The Duplex

by Lucky Stevens

  Now Barbara and I had just gotten together with the boys, the night before, for hamburgers and an impromptu walk around the lake at Echo Park. And sure, we all saw each other pretty frequently, though never two nights in a row. But when Jerry phoned, he had said it was important. At first I thought it had something to do with his boss, the one that we all found out, just last night, had killed himself. So sad. But Jerry assured me that it was very good news, and that I shouldn’t worry. He seemed excited, and I guess he couldn’t wait to see us all.

  So we all gathered near the Ferndell side of Griffith Park, the next day, for the big news. On my suggestion, Barbara and I decided to pack a picnic lunch. The boys are always so nice and always pay for everything whenever they “take us out”, so it was the least we could do.

  “Where is Cliff?” asked Barbara. She and I sat down on the blanket we had laid out.

  “It’s alright. He told me he’d be a little late,” said Jerry.

  Not that it was a huge deal, but his absence hit me for some reason. Jerry calls Cliff, the “glue” of the group, and it gave me this acute sense of anticipation about whether or not it would prove to be true right now without him.

  Barbara is never one to mince words, and when there’s news, she likes to hear about it right away. I think the situation was making her anxious, and she obviously wanted to get right to it. “So, what is this news?” She glanced around like she was catching herself in her impatience. “Or maybe we ought to wait for Cliff?”

  “Cliff already knows about it,” said Jerry. He took a quick look at the scenery and tossed his cigarette. There were a few other people in this section of the park, but most were on their way to the trails or set up with their own picnics far from us.

  “Okay, I’m going to tell you girls something, and I hope you’ll keep an open mind. Alright, do you remember the first night we all went out together? Well, something happened that night that is sort of representative of my idea. When the evening was almost over, remember how we got into the car leaving Ciro’s? Barbara and me in the back and Dot and Cliff up front?”

  “Yes?” Barbara and I answered.

  “Well, when the trip was over, it was the two boys in the front and you two girls in the back. It was like a magic trick when you think about it.”

  Barbara looked at me, and I could tell she was trying to hold back whatever she was thinking. She bit her lip a little and raised her eyebrows. Magic trick? Okay, we’ll keep listening quietly.

  “Not really magic, girls. But the point is, we entered the car one way and changed things around once we were on the inside, and no one could possibly know what we did. Not really, I mean. And that’s what my idea is, only we do it with a house. Actually, a duplex. The four of us. We rent a duplex. Both sides. And to the outside world we’re two married couples who happen to live next door to each other. We go in boy-girl, Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public, do the old switcheroo, do our thing, live our lives, and when we come out—out each respective front door—to the world, we’re Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public again. It’s the perfect cover.”

  Clarifying questions welled up in Barbara right away—I felt it. Oh, I had questions, too, of course. But I liked the idea immediately. Sure there were details to be worked out, but big picture-wise, I was intrigued and excited right away. I remember my heart started beating, and I felt my face get that tingly, blood-drained feeling. This was doing something, and I was onboard. The details would come.

  “It is very interesting,” said Barbara. “Very interesting. How exactly did you come up with this idea, Jerry? Was it just the whole seat switching thing in the car?”

  “That was the first part of the puzzle. I think I stored that idea in the back of my head, and then it all came together last night at Echo Park Lake after you two left. Cliff was talking to me about something; I forget what, and I was just tuning him out like when the radio’s playing your favorite song, and you’re not even aware it’s on. Anyway, as he was talking, I was looking across the street, and I noticed two couples getting into a car, a man and a woman in the backseat and a man and a woman in the front seat. Then I noticed a little hotel, and it all hit me. I started daydreaming about the four of us taking a trip. What would be the arrangement? We’d probably stay in a hotel somewhere, right? Pretend to be two married couples so we could get rooms. But then what? We’d be boy-girl, boy-girl. Make for pretty lonely nights, I’d say. Then those doors they put in between hotel suites for families and such popped in my mind. We just open that door, make our switch for the night, and the next day we each walk out of our original rooms just like we walked in—man and wife and man and wife.”

