Heteroflexibility (7 page)

I picked up a few food items on the way back to the registers. I should be set for a little while. I wheeled the cart to the checkout lane, where a beehived woman in her fifties greeted me.

I watched her scan the items, wondering how a woman like her, no wedding ring, probably no help, could make ends meet working at Target. I wished I could ask her, get tips maybe, but instead pulled my credit card from my wallet and zipped it through the machine.

“Transaction canceled,” it read. “Try again or use another card.”

“Just swipe it again, honey,” the woman said. “It’s always on the fritz.”

I ran the card more carefully this time, but it still read, “Transaction canceled.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, panic already rising.

“Let me try it over here,” she said, sliding the card across the groove above her keyboard.

She shook her head. “You’re tapped out. It doesn’t tell me why, if you’re over the limit, or expired or whats-it. But it won’t go through. You want me to call them? Or you got another way to pay?”

I pulled out the check card from my joint account with Cade, but I had a feeling I knew what would happen. “We can try this,” I said and ran the card through the machine.

Transaction canceled.

I checked my wallet. Two twenties and the uncashed check from Harry Histrionic. My face burned. “I guess I’ll have to put some things back, see what I can pay with cash.”

A women with two kids behind me sighed and began grabbing her items off the conveyor belt and sticking them back in her cart.

The checker smiled sympathetically. “Okay, honey, what you got?”

“Forty dollars.”

“What’s most important?” She pointed to the screen, which listed what I’d bought and their prices.

The bed was over thirty all by itself. The blanket was twenty.

“Um, keep the bed and the saucepan.”

“Gotcha.” She began shoving the rest in a bin beneath the counter. “Okay, $37.98.”

“And the Ramen noodles.”

She scanned the packages, six for a dollar.

“39.06.”

I handed her the cash, utterly humiliated.

***

I struggled beneath the boxes loaded with studio gear and essential clothes and pushed the button to the elevator for Fern’s condo. A security guard watched me from behind a polished teak desk as I tried to maintain my balance. Musak drifted from invisible speakers.

At last the doors slid open. A greasy-haired twenty-something stood inside wearing a ridiculous gray bellboy get-up straight from a sitcom. “Moving in?” he asked as I shuffled inside.

I wasn’t sure how to answer. There could be a policy against long-term guests. I didn’t want to get Fern in trouble, but even more importantly, I didn’t want to get kicked out.

“Oh no, just some…stuff.”

“What floor?”

“Four.”

He pushed a button, face forward, but his eyes kept shifting to my box. Finally, he pointed to the Target bag with the package sticking out, clearly marked, “Auto Blow Up Mattress.” Nosy asshat.

I angled the box so he couldn’t peer in. “We’re going camping.”

“Really? Where?”

“The Ozarks.”

“Which part?”

Crap. What states were the Ozarks in? Maybe he didn’t know either. “Missouri.”

“It’ll get cold at night. You’ll have to cuddle up.”

The elevator dinged, and the door opened. I stepped forward, but the man put his hand against my box. “Wrong floor,” he said. “Someone pressed a button on two.”

He moved to the doorway, looking both directions. “No one here. I should investigate.”

“Probably somebody just forgot something.”

“Could be someone in trouble.” He pressed the red button to stop the elevator from moving and puffed out his chest importantly. “Just let me check.”

I leaned back against the wall, trying to find a comfortable position with my box.

 He disappeared down the hall. I blew a wisp of hair out of my face and waited.

And waited.

Finally, he popped back into the elevator. “False alarm.”

“What a surprise.”

“It could have been something important.”

“It could have been a kid punching buttons.”

“We don’t have any kids on the second floor.” The chest again. Uggh. A self-aggrandizing elevator man.

He released the stop button. “I know every resident.”

“Could have been a guest.”

He restarted the elevator. “So who’s your friend?”

“I have lots of friends.”

“Fourth floor? Has to be the doctor, the lawyer couple, the divorcee, or the hottie harlot.”

“The what?”

He nodded his head at the mattress. “I figured. Her place is a revolving door.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

He nodded. “She doesn’t get paid for it. I already checked.”

