Meredith is sitting in Charlie's usual booth, trying not to finish off her cocktail before the end of the first set. She wants to be drunk when Charlie sings, even as she knows she shouldn't. Want to. Or be. Drunk. One drink relaxes her face so her smile looks more natural. Two drinks and she's perky and fun. After that, it gets risky. She can become sleepy, cheeky, cranky and worse: She might lose all ability to feign interest. This is her second drink, and she must make the last third of it last another twenty minutes. Unless she switches to straight tonic, and that's just no fun.
Charlie is in the men's room, warming up. He's doing his la-la-la's and mi-mi-mi's and all the other ridiculous exercises that wouldn't be ridiculous if he had talent, but he doesn't, so they are. Meredith can't actually hear him because he's two rooms and a jumbo TV screen away, on the other side of the dining room, past the pool tables. He's either in the men's room or on a little terrace overlooking the alley, belting his lungs out into the settling darkness. Charlie and his goddamn voice.
The cabaret where the singers do their thing is an intimate room within a huge bar. It's large enough for a grand piano, which two sofas face at an angle, and five booths, three on one wall, two on another. The booths are round, not rectangular, and each one seats five to seven people and they all are reserved for parties of at least three. Meredith sits alone. She's spread Charlie's sheet music around the table to effect a party atmosphere and she has ordered an appetizer for herself and a soda for Charlie, in addition to her two cocktails, the second one of which is quickly slipping from tepid to warm. As long as she orders something every time the waiter invites her to, and as long as no one is left standing without a seat, she can sit here guilt-free. Charlie badgers her to order a lot and to tip well. The first thing he asks when he returns to the table, if it's not "How do I look?" is, "Did you order something?" If she gets too drunk too soon, she'll say something snide or do something crass and embarrass Charlie or piss him off—or both—and then it's all just so much worse.
Charlie's been doing this once or twice a month for almost a year now, coming to this bar to pretend he is Frank Sinatra. Meredith has come four or five times and has managed not to meet any of the other singers or their spouses. She hasn't been here for a couple months and doesn't recognize many people in the room—which is not to say she has never met them, but rather if she has, they were not memorable.
The person singing now is a tall, string-bean of a woman with soft-looking honey-colored skin and close-cropped dark hair that glints in the soft light. She has a small space between her front teeth and perfect pitch. Even Meredith can hear that. After her, everyone will suck, period. She hopes Charlie isn't next. The woman barely moves while she sings. Once in a while, a wave passes down the length of her arm, starting at the bare shoulder and finally bumping her hand off the microphone stand. The movement the same supple ripple of a noodle a fork is pulling from a plate. She looks around for the waiter; she should order something more to eat.
The fine fingers of that hand brush away the lyrics: told me love was too plebian/told me you were through with me and/now you say you love me...
Meredith turns back to look at her. This is not another pathetic attempt at Sinatra or Holiday or whoever. This is not a nobody acting big. This is not a middle-aged man dreaming away the shadow his belly casts below his belt. This is a singer. This is someone with respect for music. This is someone she could listen to all night. The song was worn thin long before Charlie ever tried to sing it, but this gal revives it. She is not emulating or imitating, and this is no homage. She is singing this song; the familiar notes ripple through the room, alive. After one time through she returns to the beginning and scats through a verse, transports Meredith out of the room, into the song, so that Meredith completely forgets that she is here only because she's married to a guy who fancies himself a jazz singer. She forgets her drink, ignores the cheese plate that is delivered while the room applauds as the woman lays out the second verse before coming back in on the bridge.
There's a snort, as from someone who can't breathe out of the nose, and a man Meredith hadn't noticed standing to her left says, as he jerks a highball glass to his mouth, "It's all about the solos. And she's got the solos. No question." His throat keeps making talky noises as he swallows. He is not looking at Meredith but she can feel his attention directed to her.
It's Frank Mackie—Frankie Mac, as he's called in this circle. He's a fat, ruddy, smarmy drunk who stinks of Brylcreem or Vitalis, Meredith doesn't know which one, whichever one her father used. Meredith is careful not to flinch, not to let any movement betray that she has heard him. If she keeps still perhaps he'll walk away. Please just don't let him touch her. Please.
