Out of Orange (17 page)

I greeted the waiter walking by me and waved at the sous chef I thought might be about to catch his face on fire in a blazing skillet. The last to arrive gets the lousiest seat, so I took my place at the corner of the table. Piper sat directly across from me and I did not try to avoid her glance. I had screwed up enough already. I needed to just suck it up and take my lickin’s, whatever they were. But all she did was smile broadly and genuinely. Then she handed me her glass of wine and said, “I think you might need this worse than I do.”

I cannot begin to express how grateful I was at that moment. Nobody watched for my reaction to her offering, not even Donald. She had said nothing to anyone. She was compassionate, discreet, and it appeared she was going to do the nicest thing anyone could do in a situation such as ours. She was going to simply act as though nothing had happened. I smiled back and thanked her. I took a long sip of her red wine as my heart welled up with codeine and gratitude.

Phillip held his glass of scotch up to toast. Instead of a toast, he announced we were all going to Zürich on Friday.

The next day Phillip and I slipped away from the hotel and our friends to talk in private. We finally had the discussion we should have had when he arrived the day before. He explained to me that he had charged so much to his American Express, wiring me money in Bali, that when he tried to purchase his plane ticket to Brussels, he had been told to speak with an American Express account rep at the ticketing office. We had no money left from what we had managed to make from Craig and Molly’s trips, and not only that, he had no money left from his own first trip. We had not taken any cut from the money that was moved, because if our friends didn’t get a payday soon, we were afraid they would abandon us like Molly and Craig had done.

Before I panicked about our destination, he told me that Alajeh had had someone named “Antony Benet” in Los Angeles wire Phillip five thousand dollars while I was passed out all day, and “John
Smith” would be wiring an additional five thousand dollars to Brussels from Chicago. The names that Alajeh’s people used to wire money were sometimes quite funny. With Western Union, as long as your transactions were under ten thousand dollars and conducted with cash and not a credit card, you could send money from any name to any name you wanted with a secret passcode as your only identification. Alajeh still preferred not doing any cash transactions where a paper trail existed, even if the paper trail led to Daffy Duck.

Phillip was still freaking out that he would end up with a fifty-thousand-dollar debt to American Express before we found our way out from under Alajeh’s thumb. He was also concerned about the obvious stupidity of using his American Express card at all. I couldn’t argue with that, but it had certainly come in handy in Bali. For some reason, it was nearly impossible for Alajeh to get cash to us there. Besides, I said, “If we get out of this and all you have to do is file for bankruptcy, you should be happy.”

He talked about having this trip be the end, consequences be damned. We would make the money from this last trip, get his Amex bill paid, and get out while we were ahead. Once again, we considered our options. We dissected every little thing that had ever happened to make us so certain Alajeh was really a threat, and in the end we came back to the same frustrating conclusion. We simply didn’t know if the threat was real or not. We could create a more tenable situation than we currently had though. We couldn’t get away from Alajeh, but we could eliminate some of the traveling we had to do.

Phillip had the same idea about his friend Garrett as I did about Piper. Garrett lived in Chicago and Piper was living in San Francisco. Not only could they occasionally travel in our place as the escorts, they also could find recruits. Surely, between San Francisco’s and Chicago’s gay communities we would have a nearly endless supply of single-use couriers. As noted, Molly and Craig had told Phillip they were not going to do any more trips when they’d left him in Chicago. If our numbers dwindled any more, we would be back to carrying the bags ourselves if we were not careful.

We went back to the hotel in time to get our friends to vacate for a bit while we made a call to Alajeh. The crew was heading out for lunch while we took care of that. We headed up to our nice room. Our view was spectacular. It looked out onto the stone-paved roundabout in front of the hotel, encircled with ancient cast-iron hitching posts connected by a heavily oxidized chain turned green. The roundabout was surrounded on all sides by the stone facades of buildings too old and grand for the modern commerce they hosted. It was easy to imagine things like horses, knights, and carriages filling the small square below our window, where bistros and cafés colored the street level and ornate street lamps would light the way later. I sat down at the desk and opened the room service menu. I asked Phillip if he was hungry. It was likely we would be stuck in the room for lunch.

