by Rita Ciresi
I suspected Dirk was a one-time-only man. I thought about giving myself a quick whore's bath, but I did not take Dirk for the go-down type of lover and I didn't want to keep him waiting. When I resurfaced from the bathroom—still fully clothed because I didn't want him to see me stippled with gooseflesh—I found the lamp dimmed and Dirk beneath the sheets, his chinos and twill shirt and even his underwear neatly folded beside him on the floor. He had deprived me of the pleasure of undressing him. But this meant I could concentrate on the pleasure I got as he switched off the lamp—smart guy!—and undressed me.
I must admit I liked the way he handled me. He was good with buttons. Even did a tolerable job with the bra. The too-studious way he sucked on my breasts (he seemed to be timing it, giving equal attention to the left and right) was forgotten by the time he slid his hands into my jeans and gradually worked them down my thighs, tossing them (without folding) onto the floor. When I wrapped my legs around his hairless thighs, I wished I'd done a better job with a razor that morning.
“Do you have trouble?” he whispered.
“What with?”
“Coming.”
“Not if you use your mouth,” I said, instantly regretting my earlier do-not-wash decision.
Although I suspected Dirk had learned his technique from (where else?) a book, the source of his knowledge soon ceased to matter. I found I could forgive a lot of a man who was willing to spend a good quarter of an hour with his head between my thighs and who had the self-control to thrust into me for many minutes beyond that.
After it was over, I leaned my head onto the pillow instead of his shoulder so the pillowcase would catch my inevitable, inexplicable postcoital tears. Dirk waited a respectable three or four minutes, then (probably following the same medical manual's advice) he got up to clear the toxins from his bladder. I lay on my back listening to his urine, then to the sound of running water in the sink. Dirk washed his hands so long I knew that if I followed him into the bathroom, I'd find the faucet would be too hot to touch.
He came back to my sad, creaking bed, his face and hands scented with my soap instead of my salty odor.
“Angel,” he said, “your bathroom ceiling is leaking.”
“I know.”
“This is unacceptable. In the morning, I'll go downstairs and tell your landlord about both the heat and the ceiling.”
I smiled. “What makes you so sure I'll let you stay until morning?”
With horror, I heard him reach for his parka. Then he tossed it over me and climbed back into bed. “You'll let me stay,” he said. “Unless you want to freeze to death.” He stroked my hair and my shoulders. “Was it good for you?”
Truth to tell, no man had ever bothered to ask me before. I knew I should have been happy that someone should care, even if something anxious in Dirk's voice made it sound as if he expected to be graded using the plus/minus system. But suddenly I felt confused and embarrassed. Dirk had penetrated me. But it had been my landlord's long wet tongue licking me, over and over again, in my imagination.
“Das,” I said, “was… good.”
“Gut.”
I lay on my back and regarded the sloped ceiling. Then I closed my eyes and snuggled closer to Dirk. From across the room, plenty of guys could look hot enough to give you goose bumps. But when you were really freezing, only the guy willing to hold you in his arms could stroke away the cold. Only he could lie next to you in a garret and make you feel—for a moment, at least— that a fire was blazing in your very own Swiss chalet.
THE MINUTE I STEPPED inside the South Seas Restaurant, I knew my sister had invited me there just to be facetious. The lobby was so red it hurt my eyes, and the gold plastic dragon on the wall looked more like a deranged poodle than some fierce mythological animal. The menu posted on the cash register boasted authentic Polynesian and Chinese cuisine, but the man behind the counter obviously was Vietnamese. His name tag read:
YOUR HOST
MR. V. TRAN
Inside, Lina waited by the back wall, at a tiny bentwood table for two that was topped by a red and black umbrella. The fabric on the umbrella looked spray-painted, and I suspected that if we stripped it we would find the tricolors used to decorate pizza patios, and maybe even a bold advertisement for CINZANO.
“Where in the world did you find this place?” I whispered.
Lina smoothed a lock of her shellacked black hair. “Bob used to take me here.”
Bob was Lina's old lover. He had given her genital warts, a topic I didn't care to discuss just before lunch. I sat down and opened the red laminated menu.