  I grinned. “And then we’d check out of that hotel, no one the wiser, get back in our car, boy-girl, boy-girl, of course, and hit the road. And then switch again in the car.” Jerry beamed at my comment and released a happy little chuckle.

  “Interesting,” said Barbara. “But duplexes do not have doorways between houses. What do we do? Make our switches in the backyard? Cut a hole in the wall?”

  “Exactly. Uh, the second one. We install a door between the houses. When we move out one day, we put everything back the way it was. Or buy the damn thing eventually.”

  I felt like I was part of the French Resistance during the war.

  We were all quiet for a moment. Jerry and I didn’t want to stare at Barbara, but it quickly became obvious that she was the one with reservations.

  “I don’t know,” she finally said. “Wouldn’t it kind of feel like we were hiding from the world? Not being true to ourselves in a way?”

  “You mean like when we go out on dates?” said Jerry.

  Barbara smiled. “I guess I walked into that one.”

  She looked at me for the first time since we started our discussion. I shrugged with an expression that said, Why not?

  She continued looking at me for a moment and then said to Jerry, “So, is Cliff on board with all this?”

  “He wasn’t as excited about it as I thought he’d be, to tell you the truth. I don’t think he’s much of a joiner. And I think mobs make him nervous. Even a little mob of four. But I think he’ll come around.”

  “He was probably just mad that it was not his idea,” Barbara said with a good-natured smirk. Jerry and I smiled along with her.

  “Well what about you? What’s your hesitancy about?” asked Jerry.

  Barbara shrugged. “I am a lawyer. I like to consider life-altering decisions carefully.”

  “I’m a lawyer, too,” said Jerry.

  “Yes, but I am a good one.”

  Jerry chuckled. I could tell he was genuinely happy at that moment, and it was good to see.

  Barbara continued asking questions and hashing out the details with Jerry. But me, I was sold. Jerry’s idea had hit me hard. It was the perfect cover. I was going to get to live with Barbara, be a part of society on our terms, all while escaping the scrutiny and pressure of living with my Mother. To me this was the answer to everything.

  Jerry Ripley

  Cliff never did show up that day over at Ferndell when I told the girls about my idea for the duplex. The way he put it was that he had been piling up a few Zs and had overslept. It’s alright. The poor guy works hard, and I guess he was just tired. But anyway, he did say that if I found the duplex, he was pretty much in. That—finding a duplex, I mean—was actually going to prove harder than I had originally thought.

  Barbara. Well, Barbara thinks like a lawyer. She’s been trained to look at all issues carefully and from every angle, and I think that’s how she approached my idea. If I was ever going to be caught in a hotel fire, I think Barbara is certainly one person I would like to have by my side. When it comes to the important stuff, she is cool and methodical. So, when it finally became clear that she was on board with the duplex, not only was I happy about her being a part of all this, in and of itself, I was equally pleased because
her stamp of approval, to me, meant that it was a pretty good idea—not full of holes.

  As for me, overall, I was excited about the whole project, but also very nervous. Being gay is hard enough, but to be involved in this way, well, I guess it was just taking things farther than I ever dreamed possible. Especially since I was kind of the ringleader, a role I was not really used to. I guess I just took it all one thing at a time, but the closer to reality it all got, the more anxious I got. A few times I even felt like calling it all off. But the fact that it was my idea forced me to stick with it. Whether that was good or not, I wasn’t really sure. And Barbara’s not the only lawyer in our little group. It had recently hit me that what we we’re doing here could technically be seen as a conspiracy to commit a crime. And I was the one who had gotten everyone involved.

