“Well—” He hesitated. “My schedule is pretty packed, but let me see what I can do.” As he spoke, he moved himself to a piano offstage and played the opening notes of “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” from
Showboat
. “Let me hear a few bars, sweetheart.”
After my first few notes, I noticed my voice was quivering so I closed my eyes and pretended I was alone in my car. I imagined this was what a bird must feel like gliding through the air, the thrill of falling, then soaring freely back to the sky. I swear I actually felt my hair blow back. I remember feeling like I could keep singing this song long after the music ended. But we never got that far.
The theatre was silent as Ollie stopped playing abruptly. “Okay, I’ve heard enough,” he said, standing to return to his rehearsal.
“That bad?” I masked my tears.
On cue, they all laughed again. “That bad?” Julie asked. “Are you joking? What’s Ollie supposed to teach you?”
“There’s plenty to teach,” added the harsh director’s voice. “Mona, you are gifted, please don’t misunderstand. You have one of the loveliest natural female voices I’ve ever heard, to be frank with you. With training, you’re going to be amazing.”
“Amazing?” I blushed with my voice.
“I think she already is amazing,” Julie said. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you have a great singing voice, Mona?”
“Um, no,” I said.
“Cold fucking world,” Ollie quipped.
I laughed. “No, it’s not that. I guess no one has ever, um, heard my voice before. Heard me sing, I mean. Just a few people, I guess.”
Ollie unceremoniously handed me his business card and told me that the only times he was available were Monday evenings. I paused to check my calendar. “That’ll work,” I said, noting that for the first time in my life I actually might have had conflicting plans.
Women say they want a sensitive guy. They also say they want a guy who’s honest about his feelings. News flash, ladies: You can’t have it both ways.
—The Dog House, May
I hated myself for circling the gym parking lot to check for Mike’s car, but I did. Twice. It seemed for the past few weeks, Mike and I were on entirely different workout schedules. I’d only seen him the two times he was visiting Vicki, and other than that, zero contact. He was, without question, a whore—a friend available to me only for a fee. What infuriated me was that I began to trust him. I started to believe that the conversations we had about his life and his rarely acknowledged feelings were genuine. I fumed, enraged at us both. At him for being smooth. And at me for thinking our friendship was solid enough to skate on.
It was like skating, too. It’s humiliating to admit that I was starting to feel that exhilarating freedom of speed skating with a partner, having him whip you around the curve fast enough to make your heart race. Still, you feel you’re safe because your gloved hand is tightly grasping his. But the reality is that just inches past most frozen parts of most ponds are thin areas where ice breaks and people fall in.
I despised Mike, which was a perfect frame of mind to be in for my boxing lesson. Changing in the locker room, I caught a peek at my reflection in the mirror. At first, I thought it was someone else and told myself that if I continued to work out, I could get in that good shape pretty soon. Then I noticed that she and I wore the same underwear and we both snapped toward each other at the exact same moment I smiled at myself, and I smiled back.
I walked to the exercise room where my teacher, Tio, was jabbing at bags as he waited for me. “Hey, girl.” He smiled. “Ready to kick some ass?”
“Born ready,” I lied. Or maybe I was born ready, but that readiness took a detour, only now rounding the corner back to me.
As I punched and ducked at the bag, Tio asked me if I was ready to start fighting real people instead of just punching the bag. “You’ve been getting pretty tough here, Mona. Don’t you think you should find out what you’re really made of? Unarmed combat is the ultimate test, girl.”
Sure, I could beat the crap out of a defenseless sack of sand, but another person—a person with her own set of fists and ability to duck—was another story. Continuing my jabs, I told Tio I’d had enough of getting my ass kicked to last a lifetime. “Why you think you’d be the one getting your ass kicked?” he asked. “Maybe it’ll be you knocking some teeth loose.” The thought of knocking someone’s teeth loose held no appeal. I did get a bit puffed at the thought that Tio might put his money on me in a fight, though. “It could happen. You’re a natural fighter, girl.” I laughed in the absence of anything to say. I punched a little harder, determined to maintain my fighter image with Tio. “Hey, you know who was asking about you?” he said, smiling.
Mike?!
“Oh, who?” I tried to sound casual, but silently, motionlessly shaking his collar shouting, “Who, who?! Tell me now!” It could only have been Mike because I didn’t know anyone else here but the people at the front desk who scan my membership card.