“Cheeseburger?” I asked while scanning the lunch menu.

“How about breakfast?” He was hungry but preoccupied with unpacking the rest of his bag.

“Too late.” I double-checked the lunchtime menu for any brunch items that might suit Phillip and there were none.

“Okay. Cheeseburger.” He looked around the room like he had lost something. “Is there a pen and paper over there?” There was.

A while later we were finished with our phone call and brainstorming session. The little notepad was filled with notes and drawings that looked more like a road map or a flowchart than simple instructions. Phillip had made these while on the phone with Alajeh and I was glad he had. We had a very strange new twist to negotiate in order to get home this time.

Piper came back and knocked timidly on the door, probably worried we might still be talking to Alajeh. Phillip grabbed my arm and dragged me quickly into the bathroom, closing the door behind us, but not completely. He motioned for me to be very quiet. Sometimes Phillip was more like a child than an adult. But it was all in good fun. I could see in the bathroom mirror that Piper opened the room door. She stuck her head in, craned her neck, and said “Hello?” inquisitively.

Phillip threw the door open and jumped into her path, screeching “Hello!” right back.

Piper didn’t even flinch.

“You better lay off the coffee.” She was clearly irritated by the prank, but her response to Phillip jumping out and trying to scare her was funnier than the prank itself. At least I laughed. Phillip was already pulling the brown liquor from the minibar.

“Tonight we are going out to play.” He hooked Piper’s arm by the elbow and spun her in a dosey doe. She broke into a smile. I was glad to see her smile. There was a weird tension in the air between these two and I didn’t like or understand it.

We got to dinner around eight o’clock that night and found a nice restaurant on our first try. I liked the big blocky mahogany tables with no tablecloths, austere and functional like the menu: meat and potatoes.

My favorite dish in Brussels is mussels—seriously. At the restaurant we went to that night, they were served in a little cast-iron pot in a white wine broth of leeks, dill, chives, and butter and with fries. No flowery garnish or swirls of anything to decorate the plate like in Paris, just food. Everything was served by an old guy in a long white apron and black tie.

We ate our dinners and then started at one end of the Grand-Place, working our way through the small streets, popping into each nightclub we found, each one smaller and more subterranean than the last. Clubs on Boulevard Maurice Lemonnier were on the street level, but on the older side streets near the Grand-Place many were almost hidden, down stone stairs so old they curved from centuries of wear. We were hitting all the bars, not just the gay ones. Phillip was with us so we had to be fair. We lost Donald, Garrett, and Edwin when we found a lesbian bar, with a packed dance floor and playing house music. Piper and Phillip danced and everyone watched. They looked like the perfect couple; both were tall, well dressed, attractive, and both were good dancers.

I watched them while I waited for our drinks at the bar. They were trying to have a conversation while dancing. I was absolutely
entranced, watching them move so fluidly. I laughed because a bunch of other girls were staring at Piper too. They were goggling over Piper, but Phillip was eating up all the attention, and Piper had no idea what was going on. Phillip had a thing for sleeping with lesbians. She was clearly responding to his attention, probably unaware of the fact that it was for the benefit of their audience.

Phillip waved me over to them. I had to navigate through the dance floor, trying not to get bumped so hard the drinks would spill. I had my training for this kind of plight slinging cocktails in Provincetown, so getting through this little fracas without spilling a bunch of drinks was nothing. Phillip took his drink and slinked away in the direction of the girls who had been watching them dance. Piper grabbed my drink and hers, set both down on a little ledge nearby, grabbed me, and pulled me in for a hug. “I love you, you jerk.” She’d said this with her mouth pressed to my ear so I could hear her, and then she let go and continued dancing.

That would be the extent of our conversation regarding my jealous foible. We danced and danced, eventually moving on to another club, somehow ending up in a raï bar, filled almost entirely with men, but not gay men, mostly Arabic men dancing together to music I didn’t know. We stayed there for a round of shots Phillip brought to us, along with a few dozen more he handed out to the fellows nearby. Eventually, we ran out of places to go.

