Fag Hag (Robert Rodi Essentials) (5 page)

Hers was the superior bulk, however, and soon they were out on the floor. She turned and started writhing in time to the music; then, observing the naked anxiety on her partner’s face, she stopped, peered at him, and said, “Oh, my God!” She put her hands over her face.
“You’re
not Morris! I’m so fucking embarrassed!”

“‘S’okay,” he said, and he started to edge away.

“You look
exactly
like a friend of mine,” she said insistently. “I can’t believe this! I must be totally trashed.”

He smiled. “Never mind.”

“No, you’ve gotta see him now, so you know I’m not crazy.” She grabbed his shoulder and swung him in Morris’s direction. “There he is,” she said. “Guy in the khaki Girbaud pants—my friend, Mor-RISS.” She waved, and Morris blushed crimson. He waved back weakly, trying not to meet Natalie’s companion’s eyes.

“See the resemblance?” she asked. “Could be your double!”

“Sort of.”

“Sort
of! Oh, come
on!
Well—I guess on some level, all gorgeous guys look alike—”

“Not at all,” he protested, and she knew he meant, I’m not gorgeous at all (as if he could convince her he believed that).

“—but this is uncanny,” she continued, not missing a beat. “You look alike, you smile alike, you even talk alike.” She paused, then launched into the
Patty Duke Show
theme song: “You could lose your miiiind,” she trilled, and then she cracked up.

She grabbed his arm again and dragged him over to Morris. “You need a closer look, that’s all.” Morris noted her coming with an expression of utter astonishment.

Soon she had the two men face to face. At this proximity she could see that she’d rather overstated their resemblance to one another, but never mind, it had served her purpose.

“This is my friend Morris,” she said to her new acquaintance. “You might recognize him from your mirror. Morris, this lovely hunk of man I thought was
you.”
She turned to him. “Sorry, I don’t even know your name.”

“Nick,” he said.

“Morris, this is Nick.”

The two shook hands, and held each other’s gaze for a telling moment. Natalie saw Peter returning from the men’s room, and called him over: “Honey, come and look, I’ve found Morris’s evil twin!”

Peter approached and was introduced, and then there was an awkward moment of silence. Natalie grinned like a circus clown.

Finally Peter said, “Well, there’s some resemblance, Natalie, but not quite as much as you think. You’d agree if you were sober.”

Ah, so he was irritated with her. That provided an opening. But she had to play this exactly right. She turned away and started to cry.

“Sorry,” she said; “I didn’t mean to embarrass everyone. Okay, they
don’t
look that much alike. I’m a major moron. So sue me. So stick a fucking knife in my chest and put me out of my fucking misery.” She darted away.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Peter in disgust. He turned to Morris. “Look, I have to go after her. Pain in the ass. Excuse me, okay?”

“I understand,” said Morris.

She staggered over to the public telephone and leaned into its metal casing, sobbing very authentically. Two men stood a few feet away, necking obliviously.

Peter found her and put his hand on her back. “Come on, Natalie. I’m sorry.”

“Fuck you,” she bawled.

“No, really—I shouldn’t have made you look bad in front of Morris and that other guy. That was rude. You’re just tough to handle when you get all weird like that. But it’s no excuse, I know. I’m sorry. Really.”

She turned and flung herself into his arms, and drenched a patch of his shirt in crocodile tears. “I love you so much,” she wailed, and that, at least, she meant.

“I know, honey, I love you too.”

“I—I—I feel so bad sometimes,” she gasped through her sobs, “I feel like such an outsider, with you and Morris, like I don’t fit in.” And that was true, too. She was drunker than she thought. Genuine feeling was usurping her theatrics.

He pushed her off his chest and looked into her eyes. “Of course you fit in. You’re my best friend! I love having you around.”

She sniffed and let a little burp of emotion escape her. “You mean it?”

“Shut up,” he said. “Don’t beg like a dog. Listen, I won’t pretend that I don’t sometimes think you’d be better off having a romance of your own instead of always getting so involved in mine, but as far as I’m concerned no one’s come along who’s anywhere near good enough for you, so fuck it, you can hang out with me and Morris till the day we die, if it comes to that. I know he feels the same way.”

She hugged him. “Thank you so much, honey. You make me so happy. I’ll try not to get so crazy anymore.”

