The Home For Wayward Ladies (14 page)

The way he slams the door makes my stomach churn with regret. I’ve come to realize that the more people give you, the more you need to take in order to sustain. Danny is starting to get the impression that he may never be enough. The truth of the matter is- he’s already everything. But when you get accustomed to someone handing you life on a platter, sometimes you forget to say ‘thanks’ to the person holding the tray.

As soon as he is gone, I see a white card tucked in among the flowers. If only I had seen it without his prompting. Then I could have made an appropriate fuss. 

Baboo:

I couldn’t think of a more perfect occasion to tell you for the first time that I love you. You’re going to be better than fabulous tonight. In fact, I think you’ll be Divine.

Yours.

This card marks the first time since our union that I don’t resent that I’m not allowed to fuck other men. If he’ll still have me, I will resign myself to a lifetime of nothing but him. I know I’ll never do any better. Not to give the impression that I’m settling— that’s definitely not the case. I will never do any better than Danny Olsen because there is no better than Danny Olsen. Such a man does not exist.

I want to run from my dressing room and chase him down on the street. I want to throw my arms around him and start planning a lifetime of dreams come true. But all of that will have to wait. I have a show to do. And the love of my life is right: in attendance this evening will be the most important somebody I will ever know. And, for him, I’ll be Divine.

16

ELI

“Early is on time. On time is late. Late is unacceptable.” When I tucked that wisdom under my cap many years ago, I assumed it to be universally understood. Hunter Collier, who is the product of many years of cotillion, must have never gotten the word. That self-important so-and-so is already forty-five minutes late coming home and I am doing all that’s in my power to suppress a knife attack when he walks in. I would sooner have us late to tea with Maya Angelou than feel the wrath incurred by Nick if we’re a second late to the opening night of his show.

To be honest, though, I’m not sure why I really give a shit. I’ve only seen Nick in passing for the past several weeks. The way he’s been treating me, I doubt he’d piss in my face if it was melting. There’s no time for the little people when you’re always on your way to rehearsal or off to your boyfriends’s for the night or when you’re closing Hunter’s door in my face for some more exclusively private time. I am no more personally familiar with the homo appearing on that stage tonight than I am with the woman he aims to impersonate. Even his rent check for March was one step removed. I found it stuffed in an envelope and stuck with a magnet to the fridge. When I peeled it open, it was abundantly clear why he was ashamed to hand it to me in person; it had been cut from the bank of Danny Olsen.

I look at my watch as if it were a magic mirror. Peering at the ticking hands, it shows me Hunter’s inconsiderate visage. I think that people who consistently run late are assholes, and selfish ones at that. As loveable as he may be, Hunter is no exception to the rule. Life is too precious to suffer the indecency of those who act like time is a theory that will someday be disproved. For fucks’ sake, even God was on a schedule. And on the seventh day, He rested because He hadn’t spent days five and six not ready to leave the house because His hair wasn’t camera ready.

“For all the fucking days for you to be late,” I yell at the front door. Meanwhile, my heart is beating, “
Please be okay. Please be okay.”
Worrying about him gives me indigestion so bad I could shit fire. A Lady like him can never be too safe in a city like this. What if he was kidnapped? He looks young enough that someone could have thrown him in burlap sack and taken him to mine coal.

I pace around the coffee table. The home decor magazines showcase crusted rings from where ice cubes had melted in lemonade. It’s a cruel reminder that we still can’t afford air conditioning. Silly, but we keep blowing all our money on trying not to die. Although I cannot say I’m starving. Quite the contrary, my jeans are suctioned to my thighs where the winter weight still blossoms come spring.

The stillness of the humid air makes me feel faint. I decide not to follow through on complete collapse when I get a whiff of the couch. That floral print’s not fooling anyone; it smells fetid, like someone’s ass had been leaking. I pry the window open instead. The breeze carries the smell of the rotting dumpster below. Decaying puddles of garbage water pool in the alley. I marvel at how something so revolting can be transformed as the setting sun uses them to reflect orange streaks of light across my living room.

A framed photo of the three of us glows on a shelf like it intends to be seen. It’s from the day we moved in. I made our super, Fernando, take it on my phone after he put our name on the front buzzer. It seemed like an occasion worthy of commemorating. What has been only months looks like it was years ago. I can still see the future in our eyes.

“People change.” I say, running my index finger across the image of Hunter’s face.

And then I hear his key in the door. I practically throw the frame across the room as I trundle back from memory lane. He’s finally fucking home. I feel self-conscious so I suck in my stomach and pose in a twist to give the illusion of a waist. I don’t know why I bother; Hunter doesn’t even look up from the floor when he walks past.

“Don’t be mad I’m late, just be happy that I’m home.”

“Good to see you too,” I reply. “Where the fuck have you been?”

He throws his keys next to the bowl by the door and moseys to the kitchen. I watch in horror as he drinks milk directly from the carton. Sure, it looks sexy, at least until he belches hard enough for me to smell his colon across the room. It’s like
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
with him lately. Hunter used to be polite to a fault; he’d apologize to you if you stepped on his toe. But, “People change.”

I restrain myself from wagging fingers like a windmill, but his general disregard for everything makes them circle at full flap. “We are leaving this apartment in five minutes whether you are ready or not. If you make me late to this show, it will be your name on my lips when Nick sharpens the guillotine.”  

“Cool your jets,” he says, closing the refrigerator door.  “Danny said he’d save us seats. We can be fashionably late. Nick’s fellow Ladies deserve to make an entrance.”

