customers are four Mexican busboys just off shift, still in their IHOP aprons, a couple of working girls, and a grizzled man in a rumpled windbreaker who pours sugar into a spoon and dumps it into his iced tea again and again, mumbling to himself the whole time. Maggie figures him to be one of those crazy Vietnam vets who hang out in downtown Dallas at the intersections washing car windows for money. This guy isn’t trying to wash windows. He’s just smoking cigarettes and talking softly to himself while he arranges his silverware in a specific pattern.

  The waitress brings them tall, slick menus and ice water in brown plastic glasses. Maggie wants to resist eating. She’s been dieting, trying to get rid of the hips and boobs, the womanly softness that’s creeping up on her while she sleeps like some silent dust storm, so that every morning when she wakes, nothing is what it used to be, and she has to relearn the landscape of her body.

  Her mother clucks sympathetically when Maggie mentions this to her. “Oh honey, you got the Struber thighs, I’m afraid.” And for just a minute, Maggie feels this thin thread connecting them. They starve themselves in solidarity, smiling ruefully over meals of iceberg lettuce and Alba 66 shakes, Tab soda, cottage cheese, plain, tasteless hamburger patties without the bun or even a dab of mayonnaise, salmon from a can.

  “You should eat the bones—they’re good for you. Calcium,” her mother says, pointing to the tiny round bobbin of bone in the pinky, mushy middle. Maggie crunches the bone into pulp between her back teeth, and she and her mother talk about school and work and clothes and maybe buying a piano if her mom does well at her Amway job.

  “They give you bonuses,” her mother says, spooning green Jell-O onto the dessert plates that came with her wedding china. “Might as well use them. Seems a shame to pack them away,” she says, carrying the wobbly gelatin carefully to the table, watching for signs that it might make a run for it.

  Maggie eats these meals for as long as she can, until she feels her hunger is an enraged animal living inside her. Then she rides her bike to the 7-Eleven and gorges on Twinkies, Ding-Dongs, Dr Pepper, and bags of Doritos that leave her fingers stained an unnatural orange. She rides away from these secret feasts full but never satisfied.

  “What’ll you have, hon?” the waitress asks.

  “I’ll have the cheeseburger. With fries. And, um, a side of mayo, please,” Maggie says quickly. Tomorrow she will be good. She will eat water-packed tuna on Melba toast and go for a run. Tomorrow she will be her mother’s daughter.

  The waitress brings their drinks and a plate of fries to start.

  “That was such a rip-off,” Justine says, propping her chin up with her palm. “They never even showed up. I’ll bet they’re not staying there at all. I’ll bet they’re at the Adolphus.”

  Maggie shrugs. “Maybe they changed their minds.”

  “Maybe David is full of shit.” Justine blows the little white paper cover from her straw and it lands in Maggie’s water, so she has to fish it out.

  “Man, I’m wasted,” Diana giggles. “Are y’all wasted?”

  Holly laughs. “Totally.”

  Diana salts the fries without asking. “Mag-a-Doodle, we’re in Oak Lawn. Is your dad’s place near here?”

  “Kind of. I think it’s not that close, actually.” Maggie scoops up a piece of ice and drops it in her mouth, filling it completely.

  “We could stay there.”

  “I thaw we wuh stayn a’ yo howth,” Maggie manages through the ice.

  “I can’ drive back. I’m too wasted,” Diana says. Her eyes are red, her skin flushed.

  “I’ll drive,” Justine offers.

  “You can’t drive stick,” Diana says, and Justine sulks over her Pepsi.

  “Hey, check out that guy in the corner,” Maggie says, hoping to change the subject. “Attractive.”

  Diana stares at her. “Why can’ we stay there? I mean, he’s still yer dad, isn’ he?”

  Maggie fishes for ice, but the slivers are too thin; they slip out of her fingers. “I can’t show up at, like, four in the morning with all my friends, sorta drunk. Besides, it’s not even his place. He’s renting from this guy.” Her cheeks warm, and she hopes they can’t read the lie in her face: No, Officer, I had no idea the speed limit was twenty-five. Of course I’m eighteen. I didn’t skip physics—I got my period and had to
leave school, Mom. “We’ll be fine once we eat.”

  Diana purses her lips. “I don’ see why you can’t jus’ call him.”

  Holly and Justine look to her hopefully.

  “It’s just…I just can’t, okay? Can you pass the ketchup?” Maggie doesn’t wait but reaches for it, and Diana holds it away.

  “Call him.”

  “Can I please have the ketchup?”

  Diana waves the ketchup wildly, nearly hitting one of the IHOP busboys in the head. She’s making the fall from fun drunk into belligerent drunk.

  “Give me the ketchup or I’ll tell that guy you’re in love with him.” Maggie points to the rumpled man in the corner, who is stuffing Sweet ’n Low packets into his pockets.

  Diana takes the bait. “You mean your boyfriend?”

  “Your boyfriend. Your one true love,” Maggie says, relieved. She has Diana now. “I’m so jealous of your hunk of man meat.”

  “Oh, gross!” Diana says, laughing so hard, a fleck of mushy French fry flies from her lips and lands on Holly’s Pepsi glass. Holly yelps, flinging it away like a booger, and this only makes them laugh all the harder.

  “M-m-man m-m-meat,” Justine laughs, her voice spiraling into the stratosphere.

  The waitress brings their food and they tear into it eagerly, pausing only for further insults and gross-outs. And Maggie plays hardest, keeping herself safe behind a wall of laughter.

  By the time they finish their meals, it’s clear that Diana is totally wasted. Instead of sobering her up, the food seems to have made her even drunker. In the diner’s back parking lot she’s holding on to a stack of tires, her underwear stretched between her wobbly ankles.

  “Just go inside and use the restroom,” Holly says.

  “Can’ make it,” Diana slurs. “Block me.” The girls form a human wall in front of Diana, who pees, loses her balance, and falls down into the puddle with a yelp and a laugh.

  “Oh, GER-OSS!” Justine screeches. Diana grabs her wrist and tries to pull her down into it, too, and Holly shushes them both.

  “Y’all, stop it! Someone’s gonna see!”