by L. A. Zoe
“Course not.”
Around them, mothers yelled at their children for folding clothes carelessly, people shouted into cellphones, and others listened to MP3 players at high volume.
The odors of detergent, fabric softeners, and bleach scorched Rhinegold’s nose.
“Do you have some place you can hang them up until they dry?” Rhinegold asked.
“Of course not,” Georgie said.
“Then what’re you talking about?”
“You’re sure touchy today.”
“I’ve never seen you wash your clothes so much.”
“It’s not a crime. They’re my quarters. When I go over to see Melissa, you think I want to bring little creatures with me?”
“It’s still winter, Georgie.”
“If I don’t stay clean, they can stay alive close to my skin. Even when I’m cold as a mother-in-law’s smile, it’s warm enough for them.”
“You’re keeping yourself awful clean these days.”
“So, I don’t want to get sick. This cold weather’s tough enough, without inviting germs into your body.”
“You see Mrs. Grant a lot, don’t you?”
Georgie grunted, and shifted his weight around. “So that’s it, huh?”
“What?”
“You’re still not getting any from SeeJai, so you don’t like me with her mother.”
“It’s not about getting some, Georgie. I love her.”
“That’s your real problem, lad.”
“What? Loving her?”
“Always the biggest mistake you can make with women. Makes you weak, and they eat you up, then spit you out like just another watermelon seed.”
Rhinegold nodded. “I’ve seen that. Women like the guys treat them mean.”
“Then why don’t you do it?”
The concept violated every principle Rhinegold believed in. Chivalry. Sportsmanship. The code of gentlemanly conduct. It wrenched his heart, filled his guts with concrete, and charred his soul.
“I … can’t.”
“I don’t mean hurt her or anything. Just act like you don’t care about her?”
“But that makes no sense. When I love a woman, I want her to know it.”
“You want to get down on your knees and declare your undying devotion, right, Romeo?” Georgie muttered to himself, then said, “I’m glad my knees are too arthritic to bend that far.”
“Are they?” Rhinegold reared back and laughed. “Georgie, you big hypocrite. Keeping yourself clean. Shaving. Cutting your hair. Washing your clothes. Even caring about creases! Mrs. Grant’s got you pussy whipped for sure.”
Georgie scowled. “Melissa’s an older woman, with experience, knows what she wants from her men. Not like SeeJai, still trying to figure life out. That’s the difference.”
“How can I pretend I don’t care, and still protect her from the scumbags? I love her Georgie, that’s the crazy part. She’s not just another woman, she’s magic. She’s an angel. A good witch of the north.”
Georgie snorted. “So don’t listen to the old fart. See if I care. Maybe when she spits you out, you’ll fall on fertile soil and grow watermelons.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
A Visit to the Social Security Office
The middle-aged African-American woman pursed her already-squinched lips emphasized by her bright red lipstick. Her eyes shifted to the nearby waiting room full of people, like you do at a party when you’re talking to one person but are looking for somebody else.
After Mom, Georgie, and I sat in that waiting room for nearly two hours, I guess I couldn’t blame her. We just had a simple question the receptionist said could have been handled by the 800 number, except you could sit on hold for the same two hours, and Georgie didn’t want to give me his Social Security number or tell me if or how much income he had, and I knew the Social Security would ask.
And the 800 number people rushed you real fast to get you off the line right away. In the office, you could refuse to stand up and leave until they answered your questions. The 800 number reps could hang up on you, and all you could do was call back and wait another eternity.
And some of the people sitting near us looked ready to fall over dead any minute of old age or whatever disease was eating them up. I wanted them to get their claims filed before they croaked.
The little kids running up and down the aisles screaming and yelling didn’t bother me, but Mother and Georgie weren’t used to the noise.
And some of the people waiting had worse B.O. than Georgie when I first met him.
“Hi, what can I do for you today?” the Social Security worker said. I’d already given her Mom’s Social Security number, and she held a long white computer printout in her hand.
I’d also already shown her my state I.D. Like police, Social Security workers don’t trust anything you tell them.
“I need to know, what would happen if my mother got married?” I said.
“Well, that depends on the man’s income and resources,” she said automatically. She probably said the same thing a million times in her career. “Do you know them?”
I hit Georgie’s knee. “What’s your income and resources?” I asked, growling because I hated this whole thing. I didn’t care who Mom fell in love with, or if he spent the night with her, long as Sylvie the apartment manager didn’t, but marriage was going way too far.
Mom’s SSI check covered her basic expenses. Rent and water. Satellite TV. Energy Assistance helped pay the winter gas bills and summer electric bills. Food stamps covered most of her groceries. Medicaid most of her doctor bills and medicine, except for some two-bit deductibles.
A sweet deal if all you wanted to do was stay home every day and watch TV, which, until she met Georgie, satisfied Mom as much as anything could.
Now she wanted to keep a man.
I figured Georgie had no income except panhandling, and that’s why he lived on the streets pushing a shopping cart.
So if he and Mom married, and he moved in with her, they would have to transfer to a two-person studio apartment. He ate a lot more than she did. Adding him to the food stamp grant might help, but not enough, I figured.