She tips her head to one side and nods it ever so slightly in time to the music. She narrows her eyes slightly, looking for the notes before they disappear like soap bubbles in the air, along with her delight. When the vocalist ends the tune Meredith even does something she has never before dared to, not even for Charlie: She calls out, "Yes!" as she applauds, and "Brava!" The singer looks her way and bows slightly, holding one hand to her heart. Meredith wants to freeze the moment, wants to sit there forever, applauding, smiling, and sensing her ardor returned. Instead, she flags the waiter to order another drink.
It's not just the soloing, Meredith thinks, almost says aloud. This gal knows how to exit the stage gracefully. Where others tip forward awkwardly or ignore the audience all together, just grab their music and go, this singer gives a nice little bow, sweeps her charts from the accompanist, and somehow conveys acknowledgment to every audience member without actually looking at any of them. Meredith sighs a heavy breath. Amateurs. She's surrounded by amateurs.
~
Meredith didn't used to need so many drinks to make it through these nights. And there was a time when she was content with Charlie, if not exactly happy and then she learned, hard and of a sudden, when you keep one foot on the dock and the other on a boat, how cold the water is when you fall in.
At the time, the affair did not feel pathetic. Phil Travers was in some ways a better lover than Charlie, if marginally. He was an avid kisser—though a little sloppy, honestly—his mouth singing silently into hers as soon as the hotel room door clicked shut behind her, and he had evidently read a few how-to books, the same ones reviewed in the magazines Meredith read at the dentist's office. Like Charlie, Phil told Meredith she was the best thing that ever happened to him, but in this case Meredith had believed it because she felt Phil was the best thing that had ever happened to her. She thought they were equal. She thought they had something real.
Phil wanted Meredith the way she wanted to be wanted: desperately. Charlie wanted her selflessly, confidently, regardless to how she wanted or felt for him and that made her feel sorry for him and like she owed him something. Phil poured into Meredith all that Charlie had sucked out. Phil devoured her the way a starving man would go at a buffet: he tasted everything and came back for more, could not get enough. Charlie, on the other hand, consumed her as he did any dinner she laid in front of him: slowly, methodically, with a reverence that irritated her, made her want to shove his face in a bowl of mashed potatoes until he choked.
It had happened because of the singing and it had ended because of the singing. They'd always been attracted to each other, had always laughed a lot when the two couples got together, their spouses the more romantic halves of both unions. Phil's wife Melanie used to sing too but she was more obviously terrible and gave it up about the time Phil dumped her though Charlie and, half-heartedly, Meredith had cajoled her into coming out a few more times after the breakup. She had actually started crying while singing Cry Me a River and that's when Meredith realized how ornery alcohol could make her because she had laughed. When she saw Mel's eyes glass up, heard the warble in her voice, and then recalled Phil telling her, while they both dressed, that he was leaving Melanie and Meredith too, was leaving them both for Leslie who, at 35 was not young enough to be Phil's daughter but still young enough that Meredith could hate him for it because he had had the audacity, the gall to say "God, she makes me feel so young, so alive. Like I have a second chance at …" Meredith didn't hear the end of the sentence, if he even finished it. She had wanted to cry but her system was so hardwired for cruel that she snickered instead, and if Phil had still been talking he stopped then.
Just like a goddamn song: The setup, the hookup, things take a turn, then it's all over but the crying, lesson learned. AABA—verse, verse, bridge, verse, tag ending, hold the last note as long as you can and it's over, done, good-bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Grab your music and exit the stage next singer please.
Adrift in the reverie the song prompted, Meredith floats into a recollection of something else Phil had told her: "You don't feel."
He'd said that. He said exactly that and Meredith had listened, nodded even, because she couldn't believe he was saying that to her while she was lying, unclothed, beneath the sheets that still held his warmth and his smells. He had showered, he was combing his hair, looking in the mirror on the hotel room bureau, not looking at her, looking right at himself, as if that would lessen the sting of being called out loud what everyone knows Meredith is, coldhearted. Mean. They call her mean, too, and they're right, she is. But that's not the point.