“Forget the food,” Lina said. “This joint is known for the drinks.”
I looked at my watch.
“It's Saturday,” she reminded me.” Besides, if you eat a lot of rice, it'll wear off by one-thirty.”
When our waiter—a Mr. T. Tran—appeared, Lina felt compelled to state her order twice, in the loud exaggerated tones our parents used to use whenever they spoke English to someone who wasn't Italian. To make up for Lina's condescension, I mumbled my order and had to repeat it twice.
Lina got a mai tai. I got a frothy drink called a grasshopper, which reminded me of the seafoam-green punch my aunts had served after my mother's funeral.
Lina reached over and stole the tiny paper umbrella out of my glass. “Pammy loves these things,” she said. “I'll save it for next time she starts whining. Did you know Pammy's a whiner?”
“Yes,” I reminded her. “I've baby-sat.”
“Phil sends his love,” Lina said. “To you.”
“My love also,” I said, sipping the grasshopper.
Lina's plum-colored lips raised slightly, as if she had just confirmed what she had suspected for years: that I once had harbored a strange crush on her husband. “You've got a foam mustache,” she said, and I wiped my lips with a red paper napkin.
Lina took a long drink of her mai tai, folded her plum-tipped fingers together, and leaned across the table. “All right, let's get down to business.”
Ostensibly Lina and I were meeting to settle the question of what to do with our father. For months now, Babbo had let everything go. The house was draped with cobwebs; the car growled because it needed a new muffler; the laundry sat gray and stiff in the corner; and Babbo, who refused to bathe, smelled gamy as a stuffed skin that the taxidermist hadn't treated quite right.
“He's a mess,” Lina said. “The other day I went over and the faucet in the kitchen sink was streaming water because he forgot to turn it off. The toilet was clogged with poop—”
“Spare me the details.”
“—and Babbo started talking at me in Italian.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“How the hell should I know?” And when I frowned at her, Lina said, “Like I'm supposed to remember? Use it or lose it, as they say. Anyway, I kept yelling at him, Non capisco, I don't kabeesh you, Daddy, and I kept on repeating it until a mouse—a real live mouse—zoomed out from under the couch, looked at me, and then zoomed back in.”
I shuddered. “I hope he's not home when I get there—”
“Oh, Babbo never goes anywhere—”
“No, the topolino.”
Lina wrinkled her nose. “You could feed him the three-month-old formaggio that's been sitting in the fridge.”
“Stop. I'll be sick.”
Lina straightened her silverware on the table. “Phil says we should put Babbo in a home.”
I hesitated. Then I said, “All right. Keep on talking.”
“But the whole thing gets me depressed. It's like Mama all over again.” She swallowed the last of her mai tai. “Do you ever think about Mama?”
I felt like telling Lina, I dream she's coming at me with her fingers pinched together, ready to pick the nits out of my hair. I dream someone opens her coffin and her face instantly caves in, like a jack-o'-lantern melted by a candle—
“Oh goody,” Lina said. “Here comes the pu-pu platter.” She pushed her glass acro
ss the table at the waiter. “I need a refill,” she said. “Another mai tai.”
Mr. T. Tran nodded and took the glass. He pointed at mine— still half-full—and I shook my head.
“Watch, he'll come back with a Coke or something,” Lina said.
“Be quiet,” I said, and selected a pu-pu, or whatever one of the individual things on the plate was called. Grease dribbled down my chin.
“What about a home nurse?” I asked.
“Too expensive,” Lina said.
“What's the other going to cost?”
“Big bucks too,” Lina said. “But thank God for Medicare. And Phil's big fat salary. Phil can pay for anything. Mmm, try one of these rolled-up things; they're actually edible. Do you know why Connecticut is called the Nutmeg State? Pammy has to write a report for school.”
I shook my head. “Babbo's never even been in the hospital,” I said. “I wonder how he'll react when you tell him.”
Lina tapped the table with her red plastic swizzle stick. “What do you mean, me tell him? You're not getting off easy on this one, pal.”