  Anyway, let me change the subject to Dot. What a wonderful girl. No one showed more enthusiasm for the duplex idea than she did, and that made me feel really good. Of course, I think she was driven by other factors besides what she saw as an interesting idea. She was in love with Barbara and really wanted to live with her. And at the same time, she did not want to live at home anymore. I think she started to believe that she needed to break away from her mother at some point, and that this was the perfect opportunity.

  So, it came as no surprise to me that it was Dot who finally found the duplex that would work for us. We were all keeping our eyes open for one, but it was Dot and me who seemed to be the most actively looking parties. I personally had looked alone, as well as with the other three, and found it harder than I had thought it would be. There are only so many duplexes in Los Angeles to begin with. But even harder than that is the fact that most people who do own a duplex live on one side and rent out the other. It proved pretty difficult to find a homeowner who was renting out both sides. And on top of that, obviously both sides had to be up for rent at the same time in order for the idea to work. Barbara remained positive. She said that all ideas worth their salt come to pass eventually.

  But it was really Dot who made it happen. We all looked at the papers every day—I think, but she hit the pavement, knocking on doors. Armed with her grandmother’s wedding ring firmly fitted on her ring finger, she spent weeks talking to people, researching, investigating, the works. She explained to those who wondered why she was tackling all this on her own, that her husband was still at the office, and that she had a little more time on her hands to make the initial inquiries.

  Finally, I got her call. It was almost five o’clock, and I was at work.

  “Jerry, I have some wonderful news. I found a nice place over on Keniston near Olympic and Highland. I dragged Cliff away from work, and we just went over there. We were both wearing rings on our fingers.”

  Right away I felt excited and a little bit nervous. Was this actually happening? I couldn’t wait to see the place, and I guess there was a part of me that wished she had taken me along instead of Cliff, but the reality is that when we all get together and pair off boy-girl, boy-girl, it’s usually Cliff with Dot and me with Barbara.

  “We told the landlady, Mrs. Rayburn, that our best friends, another married couple, also need a place, and that we all want to live next door to each other. She thought that was very nice, but it still took some doing. You see, she was happy to rent out one half, but she was on the fence about the other half, the half she lives in. The only way we could get it was to offer her more money. Almost an extra eighty dollars a month. I hope you and Barbara won’t mind, but it was the only way, and the situation being what it is, Cliff and I decided we should snatch it up. Of course, we also told her that you and Barbara would have to look at it first.”

  Dot Johnson

  School had let out only about twenty minutes prior, and I felt anxious as I found myself staring at a stack of ungraded papers. It, grading papers, that is, is a job that sometimes seems to have no end. Having trouble concentrating, I decided to leave the rest for the next day. Besides, I was dying for a cigarette.

  I made my way to my car when I noticed Mr. Daly in the teachers’ parking lot about ten cars away. I was hoping he wouldn’t see me, but my luck had run out by the time I reached my car.

  “Miss Johnson, do you have a minute?” he called out, waving his hand. Before I had a chance to answer, he was unbuttoning his coat and briskly heading my way. All I could think about was getting inside my car and having a cigarette—after all, I thought, I haven’t had one since lunchtime in the teachers’ lounge. And that’s when it hit me how foolish I felt. It was as if I was in an Alfred Hitchcock movie, madly fumbling with my keys trying to get in my car as this crazed man, in the form of the always polite, if not a little dull, Mr. Daly, waved wildly at me as his black leather shoes suspensefully hit the pavement with ever-increasing speed.

  I chuckled in my mind as I thought of the absurdity of it all. “A minute’s about all I have, Mr. Daly,” I said, feeling badly the moment I said it. He’s harmless really, but still I always feel a bit uncomfortable around him, as if he wants to ask me out on a date but just can’t quite get up the nerve.

  Hearing my response, he seemed to slow his pace a little, and by the time he reached me, didn’t seem to have much to say. So I helped him keep the conversation going and soon we were laughing. After a moment, when I felt I could do so, without bruising his ego too much, I said that I really should get going. We said our goodbyes, and he turned to head back toward his car but not before turning around one more time.