When she told me they planned to get married, I nearly slapped her and kicked his ass. Finally, I convinced her to wait at least until we asked how this would change her check.
“This man is your mother’s possible husband?” the SSA worker asked me.
“Sure am,” Georgie said.
“What kind of income do you have, sir?” she asked.
I expected Georgie to say he had none. Instead, he told the SSA worker his Social Security number.
She flicked a few keys. “Do either one of you have a minor child living with you?”
Mom? Georgie? Both looked older than giant sea turtles, yet the worker said that straight, as casually as asking if snow were still falling. I didn’t know much about poker, but I suddenly realized I wouldn’t want to play the game against this woman.
“No,” I said, trying not to laugh. I’d sure pity those kids. I forgot just a few years ago I was a minor living with Mom.
She told me, “Starting with the month after the month your mother married him, she would not be eligible for SSI.”
“What!”
“I can’t give you details without his permission, but I can tell you, his income is so high that, as his wife, your mother would be over the SSI income limit.”
My cheeks flushed red now from anger, not cold. “You get that kind of money, Georgie, what’re you doing living on the streets?”
“I hate to pay rent,” he said.
“You marry Mom, you’ll have to pay rent, gas, lights, TV—everything!”
He got that huffy expression on his face as though I were insulting him—which I was, but I didn’t care, because marrying him would totally screw up Mom’s life, and if he went back to drinking up his entire check, which was obviously what he’d been doing until recently, Mom could wind up on the street. No SSI check. No food stamps. No
Medicaid. No subsidized rent apartment.
Nothing but me.
I couldn’t handle the burden. A million tons on my shoulders. Nobody helping me. Give her my bed and sleep on the floor beside Rhinegold?
So he turned his shoulder to me, and Mom put on her face of quiet disapproval.
I stood up. “Let’s get out of here,” I told them. “We’re wasting this lady’s time.”
“If they do get married, report it to us right away,” the SSA woman said.
At the bus stop, I paced back and forth, sliding around the small hills of ice, as Mom and Georgie sat on the bench.
“Don’t do it!” I kept saying, over and over again, to both of them. “You guys get married, Mom loses everything.”
Mom sniveled into a handkerchief, shaking her head, refusing to speak.
“What’d I ever do to you?” Georgie asked me.
“You heard the woman, Georgie. If Mom loses her SSI there goes just about everything. Medicaid. That Section 8 apartment. Look, I don’t care what you guys’re doing in bed. Just don’t get married.”
“Who says we’re doing anything in bed?” Georgie asked.
A few people stood around us, focusing on smoking their cigarettes, reading their newspapers, or staring into space. Doing their best to ignore us, and our drama.
“Look, Georgie, I like you, but how can I trust you with my mother’s life and her entire future? That’s what you guys want.”
“I swear, I won’t let her down,” Georgie said. “Just because you’re afraid to admit you love Rhinegold doesn’t mean I don’t love your mother.”
I clasped my arms around my chest, trying to keep out the chill wind. To hold in the fear tearing apart my heart.
“How can I trust you?” I screamed. “Either one of you?”
Mom wiped her nose, and said, “I love him, honey.”
“Fine, love him. That’s great. Wonderful. Just don’t get married.”
“SeeJai,” Georgie said. “We’re not your generation. We believe in marriage as a sacred institution. And with Valentine’s Day just a few days away, that makes it even more special.”
“Oh give me a break.”
“Marriage symbolizes our commitment to each other.”
Around us, several young men and women cracked up, but fortunately kept their sniggering at low volume. If I couldn’t belt Mom or Georgie, I could smack down one of them. Of course they were all bigger than me and Rhinegold was miles away, but right then I didn’t give a damn.
“Your commitment is your commitment, you don’t have to make it legal,” I said.
Mom cried even harder.
Georgie looked sad, and wouldn’t face me. “Without that, and we sleep together, I’m just one more horny bastard and your mother’s just another cheap pickup. Is that what you want?”
“I want my mother to stay right where she is. With enough government money to support her. And people nearby to help her when she needs it.”
“I love him,” Mom blubbered out, shoulders heaving as she sobbed. “Don’t you understand? He-he’s all I’ve got left.”
I staggered. Her words sliced through my heart like a burning sword cut. I nearly fainted from the shock of the pain, of the hurt. Of the re-awakened sorrow still deep inside my soul, waiting to rise up and devour me like a monster dragon. I fell back against the aluminum side of the bus stop.
Enough. Too much.
“All right,” I shouted to both of them. “You don’t need me?”
At the last moment, the instinct for self-preservation forced me to look at the street. A pause in the traffic, so I ran across it.
“Wait!” Georgie, behind me, shouted. “She didn’t mean—”
Fortunately, the next bus came right away, taking me back to my room, without having to sit and watch Mom and Georgie.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rhinegold Negs SeeJai
Georgie’s advice nagged at the back of Rhinegold’s mind. Treat SeeJai as though he didn’t really love her? How could he do that?