Phil had said, to the mirror, that he liked that about her, admired that about her even (or did she infer that to make herself feel superior to him?) because it meant he didn't have to worry about breaking her heart. Phil dissolved from Meredith's view and she watched her brittle little heart exploding into a million pieces, the shrapnel lancing and embedding itself in his smug, ever-smiling face.
So Meredith had learned her lesson: The affair was wrong. Not because it was deceitful, not because it was a betrayal and made her feel guilty and cheap and bourgeois, but because the whole experience had turned out to be exactly what Meredith had thought she was escaping. The affair had been the sexual equivalent of watching Charlie sing. Beneath the initial thrill of attraction denied and then indulged it was about a man regretting too late not trying something, and grappling back for time he misspent doing what he was told and exercising talent he never had to waste. There she was, watching a man get his own groove on, needing her only as a witness. Pathetic. For both of them.
~
The next singer is a woman, a deathly pale but nice-looking woman who is—and looks—older than Meredith, though she dresses much better and is much, much thinner—she's skinny; who are we kidding here? But pretty in Prada or not, she has no sense of pitch. She also has no tits, but is nevertheless shimmying her shoulders at every man in the audience and Meredith has no doubt this gal will go home with one of them, a few numbers, or both. Like she said, amateurs.
Meredith places a cocktail napkin over her glass to protect her last four swigs of sidecar and grasps her purse with what feels like a delicate gesture and minces by every man between her and the restroom, no matter how old or untalented, and tosses each one a coy grin, nodding to one or two and touching the arm of Charlie's boss while mouthing "Hello." It takes so long to get where she wants to go.
She's there. The singer—the real singer. In the loo. Exiting a stall, then washing her hands. Even taller this close. Meredith was so intent on listening to her that she had not noticed how attractive the woman is. How young, she can't tell. She could be close to Meredith's age—and she sees Meredith staring at her in the mirror, so Meredith has to say something.
"I really enjoyed your tune." Charlie had taught her to say that. Not "You're really great," a gross faux pas, because rarely is the speaker qualified to remark on a person's musicianship, and if one is, the compliment can come across as condescension.
The woman gives a slight and, to Meredith's ever discerning eye, very humble bow, clutching the crumpled paper towel to her breast and cocking her head a bit. "Thank you. That's nice to hear." Then she extends one hand to Meredith and looks her in the eye, a warm smile still on her lips. "I'm June. What's your name?"
Meredith freezes. Clutches her purse to her chest. Is of a sudden no longer tipsy enough not to be self-conscious. She can't remember the last time she felt self-conscious, the last time she cared about impressing someone. Unbeknownst to herself, Meredith has taken a deep liking to this gal.
"I'm sorry. I guess I'm a little star-struck. I've been coming to these things for a while and you're definitely the best singer I've ever heard. You sound like a professional."
June tosses her head back and, reaching out to grasp Meredith's arm, lets out a peal of laughter that bounces off tile and stainless steel and hits Meredith in the same place in her heart where the song had earlier. If June weren't holding her arm, Meredith would think she was laughing at her.
"Oh, Meredith, Charlie's Meredith, I presume? You are too kind. And I love it. Thank you. You've made my night. Speaking of Charlie, don't take your time—I think he's up next. I'll see you out there." Then June squeezed Meredith's arm and walked out, leaving Meredith to face herself in the mirror. For a moment, just that moment before she realizes she is seeing herself, Meredith looks like a happy woman.
~
The drinking started after the affair ended. On Charlie's invitation—Phil had given Charlie a much different story of the breakup than Meredith was privy to—Phil had brought his excruciating new wife over for dinner, a girl whose age equals her waist size, who is as tall as Phil is old and affectionate with him in a way Meredith finds absurd. Charlie had put on a Harry Connick Jr. album and under the sway of a single-malt scotch Phil had brought in a quilted bag that obviously had been his girlfriend's touch, Charlie serenaded Meredith—who was not drunk enough not to be embarrassed—with I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance With You while she watched Phil and his little délice cuddle into a single crushed velvet cushion of the sofa. Meredith felt Charlie was mocking her, knew that she hated Phil's new wife not because she was young and pretty but because Meredith was the affair that made Phil realize he wanted to leave his wife yet this little cookie was the one now lying beside the flabby body Meredith had convinced him someone could love again. That's what Phil thinks he's in now: love. And he had the audacity to tell Meredith he owed it all to her. Men, Meredith thinks as she swishes the ice in her sidecar. It's hard to say when they're more cold: when they ignore your feelings or when they think they're flattering you.