  “Miss Johnson?”

  “Yes. Mr. Daly?” I said.

  “Uh. Have a good day.”

  I smiled and wished him the same.

  As I drove up Rimpau, crossing Olympic, I felt more relaxed. I thought for a moment about Mr. Daly. I also thought about my mother. I’ve learned so much from her over the years, and I was thinking about how right she is about always taking just a few moments to be extra nice to people no matter what kind of mood you yourself are in.

  When I reached Wilshire, as has been my habit of late, I pulled over and picked up a copy of the Los Angeles Times. Thumbing through the real estate classified section, I located duplexes and saw something that looked promising. This whole process had been rather challenging. For one thing, I always feel queer showing up to look at a residence by myself. Of course, I can’t bring Barbara. And the boys work a lot later than I do. But, still, I just had a feeling about this place. So, locating some change I had in my purse, and my little phone book I keep for important numbers, I set about making a few calls. Fortunately, there was an available phone booth right near the news stand. First, I called the number in the paper. The woman who was renting out her duplex, Mrs. Rayburn, seemed rather business-like and told me that I could come by as long as I could do so by five-thirty. After I hung up, I tried Jerry, but his secretary told me he was with clients.

  “May I tell him who called?” she asked.

  For a split second, an effervescent feeling came over me and I wanted to blurt out, “His fiancée!” but I restrained myself, telling her that I was a cousin, and that I’d phone him later at home.

  It didn’t occur to me until right after I hung up the receiver that this might have been a blessing in disguise. After all, the man I showed up with was going to have to be my “husband” on a permanent basis, and it was not like I could switch him out later. I hadn’t thought about those details when I called Jerry, but that could have possibly been a real problem because the fact of the matter is, when the four of us go out, I’m usually with Cliff, whom I tried next.

  “Who is this?” he bellowed. “Duplex? What are you talking about? You three were serious about that? Who’d you say this was again?”

  I laughed and I could hear the playfulness in his voice. I also worried that he might be talking too loudly considering he was in an office. He told me he was pretty busy, but he guessed he could spare a little time for his “wife.”

  When we finally
said goodbye, I couldn’t help wondering if his personality might greatly help us get the place, or scare poor old Mrs. Rayburn away.

  Well, it turned out that I had no need to worry in the least. Mrs. Rayburn loved Cliff straight away. He just had this wonderful rascally way of interacting with her. And he made her feel good about herself as he flirted with her in the most subtle of ways, flattering her with a metaphorical wink as if he was acquiescing to the idea that he knew she was too smart to be taken in by his roguish behavior. “Mrs. Rayburn,” I remember him saying at one point, cocking his head and practically batting his eyelashes, in a way that somehow gave no hint of femininity, “only my deep California tan prevents you from seeing how much you’re making me blush right now. If I wasn’t already married…” Next, he gave her that genuine grin of his that seemed to say, we both know how adorable I am, don’t we?

  Anyway, I’m not sure how he did it, but he did. She melted, and we got the place.

  But, of course, this was only the beginning. Having never lived away from home before, this whole experience was very exciting. And a little bit scary, too.

  Telling Mother was no easy task. I think she always believed that I’d go on living at home until the inevitable day came when I would get married. A day that should have come by now, I’m sure she thought. And sure enough, we did have a big argument. “I just don’t understand you,” was the last thing I remember her saying to me the day I moved out. Obviously, she didn’t know the half of it.

  Barbara Penczecho

  “Bread and butter!” I was holding Jerry’s hand and we both said it at the same time as a lamppost split us apart for a half a second. We had just parked the car and were with Cliff and Dot on our way to meet with Mrs. Rayburn, our prospective new landlady. Dot was nervous that the woman would change her mind seeing that she would have to move out of her side of the duplex. I had not met her yet, but felt pretty confident anyway. It is times like this that I wish I could be holding Dot’s hand, “bread and buttering” with her.