Fag Hag (Robert Rodi Essentials) (32 page)

She unlocked the door and opened it, but mere seconds after she’d done so, she heard the bathroom door click shut. Peter had heard her, and hidden himself away from her again. Well, at least she knew he was still here.

She flicked on the light switch. Why did he insist on sitting here all day in total darkness? She looked around the room. Nothing seemed amiss. Except…

She smiled.

He had eaten the oatmeal.

Victory number one.

T
HAT NIGHT
,
SHE
made a delicious pot roast and sweet potatoes and opened a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. She’d decided that Brynocki had behaved well enough to no longer require the leash, so she simply whistled for him, and he jumped to his feet and followed her.

In fact, he seemed so happy and oafish that she began to wonder whether he were really the same fearsome dog she’d seen in action at the breeder’s kennel.

She opened the door to the cellar, looked at him, and said, “Brynocki,
sic ‘em.”

He snarled and barked savagely at nothing, his fangs bared beneath his quivering snout.

Yep, same dog.

“Good boy, Brynocki. It’s okay.”

His tongue lolled out of his mouth contentedly.

She went down to Peter’s room, unlocked the door, and swung it open. Darkness, as usual.

Immediately, she could smell Peter’s body odor. Then she noticed the thickness of the air.

She flicked on the light. He was seated on the bed, wide awake. He had a two-day growth of beard and was wearing the same clothes he’d had on since the party.

She put the tray on the butcher-block table, then went and checked the air-conditioning unit. It had been turned off. She switched it back on.

“Why’d you do that?” she asked, turning to face him. “I can barely breathe in here.”

He refused to look at her.

“I made pot roast for dinner. Doesn’t it smell scrummy! Let’s not let it get cold.”

He examined his cuticles. His face looked gray and haggard.

“This is absurd,” she said, growing angry. “You sit here in the dark all day, now you make it so you’re practically suffocating—what on earth is the matter with you?”

He got up and headed for the bathroom.

She raced ahead of him and barred the door. “You know,” she said, “with all the time you spend in the john, you might at least take a shower. I’ve given you shampoo, a hair dryer, an electric razor, new clothes—but you sit here stinking like a—”

He tried to get past her. Brynocki got to his feet and emitted a low growl.

“Give it
up,”
Natalie said, maneuvering to stay in his way. “You can’t keep this up forever. You already broke down and ate the oatmeal!”

He stopped and looked at her with such an expression of loathing that she got goose pimples; she knew at once she’d made a tactical error.

His nostrils flared; he reached out, grabbed her, and threw her to the floor. Brynocki flew at him, snapping and snarling—but before the dog could reach him, he was safe behind the bathroom door.

L
YING IN BED
that night, Natalie couldn’t seem to unclench her fists. She had to concentrate, force her fingers to relax, and rest her hands on the blanket. But her concentration would inevitably wane, and she’d find herself digging her fingernails into her palms until the sharp pain shocked her into awareness of it. Once, she came out of a deep reverie to find herself muttering something, something to Peter, and the last words she caught were, “forced me, God, I never meant for that to happen to you,” and she couldn’t remember anything she’d said before that. She shook her head to clear it, suddenly frightened of herself.

She had the feeling that she’d come to the end of a long rope but had never given thought to what to do when the rope ran out. She’d been too busy hanging on to care. She hadn’t anticipated Peter’s behavior, or Lloyd’s suspicion—not because they couldn’t have been anticipated; she could see that, quite the contrary, they might almost have been expected. But she simply couldn’t face the idea of failing, because nothing came after it. She’d thought long and hard about how to get Peter locked away in her basement; spent hours planning it, weeks having the room made soundproof and escape-proof, and thousands paying for it all. Yet she’d never given a thought to what she’d do once she had him there. She’d known better than to allow herself to consider that.

What had she done? What had she allowed herself to do? Well, it was all ruined anyway. It would all come crumbling down around her; but at least she’d have the satisfaction of knowing she’d fought for her man.

Her fists had balled up again; this time she did indeed draw blood. She watched it run down her wrist, a rivulet of ooze, black as hate, and she thought of Peter. She couldn’t rid her mind of the way he had looked at her tonight—so full of fury and contempt. She couldn’t forget that he had thrown her to the floor.

