Bad Weather

by Paul Austin Ardoin

  They swung around to the kelp forest area, then through the doors to the outdoor touch pool. The rain was coming down harder now, but the covered touch pool area was crowded. Dez wasn’t keen on touching the starfish or the other species and hated the overenthusiastic little kids going crazy to try to get their hands on the wildlife.

  “I tell you, if I ever end up in hell,” Dez said, “I’ll get turned into a starfish in one of these damn touch pools. Little kids with their grubby mitts eating McDonald’s and picking their noses and then sticking their hands in the water. Ugh.”

  “I swear,” Audrey said, a deadly serious note in her voice, looking deep into Dez’s eyes, “that I will never eat McDonald’s and then pick my nose and stick my hands on you.”

  Dez laughed. “Can’t beat that with a stick.”

  They walked laughing in the rain, without an umbrella, back to the Corolla. They listed the best things about Los Angeles that they still hadn’t experienced and planned to do together: Dez had yet to eat fried chicken at Knott’s Berry Farm; Audrey had never been to Venice Beach. Neither of them had ever been to the Los Angeles Arts Theater before, even though it was built in the twenties and was supposed to have been the location where Elizabeth Taylor’s first movie was released.

  The traffic was horrible on the way back to Dez’s apartment off Bellflower, but Audrey was in a good mood, and so was Dez, and even got Dez to sing along to an Indigo Girls song.

  “You need to get some Aretha,” Dez sniffed. “Jesse Jackson wouldn’t like it that you don’t have any Aretha CDs. This whiny white people music is going to give me a damn complex.”

  Audrey pulled up next to the curb in front of Dez’s apartment. Dez looked around briefly, and seeing no one, pecked Audrey on the lips. “That wasn’t a real kiss,” Audrey pouted.

  “You’ll get a real kiss after the show tonight,” Dez said, opening the door and getting out of the car. “In my little black dress and everything.” She closed the door behind her as Audrey blew her a kiss and waved goodbye.

  Dez felt light as she walked to the apartment—and then realized she had left the book in the car. She sighed—she’d thought she might read some more of it before she figured out her dress, makeup, and hair for the evening. “Such a pain in the ass,” she said to herself. “If I wanted to get all dressed up for a date, I’d date a stupid boy.” But she was smiling to herself to think of her and Audrey together, dressed up in girly dresses, turning heads with Audrey’s curves and Dez’s runner’s body.

  She called Rhonda’s name when she got into the apartment, but there was no answer. She went upstairs; Rhonda’s bedroom door was open, but it was empty.

  Dez wrapped her hair for a shower, then thought of using the fancy body wash her mother had sent her for Christmas. It took some digging under the counter before she found it. After her shower, she pulled out a shoe box from her top shelf and found some perfume—a bit of Carolina Herrera from a sample that had been forced on her at Emporium.

  The little black dress was a Paquette, and it still fit her well, if a little snugly across the rear, but she hadn’t been nearly as strong a runner when she had bought the dress, and she knew the extra inch around her hips was muscle. She admired herself in the mirror and, just for a moment, saw herself the way Audrey saw her—and maybe even the way Frankie had seen her three months before.

  She had a pair of low heels—her only pair of heels, in spite of her mother’s horror about it—and they were, to Dez’s relief, black and shiny and perfect with the dress.

  She had expected to be a little disgusted with the way she looked, or at the very least, not recognize herself in the mirror. But she was pleasantly surprised to find that the dress looked good on her, accentuating all the things she liked about her body, even if the femininity the dress exuded was a little much.

  “Damn,” Dez said, “I don’t really look like me, but I guess I look pretty good.”

  She looked at the clock; Audrey was going to pick her up in about thirty minutes. She heard the front door open and close, and Rhonda called her name.

  “Up here!” Dez called out, and she picked up a black-and-white zebra-striped purse—the most formal purse she had—and went downstairs.

  Rhonda was sitting on the sofa, holding the remote control, about to turn the television on. When she saw Dez, she burst into laughter. Dez was mortified.

  “Dez,” she said, tears of mirth starting to stream down her cheeks, “what in the hell are you wearing?”