“I don’t want to make an entrance,” I hiss. “I want to blend in like wallpaper while I watch Nick Applebaum pretend to be Bette Midler so, when it’s over, we can all get on with the rest of our fucking lives.” My nose wrinkles from the fumes when Hunter walks by. “Hurry up and wash yourself with a rag in the sink. You smell like a burnt asshole stuffed with rusty pennies.” I follow him to the bathroom so I can keep nagging. “Are you going to tell me why the hell you’re so late?”

“I don’t want to tell you; it’s not worth the fuss. Okay, since you insisted- I had a meeting about a choreography gig.”

“Hunter! That’s amazing. How did it go?”

“I didn’t want to bring it up until I was sure I didn’t get the job. Well, I’m sure I didn’t get the job and now you’re all up to speed.” He runs the sink and waits for the water to get warm.

“That’s impossible. How could they not love you?”

“Because it was for sub-Saharan African dance troupe. They weren’t looking for someone who does jazz hands and maxi fords. Needless to say, they didn’t want little old me.”  

He peels the shirt from his body like it’s a rag unfit to touch his skin. With a toss, it falls in a heap upon the bathroom floor. He didn’t even aim for the hamper. I try to give him the respect of looking away, but his perfectly hairy chest is too tempting. His body deserves to be admired like meat in a butcher’s window. I know he knows I’m watching. I can tell by the way he flexes his arms as he mattes his underarm with soap. I didn’t know it was possible to look so rugged while applying Britney Spears’ perfume.  

“You look good,” he says in my direction. “I can tell you’ve lost weight.”

“Hunter, please. If I gain another ounce, I can moonlight as a stuffed moose above the entrance at a VFW Hall.”

He rolls his eyes as he sweeps past. When I make it to his door, he’s already pulling a fresh pair of underwear over the crack of his ass. They are peach in color and, wearing them, he looks appropriately juicy. I can tell he wants me to notice so I don’t give him the satisfaction. I take a seat on the foot of his unmade bed, clearing away piles of dirty clothes in order to do so.

Over the past few months, Hunter’s room has metamorphosed from clean to calamitous. Empty cereal bowls with congealed milk sit on top of his dresser, their spoons long pasted in place. Nothing is picked up or put away. The trashcan under his desk is overflowing. In all, I’m surprised he’s not mortified. I feel like I need one of those radioactive suits those guys wear when they steal ET. Hunter seems right at home. He walks about his wasteland with the confidence of a lion in a zebra cage. Something in him has changed. Whatever it is, it’s impossible to determine whether it’s for the better.

17

HUNTER

I watch Eli sitting on the corner of my bed while I get dressed to paint the town. It’s important to me that he still has the shameful notion to peer my way after all these years, to assure me that I am still worth peering at. “Which shirt do you prefer?” I ask, shaking two button-downs in his face, one black, one blue. He does not look at either as he points to whichever is on his left.

The grimace on his face is more sour than usual, which, until now, I had deemed unimaginable. Certainly, as I anticipated, he studies my fuzzy torso as it disappears behind the buttons, first concealing my abs, then treasure trail, and, finally, my perfectly proportioned nipples. Still, he seems distracted by the disheveled state of my bedroom. His revulsion, however, matters not to me. My newfound acceptance of all that is unclean is a badge of honor. I choose to wear it as such.

What Mr. Know-it-All does not know about my newfound disregard for all things neat and tidy is that it came at quite a cost. It all started when darling Nick helped launch a campaign against my OCD. He came up with the idea of “exposure therapy” one afternoon while we were watching some tawdry chat show. Their guest was seeking help for her lifelong fear of—  you’ll never believe this —hotdogs. Well, at first, I didn’t think that lady could be for real. But, sure enough, when the host brought out a Ballpark Frank, the sight of it was enough for her to claw at her eyes like a falcon. They actually had to restrain her, which was no easy task; she was a rather large beast and, although it was abundantly clear that she did not partake of hotdogs, her robust figure told tale that she had nothing against hamburgers and fries.

After they dragged the woman offstage, they held a hot dog under her nose. She looked at the camera like she was going to drown her children in a lake. When she was finally brave enough to take a whiff, they increased the exposure by placing a hot dog in her bare hands. She didn’t hyperventilate, so they told her to take a bite. Somehow she managed to keep it down. Well, sure as shucks, by the end of that episode, she was sitting at a barbecue in own her backyard slugging back wieners like she was in a contest on Coney Island. 

We were astonished. Nick was so inspired that he put down the bong and switched off the TV. “If that hot dog nonsense is good enough for that fat lady with the bad perm, then it’s certainly good enough for you. I hereby declare an official meeting of ‘Mess Doesn’t Matter.’ Go wait in your room and close the door.”

Following orders, I nervously sat on my bed as I heard him marching through the apartment on a tear. I hadn’t the foggiest what he was up to. Prior to that, our sessions had been somewhat sedentary. All we ever seemed to do was get stoned and talk in circles about the root of my symptoms, which would inevitably turn into a discussion as to whether or not Toucan Sam was into rimming (which I argued was impossible; there is no way that stubby tongue could reach beyond the boundary of his honking rainbow beak). But this time, when Nick threw open my bedroom door, he looked at me like this might be his very last chance to make me normal. Nothing could have prepared me for what he was about to do.

He was carrying the wastebasket from our bathroom. It was overflowing with stiff tissues, used rubbers (which were white on one side and brown on the other), and dental floss that someone’s gums had stained with blood. “You’re going to sift through this trash like it’s a box of Cracker Jacks and you’ve got to find the toy.”