We went back to the hotel and stopped at the guys’ floor to see if they had returned. They had. Garrett was passed out and Edwin was in the shower. Donald wanted to come to our room with us, but we were drunk and going to bed.

Piper got undressed and into bed first, all alone. I was sleeping with my husband. What fun a shrink would have with me, sleeping with all my fake spouses. That arrangement—to sleep with Phillip—had been made, however, when Piper and my uncomfortable situation had still been uncomfortable. I didn’t think she or I still had any concerns about my little blowup or my misinterpretations about our relationship. I guess in her head we were friends and I should be sharing her bed, just as we had done in Bali. She
leaned up on one elbow and pouted at me. She liked to snuggle naked, but there was no way in hell I would do that again.

Phillip saw her pout as a call to action. He jumped out of bed and pushed Piper’s bed into ours so the two beds were joined. He yelled, “Slumber party!” as the two beds slammed together. He hopped up onto our bed and was about to start jumping up and down, in his boxers. Piper flung her long leg over me and kicked his legs out from underneath him. He flopped onto the bed next to me, elbowing me in the ribs. Piper laughed and rolled over with her naked back to me. Phillip turned the light out and I lay on my back between the two of them, staring at the ceiling. Nobody said a peep, but I knew they weren’t asleep. Piper giggled.

“Phillip, your penis is poking me.” I burst out laughing. Phillip had an erection. I have no idea why I was so comfortable with him that his erection didn’t prompt a different response. I loved him deeply, like a brother. But if my brother was in bed with me and this happened, I wouldn’t have laughed. I would have knocked him out.

“Sorry. I’ll talk to him.” Phillip scooted away from me and rolled onto his back. “Do you mind? We are trying to go to sleep!” He continued the conversation with his penis, and I considered for a moment how difficult it must be to have a penis and keep your desires secret. Piper and I could snuggle butt naked, for example, and if she happened to notice my heart pounding out of my chest, or vice versa, it could remain unspoken. Men didn’t have that luxury. There is nothing ambiguous about an erection.

“Let me ask.” He leaned over and whispered in my ear, “He wants to talk to you.” Phillip’s whiskery face and hot breath gave me goose bumps and tickled. I crunched my shoulders up and retracted my neck like a turtle does, so he couldn’t get his scratchy face anywhere near my neck, but he kept trying, which made it worse, and I kept laughing.

He then stopped and stared at me all serious like, and it felt like the floor had just dropped out beneath me when he kissed me passionately. I hadn’t expected that. Then he stopped and leaned up on
his elbow a little and smiled. “How come you and I have never made love?”

“Maybe because I’m a lesbian.” I couldn’t help but laugh. “Made love” sounded so serious and polite, considering he had just been conversing with his dick.

“Aha! I knew it wasn’t me. I’m irresistible.” He flung the cover back, presenting his red plaid boxers. His lack of modesty about his current condition amused me.

Piper, in the meantime, hadn’t moved a muscle. Her face was turned away from us, but no way was she sleeping, not after the fight I had put up to defend myself from Phillip’s scratchy face. I had kicked her, our kiss had been slurpy, and Phillip had sighed. Besides that, the conversation he had been engaged in with his penis was absolutely ludicrous. But Piper hadn’t objected, gotten out of bed, or otherwise expressed any opinion. The twist of reality unraveling next to her certainly warranted some kind of reaction. I made a what-the-hell-are-we-doing face at Phillip and nodded toward Piper. We should have been asking the same question of ourselves, not just addressing the fact that we might be intruding on Piper’s sleep or personal space.

Phillip reached over and softly stroked her bare back, then smacked her butt. Piper flipped over quickly, raised her head up, and leaned on her elbow, shooting a killing dagger look at Phillip. “You’re joking, right?”

I thought we might be in trouble for a split second, but then I finally got my Hollywood kiss. Not exactly the film I had in mind when fantasizing about kissing her for the first time, but passionate. Piper held my face in her hands for a long time, staring at me. She kissed me once gently, then stopped, gazed at me some more, and then kissed me again like she meant to consume me in one bite. I knew this was more than just a drunken accident of circumstance. But this tawdry, drunken affair is how and when my relationship with both of them graduated from platonic to sexual and unquestionably insane.