Venus Envy (20 page)

W
E CUDDLED.” KENNY HALF-HID HIS IMPISH SMILE. “THE
whole night was thoroughly enjoyable, although I’ve got to get used to bosoms again.”

“You’re telling me you’re going to date Courtney Wood?” Frazier laughed as she and Kenny Singer walked along the road to her house.

“Yes. What do you think of that?”

“I think you should both get blood tests.”

“I have. Negative.”

“Thank the gods, Kenny.” Frazier’s relief was genuine. “I worry because of Billy….”

Kenny smiled but it was a smile of pain. “He’d fuck a dog if it shook its ass right, but he uses condoms and he uses spermicidal jelly.”

“With you. But when he gets ripped on coke, who knows what he does.”

“Things you could never imagine.” Kenny sighed, not in resignation but with marvelous memories.

“Kenny, I feel responsible for Billy’s dumping you. He wanted to cut me off and you didn’t.”

“It was time for that relationship to be over. Billy will use anyone or anything as an excuse—but that’s never the truth. Don’t worry about it.”

She sighed. “I’m so glad you decided to be my friend—now.”

“I need a shot of imagination. I need to live vicariously.”

“Well, if you’re going to play with the girls you’ll have to make trips to New York or Denver or some town full of great-looking ladies. I pick Denver myself. More outdoorsy kind of women. Gee, Kenny, why don’t you take over my life?” Frazier laughed.

Curry dashed on ahead amidst furious barking while Basil, with regal dignity appropriate to her name, stayed at Frazier’s heels. The buds had swollen to a dark maroon but the only shrubs with opened leaves were the forsythia bushes, and the yellow peeked out from partially opened buds. Spring behaved like Carter in his truck, knocking back and forth before finally wiggling free.

Kenny ran his fingers through his close-cropped seal-brown hair. At thirty-two, with few job skills but a pleasing personality, Kenny recognized he’d better get serious about something. “I’m going back to school.”

“U.V.A.?”

“No, Virginia Commonwealth in Richmond. The graphic arts department is pretty good and they work a lot with computers. I’m going to be the oldest student in the class, I guess, but I’ve drifted too long.”

“You used to be Snow White but you drifted.” Frazier laughed at Tallulah Bankhead’s famous line.

“Time got away from me.”

Frazier kicked at a mud ball. Curry raced back and picked it up in his mouth, only to have it crumble, making Frazier and Kenny laugh at him. Basil grandly swept by as if to say, “Stupid dog.”

“V.C.U. sounds great.” Frazier paused. “Are you still in love with Billy?”

“I think I will be forever. I know that sounds dramatic but I can’t get Billy out of my system, although he’s out of my life. He’s a perfect shit but he’s never ever dull.”

“That’s the truth. What about Courtney?”

“I genuinely like her. I told her I was bisexual and I hadn’t exercised the b
i
since high school. You know she’s not the brightest person in the world or the most mature—but then neither am I—but she’s kind. She said that was okay with her. She said something I never thought about. She said, ‘Men only like me for my tits. Maybe you’ll just like me for me.’ I found that touching.”

“I know exactly what she means.” And Frazier did.

“I’d like to have a friend that became a lover. I’d like to sidestep all that obsessive crap we go through in the beginning and call love.” Kenny exhaled. “Christ, Frazier, it’s exhausting and it takes about a year to find out who that other person really is. This way I can get to know Courtney and she can get to know me. We can date. Sounds corny.”

“Sounds wonderful.”

“Want a piece of unsolicited advice?”

“From you, yes.”

“Find a way to”—he paused and groped for the right approach—“to be with Mandy Eisenhart.”

“What?”

“She’s the right person for you.”

Frazier, discombobulated, sputtered, “She’s straight. She works for me and furthermore, I don’t know if she’d, uh, take to a white person that way, much less me. I
mean, she’s seen me at the bottom of my life just dragging my butt.”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly what?” Frazier’s eyebrows knitted together.

“She
knows
you. Knows
you.”

“Kenny, you’re as cracked as the Liberty Bell.”

Kenny laughed and slipped his strong arm around Frazier’s waist, pulling her next to him. “Sometimes another person can see what’s right under your nose. Mandy loves the arts. She is a magical-looking creature. She must be all of five foot two but what a package—those light-hazel eyes and that exquisite mouth. The two of you in bed would drive any man berserk. I mean, even the impotent would get hard-ons thinking about that combination.”

