1958

Bangor, Maine

 Charlotte

I didn’t drown in the South China Sea holding Babe’s rooster in the air, but nearly. A year later, Pinkie and I scarcely escaped cutthroat thugs chasing us down a slum street in Los Angeles. It’s all part of my job. It’s not unusual for me to be praised, cursed, hugged, stomped, chased, or flung through the air in the course of fulfilling my professional duties. Dancing on tables, bribing hotel personnel, flirting with criminals, and playing daredevil with death more times than I care to admit are fait partie de la routine.

Having engaged in the epicenter of every human exertion and sentiment for more than a decade, why, then, do I presently find myself so distraught from simply being pushed from an idling car and having a shoe flung in my face?

I’m still piecing it together, but I’m quite sure it revolves around my rarely-given trust being so callously mishandled. Having a presumed friend and colleague turn on me as savagely as a rabid dog earlier this evening seems to have triggered a certain psychological shockwave most likely linked to my, let me say… less-than-perfect childhood. Little more than half an hour ago, I sat splattered on my derriere in a cold alleyway, broadsided by a man I have been on assignment with, one with whom I spent a wonderful three hours this very night at a company fête at the Bangor House reception hall.

I’m surprised to see my hands shaking. I automatically revert to ROSE Recovery number two—the protocol we are trained to follow after any episode evoking high emotion.

Deep, slow breaths. Concentrate on your surroundings. Remember your purpose.

I do a few quick inhalations and exhalations, then take long, slow breaths as I sit expressionless on a plastic chair placed solitarily against the wall. My nylon-stockinged feet are resting on top of what’s left of my open-toe high heels. Judging from the stinging in my toes, I believe they were close to frostbite by the time I entered this small rustic bus station on the ground floor of a downtown Bangor building.

Casing the room slowly, I allow all five senses to take over. A small huddle of hollow-eyed street people sitting on the floor is excitedly comparing their goods from a day in the streets. My quick perusal shows necks of whisky bottles jutting from tattered cloth bags, half-eaten foods wrapped in crinkled foil—most likely rummaged from restaurant trashcans—and yards of dirty yarn masquerading as skull caps and scarves. How those poor souls avoid freezing to death in this cold-winter city, I do not pretend to know.

A station security guard emerges from a door and flushes them outside. He imperiously holds the door open as the mismatched crew marches outside like naughty children. When the last one is through the door, he steps partially outside and peers into the night sky. Tumbling ice crystals shine as nocturnal jewels in the light escaping from the doorway—cotton-wrapped bullets pelting the snow and forming a crust of ice over the streets and sidewalks.

The guard shakes his head and beckons the group back inside, lecturing them with extended finger to stay put and not bother, that is, beg from, anyone in the station. The relief on their blotchy, weathered faces matches his mock austerity.

Flattened garland scotch taped across the ticket windows and a hand-painted X-mas Greetings! on the outside doors show a brave attempt to bring holiday spirit into the mostly deserted station. The cream-colored walls sport a long metal cutout of a loping greyhound. Crinkled posters thumbtacked to the walls portray buses traveling on highways passing through redwood forests and beside sparkly seashores.

I’m calming down. I settle back a few more inches in the chair and continue perusing the room. A young couple sits tight-lipped and straight on the end of a Naugahyde sofa on the opposite side of the room. She is dressed simply in saddle shoes with thick knee-high stockings, a plain shift dress too thin for winter, and a sweater stretched crooked by a hundred washings. Her coat is draped over the back of the bench. A modestly wrapped Christmas box sits on her lap. Judging from her expression and straight neck, along with the man’s restless shuffling and terse glances in her direction, it’s easy to see they’re in the middle of a quarrel.

A fleshy man in a cheap wrinkled suit and loosened tie, who only minutes ago exuded bored resignation and nervous hand clasping, pulls out a white handkerchief and wipes it across his forehead. He isn’t all right; anyone can see that. Everything about him, especially his tattered briefcase and out-of-season Panama hat, screams weary salesman. In my peripheral vision, I covertly watch him fumble with the folded newspaper on the bench beside him. He works at it until part of a page rips off, uses it to vigorously fan his face. He exudes a loud sigh, more like a grunt, and, between his spread legs, drops his face toward the tiled floor. His hat falls off, and he leaves it there.

Lord to goodness, is he about to have a heart attack?

Sensing my stare, he raises his head and looks at me. In his eyes is a look of surrender. The lines on his face bear a striking resemblance to a Bristol-paper charcoal etching of an old man I saw in the Louvre Museum in Paris a few years ago. What lot in life has this man traveling by bus in such obvious disappointment, as well as in scruffy shoes? Perhaps he was hired to sell French copper cookware to the shantytown wives?  Frustration that deep might prompt the ruination of anyone.

It hits me with a peculiar, half-jaunty air that I, CeeCee Jones, fit in well with this midnight-at-the-bus-station crowd with my disheveled hair and blood-caked lower lip. I’m a mess right now, and I find that rather memorable. At least it covers up the expensiveness of my clothes—clothes I wore to our celebration tonight. I re-cinch my street-length camel coat, dirty spots and all, and dab my raw lip with a handkerchief. No fresh blood.

 My feet are swelling. Shoving my toes back into the narrow strip of see-through plastic across the toe box isn’t possible now. That means I’ll have to walk across the room to the ticket counter in bare-footed hosiery with additional runs humming up and down my legs with every step. On the side of my left foot, I notice an unattractive hole. A hot flush invades my cheeks.

Honestly, can I be more of a dichotomy?

I’ll dive into a waterway with alligators if I have to, though I did that only once. I’ll tenderly coerce a ship captain with promises I’ll never keep or pretend to be a dizzy chorus girl, but walking barefoot in public with disgraceful hosiery insults my Southern roots and pushes me to the edge of vulnerability—an emotion I refuse to entertain. 

You have no choice.

I sigh abjectly and head toward the ticket counter. I feel the salesman’s crimson-rimmed eyes follow me as I pass. I admit one of my objectives is putting distance between us before he collapses. I simply cannot get involved right now. Haven’t I been through enough tonight? Still, I feel the old twinges of guilt.

Guilt was my constant companion for most of my younger life, and one of the strongest catalysts to seeking the life I now live. Frankly, I don’t regret my history with it. It has proven to be a good and gracious commodity… gracious for me, and good for the ones I replant, as Harry Wáng loves to label our processes. As a matter of fact, my rushing to answer the guilt-laden siren of distress only certain people allow themselves to hear is how I met my two favorite assignments, Pinkie and Babe.