  “I’m wearing a black dress,” Dez offered lamely.

  “Who are you and what have you done with Dez?” Rhonda hooted.

  “Don’t be an asshole,” Dez snapped. “You know I look damn fine in this. I look a lot better than most of the party girls you bring home.”

  “Oh, take it easy, Dez,” Rhonda said, bringing her gales of laughter under control. “I just didn’t expect to have Naomi Campbell walking down the staircase in my house.”

  “Please. You call me Naomi Campbell and now I’m supposed to forgive you.”

  “Now, don’t take this the wrong way, but that dress was Audrey’s idea, wasn’t it?”

  “So what if it was?”

  “I’m just saying, Dez, that it’s fine that you’ve disappeared up her butt for the last two months. You’ve been single for a while, you deserve some great sex, some good relationship karma, some blah blah blah. But just remember, your friends have been there for you for a long time, so don’t just cut us loose.”

  Dez paused. “Yeah, okay, Rhonda.”

  “Okay.” Rhonda paused. “And you do look really good in that dress. Your ass looks fantastic.”

  “Ugh,” Dez said. “You went into creepy territory with that.”

  “Not saying I wanna bang you or anything. Just saying your ass looks good.”

  Dez put up a hand to stop her. “Okay, thank you, appreciate the compliment, don’t say it again.”

  Rhonda laughed. “It’s really a fine line to walk with you, Dez. Can’t laugh at the way you look, can’t perv on you.”

  “What? Perv on me?”

  Rhonda nodded. “The girl who was here Friday night. And Saturday morning. She’s from England. She’s teaching me some new phrases. Some of them are dumb, like saying pants when you mean underwear, but I like ‘perving on you.’ It’s delicious and naughty.”

  “Okay, creepy chick,” Dez said. “Audrey’s going to pick me up soon. Don’t go, uh, perving on her either.”

  Dez walked into the downstairs bathroom and checked her makeup one more time.

  “So why are you all dressed up?” Rhonda said. “What are you up to—is it the opera? The ballet?”

  “Audrey got us tickets to an author reading tonight.”

  “An author reading? Barf.” Rhonda shook her head. “A concert or a Lakers game I could see. An author reading? Man, unless it’s that crazy violent wolf-insect-sex author you were into a few months ago—”

  Rhonda looked at Dez’s face.

  “Oh my God! It is him! That writer my brother likes. You were asking about that book when you met Audrey and now she bought you tickets to it!” Rhonda cackled. “That is just too rich. Did you ever talk to her about—uh—what was her name? That girl you danced with at the party in Westwood? The one who had you convinced that she wrote that weird book? The one you were totally into for about a week?”

  “Frankie.”

  “Yeah!” Rhonda smacked her knee for emphasis. “That was it. Did you ever talk about her?”

  Dez shrugged. “Nope. Didn’t really see a need to.”

  “Did you ever see her again after that one date?”

  “No. She called me once and left a message, but that was it.” Dez felt a twinge of guilt.

  “Hah.” Rhonda smirked. “Did she go back to disappointing men in bed?”

  “Oh, come on, now,” Dez said. “That girl had problems.”

  “Problems in bed,” Rhonda said. “And usually girls that crazy are dynamite.”


  Dez paused. “You know, I think that Frank Bethany really did steal that book from her.”

  “Really? She wasn’t just a narcissist looking for attention?”

  Dez laughed. “Well, I think she was a narcissist looking for attention, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t get her book stolen.”

  They were silent for a while.

  “Rhonda, this is going to sound crazy, but part of me thinks Frankie’s going to show up at that author reading tonight.”

  Rhonda’s face was blank.

  “I mean,” Dez clarified, “show up and do something. Like, I don’t know, make a scene, try to rush the stage, maybe. Expose his plagiarism to the world.”

  “You really think she would do that?”

  “I don’t know. Just—she told me she was Frank Bethany, which is crazy enough, but then I find out that he stopped touring for his new releases and it was maybe because of a stalker.”

  “Maybe because of a stalker?” Rhonda’s skeptical tone made Dez feel foolish.

  “I’m just thinking—why would she lie about who she is if she wasn’t planning on confronting him when he’s in L.A?”