“You flatter me.”

“I know, I know, sounds crazy but over time, when the dust settles after your coming out—did you come out?”

“I backed out.” Frazier laughed at herself. “And bumped into a few trees in the process.”

“Women drivers.” Kenny shook his head. “Anyway, sooner or later this will calm down, if for no other reason than that this burg generates a juicy scandal about once every three or four months. They’ll be on to someone else, shaking their heads, clucking their tongues and judging—oh, how our friends and neighbors and the people we hardly know, how they love to sit in judgment of us. Must be wonderful to be so right all the time.”

“Yeah.”

“Anyway, when this calms down you’ll see that you do have a life. There will be a person just for you and maybe you can live with some integrity as a couple. Not that it will be easy. Shit, look at how I turned myself into a pretzel for Billy. If I’d had any balls I would have told him to shove it. Easier said then done. I guess watching
you and reading the letter made me ask some questions about myself and I thought since you’d done me a favor without actually knowing that you had, I’d do you one. Mandy.”

“I’ll have to think about it.” Frazier evaded.

Kenny nodded in agreement. He could have said many things to Frazier but he chose to keep them to himself. One thing at a time with Frazier. He guided her over to a field of huge daffodils, a bright cloud of spring, just shouting yellow.

“A nimbus of hope,” he said.

T
HE REMAINS OF THEIR IMPROMPTU LUNCH WERE SCATTERED
on the table like the detritus of earlier conversations: a slipped verb here, a tired adjective there, a discarded noun. Laura spun her web with skill. She waited to capture her prey until the arrival of the crème brulée, which they both felt they had earned, since they ate only a salad for lunch.

“I hear that Frazier isn’t going back on the board of the Cancer Ball.” Laura stirred her espresso.

“Oh, I haven’t heard anything about that.” Ann’s long fingernails clicked against the countertop as she put down her spoon.

“Darcy told me the other day at bridge that Frazier’s been dropped from the committee and they’ll ask Billy Cicero to replace her. Too busy, Darcy said, but we all know why. Personally, I think people should be direct and get these things out in the open. I hate the
behind-the-back stuff,” said she who was an expert at it.

Ann’s hands nervously fluttered over the delicious desert. “Frazier calls those committees ‘The Disease of the Week’ but she does raise money. She’s good at that.”

“You two were very close, weren’t you?” Laura’s blue eyes softened with understanding.

“No, I wouldn’t say that.” Ann’s upper lip twitched slightly. “I love art. Frazier and art are synonymous.”

“Did you know—about her proclivities, I mean?”

“Uh—I never thought about it. She was usually with Billy Cicero….”

“And you were usually with Kenny Singer,” Laura interjected. “Now if I’m thinking along those lines, you can imagine what the rest of the town is thinking, which is why I wanted us to go to lunch. Just thought you’d like to know so you can be, well, ready.”

Ann blanched but kept her voice steady. “Ready for what?”

“Ann, don’t be dense. What if you aren’t asked back to serve on your various committees, and I know that Allied Assets Bank is a fine firm but people expect a kind of reliability, should we say, from their bankers.”

“Laura, don’t be absurd. I’m not a lesbian. I like men as much as you do.”

Considering the fact that Laura hated men, Ann’s statement was loaded, but of course Laura was married. It didn’t seem to occur to people that being heterosexual didn’t absolve anyone from hatred of the opposite sex. Sleeping with people didn’t mean you liked them; it meant you’d borrowed their bodies. In Carter’s case Laura merely borrowed his penis, since the rest of him held no interest for her. Lately, she didn’t even borrow that.

“I’m glad to hear that,” Laura cooed. “Now if you’ll heed my advice you’ll steer clear of Frazier for a while.”

“That won’t be hard,” Ann truthfully noted.

“The Armstrongs are a peculiar breed….” Before Laura finished her thought Sarah Saxe emerged from the back of the restaurant where she had been sitting in a booth with Carter. She spied Laura and whirled around to warn Carter to duck. Carter followed Sarah’s eyes and noticed his wife. Instead of ducking he slid out of the booth and stood beside Sarah.

“Carter, get out of here,” she whispered.

“Not on your life.” He guided Sarah by her elbow toward the front door.

