Slut Lullabies (14 page)

The wetness of her touch slides down my back lightly, sending goose bumps down my arms. I say, “I've been thinking of telling Bobby that we're growing apart. I love him, but I'm afraid for the cats. They're becoming demented.”

“I'm relieved you're coming to your senses,” she says. “What you ever saw in him anyway is beyond me.”

I choke back an angry response,
Yeah, well, at least he has legs
. “He wasn't always like this. I mean, he was always shy, but not . . .” I feel tears close at hand and swallow them down. “There's something wrong with him. It runs in his family. His mother abandoned him. He'll die if I leave him, too.”

I look down at the bubbles, waiting for her to speak, but she is silent. When I glance up, her neck is tilted toward the sky and her eyes are shut. She appears to be wishing on a star.

“Merlot?” I say. “What are you doing?”

“I'm wishing you wouldn't think that was your fault,” she says, still facing the sky. “I'm wishing you would see you don't owe him your life, and that you'd taste this champagne and hear this music and understand what you need.” She looks at me, and I feel dangerously light, my impulse to cry as forgotten as if it had happened to somebody else. “I'm wishing you would go home and end that farce and come here and stay with me at my house. I'm wishing . . .” She pauses, then suddenly laughs aloud. “I'm wishing you would stop wasting our time.”

There is more to it than her house, than her boots, than the husband in Chicago, than the kinky paraplegic, than Bobby, than anyone else can see. There are the long silences over the telephone, fraught with recognition when she says that her mother cannot drive and that she depends on Merlot for everything, that she flies into hysterics at the thought of Merlot getting her own place. There is the confession of my own mother's dependency after we found Dad in the basement, the year we spent in family therapy, Mom sobbing,
We didn't love him enough, we just let him die
. There is the way Bobby started to talk about killing himself last year when he lost his fourth job and I tried to leave, and the way I believed I was cursed. There is the fact that her husband's family doesn't know about their marriage because they are very rich and important and Jewish, and she is none of these things (at least not by their standards), and Jeffrey is waiting for the right time to tell them; he doesn't want to get disinherited, and she has to be patient, but it hurts. There are her tiny, dark fingers running through my hair after we leave the Jacuzzi, tucking, pulling, while she sings me songs from
Madame Butterfly
, which she has practically memorized. There is the sensation in my stomach that neither Bobby nor anyone else has ever made me feel, the dropping inside my gut when the silk of her wide-bottomed pants brushes against my leg at work as she leans over to tell me some banal secret. We share a common captivity: Houston, our mothers, the magazine. She tells me stories of other places: Chicago, San Francisco, Paris on Bastille Day. She says that her job at the magazine is just a stepping stone. She says she will not be like her mother.

Leaving Bobby is easier than I thought it would be. The moment he says he will accompany me to my boss's birthday party, the words are out. They are, “I'd rather be shot in the foot than bring you to a party. If you wet your pants in front of the people I work with, I'd have to move to a foreign country. You know we really have to break up; I just can't do this anymore.”

“But I almost have the ring paid for,” he says, smiling like he can't believe I'm serious.

I glare at him and quote Merlot verbatim. “I don't want a diamond solitaire anyway. They're tacky.”

Some kind of realization begins to come across his face. He sits down on the couch, the muscles in his right leg jerking with involuntary agitation. “I will die without you,” he says.

The sound of the cats clawing at the pantry door make it easy for me to believe I hate him. “Bullshit,” I say (just like Merlot told me to). “Get over it.”

Even though I open all the doors in the house the moment that his sister picks him up and drives him away, four days pass without the cats venturing out. Eventually, I have to put their food in the kitchen to make them leave the dark, smelly room that has been their home for eight months. They never eat in front of me, though, only when I'm not at home.