“That Dog guy,” Tio said.
A choir of angels sang Hallelujah. Really they did. It’s just no one but me heard them.
Casual, casual. Everything you say will get back to Mike.
“Oh, how’s he doing?”
Excellent. Inhale, exhale.
“He’s lookin’ fit. Asked if you were still boxing here. I told him you were my lunchtime gig every Monday and Thursday.”
“Lunchtime gig?!” I shouted. “My lesson is at two o’clock, Tio! That’s not lunchtime!”
“Settle, girl. It’s when I eat lunch. What’s your problem?”
“No problem.” I took it down a notch after catching my reflection, looking like something out of a Paxil commercial. “It’s just that you shouldn’t wait till so late to eat lunch. You could get, um, hungry.”
Tio scrunched his face, looking at me like the crazy white chick I was. He pointed at the punching bag, urging me to continue.
“Did he say anything else?”
“Who?” Tio asked.
Seriously, there must be a brain leak from all penises.
“Mike. Dog. Did he say anything else about me?”
“He said he doesn’t see much of you anymore and was wondering how you were doing.” So he asked my boxing teacher? If Mike was wondering how I was doing, why didn’t he pick up the phone and ask me? Why didn’t he send an e-mail? Why didn’t he ask his sister, who lived under my roof? What is wrong with this imbecile of a man? And more important, what was wrong with me for caring?!
“Whew, you really kickin’ ass now, girl,” Tio said as I continued punching. “Watch your face. Protect yourself,” he commanded. “You’re hitting good, but you keep leaving yourself wide open. Put your hands up, girl. Hands up.”
Driving home, I dialed Mike’s number, but hung up after the third ring. What was I going to say to him anyway? I dialed Adam’s office and the honker put me through to him right away.
“Hello there, Mona,” Adam said with a formal friendliness we hadn’t gotten past. And I’m not just talking about our conversations either. We had been dating ten weeks with absolutely no sign of advancing our relationship to a sexual one. I can’t say I was overwhelmingly drawn to him physically, but it was so damned insulting to be respectfully pecked on the cheek after each of our dates. I invited him in for coffee on Saturday night. He said he never drank caffeine after seven. I told him I had decaf, but he said he had an early meeting with Jesus. Yes, Adam Ziegler was born Jewish but was baptized three years ago after he was born again.
Of course, I found out about his newfound relationship with the Lord at the worst possible time. On Saturday night, I idiotically followed one of Mike’s last ridiculous pieces of advice and tried to sexually titillate Adam by giving him the impression that I once had a relationship with a woman. Melanie was actually a Venus Swimwear model trying to break into acting, and was hired to play Violet, the Bedford Falls flirt who would’ve become a bar brawling tart if George Bailey had never been born.
Far more subtle than toxic Tim, Melanie slinked into the restaurant where Adam and I were having dinner, and illuminated our table with her astounding sex appeal. She should’ve had film noir damsel entrance music. Melanie alluded to our relationship, and for a moment, I wished someone this good-looking—male or female—was ever interested in me.
“She broke my heart, you know?” Melanie told Adam. “She’s ruined me for all other women.” All male heads turned toward our table with such speed, I actually heard a swish. “I’ll let you enjoy your dinner, Mona, but I want you to know my life hasn’t been the same without you.”
In her clingy red silk dress, Melanie wished me well with a luscious pout and warned Adam he’d better take good care of me. As she strutted away, her body was a visual smorgasbord—her flowing platinum hair, her muscular tan back, her perfect scoops of ass cheeks, larger models of her perfectly scooped breasts. Everyone within a six-table radius was sexually charged. Men were ordering oysters. Women were lustily looking at their companions, changing their dinner orders to T-bone steak. The front window of the restaurant fogged up. If my chair had an armrest, I would’ve humped it. Everyone seemed infused with hormones. Everyone, that is, except Adam, who said that I should be deeply ashamed of my past.
“Mona, I’ve grown very attached to you, but clearly the person you are today is not who you were years ago,” he said, like Ward Cleaver reprimanding Beaver. “Can you assure me that the lesbians and drug addicts are youthful indiscretions?” I nodded my head, wondering who, other than Adam Ziegler and Congressman Henry Hyde, used the term “youthful indiscretion.”
