Fag Hag (Robert Rodi Essentials) (7 page)

Peter was aghast. “What would you rather have? Some commie dictatorship?”

Lloyd gave him a you-know-better-than-that look. “I think you can tell from everything I’ve said that I’m no Communist. I firmly believe that the state exists to serve the individual, not the other way around—which is why I find the liberal drift in this country so pernicious; they always place the individual at the service of, and the mercy of, the state—this gun issue is just one example of that. But I also think that democracy in its purest form is mob rule, and democracy as it’s practiced today is a virtually worthless method of making cosmetic changes in a permanent government machine that is firmly entrenched in power and immune to the vagaries of the election booth—or the precepts of the Constitution, as we’ve seen repeatedly since Watergate.”

Peter’s face had reddened. “So, what then? What kind of government?”

“No kind of government. I’d like to live in an anarchist state, where everyone is responsible for his own backyard.”

“Oh, yeah? What the hell would keep the country going, then?”

“Trade.” He said it with the fervor of a priest invoking the Savior.

“And who regulates trade?” Peter asked. By now the Romanos and Emily were looking on, a little alarmed by how heated the exchange had gotten.

“Trade regulates itself. Or rather, we, as consumers, would regulate trade based on what we buy. Ideally, an educated and informed public would consume only quality goods and services, and trade would prosper because of that. I guess what I’m really talking about is a consumer-determined meritocracy.”

At this point Sandy appeared at the table and tapped Natalie on the shoulder. “Honey, I’d like to have my picture taken with you and Calvin, what with you both looking so nice for a change. Shouldn’t take a moment.”

Natalie excused herself and rose from her seat; Peter was so involved in his discussion with Lloyd that he barely noticed her go.

The photo session turned out to be a trap. After one picture with her children, Sandy told the photographer, “Right, now one of me with just the bride and groom. Natalie, go stand over there by Hank.”

Hank Bixby was off to one side, waiting like a puppy dog for Sandy. Natalie sighed in defeat, approached him, and said, “Hello again, Hank.”

“Long time, no see,” he said, and he actually laughed at this lamest of jests. Natalie couldn’t believe her ears.

“Perhaps you’d care to dance,” he said a moment later, and for the first time she noticed that the dance floor had been cleared and a band of what looked like Rastafarians had set up their instruments and were preparing to play.

“Oh—well—thank you, Hank. Yes. Sure. Lovely.” She peered over her shoulder at Peter, who was now leaning across the table, speaking with great intensity to Lloyd Hood. She decided it was safe to leave him unattended.

“Natalie, Hank,” called Sandy, “you two come and join us now.” Natalie felt like throttling her. By the time the shot had been taken, the band had started up. Calvin and Vera were summoned to open the dancing with a quick whirl through “their song,” Barbra Streisand’s treacly ditty about evergreens, which Natalie strongly suspected was solely Vera’s choice. Then the band kicked in with an old Four Tops tune, and Hank dragged Natalie onto the dance floor.

The Four Tops segued into a Jackson 5 hit, and Hank, a truly terrible dancer, flapped his arms and twirled about, and showed no sign of tiring. Natalie felt the seams of her dress begin to strain and feared they might burst.

The band then plunged into an old Temptations number, and Natalie thought,
This will never end.
Hank was leaping about like an acrobat; it was mortifying.

Suddenly Peter appeared and tapped Hank on the shoulder. “Mind if I cut in?” Hank, sweaty and bewildered, had no choice but to bow out. He left the dance floor mopping his brow with a handkerchief.

Peter took Natalie into his arms and gave her a spin. She shrieked with delight.

“Finally ditched the right-wing reactionary pig?” she asked.

“Who, Lloyd?” he said as she bumped his hips against hers in time to the music. “Interesting guy.”

“Oh, Christ, Peter! He’s a Nazi!”

He laughed, grabbing her by the waist for another twirl. “That’s a bit melodramatic.”

The tempo slowed; the band slid into an old Smokey Robinson ballad. Peter took Natalie in his arms and glided romantically across the floor. She melted, and found her nirvana on his left shoulder pad. To think that, for a while, she’d been in danger of having to be here without him! But this was the payoff to all her efforts, this moment, now, in his arms; she’d won. He was hers, he was hers.

