Worth the Wait

by Karelia Stetz-Waters

  * * *

  The Peculiarium was on the frayed end of Northwest Twenty-Third Street. A few blocks back it was designer soap shops and hand-printed stationary. But gentrification hadn’t quite reached the end of the street, and the Peculiarium looked out on the industrial district and a span of highway arching over the river. A faded sandwich board outside advertised ICE CREAM. WAFFLES W/ POP ROCKS. ART. WEIRD STUFF. A rubber severed head watched them from a pedestal by the door. The entry fee was five dollars, but King & Crown got in for free.

  “Go on. Take a look,” Greg said.

  Inside, the place was a tiny homemade house of horrors. The entry included a life-sized (presuming one knew what size it was in life) Krampus, various beagle-sized creatures with eyeballs protruding from stalks, and a rotary phone with the inscription THE ROTARY DIAL PHONE. THIS IS HOW PHONE CALLS USED TO BE MADE. EXCRUCIATING, ISN’T IT? GIVE IT A TRY, IF YOU CAN STAND THE PAIN.

  Colton, the set manager, looked up the street.

  Avery stood outside, watching the highway but glancing at Merritt.

  Merritt leaned against the building beside her. Tami, in makeup and wardrobe, had done little to her. She’d traded Merritt’s tuxedo pants for jeans, her white shirt for pink, but her hair was the same recalcitrant black silk, forever falling in her eyes.

  “I’ve always liked traffic,” Avery mused. “I like to think about how each one of those people could go anywhere. Seattle. Alberta.”

  Merritt followed her gaze. “You thinking about getting away?”

  Not really, Avery realized. All those other people could go to Alberta. She wished she could take Merritt’s hand and stroll up the street, maybe nip into an ice cream parlor. It was the kind of thing she would do with Alistair. She felt a twinge of guilt because she wanted to have that afternoon with Merritt instead.

  “You know, we do come back to cities we like,” Avery said.

  “Portland will win you over today for sure,” Merritt said. “I hear they have jars with organs inside and ice cream and art.”

  Maybe that was the little ice cream parlor they’d nip into.

  “You know if they all pitched in”—Merritt nodded toward the crew—“you wouldn’t be behind.”

  “The crew’s union. We’re one of the few union reality shows. They can’t switch jobs.”

  “You mean one person’s moving stuff and everyone has to stand around and watch them?”

  “Pretty much. The grips move equipment. Greg is field producer. Gould is camera. Tom’s sound. Meg, who you were talking to—” Avery touched her fist to Merritt’s arm, a symbolic punch. Merritt pretended to look innocently confused, as though there were something between them that Meg might interrupt. Avery’s heart lifted a little. Merritt was playing along. “Meg is boom mic. Solomon is assistant field producer, so if Al and I split up, he takes the easier set.”

  “It’s all a little boring,” Merritt said, not unkindly. “You spend a lot of time standing around.”

  Avery had never thought about it. “We’re here when we’re needed.”

  “So you travel all over the country, but when you’re at work…?”

  “We wait. We don’t mind. It’s very well organized, and the crew makes well over union wages. That’s important to me and Alistair. Our contract is half the average so that Greg can pay the crew more.”

  “That’s nice,” Merritt said thoughtfully.

  * * *

  A few minutes later Greg called them over and identified the next shot: Avery would tiptoe into the Peculiarium. The Peculiarium really was a charming mess of campy, glue-gunned horror. Merritt would grab her by the waist and half carry, half pitch her into the dark interior. Avery would squeal, Something’s going to jump out at me.

  “You sure you don’t want Alistair in this one?” Gould asked.

  “I do,” Greg said, “but we’re behind schedule, and we have got to be out of here in less than a month. If we call Alistair over here, that’s a day. We’ll use Merritt. Make it look pally.”

  Avery should have told Greg about Merritt, she thought. If Merritt grabbed her and pulled her into the darkness, someone on the Peculiarium staff would see them. They’d sense Avery longing for Merritt’s touch. She wanted Merritt to drag her into the dark, even if it was an exhibit that purported to be a zombie decontamination room.