After a couple of weeks, Bobby stops sitting outside the apartment waiting for me to come home. Mostly, I stay with Merlot anyway, in her black and white bedroom which is filled with the sounds of Nina Simone and Edith Piaf. We lay together on her king size bed and talk about what we would do with a million dollars. She would be a philanthropist, a patron of the arts. I would pay my college loans and buy a beautiful house. We decide that the fact that we are telemarketers is a sick joke. We have learned a lot from working at
Houston Magazine
, we should be assistant editors by now. If they don't appreciate us, another company would.

Even while I am staying there, though, I always call to check the messages on my answering machine. No call comes to tell me Bobby is dead, so eventually I assume that he was only lying.

Incident

The day before we plan to give our two-week notices, we go to a reception at Dream Land. I am wearing an outfit that belongs to me. We bought it last week; I picked it out and she approved. My head feels light, though I have only had one glass of white wine and have eaten more than my share of cheese. I think I may be the youngest person at the reception.

Merlot says, “You would never have worn that dress when I met you.” My giddiness at my comparative youth is heightened by her reminiscence. The person in her memory feels like my younger sister or a character I read about once in a book, not me at all. From this detached position, it suddenly occurs to me that Dream Land looks strikingly like the wooden frame house my mother lives in. The floors even creak like her floors. This realization makes me want to laugh at the fact that I was once afraid to enter this gallery, when in fact I might just as well have lived here! When I turn to tell this to Merlot, the logic that led me to this conclusion suddenly seems cloudy, and I remain silent. She does not notice my befuddlement, however; she is staring across the room.

The Third Man is here.

She takes me aside, her face flushed scarlet, and whispers, “It's him, God, do I look OK?” I say, “Who?” “The love of my life,” she says, flippant but somehow deadly serious. She does not say,
Before Jeffrey
. She does not say,
Before you
.

My stomach clutches with pain and excitement, and I turn in the direction she indicates to see a man in his mid-forties, medium height and balding, with gray hair and a wrinkled black blazer. He is standing surrounded by people, but I know she is talking about him because most of the others are women, except for one other man who must be fifty-five and looks like my stepfather. He is wearing a stereotypically Texas-style suede jacket that is tailored to look like a sports coat, and his hair looks as though it has recently been smashed down by a cowboy hat. He is fat. It disappoints me, The Third Man's relatively ordinary appearance and choice in friends, but two of the women are beautiful (though not as striking or exotic as Merlot), and this gives me pleasure.

She pulls me in the general direction of the gaggle of art aficionados of which he is a part. They are looking at a painting that costs just over two thousand dollars. The Third Man is debating whether to buy it. Merlot says, “Don't say anything about the Calvin Mills painting.” I try to think of what she could be talking about, then remember the painting in her house that she bought some months before,
The Soldier
, a four hundred and fifty dollar painting that resembled an African warrior. I am trying to figure out why I would be likely to bring this up when she walks up to The Third Man and slips her arm around him. He looks taken aback, smiles, kisses her cheek. She clings to his arm and whispers things in his ear until the three other women wander away. I am forgotten, holding a small plate full of cheese cubes. Once the other women have left, though, Fat Friend comes up to me, grinning and asking for introductions. Merlot stays affixed to The Third Man's arm. When he goes to talk to someone else, she goes with him, leaving me with his friend.

After wandering around the room extensively, The Third Man and Merlot return to where Fat Friend, whose name is Larry, is telling me about how he outsmarted someone who sounds like an idiot by doing something that sounds like lying. I have gathered by then that he and The Third Man, whose name is Phillip, are business associates connected by a deal that they both desperately want, but that they don't know each other very well. Fat Friend, for example, does not know how old Phillip is or whether he is seriously involved with anyone, though maybe it is just that businessmen don't talk about those kinds of things.

The crowd is beginning to thin out. “Why don't we all have coffee,” Merlot says, tossing her hair back over her shoulder with one quick motion of her slender neck. Phillip clears his throat, looks around the room and says, “Well.” Fat Friend puts an arm around me. I am not sure how we have become so familiar. “That would be great,” he says.