She peered into her future and tried to see herself in a week, a month, a year; but there was nothing but darkness, no matter how far she projected.

She licked away and swallowed the blood from her hand. Fuck the future; darkness suited her fine.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, she felt more hopeful. She dressed for work, then went down to the kitchen and made Peter some Cream of Wheat; she couldn’t serve him oatmeal again—she’d poisoned that well. But maybe this was close enough to tempt him with equal success.

She unfastened the padlock and whistled for Brynocki, then took up the breakfast tray and carried it down to the basement room. The dog loped down the stairs after her.

She unlocked the door and kicked it open with her foot. As expected, the room was dark. “Good morning,” she trilled, and, resting the tray on her breasts, she extended one hand and turned on the lights.

She gasped.

Peter had taken something—a chair, presumably—and smashed the TV and the VCR to pieces; the same with the stereo. He had ripped the cord from the refrigerator, torn its doors from the hinges, and toppled the entire unit. Food was strewn everywhere. He’d taken the paints she’d bought for him and splashed them over the walls. He’d ripped the bed to shreds, too; there were feathers floating everywhere.

He was nowhere to be seen, but the door to the bathroom was shut.

She set down the tray, stormed over to the bathroom, and pounded on the door. “This is so
fucking
childish,” she screamed. “I could
kill
you for this. You’re going to regret it, Peter. You’re going to regret this like you’ve never regretted anyth—”

She stopped short, feeling something move beneath her. She looked down; water was seeping beneath the door, flowing around her shoes. She listened; she could hear him running the faucets and the tub. He was trying to flood the place.

She ran out of the room, Brynocki loping at her heels. She locked the door behind her, then hurried across the cellar to the plumbing closet. Wildly, she turned the knobs controlling the pipes to Peter’s bathroom until they could turn no further.

She leaned against the wall, panting.
No more water for Peter,
she told herself.
Well, he brought it on himself. Screw him if he doesn’t like it.

So was so angry, the entire basement seemed to whirl about her head. Her panting turned by degrees into animal grunting. What she’d known before had only been Rage 101—she’d just now gotten her Ph.D. She took a step forward, the cellar still spinning madly, like in a Van Gogh painting, a swirl of colors around her head, all scarlet hues shot through with black. And she started to laugh. The sound of that laugh frightened her; she didn’t recognize it as her own. It was the laugh of a film-serial dragon lady.

As she made her way up the stairs, her skirt caught on a rail and snagged, and with a roar of fury she ripped it right off her body, clawing it to pieces.

Then she went and put on something else, and headed off to work.

“F
REE FOR LUNCH
?” Jennifer asked as she donned her black slouch hat.

Natalie’s head snapped to attention. “What?”

“I asked if you’re free for lunch.” She buttoned her trench coat.

“Oh. I guess. Sure.”

“Let’s go. It’s a goddamn monsoon outside. Hope you brought an umbrella, ‘cause I didn’t.”

“I didn’t, either.” She grabbed her coat.

“You didn’t?” Jennifer stopped by the door.

Natalie almost bumped into her. “No.”

“I thought for sure you would’ve brought an umbrella.”

She shrugged.

Jennifer sighed and started unbuttoning her coat. “Let’s just go to the coffee shop downstairs, then. I’d rather not face the monsoon unarmed.”

T
HEY ORDERED TUNA
salads glumly, knowing they’d be rubbery and salty when they arrived.

Natalie stared into space.

Jennifer put a hand on her arm. “Natalie, I didn’t ask you to lunch only because I thought you had an umbrella.”

She tried to pull her arm away. “Okay.”

“Are you all right?”

She shook her head, and then something came over her; her face clenched, and she began crying uncontrollably.

Jennifer scooted her chair to the other side of the table and put her arm around her. “There, there,” she said. “Tell Jennifer what the big, bad world’s done now.”

“It’s Peter,” she sobbed. “It doesn’t—no matter what I—he won’t give me a chance to—”

She put a finger to Natalie’s lips. “Now, honey. Isn’t this the one I told you to forget, months ago?”

Natalie nodded, wiping her nose with a paper napkin.

“You see there, what happens when you don’t listen to Jennifer?”

She had recovered now; she put her hand over her forehead and said, “It’s awful. He treats me so badly.”