He patted her ample bottom. “Okay. C’mon. Let’s go back to our wall and get totally plowed.”

They returned to their corner, but Morris wasn’t there. Natalie said, “Don’t worry, he’ll find us if we stay where we are,” and she went to buy two beers. The line at the bar was long, and when she got back Peter was still alone and looking a little frantic.

“I don’t see him anywhere,” he said.

“It’s pretty dense in here,” she said, handing him his beer.

He took a swig, never taking his eyes off his surroundings. “Do me a favor and help me look, okay?”

“Sure,” she said. “Anything for you, baby.”

He started wading through the crowd to his left, and Natalie forged her way to the right. The crowd had gotten thick; dozens of perfectly tapered heads with perfect skin glanced her way, displaying rows of teeth like pearls on a string, glowing with health and happiness. So many beautiful men in the world, such an astonishing number. And then she met Peter again in the middle, and his eyes were like little galaxies, they brimmed with the raw stuff of existence; next to him, everyone else paled.

“Funny,” he said. “No sign of him anywhere.” He was practically shouting; they were directly beneath a speaker.

She knew he’d reached the same conclusion she had, but he’d hate her if she gave voice to it first. Instead, she said, “Maybe he thought you took me home.”

He raised an eyebrow, grateful for even so absurd an interpretation of Morris’s absence. “Let’s give him another ten minutes,” he said.

Two hours later, she led him out of the bar. He could scarcely see; he was blinded by tears. There had been no sign of Morris.

No sign of Morris, and no sign of Nick.

T
WO DAYS BEFORE
Calvin and Vera’s wedding, Sandy Stathis called her daughter. It was seven in the morning.

“Mom, why are you bothering me this early?” Natalie griped as she rolled out of bed and carried the portable phone to the kitchen. She got a tub of yogurt from the refrigerator and pried off its foil lid.

“I suppose you’ve already heard,” said Sandy accusingly. “I suppose you’ve known all along and deliberately kept me in the dark.”

“I wish you’d stop talking like a TV show and tell me what’s on your mind,” she said, irritated. She spooned some yogurt into her mouth and immediately felt her stomach recoil. She was feeling groggy and stupid and ill. She’d been out celebrating with Peter the night before; he’d just gotten a full-time job rendering storyboards for television commercials. He was excited, he could give up the endless hustle of freelance work and settle down to “getting paid for goofing off,” as he put it. Accordingly, they’d drunk long and hard, and this morning, with a hangover grating on her brain, Natalie’s social tolerance was nearly nil.

Sandy sounded hurt and betrayed. “Your brother and his fiancée just let it slip that they do not intend to have children.” She paused. “Well?”

“Well, what? It’s their business.”

“It is not. It’s mine too. I’m the grandmother here. Or I should be. I’m forty-seven on my next birthday, I don’t have many years left.”

“Oh, bullshit.”

“Language, Natalie. Now I know I can’t count on you for grandchildren, you’re determined to waste your life chasing a man who doesn’t want you. But I thought I could count on Calvin, because he always does everything by the book; and now I’ve found out that he and Vera don’t want to bring children into such a ‘troubled’ world. It’s appalling, like something you’d hear hippies say in 1970. That’s the worst part: losing your grandchildren to a cliché. I tell you, this wedding is ruined for me. I’ll put on a brave face, but I want you and your brother to know that my heart will be breaking. Don’t worry, I have a rose Christian Lacroix frock that looks so sensational everyone will think I’m on top of the world, and I intend to give that impression. I don’t want to spoil the wedding for anyone, especially my date.”

Natalie almost spit out a mouthful of yogurt. “Date, Mom? You have a
date?”

“After a fashion. I asked Hank Bixby to take me. Carolyn’s boy, remember? She and Nathan will be at the wedding and they’re on thin ice, you know—apparently the cranberry car incident was only one of many. Well, when Hank came to pick up Carolyn after the last Accessorizers Anonymous meeting, he took me aside and asked me to watch over her at the nuptials, to make sure she and Nathan didn’t make a scene, and I said, oh, Hank, why don’t you just come and watch over them yourself? So to allay their suspicions he’s posing as my escort, as if he’s doing me a favor, but really he’ll be there on a peacekeeping mission with regard to his parents. Also, I thought this would be the only possible way you’d ever meet him, with the both of you trapped in a banquet hall together.”