“There’s got to be a back door.” Her heart was pounding.

“Alarm system on it. Head up, girl.”

They drew alongside Laura and Ann. Carter stopped. Sarah stopped, too, although cold sweat trickled down the small of her back.

“Hello, Ann, nice to see you. Hello, Laura.” Carter smiled. “Ann, I don’t know if you’ve ever met my friend Sarah Saxe.”

“No, we’ve never met.” Ann nodded a greeting.

“Nice to meet you.” Sarah smiled in reply although the smile felt plastered on her face.

Laura, nonchalant despite her fury, spoke to Carter. “Darling, you’ll carry a pitchfork into paradise.”

“Uh, well, it was good to see you all.” Sarah started off.

Carter bored into Laura but his voice was soft. “You know, honey, you nourish grudges. They’re the children you never had.”

“And whose fault is that?” she hissed.

Sarah, hurting for Carter and for herself, watched as Carter leaned over and said in a low voice to Laura: “Well, darlin’, you just suffer an amorous martyrdom, don’t you?”

As she watched her husband’s back move toward the door, Laura smiled and drank her espresso. Ann, paralyzed by the intense moment, gobbled her crème brulée.

“You know, Ann, maybe you’d be better off gay.”

“I’m not gay.”

“Then maybe I’d be better off. That man is impossible.” Laura feigned insouciance.

“Runs in the family.” Ann blushed, realizing that perhaps she had betrayed both a love and a wound.

S
O WHO DIED AND MADE YOU GOD?’ I SAID. OH, YOU SHOULD
have seen his face. Not a pretty sight.” Mandy pushed away the catalogue from England she had been studying. “I let this whole thing go on too long. It’s my fault.”

“You know what Auntie Ruru says.” Frazier quoted her aunt: “‘It’s easy to get them in and oh so hard to get them out.’”

“Ru has a saying for everything but I have this theory—”

Frazier laughed, “Yeah, yeah …”

“No, really, I have this theory that we grow through one another. It’s not just books and solitary experiences. I mean, I think there’s this subconscious river flowing, this subterranean water …”

“Mandy, I can’t bear water images for emotional states. Really.”

“Frazier, don’t be a bitch.”

“Well, don’t be conventional.”

“As I was saying”—Mandy’s clear eyes widened—“I think we pick people as lessons. We grow through one another or are retarded through one another.”

“So, what was the lesson with Sean?” Frazier folded her arms across her chest.

Mandy imitated her, “What was the lesson with Ann?”

“Touché.”

“Oh, I can get tougher than that but being a good sort, I will answer the question. Sean is handsome. Obviously, I can’t see myself with an ugly man. My ego depends on his looks. He was bright. He was also so centered on his career that he barely perceived me except when he needed me. And when you get right down to it, how many attractive, well-educated black men are there?”

“Plenty.”

“In central Virginia?”

“Maybe you need to—”

“Go on a vacation. No. I need a break but not that kind. Same kind of break you need, I suppose.”

“God, I hope not. I’m not getting a break. I’m getting flogged. I mean, this morning I stopped to get scrambled eggs and a bagel and standing next to me in line was Olivia Marshall, with whom I have served on every committee except the King James Version, and she moved away from me, didn’t even say hello. Like I carried the plague. If we hadn’t been standing in the middle of Bodo’s I would have called her on it but that’s the point, isn’t it? They derive their gray little pleasures from cutting you down when you can’t fight back, or when if you do fight back you look like the irrational one. Not that what’s happened to me is as bad as breaking up with Sean. I thought he was kind of cute.”

“What do you think of my theory?”

Mandy never strayed off the point for long, which was one of the qualities Frazier loved about her, because from time to time Frazier could fly off on a tangent. “Your theory has merit.”

“Then why did you pick Ann? What was there to learn?”

“Wait a minute. You didn’t tell me what you learned from Sean.”

“That men are selfish pigs.”

“Come on. That’s not true.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re not going to live with one.”

“You never know.” Frazier’s green eyes brightened.

“What did I learn?” Mandy paced. “Okay, I learned that the package, no matter how great it looks to you and others, isn’t as important as what’s inside, and I know that’s a platitude. I know but I still had to learn it inside. Knowing something intellectually doesn’t mean very much if it isn’t connected here.” She thumped her solar plexus.