Performance Anxiety. Betsy Burke
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me. The girl was all wrong out there.
I caught the last bus home. I still had to prepare everything for the party. I was a nervous cook. It’s a fine art getting all your dishes to arrive at the finish line in the same moment, hot and crisped to perfection. So I counted on lots of cold things, hor d’oeuvres, and dishes I’d cooked the week before, stashed in the freezer and then shoved into the oven at the last minute.
I know what you’re saying. What a little housewife, eh? Well, what if it all worked out with Kurt? What if I ended up moving in? What if Kurt wanted to entertain all his world-famous friends at home? What was going to happen, for example, if he conducted a big New Year’s Eve bash at someplace like the Albert Hall, and then he invited the Three Tenors over to his house after?
Even if we’re just talking about a little snack, that’s a wicked quantity of pasta and paella there. I’ve never met a singer who didn’t care about food. When there isn’t something coming out of a singer’s mouth, there’s usually something going in.
I was hoping Kurt and I would do a lot of eating out, experiencing all of London’s best restaurants and bistros. And maybe I could get help in the house for some of the other big events like parties and receptions, because, on a large scale, I really was a nervous cook. He was bound to have a housekeeper, wasn’t he? Somebody as important and famous as him? And separated, too? There was sure to be extra help. Maybe an au pair or two?
Although, I’d have to be careful about au pairs, screen them, make sure they were always older, fatter and uglier than me. You hear so many stories about men dumping their wives for the eighteen-year-old foreign student. Not that Kurt was going to do that to me. Wasn’t his full sexual treatment, minus one point, proof of his overall fidelity in such matters?
Chapter 7
I was alone in the apartment in a state of pre-party alert. Caroline and the Sasquatch were out. I’d invited Kurt to come early, but now the afternoon was too far along to still be called early.
I reshuffled the pile of CDs. Nelly Furtado, Joss Stone, Ben Harper, Oasis, Cyndi Lauper, Simple Minds, Missy Elliott, Anggun, Lenny Kravitz, Aerosmith, The Calling, Fiona Apple, Stones, Shaggy, The Cure, Barry White’s Greatest Hits, and a bunch of rock and roll that was so old, you could almost smell the mould growing on it. Because I like those parties where the music reminds people of another time and they start acting out their old superegos, the ones they abandoned years ago.
I happened to know that Kurt had been a flat-out fan of Spandau Ballet, Pet Shop Boys, The Cure…those kinds of groups. Back in his dubious reckless days of clubbing and eyeliner. He was a good nine years older than me, after all.
I put some Oscar Peterson on the player and checked the food again. I just hoped it all tasted as good as it looked. Nerves had made my tongue go numb, so now everything tasted like soggy Kleenex to me.
As I was pouring myself an iced orange vodka, my favorite bottled shock absorber, the buzzer went.
I ran to answer. The voice in the speakerphone was Tina’s.
“C’mon up,” I said.
Tina was with her new conquest, Collin.
Collin was dressed from head to toe in black leather and carried two motorcycle helmets. He was a lighting technician at the theater and a man of few words. “Life’s a bitch and then you die” pretty much summed it up for him. Tina wasn’t interested in a lot of words from a man. The man of her dreams was a cowboy, a drinker and a wanderer. Collin came as close as possible to a physical copy of Tina’s father, except that his horse was a motorbike. You could say that Tina had a little obsession.
One day, when we were still in our third year at university, Tina stopped me in the hallway. I was on my way to the obligatory History of Musical Instruments, which, despite its potential, had turned into History of the Big Yawn for me.
“What other classes do you have today?” she asked.
“Library Skills 101,” I replied.
“Skip it,” she said.
“I’ve put if off for three years. They won’t let me graduate if I don’t pass it.”
“Borrow the notes. You’ve got to come with me.”
“Where?”
“To Victoria.”
“Are you crazy? It’s at least a ferry ride. It’s money. And why Victoria?”
“I’ve hitched us a ride one way. I’ll pay your part. We’ll hitch another to get back. We gotta hurry though. Wayne, this guy in my Women’s Studies class has got a truck. He’s going back to Victoria for the weekend.”
“Guys usually avoid those courses. What’s he doing in Women’s Studies,” I asked.
“Studying the women.” Tina smirked. “He’s not as stupid as he looks.”
Tina didn’t waste a lot of time, so there had to be a good reason for her wanting to go to Victoria. She looked terrible that day so I figured it was serious. Her long dark hair was stringy and her face looked drawn and ash-colored.
So I agreed to go with her and we crammed into the front seat of the appointed truck at the appointed hour.
Wayne, Tina’s friend from Women’s Studies, appeared to be majoring in Babes and Foxes at university. He was definitely eye candy, with an Olympic athlete’s body, a profile that belonged on a Roman coin and a shock of sun-bleached curls you wanted to reach out and twirl with your fingers. I imagined a lot of women were also majoring in Wayne.
He asked, “So how’s life in the music department, by which I mean, any action? You girls getting G-spots attended to?”
I flashed Tina an irritated quizzical look and said, “Ouch. Forget about the prelims. Let’s get straight to business.” But she elbowed me to be quiet.
He went on, “I mean, are you getting it often in that department, see, ’cause I was thinking, if they were short on dudes there, of changing my major. I’m running out of inspiration in Twentieth-Century Canadian Literature.”
Tina said to the windshield in a loud amused voice, “He’s worked his way through the whole faculty. Students and lecturers.”
“Hey. Only the babes, eh? Dudes aren’t my territory,” added Wayne quickly.
Tina turned to him and said, “You wouldn’t know what to do with the women in music, Wayne.”
“No?” He had an expression of disbelief.
“Music’s bigger than any man, Wayne. And they wouldn’t let you in anyway. Kazoo does not exactly qualify as an instrument.”
“Harmonica?” he said hopefully.
“Don’t think so,” said Tina.
Wayne pried and prodded a little longer, trying to get the biological profile on all the flora and fauna of the music department.
“Flautists,” he spouted enthusiastically. “All that embrasure could come in very handy.”
But Tina and I acted like a couple of brick walls and he eventually gave up.
Once we’d boarded the ferry, Wayne went off to check out the babes and foxes on deck while Tina and I sat at a table inside and sipped cappuccinos. First we griped for a while about our singing teachers and then, for the longest time, we just sat in silence.
I tried to break into Tina’s mood. “Wayne’s really, really amazing looking,” I said, “but he’s…”
“He’s gorgeous and he’s a total hoser,” said Tina, bored.
I watched the wild April ocean fracture into sapphire shards with each new gust of wind, and said, “Maybe a pod of whales will swim by and flick their tails for us.”
“Hmm,” said