by Lois Greiman
He struggled through that with narrowed eyes.
“Which one hurt you?” I asked.
He stared at me, all hot rage and cold bravado, but underneath that fragile patina was a frightened little boy. If only I could find him amongst all the bullshit.
“I just want to be left alone,” he rasped finally.
“Why? What’s the problem?”
“I told you last week, I don’t have any problems. My life is perfect. You said so yourself.”
I hadn’t said that exactly, but it has been proven time and again that facts are some of the easiest things in the world to ignore. “Are you concerned about your sexual orientation?”
He looked surprised for the briefest of seconds, then locked it away, going for his default expression: boredom with a touch of I’m-the-shit and a big-ass dose of you-are-shit. “Being queer’s all the rage these days. Didn’t you know that?”
“I didn’t. Tell me about it.”
“Everybody wants to have a gay friend. It’s not a party without a pansy.”
“Wow. And here I am without so much as a daffodil. So you go to a lot of parties?”
“Everybody needs a mascot.”
“When was the last one?”
That shrug again. I considered slapping him upside the head just to provoke a different response, but sometimes parents get a little uptight about physical abuse.
“Do boys and girls want mascots in equal measure?”
I could see the fragile beginnings of his desire to talk, to unburden. It was that burning need to share that made my job possible. I waited.
“The jocks are jealous of us.”
“Of the gays?”
He shrugged. “Fags are the ones hanging with their girlfriends.”
I ignored the crude terminology. I had to guess that despite the fact that he attended Harvard Westlake, a school that probably cost more than my humble little abode in Sunland, he’d heard worse. “Why?”
“Because we don’t waste our time on sports and crap.”
“That seems like a generalization,” I said. “I’ve known gay men who play football, wrestle, run track.”
“That’s not my thing.”
“What is?”
He shrugged, struggled to remain silent, then spoke. “I sing.”
“Really?” I felt a little like singing myself. Maybe he was finally ready to open up. “You any good?”
Another shrug.
Or not.
“I sing, too,” I said. “Make a little money on the side.”
Interest flickered in his eyes. “You got a band?”
“No. Actually, people pay me to quit singing.”
He stared at me, snorted derisively. It wasn’t a vast improvement on the I’m-so-bored-I’m barely-breathing shrug, but I’d take what I could get.
“What kind of music do you like?” I asked.
He glowered. I probed.
“Rock? Soul? P—”
“Fucking ad execs!”
His outburst came out of nowhere. From which, coincidently, the most pertinent information often appears. “You don’t like ad executives?”
“Corporate stooges, selling worthless shit to worthless people.”
I took a wild leap, knowing something about his familial situation. “Do your parents want you to follow them into the family business?”
He ground his teeth.
“Dad wanted me to be a plumber,” I said. “Mom’s goals weren’t quite so lofty, but she thought I could be an okay hairstylist if I really applied myself.”
He stared at me, probably sure I was kidding. I wasn’t.
“I told her I’d rather die.”
The following silence was heavy. I spoke softly into it. “Why do you want to die, Jeremy?”
He glowered, but the effect was somewhat ruined by the tears that flooded his eyes. “I never said I did.”
“Not to me.”
His lips trembled. His face contorted. I had seen that expression on a hundred other lovelorn souls.
“What’s his name?”
“Who?”
“Whoever you think is worth dying for.”
He didn’t respond.
“Listen, Jeremy, I know you think this is the end of the world as you know it, but—”
He jerked to his feet, grabbed the armrests on my roller chair and yanked me close. “I’m not the one who’s going to die!” he snarled.
I didn’t move. Couldn’t. The raw rage on his face held me immobile, and before I could articulate an appropriate response, he pivoted away and stalked from the room.
I remained as I was, waiting for my heart to quit trying to jump from my chest. Had he just threated my life? Or was someone else in danger? And if so, did I call the school? His parents? The cops?
