MARCY CAN BARELY SEE THE LIT SIGN FROM THE SIDEWALK, but a few more steps and the words “this is it” begin to appear through the night fog in neon radiance.
This is where they said they’d meet her, so she braves the downward spiral staircase, grabbing the black iron rail for balance. She’s visibly uncomfortable in those high heels, with the uneven stone steps not helping her equilibrium.
Once at the bottom she takes five or six steps towards a Van-Gogh-red-and-yellow door and pushes it open into a dark hallway. Passing through she sees that the hallway leads to a smoky room full of noise and lights and music.
“Don’t let the magic out,” says a short man with a cigar sitting on a small chair in the dark. She hadn’t noticed him and was alarmed but not frightened. She takes a step back and closes the door gently.
“Thank you, Marcy.”
She smiles, not surprised that he knows her name, and continues into the club.
As she approaches the lights in the big room ahead, she feels the change. She’s suddenly Marlene Dietrich and Betty Grable and Bridgette Bardot and even Betty Boop… all at once, and she steps onto the main floor of the club, now gliding comfortably in her tight dress, her heels no longer uncomfortable… and as she approaches the cloud of pot and cigarette smoke mixing with the smell of booze and perfume, everyone turns and looks at her, and she hears them cry out, Happy Birthday Marcy! But everyone knows that it’s not her birthday.
And she takes off her hat and sends it flying over the crowd and throws up her arms as if declaring victory and then reaches for the first shot glass offered and tosses it back like a pro… “Ah… rum!” she says, and she mingles with friends from forever, and everyone surrounds her with hugs and kisses and hellos. And she notices the piano player, as a mysterious light seems to dull everything else in the room, making his presence visible to her.
The piano player resembles a Nighthawks at The Diner Tom Waits type in a black blazer over a dark shirt … the strange light fades as he continues singing the slowest and deadliest Happy Birthday ever performed to any audience, living or dead. She notices that he sings and smokes at the same time, with both hands constantly on the piano and the ash on his cigarette growing longer with each note.
Another shot of something alcoholic is handed to her, and she slam-dunks it … hugs, smiles, kisses, more hugs … and stories from friends she has not seen or thought about in years but are suddenly and urgently important. Everyone’s catching up with her and with each other, talking about life events and remembering old experiences and confessing to minor lies and misunderstandings.
“Marge!” she says to a woman in a fancy green dress and big blonde hair. “Marge! You look better than you did when you died!”
“I had to dress up for your party!” says Marge.
“And me too,” says Bob, Marge’s first husband, emerging through the crowd. He’s the one of three husbands that Marge truly loved, the others being clearly a missed shot in the dark. “This is the best tux I ever had,” he jokes, taking a model pose, palms down and out, head stretched upwards as if looking for a UFO in the ceiling.
“I’m glad to see you two together again,” says Marcy.
“It was inevitable,” they respond in perfect unison, grabbing for each other’s hands.
Later, after more shots and kisses and hellos, she finds herself next to the piano player, who’s still smoking a cigarette with about two inches of ashes that won’t fall.
“What would you like to hear?” He says to her.
“Something happy,” she responds.
“You never really liked ‘happy’ music,” he says, “but I’ll see what I can do.”
Someone taps her shoulder. It’s Pablo, her first boyfriend, from Mark Twain Jr. High School. They used to ditch 3rd period English and hide under the bleachers in the football field to make out and smoke cigarettes.
They’re talking through the crowd noise and taking Tequila shots as the piano player begins a slow, choppy and nearly melodic rendition of “Singing in The Rain.” It sounds almost like his earlier rendition of Happy Birthday in Minor.
“I’m… singing… in… the… rain…” with uneven slaps of the piano keys through and between the words. “Just… singing…”
After some time someone tells her that there are various animals in the patio waiting for her, and she confesses she didn’t know there was a patio. “It’s through the gallery,” says Marge pointing at a door labeled “Gallery.” She also didn’t know there was a gallery.
At that moment her three best friends from high school arrive, a little late, as teenage girls love to make an entrance, and it doesn’t seem to matter that high school was over thirty-five years ago… in another state. Or that one of them died in a car accident shortly after high school.
“I’m… smiling… inside… at… the… clouds… up… above…”
The four once-close friends get reacquainted and someone else approaches them to take a picture.
“You guys look the same as you did in the eleventh grade!” says Jerry, the photographer, who also looks exactly as he did in the eleventh grade. He even carries the same 35-mm Ricoh with a denim strap.
He takes other pictures of her with her all-dressed-up-and-polished illicit lovers. These were her lovers while she was married. They made her feel like she was a woman when her marriages were ending, and she could find no harmony in life.
“There’s… rain… in… my… heart… but… I’m… ready… for… love…”
It takes the piano player over 20 minutes to get through the song.
Much later, after a few similarly happy songs, it’s time for Marcy to visit the gallery. “You have to go through alone,” says Marge.
Marcy responds in a cheery “I know.”
Everyone steps up to hug her again, and they’re all clapping and cheering their good wishes as she goes through the door into The Gallery. Everything goes quiet once she closes the door behind her.
The Gallery is just another long hallway, with small, framed pictures lit individually by an unseen source, and another door at the opposite end.
There are no faces or bodies in any of the pictures, just views of different rooms in different states of being lived in. Marcy studies each one carefully, not feeling any urgency and knowing exactly what each of the rooms represented in her life; the living room in her Vinton Avenue apartment (before her first marriage) the kitchen in the first apartment near Venice Beach, the studio where she painted away the hours during her second marriage, and so on.
Time loses any sense of meaning in The Gallery, as she explores every image offered. She doesn’t know how long she was there, but at some point, she noticed her heels, now in her hands and her bare feet on the warm, hard-wood floor.
Reaching the end, she reluctantly opens the last door. The familiar flowery green scent of a summer garden mixes with the salty air of a beach resort nearby. As she takes a deep breath, her eyes close, her senses overwhelmed by the sensations suddenly flooding her mind. But she hears her dogs barking and rushing her in excitement. All four of them, from different times in her life. She knows all their names and everything about them. And they also remember her and shower her with unending love and excitement at seeing her again. They bark and jump on her and run around her and awaken old memories of a life gone by.
And even though the various animals never knew each other before, they seem to be friends now, even getting along well with the three cats that show up fashionably late, like cats often do.
“You didn’t have enough time,” says a voice.
She turns and sees the Piano Player standing by the same door she passed through moments ago. He lights a cigarette.
“Those things will kill you,” she says, still playing with her dogs and cats.
“These things already killed me,” he responds. And after a second or two, “The animals will show you the way.”
She turns her head towards him, not fully understanding.
He looks back. “Everything makes sense in the end.”
She turns back towards her animals, nearly euphoric with joy from their reunion.
And they take off running towards the trees. Even the cats. And she runs after them, running as fast as she could in grade school. Everything does make sense, somehow, as she gets closer to the animals.
She runs now beside the dogs, who bark in energetic excitement, and she calls each of their names, becoming part of the journey towards mystery she now embodies, reaching with all her spirit towards the gift of a new life. A gift that reaches out to her and she will hang onto for as long as she can.
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