I gave her what I hoped was a frosty look. “Of course I'll be there to tell him,” I said. “Just give me the date.”
Lina took her calendar out of her purse and turned to her To Do list. “I'll start calling around on Monday,” she said, writing a note to remind herself. “It's probably just like day care—you have to get on a waiting list for something decent.”
I thought about Saint Ronan's, where Mama had lived for three years after her stroke. “All those homes are horrible,” I said. “Full of construction paper cutouts and Lawrence Welk on big-screen TV.”
“High-school glee clubs in to sing Christmas carols,” Lina added.
“Little children marching around in Batman and Barney costumes on Halloween,” I said.
“Talk about hell on earth!” Lina finished the last pu-pu and licked the grease off her well-manicured fingers. “Thank God you could come today. I couldn't wait to ditch Pammy and Richie with the baby-sitter. They love the baby-sitter. They hate me.” She paused. “Do you think Phil hates me?”
“Of course not,” I said.
“Sometimes I wonder,” Lina said, smiling, as if the very idea gave her satisfaction.
Lina got the Happy Family, which she hardly touched. I got the Perfect Match with white rice, cold sesame noodles, and a spring roll. I tried not to think about Mama and mice and Babbo babbling in Italian as I glumly ate my sour, salty main dish, half-listening as Lina gave me the run-down on the doings at her house.
“Pammy plays ‘Frère Jacques'—with two hands—on the piano,” she said. “Richie's still padding around in those Big Bird slippers that make his feet stink. Every day when I drop him off at day care I tell the teacher, Have a good day. Notice I don't say nice. And she says, Every day is good when you wake up alive. Like you're gonna wake up dead? I feel like asking her. But I keep my mouth shut because she's still Pollyanna-izing. Every morning when the alarm clock rings, she says, I thank God for another day. Oh yeah? I feel like saying. Well I think: Fuck, six-thirty already? But like I said, I don't breathe a word of this. I keep my mouth shut because I'm afraid if I'm rude they'll molest my kid or cheat him out of his goddamn graham crackers for snack. I mean, once I told Pammy's teacher I didn't have time to sell candy bars. For weeks afterward Pammy complained about how she always got stuck playing with the bald-headed doll during recess.” Lina paused. “So what do you think of my exciting life?”
She looked around the restaurant, which was empty except for an older couple sitting in a booth toward the front. Her eyes looked vacant, and the deep plum color on her lips seemed to tremble.
“Bob just wanted me because I looked different,” she finally said.
I nodded.
“He wanted me to talk in Italian to him,” Lina said. “Like I know more than four or five things to say. I mean, he'd be fucking me and I'd be telling him, Fish on Fridays, or Shut the hell up! Then he'd come with these great big groans and I'd be saying, Hey thanks, paesano, you're a real goomba, how goes it?”
I laughed. Lina shrugged and looked across the table at me. I knew she was evaluating, with dissatisfaction, my green turtle-neck and navy sweater.
“Do you ever feel like waltzing into a bar, leading some guy on, and then giving him the wrong phone number?” she asked.
“Nope,” I said, using my fork to stab a scallop.
She took another drink. “The minute that mouse looked at me, I knew I needed a face-lift,” she said. “I'm getting a face-lift.”
“Don't,” I warned. “You'll end up looking like Liberace.”
Lina sucked on her swizzle stick. “How could we have watched Liberace for all those years and not realized he was the gayest blade on earth? God, wouldn't it be great to be a kid again and not realize anything?” She looked intently at me. “You know, Pammy's got these two black girls in her class. The other day when I pick her up she whispers in my ear, Daniella and Nicole are different. So I get all set to roll out the Sesame Street we-are-the-world minilecture when Pammy leans over with a devilish look on her face and says, They've both got beads in their hair. Isn't that something? Out of the mouths of babes—”
“Ofttimes come burps,” I finished for her. It was a line Phil had coined when Pammy was a colicky infant and screamed herself red in the face until she belched herself out of her indigestion.
