THE S CLUB

The moon was a tungsten white fingernail in the deep blue evening. I had stepped outside to the solace of the backyard to relieve myself from the tedium of Saturday night at home. The clicking of ice cubes and muttering were heard over the hedge.

Boom’s pool was lit up. The turquoise after glow and luminous cross currents streamed across Boom’s pondering face. She was in a ripped but comfortable terry cloth bathrobe. Her hair was wrapped in bandanna. Her face was covered in fresco of cold cream. She wore satin blue mules with blue tufts of mesh on the tips.

She glanced over and saw my figure in the floodlight.

“Oh Randolph,” she waved sloppily.

“No, it’s me. Edmund. Mrs. Quail.”

“Oh hi! Eddie. I just thought for a second there that you were your father.”

I smiled. She must have been a little drunk because I don’t look a thing like my father.

She gazed over at me. Her shoulders raised and then lowered. “Well, how are you doing, dear?”

“I am okay,” I said, “how about you?”

“I don’t know how I am doing,” she said looking into her amber Scotch. “I just want to be outside. I am thinking too much. I feel sad. I think it is the booze. I wish they would make a booze in which you are always happy, like the first two drinks. The first two drinks are always the happiest.” She looked over at me. “Why are you always so nice to me?”

“Well I like you and ah I was brought up that way.”

“I wish my children were brought up that way. But they are not. They are going to drive me crazy. But you have to understand that I love them so much. And I miss them so much right now. And I really don’t know why. I’ll never understand the maternal instinct. I guess, it’s nothing to understand just feel.” Boom shook her head. She couldn’t believe how she could ask a question and answer it in the same breath.

She puffed on her cigarette and she must have thought something ever so silent and sad. She started shaking as her nose and mouth squeezed up to a prelude of a long hard and meaningful sob.

“Don’t cry. Mrs. Quail. You are too pretty to cry. It’s like seeing someone like Marilyn Monroe cry. Who wants to see Marilyn Monroe or even Angie Dickinson cry?”

A throat-wrenching groan followed. “Oh honey, sometimes you can’t help it,” she said and suddenly she released it. She cried and the pool went still for that moment.

“Please Boom Boom,” I pleaded.

She wept and mumbled, ”it’s over and now I feel better. “Suddenly, in a delayed response synapses, she snapped, “Boom Boom!”

“I mean, Mrs. Quail.”

Miraculously, she laughed. “I swear I am going to strangle your father for naming me that. My God! Boom Boom.” She paused and perked her happy head up. “Do you really think I look like Marilyn Monroe?”

“Sure you do,” I said.

“Really?”

“Really. I have seen those pictures when you played El Morocco.”

“No honey, it wasn’t El Morocco, it was the Stork Club. God! El Morocco, they always had some guys playing mariachis all the time. You know, the cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-God!” She stopped. ”The next morning you still heard it.” She snickered. ”I was kinda glad when they closed that damn club.”

“Well, what was playing the Stork Club like?”

Instantly her eyes were glazed in a wondrous flight. “Oh,” she said in a soft and sacred voice. “I had the entire room. They loved me. The phone rang for days. It was splendid.” She leaned back in her chair and thought about it again. She squinted, her voice hovered all vulnerable and fishing for a compliment. “You really think Marilyn Monroe?”

“Oh yes, Mrs. Quail, you are the most beautiful woman, I know.”

I could have only said that if nobody else was around and because it was true.