Earth Angel (44 page)

“Here’s my theory,” he said. “I love women, just like the average heterosexual man. Only I love them too much. Not just sexually,
but it’s as if I want to be one. I prefer their company to that of men. So it hit me: Maybe I was supposed to be a woman but
the hormones got screwed up in the womb, so that not only wasn’t I born a woman, but I was born a lesbian. It’s all hormonal,
anyway. Maybe
all those years of fucking women I was really just trying to find my own womb. Physically screw myself into their womb. What
do you think?”

“I think you’re getting off on this discussion.”

“True. But doesn’t that further prove my point?”

I spooned more yogurt into my mouth. “You’re just a romantic, Edgar. How about I give you a yeast infection and see how romantic
the notion of being a woman is.”

He nodded sagely as if considering it.

The intercom buzzed and Judy Mulcahy, the receptionist, said, “Flu symptoms in room two, Dr. Gottlieb.”

I sipped my diet Coke, rinsed it around my mouth, and swallowed. I popped a Certs and started for the door. “Duty calls. Try
not to perform any life-altering surgery on yourself while I’m gone.”

“You know something, Gottlieb, women will never be considered equal in this society as long as they wear skirts and dresses.
You know that, don’t you. It’s demeaning.”

“I’m wearing pants, Edgar.”

He looked at my legs and shrugged. “I’m just saying, in general…”

I opened the door to room 2 and found David sitting on the examination table in his underpants. “Time for a quickie?” he said,
grinning.

“Remind me to sprinkle sneezing powder on Judy’s keyboard.”

“She was just playing Cupid. She said you haven’t been too busy tonight.”

“Nothing life-threatening.” I leaned over him and kissed him hard. My hand slipped down the elastic waistband of his underpants.

He nodded over my shoulder. “Shouldn’t you lock the door?”

“It doesn’t lock. Fire laws.” I squeezed his penis and blood swelled the flesh, filling my hand.

“What if someone walks in?”

I shrugged. “They’ll have something to discuss at dinner tonight.”

David pushed me away and quickly pulled on his pants. “I was just kidding with you.”

I laughed. “So was I. You didn’t think I was really going to do it here, did you? I’d have to sterilize this entire room afterward.”

David buttoned his shirt and slipped into his shoes. “You’re no fun trying to pull a joke on.”

I swatted his butt. “I’m more fun than you’ve ever had in your life.”

“That’s true.” He tucked in his shirt. “How’s Edgar?”

“He’s a lesbian trapped in a man’s body.”

“Don’t they make something for that, an ointment or vitamins?”

I looked at my watch. “I still have another half hour. You want to wait in the lounge? I’m sure Edgar would like nothing better
than to discuss his theory.”

He made a face but walked off to the lounge, exaggerating his limp as he often did when he didn’t want to do something. But
that was just for show. Actually, he and Edgar were very friendly, and David had taught Edgar how to play beach volleyball.
Now they both smelled of the ocean.

David and I were not married, but I lived in his house. We were talking about buying a new house further up in the hills so
we could have a horse. Neither of us knew much about horses but we both liked the idea. Mostly I liked the thought of feeding
apples to our horse. When I was a kid a horse ate an apple from my hand and licked my tiny fingers afterward. I couldn’t believe
something so big could be so gentle. I guess I’d never gotten over it.

Rachel was excited about having a horse and was reading lots of books about them. On weekends we drove through the hills looking
at homes for sale. She knew a realtor from the synagogue who called occasionally with a hot
prospect. Sometimes all four of us would look, sometimes just David and me. Josh was pushing for a place with a pool and a
Jacuzzi.

Rachel still went to the synagogue, but not quite as often. Nor did she try to get us all to convert anymore. A couple of
weeks after I’d escaped from Carson Ford, Rachel came to me and asked me to go with her to the local women’s clinic. She didn’t
want to tell David, she’d decided, even though we both knew he would have supported her decision. I went with her and answered
all her questions. Afterward I asked her if she wanted to discuss birth control, and she said she didn’t need to yet. She’d
decided not to have sex again until she was eighteen or madly in love.

