Chapter 39
Cold Max led Corey into the bathroom then released her and drifted over to the long mirror over the sink to examine herself. The woman appeared flawless, so for the life of her, Corey could not see anything that could have possibly needed touching up.
“First,” said Max, “I’m a big fan.”
She pressed her lips together, then continued. “Not as big as Kyle.” She gave her flawless reflection one final appraisal before turning and focusing her ice blue eyes on Corey. “Obviously.”
Corey stood, stuck between fight and flight, and when Max saw her, she burst out laughing.
Corey stared at the guffawing woman, then slowly rotated her head toward the mirror and the expression that greeted her did look slightly horror-stricken. She offered a pained smile, but Max only laughed harder. The woman doubled over, and when she straightened her eyes were watering.
“Oh my God, the look on your face!”
“What is happening?”
“I’m so sorry. Really. I only intended to freak them out, not you! I really am a huge fan.”
Try as she might, Corey could not picture the swan in front of her listening to her debut album about introspection, complicated sexual politics, and ugly duckling songs.
“You,” said Corey, staring at the Glamazon in front of her, “are a fan?”
“Of course. Damsel was standard issue.”
Corey felt like she had fallen into some bizarre parallel universe. She’d had acid trips that weren’t this disorienting.
“Wait…why exactly do we want to freak them out?”
“Normally, the lion doesn’t concern itself with the opinions of the sheep, but sometimes you have to keep the boys on their toes. You know how it is.”
“Sure.” Corey nodded along, then began shaking her head. “No I don’t actually…”
“Look, Kyle always had a crush on you. Oh, he denied it of course, but I knew. It was all harmless, except,” she said, gesturing to the space between them, “here you are. So once again, Cold Max was right.”
“So you’re making him sweat to prove a point.”
“Exactly!”
One corner of Corey’s mouth ticked up in an involuntary smile. “He’s probably shitting himself…”
“Right?” said Max, laughing again. “Bobby and Charlie too.”
“So…” said Corey, gesturing between the two of them, “we’re cool?”
Once again, she drifted toward Corey and Corey was rooted to the spot. Max’s hands found her shoulders and the stunning woman bent her head toward Corey. It made Corey feel a bit like a girl.
“Despite everything, Kyle will always be my best friend. No one deserves to be happy more than him, and I couldn’t be happier that you’re in his life. And Kirby’s too. She hasn’t shut up about you and the con for weeks. She doesn’t even let me go to those things, because I’m too much of a…I’m just too much apparently. I know she has to do it her way, in her own time, but it kills me that I can’t help her with her own dream. But you got her closer to it than anyone ever has. We are more than cool, Corey.”
Either through Max’s words or her hands, Corey felt the tension drain from her shoulders. She exhaled, louder than she meant to. Max laughed again.
“So there’s really, like, zero beef between you and Kyle? You just…get along?”
“We’re classmates,” said Max, as if the answer was absolute.
“I’ve had a lot of classmates. I hated most of them.”
“No,” said Max, shaking her head. “It’s different here. We all passed through the same crucible together. It’s a weird bond. Our tribe against the world. And even if you couldn’t stand a classmate, you’d still give them the shirt off your back. Unless they were a slash.”
“I’m sorry, but that sounds like some fraternity bullshit.”
“Fraternities don’t go to sea. Sororities don’t fly. I’d like to imagine it’s like being in a good band. Everyone plays a role in service of the greater mission. In your case, the music. Like The Toddlers. You guys were huge. You can’t get that big without having each other’s backs.”
“You didn’t read a lot of tabloids back then, did you?”
“Still don’t. I just enjoy the music.”
“What’s that mean exactly, a slash?”
“Someone who stabs someone in the back. The lowest of the low. You never slash your classmate.”
Corey considered this, her brow knitting over with a question she thought it best not to ask.
“Out with it,” said Max.
“Is Bobby a classmate?”
“You’re asking if my husband is a slash?”
“I’m sorry…”
“No,” said Max, holding up her hands, “it’s a fair question. And the longer we talk in here, the more they sweat out there, so I’m happy to answer. We were all best friends at school, inseparable, until we graduated and the fleet separated us. Kyle and I were a couple by senior year, so we were co-located. We were on sister ships out of Charleston…which seemed like a good idea, but our ships were on opposite schedules and we barely saw each other those first two years.”
“That must have been hard.”