The elevator slid to a stop, and he smoothed his hair. “You’ll put in a good word for me?”

“What?”

“With the hottie.”

The door opened, and I rushed down the hallway. The last thing I wanted to do was broker Fern’s next lay.

And so I used the stairs for the other three boxes.

Finally, hot and exhausted, I set the last one on the stack and fumbled with the spare key. “You home?” I called as I pushed through the door.

A thump from the next room was followed by a crash. I hurried for Fern’s bedroom, flinging open the door, “Fern, you—”

I froze. Fern’s boss, the movie director, was swinging from a contraption made of satin rope, chains, and steel hooks. He was naked.

Fern knelt on the floor in black leather, shoving shards of glass into a corner. The broken body of a lamp lay nearby.

I backed away. Oh jeez.

Manny wiggled his fingers, his wrists tied with black cords. He crossed his legs in a small gesture of modesty, setting a loose chain to wild motion, narrowly missing the remaining lamp on the opposite side of the bed. “Good to see you again.”

I whirled around and raced through the living room. God, god, god, god, god. Would this sort of stuff happen every day? I paused in the front door, not sure what to do. Move my boxes in and wait? Go back in the hall?

I spied Fern’s laptop on the coffee table. I could borrow it and work on photos in the lobby.

I pulled the front door shut behind me, ready to snag my flash cards and portable reader when I remembered Elevator Boy. A revolving door. Apparently he knew his building.

And he might be hanging out downstairs.

I built a barricade with my boxes so that he couldn’t see me should he step outside the elevator, hunkering down with the laptop.

The walls were well insulated, or else Fern and Manny had settled down, as the corridor was silent. The padded carpet smelled faintly of lilacs.

I wanted to get all the latest pictures online before I left town for the wedding in hopes they’d order shortly after I got back, padding my meager funds. I’d need to open a new bank account, away from Cade. So much to do.

Fern’s laptop had a password, but she hadn’t changed it from “password,” so I got in easily.

The images began transferring, the women in their purple dresses.

Marge. I remembered her at the funeral, less girthy and still quite beautiful, decked in a black sheath and dramatic hat with netting, like a Betty Davis film.

Mom was laid out in a polished redwood coffin at the front of the room at the funeral home. Marge approached it as recorded organ music played some dirge, a black lace handkerchief held to her nose. All she needed to complete the picture was elbow gloves.

Dad sat next to me and tensed when he saw her, putting me on alert. He’d been calm and quiet throughout everything. Of course he had. He wasn’t there when I found her collapsed on the floor of the bedroom, worn out from chemo and unwilling to admit how bad she was feeling. When the paramedics came and laid her on the stretcher, she’d awakened a bit and looked around as though she’d never see the place again. “Don’t forget to dust the television,” she’d said to me. “You never remember to move the picture frames.”

Marge turned from the coffin, bent over as if grief-stricken. I hardly knew her except through an annual Christmas party and mom’s caustic remarks. Mom managed a thrift shop that was staffed by volunteers from some charity, including women like Marge who seemed offended that someone actually got paid to work at a place they served for free. Tack a religious angle onto the whole mess and Mom got a daily dose of negativity.

Marge reached for Dad’s hand and patted it with enthusiastic affection. “I’m so sorry, Ben. Eleanor was such a dear.”

Dad nodded politely but I could see him trying to extricate his hand.

Marge released him and straightened her skirt. “I do wish you’d followed my suggestion of holding the service at Our Lady of Guadalupe. It would have been so lovely.”

A muscle in Dad’s jaw ticked. “This will do just fine, thank you.”

Marge tugged several Kleenexes from her bag and handed them to me. “Poor little Zest. In case you need them.”

I didn’t reach for them, and they fluttered to my lap. Marge leaned forward, reaching out as though to cup my chin, and I ducked and took off across the room.

“Poor overwrought thing,” I heard her say as I pushed out the doors and to the bathroom.

I poked the keys on the laptop harder than necessary as I copied the images over to the hard drive. I should never have even booked that session. The pictures were useless as samples. The women probably wouldn’t even order any. Morbid curiosity, I bet, led them to call me at all.