  “Don’t you think—” She was going to say, That would look a little gay. But she saw Merritt examining a fake-blood-filled Magic 8-Ball in the window, the sun catching every contour of her face. Venner would make it a crass pejorative: That’s a little too gay. She wouldn’t. She would never say that because everything about Merritt was perfect.

  “I’m ready when you are,” she said.

  “Okay. Let’s get going,” Greg said.

  Merritt opened her arms with a cocky grin. “You ready?”

  “Terrified,” Avery said.

  They took their places.

  “Ooh, what’s in here?” Avery said, a little off script. She stepped into the shadow of the Krampus. Its eyes lit up. A second later Merritt’s arms closed around Avery’s waist. The sensation took Avery’s breath away although her grip was light. Merritt didn’t seem to flex a muscle, but suddenly they were around the corner in the blackness of the zombie room. Merritt planted her neatly back on her feet.

  “You forgot, ‘Something’s going to jump out at me,’” Greg called. “Go again.”

  Gould checked his light meter. Tom played back three seconds of sound. There was a lot of waiting, Avery thought. They ran through the scene four more times. Every time Merritt pulled her into the dark, away from the eye of the camera and the crew, Avery felt Merritt hesitate before she released her.

  On the fifth take, Merritt caught her from a different angle. When they disappeared around the corner, the sweep of Merritt’s movement landed Avery against Merritt’s body, their lips almost kissing, Merritt’s leg between Avery’s thighs. It turned Avery on. Instantly. Entirely. Avery had the sense that Merritt was in complete control of every movement, just like when she’d caught Avery on the stairs of the path.

  “I’m sorry,” Merritt said, and pulled away.

  “Are we dancing?” Avery asked, so softly the boom mic could never catch it. It was the secret voice she used only for Alistair.

  “I don’t know how to dance,” Merritt said.

  “I think you do.”

  “You’re trouble, Avery Crown.”

  Then they were back outside in the clutter of equipment and the bright light of the day. Inside, Avery groaned with unrequited desire.

  Chapter 21

  Outside the Peculiarium, caterers were setting up long tables with white paper tablecloths. Avery’s phone rang, and Merritt watched her disappear around the corner. Merritt knew she’d been wrong to tease her. Each time Greg had said, Go Again, she’d held Avery closer, until finally the heat of their bodies touched. She felt it. She’d heard Avery gasp. It wasn’t fair. Avery didn’t love her. She wouldn’t stay. But Avery liked her, and Merritt didn’t have a right to tease her and then say no. She’d still teased Avery though. That was the trouble with temptation. It was tempting. And her night with Avery had felt so good.

  Merritt tried to muster interest in lunch. The crew was always interested. What it would be, when it would be, and would it be pasta primavera again were topics of much debate and genial complaining. The food seemed good to her. Her natural food source was popcorn shrimp from the Mirage. Sure, every few months she vowed to cook kale, but she just ended up wandering the aisles of Market of Choice, buying nothing. Sitting down to one lonely fork wasn’t worth it. At least at the Mirage she could let Vita abuse her.

  Instead of lunch, Merritt looked for Avery. No, she wasn’t looking. She just happened to be wandering in the direction Avery had gone. She turned the corner of the Peculiarium. Half a block away, Avery was pacing back and forth, her phone to her ear. With each pass, she seemed to shrink. Even her curls seemed to sag. Finally, the call ended and she s
at down on the curb. She rubbed the fading yellow paint on the concrete and ran her fingers through the gravel and dust that had collected at the edge of the road.

  Merritt had only meant to catch a glimpse of Avery, but she couldn’t leave her sitting on the curb picking at the gravel that had collected at the edge of the road. She hurried over. Avery didn’t seem to notice her until Merritt sat down beside her.

  “Not eating?” Merritt asked gently. “It might be pasta primavera. It might not. These are important issues.”

  “I’m not hungry.” Avery picked up a pebble and placed it on the curb between them. No, I am hungry, but I’m right at my limit.”

  “Limit?”

  “A hundred and twenty-five pounds. I told you I can’t change. It’s in my contract.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You’re perfect, and you would still be perfect if you gained weight.”