We go to Brasil because it's close. Merlot is drinking Kir Royales and talking much louder than usual. She is still hanging on Phillip and laughing a lot. I am not sure what is funny, but fear that it may be me. Fat Friend keeps leaning over and pinching me on the arm, saying things like, “Don't you ever talk, girl?” He speaks Texan. Phillip does not. Phillip is from New York and only lives here half-time for business. When Merlot finally excuses herself to go to the bathroom, I hurriedly rise to join her.

The bathroom at Brasil excites me. The door to the ladies' room has no sign, just a drawing on it that looks like a breast. I like to walk into the bathroom without hesitation, because it indicates that I have been here before; newcomers always stand outside trying to figure out if they are in the right place. Tonight, though, Merlot pulls me in before I have a chance to enjoy my entrance.

“I'm so confused,” she says, pulling me into a stall and locking the door behind us. “What should I do? I can't cheat on Jeff, but just being around Phillip is driving me mad. I shouldn't have even let him take me out. There's too much of an attraction between us.”

I am no help, sulking at the anticipation of F.F.'s sweaty fingers pinching me again when she is the married woman and I should get the eligible, thin man. I leave her at the mirror picking out her wild hair and reapplying red lipstick, angry at her sudden indifference to my presence. I go back to the table, planning to announce that I am taking a cab home. When I get there, F.F. is at the bar. Phillip pulls back my seat for me and says, “Hey, let me talk to you for a minute.”

“I have to call a cab.”

“You seem like a really nice girl,” he says. “Don't let Larry put you off, he's just had too much to drink. You know how married men are.”

I do not know anything about married men, but the conspiracy of the comment gives me a small rush. “So?”

“I don't know how close you are to her,” he says, indicating the door with the tit on it, “but you should really be on your guard. You seem like a sweetheart, and she's a just a player. You don't belong with her. Do you see what I'm saying?”

Merlot is coming back to the table. F.F. is close behind, bearing drinks. When they sit down, he says to her, “Hey, darlin', are you Thai? I went to Thailand once on business, and I never had head like that in my life. Are you Thai?”

“Cool it,” Phillip says, but Merlot laughs. “I'm a happily married woman,” she says. “No one gets to rate my performance except my husband.”

Phillip laughs, too, like he gets the joke. Then he stops abruptly and says, “Wait a minute. Does that mean you're not coming home with me? Come on, baby, don't waste my time.”

I am not sure whether or not he is kidding. Merlot, though, lowers her eyes flirtatiously. “You and I have a history,” she says, “that doesn't pertain to my husband.”

“Aw, cut the talk about your husband,” F.F. says. “I've got a wife, and you don't see me carrying on about it to no end. Your husband's a damn drug addict from what I hear. He doesn't deserve a pretty lady like you.”

Merlot looks at Phillip with a venom that I have seen her use at work to make people give her her way. “Jeffrey is out of rehab. He has a job at the Board of Trade in Chicago. It's not like it was, so I'd appreciate your not spreading lies about me to your friends.”

“Look, don't flatter yourself,” Phillip says. “If you're so happily married, what are you doing here with us? When have you and I ever been together without ending up in bed?”

“Fuck you,” Merlot says. Even I know this is a mistake. I have never heard her curse before, and she sounds crude, out of control. F.F. is laughing.

“In good time,” Phillip says. “Only I wanted to send your little friend home first. She's too sweet for what I had in mind.”

I stand up, take Merlot by the hand, but she pulls away. She is starting to cry now, and Phillip says, “Why are you always trying to con me? Now that fuck-up husband of yours is in Chicago? What kind of marriage do you have anyway? Don't tell me you're still living with your mother and spending all her money. When are you going to grow up?”

“Merlot,” I say, “let's get out of here.”

She is crying so hard she cannot breathe. F.F. is staring off into space, drinking his scotch. Phillip looks at me with cool, glassy eyes and puts an arm around her. He pulls out a twenty and hands it to me. “Take a cab home, honey. She's just drunk. I'll see that she gets home OK.”

“I'm not leaving her with you.”

Merlot puts her face into Phillip's shoulder. He strokes her hair rather absently.