They shared every dance that night; they were inseparable. When their energies started to flag, they fled to the men’s room for more cocaine, and that kept them going the rest of the night. Soon the air was heavy with smoke, and empty glasses swarmed over the tabletops; there was an exhausted feeling in the air, as if the building itself were asking people to leave. The remaining guests strayed out the door. The band finally packed up and left. It was eight-thirty.

“Guess we should hit the road,” said Peter.

Reluctant to let the evening end, Natalie nevertheless agreed.

She visited the ladies’ room, he the men’s, and they met outside a few minutes later. Peter hailed a cab.

They rode in silence for a while. The lights of the city drifted by Natalie’s window; combined with the steady hum of the taxi’s engine, the effect was hypnotic. She settled onto Peter’s shoulder, then turned her face up to his.

There was a twinkle in his eyes.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I hate to spoil the mood; I can practically hear you purring.”

“What? What?”

“I’ve got the
best
story,” he said eagerly.

She sat up. “Oh, tell me!”

“In the men’s room a few minutes ago, I ran into Lloyd Hood.”

“Did he rob you at gunpoint?”

He ignored her. “We stood next to each other at the urinals.”

“Peter! You didn’t
peek.”

He laughed and punched her arm. “No, listen. Even better. He got all nervous, you know, all mealy-mouthed, and then he asked if maybe I’d like to continue our discussion over dinner sometime.”

Natalie felt the floor fall away. “Get out!”

“I’m not joking. The right-wing reactionary pig is a queer.” He grinned. “And I have a date with him!”

She threw back her head and emitted a howl of laughter.

P
ETER STARTED HIS
full-time job on Monday and celebrated with Natalie on Monday night. They met at her apartment, finished off the rest of the cocaine, and went to Berlin, where they hopped up and down on the dance floor for two hours (it being too crowded to actually dance).

Later, as they sat on the curb airing out, Peter said, “Really, hon, these late nights have got to stop. I can’t sleep if I’m wired like this, and I’ve got to get up early these days.”

Her heart sank a little, but she’d known this day must come. Neither she nor Peter had put much thought or energy into their careers since they’d met two years before. He’d scraped by, doing cartoons for various local magazines and newspapers, but he never really applied himself to turning a profit at it; and she still worked as a temporary secretary, wanting to keep her freedom to take a day off whenever she wished. But they were getting a little long in the tooth for such frivolity, and Peter’s new job obviously signaled the end of their weeknight revels.

She stretched her legs into the street and sighed. A gay couple passed behind them, mincing in the most embarrassing manner and chattering at each other like magpies, their lisps overlapping. After they’d gone, she looked at Peter and they both laughed.

“God bless ‘em,” he said. “Not everybody can be butch.”

They were silent for a time. Then Natalie said, “Well, it’s been fun. And what a way to end an era, huh? That wedding, then tonight. Feel like my nerve endings are sticks of dynamite. With the fuses lit.”

He smiled. “Guess we’ve got to grow up sometime.”

“Funny, isn’t it—just when you get to the point where you can afford stuff like blow, you can’t use it ‘cause then you can’t do the job that lets you afford stuff like blow.” The sentence rambled out of her, and they both laughed at its awkwardness. “We’ll still have wild weekends, though,” she said.

“Oh, sure.”

“In fact, let’s plan a big bash for Friday! We can have it at your place. It’s your milestone, after all—one full week of gainful employment!”

He shook his head. “Can’t. Friday’s my date with Lloyd Hood.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re not really going through with that!”

“Why not?”

“He’s a fascist!”

“He’s not, Natalie. He’s a libertarian. He has opinions you wouldn’t expect. Like, on abortion, he’s really strongly pro-choice. And he’s one hundred percent against U.S. intervention in El Salvador and Nicaragua and all those places. And, of course, he’s pro-gay rights. Well, kind of.”

“What does that mean, ‘kind of’?”

“Well, he says he’s always hated going to gay rights rallies because it implies that he believes the government has the authority to decide who has civil rights and who doesn’t. Whereas he believes
everyone
has civil rights, just by being born, but the government selectively denies those rights to groups it doesn’t like, like gays and women and the mentally ill. So when he goes to gay rights rallies, he feels like he’s playing by the government’s rules, y’know, treating them like it’s up to them to grant or deny us our rights, when they have no moral authority to do any such thing.”

