Buckskin Cocaine Page 8

  “But you will have to work hard at that audition. New York is now Paris, and Paris knows it.”

  I laughed, and the champagne came.

  “We both know that’s the one thing I can do,” I said, watching as the waiter poured. I kept my eyes on the champagne. David hated it when I tried to engage anyone waiting on us, though I generally rebelled and did it anyway. But tonight was special.

  David picked up his glass, and I mine, and he held his out. We clinked, and drank. “We both know you are good at many things. One of them working hard, the other…at holding the hearts of men.”

  I laughed again.

  I HAD THE SUNDAY OFF ONE WINTERY, New York day, and so I had decided to go into the studio to practice. I had taken the subway into Manhattan with my big pink dance bag by my side, my tights and leotard underneath my large, woolen thrift-store jacket and gotten off at the stop I always got off at, pausing for a coffee in a local shop. I had told the teacher that I liked to practice on my own, and that I would like an extra set of keys. When he had responded to my request with silence, I had taken that to mean that he didn’t trust me. I was filled with rage but had said nothing. But after the next class ended, he had handed me a set of keys with a strange, knowing kind of smile. I thanked him airily and walked immediately out the door, sighing with relief when I felt I was out of sight.

  My coffee in hand, I walked down the streets of New York, happy to be there, happy to be living somewhere other than Denver. New York was somewhere no one knew me, the sheer mass of people shuffling past making me feel a kind of lovely, gentle melancholy. At the studio doors, I dug for the keys I’d so coveted in my bag, found them and unlocked the doors. Inside, I turned the lights on and listened to them hum. I set my bag down, threw my coat off and tossed it into the corner and then sat on the hard, wooden floor so that I could put my silky pink pointe shoes on. I shoved my boots off and began to get into my pointe shoes, thanking the Creator for the new gel inserts. The old wooden toe and cotton stuffing had been a form of torture. I stretched for a good twenty minutes and then began the newest routine. I knew each step by heart. But I wanted everything to be perfect. To be elegant, magical. I turned the music on. I began to glissade. And then I started into the rest of the routine. But what I needed to make perfect was my fouetté rond de jambe en tournant. I had been working on that for a long time.

  I had practiced the routine over and over, for several hours, had broken for a small lunch I’d packed and then continued, focusing on my fouetté rond de jambe en tournant. I had done it successfully fairly quickly, but I wasn’t satisfied. I began to curse over the music. I paused, leaned against the barre and then started again. Until I was half-way through another turn, and cursing a loud blue streak into the air, I didn’t notice that the teacher had come in at some point in the last few minutes and was watching me in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest, a teasing smile on his lips. I felt a shock pull through me and then decided to ignore him. I started again, this time without cursing. He watched me practice, and I was filled with an icy rage that made me want to hit him, to scream at him as loudly as I could, to be better than any dancer he had ever trained. I went through the full routine again, determined not to let him stop me. He had been particularly cruel this week, coming over again and again, hitting my legs with his stick, yelling in that quiet way of his that made me want to kick that stick out of his hand and hit him in the face with it. One day in bed, I realized that he’d hit me so hard with the stick there were bruises on my calves.

  This time, my turn, my fouetté rond de jambe en tournant was perfect. I could feel it before I even began, it was everything it was supposed to be. I began to tear up, but I kept going, finished the routine. I wanted to yell, “HA!” in his stupid, white, billyganna face but instead I stopped, ready to gather my things and leave without a word. I began to stride over towards my bag.

  “Stop,” he said.

  I looked over at him, my long black eyes like a cat’s. He smiled at me. Said nothing. Just as I was about to continue walking, he came over to me. He slid his arms over mine.

  “Like this,” he said, directing me, his breath hot on my neck.

  “David…” I said, my rage becoming something else.

  “ARE ALL INDIAN WOMEN LIKE THIS?” David asked.