Charlie, on the other hand, actually is in love with her and if she were a decent woman she would appreciate that but she isn't and so she finds his affections tedious. The relentless attention to her pleasure, the tender whisperings that slip from his lips at moments when the average man could only articulate a groan—it's all so cliché, like something out of the ridiculous movies he takes her to because he thinks she likes them but really he's the one they appeal to. He's wasted on her—Meredith can admit that—but, not being a decent woman, she doesn't give him up; she keeps him in tow, endures his attentions, which compound her resentments, which she pays out to him by shtupping one of his friends.
~
Now some 50-something divorcée is plodding her way through My Funny Valentine and Meredith finds it almost refreshing that someone other than Charlie could be so naïve about love and she thinks she wouldn't mind if Charlie had an affair with this woman—that would be nice, really, they might be very good for each other. They have something in common, anyway.
The waiter appears with her drink just as Meredith slides into the booth and he swipes the covered glass away before she even thinks to protest. As the waiter glides away Frankie Mack slithers in. His whiskey breath moistens Meredith's cheek and sours her nostrils and she is reeling through a wave of nausea before she can scoot a safe distance away.
"I know you. You're Charlie's…wife." The message rides a noxious cloud from his mouth to Meredith's ear. She manages a pained smile before turning her face away from him.
"You know what I mean—by soloing, I mean?"
Meredith does not know what he means but her stomach turns anyway, in a somatic response the guilty have too often to bother with and, at any rate, too late to heed.
"Are you a…soloist?" Frankie tosses his head up and lets out a laugh that makes a couple from the next table look away from each other and over to Meredith's table. Meredith glares at Frankie and he shuts up, but remains. It could be worse, Meredith thinks. She could be married to an obnoxious drunk.
~
"You can do better Merrie."
Meredith's mother never said she didn't like a guy. On a rare occasion Meredith would ask her mother's opinion about a boyfriend, that's what her mother would say—not "He's no good for you" or "I don't trust him" or "He doesn't seem ready to settle down" though all of those were true at one time or another. She told Meredith to keep looking.
"There's nothing wrong with having fun, but when you want something to last, it just works best if the man loves the woman a little more. Not a lot, mind you, just enough so he keeps working for it, never takes you for granted."
At 35, Meredith had never been taken for granted, she had never been taken for a ride, and she had never been taken, period. Then suddenly Charlie. Perfect on paper—computer screen, actually; they met online—with a good job, an interest in music, and a real sense of humor that came across in his emails, not listed in his profile. Meredith held her breath when they actually met, and Charlie was a pleasant surprise.
He was thoughtful—gave her his phone number, and suggested they meet at a museum, a public place where they could walk and talk and if they felt like it have something to eat afterward. He made his interest clear without being prematurely ardent and was generally just a very nice person.
Meredith found Charlie attractive, but wished he had a little more of the scrawny build she was used to. He didn't belong to a gym. And he liked to eat. Though they both liked music, they didn't like the same kind of music; Charlie liked classical and classic jazz and Meredith was into whatever was contemporary and new; two of her exes were guitarists from the same alt rock band. Meredith and Charlie both liked to travel, but Charlie liked to go to far-away places and wing it—backpacking across Asia, for example—and Meredith liked to use her frequent flyer miles to stay in increasingly nicer hotels. "Superficial differences," her mother said. "Tastes and hobbies can change, but it's almost impossible to teach a man to adore you. Charlie adores you—he's a gem."
It was Meredith's tastes that changed. She shared his subscription to the symphony, and was eventually coerced to go white water rafting. Her compromise was that it be with a tour that catered to people who wanted to experience camping without actually having the camping experience. All the gear was provided and schlepped and assembled and cleared for them and all the meals were gourmet and cooked by a cowboy chef who could tell which wives were there under duress and always found a way to serve them first and give them the nicest desserts. Meredith actually enjoyed herself until she went home with a case of swimmer's ear.