“For Christ’s sake, Mom.”

“He’s a decent man, Natalie. He’s presentable and he’s wealthy. And he fixed my dishwasher for me, God bless him. He always dresses like he’s on his way to a golf game, but that’s his only fault as far as I can see. You could do worse.”

“No, I couldn’t. There is no worse.”

“I don’t want to argue with you. He’ll be at the wedding, so the only way you can avoid meeting him is if you shun me as well, which you’d better not dare because I’ll never forgive you. I’ll need all the support I can get, after watching my only son pledge to be faithful to a woman who’s going to make him wear a latex sheath on his thingie for the rest of his life. Are you bringing Peter Pan?”

“Yes, of course I am.”

“He’s still not in love with you?”

“Not yet.”

She sighed. “I don’t understand it. You’d think a handsome boy like that would want to be in love.”

“Oh, he does. And he occasionally falls for someone. Just always the wrong type.”

“I’m surprised he hasn’t got trapped into marriage by one of them. That can happen.”

“Well—he has me to look out for him, and I won’t let it.”

“I wish I understood my own children. I wish I could fathom this strange relationship you have with that boy. I have to say, though, I am looking forward to seeing him in a suit and tie. In my day, all the young men wore suits as a rule. We always got to see them at their very best. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen Peter wearing anything but baggy pants and shirts without collars.”

“It’s his look, Mom. He’s an artist. He never really has to wear a suit.”

“He does own one, doesn’t he?”

“Oh yeah, a gorgeous Armani I helped him pick out. Dark gray, double-breasted. You’ll like it.”

“Wonderful; very suitable.”

She’d finished the yogurt now, and tossed the empty tub into the wastebasket. “Got to run, I’ll be late for work.”

“Still temping, I suppose.”

She shut her eyes in vexation. “Yes. So what?”

“So, when are you going to start a career?”

“I have a career. It’s called life.”

“Now who’s talking like a TV show? Very well, I’ll let you go. I’m going to spend the day rethinking my plans for the spare room. Apparently there’s no crying need to turn it into a playroom now. Unless I plan to get pregnant again myself.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Thank you for caring, darling. See you at the church.”

T
HE DAY OF
the wedding arrived with a dull, steady rain; Natalie knew, just by the looks of it, that it would keep falling all day. Her head began to ache. It was cold, so she’d have to cover her eggshell-blue bridesmaid’s dress with the horrible old lamb’s-wool coat she’d been meaning to replace for about a million years now. Her mother had already called her, hysterical about the rain—“The weatherman said clear skies! Why aren’t these people held accountable for their blunders the way other professionals are?”—and she was beginning to dread the whole day. When Peter came over, looking less than his usual self because he was wet and hunched over (he didn’t own a topcoat), she decided that desperate times called for desperate measures, and she fetched from the refrigerator a bottle of gold-label Veuve Clicquot she’d been saving for an undetermined special occasion.

So by the time they made their way downstairs and hailed a taxi, they were roaring drunk. They giggled and cracked jokes in pig Latin that were only funny because the Pakistani driver was so obviously befuddled by the stream of uck-fay ou-yays and ull-bay it-shays.

When at last they reached St. Edmond’s, Natalie shoved a wad of bills into the driver’s hand and made a smooching sound at him; then she and Peter leapt out into the rain and raced up the stairs. They were late, of course; the traffic from the city had been dense, and Sandy was standing at the back of the church with the vein in her forehead prominently proclaiming her anxiety.

“Where have you two been?” she asked hoarsely, taking them by their arms and nearly yanking them inside. “Natalie, you go right through that door, Vera’s waiting in the vestry with the other girls and I hope to God she hasn’t gone into cardiac arrest because you’d be to blame. Peter, this is Vera’s brother, David, he’ll seat you.” Peter winked at Natalie as the usher led him down the aisle.

The wedding went off without a hitch, of course; Calvin looked suitably nervous, Vera looked suitably radiant, the church was strewn with gorgeous floral arrangements, and the organist didn’t miss a beat in either the processional (Clarke’s “Trumpet Voluntary”) or the recessional (the hornpipe from Handel’s “Water Music”). At one point during the ceremony, Natalie sought out Peter in the congregation, and when she found him, their eyes met and he made a grotesque face. Still drunk, she barked out a laugh, then quickly pretended it was the beginning of a cough.