Uncertain of everything and tired beyond reason, I swiveled shakily to the right and dropped my forehead onto the desktop as I tried to remember why I had ever become a therapist.
Holy hell, I was a loser. What did I think I was doing, counseling others while my own life was a joke? A joke in very bad taste. Maybe my father had been right. Plumbers hardly even have to talk to people, and, as an added bonus, they get to wear those low pants that show their butt cracks while—
Hearing Shirley’s footfalls coming down the hallway, I lifted my head, straightened my spine, and fiddled heroically with Jeremy’s file.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“Okay,” I said, and silently wondered if I was losing my lying edge.
“Yeah?” She squinted at me. “He looked kind of angry when he left.”
“Who? Jeremy?” I waved a dismissive hand. Shirley was a single mother of about 117 kids. Admittedly, the majority of them were grown, but she still had a passel of people to care for and I didn’t want her to worry that her employer was stupid enough to get her pants sued or possibly worse…get herself killed. “It’s just the eye makeup that makes him look that way.”
“So you’re all right?”
“Yes. Sure. Of course. Why do you ask?”
“You don’t hardly ever have paperclips stuck to your forehead ’less you’re a little down.”
“Oh.” I put my hand to my brow and, sure enough, paperclip. I cleared my throat as I tugged it away.
“What’s up, Ms. McMullen?”
I considered lying, but she seemed to have inherited Laney’s psychic powers with the job. I felt my shoulders slump. “I should have listened to my dad.”
She considered that for an instant before shaking her head. “Plumbing wouldn’t be any easier than this job.”
“You sure?”
“My uncle was a plumber. Threw his back out installing a sink in a fourth-floor walkup.”
But you get to wear those low-rise pants.”
“It wouldn’t be no good fashion statement for you. And look on the bright side…no one’s tried to kill you today.” She gave me an appraising glance, followed by a scowl that probably kept all 117 of her kids shaking in their Nikes. “Have they?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Well, if you don’t know about it, it don’t hardly matter,” she said, then, “Andrews is still in jail, right?”
Just the thought of the man who had once kidnapped Laney made me feel a little shaky, but I kept my chin up. “So far as I know.”
“And that dirty cop what tried to kill you and Lavonn, he still dead?”
I swallowed my bile, remembering the showdown on 6th Street. “Probably.”
“And the old dude with the poker—”
“Shirley!” I snapped, then calmed myself. “You’ve got to quit trying to make me feel better.”
She grinned a little, teeth shark-white against her ebony skin. “I’m out of time anyhow. Your next client is on his way.”
I winced, but resisted clonking my head back onto the desktop. “Is it the cross-dresser or the narcissist?”
“It’s the cross-dressing narcissist,” she said, and left my office just
as the front bell rang.
By the time the day was over, I felt like my mind had been weed-whacked to within an inch of its life. It was seven o’clock on a Monday evening and I wanted nothing more than to eat my weight in fried foods while watching The Princess Bride for the thousandth time from the relative comfort of my ratty couch. But when I had traipsed across the parking lot, I saw my gym bag sitting on the passenger seat of my little Saturn. I glowered at it as I slid behind the wheel. It glowered back. Usually, I’m a runner. And by that I mean that if I roll out of bed in time, and if it’s not too hot or too cold or too windy…and if it’s the right cycle of the moon with the proper degree of humidity, I will drag my sorry ass up and down the streets of Sunland twice a week. But the cycle of the moon had been off lately and my sorry ass was getting sorrier by the day. So I had paid actual money to work out. To me, it has always seemed counterintuitive to pay for something you don’t want, but upon further consideration, I realized that if I invested real money for the right to exercise, I would, by dint of being truly cheap, exercise.
I glared at the gym bag again, still dreaming of my sweet Westley…and my sweet couch…but as I snugged up my seat belt, I noticed that my belly was making inroads over the webbing.