“Okeydokey. I can live with that. After all, if I were perfect, I would’ve never come to know Jesus. Everything happens for a reason. That’s what I believe.”
At first I laughed, thinking he must be kidding. I realized he wasn’t joking about four minutes into his excruciatingly detailed account of how Jesus paid him a personal visit and served as his spiritual obstetrician, delivering him to the world of Christianity.
“Hello, Adam.” I spoke loudly into my car phone. “I just got out of boxing class and wanted to say hello, and see how you’re doing.”
“Doing well, but I’m going to have to get back to you in a few, okay? Is this an emergency? Can it wait?”
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll be home in a few minutes.” I hung up wondering why I was still even in this relationship. The few times I started to break up with him, I panicked at the thought that he was my last chance for a stable, happy married life. As long as he was still interested in me, I was immobilized by the fear that Adam was as good as it got, and that if I gave him up now, I’d only regret it.
As I turned onto Alameda Avenue, I saw the familiar sight of navy guys waving certain cars in to the base. They scanned my car, then moved on to the next.
I returned to what I thought was an empty home, but saw that Vicki had left fabric swatches and paint samples sitting beside printouts from movie Web sites. In Vicki’s handwriting, notes about Tara blocked entire pages with notes along the margins and asterisks on every page. At the bottom of each page, Vicki listed upcoming art auctions, estate sales, and art dealers.
She breezed by in a pair of red go-go boots and a knapsack, dashing madly out the door, saying she was late for work. “If I’m late one more time, I’m seriously fired,” said my blur of a roommate.
“Who’s at a strip joint at quarter to four on a Monday?” I asked her exiting body.
“Guys with dicks.” The door slammed.
The answering machine taunted me with no messages, so I played the old ones to fill the silence. I sat at the piano, and sounded out a few notes. I stared at the silent phone.
Fine, don’t call. I don’t give a rat’s ass.
“Dog was asking about you.” I heard Tio’s voice
“I told him you were my lunchtime gig.”
I picked up the phone and dialed without pausing to remember the number.
“Talk to me,” Mike said casually. How could he be so happy-go-lucky when I missed him so desperately? I hung up the phone, which rang just seconds after I placed the receiver back in its cradle.
“Mona?” he said. “Why’d you hang up on me?”
Fucking caller ID!
“Oh, hey Dog. Sorry ‘bout that. There was someone at the door so I had to hang up.”
“Who was it?” Mike asked. I wasn’t sure if he was just making conversation or trying to catch me in a lie.
“The postman,” I said.
“The postman rings the doorbell?”
“Sometimes twice,” I said. By the lack of acknowledgment, I could tell he didn’t get the reference.
Dumb shit.
“So what’d’ya call for?”
“Oh, nothing. I was just at the gym today and Tio said you were asking about me so I figured I’d give you a buzz and catch up. It’s been awhile. What’s going on with you?”
He hesitated, embarrassed that Tio had turned him in, I suppose. “Not too much. You know, same shit, different day.”
Thank you, Cliché Man.
“So how’s it going with your boy?” Mike asked. “What’s his name, Aaron?”
Just hearing the sound of Mike’s voice made me want to cry. Why hadn’t he called me? Why didn’t he care that we were no longer friends? I’ll bet if I really was Claudia Schiffer he would’ve been back at my doorstep the next day—bullshit Dog Rules be damned.
“Adam. His name is Adam,” I said through clenched teeth. “Mike, can you give me an honest answer to a question?”
“Shoot.”
“Have you ever really been in love with a woman?” I asked. “Never mind, never mind. We don’t have to talk about this kind of stuff now that I’m not paying you. It’s just that I’m not really sure it’s Adam I’m in love with, or the idea of Adam. Or someone like Adam. Or someone like who I thought Adam was. By the way, he’s a born-again Christian and was totally wigged out by the whole hot-lesbian-in-my past thing.”
Mike laughed and I saw him sitting back into the blue chair I imagined he had. “A born-again Christian who goes to Ozzfest?”
“I know, bizarre.” I laughed. “It’s just that every time I try to break up with him, I get this anxiety like he’s my last chance. Is that crazy?”
Tell me it is crazy and that you are my last chance. Tell me that the only time you’ve ever really known love was with me.