Heteroflexibility (19 page)

Butch had given up her guide dog status and trotted along with us. Despite my anxiety that I would be dragged to another gay bar, I didn’t see how we could do anything terrible with a pet in tow.

“Ohhh! Look! There’s a haunted house ahead!” Jenna exclaimed.

“I’m not big on those places where things jump out at you,” Bella said. Nikki wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

“No, it’s a REAL haunted house.” Jenna opened her guide book. “The Whaley House is considered to be the most haunted house in America.”

Bella gripped Nikki’s hand. “What happened there?”

“Yeah, what?” Nikki asked. “Stabbing? Hanging? Murders? Mass murders?”

Bella grimaced. “Nikki, please.”

Jenna stopped. “It says here it all started with a hanging.”

“Everything good starts with a hanging.” Nikki peered over Jenna’s shoulder at the book.

“The heavy footfalls of Yankee Jim Robinson are regularly heard in the house.”

“Awesome.” Nikki said. “Let’s go!”

I shrugged. “I’m game.”

Jenna tucked the book in her bag, and we turned the corner. A line had formed outside the red brick building. “Oh, look!” Jenna said, pointing to a sign. “On Halloween they have ghost tours until midnight!”

Bella stopped cold. “No way.”

Nikki pulled her forward. “Oh, come on. It’s not real.”

Bella walked in short, mincing steps, eyes wide. “I believe in ghosts.”

“Then they’ll appreciate your support.” Nikki waved to the Audreys, who had fallen behind. “Come on, Hoebags! We’re putting our scare on.”

We waited our turn, watching groups enter the old house. Bella grew more anxious as we paid for our tickets.

Bradford stood beside me, casual in jeans and his rolled-up button-down. I pretended for a moment that we were on a date, waiting among strangers for our turn for a Halloween scare, him expecting me to clutch his arm. Sigh.

“You all ready?” A lanky twenty-something guide approached us and counted our group. “You’ve got enough for your own tour.”

The guide led us up the front stairs. He spoke in a low and rather silly voice. “Listen carefully for the footsteps of Yankee Jim,” he said, crouching. “Look for Mr. or Mrs. Whaley in the parlor or the courtroom.” He nodded knowingly at our group. “And you, with your camera—”

My head snapped up. Me?

“—Try to capture them on film. Many before have done it.”

He led us into a hallway filled with images of ghosts taken inside the house.

“So watcha think, Zest? Can you get one?” Nikki asked. Bella stared at the images, her hand in a fist by her cheek.

I shook my head. “This one here,” I pointed to a series of glowing orbs before a grand four-poster bed. “Is called lens flare. A reflection from their own flash, most likely, or light from the window or off a mirror.”

I studied the others. “These big white smears can be a smudge deliberately placed on the lens. Or it could be someone breathed on their lens just before taking the image.”

A young Japanese tourist stepped up. “Will that work, really?”

“Sure,” I said. “Try it.”

He breathed on the lens and snapped a quick shot of me. “Wow!” He turned the LCD around. “A ghost!” I had a film of haze before my face. “Awesome, thank you, thank you very much! My friends back home will think I saw a real ghost!”

I moved closer to Bella. “Feeling better?” She nodded.

“Well, that’s enough here,” the guide said, shooting me a “don’t ruin my tour” look.

We followed him into a child’s bedroom. Butch began growling, low and menacing. Jenna had placed the “Guide Dog” harness back on him so she could bring him inside.

We all tensed a little as Butch began backing toward the door.

“The dog senses a presence,” the guide said, clearly pleased. “Everyone close your eyes, let the child who sometimes haunts these walls into your consciousness.”

Butch began to whine, so Jenna scooped him up and went back into the hall.

“I’m with Butch,” Bella said, and she also left.

This would be a fun memory to capture, I realized. I assessed the room, the child’s wooden bed, toys on the parquet floor. The sun wasn’t coming in directly through the window at this hour, so I couldn’t rely on flare. I shrugged. I’d just have to fake it. I licked my finger and ran it across the filter that protected my lens, creating a streak. Then I aimed my camera at the rocking chair, tilting it so that the streak would appear to be something sitting there.

I snapped the shot and checked it. Not quite visible enough. I killed my flash and tried the image again. This time, with the darker background, the side light made the smudge more obvious. Perfect.