Phil thinks their fling was a simple a seven-year itch affair between friends; no big whoop. Meredith disagrees. She got married itching. What she feels now is the raw sting of a rash scratched until it bleeds. A scab picked off before the wound can completely heal. A hangnail yanked: clean smooth skin for a second then a shiny bead drop of blood appears. Meredith twitches, looks into her lap as if she had just spilled something, but her clothes are clean.
You make me smile with my heart
The words ride right into Meredith's head before she has the chance to close the door and for a second she regrets this third drink but takes another sip and instead feels thankful and lets it all go.
Did anyone ever make Meredith smile with her heart? The bigger question she sees, though the drunken blur that is settling in, is has she ever made anyone smile with his? To have that effect on a person is like a contact high.
It had seemed that was happening with Phil. That was what she had wanted to happen with Phil. That was what she had hope would happen to her eventually with Charlie, with someone and there Phil was so it seemed that it would be with him. So there. There it was, her life even more the cliché than she had realized. The singer comes back into focus. Meredith takes a gulp of her drink. Inside and out.
Oh, but the song is not over yet, nor is her interior dialogue. Has Charlie, even, felt like that for her, felt a deep current low inside, that burgeons up to the surface in an ineluctable grin? Wouldn't she have seen it? Wouldn't she have felt more for him if what he felt for her was more than window dressing? What if he didn't really love her just a little more, but actually just a little bit less? What if he had been acting, too? Meredith also had looked good on paper, also had made a great impression on his mother, also had been practiced enough in courtship to keep their scenes together afloat. The possibility enters Meredith's mind that she is not the only dissatisfied member of her marriage.
Despite her evident mediocrity, the room explodes with appreciation for Ms. Funny Valentine and Meredith goes along with the gag, applauds loud and long if for no other reason than she is trying really hard not to get so close to the bottom of her glass that the waiter invites her to have another because surely she will acquiesce, easily.
~
"Frankie, if you don't mind, we would like to enjoy the music."
Meredith turns toward the voice to see June easing herself into the booth on her other side. June fans her hand as if brushing away a gnat and Frankie Mac gives Meredith a wink and an oily grin and leaves without a remark. The piano player announces that the trio will take a short break. Mary Stallings' voice singing The Thrill Is Gone immediately fills the speakers.
"Well I certainly hope it will be short." Meredith is looking down into an empty glass and feeling a twitch in her tongue. As it is, she is two steps into dangerous territory: too tipsy to be properly fake and not tipsy enough not to care if her flippant remarks slice.
"Anticipation?" June smiles at Meredith with what appears to be genuine warmth. Meredith cannot recall the last time someone smiled at her warmly—someone who didn't want something from her or had just taken something from her.
"You could say that. I get nervous for him." Terrified he'll embarrass himself, Meredith thinks so loudly she's afraid she's actually said it.
"Well, if you want to help him, don't be nervous for him, be confident for him. That's what a person needs—to feel the love in the audience." June looks around the room. "It only takes one person."
Meredith looks around at the room, which is now full of people. People squeezing together on the sofas, people leaning into each other in the shadows of the booths. The singers are obvious—they have one of two postures: I'm a superstar, or I'm scared to death. Meredith takes a sip of her drink, to have something to do. June spies the waiter. A gentle flick of her hand that could easily be mistaken for a punctuation to her conversation summons him directly. The ease with which June gets what she wants reinforces what Meredith already thought: that her generous tips will never be enough to prompt that kind of skip from this guy when she snaps. This is nothing new. Meredith has never had the kind of pull with men she wanted as she did with men she didn't.
"Who do you have in the audience tonight?" Meredith is a little surprised at the question; it feels neither flippant nor fake. She actual is interested in the response.
June looks up at the bandstand. "Oh, this is a friendly room. I've known a lot of these people for years. The band—they're old friends."
