by Julia Slavin
In the car William stares out the back and won’t talk. I guess we both thought the day would be different.
Star Gaze has photos from the Nevada/albino wedding. They eloped after the screening. I shouldn’t have left early. Maybe I could have stopped them. “Your little baby. All grown up,” Crystal says, flipping through the rag.
“Don’t be cruel. Not today.” Nevada looks so handsome in his Nehru tux. A tear drips off my face and onto the conveyor belt. Crystal and I watch as it moves across and gets pulled down into the mechanical world.
In the car, I check my voice mail for a message from Gus. How pathetic. We share a flat. His limbs have fallen off. He has no ears, no hair, only a scattering of teeth. His nose hangs by mucous beads. I still wait for him to call. There’s a message from my agent: “Big news! Call me!” A message from Austin Kairys saying no rush getting back his jacket, but how ’bout returning it over lunch? I play it back a few times, just to make sure. And then Gus telling me he’s sorry he didn’t call earlier, he slept all day, no rush coming over. But I rush over anyway.
Gus is arranged on the bed like bones on an anthropological dig. “Who laid you out? Esperanza?”
“Ain’t she a wonder.” He’s staring at an infomercial for an instant miracle teeth whitener. I bring him a Natural Beer with an extra-long straw that I bought at the toy store. “Oh, a letter came from your agent. By, uh, Fed Ex. You got Pretty Mom of the Year again.”
“Fabulous.”
“You don’t seem happy.”
I shrug.
“What are you going to do with the Plymouth?”
“Give it away.”
“Why not keep it? Strap me in. Push me off a cliff.”
“Stop.” I rub his head. “I want you to come with me. To the awards ceremony.”
“As what? Your seat cushion?”
“As my date. As the love of my life.”
“Silver-headed Frank is the love of your life.”
“No, baby. It’s you.” I prop him up on the pillows.
“I’m hideous.”
“Never.” I sit next to him on the bed, take his head and shoulders in my arms, and rock him. “I love you. I’ll always love you.” I feel what I’m saying is true.
“There’s something I need to tell you.” I stop rocking. “Because I have to be honest. Because our relationship is based on honesty.” I mouth the words as he’s saying them. I look out at the pool. I should just let it go, not press for details. But, as always, I torture myself.
“Esperanza?”
“LaShawna.”
“LaShawna?”
“The Fed Ex girl.”
“What?” I stand up. “How could you?” Then, looking down at him, I rephrase the question. “How could you?”
“Well,” he shrugs. “I managed to call you on the phone, didn’t I?” He gives me his bad-boy grin. I break down. “Oh, Jeanette. I’m sorry. Forgive me. You know I love you. Don’t be sad. You have my heart.”
In the end the beginning seems unbelievable, something that happened to people who just look like you, but you can’t help going there. The blue splash of Gus diving into the pool at the far end, swimming the length underwater, pulling himself out, lying on top of me on the deck, drenching me.
“You make me feel so beautiful.”
“You’d be beautiful with or without me.”
“No, it’s you.”
“This is an affair, Jeanette.”
“This is different.”
“I’ll go the way of the director, the trainer, the redneck, and the pool boy.”
“I wasn’t in love with any of them.” He puts his mouth over mine to quiet me.
We start quarreling immediately upon my return from the Pretty Mom awards. “I see I’ve been replaced.” Gus’s voice comes up behind me as I’m collecting the last of his teeth and a few skin flaps off the floors and counters. An eye floating in a glass of milk follows me around the kitchen.
“It’s not what you think.” I go out on the deck.
“Yeah, right.” His voice follows as I move to the end of the pool to check the thermostat. “I told you we were doomed.”
“Austin took me to the ceremony. He’s having his place done. There’s dust an inch thick.”
“You’ve seen his place?”
“I still love you.”
I hear the shower turn off, Austin Kairys humming the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the sound of him switching on my hair dryer.
“He’s wearing my robe. He’s drinking my scotch. That son-of-a-bitch.”
“Leave him alone. He has a blood vessel abnormality.” I chase Gus’s voice through the sliding doors off the bedroom.
“Get out!” Gus yells. “Get out of my house.”
“Huh?” Austin calls over the roar of the dryer.
“Get out of my robe! Stop touching my things!”
I pull up behind the voice and open my mouth. Austin switches off the dryer and looks at me.
“Say something, love?”
“Get the f—”
I take in a tremendous breath and swallow. Gus’s accusations and recriminations shoot down my gullet like rocket debris hurtling through space.
“Nothing,” I say to Austin. A haywire gas bubble bounces off the walls of my stomach. I throw back a shot of Austin’s scotch. “Nothing.”
Acknowledgments
For their astounding support I am grateful to the Tabard Group: Jan Linley, Fiona J. Mackintosh, and Beth Millemann. I also wish to thank Esther Newberg, Jeff Jackson, Denise Shannon, Rachel Klauber-Speiden, and my editor, Jack Macrae. Thanks to my parents. Thanks to Dan Slavin and Paul Slavin. And for guidance and honesty, Claudia Rosenthal Plepler.
About the Author
Julia Slavin is the author of The Woman Who Cut Off Her Leg at the Maidstone Club and Other Stories and the novel Carnivore Diet, which Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post chose as one of the best three books of fiction of 2005. Slavin is the winner of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, GQ’s Frederick Exley Award, and a Pushcart Prize, and her stories have been translated into Japanese, Italian, and Hebrew. “Covered” was read by Alec Baldwin as part of the Symphony Space Selected Shorts series, and the recording can be heard on the “Too Hot for Radio” podcast. She is currently working on another collection, Stories for Squatters.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1999 by Julia Slavin
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
Cover photograph © Maren Becker / Trevillion Images
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4862-0
This edition published in 2018 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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