“I saw you do that,” Bradford said. “Show me what you got.”

“Oh, I’ll show you what I got.”

Holy shit. Did I just say that?

Bradford cocked his head. “Did I hear you right? Did you just flirt with me?”

My face flamed. “I think I’ve been around these girls too much!”

He laughed lightly. “It’s okay. I’m harmless.”

My shoulders sagged. Of course he was. I turned the camera LCD to him. “Got the ghost.”

He held it close, his fingers cradling the black metal. “Very nice.” He looked over the camera at me. “Also very nice.”

Had he just flirted back?

I’d have to ask Nikki if there was such thing as
homoflexible
.

Chapter 23: Hottiefication

We ate dinner at the first place that listed margaritas in their window. The light was going gray as we piled down the steps and back into Old Town. More costumes had come out, tourists snapping like crazy.

“Let’s go this way!” Nikki said, steering us across a busy intersection. I had no idea where we were in relation to the hotel anymore. Bradford and I tended to hang back a bit from the group, letting them have their pre-nuptial honeymoon space.

Besides, he might flirt again.

Nikki paused in front of a nondescript door, the windows from its former business incarnation blacked out and painted with silver sparkles. “I’ve heard about this place,” she said. “Let’s check it out.”

I looked at the signs for bands posted by the entrance with suspicion. “What’s this place called?”

“I dunno,” Nikki said. “Let’s go!” She opened the painted glass door to a blast of rock music.

Something about the gleam in her eye made me cautious. I backed away until I stepped onto the street, so I could see the main sign. A giant pair of neon lips sported a single red-tipped finger as if it were saying. “Shh.” Next to it flashed the words, “On the Box.”

I had no idea what that meant. “Can someone translate?”

“Dancing!” Nikki chirped. “You know, like dancing on a box. It’s a dance club.”

We stepped inside the dimly lit interior, bright spotlights circling everywhere. I blinked to adjust. The first thing I saw were two women in very little shiny vinyl holding trays of drinks.

“Ooo la la!” Nikki called out over the noise. “Come on Bella, let’s go make out.”

There were, indeed, dancing boxes throughout the club, lit with pulsating neon. There were no men whatsoever.

I turned around, smashing into Bradford. “Can’t do it. Not again.”

He grasped my arm. “I don’t blame you. I’ll take you back.”

We ducked out the door and into the evening. Fatigue was setting in hard. “I don’t want to spoil your fun,” I said. “Just point me in the general direction of the hotel and I will get there. I drove back last night, like you guys. I’m beat.”

“I’ll walk you. I don’t really want to stay there either.”

We fell in step. Twenty-somethings in strange, sexy costumes hurried by, all seeming to have somewhere urgent to go. A girl in a French maid outfit, boobs overflowing the lace neckline, with white thigh stockings and platform heels sauntered straight for us, tickling Bradford under the chin as she passed between us. He didn’t even acknowledge her.

I totally didn’t get him. He dressed really well to be straight. But that was a stereotype, right? Boys could care about their clothes. Straight boys.

He owned a salon. He could be an entrepreneur.

All his friends seemed to be gay, although what did I know, really. Fern had flat out said he was gay, admonishing me for throwing myself at him. Had I? I didn’t think so. But she was obviously not to be trusted. Who knew what motivated her at this point. Anger flared up again, and I stuffed it down.

Maybe I had been wrong, steered the gay direction by Fern. Oh, how I wished I didn’t have the gaydar of a Frisbee.

Bradford touched my back lightly as he led me across an intersection. He did everything so smoothly. It was really, truly, irrelevant whether he was gay or straight. For someone like me, he was unattainable. The sooner I got that firm in my head, the sooner I’d quit making a fool of myself.

Besides, I was still married.

“Nearly there,” he said. The yellow stucco hotel filled most of the block.

My reluctance to leave him grew as we climbed the steps to our building. “So, are you familiar with San Diego? Being from California and all?”

He nodded, holding the door to the hallway open. “When I lived in LA, I used to go to trade shows here. Still do, sometimes. Cosmetics. Hair products.”

“Any bad memories?” We were approaching our doors.

He paused and leaned against the wall. A reprieve. “A few. But they’re behind me.”