I loaded Photoshop Bridge to look at them at full size but paused when the most recent of Fern’s images opened in the viewing pane.

A girl. An arresting girl. Dark-haired, smooth-skinned. Serious.

And familiar.

I glanced at the file names. Aud-at-concert. Aud-smiling. Aud-birthday.

Audrey’s Aud! All over Fern’s computer.

Now it was clear why Fern had so much interest in the Hoebags. Fern had been with Aud. But when? I switched to detail view to check the dates.

About a year ago. All the pictures were taken in a one-month period. Hadn’t Aud said she and Audrey had been together two years?

I didn’t want to know. I’d just put the laptop back where I found it. Pretend I hadn’t looked. I could do the women’s images later. I closed Bridge and deleted the purple dress images from the drive.

I slipped back through the door and returned the laptop to the coffee table. I heard a loud squeak of metal and an abrupt shout. Manny.

Fern responded, “You’re in BIG trouble for breaking Mommy’s lamp!” Then the snap of a whip.

Time for me to go back in the hall.

Chapter 11: 24-Karat Hearts

The Volvo idled with a gentle vibration as I waited a half block away from my old house. Someone had wrecked my life. I wanted to know her name.

The house looked deserted. If I could be certain Cade—or the bimbo—wasn’t there, I was going in.

I cut the engine. Cade should have gone to work a couple hours ago and didn’t usually come home for lunch. But just in case, the mission would end well before then.

Leaves crunched as I strode along the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. Despite the heat, I pulled my hoodie up over my ears to hide my signature hair.

I passed the house, walked past two more, then crossed the street and doubled back. As the two-story limestone grew near, I stuck close to the trees. I could enter the garage by a side door and see if his car was there. If not, I could go in and really do a thorough search.

The second spare key—one I had made months ago after locking myself out while Cade was out of town—slid easily into the lock. Cade would never have to know I had it. Besides, the house was still half mine. Who knows, maybe I’d decide to fight him on it, just to be difficult.

Sunlight crossed the empty cement floor as I eased open the door. Awesome.

I ran up the stairs, knowing exactly where I wanted to go. While waiting in the hall last night, I’d thought about the box of sex toys that had been in plain sight, stowed beneath the liquor. I was the drinker of the family, not him. He intended for me to find it.

Then I’d remembered something else. A lipstick. A stupid pathetic cliché lipstick. In his coat pocket no less. It had been cracked and scratched up, and I had just assumed he’d picked it up off the ground in a fit of not wanting anyone to Mess with Texas, especially since it was nestled with a beat-up matchbook from some podunk bar—Billy Bob’s something or another. No place he’d ever go. The idea that Cade—the clueless, unromantic, hairless wonder—could be having an affair seemed about as likely as, well, me having one.

I was pretty sure there would be other things stowed where he figured I’d come across it, putting together the clues that would make the divorce filing less of a surprise.

I’d just been more clueless than he’d figured.

Cade had one funny little quirk about his laundry. His underwear had to be folded. And they weren’t boxers. They weren’t even tighty whiteys. He like wearing Tommy Hilfiger, Abercrombie & Fitch, or Calvin Klein bikinis. And not plain. Red, sapphire, black, leopard print. He even had some with a lightning bolt. I’d discovered this back when we were dating and found it endlessly amusing.

So one of the things I did for him was to fold them. A small thing, surely, but I had never begrudged him this service, even though my own underwear was wadded into a mass of cotton and lycra.

If he wanted to hide something and yet make sure I would find it, he’d put it there.

As I entered our bedroom, I felt accosted by images. Photos of us lined every wall and rested on each flat surface. I’d taken so many as I practiced en route to becoming a professional, before my hobby became my job.

Over the bed, we ate ice cream, laughing because I’d gotten Rocky Road on my nose. Next to that we leaned against a tree in the backyard, me pressing into him, his arm draped across my shoulder, staring at each other in a romantic engagement-style pose. From the pictures, a casual observer would assume we had a normal courtship. That, I knew, was the power of photography. It could document, but it could also disguise.