What You See in the Dark - Manuel Munoz [70]
The pleasure she took in the magazines, she knew, was nothing but escape, yet maybe for the first time, sitting in the armchair of her living room, flipping through the pages of a Photoplay, Arlene knew what the girls of the café might be dreaming about, why they were moved by picture after picture of movie stars posed with one leg pivoted forward, jewels haloed with gleam. All of this taking place just over the Grapevine, another way to live altogether, the dust giving way to red carpet and camera flash and expensive champagne. Sometimes, in the pictures of the much younger starlets, she could almost see vague semblances of the café girls, similarities so sharp that Arlene felt she, too, could imagine their regret over living in Bakersfield.
The local paper, carrying word of her own real world, appeared on her porch every day and remained there, curled up with its rubber band, yellowing after a few days of going un-collected. She knew what the paper said. She had a life much more regrettable than the café girls did. She stuck to the magazines: perfectly useless information, but a needed distraction from the local news, the chatter that went on in the café as she ran plates under hot water. What ran in the newspaper was not rumor anymore as the days went on. Truth was confirmed. It was true that the girl had no family in town and that there was no one to claim her. It was true that Dan had fled and no trace of him had been found. It was true that he had beaten the girl to death in the dark stairwell leading to her apartment above the bowling alley. It was true that a Mexican was deported, though everyone knew he had had no involvement in the death whatsoever.
Other things were true as well: Arlene did not know where Dan had gone, though sometimes she felt as if the town didn’t believe her. It was true that the girl was the daughter of a woman who used to work in the café years ago, around the time of the earthquake in 1952, but so much time had passed that people couldn’t even remember where that woman had gone.
Arlene knew what was in the local paper better than anyone else did, yet her eyes never left the glossy movie magazines, seeing the same pictures, the same stars, over and over, as she leafed through the pages day after day. Would the news about Dan ever go away? Would the feeling of being stared at in the café’s serving area ever lessen, the silent accusation? At home, she would pause and put down the movie magazine, close her eyes. But there was no wishing away what she had to face.
“You’re faster than the young girls,” the new shift manager had said, almost two months after Arlene had taken to volunteering to do anything that would keep her in the kitchen. “I need you back out front.” The shift manager was in his late twenties, but respectful of her. Without prompting, he called her Arlene and not Mrs. Watson. Arlene liked this about him, as if he wanted to let her know that he didn’t think of her as anyone’s mother.
His voice was fraught with his own need for help, but she could still detect the kindness underneath it. “Those girls,” he said, “are too slow to handle anything all by themselves.”
At first, put back full-time at the front of the café, Arlene felt on display,