“Well, then, he’s a louse, and not worth all this crying.” She began fishing through her purse for something.

“That’s not true. He’s—I mean, he does have some cause to resent me, but not as much as—he
pushed me down,
Jennifer.”

She stopped her searching. “He what?”

“He threw me to the floor.”

She shook her head and resumed digging through her purse. “Well, then he’s—ah!” She withdrew her cigarettes and clipped the purse shut. “Then he’s not only a louse, he’s a bully. Next time you see him, you slap his face, Natalie. Just like in the movies.”

She grimaced. “I can’t do that.”

“Why the hell not?” She tapped a cigarette from the carton and lit it.

“I—I—”

Just then the waitress arrived with their tuna salads and placed them on the table. “Anything else I can get you?” she asked.

“We’re fine, thanks,” said Jennifer, scooting her chair back to the other side of the table.

Natalie took a quick gulp of her Diet Coke and collected herself.
I almost told her!
she thought.
I’ve got to get a grip! I almost told Jennifer Jerrold, the Mouth with Legs, that I’m holding Peter captive!

She munched quietly on her salad for a few minutes; then, to change the subject, she said, “Jennifer—how did
you
do it?” It was, after all, a question she’d been dying to ask.

“Do what?” She had a fleck of mayonnaise on her lower lip, which she wiped off on her sleeve as she took a puff. She was alternating her cigarette with her salad, which made Natalie feel queasy.

“Win your man,” Natalie said, tried not to look at her.

She blew out a little tumbleweed of smoke. “I don’t think our situations are analogous, Natalie,” she said, lowering her cigarette and lifting the salad fork with the opposite hand.

“But they are. Kyle’s gay, isn’t he?”

Jennifer dropped her fork. “Did Bettina and Sally tell you that?”

“Bettina and Sally didn’t have to.”

She shoved her plate away. “All right, he’s gay. So?” She took up the cigarette again, and started puffing faster.

“So, our situations
are
analogous.”

Jennifer raised an eyebrow, looked at Natalie for what seemed a
very
long time, and then leaned across the table. “Natalie, do you have any friends?”

“Of course I have fr—”

“I mean,” she interrupted her, “friends you can confide in. Reason I’m asking is, as long as I’ve known you, you’ve dropped little hints about yourself here and there, like pellets for lab rats to nibble on. But I don’t feel I know you. And what disturbs me is that all these little bits and pieces, when you put them together, are kind of shocking. Like you’ve got all this stress and heartache in your life, and it’s churning you up inside—and you have no way of letting it out. Unless—I mean,
do
you have a best girlfriend you can call and cry to and yell at and share secrets with, or just gab away for an hour about nothing?”

Natalie looked at her plate. “It has to be a girl?”

“Yes, it has to be a girl.”

She picked up her fork and toyed with her salad.

“Natalie,” Jennifer continued, “you need friends. You need a context. You need some perspective. Even family would do; a mother is the next best thing to a girlfriend, but I never hear you mention yours.”

“We’re not speaking.”

She stubbed out her cigarette. “So, I’m it?”

Natalie nodded glumly.

She folded her arms. “Okay, then. Here goes. My story, by Jennifer Jerrold. I was never pretty in the conventional sense. Hell—in any sense. But I smoked and cursed and made a lot of wisecracks, and for some reason that seemed to draw all the gay boys. Maybe they saw me as a kind of clownish sidekick who’d keep them laughing and never try to get down their pants. I certainly saw them as the only kind of men who’d pay any attention to me at all. They were the ones who liked me for
me
and didn’t judge me by my face or my boobs. When I got older, I got tired of going to dinner parties alone, so I proposed to one of my gay friends. He turned me down, so I proposed to the next and the next until—well, Kyle took his time getting here.”

“Do you love him?”

“That’s none of your business.” She fetched another cigarette. “Any more questions?”

“About a million.”

“Save your breath.” She stuck the cigarette in her mouth and lit it. “Don’t settle for this kind of life, Natalie. Find a man who wants you. I mean, who wants you so much it
hurts
him. I had one, once. I was stupid enough to let him get away. Hell, I
turned
him away. Because I didn’t like his politics!” She shook her head, as if amazed by her own stupidity. “But I remember the look in his eyes…haven’t seen it since, but it marked me. Find the man who looks at you that way.”