Authors: Kate Rockland
Her profession was unknown, and they’d never really gotten an actual look at her face after several years of cohabitation. Only brief flashes of light green eyes, nearly yellow like a cat’s. Her hair was down to her waist and Wonder-Woman black, with a blue sheen. Her skin was a translucent white and she spent most of her days in her room (like a vampire!) playing the kind of weird music with bells sounding and cymbals pinging one heard in a spa. Billy had a theory she was a dominatrix, as she seemed to work only at night, and often wore thigh-high patent-leather boots. She’d once left a book out on the living room table, and Billy and Alexis had pounced on it. The title?
Wicca Today: 15 Curses for the Modern Witch
. Billy had emitted a little scream and dropped it on the floor like a hot pan. Later, Alexis saw him carefully place it back on the table, precisely as it had been left. His hand had been shaking.
This morning was only the second or third time they’d heard her speak. Billy shrank closer to Alexis. Vanya had a mix of accents; one couldn’t be sure if she was Irish, Scottish, or Transylvanian.
“Just a little disagreement,” Alexis said. “Sorry we woke you up.”
Billy made a small choking sound. Alexis
never
apologized. “Being hot and skinny means never having to say you’re sorry,” she often said.
Vanya retreated back into her room (Alexis could swear she saw her feet not actually touch the floor), its walls painted such a dark purple it was cavelike, the reflection of a mirror on the ceiling casting a silver light onto the crack under her door. Only, her door didn’t shut, not really. It seemed to
suck
closed, like a force field swirled around her space and it was retreating back into itself.
Billy wiped his forehead with the gold sleeve of his Louis Vuitton pajamas. “She scares me,” he said. Then, as he turned to Alexis, they both started giggling uncontrollably, holding their sides and then each other. Billy was the only man Alexis felt comfortable with touching her regularly. She occasionally slept with men (some married, some not) in five-star hotel rooms, but if they called her or tried to contact her afterward she always told them to lose her number.
She and Billy were so close it was as though they were married. Dating someone seriously would feel like an intrusion on their friendship; whoever it was would be an outsider. He wouldn’t get their seven-year buildup of jokes and familiarity. They’d both dated but never seriously. Most people who found out about how close they were usually recognized their friendship for what it was: needy and strange. They vacationed together, applied self-tanner to each other’s bodies, and even took baths in their humongous claw-foot bathtub the rich old lady who owned the apartment before them left when she died, their feet hanging over the tub’s lip on either end.
Billy handled the recruitment of advertisers for
Skinny Chick,
serving drinks to people in the entertainment industry who wanted to promote their new movie or album on the blog. “I’ll go and get my gay,” Alexis would say, when advertisers called wanting to speak to someone about the site. Billy worked three jobs: he helped run
Skinny Chick,
bartended, and worked as a fashion consultant for
Vogue
. He styled the models for photo shoots, lugging items from his own collection (he had a twenty-seven-inch waist, and sometimes the models wore his clothes unawares), or he’d borrow a credit card from
Vogue
and go shopping for the shoot, with specific outfits in mind. Billy was a genius when it came to dressing women, and even though freelance budgets at many magazines were dwindling, they always found the dough to hire him. Before she met Billy, Alexis dressed provocatively, wearing very short dresses and thigh-high boots. She cringed now, remembering. Her mother had never really helped steer her in any direction with fashion; Bunny wore tennis skirts and tops around the house, which was ironic because she hadn’t picked up a racquet since she peered down the neck of a bottle of vodka years ago and never looked back up. Billy helped give Alexis a more streamlined, polished, adult look. She still was allowed the occasional short dress, but the label had to be Stella McCartney, not Bebe.
Though Alexis founded
Skinny Chick,
Billy came across as much more warm in business meetings and over the phone. Clients were scared of Alexis. Men and women alike. She weighed one hundred pounds soaking wet. She wore five-inch heels, everywhere she went, even to the supermarket. Her blond hair was dyed so heavily it was nearly white, and pulled into such a short bob it gave her young face a severe look. Once, when she looked into the carriage of a neighbor’s new infant, the baby had instantly scrunched up its soft face and burst into tears, the mother embarrassed and shushing it.