  “Like what. I’m me. I’m only me,” I said. I hated when David got like this. Petulant. Angry. But a quiet angry. We had just had a wonderful dinner, I had killed at my audition at the Opéra de Paris. David had been pleased, and as I finished, I could hear whispering up front. La belle amérindienne, c’est magnifque! And of course, tout comme Maria Tall Chief, tout comme!

  “So dominant. So like a man.”

  We were sitting at a table. We had come to a restaurant his friends had wanted to go to, to celebrate. David had many friends. Many ex-lovers who were now friends. And I had taken French in high school, and had taken a refresher course in New York. His friends had expected a silent American, a stupid girl. They were surprised when I spoke French decently, they were surprised that I was funny, that I was dark.

  I had always been quick. And quick with language, because when you grow up with so many languages around you that you must learn, or get pushed down into the dirt, you learn fast. I had never been pushed down, around. I had had too many men around me, admirers, boys who I knew exactly how to keep close, but not too close. This had begun when I was five.

  We were alone. His friends had left us to celebrate our last drink on our own. One of them had left an intricately carved white plaster mask. I put it over my face. “You must like fucking men then,” I said.

  David was silent. I thought for a moment that I had finally pushed him too far. I put the mask down and stared at him placidly. I wondered what he would do. Would he slap me? Cry? It was exciting. He began to laugh. “I love you so much Maria Tall Chief. You will be the death of me.”

  I put the mask down and took a long sip of my champagne. “It will be your best death ever.”

  David smiled and gestured for the check. “I can’t wait.”

  IN NEW MEXICO, there were so many Indian boys. I played with them all. What was left? I was nearing thirty, and there was no more Paris, no more professional ballet, no more David. And the other boy…I had to push that down. Far down. As far as it would go, or it would drive me to madness. There were times when I was mad. When I would drink and drink and cry in the apartment I shared with the other dancer. She was sweet, but stupid. When she would see me do this, she would pet my head and tell me how sorry she was. That her heart had been broken too. I would nod, and thank her and not tell her the precise way it had been broken. I was like a man, David was right. I always kept my pain deep inside. Except for the tears. I guess they made me a woman after all.

  “THERE WAS SOMEONE ELSE,” David said, his hand in mine.

  I looked down at him. I was taller than he was by two inches, and I wore heels. He didn’t mind. In fact, he loved them. He always came home with a new pair. We were walking down the Rue de Passy at night, the reds and blues and whites of the store fronts lit up beautifully, the shops looking like something out of dream. They were. I had dreamt of them. I had dreamt of all of this.

  “There is always someone before someone,” I said. I dropped his hand and walked over to the front of the store, staring in at the tall white mannequins in clothes so fine, so glamorous it hurt my teeth to look at them.

  “Yes,” he said, standing next to me and staring into the window. I could see our reflection, David, his soft grey hair in a sophisticated cut, his casual but expensive clothing nearly shining in the light above us. I cocked my head, examined my long, thin form, my dark hair sweeping over my shoulders and down my back. “But there is…more. There is someone important. I can feel him there, when we’re making love. I don’t like it.”

  “Aren’t we beautiful?” I said, looking at our reflection.

  David sighed, picked up my cold hand. “Yes. We are very beautiful. Especia
lly you. You are like a butterfly. A cold blue butterfly.”

  “But when will I fly away?”

  “Daddy, tell me you’re proud of me.”

  It was graduation, and I had a scholarship to a school in New York, the very best school one could go to if one wanted to dance professionally. And I knew after that it was a short trip to the New York City Ballet. We were sitting in the Denver Diner. We were there to celebrate.

  Daddy looked up at me, his eyes sad and soft. I felt a twist in my belly and in my heart that I could almost not bear. I began to cry.

  “Don’t cry sweetie. Of course daddy’s proud of you,” he said putting one of his fries down and patting my hand awkwardly.

  “I think you should move to New York with me,” I said.

  Dad looked at me with such intensity, and then laughed, his head shaking at the end of it. “I love you too,” he said.

  “Really daddy, why not? You could get a job at a hospital there. There are loads and loads of hospitals in a city like New York. And that way I wouldn’t have to be lonely,” I said anxiously, knowing that he would never take me up on it, wanting him to, not wanting him to.