Josh and I had a kind of truce, even though David took away the money Josh had earned selling that video of me to the television
news. He had one more year of high school, after which David promised to return to him all his ill-gotten gains so he could
go off to college or to bum around Europe for a while, Josh wasn’t sure which. Sometimes I gave him college catalogs, sometimes
I gave him travel books for Europe. A few weeks ago he’d brought home a compact disc he’d bought for me, some new group I’d
never heard of but who were supposed to be hot. “I thought you might like them,” he said, dropping the CD on the kitchen table
where I was writing a letter to my mother. Blue was sitting on my lap, kneading my thighs with her claws. I picked up the
box and looked at the group: four guys in a big wooden tub of crushed grapes. Only their heads were exposed. A sexy peasant
woman with skirt hiked high up on her thighs pranced around them in her stained bare feet.

“What makes you think I’d like them?” I asked.

“They’re very sincere. Very sixties.”

“I was five when the sixties ended, Josh. Not every adult remembers Woodstock.”

“They’re sincere, you’re sincere. You’ll like them.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment. “Thanks. That was nice of you.”

“Whatever,” he shrugged. He raided the refrigerator, petted Blue, and left.

I returned to my letter to my mother, the first letter I’d written to her since college. I’d come to realize there were some
things I couldn’t discuss with her over the phone because she felt everything needed to be commented on in the context of
my future plans. How did whatever I was talking about affect my Lifeplan. So I wrote:

… the other day David revealed a secret. Remember how I told you about the way he always wins at rock-scissors-paper? I’d
played it with him a hundred times and he
always
won. I know, it’s statistically impossible. That’s what I said. Anyway, we were cleaning the house (yes, mother, I was actually
cleaning); David was washing the windows and I was scrubbing the grout in the kitchen counter tiles. Suddenly he sets down
the squeegee and says, “You know how come I always beat you at that? Because I cheat.” Then he told me how. He watches people’s
hands a fraction of a second before they release. If they’re going to throw scissors, their middle knuckle edges up a bit.
If it’s going to be paper, they don’t bend their wrist when they shake their fist. If it’s going to be rock, their knuckles
whiten a little as they shake because they’re tightening their hand. Also, he says he tries to let the other person release
their hand just a little before him. It takes practice, but I’ve gotten to where I can do it most of the time. It comes in
handy with the kids.

You asked if we are getting married. You asked if we are moving. You asked if we would have kids of our own. You asked if
I will open that pediatrics practice. David and I talk about all these things. Sometimes we discuss them every day, sometimes
weeks pass and neither of us mentions them. Some of them will happen, I think, others won’t. I can’t say which. I try not
to think about it. So far,
all I’ve accomplished since coming here is getting a new water heater. On the other hand, I can only say this: I’m happy,
Mom. I feel like I’m in the middle of my own life. That, for once, it’s nice to be able to answer any question with, “Nothing’s
been decided.”

The other day I wrote out a check to Jackie Frears. I am still sending her money and she is still dating Gordon Moore. Every
once in a while she’ll write and tell me how her movie is going. “Some days I think I’m a fucking genius,” she wrote last
time, “and others I think I should be beaten to death for art fraud. Hell, screw art. All I need is a two-picture deal at
a major studio.” She mentioned Gordon often, but she didn’t tell me how she felt about him, which I think she did on purpose.
That way I didn’t know if she’d keep going out with him if I stopped sending checks. So I didn’t stop. Once when I was writing
a check to Jackie, David—who knew the whole story—shook his head at me and asked, “Why do you keep sending her money? It’s
goddamned extortion.”

“I like her.”

He looked at me funny, with some strange combination of admiration and uncertainty and said, “Sometimes you scare me.”