“It was. Very hard. And ultimately it wasn’t good for us. Anyway, we got married, I went to flight school, and by then Kyle didn’t want to fly anymore.”
“Kyle wanted to fly?”
Max narrowed her eyes for an instant, as if trying to peer into Corey’s skull, but she just smiled and said, “Once upon a time. Anyway, we had Kirby pretty early on, and Kyle rode desks in intel billets and marine safety billets while I flew. And we picked up stakes every couple of years, moving to the next tour, before we realized we’d just…diverged.”
“‘Diverged.’”
“There were no fireworks. No shouting matches, no shattered dishes.” Max chuckled. “Maybe that was the problem. There was never any shortage of love per se…the color just sort of bled out of it. So we ripped the Band-Aid off.
“Anyway, it wasn’t until a couple of tours later that Bobby and I both wound up stationed in New London, him at the Academy, me at the Air Station. We were always friends, we’re both pilots…and we just fell in love. He’s no slash. As soon as he realized there was a spark, Bobby called Kyle.”
“To, what? Ask for your fucking hand?”
“Right? I was none too pleased, to be honest. I’m a grown ass woman and I need no one’s permission for anything, but I sort of understood. It wasn’t a permission thing, it was a classmate thing. An ‘I wanted you to hear it from me first’ thing. Our tribe is small and everyone knows each other’s business. It was a weird spot to be in for everyone.”
“What happened?”
“They talked. The next day, Kyle sent me and Bobby roses. And he came to the next reunion and sat at our table to show everyone that there were no sides to take.”
“Wow.”
“That’s a fucking classmate right there. Come on, I suppose we’ve tormented them long enough…”
They crossed the ballroom floor toward a table claimed by Bobby, Charlie, a woman Corey assumed was Charlie’s wife, and three other Academy couples. Max threaded her arm through Corey’s, and Corey felt strangely buoyed. Kyle stood as they approached and both of them tried not to laugh. Max peeled off to hug the others. In the commotion of everyone greeting each other, Kyle asked, “Everything go okay?”
“Uh, I think I want to make out with your ex-wife.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, “but I’d like the record to show I’d really rather you didn’t.”
“Why didn’t you tell me she was so…”
“Alpha?”
“Yes!”
“Would it have helped?”
“You should have prepared me.”
“I’ve found it’s generally useless to try to prepare for Cold Max.”
Corey was passed to Charlie’s wife, Sandra, who informed Corey, loudly, that, “You are Corey Lyondell!”
“That’s what it says on my driver’s license.”
“Oh my God, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve played Damsel Underdressed. It was the fucking truth. Let me tell you, if Kyle ‘Steel Trap’ Williams here had spilled in advance that he was dating you, I would have been at your Norfolk show, and Charlie would have stayed home to watch the jackals.”
“Children,” corrected Charlie.
“They’re animals, but I love them. I put a padlock on the hotel mini-bar.”
“They’ve probably chewed through it by now,” shrugged Charlie.
“I love them,” said Sandra, “but don’t have kids. My God, Damsel Underdressed…”
And so it went. The night unfolded, Corey’s head spinning. Everyone knew everyone else. Kyle would turn around and there would be someone he’d known for decades. He could barely take two steps before someone shouted his name and he was enveloped in a back-pounding, borderline violent embrace with someone. It took him forever to get back and forth from the bar, so she opted to shuttle drinks herself.
For a while, no one beyond their small group seemed to recognize her and she reveled in the anonymity, happy to forget the problems associated with being Corey Lyondell for a night and content to just to be Kyle’s girlfriend. Yet each time she let her guard down, she would feel the look, that telltale “Is that who I think it is,” trying-not-to-stare stare that preceded the approach.And the women, in singles and in pairs, who followed through on their approach meant well but always cut too close to the bone. With a drink or two in them, they professed that Damsel helped get them through the Academy, then immediately began to assail her with personal questions about the precise meanings of her lyrics. It happened all the time, and she had plenty of practice with it over the years, but at a signing or any other party, she could drift away or just bail, but here she was trapped. Anchored to the spot.
On Serpentine, when you sang You slither up my leg then slither away, but I’m still living with your venom day after day, was that about Anders?
“We were just friends.”
On Cabal, when you sang, Was hoping you’d help me shatter that ceiling, but all the mates would rather see me kneeling. Was that about The Toddlers?