  “Oh, sweetie…sometimes a person has to feel lonely. And don’t you worry about your daddy. I like my job, and my friends. I have a life here. And you need to have a life too. A different life, God willing.”

  I nodded. We ate in silence for a while, me picking at my salad, daddy finishing up his roast beef sandwich and fries, the smell of fried everything filling the air. I thought about a different life. I had always wanted out, knew I didn’t want to be a thing like the people I went to school with, all babies and drugs. I remembered once I’d spent the night at a girl’s house. We had become friends in AP English. I liked her. She wore huge, government issue glasses and read all the time. Her mom was raising her alone and was gone most nights. She worked at the hospital too, night shift. We’d spent the evening studying and talking about what we were going to do after high school when we’d heard a knock at the door. I remember Sabrina sighing heavily.

  “That’s probably my cousin. She’s always knocking on my door when she’s drunk, when her stupid boyfriend has beat the hell out of her and she wants some sympathy.” Sabrina pushed her large, blocky black glasses further up her nose and got up. I followed her into the living room of her sagging apartment. She walked over to the door, her body heavy, and opened it. Sabrina’s cousin marched in, a tiny blonde girl of no more than fifteen. Her hair was huge. More hairspray than I thought a single can could contain had gone into the elaborate construction of what she was wearing on top of her head. It was like her hair was a separate entity.

  “Yeah, let’s get drunk,” Tina said, pulling up a gigantic bottle of vodka and swigging from it. “I wanna celebrate.”

  “Tina…” Sabrina said, but she marched determinedly towards Sabrina’s bedroom, Sabrina trailing behind.

  Tina plopped down on Sabrina’s bed, pushing her Biology book off the bed in one careless swoop. “Good times,” she said, swigging again.

  She looked over at me. “Who’s the Mexican?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “She’s not a Mexican.”

  “Well, she is kinda light. Eye-talian then.”

  Sabrina took the bottle of vodka out of Tina’s hands, or should I say, tried to take the bottle, as Tina clung to that thing like it was magical potion.

  “She’s an Indian, if you must know,” Sabrina said, walking away from the bed and leaning against her white and gold dresser. She glared at Tina.

  Tina looked over at me with some interest. “Really? Me too. I got some Cherokee in me. You Cherokee?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then what kinda Indian are you? There aren’t that many, you know. Least around here. Lots of Mexicans though.”

  “Chickasaw. And Choctaw.” I hated this girl.

  “Well, never heard of that,” Tina said. She stared at me, her blue eyes rimmed in layers and layers of black eyeliner.

  “So…why the celebration?” Sabrina asked.

  “Not pregnant. Not anymore, anyway.”

  I looked over at Sabrina, who shrugged.

  “What do you mean anymore? You get an abortion? Man, hope your mom doesn’t find out. Isn’t she born again Christian?”

  Tina took a long, hard gulp of the vodka and then paused. I wondered if she was going to puke all over Sabrina’s pretty white bedspread. Sabrina had told me that she’d saved up for months from her bussing job for that bed. Had put it on layaway at Sears.

  “Fuck that bitch. Bitch had loads of abortions before she became born again,” Tina said.

  “Then.” Tina said.

  “Oh. I just got Ralph to hit me in the stomach, over and over, hard as he could, till it came out.”

  I felt sick. I looked over at Sabrina whose face quickly contorted from one of horror to nonchalance.

  “It’s great, right?” Tina said, not looking at either of us. She just took yet another long swig of vodka and then offered it up to Sabrina, who shook her head. She looked over at me. “Well, I won’t ask you if you want any. On account of you being Indian and all. You know you guys don’t do well with the ol’ firewater.”

  “Thanks,” I said, walking over to stand near Sabrina.

  “Sure. I just don’t want you getting all outta control or anything.”

  “Right.”

  I looked over at Sabrina, who knew that after her cousin’s revelation, there was no way in Christ she could tell her to leave. We spent the rest of the night listening to Tina alternately cuss and then praise her horrific sounding boyfriend until she passed out, her legs splayed in two very awkward positions, her right hand still desperately clutching the handle of the bottle of vodka.

