chapter four
The next night, Jack sat at the cafe’s bar watching the five o’clock news; Tania slid onto a stool beside him.
“I want to talk to you away from here,” she said. “This isn’t a level playing field.”
“What are we playing?” asked Jack.
“That’s what I want to know.”
“It’ll have to be after my brother-in-law’s fundraiser. He’s running for city council. Wanna make a contribution to his campaign?”
“I don’t think so; my boss doesn’t pay me very much.”
Jack rubbed the spot on his cheek where Tania’s ring had scraped his face.
“Maybe you should be nicer to him.”
“Maybe he should be nicer to me.”
“I bet he likes having you work in his restaurant. I bet he likes the way you float around.”
Tania heard one of the cooks call her name. She scooted off the stool.
“I’ve got to go float around.”
“Good; I’ll be watching you.”
The next morning, Tania got a phone call from her mother.
“I’ve been sick as a dog since that goddamn wedding. Maria says I probably ate a bad shrimp. You can die from that, you know. I told her to sue the country club.”
Tania pulled off a sheet from a legal pad and crumpled it next to the receiver.
“I’m having trouble hearing you. We must have a bad connection,” she said.
“I have some pictures of the wedding. I got extra copies for you.”
“Mother, why would I want photographs of something I don’t want to remember?”
Tania crumpled the paper again.
“There goes that darn connection,” she said.
“Well, don’t forget to come over and pick up the pictures,” said Angela.
“I can’t hear you, Mother.”
As soon as she hung up the phone, Tania got another call. She put the handset to her ear and immediately pulled it away.
“Pat, I guess you got my letter.”
Tania held the receiver farther away from her head.
“What do I think I’m doing? If you don’t pay me, I’m mailing that letter to every theater company in Minnesota. That’s what I’m doing, Pat.”
Tania listened.
“I know it’s blackmail.”
Tania listened some more.
“I have to go, Pat. I need to buy envelopes.”
A few evenings later, Tania was finishing up her shift at the cafe when people started to arrive for a “Potter for City Councilman” fundraiser. The jukebox played “Stand By Your Man” while Tania and two other servers laid out sandwiches on aluminum platters. At 7 p.m., John Potter stepped up to the microphone. Jack’s older sister, Peggy, fidgeted by her husband’s side. Jack turned off the jukebox and retreated to the wait station.
“I’d like to thank my brother-in-law for inviting me to speak here tonight,” said Potter.
Jack smiled on cue. Then he took a swig from a bottle of beer.
The candidate continued, “You can be sure when I’m elected, I’ll bring Rawson-style integrity back to Minneapolis politics.”
The crowd cheered; Jack belched. Tania came over to the wait station.
“Ellen said we could leave after we put out the sandwiches.”
“So, who’s gonna cocktail?” asked Jack.
The other two servers punched out.
“Nobody,” answered Tania.
She tilted her head in the direction of the crowd.
“If those people are old enough to vote, they’re old enough to pull a beer out of a tub of ice.”
Jack chewed on this.
“Tell ’em it’s a food and booze buffet,” said Tania.
“Food and booze buffet—I like that. Yeah, a food and booze buffet.”
Tania set the trays of sandwiches on the bar, and Jack uncorked a couple bottles of house wine. A busman brought in a tub filled with ice and stuck beers in it. When Potter finished his speech, Jack joined him at the microphone.
“There’s a food and booze buffet in the bar; I figure if you’re old enough to vote, you’re old enough to pull a beer out of a tub of ice.”
The crowd laughed, and Jack turned on the jukebox. He caught Tania’s eye as she was leaving and gave her a wink. She smiled back.
The next morning, Tania reached inside her mailbox and pulled out the contents. There were ads and bills but no check from Pat. She lumbered up the three flights of stairs to her apartment, closed the door behind her, and went into the dining room.
A window in the back-left corner of the room was designated as a “Prosperity Shrine.” Play money, chocolate coins, crystals, and copies of Tania’s paid bills hung from the interior casing. A handwritten sign above it read, “I Am a Money Magnet.” Tania opened the unscreened window as high as it would go and sat down on a chair in front of it. Her cat, Jimmy, jumped on the sill and sniffed the chilly air. Tania closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. She mentally transported herself to an Oz-like locale where twenty-dollar bills fell from the sky. She visualized herself raking up the cash and heaping it into a bushel basket.
