Silver Lining

by Diana Simmonds

  The blond woman’s eyes opened and she stared straight at Amanda before letting out a high-pitched squeal. Then, in a gesture that would later (much, much later) cause Amanda to feel a kind of crazed amusement, her hands flew to her jiggling breasts to cover her nipples from Amanda’s gaze. For another long moment Natalie continued her frenzied pumping until the blond batted at her head and shoulders with plump hands, squealing, “Sweetie! Nattie! Stop!”

  Then Natalie’s eyes opened wide in the slits of the mask as she caught sight of Amanda and pulled back from the blond woman; disentangling herself from the pale waving legs. Her movement disengaged the purple dildo with a cartoon-like “schploop!” and the blond shrieked again and grabbed at her crotch. Natalie sat back on her haunches and Amanda stared at her lover, open-mouthed, and heard herself begin to giggle hysterically. Waggling roguishly from beneath Natalie’s heaving belly and breasts, the glistening wet and amazingly bright purple organ was bobbing and swaying, seemingly still searching for the place from which it had just been wrenched. The woman behind the camera turned to stare at Amanda and the man in the easy chair dropped his phone and leapt to his feet, so there were suddenly two erections waving at her.

  “Holy crap!” Amanda whispered, barely able to believe her eyes or to know whether she was laughing or crying.

  “Oh shit,” whispered Natalie, her breath coming in convulsive gasps and her voice strangely muffled and echoing behind the long snout of the mask. “What the fuck’re you doing here?”

  Amanda snorted and sobbed on her laughter, almost speechless. Almost. “Ha!” She spat furiously. “I live here, remember? And not much point asking what the fuck you’re doing, is there?”

  The blond squealed again as the waving purple appendage nudged hopefully at her knees. She sat up, one arm still clutched across her breasts, and struggled to reach for her clothes where they lay on the end of the daybed. My grandmother’s antique Baltic pine daybed, Amanda’s mind registered. Still Natalie knelt, the disconcerted shock in her eyes suggesting she had been momentarily robbed of speech and thought.

  “For God’s sake stop pointing that thing at her, Natalie,” Amanda heard herself say. “And you look ridiculous with that Pluto mask on, take it off.” She turned her attention momentarily to the man who was still goggling at her. “You look ridiculous too. Put that thing away and get out of my apartment. Now.”

  Natalie looked at each person in the room in turn as if seeing them for the first time, then down at the jiggling purple penis. She pulled the mask off her face and looked at Amanda, her mouth opening and closing like a goldfish out of water.

  “Amanda, this isn’t what you think it is…” she tried.

  Amanda heard herself laughing. It was a harsh sound, but it was definitely laughter. “Is that so? Well. Do tell me what it is, then? A post-feminist intervention into the patriarchal ascendancy? Or just a porno movie? Are you going to make some money at last? Huh? That would be something.”

  “God you’re a bitch, and you’re ridiculous,” Natalie spat, hurling the mask across the room. But the shiny, realistically veined if improbably colored organ that continued to bounce merrily between her legs hampered her efforts at dignified fury.

  “That’s rich, coming from the last of the big purple hot rods,” Amanda hissed. “I am going to change my clothes and get out of here and when I come home I expect your movie crew and this skanky ho to be long gone. Do you understand?”

  The blond squealed again, this time there was fury in it. “How dare you,” she shrieked. “I’m an artiste. Tell her Nattie!”

  Amanda almost choked but laughed instead, “Well sweetie, I don’t care what you are—the message is the same. Get your peachy great artistic ass out of my apartment, now.”

  Amanda glanced at Natalie, who was struggling with the straps of the harness and cursing under her breath. “As for you, Superdick, I’m not sure I want to see you here either right now.” Amanda turned away from the scene and walked, in a daze, through the apartment to the main bedroom and managed to close the door and snib the lock before bursting into tears.

  She stood in the center of the room for a few minutes, her fist pressed to her mouth as she struggled to smother gulping sobs. Her thoughts were scattered by shock and disbelief and her stomach was rebelling against dread at the fresh chasm of unknowns that had abruptly opened before her. She sat on the edge of the bed and reached for a Kleenex, and then another and another as her body shook with the effects of fear and the impact of her world collapsing around her.