Angry at the seat belt, my belly, and the world at large, I cranked up the Saturn and puttered toward Foothills Athletic Club in La Crescenta.
The sun was just slipping behind the Santa Monica Mountains when I reached my destination. Leery about getting too much exercise before I began to exercise, I cruised around the parking lot twice in an effort to find the slot closest to the door. Spotting a nifty space not twenty feet from the handicap parking, I gunned the motor, but a silver Lexus was closer. Seeing me coming, however, the driver waved congenially and sailed on past.
Huh…a Good Samaritan…in L.A. Feeling marginally better about life in general and the human condition in particular, I parked the Saturn and marched into the gym.
Fifteen minutes later, I was climbing fictional stairs and staring at the well-toned derriere of the guy in front of me. Which led me to the secondary advantage of having a gym membership. If the fact that I was paying money didn’t get me in the door, heavily exercised glutes should do the trick. These glutes in particular sauntered up to a well-muscled back and arms massive enough to dead lift a pachyderm. I could imagine him lifting me in those well-toned arms. Could almost feel his—
“You ready to have some fun?”
Jerking my gaze to the right, I realized Adonis was standing next to me. His bare chest glistened with sweat. His biceps were bulging and the overhead lights glistened off a smile with enough wattage to intimidate Tujunga Electric.
“I…” I glanced around, wondering if I had entered an alternate universe, but two overweight women were still pumping iron on the benches against the wall, while a balding fellow in a T-shirt that read Beefcake was using the butterfly machine. His man boobs jiggled in an unbecoming but familiar manner. I shifted my gaze back to Adonis. I knew I should act affronted. Perhaps a truly dignified individual would even slap his face. But I didn’t want to be rude…or alone. “What do you have in mind?” I asked.
His smile dimmed by a couple dozen watts. “I…asked if you were done,” he said.
I blinked.
“With the Stairmaster,” he explained. “You quit moving a couple of minutes ago.”
Chapter 7
Tomorrow is another day. And isn’t that just the shits.
—Christina McMullen, deep in a Cool Ranch Doritos binge and not quite ready to be cheered up
My trip to the Saturn followed quickly on the heels of the humiliating interaction with Adonis. I didn’t bother to take a shower or change out of my gym clothes, but I did buy an ultra-nutritious, uber-expensive yogurt, which I stuck into the pocket of my less-than-classy hoodie before hustling, red faced, out the door.
It was dark by the time I reached the parking lot, and even though the area was relatively well lit, I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand at attention. Maybe it was the dip in my self-esteem that made me jumpy, maybe it was my frequent interactions with folks who had a few quackers out of order, or maybe it was Shirley’s earlier attempt to cheer me up.
But whatever the reason, I was on the alert as I quickstepped across the asphalt to my car. Footfalls echoed in my wake. I jerked around, scanning the area, but there was only a little old lady slipping into her Mercedes. She was eighty years old if she was a day, but she was lean and upright, and by the look of her could still take me down if it came to blows. Such is L.A.’s fitness-obsessed populace. Such, also, is my frame of mind that I continually consider whether or not I can best octogenarians.
Trying to calm my heart, I turned back to my car. It was then that a body lurched at me, arm raised. I screamed and jerked away.
From my right, someone yelled. My attacker lurched back, giving me time to catch my breath and realize, rather belatedly, that the knife I was certain he’d been holding looked a little more like a cell phone than a deadly weapon. His brow furrowed nervously as he clutched it to his chest.
“I’m…I’m sorry,” he sputtered. “I didn’t—”
“You okay?” A second man, presumably the one who had yelled, came trotting around the cars that remained between us. “What’s going on?”
“It’s my fault,” Guy One said. I scanned him again for a knife, but he seemed to be bereft of bloody stilettos. Neither did he have a hatchet, AK-47, or nuclear bomb. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” He spread his hands out to his sides. He was Hispanic and wore a faded green T-shirt over black sweatpants. His demeanor was apologetic. “I just wanted to tell you…” He glanced at my face, which, even on normal days, is as pale as rice flour. Right about then, it was probably translucent. He backed away another half a step, as if he feared I might pass out should he venture within ten feet of my personal body bubble. “Your tire’s bad.”