“They’re okay. Just metaphor.”
Are The Toddlers ever going to get back together?
“I’ve been solo for twenty years now, so, you know, I’m good.”
Was she bitchy at that last question? She barely had the energy to function, let alone answer probing, personal questions. When she winced, the women didn’t seem to notice. Three women kept peppering her with insistent questions. She let her eyes lose focus and she began imagining them as three witches standing over a bubbling cauldron.
The cocktail hour ended and everyone took their seats for dinner, which was a relief. Between courses, Corey held Kyle’s hand in her lap, listening to the men mercilessly bust each other’s balls, belying everyone’s beautiful dress and the elegant surroundings. Here, the ease and the camaraderie among them were evident, and it did feel more like a band. The sophomoric jokes, the brutal takedowns…it was so much easier than making polite conversation with strangers or answering well-meaning but intrusive questions about her back catalogue.
She heard a muffled thumping and turned to see Max tapping a microphone on a podium at the front of the ballroom.
“Max!” yelled the assemblage.
Corey met Kyle’s eye and raised her eyebrow.
Kyle leaned over and whispered in Corey’s ear. “Class president.”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course she is…”
“Looking pretty good, ’95,” said Max. “For a bunch of old farts, that is…”
There was some good-natured laughter, some loud booing, and a few cloth napkins sailed through the air toward the podium.
She batted down the heckled cries. “Prove it then. How long have you been in the Coast Guard?”
The audience roared in unison, startling Corey, “All me bloomin’ life, ma’am! Me father was King Neptune, me mother was a mermaid. I was born on the crest of a wave and rocked in the cradle of the deep. Me eyes is stars, me teeth is spars, me hair is hemp and seaweed. And when I spits, I spits tar. I’s tough, I am, I is, I are, ma’am!“
“Not bad. A rocky start there, but you finished strong…”
Everyone laughed, and Max proceeded to play MC with ease, as comfortable in front of the microphone as any frontwoman Corey had ever seen. Certainly more relaxed than Corey herself would have been without hiding behind her guitar and her songs. It was something to watch.
“Now, to get serious for a moment. Many of you have come far and wide to be here tonight…”
Kyle leaned in. “Be right back, I’m going to get us a drink.”
“…but there are a handful of beloved classmates who’ve slipped the cable and though they can’t be with us in person, they’re with us in spirit and remain forever in our hearts. I’d just like to read their names then have a brief moment of silence.”
The room fell quiet as Max recited the names of their class’s fallen. “Michael Dabney, Suzanne Powell, Kelly Sensor…”
At she read the names, she noticed Max glance at their table. It was the briefest of moments, the shadow of a cloud racing over her face on a sunny day, and she continued her recitation. Corey looked around the faces of the table and saw both Bobby and Charlie both staring over her shoulder. She turned around and saw Kyle at the bar, his back to them.
Max updated the assemblage on the gifts and services that their alumni funds had purchased for the Academy, and Kyle returned with fresh drinks just as Max began to present some mock awards designed to poke fun at various classmates.
“Everything okay?” asked Corey.
He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Never better.”
“Now,” continued Max, “since we don’t really energize the smoking lamp these days, I’m going to energize the dancing lamp. I don’t expect any of your moves to have improved with age, but hope springs eternal. Take it away, Mr. DJ.”
Max left the podium, the lights dimmed, and a soulful voice announced from the speakers, “This is how we do it…” Then the heavy bass dropped to reveal Montell Jordan’s monster jam. Corey rolled her eyes and Kyle laughed.
“Come on, don’t tell me you’re too cool to dance?” asked Kyle.
“To this? Yes, I am too cool to dance to this.”
Max returned to the table and rallied everyone. “On your feet, kay-dets. If I’m dancing, you’re dancing.”
To her horror, everyone groaned, but pushed their chairs back, complying with Max’s command. Kyle stood and held out his hand for Corey, still seated.
She looked up at him with a look that said, “Really?” but she shrugged and got to her feet.
Once their table was on its feet, everyone else rose to theirs and the parquet floor quickly flooded with middle-aged dancers jerking to the big, obvious beats. The song wound down, but was immediately replaced by another mid-90’s, middle-of-the-road number, the precise kind of music that Corey and her brethren had recorded their own music in direct response to. In defiance of. The music of the mainstream. The music of the lowest common denominator. The music of weddings that children and grandmothers alike could dance to. A vanilla sundae, with vanilla sauce, dotted with white chocolate chips.