  “Oh Mom,” she whispered aloud, “I wish you were here.” The realization that at this moment, at the age of thirty-two, all she wanted was her mother’s arms kept the tears flowing freely and she fell back, shoved her face into the pillow to muffle the sound and howled. The pain and fear that coursed through her was something she had experienced only once before. She remembered it clearly all over again and the memory of her grandmother’s slow, cruel death made her cry so hard she could barely breathe.

  “Oh Gramma,” she gulped into the pillow. “Oh Mom,” she sobbed. “I think I’ve really fucked up somehow and I don’t understand. It’s so unfair.” She whimpered her distress and bewilderment into the duck down pillow that accommodatingly soaked up the torrents of tears until she could cry no more. Finally she sat up, took a deep breath, emptied the tissue box in trying to clear her nose and walked, zombie-like, into the bathroom to splash her face with cold water. She looked at the red-eyed, mascara-streaked face in the mirror. She shook her head, trying to clear it of the haze of incredulity that had made her mind opaque.

  “Why me?” she asked the bleak eyes that stared back at her. “Why now? What the hell?” No answer came from the dazed reflection. Again she shook her head and patted her face dry with a soft hand towel, then blew her nose in it, hard, and threw it in the bathtub. She took half a dozen deep breaths and felt calmer, but still pole-axed. She ran the cold water again and held her wrists in the flow. It was soothing. She inhaled deeply and slowly and stood up, feeling marginally better.

  “Okay, let’s move,” she told her reflection and tried a grin; it was shaky but almost there. “When the going gets tough the tough get breakfast.” She walked into her closet and pulled from their shelves a pair of low-cut J jeans, a fine knit black tank top and a soft, well-worn, oversize pale gray Yale hoodie. She kicked off her shoes, stripped off pantyhose, discarded the Carolina Herrera jacket and pants where she stood and pulled on her comfort gear and finally, red lambs’ wool socks and a pair of ultralight Nikes. Immediately she felt more secure, despite the indeterminate queasiness that continued to churn her stomach. She kicked her discarded clothes and shoes toward the laundry basket.

  “Later,” she told her reproving tidy self. “Right now I want out of here.” She stalked back down the corridor to the living room. From Natalie’s workroom she could hear hushed but urgent and furious voices.

  “Out of here. All of you. Now!” she yelled angrily; then took her purse, keys and a pair of mirrored RayBans from the hall table and left the apartment, slamming the door behind her.

  * * *

  The neighborhood diner, the Starlight Grill, was run by the Kumars, an Indian immigrant family whose elder members spoke with the distinctive sing-song Bollywood accent and precise English that Amanda loved to listen to; by contrast the New York City-born generation sounded like any other American kids, but polite and respectful to their parents—which was the cultural give-away—Amanda had once observed to the family’s matriarch.

  Amanda slid into a side booth where she could watch the street as well as the goings-on in the diner. It was the least chic thing she did these days and she always came alone. It was something that made her think of her childhood and of a life she had left far behind…

  * * *

  “What’ll you have, honey?” Eleanor had slid into the booth across from Amanda and pulled off her gloves and scarf. She stuffed them into her jacket pocket and slipped the jacket from her sho
ulders. Amanda was still snugged up in her high school duffel coat; the promise of the diner’s steamy-window warmth wasn’t enough to beat the winter chill, yet.

  “Hot chocolate, eggs over easy, home fries and toast,” she said promptly, adding “Please, Mom,” as her mother’s right eyebrow rose.

  Eleanor sat back against the vinyl seat and let out a long, contented sigh. “Sounds good to me,” she said and repeated the order to the waitress who had remained behind the counter, fully expecting the usual from the McIntyres. “Feel like some fruit?” Eleanor asked Amanda but her daughter wrinkled her nose at the idea.

  “It’s too cold, Mom. Fruit is for summer. Unless it’s your canned apricots all stewed up with cinnamon and cream on top.”

  “Mmmm, good idea, we could have some for dessert this evening.”

  “Uh, I’m going to the movies with Jess,” Amanda said quickly, carefully avoiding the flash of disappointment that crossed Eleanor’s face.

  “Right, okay honey. I guess you’re really looking forward to seeing her.”