  Avery set another pebble between them. “You’re sweet.”

  They were silent for a moment. Avery picked up a third pebble, selecting it carefully.

  “Are you counting them?” Merritt touched Avery’s hand.

  “I don’t even know how to knit,” Avery said, as though this were a terrible failing that she had finally worked up the courage to share. “DX knows. I don’t know why she still teases me about it. Once this woman asked me to fix this train wreck of a sweater. I had to give her this long speech about accepting yourself. Your sweater is precious because you are. Don’t compare your sweater to other sweaters. It didn’t even look like a sweater. It looked like it had crawled out of her knitting basket and died. But she said no one had ever loved her the way I did. Greg sends me a list of all the things on my blog so that I don’t forget. They put a new craft up every day. How am I going to keep track if—” She sounded teary.

  Merritt stopped her. “Who was it on the phone? What’s wrong?”

  Avery slumped even lower. “My agent…my mom.”

  She stared down at the gravel at her feet. She looked so sad. Merritt wanted to put her hand over Avery’s, to say, Look at me. It was the kind of gesture she could never quite manage with the women she dated. She cared about them. She felt sorry if they were sad. But there was always this moment when there was a right thing to say or do, and she always missed it. Now everything in Avery’s bowed shoulders said Merritt should put her arm around her. She wanted to. But a trio of pedestrians were walking too slowly at the end of the road.

  “She says Venner’s up here seeing if King and Crown needs a new female lead,” Avery said finally.

  “But it’s King and Crown. You and Alistair are the show.”

  Avery looked even more despondent. “Actually, she didn’t say he was looking for a new female lead. She said he should be. She said if he knew what he was doing, he’d be thinking about it, and I should be thinking about it too.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “She wants me to get a lift.” Avery touched her perfectly smooth cheek, pulling it up toward her temple.

  “A face-lift?”

  “Yeah.”

  Avery was wearing the usual glitter on her cheeks. It struck Merritt as sweet and girlish. The kind of enhancement a young girl would put on and then spin around in front of the mirror, thinking she was a princess. For someone to cut into that simple happiness seemed like mowing down wildflowers.

  “Don’t do it!” Merritt said with passion she felt but hadn’t meant to share.

  “I might do it. I don’t want to lose the show. I don’t want to lose Alistair.”

  “No one in the real world notices things like that until you have a Michael Jackson nose and lumps on your forehead. Don’t do it if you don’t want to.”

  “They do notice. If it’s good you just don’t notice you’re noticing.” Avery brushed the pebbles back into the street.

  “You don’t need to be fixed,” Merritt said. “You’re not a lumpy sweater.” A thought occurred to Merritt with sudden shock. “She doesn’t mean me, does she? I’m not the new lead. I’ll quit if I am. I’ll walk away. I won’t even go back for the afternoon. I wouldn’t take that away from you.”

  Avery looked up. “You’d lose the Elysium.”

  “I don’t care.” Merritt didn’t realize how much she meant it until she spoke the words.

  “I do.” Avery let out a heavy sigh. “I want you to have it. Sometimes I wish I could cut my hair or just braid it. I can’t take the day off. I can’t go to a concert without running it by our legal department. I can only hug Alistair, even if I’m sad. And if I hug Alistair in public, it always has to be the right hug and the right sad. And it’s worth it. It’s just that he’s not the one.” She looked at Merritt. The gold flecks had faded from her eyes.

  “Come with me,” Merritt said.

  The Peculiarium had a small storage room off the back of the store-slash-museum-slash-eatery-slash-gift-shop-of-things-you-could-only-buy-for-that-one-weird-friend. It had been offered as a dressing room, but they were dressed and Tami needed to powder them in location, to make sure the contours accentuated the right light pattern.

  Merritt pushed open the door. The high-ceilinged room was full of Peculiarium cast-offs. She locked the door behind them. She hesitated for a moment, then put her arms around Avery. Avery sagged against her.

  “Thank you,” Avery whispered. “I needed this.” She nestled her check against Merritt’s breast.

  For once Merritt knew she had done the right thing. Maybe this was what emotional intelligence felt like.