But now Billy was ready to go back to sleep. Or at least to bed. “I was having the strangest dream,” he told Alexis.
Alexis glared at him.
“I know, I know, you have to go work out,” he said, rolling his dark, beautiful eyes. “Just listen. So I’m nestled there between my two sailors, and I’m dreaming that I go on Craigslist, because you know how I have that obsession where I look at crap people are selling in our neighborhood?”
“Of course.”
“So I go on there, and lo and behold, there is my signed poster of Liza Minnelli from
Flora the Red Menace,
you know, the one I waited for three hours in January outside the auction in Midtown and caught a deadly strain of pneumonia to get?”
He’d caught a cold, and it had been a mild one.
“On sale for fifty dollars.
My
Liza poster!”
“You are
such
a gay stereotype,” Alexis said drolly.
“I know, shut up. So! I keep scrolling down, and ooo, there’s a lovely TAG watch for a hundred bucks, and I look closer, notice the scuffing on the band…”
“Let me guess, it’s your watch,” Alexis said, rolling her eyes.
“Yes! Yes! All my shit is being sold online. It was like some crazy
Groundhog Day
situation.”
“Only you weren’t living the same day over and over again.”
“Maybe not exactly the same. But isn’t that weird? I’m
totally
calling Jasmine.”
Jasmine was Billy’s psychic, who charged seventy-five dollars an hour.
“I put a lock on your cell so it won’t dial her.”
“I’ll call from the house phone.”
“I shut it off. It cost too much, anyway.”
“Damn you, Alexis! You skinny, heartless bitch. Don’t I feed you diet pills when you go up a pound every Thanksgiving? And put grapes in the freezer and call it dessert? And pretend to be your husband when married guys you banged call the house? And for what? So you can come between me and the only woman I’ve ever loved?”
Alexis sighed and threw on her pink cashmere cardigan that hung on the back of the door. She tossed her keys in her purse and put her hand on her hip. “
I’m
the only woman you’ve ever loved.”
“Other than Nana Kay.” Nana Kay was Billy’s mother’s mother, who came over from Korea ten years ago. As both his parents disowned him because of his sexual orientation, Alexis and Billy both adored Nana Kay. Billy once lived with her for several years. She was four-foot-ten and had an apartment in an assisted living facility in the Bronx, where they visited her from time to time. Alexis loved her overstuffed apartment, the shelves in her living room crammed with books, which reminded her of Penny Oliver, a girl from grade school whose adult teeth grew in before her baby teeth fell out. Shameless, she’d open her mouth and grin widely for anyone who asked, looking like Jaws with double sets of teeth.
Nana Kay cooked traditional Korean food and they’d drink her homemade wine until deep into the night, playing old records and dancing. She still applied whore-red lipstick every morning, and at eighty-two, she was Alexis’s hero. Well, second hero. The other was MeMe Roth, of course.
“Right. Other than Nana Kay. And don’t you forget it. Now make me proud and go enjoy your man meat.”
Billy pretended to pant like a dog, which made them both laugh. She tried to stop laughing when she got to the elevator. Once, when she was five, her mother said it caused wrinkles, and she’d never forgotten the tip. Alexis thought about her parents and sighed. She’d never felt particularly close to either of them, and the last three years that had gone by with no communication hadn’t helped. Mark’s death had caused a rip in their family that could never be repaired. Bunny, who’d had a small drinking problem when he was alive, was now a certified drunk. Dad dealt with his grief by burying himself in work at his bustling, successful Greenwich law firm where he was a partner.
Dad had met Billy only once while briefly in New York for work. Alexis had called him, initiating the get-together. “The only time I have is if you come with me to a Giants game with clients,” he’d said. So she did, dragging Billy along for support. She sat there, while her father made cracks about her blog and asked when she was going to “get some damn sense and go back to the law.”
Billy, sensing her unease, had pointed to the field in front of them. Halftime was ending, and the team was trotting back onto the field in a blur of blue and white. “All those tight pants! It’s like we’re at the ballet,” he’d whispered, making her giggle.