“2004?”

“Around then.”

Right. When gay marriages ended. I wondered how much I could pry. “Because of the scene.”

He laughed gently. “Back to that, are we?”

“I could use a change of scene myself,” I said. I walked over to a window to the view of a line of palm trees. “Not a bad one here.”

He stood beside me. “How long were you married?”

“Five years.”

I leaned my head against the cool glass. It felt calming. “I actually sort of figured something like this would happen. I was always surprised anyone would pick me.”

“Why is that?”

I turned to him. “I’m not exactly attractive. Mom was clear on that from as early as I could understand words.” I held out a chunk of my crazy hair, whipped into a frenzy from the walk, the conditioner all dried out. “And I don’t exactly have the best attitude.”

He tweaked the lock of hair. “The hair can be fixed.”

“But the attitude goes straight to the bone.”

He smoothed my hair against my head, a gesture so much like my father’s that I had to close my eyes a moment, willing my heart to still. Who was this man?

He touched my nose, and I opened my eyes. “We’ll start with the hair.”

***

I sat in his bathroom, a white towel pinned around my neck, and felt I had to warn him. “I’ve tried all this before, you know. Straighteners, relaxers, conditioners.”

He forced my chin up, painting some foul-smelling product onto my hair. “Not with me.”

I watched him in the mirror, all concentration and skill. “Did you always want to do hair? Own a salon?”

“No. I did undergrad in chemical engineering, actually. Quit with two semesters to go.”

“What happened?”

“The overbearing father died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I hardly knew the man. He never married my mom, just gave me money for college with the stipulation of how I should use it.”

“I hate that.”

“I wanted to reject it, but mom worked hard and still didn’t have much. Even my grandmother pushed me to take it. So I did. I signed up for as little engineering as possible and racked up a bazillion frivolous electives.”

He tilted my head. My scalp buzzed from the chemicals.

“Did you ever finish?”

“Yes, I was so close that I went ahead and got a quick business degree. Used it to help me set up shop while I did cosmetology. I rented a space and hired people before I could do any of the hands-on work myself. Dad left a little money that got me going.”

“I thought my husband was going to help me until I got my business started.”

He turned my chin toward him. “You’ll do it anyway. You’re obviously good enough. People will see that.” He combed the chemicals through. “You’re going to be straight in about fifteen minutes.”

I ignored the obvious and skipped the joke. “You really think you’re going to take the kink out?”

“Without a doubt.”

“I’ve always hated it.”

“Because of mom.”

I thought of the boots, the picture, and the moment I had broken down in Dad’s kitchen. “Yeah.”

“Well, if changing the hair helps, then we’ll change the hair.” Our eyes met in the mirror. “But don’t let the things your mom said keep going through your head.”

How did he know about that?

“I heard my dad for years, how I would never be anything but an effeminate loser.”

“You’re not effeminate at all!”

He combed through my hair again, flattening it down. “Depends on who you ask. Time to rinse and neutralize.”

I sat on the floor, leaning my head over the edge of the tub as he attached a nozzle to the faucet and began to rinse. His hands were practiced as he swept the warm water away from my forehead despite the awkward position.

At last he shut it off. “Time for the finish.”

I never even attempted blow drying my hair, and the one time with Fern had been painful and long. I stared at the pinstripe of his shirt as he worked the round brush. “You have healthy hair, you know,” he said over the noise. “It took the relaxer well.”

He shut off the power. “And now for the cliché moment to beat all makeover clichés.”

He moved away from where he had blocked my view of the mirror. I had to peer at myself. It was the same old face, no makeup, a bit blotchy, but transformed by the perfect hair. The color had shifted slightly with the chemicals, edging on red, smooth from my scalp to where it curved against my shoulder.

“It’s—it’s beautiful.”

He stood behind me, nipping a few strands with small scissors. “I agree.”

“Thank you.” He stood above me still, assessing the ends. I tugged on his shirt, which was untucked now, as casual as I’d ever seen him. “I mean it.”

He looked down, as if noticing me finally. I couldn’t take my eyes off his lips—always the lips!—and I could see he had focused on mine too. He bent down and I closed my eyes, so glad I was wrong, that Fern had lied, and this boy was not gay at all, just very metro, just cutting edge liberal, tolerant, and—