  “Don’t listen to them,” Merritt said. “They don’t have a right to tell you who to be. In the real world, you dump people like that. In the real world, if your lover acts like that, your friends hate them. They stage an intervention. You say, No, no, I love them. And your friends are like, Fuck that shit.”

  “But I do love them, and they are my friends…well, not my mom.” Avery sounded like she was on the verge of tears again.

  Merritt wrapped her arms tighter around her, resting her cheek on Avery’s head. She thought again how Avery was like the pin-up girls of the 1920s, tiny by modern standards but as luscious as that decade had ever seen. Her petite curves the perfect shape for a woman. Hollywood wanted women with the bodies of young men, but that was a waste. Young men could be young men. She wanted to say, Get fat. Shave your head. But she didn’t think that would help. Instead she rocked Avery gently back and forth.

  Then slowly Avery lifted her head from Merritt’s chest, and Merritt tilted her head down. Their lips touched. Merritt’s body sang with the hot desire she had stoked every time she drew Avery to her in the dark of the Peculiarium. She couldn’t have stopped their kiss any more than she could have stopped the sun from rising. It was bliss, holding Avery’s body close and feeling her soft lips, her tongue exploring Merritt’s mouth, every sensation arousing a hungry, protective, insistent passion. She wanted Avery. She needed her. She wouldn’t care if they were making love on a pile of rubber ghoul masks. She would come with her clothes still on. But after that she’d meet Avery at the Jupiter Hotel, and she would not be able to pretend that a night at the hotel was a night out of time, that her heart wouldn’t follow her into the room and it wouldn’t break as Avery went out.

  Her body cried out in protest, but she broke their kiss. She took Avery’s shoulders and guided her away until she held her at arm’s length. Avery gazed at her, her eyes wide, her lips parted in a look of nervous resolution. Then she must have seen something in Merritt’s face because she covered her mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Did I get it all wrong?”

  “Avery, I can’t.”

  It was the girl with the pigtails. You’ll always be alone. It was her friends never seeing that she was the one who got hurt. It was Greg reminding them of every passing minute. It was Avery saying, I feel free when we leave. We: Avery and Alistair. It was the one lonely fork.

  “I thought you were flirting.” Avery looked despondent. “I’m hopeless. I thought…I read too much into t
hings.”

  “Stop.” Merritt stroked her thumb down Avery’s cheek, as though tracing a tear Avery hadn’t shed yet. “You can’t think I don’t want you. Look at me, Avery. You wreck me. I’m a mess. I can’t sleep. I’ve never wanted anyone more than I want you. I’ve wanted you since we were sixteen. If I wanted you less, I’d say yes in a second. But, you see, you’ll break my heart, and there’s too little heart left to break.”

  “If there’s so little…what do you lose? Wouldn’t it…?” Avery didn’t finish.

  “Be worth it?” Between Merritt’s legs, her sex throbbed. Yes, her body cried. “It’s not that easy.”

  Chapter 22

  It was one a.m., and the grounds of the Extended Stay Deluxe were empty. Avery sat by the pool. Occasionally, an airplane roared by overhead, but even the airport seemed to be half asleep. Soon it would be time to leave. Leaving had always made her feel better. A bad visit with her mother, a season that fell flat—the answer had been simple. Just go. But the planes looked unsteady, and the summer night would be so beautiful if Merritt were lounging in the plastic lawn chair beside her.

  The water in the pool was motionless. She stood up. She was still wearing a dress, but she stepped into the shallows anyway. The dress floated around her knees. Greg would be appalled. She was wading tearfully (and fully dressed!) into a pool, right beneath a sign that said DO NOT SWIM ALONE. Dan Ponza could be in the bushes. Hotel guests could be out walking their dogs.

  She took another step in, then dipped her head under the water, holding her breath for as long as she could, listening to the water pressing against her ears. She tried to imagine herself someplace else—Atlanta, Montana—but she was right there. Her breath ran out and she popped up. Her hair hung in tangled curls. She thought about Merritt stroking it off her forehead while she lay in the bath. I don’t want to hurt you.

  “You did,” she said to the empty water. Then she dipped under again, swimming the whole length underwater.