Another singer sidles up, a young man Meredith remembers from one of her last visits, a kid in his twenties who looks like Sting and actually does sound like Frank Sinatra. His stage presence is not so smooth yet—and when did twentysomethings become kids to Meredith? When she became old enough to have spawned them. This thought tips Meredith's attention away from the crooner and back to June.
Meredith is captivated by June's profile, her smooth, wrinkle-free skin, the faint shine of lipstick on her mouth, and notices in her peripheral view that June's hands are playing with each other, as in a nervous tic. Is June older, younger, or about the same age as she—Meredith cannot tell. She touches this guy's hand and laughs and he laughs with her. They are not ignoring Meredith but they also are not drawing her into the conversation. Maybe he only looks young enough to be her son; it seems this cabaret light casts everyone in a universe beyond Meredith's reach, whether they truly are so distant from her or not.
The trio returns and Charlie materializes beside Meredith with a bottle of mineral water and a drink that she can't remember ordering appears in front of her. Frank-Sting lifts his glass to Meredith and then to Charlie and clicks his drink to June's and the band plays one instrumental and Charlie's arm is around Meredith and he leans in to tell her "I'm really glad you're here tonight." Meredith wants to go to the restroom again but fears she might not make it back before Charlie goes on and she really wishes she weren't embarking on her fourth drink in ninety minutes but there is nothing else to do; Charlie doesn't like to talk before he sings and the other two are occupied.
Meredith closes her eyes and her mind drifts back to June's song, then to meeting June in the restroom. Adrift in a sea of uncertainty, Meredith catches a swell of liquid nerve. She leans over and whispers in June's, "How did you know who I was, in the restroom?"
"Charlie talks about you all the time. Everyone has heard about you."
June's attention is drawn back to the other singer, leaving Meredith to wonder exactly what Charlie might have told people about her. Charlie hasn't mentioned them to her. Or has he and did she just not pay attention? Was she too wrapped up in not giving away how she spent the time he was out singing that she missed how he spent it? The question begs: Who has Charlie been singing to all these months, who has been his friend in the audience while Meredith has been otherwise occupied? Charlie squeezes her arm and then he is gone. Everyone is applauding. The guy is calling out "Yeah, Chaz!" and June is smiling a broad appreciation. "Chaz?" What is Meredith missing? What has she missed?
It's that song. Meredith knows it by the intro. It's not the one from the record; the band is doing its own thing with it, but it's evident where this is going. Charlie's eyes are closed, his lips are pressed together; maybe he's humming along, finding his way into the notes while Meredith can but sit outside and watch.
I love you oh, so madly/I need your love so badly/but I don't stand a ghost of a chance with you
Meredith's head reels. She shouldn't feel this drunk on three drinks. She puts her hands on the table; she has to go to the bathroom, she wants to leave. But she can't. The room is still. No one is moving and the spaces between the notes are huge, too large to run through. The bass player is sitting out, the drummer is barely there. The keyboardist is but lightly playing under him. The song is his. He has the room.
I thought at last I'd found you/but, alas, other arms surround you/ so I don't stand a ghost of a chance with you
He hits every note dead on, a hammer striking a nail, driving it deep into the wood. He pronounces every syllable in round tones, sings with a lethargy, holding each word almost too long, the way you do when you know this is the last goodbye. Meredith could swear he is stalling time itself, suspending her in a dreadful limbo, darkness ahead, fire behind. She doesn't want the song to end, does not want to know what is beneath and beyond. Perhaps nothing—Charlie never noticed (never remarked, anyway) her sudden giddiness; never questioned her fall into torpor or that it coincided with a call from a friend saying he was leaving his wife. Or maybe Meredith just did not notice him noticing. And maybe he is not looking at Meredith now. She has been away a long time—long before the affair, before the singing, before the rafting trip. And at some point Charlie let her go, even she can hear that. June is nodding. Her eyes are closed. The young guy has his arm around the booth behind her but she is not leaning into the embrace.
Every face in the bar is a reflection of longing, with him every line, begging him to stop and egging him on. Condensation has erased Meredith's fingerprints from the glass. The beads grow heavy and slip into one another, forming droplets that mate and make rivulets that roar down the stem and pool around her fingertips. Or is that the applause, thundering through the empty chambers of her heart?
* * * *