Natalie stared at him in disbelief. “When did he tell you all this?”

“Oh, we talked on the phone yesterday.”

“I see.” She was uncomfortable with this entire conversation. Here was Peter, sitting on the street with her like always, his gut full of beer and his nose full of blow, and he was talking politics and ideology like some kind of fanatic. What was happening here?

When he’d first told her that Lloyd had asked him out to dinner, she’d felt nothing but amusement at the ridiculousness of it. Just imagine beautiful, sensational Peter with that balding, badly dressed nut case! But now, here was Peter parroting him at one in the morning on Halsted Street, slurring words like ‘Nicaragua’ and not even noticing.

She still couldn’t believe Lloyd was any kind of threat. And if he were, surely she could dispatch him with a flick of her wrist—he’d be no trouble at all. Not like the others.

And yet…there was an odd difference in Peter’s manner tonight. Not at all headlong in lust or love, as he was at the beginning of every other affair; he was calmer, more rational. Perhaps that meant that Lloyd meant nothing much to him; she just wished she could be sure.

“Well,” she said, “treading carefully, “where are you two lovebirds going on Friday?”

“Don’t know yet. We haven’t decided. It doesn’t really matter.”

Doesn’t it?
she thought, surprised.
It always has before.

N
ATALIE WASN
’
T WORKING
the next day, so she slept late; it helped to make up for having slept badly. Lloyd Hood’s unfathomable presence had dogged her dreams.

She rolled out of bed at eleven and put herself on the bathroom scale, figuring that as long as she was depressed anyway, she might as well check her weight. To her stupefaction, she was down three pounds. Peter hadn’t even noticed.

Angry, she decided she’d better consider an anti-Lloyd campaign. She knew next to nothing about him, and wondered where she could get some dirt. Suddenly she remembered her brother; it was Calvin who’d invited Lloyd to the wedding, because Lloyd had sold him his “first” gun. Maybe there was something damning there—maybe Lloyd was armed to the teeth, a raving paranoid.

She hadn’t talked to her mother since the wedding, so she called her now.

“Honey, you couldn’t have phoned at a worse time,” Sandy said. “I’m just setting up for a luncheon meeting of Accessorizers Anonymous. I’m forcing myself to use mismatched china, as a kind of motivational gesture.”

“This won’t take long, Mom.”

“Well, I like that! You scarcely speak to me at the wedding, then days go by and I don’t hear from you, and when I finally do you don’t want to talk long. Honey, don’t you know what it means for a mother to see one of her children wedded? Didn’t you think to call me the next day to see how I was feeling, or at the very least to gossip about everyone’s outfit?”

“I had a hangover! And if that’s how you felt, why didn’t you call
me?”

“I was far too disgraced by your behavior to do that. Honey, you spent the entire reception making a fool of yourself over that male model of yours.”

“Peter’s not a fucking model, Mom.”

“Language, Natalie.”

“Well, what do you exp—”

“Hush, I’m talking. Now, as I said, you scarcely spoke to me, you ignored your brother, you never welcomed Vera into the family, you nearly startled Aunt Lucy into an early grave by having Peter in the ladies’ room—”

“Oh, for…”

“…
and
you made poor Hank Bixby feel like an also-ran.”

“He
is
an also-ran.”

A brief pause. “You’re a very proud young lady, Natalie. Life will bring you down a peg, and don’t come crying to me when it does.”

She sighed. “Can we please get back to the reason I called?”

“By all means. Let’s do what Natalie wants. Natalie has decreed.”

“Don’t make me hang up, Mom.”

“‘Make’ you! Oh, of course. If you did something as rude as that, it’d be my fault, wouldn’t it?”

“Mom,” she said determinedly, “at Peter’s table at the reception there was this guy, Lloyd Hood, who owns a gun shop. That’s why he was invited. He said he sold Calvin his first gun. Did you know he was into guns?”

“If he is, it’s his own business, and all I can say is thank God he’s not having any children, then. A house full of firearms is no place for babies.”

“So, you didn’t know about this gun thing he’s into?”