The waiter came over and pointed to my empty spring-roll plate. I nodded and he cleared it away. After he was halfway to the kitchen, Lina said, “God, to think I have to pay fifty bucks a month for gloss to get that kind of shine in my hair.”
I sighed. I picked a little bit more at my rice, while Lina sat back and opened and closed the tiny umbrella that had been in my drink. She had a dreamy look on her face. All of a sudden I was afraid she might be remembering her days in the high-school drama club. I was scared she might break out into “Shall We Dance?” from The King and I or “Happy Talk” from South Pacific. To head off trouble, I blurted out, “I'm seeing someone.”
Lina dropped the toy umbrella. She leaned forward, her hands pressed flat on the table, and in an exaggerated ladies-lunch voice she said, “Do tell.”
I paused, twirling my sesame noodles around my fork. “He's German.”
“No way! What's his name?”
I paused. “Dirk Diederhoff.”
“Can he change it?”
“I doubt he's ever even considered it.”
“Where'd you two hook up?” Lina asked.
“He's from Minnesota,” I said, evasively.
“I guess you didn't meet him in a bar, then.”
“I don't do bars,” I said. “Anymore.”
“So where—”
“I answered his ad,” I said. “In the newspaper.”
“Oh my God!” Lina said. “My little sister answers dirty ads.”
“They're not dirty.”
“I can't believe it. What did the ad say?”
I pressed my lips together.
“God,” Lina said, “I can just imagine the kind you'd answer. Long walks at Grant's Tomb—”
“That's full of crack addicts now,” I said.
“Evenings listening to chamber music. Saturday afternoons in the stacks of the New York Public Library.”
“So what kind would you answer?” I asked.
“I wouldn't answer,” Lina said. “I'd advertise.” She laughed ruefully. “Bored housewife needs something to keep her out of the mall.” She sucked wistfully on her discarded straw. “I've seen those ads in the paper. I've read them. Do you notice how the men always want a photo?”
“And the women always want a man who can bench-press three hundred but isn't afraid to cry,” I said.
“What gets me are the euphemisms for fat,” Lina said.
“Zaftig.”
“Rubenesque,” Lina said.
“Statuesque.”
“Does he fuck you in German?” Lina asked loudly.
I looked over at the cash register, where Misters V. and T. Tran were conferring. Lina impatiently said, “I'm telling you, they don't get English. One day I ordered the moo shu and they brought the chow mein. Do I look like someone who orders chow mein?”
I shook my head. “Dirk doesn't talk much,” I lied.
Lina laughed triumphantly. “Neither does Phil. Bob never did either. It's a male thing. It's like they're afraid their dicks will fall off if they open their mouths.” She leaned back in her chair. “The other day Richie pulls down the fly on his jeans—did I tell you how much I hate the way his Big Bird slippers make his feet stink?—and he goes to me, Mommy, Mommy, I've got a peenie. Great, says I. Now you can go out and rob a bank.” She sucked in her cheeks and pursed her lips at me. “Did I tell you I'm going out for Halloween as a dominatrix?”
I looked at her empty mai tai glass. “You're acting like an asshole.”
Lina sighed. “I should have been a man,” she said. Then she pulled her ear to indicate she was joking. “So this relationship, is it serious?”
I shrugged. “I think so. Yes.”
Lina turned and craned her neck. “Where's the waiter? We need our fortune cookies right now. Chop chop.”
“Stop it,” I told her.
“What's Kirk—I mean Dick's—I mean Dirk's astrological sign?”
“Aries, I think.”
“The ram. Great. He'll never be impotent.” She took a cup and poured some of the tea that had been sitting in the stainless-steel pot since the beginning of the meal. “I'm going to read your tea leaves.”
“That's the Gypsies, Lina.”
Lina stared down into the cup. “Ah… I see… I see… life full of great fortune and profound sorrow.” She stifled a burp. “Not-so-happy family comes back to haunt you. New family of many blond daughters. One son, strong as ginseng root. But beware the evil tuna fish—”
“Lina, stop it,” I hissed as the waiter came over and silently gathered our dishes.
“Do you think I should leave Phil?” Lina asked, watching the waiter stack the plates.