  “Uh,” Rhonda said, “if she pretended to be him, doesn’t that just draw attention to herself? Like, if I were going to make a scene at some celebrity event, I’d be the most unassuming, quiet-as-a-mouse person you’ve ever seen—so no one would suspect me.”

  Dez smirked. “Like you could be unassuming if you tried.”

  Rhonda shrugged. “You don’t know that. I got a little crush on Marisa Tomei. Maybe I’ll be her quiet little accent coach for her next movie. Teach her how to roll her R’s.”

  “This isn’t a random celebrity crush, Rhonda. She used to be his student at Dartmouth.”

  Rhonda crossed her arms. “Okay, I see that you’re intent on talking yourself into this. So what do you want to do about it, Mrs. Fletcher? You gonna call the police and tell them that some girl you banged once, who lied about her name, might sorta kinda possibly maybe do something like jump up on stage and tell people he stole her book? Is there anything even illegal about that?”

  “Maybe she’ll try to hurt him.”

  Rhonda scoffed. “The cops would tell you to go back to Cabot Cove.”

  Dez tapped her foot. “You’re probably right. Okay—when Audrey gets here, don’t breathe a word of what I just said. We’re going to have a nice, romantic evening, and we don’t need it ruined by my paranoia.”

  Rhonda laughed. “It’d serve you right. Not telling Audrey she got you tickets to see the guy your ex-lover pretended to be.”

  “It’s complicated. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

  There was a knock at the door. Dez shot Rhonda a sharp look. Rhonda mimed zipping her lips.

  Dez opened the door. Audrey was there, resplendent in a red-and-black floral dress. She had on a little more makeup than usual.

  “Holy shit, Dez, you look hot,” Audrey said. “That dress looks incredible on you.”

  “You look pretty great yourself.”

  “You don’t even look like dykes,” Rhonda offered from the couch.

  “I know,” Dez said. “We look more like those bi-curious sorority girls you bring home.”

  “Oh, Dez, be nice,” Audrey said. “Have you had a good birthday so far?”

  “Oh, shit,” Rhonda said. “It’s your birthday.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Dez said.

  “It’s your birthday and I totally forgot,” said Rhonda. “Why didn’t you remind me?”

  “It’s not a big deal.” Dez shrugged. “After twenty-one, birthdays don’t mean much anymore.

  “At twenty-five, you can rent a car,” Audrey offered.

  “Woo hoo,” Dez said. “Come on, let’s get going, or parking’s going to be a nightmare.”

  “Wait,” Audrey said. “Aren’t you going to take Exodus Nights?”

  “I don’t know,” Dez said. “It’s a paperback. Aren’t you supposed to take your hardcovers to sign?”

  “He’ll be honored that you bought the book, period,” Audrey said. “Go up and get it.”

  Dez walked up the stairs to get the book, and felt Audrey’s eyes on her dress the whole time, drinking her in. She put a little more side-to-side in her hips and immediately felt ridiculous, but when she got to the top of the stairs she turned her head to look at Audrey. The look on Audrey’s face made her feel a lot less ridiculous.

  She took her copy of Exodus Nights from her dresser and walked back downstairs.

  11

  Dez and Audrey got out of the Corolla several blocks away from the Los Angeles Arts Theater. Parking, as Dez had suggested, was a nightmare—and traffic hadn’t been a treat either. Not only was there no street parking around the theater, but the two parking garages that Audrey was going to use as backup were both full. As they drove down San Vicente Boulevard, they saw a Yugo pull out from a parking place into traffic in front of them, and Audrey did a masterful job parallel parking into the tiny space.

  “Almost as good as me,” Dez said.

  “My looks, or my parking job?”

  Dez laughed, picking up Exodus Nights.

  They got out and started walking.

  “You have the tickets?” Audrey asked after half a block.

  “The tickets? Oh, shit, no.”

  “Are they still in the book?”

  Dez closed her eyes and remembered putting the ticket envelope inside the front flap. “Yes.”

  “Okay.” Audrey’s eyes met Dez’s, and the anxiety must have been obvious. “Don’t worry about it, babe. You left the book in my car earlier. I put it in a bag in the back seat.”