“I am now accumulating large amounts of money,” said Tania.
Remember, Christopher said to say it “loud and with feeling” and “try to be happy and positive when you say it,” she told herself.
Then, she thought, If I were happy and positive, I wouldn’t have to be saying this shit.
Next, she mentally hosed a dormant garden, and silver dollars bloomed. Before she could get out another affirmation, she heard Jimmy cry, “Ma!” Tania opened her eyes. The grey tabby was at the far end of the window ledge with nowhere to go.
“Come to Mommy,” called Tania.
Jimmy turned and lost his footing. He dropped three stories to the ground. Tania stuck her head out the window.
“Don’t move. I’ll be right there.”
Tania rounded the corner of the building. Jimmy crouched on the hardened dirt beneath the ledge. She picked him up and shook him like a piggy bank. Nothing rattled; nothing seemed broken. Then Tania’s eighty-something, kimono-clad neighbor, Ruby Rosenblum, opened her back door.
“Tania, dear, is that you?”
Ruby stepped onto her back porch holding an envelope and slipped on a piece of melting ice. The envelope flew from her hand and floated to the ground. Ruby grabbed onto a railing.
“Mrs. Rosenblum, are you okay?”
“Of course I am, dolly. Why, when I headlined at the Chez Paree, I slipped on one of the Kelly sisters’ feathers during ‘Bird of Paradise’ and didn’t miss a beat. The mayor was in the house that night. He was with his niece. Niece my foot.”
Tania looked down at the envelope and read the return address. With Jimmy tucked under her arm like a loaf of French bread, she ripped open the flap and pulled out a check.
“Pat’s paid me; Pat’s paid me, Mrs. Rosenblum!”
“That’s wonderful, dolly. You and your husband should go out and celebrate.”
“Ben and I aren’t married anymore,” said Tania.
“I’m sorry to hear that, dear. When the Duke and I called it quits, I thought I couldn’t go on, but the great Mr. M came to my dressing room. He said, ‘Miss Ruby Lee, do you want to be a Phoenix rising from the ashes or a warbler in the chorus?’ ”
Ruby paused.
“I took the name Lee after my parents disowned me.”
She answered the question on Tania’s face.
“No daughter of theirs was going to India and live with a bunch of dark-skinned contortionists. I changed my first name to Ruby when I left the ashram and came to London. Anyway, Mr. M said, ‘This is not the time to cry. This, my little songbird, is when you must fly.’ ”
She leaned over the railing.
“That’s what you must do, Tania. You must fly.”
A couple of days later, Tania came into the warming house at Powderhorn Park with a pair of ice skates hanging from her neck. She spotted Christopher sitting on a bench. His lips were moving.
“Jon Namaguchi is coming to me easily and effortlessly,” he murmured. “Jon Namaguchi and I are back together. Jon Namaguchi and I are having sex.”
Tania sat down next to Christopher and kissed him on the cheek.
“Are you talking to someone I can’t see?”
“No, I’m saying affirmations; I’m visualizing Jon and I back together.”
“I’ve been doing that too, and guess what?”
“You and Jon are back together?”
“No, silly. Pat paid me. I don’t know whether it was the affirmations or the blackmail, but she paid me.”
Tania took off her boots.
“Guess where I just was?” she asked.
Christopher got up and teetered on his hockey skates.
“You were at the Guthrie, and they want you to star in a revival of Annie Get Your Gun, but you told them you won’t do it unless I play Sitting Bull.”
“No, I was at the Speedy Messenger Service. I sent Jack Rawson an invitation to meet me at Big Blues tomorrow night.”
Tania and Christopher wobbled out to the rink. She stumbled onto the ice and skated away. She slowed down to change direction. Then Tania spread her arms out behind her, threw back her head, and raced across the frozen surface.
“I’m flying, Christopher,” she shouted. “I’m flying.”
Meanwhile at the cafe, Jack shoved Tania’s invitation into his jacket pocket and walked into the bathroom. He pressed his hands down on the sides of the sink and checked himself out in the mirror. He used his fingers to comb the thinning hair over the bald spot on the crown of his head. Then he pulled the two sides of his Minneapolis Twins jacket together, sucked in his stomach, and held his breath. He engaged the zipper. The slider inched up Jack’s belly and caught on the jacket’s lining at his sternum. He tugged on the tab.
“Damn it to hell anyway.”