Lord, give me cinnamon.
She tried to keep her conversation with Kincaid at the fore of her mind, about not being a music snob, but the songs were the equivalent of a dentist’s drill. Her shoulders tightened. Her teeth stood on edge. She looked around. Damn it, these people were enjoying themselves. Couldn’t she stop judging and just enjoy herself too? There were times when she could dance with abandon to cheese, and later blame it on irony, but that usually required a heroic amount of booze. She was still trying to silence her inner critic when A-Game’s early smash “You’re Playing With My Emotions” flooded Leamy Hall and the women—grown women!—shrieked and poured onto the floor.
“Hey!” he said and pointed to her. She had wanted to tell him in person about the implosion, but when she saw him on the train platform she didn’t want to spoil their afternoon. And then the drill happened, and the ball, and Cold Max, but this was a bridge too far.
She held up her hands in surrender. “Nope. Lyondell out.”
“Come on, it’s fun!” laughed Kyle.
“Getting us a drink…”
“Suit yourself,” he said and turned back to the large group of people from the table, all dancing in a ring.
With cocktails in hand, she was heading back toward the knot of Kyle’s friends when she spotted the DJ booth and vectored to it instead.
“Hey!” she called to him.
“Hey!” the DJ called back, and Corey saw the telltale rise of his eyebrows that signaled recognition. It gave her buzz a small kicker. “You’re Corey Lyondell!”
She hoisted her glass, then pointed at his turntable from which A-Game emanated. “And this is a weapon of mass destruction. Can you please play something with teeth?”
“I’m on a tight leash,” he said, shrugging.
“Anything cool. I’m dying out there.”
“Something of yours?”
“I will fucking murder you if you do that to me!”
The DJ burst out laughing. “Relax, relax. Okay, I think I can throw you one.”
“Thank you for your service,” she said.
As she walked back toward the ring of dancing alumni, she heard it. That familiar opening guitar riff, grinding and insistent. She could feel her lip curling over her teeth, and she turned back to the DJ and nodded. He nodded back, a slight snarl on his face as well. After all these years, the right song at the right moment could put a literal spring in her step and sway in her hips and make her feel alive and immortal, desirable and desirous. The right song, when things were hopelessly uncool, or just hopeless, might strike a ballroom dance floor like a hammer of the gods, sending electricity through the congregation.
The buzzing riff continued and her heart, her mood, her soul swelled as the backbeat kicked in, then one by one, more guitars layered the first and the bass filled out the bottom, joining the song’s sleazy drive, until Julian Casablancas’s distorted growl erupted into the ballroom.
Last night she said
Oh baby I feel so down
Sure, the riff was nicked from Tommy Petty & The Heartbreakers’ American Girl, but that was academic. Good music referenced other good music, a call and response handed down through generations, through the radio, through swapped cassettes and borrowed CDs, through shared files. What she felt now was raw and primal as she strolled back to the floor to dance with her man to the one song tonight that would be for her, for them. The circle of officers and their spouses had expanded and was almost impenetrable now. They were whooping and chanting, and though she couldn’t tell why—something to do with the song—she shouldered her way back in and there she saw it.
Kyle dancing. With Max. She cocked her head. They weren’t just dancing.
They were swing dancing.
To The Strokes.
What was happening?
How was this happening? The song was for dive bars or sweaty club floors, where people awash in beer and rum drunkenly swayed or hopped to it. It never occurred to her someone could dance to it for real, let alone Kyle and Cold Max, and beautifully at that. She looked around nervously. Everyone else had backed off and given the pair room. Their movements were crisp, their feet moving in perfect mirror synchronicity, so quickly that her buzzed eyes had difficulty registering the motion. But whatever they were doing, they were doing it with incredible precision.
A perfect unit.
The crowd was egging them on now, cheering their names. Kyle spun Max in tight, whirling turns, not like the sloppy drunks on dance floors she was accustomed to. Max whirled perfectly in place, always spinning round and landing on the downbeat, and flowing perfectly into the next rock step. All with a surety Corey didn’t possess. Kyle led, and Max followed, and if he telegraphed the next move or spin, the signal was so subtle as to be so invisible to Corey. It may as well have been telepathic.
Her heart burned. She felt the strain in her smile and a psychic twinge in her final paw.