  Amanda flushed and shook her head. “We’re just going to the movies,” she said sharply. That she couldn’t wait to see Jess and hold hands with her in the back row was not something she was willing to admit to Eleanor; or even to herself, really.

  Eleanor had sighed and shrugged. “Sure honey. How about bringing Jess home for supper after the movies?”

  Amanda had stuck out her lower lip and said, “Maybe.” But she knew she would not. At fifteen she was not about to share Jess or her secret life with her mother.

  * * *

  Amanda turned away from the memory with a sudden wave of sadness. I was a bitch to my mother, she thought. I know I was a teenager, but I was a bitch. With determination, she brought herself back to the present and the bacon-scented warmth of the diner. The Starlight was a classic local hangout and virtually everyone on the block came by at least once each morning, if only for a takeout coffee or one of the house specialties: a fried egg and bacon sandwich with a homemade sambal that was delicious and sinus-clearing all at once.

  “Today is a special day,” Amanda told her friend Parveen when the daughter of the establishment strolled over to take her order. “Today I would like scrambled eggs, hash browns and Canadian bacon with some of your mom’s sambal on the side. And coffee with cream, plus a pineapple juice to start.”

  “Wow, you got something to celebrate?” Parveen leaned her elbow on the booth side and grinned down at Amanda’s mirror-shaded eyes, hands thrust deep into the front pouch pocket of a navy blue striped apron. She was a luscious, amber-eyed, café au lait-skinned twenty-one-year-old grad student at NYU when not helping out in the family business. And, since her nineteenth birthday, she had been trying to get Amanda to help her out in deciding whether or not she might be a lesbian. Despite the temptation, Amanda had managed to avoid this very clear and present danger and maintain an easy friendship.

  “Well, you could say that,” Amanda said. She took off the RayBans and set them carefully on the table, then looked up deliberately, knowing that Parveen wouldn’t miss her puffy, red-rimmed eyes. “It’s certainly a first anyway. I got fired this morning and arrived home to find Natalie doing a faux blond on a faux fur rug with a dirty great bright purple dildo.”

  “Wow!” Parveen’s eyes widened to saucers. “No shit, it’s like for real. Yeah?”

  “I’m not sure whether you’re talking about what the news is calling ‘the looming economic crisis’ or Natalie wearing a big purple dick, but that actually was quite real—in a rubbery sort of way.”

  Parveen looked at her with expressions of horror and amusement fighting for supremacy in her huge dark eyes. Finally she failed to suppress a burst of giggles but also looked dismayed, all at once.

  “Holy crap,” she whispered.

  “Funny, that’s exactly what I said,” Amanda sighed and shivered. The adrenaline that had been keeping her going was seeping away and without warning she began to feel faint and very much like gagging on the sourness of fright and distress. Parveen saw the blood drain from her friend’s face and squeezed her shoulder.

  “Hey, hold on. I’ll be back with your juice and coffee, don’t go away.”

  Amanda stared down at her hands, clasped loosely in front of her on the table. They were good hands; she liked them with their strong, long fingers with manicured, oval-shaped nails, painted frosty pink. Her thumb joints were prominent so there was an interesting angle to the edge of her hand when she splayed her fingers. On her left pinkie she wore a heavy gold signet ring with an inset of polished onyx bearing her initials. On her wrist was a midsize Rolex in white gold and brushed steel on a gold and steel linked bracelet. It was low-key and few of her acquaintances—whose idea of a watch was a monster Tag Heuer waterproofed to the floor of the Marianas Trench—ever noticed it.

  Amanda glanced at the watch and saw the hands pointing at ten of ten. A lot had happened already and it wasn’t even mid-morning. She let out a long deep breath and considered this as Parveen returned with a tumbler of pineapple juice and a steaming cup of coffee. She slipped into the booth opposite Amanda and laid her order pad and pen on the table between them. Her dark eyes scanned Amanda’s face and her eyebrows rose in a mix of questioning and bewilderment.

  “I don’t know what to say, Amanda, I mean, shit. Where do you start?”

  Amanda shrugged. “Not sure. I’ve never been fired before, so I guess that’s an interesting thing to get my head around. And I’ve never walked in on a girlfriend while she was screwing another woman with a big purple dick.”