“Sometimes I scare myself,” I said, and laughed. And then I looked at him standing at the kitchen counter in his faded shorts,
smelling like the ocean, peeling the skin off an avocado for our dinner salad; and I looked out into the backyard where Rachel
was lying on the lounge chair with the broken weave reading about horse breeding; and I looked over at Josh making himself
a peanut butter and banana sandwich with his Walkman on, wondering if he was going to offer me half, which he sometimes did
when he liked me. I looked at all of them swirling around my life like small planets, and wrote on Jackie’s check under MEMO:
Nothing is decided.

The irreverent, outrageous novels of Raymond Obstfeld—written under the pseudonym Laramie Dunaway—give readers everwhere something
to laugh about. In each book, his wisecracking. exuberant characters plunge head- and heart-first into grim modern realities
that are twisted just enough to become a little bit naughty and a whole lot of fun.

Now writing under his own name, Obstfeld is better than ever with a tale about a bereaved young doctor who paves a bawdy,
brave, and uproarious path to hell with her good intentions.

EARTH ANGEL

In one freak, tragic instant, Season Gottlieb, M.D., finds out how quickly “having it all” can turn to absolute dog crap.
When her wedding to Tim, a hardworking fellow doctor, is only two weeks away, her would-be groom snaps. Before the cops gun
him down, Tim has sprayed her southern California clinic with bullets, leaving behind a half-dozen dead bodies and the wreckage
of Season’s world.

From its ashes arises her nutsy, well-meaning, deliriously inventive plan to put her life together again: Season will make
amends to the families of Tim’s victims by becoming their guardian angel.

The results are catastrophic, unexpected, and fiendishly funny—for Season as an angel is not what the doctor ordered. Her
attempts will get her black mailed, labeled a lunatic, and arrested. In fact, she’s nearly ready to quit when she arrives
at the Santa Barbara home of David Payton and his two adopted teenagers determined to change their lives, whether they want
them changed or not.

With a psycho serial-kidnapper loose in town and with Season’s secrets catching up with her, she’s on a roller-coaster ride
to thrills, chills, and big-time trouble… and thank heaven, she’s taking us along for the racy, joyous ride.

Raymond Obstfeld once again combines a maniacal imagination with a satirist’s savvy about modern America. And in EARTH ANGEL
he adds a warm and wonderful message about the healing power of both laughter—and love.

R
AYMOND
O
BSTFELD
is an associate professor of English at Orange Coast College in California. He is the author of over two dozen novels, including
Dead Heat
, which was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award, and
Doing Good
, his book on comparative ethics and religion. He has also written numerous plays, screenplays, and a book of poetry, and
his short stories have appeared in several anthologies. Under the pseudonym Laramie Dun away, he has written three other contemporary
novels:
Hungry Women, Borrowed Lives
, and
Lessons in Survival
, all of which became international bestsellers.

D
ISCOVER THE
W
ACKY
, B
OLD, AND
B
AWDY
N
OVELS OF

RAYMOND OBSTEELD

(writing as Laramie Dunaway)

“Fast, funny, and
smart, an exuberant satire.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

“An absolutely hilarious, wicked tale.
Everybody in it is a little cockeyed…
fiercely comic.… Don’t miss a
moment of the trip.”

—Cosmopolitan

“The characters will charm your socks off.”

—West Coast Review of Books

“A saucy adventure… Dunaway
tosses enough eccentric and bizarre
plot twists into the mix to keep
us happily tuned in.”

—Boston Sunday Globe

“A bang-up story, full of
acute commentary on the human condition of
the 1990s.… Clever, witty, mordant, ripe
with repartee and riposte.”

—Los Angeles Times

“Fun to read and hard to put down.”

—San Francisco Sunday
Examiner & Chronicle

“Funny, wacky, irreverent.…
A brilliant spoof of modern pop
culture and the media.”

—Napa Valley Register

“A stylish romp that’s great fun to read.

—Toronto Sun