Yet, intuitively, he realized the value of what Georgie said. The guys he knew in high school who scored with the most girls were the same ones who treated them like dirt, or at least acted as though they didn’t care. If one girl turned them down, they just laughed and moved on to another. And girls seemed to love them anyway. They always had another girl to move on to.
When he first met Sybille, he thought her a haughty bitch, because she seemed to take Father so much for granted. But it must have been just her way of making the wealthy divorced lawyer pay more attention to her, when he could have so many attractive women just by snapping his fingers.
Now they’d been married for nearly four years, he took her for granted, and she didn’t care. She already got what she wanted. The position of wife of a rich man. She didn’t raise a fuss about anything, unless it affected Keara …
Yet, none of that explained how to do it. SeeJai had a temper. What if he insulted her in a way she never forgave? He couldn’t live with that.
He got so curious he even went online and searched for relationship advice. He soon discovered the “pickup artist community” even had a special term for putting down a woman a man is attracted to: ’negging,’ short for negative.
If you’re attracted to someone, according to guys who picked up lots of women, you not only pretended to ignore her, you insulted her. Used some type of negativity to make her think you didn’t even like her.
The reverse psychology worked to force the women to prove they really were hot and sexy.
How to apply that to SeeJai?
Insult her appearance? He already told her lots of times how beautiful she was. She didn’t want to believe in own divine loveliness, but it wasn’t for lack of him trying to convince her. So if he now agreed she was ugly, he’d be inconsistent. If only he’d known about this technique when he first met her, he could have agreed with her own negative self-assessment of her body and face, and they’d probably be true lovers already.
Too late now.
Insult her intelligence? Might work, but she didn’t seem to care much.
Point out her lack of imagination? So strange for a woman who personified the essence of magic otherworldliness. Who was continually surrounded by an aura of glowing elven spirit. Maybe she unconsciously or even deliberately repressed that aspect of her personality. The only fantasy life she accepted was every so often watching a movie.
She spent way too much time on practical concerns. Working a job. Living in a rented room. Paying bills. Handling her mother’s business. Saving money to buy a car. And planning to attend college.
Then the idea struck. Perfect. Tonight, after they returned from her dinner rush hour shift at The Sunshine Garden.
Rhinegold and SeeJai sat at the small kitchen table. The ’kitchen’ table because it set close to the refrigerator, stove, and sink.
They split two whole orders, one of chicken fried rice, one of sweet and sour pork. Plus orders of crab rangoon and egg rolls. A two-liter of Sprite.
After SeeJai told him about what happened at the Social Security office that afternoon, Rhinegold didn’t know what to say. Express sympathy? Or pretend he didn’t care how upset she was? What would a true pickup artist do? Did he even care, since a true pickup artist would have either bedded SeeJai a long time ago or moved on? Rhinegold could have bedded her the first night, and probably last night, but he wanted more.
Love.
“They love each other,” he told SeeJai. “Isn’t that enough?”
“Are you crazy? Mother needs food and shelter. Medicine. A TV to watch twenty hours a day. What’s love got to do with it?”
“Old Tina Turner song,” Rhinegold muttered.
“I’ve heard it, and I don’t care. Mother’s right where she ought to stay for the rest of her life. As soon as I get her in a good place, Georgie just comes along, and, and—”
SeeJai’s hands trembled. She set down her fork, and joined her hands in her
lap, hunching her shoulders, shaking.
“Falls in love with her,” Rhinegold said in a whisper.
“Threatens to ruin everything!”
“By marrying her! How dare he?”
“You’re not helping out.”
“I’m sorry, but you’re wrong, SeeJai. If they love each other so much, then why shouldn’t they get married? What should they wait for? The Big D? Be angels in the sky together?”
“Love’s fine, I guess, but it doesn’t pay their bills.”
“According to the Social Security woman, Georgie’s got enough money to pay the bills.”
“So why doesn’t he? You ever see him in an apartment?”
“So you think he’s been drinking it up?”
“Don’t you?”
Rhinegold shrugged. “I can’t argue. He hangs with the other drunks. He could have his own place, but he’s been freezing out there with the other homeless.”
“So how am I supposed to trust him with Mother?”
“You don’t have much choice, do you, though? She is a grownup.”
“Social Security says she needs someone to get her check, that’s why I’m her payee. But I can’t control everything she does.”
They ate in silence for awhile. When Rhinegold decided SeeJai calmed down from talking about Georgie marrying her mother, Rhinegold decided it was time to try out the neg.
He cleared his throat to get her attention. Something felt stuck inside it. Any bones left in the fried rice?
“Errr, SeeJai?”
“Yeah?” she asked in a tired voice.
Not encouraging. But he soldiered on. Just like in a workout. You couldn’t quit halfway through just because you felt tired and wanted to quit. That’s when willpower and mental toughness were most important.
“I apologize for the other night.”
“The other night?”
“Sunday. You know, when I … kissed you.”
“It’s all right,” she said, voice still tired, sounding as though she were thinking of twenty other, more important, things. “After all, I’ve offered you more, a lot more. I think I still owe you. You’ve done so much for me, and I do appreciate it. Bedding you in return would be a small thing I could do to thank you.”