Now, standing in her hallway, Alexis pressed the elevator button with one perfectly manicured finger and listened to the sounds of its cables rising up to meet her, like the building’s innards slowly waking the same time as the city. At the end of the hallway a large window showed the sun peeking over a few jagged buildings, which caused her to squint, so she dug in her purse and put on her Chanel sunglasses Billy had stolen from the time he’d dressed all the actresses on
As the World Turns
. They were white and very wide and slimmed her face, which was a perfect circle, and therefore always gave her grief. She’d inherited her father’s looks along with his stubbornness; Mark took after their mother, with their heart-shaped faces and easy dispositions. Having a circle for a face is cute when you’re a baby. But when the rest of you is slim and streamlined, it adds five pounds in photographs. At least it did in Alexis’s mind.
“I have a Christina Ricci face,” she would complain to Billy.
“I know, darling,” he’d say. “But your ass is so skinny, I don’t think you can lose another pound. I’d have to put you on ano watch.”
Her phone beeped again. She stepped onto the elevator and pressed a button to silence it. It was 5:10 in the morning. “I know, I know,” she muttered out loud in the silence of the hall. “I’m late. I should be at the gym by now.” She worked out at the very elite Soho Gym, which was co-owned by several celebrities. It cost $500 a month and she barely was able to pay her rent because of it, but her membership was absolutely essential. Her weight hardly ever altered more than a pound or two other than that scary week last year when she’d found herself weighing 110 and had to go on a quick liquid diet that had left her with terrible diarrhea (Billy joked they’d need to air out the apartment with large fans), but lately her personal trainer Sarah was helping sculpt her arms and give her already-flat stomach definition.
Walking along Sixth Avenue, Alexis kept up a constant stream of thoughts in her head. As a writer, she was a natural people-watcher. Unsurprisingly, she picked apart mainly women.
She’s fifteen pounds overweight, she shouldn’t be wearing horizontal stripes with those wide hips, she could use a good lip wax, what was that woman thinking wearing leggings with that ass, if you’re not pregnant don’t wear an Empire-waist dress, if I ever get that overweight please take me into the pasture and kindly put a bullet in my brain.
It was a habit she had, like some people don’t step on cracks or always turn right when lost. When women passed her on the street she instantly judged them. Height, weight, whether they were prettier than her, highlights real or fake, how many times they’d gone under the knife … It never failed to leave her with an anxious feeling, and she knew she’d feel better if she could only stop comparing herself to every New York woman, but it was a hard habit to break. It was just who she was.
Entering the gym, she waved to Carlos, who worked the front desk of her gym. He doubled as a yoga teacher, and he was always inviting her to his class, but Alexis knew yoga was for lazy people who didn’t want a real workout.
“Namaste,” he teased her as she swiped her card.
“Whatever,” she replied.
Alexis passed the room where she sometimes took spin class, then walked by the personal training room, currently occupied by the resident kickboxing expert, Leona. She was Hispanic and had long, curly black hair she put in two buns on the top of her head and a killer bod. Some gyms touted a mix of people trying to get into shape and those already in it; what Alexis liked about Soho Gym was that everyone was already gorgeous, like Leona. She didn’t have to do crunches on the mat next to any fat, sweaty slobs wearing T-shirts with the sleeves cut off, advertising mechanic shops. Soho Gym was a place where people wore makeup on the elliptical machines.
Alexis, who had worked out with Leona last winter when Sarah went on her honeymoon in Alaska, waved. In turn, she looked up from demonstrating jabs to a short, pale, fleshy banker-type guy on the punching bag and winked.
Alexis strode into the women’s locker room and stripped off her cardigan. Inside her specially-assigned locker was a brush. She ran it quickly through her hair, then slipped on a slim black workout headband. She went over to the scale and stripped off her clothing, then climbed on. It was chilly in the room, and she shivered. She congratulated herself inwardly: the needle wavered between ninety-nine and one hundred. She’d lost a pound, perhaps from all the stress of going on
Oprah
last month. She hadn’t been nervous onstage because she knew she was in the right with her message of health, that awful fat girl Shoshana was
completely
in the wrong, but she had been on edge in the weeks leading up to the show.