It took all my rapidly depleting reserves to jerk my attention to the Saturn’s left front tire. It was as flat as Adonis’s belly. I blinked at it, mind tripping along in slow motion.
The men stared at me in tandem silence.
“Well…Sorry again about scaring you,” Guy One said, and scurried away as if escaping the plague.
I might have nodded. I might have recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Who knows? My mind was numb.
The other fellow was still staring at me. He wore a dark windbreaker, jeans, and a red baseball cap over summer-blond hair. “Do you have someone to help you with that?” he asked.
“What?” My thinking cells were tumbling around like loose dice in my cranium, but I tried to shake them back into some semblance of order. “What?”
“An auto club or a…a husband or something who could change your tire?”
I didn’t have either of those things. AAA was too expensive, and husbands, so I had been told, could be just as costly. I shook my head again. The numbness in my hands had obviously spread to my brain. The parking lot was silent except for cars zipping by on the 210. “How ’bout a jack, you got one of those?”
I cleared my throat, trying to bring my mind back into focus. “I think so.”
“You want help?”
“No.” I did. I really did, but not if he was going to try to kill me, and judging by the number of attempts on my life thus far, the odds were pretty high. “I’ll be fine.”
“You sure?” he asked, but he was already backing away, looking relieved as hell.
“I’m…Yes. I’m sure,” I said, finding my equilibrium slowly. “But thank you.”
Half an hour later, as I struggled with nuts and jacks—neither the kind I secretly wished to be struggling with—I knew for certain that I was crazy. No sane person would turn down a Good Samaritan. At least not in Los Angeles, where angels go to die.
Still, by the time I reached home, I was feeling better about myself. I had, after all, defeated the flat tire without any testosterone intervention.
When I punched in
my security code and shambled into the house, Harlequin greeted me with the ebullience usually reserved for long-lost lovers and good news from Powerball. After resting his broad muzzle on my shoulder for a moment, he dropped to his platter-sized paws, trotted to his empty food dish, and gazed at it in mournful longing. He looked hungry enough to cry. Apparently, I had, for once, been successful in hiding all my empty soup cans and candy stashes. And a good thing, too, because the cans tended to get caught on his oversized snout, while chocolate more often than not precipitated flatulence reminiscent of a backfiring Fiat and emergency visits to Dr. Kemah.
Still, the fact that I had neglected to buy kibble caused curse words to swarm through my head. But I try not to corrupt young minds like Harley’s even when I have to venture back into the cold, cruel world to rectify the situation. For a moment I considered feeding myself first. But long-lost lovers don’t come along every day, so with a martyred sigh, I clipped the leash onto woman’s best friend’s super-sized collar and tripped back out to my car.
It took only a few minutes to reach Tomcat Pet Warehouse, a mom-and-pop store larger than most third-world countries. Harlequin trotted alongside me, thwapping his tail at lesser canines and eyeing cats with enough interest to make the hair rise on their arched backs. A macaw riding on his owner’s shoulder gave him pause. He tilted his blocky head at it, then gazed at me as if questioning the wisdom of allowing such an animal to remain uneaten, but before I could explain the intricacies of civilization, Harlequin was attacked by a lanky tornado.
I stumbled back a step, but the whirlwind had already morphed into some kind of hairy mongrel that had wrapped its forelegs around Harley’s neck and seemed intent on gnawing off his right ear.
“Quit it,” someone chided, and tugged at the mongrel’s leash. The reprimand did nothing whatsoever to rectify the situation, but I followed the nylon cord to the hand that held it, zipped up the well-toned arm and across a broad shoulder to the face. “Hey, Chrissy.”
