Early Warning

TO SAVE ON heating oil, Janet and Marla had closed the door of her room and wrapped themselves in blankets. Marla was in the chair, Janet on the bed. They were reading The Madwoman of Chaillot, their third session, and they were nearing the end of the first act. Two of Marla’s plays had been put on, the best one, a one-act called Cedar Rose Park, by the Berkeley Rep. She went to the Temple with Janet every Sunday, but she complained about it and swore she was going to write a play about Reverend Jones called Loudmouth.

Though she didn’t like the Giraudoux play very much, Marla always wanted to finish. She read, “Dans les trois cent cinquante. Nous n’enverrons qu’aux chefs.” Her pronunciation had gotten better, but it wasn’t perfect, so Janet repeated the line slightly more fluently, then waited while Marla pondered it for a moment before translating it as “In the three hundred and fifty. We will not send the heads.” This was correct as far as Janet was concerned, so she nodded and Marla read the next line, “Qui va les distribuer? Surtout pas le sourd-muet! On lui rend en moyenne quatre-vingt-dix-neuf enveloppes sur cent!” Marla was now twenty-four, and seriously worried that she was getting too old to make her way in France. She was to turn twenty-five at the end of March, so she planned to leave by the first of February, to take advantage of the two months of her remaining youth when she arrived in Paris. She had gotten her passport; her savings amounted to $1,498.76. She planned to put aside another two hundred in the two months before she left, and with luck, she would find a wealthy Frenchman to take her on when she got there. This aspect of the whole thing Janet could not help her with, but she had no doubt that the willing Frenchman would present himself — Marla was as careful of her appearance as any Frenchwoman Janet had ever seen, and much more friendly. She corrected Marla’s translation, and Marla went on to the next line. One thing they had done in the summer was to translate Cedar Rose Park into French — not writing it down, but saying it aloud. Marla was proud; she did not want to be less than perfect from the moment of her arrival.

The door opened, and Lucas slipped into the room. Marla kept reading, but Janet made a smooch and waved him over to the bed. Then she did what she could never resist doing, which was to press herself into Lucas as tightly as she could. His skin tonight was chilly enough to make her shiver. When Marla finished reading, Janet said, “You are cold, baby.” He kissed her, kicked off his shoes, pulled one edge of the blanket around himself, and said, “Keep going. I like to hear it.”

Marla read, “Vous, Fabrice, vous me reconduisez. Si, si, vous allez venir. Vous êtes encore tous pâle. J’ai de la vieille chartreuse. J’en bois un verre tous les ans, et l’année dernière j’ai oublié. Vous le boirez.” Janet corrected her pronunciation of boirez. Her translation was excellent. Janet nodded. Lucas took the book out of her hand, stared at it for a moment, then shook his head. “Makes no sense to me.” He gave the book back to her.

Marla said, “Really, Lucas, you should act. You look good, you don’t give a shit about performing in front of an audience, and you’ve got style.”

Lucas shrugged.

“Start now. You’re perfect. Pisses me off, you wasting your talents while the rest of us work our asses flat.”

Lucas laughed. “Show me when that happens.”

Marla read the next line. Cat and Marla disagreed about how Janet should handle Lucas.

Marla said he had stage presence, which was rare in a drummer, too bad he had to sit at the back, because the lead singer ought to have a bag over his head, he was so ugly. Lucas was way out ahead of all of them, but he didn’t have a lick of ambition, “and that seems fine to you now, but give it ten years,” she often said.

Cat, who had given up all her acting ambitions and was going to community college in marketing, had a list as long as your arm of musicians who thought they were going to hit the jackpot, and of course never did. She thought Janet should get Lucas to go for his GED and then learn something like accounting or library science. She said, “He smiles, white people aren’t afraid of him — he should make the best of what he’s got.”