  Parveen snorted on another laugh, “Does that mean you’ve had experience of other colors?”

  Despite her state of shock and distress, Amanda also laughed. “Very funny, missy. No I have not. My God, you should have seen it.” She waved her arm back and forth, hand clenched in a fist. “It was like the Cookie Monster, but not furry or cute or blue, you know?”

  Parveen giggled again and clutched her hand across her mouth. “Wild. Oh wow. Purple!”

  “Purple,” Amanda confirmed. “But otherwise amazingly realistic. Possibly even modeled from life. If you could get a horse to stand still that long, of course.”

  Parveen hooted with laughter. “You are wicked, Amanda. Your heart might be breaking, but you sure as hell are wicked. And funny.”

  From the rear of the diner a bell dinged three times and Parveen’s mother called from the kitchen hatch, “Parveen! You sitting? You working? You come fetch this breakfast you naughty naughty girl!”

  “Coming Mom, be right there.” Parveen leapt to her feet. She grinned at Amanda, “I’ll be back.” And before she raced off to the kitchen hatch she gave Amanda’s shoulder another friendly yet tender squeeze. It was a reassuring touch. Amanda appreciated it so much it brought tears to her eyes. She pinched them tight shut and swallowed hard, breathing deeply and slowly to dispel the lump of sadness that was growing in her chest and threatening her throat.

  Moments later Parveen was back and setting down a thick white china platter. The scent of sweet bacon and fresh toast hit Amanda’s nostrils and she licked her lips in anticipation. Eating real food was a luxury she rarely enjoyed.

  “Oh wow, I am so looking forward to this,” she said, inhaling deeply the aromas rising from the plate.

  “Jelly? Peanut butter? More coffee?”

  “None of that yet, but I’d appreciate your company if your mom won’t bite your ass.”

  Parveen laughed. “She’s cool. I’ll just have to keep an eye on Mr. Edelstein, you know how he loves his coffee topped up.”

  Amanda glanced across to the window booth where an elderly man, in an ancient but immaculate three-piece brown pinstripe suit and thick horn-rimmed spectacles, sat watching the street while intermittently returning to his copy of the Times and the crossword puzzle.

  “So,” said Parveen. “Let’s leave Natalie and her…um…whatever for a minute and tell me what’s happening on Wall Street. I’ve been re
ading the news and watching TV and I don’t get it. Have you really been fired?”

  “The technical term is ‘let go’ actually,” said Amanda, tucking into a mouthful of scrambled egg, a sliver of sweet bacon and a speck of the fiery red sauce. “They let me go. They’re going to be letting a lot of folks go today I reckon.”

  “Is it stupid to ask why? What did you do wrong?”

  Amanda grinned, shrugged and shook her head, her mouth full. “Wow, that sambal is good.” She took a long drink of the pineapple juice. “Your mom should market it. Anyway, no it’s not a stupid question because right now not many people have anything but stupid answers. Buffett, Soros and Volcker figured there was something going down, but as usual nobody was listening. There was too much money being made for anyone to listen, me included. And money talks. Money always talks and this century it’s been yelling the place down until everyone got deafened and dazzled by it. Including me again, if I’m being honest. What we were doing didn’t make sense. It was like a house of cards, but not even that well built, y’know?”

  Parveen was looking mystified and shook her head. “But all the economists have been predicting steady growth. I’ve been reading up.”

  Amanda nodded and chomped on a crunchy corner of buttered toast. “I know, but what you have to realize is that economists are like weather forecasters. If they say it’s going to be fine you should probably take your umbrella.” She waved her fork at Parveen. “Last month, when all this started to hot up, I got curious and did a little exercise just for fun. I did a comparison of what the major economists predicted on interest rates each year of this decade—as in this century—against what’s actually happened. Guess how many times they got it right.” She drained her coffee mug and set it down as if to emphasize her question.

  Parveen frowned and shrugged. “Dunno. Two—three times? A dozen?”

  Amanda held up her thumb and forefinger in a circle and squinted at Parveen through it. “Zero, none, nada, nil, never. Didn’t get it right once. They said rates would go up—they went down. They said they’d go down—they went up. Not once were they right. It’s amazing. I don’t know why I didn’t check before.”