  They went back to the Corolla and Audrey pulled Murder on a Lifeboat out of the bag and handed it to Dez and locked up the car again. Sure enough, the tickets were tucked inside the front flap.

  “Come on,” Audrey said. “It starts in fifteen minutes.”

  They walked past a laundromat and a Del Taco, then cut through a small park to cross Wilshire. Dez thought about taking Audrey’s hand, but she looked around; there were lots of dressed-up older people, possibly on their way to the same theater, and she didn’t feel comfortable announcing their relationship.

  She looked at Audrey and marveled at how this woman could have so quickly transformed her heart. She hadn’t been in a dress in a long time—not since moving to Long Beach three and a half years before—and she couldn’t believe that she had gotten dressed up in a girly-girl, figure-hugging little black dress for her lover.

  And she also couldn’t believe that Audrey would fall for a girl like her. Dez definitely liked more feminine, curvy girls like Audrey—and Frankie—but they didn’t always go for her; she tended to be more butch in her dress and in her mannerisms. And while she liked California, California didn’t always like her: Mettie, for one, had made fun of the way she talked, and Dez still couldn’t get the Louisiana drawl out of her voice. She saw the way some people looked down on her the times that she said “y’all.”

  But there wasn’t any of that second-guessing herself when it came to being with Audrey. Yes, Audrey liked books and the whole book culture thing way more than Dez did, and Audrey still called her “Desirée”—which was Dez’s own fault for introducing herself as such when they first met—but she’d never been more comfortable in a relationship. She looked down at the two books in her hand and with a palpable sense of relief realized that she had dodged a bullet with Frankie. Frankie hadn’t been interested in anything about Dez. She criticized the Cabrillo Aquarium, she criticized Dez for still being a student, she made Dez feel bad for wanting to eat the cheesecake point first. But none of that was an issue with Audrey; they could talk for hours, and they could both participate in the conversation, and Dez could express her feelings and tell her about her past and Audrey listened. Dez was a pessimist, but she felt her heart swell.

  They got to the entrance of the theater. Dez looked at her watch. It was twenty minutes past seven.


  “We have a few minutes,” Dez said. “They never start on time, anyway. Do you want to go grab something quick at that Del Taco we passed? You haven’t eaten since brunch, right?”

  Audrey smiled. “And miss out on your birthday dinner later? Not a chance.”

  “Oh, come on, Audrey,” Dez said crossly, although a smile was playing at the corners of her mouth. “Your birthday is going to come along and I’m definitely not going to be able to top this. Certainly not on a scholarship student’s finances.”

  “It’s my pleasure.” Audrey held the door open for Dez. “We can figure other stuff out when it’s my birthday. Maybe stuff that doesn’t cost money.” She flashed an evil and knowing grin at Dez. Dez smiled back at Audrey; she was so forward. Dez liked it.

  They found their seats, and Audrey went out to go to the bathroom. Dez sat; the chair folded down, and the upholstered seat looked more comfortable than it was.

  She looked around the hall, scanning for Frankie’s face. She knew she was being paranoid, but she couldn’t help herself. If Dez were in Frankie’s shoes and wanted to make a scene, she’d arrive early, stake out a good spot, watch for patterns in the ushers’ movements, making sure she could avoid any and all obstacles on the way to the stage. Dez was suddenly struck by the thought of what she would do if Frankie did rush the stage and accuse Frank Bethany of plagiarism. Would Dez stand up, holding Murder on a Lifeboat above her head, and shout, “It’s true! He’s a thief! Here’s the book he stole!”

  Dez noted with relief that no one in the hall resembled Frankie.

  She opened Murder on a Lifeboat and began to read again.

  The scene with the old man and the transforming couple was there, too, just as it was in Exodus Nights. The transformation was different, however; these weren’t wolves transforming into insects, but rather people transforming into vampires. Dez thought she saw some parallels in the text with Anne Rice, although a quick check of the publication date made her realize that Jennifer Morgenstern might have only been able to reference Interview with the Vampire, and not even The Vampire Lestat. It was less interesting than Frank Bethany’s work, but it was inarguably close enough to have been stolen.