  “DAVID, DO YOU REGRET NOT HAVING CHILDREN?”

  We were sitting outside in Rome. We’d had a good day, walking around the city, looking at all of the ruins, drinking wine and eating at a little restaurant that David had been to many times with one of his exes. He loved the prosciutto.

  David took a sip of his wine. He looked at me. “Do you want a baby?”

  I looked back over at him. “Of course not.”

  “You are only nineteen. There is plenty of time for that, for babies, when all of this is over.”

  I felt a sharp pain then. I signaled for the waiter. He came over.

  “Hi. Un altro?” I said, pointing to my glass.

  David looked at me, sipped again. The light was fading and it was beautiful, the walls of the outside of the restaurant were covered in ivy, and the little tables were all covered in crisp white cloth, everyone speaking Italian in soft, clipped tones.

  “You are worried about when this is all over,” he said. When the waiter returned, he pointed to his glass as well.

  I sat back. David could be so dense. “Of course I am.”

  “You should not. Because first of all, you have many years until that comes. And you need to learn to enjoy life.”

  “I do–”

  “Wait,” he said, interrupting me. “Let me finish. You need to learn to live in the moment for once. You are always looking ahead, looking for more.” The waiter returned with his wine and he sipped at it before he began again. “All artists are like this. It is necessary, this…disposition you have. Otherwise you would have been satisfied with your life as it came to you. You would never be here, in Rome, about to perform. But there comes a point where this is damaging. Do you want to end up like Edith Piaf?”

  I began to laugh, hard, at the thought that I’d end up a love-struck heroin addict.

  David frowned. “You laugh now, but you don’t know what it’s like to live your whole life as an artist. So much has come to you so very young. And you have demons, just as she did.”

  I crossed my arms across my chest. “I’m listening.”

  “Secondly, when that times comes, you can open a studio. And you could even open one in New York, which is a wonderful city. Your life as an artist will not
be over.”

  I picked at my salad. “That’s…not. Yes, David. You’re right. You’re so good to me,” I said, patting his hand.

  David looked happy, satisfied, like we’d had an argument and he’d won. I stared at a family at the next table, the mom reaching over and feeding her little, fat baby and smiling at him. He smiled back at her, his mouth covered in food. They seemed very happy, the baby and his mother.

  I WAS AT A PARTY WHEN IT HAPPENED. My friend Shaun had been bugging me to go during lunch that day. I always sat at the jock’s table, because there weren’t many girls. And because there were ways that I had much more in common with them than with anyone else at that school; I was praying my body would get me out of this. I told him that I never went to parties. I told him they were boring, because they were always full of boys, which made the boys around me stir anxiously. I remember hitting Shaun in the chest gently, and the light that came into his big amber-colored eyes when I did it, the envy and violence that came into the eyes of all the boys around him. I laughed happily. I left the lunch table with Shaun and his friend begging me to come.

  That night, studying in my little room, I thought about Shaun’s invitation. I was sure it would be a waste of my time, loads of drunken kids gathered around a stereo trying to have sex with each other. I looked up at my posters of Maria Tall Chief and Yvonne Chouteau on my walls. I would stare up at them often, into them, knowing that if they had done it, I could. I was staring up at them that night like they were other galaxies, full of wonder and mystery and life. I was feeling restless. I walked over to my dresser, where I’d casually tossed the piece of paper Shaun had pressed into my hand. I picked it up, looked at his juvenile scrawl. It had the address of the party on it. It was two blocks away.

  At the doorway to the house, I could see the lights of the house glowing brightly, the noise of the party nearly stopping me at the door. But there was something friendly and warm and vaguely exciting about it all, and I knocked. There was no answer. I knocked again, and then opened the door. The noise was deafening. I began backing out, pulling the door closed when a boy I knew from school saw me and rushed over. “Olivia! Don’t go,” he said, pulling at my arm. I smiled and followed him in.