I like my men with a bit of mystery. To discover a man, to know his deepest secrets and innermost thoughts, enthralls me. The idea of meeting him unexpectedly, making our connection that much more delicious and enigmatic, is thrilling. I see us catching the other’s eye across a crowded room, like during a fancy dinner at Seattle’s Space Needle. I would peek from behind my icy bangs, peering at his chocolate eyes with my own frozen blues. He would slowly lick his full lips and I would coyly nibble the bottom of mine. He’d raise his right eyebrow slyly: a question. I would nod once, very subtly: an acknowledgment. Yes.
Politely excusing himself from a one-sided conversation with some gossipy brunette, he’d slowly slide his long frame out of the wide booth. His longish hair would flop over one eye, and with a careless flick to get it out of the way, he’d stride purposefully toward me. I would smile for my lap.
“Yes?”
“Isabella,” he would say with emphasis. And desire.
- - -
My marriage to my current husband Dale has a neutering effect on me. Not until I close the door of the laundry room on the bottom floor of our three-story house can I exhale and shake off the numbness I am so used to feeling these days. When Dale is deliberately rude to me, I hide my feelings from him and leave my face as neutral as possible until I can get downstairs to the laundry room and shut the door behind me. Even though some days I can ignore his little insults or nagging comments without the words biting too deeply—like when he grumbles about the way I scramble his eggs, letting them fry a little too much and causing a crispy layer of burnt egg thin as lace to build up around the edges—there are times when his criticism truly gets to me. Like last weekend, at his brother’s beach cabin, Dale took a stab at me in front of his whole family. I could not disregard his criticism that time, which was over the length of my shorts. He said I was trying too hard to look like his twenty-something brat of a daughter, Amelia. There were about ten of us filling up our plates from the buffet style setup, and Dale practically hissed the insult aloud. My hands started to shake so much so that I almost spilled the food off of my plate. His sister’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, but she would not even make eye contact with me. I bottled up my hurt then and kept a fake smile on my face for the rest of the day, a façade that is now a norm when we’re actually out together. We smile for our friends, and in front of restaurant waiters, grocery store cashiers, and the kids. I don’t want anyone to see how much he can hurt me, so I wait until the moment when I can get downstairs and let myself whimper, feeling tears crease through my Chanel foundation.
Fortunately the methodic whirr and churn of the washer and the clinking of metal buttons hitting the sides of the dryer drown out the sounds of my crying so he can’t hear me. On the night we came home from his brother’s cabin, I insisted to Dale that I would run a load of our whites rather than watch TV in the master bedroom before succumbing to a food and alcohol coma. He just shrugged, not even looking at me, and got undressed and climbed into our giant bed. My bottom lip was trembling and my face threatened to crack, but I turned quickly, the laundry basket in my arms. Once I got downstairs, I poured the detergent into the machine and pressed the buttons to start the cycle, and then I screamed and cried so hard I had to muffle my mouth with a fresh towel I’d folded that morning when I ran a load of linens. I finished forty-five minutes later at the sound of the buzzer. The white cotton towel I cried into turned yellowish with blobs of snot and black smears from my mascara. I threw it in an empty hamper to be washed later and mechanically transferred the clothes to the dryer with my chest still hiccupping with dry heaves.
And then other times, Dale does not even say anything out loud, and he will still manage to hurt me. When he compliments our friends’ wives on their fabulous hostess skills at dinner parties we go to, he’ll glance sideways at me with a look of disappointment and contempt. Then, the tears slide in silence down my cheeks downstairs in the laundry room. I’ve come to associate that fresh scent of wild lilacs with unhappiness and regret. The warm perfumed air is like a heavy cloak of sadness wrapping itself around my shoulders like a physical burden. I learned to keep a tube of Maybelline’s Great Lash mascara in one of the drawers after the third year or so of marriage, when we really started fighting, Before coming upstairs again, I learned to reapply a few coats to keep my tears a secret.
Dale has no idea how to do his own laundry, so he never ventures downstairs, leaving me alone with my misery and detergent. He delegated all house chore responsibilities to me, although I’ve elected to use an illegal Mexican woman, Guadeloupe, to do most of the serious tasks. I just can’t get myself to wash our tall windows or get on my knees to scrub the hardwood floors covering two out of three floors of the enormous house.
I do the simple chore of laundry for the men I share this prison-like house with since it’s the one and only domestic act that I have can successfully manage without explicit directions from Guadeloupe. My younger son Jordan is hardly around enough to do his own laundry, let alone bring his basket downstairs. It forces me to politely knock on his bedroom door and enter the dark chamber twice a week, usually while Jordan’s still at school. His room is painted navy blue on two sides and the window is on the wall that only gets sunlight slanting through the rarely opened shades in the evenings. His room was professionally decorated to look very nautical: it has wooden model sailboats, anchors and rusty looking buoys (all purchased with that “faded” maritime look from Pottery Barn for a very hefty price) set off by natural pine furniture. The decorator insisted his room be very preppy, because she assumed every teenaged boy wore polo shirts and khakis with baseball hats. Well, the preppy look is completely opposite from Jordan’s alternative skater style, but he never balked about it. This is his last year of high school, so he’ll be out and in a shitty dorm room he can style how he wants it soon enough. I encouraged Jordan to start his college applications over the summer, but he just brushed me off saying he’d do them later and kept playing his video game. I swear, ever since Jordan got his license two years ago and bought himself an old truck, he drives himself wherever he likes, which means he’s never home. On the rare occasions when Jordan is around, he’s usually parked in front of the big screen TV in the den or else rifling through the kitchen pantry like a beggar, mumbling about how there’s nothing good to eat. It’s mostly because he’s already eaten it all.
When we first got married and bought the house, I was excited to decorate the house and be a wife again. Dale didn’t care; his only input on the house’s styling concerned the office where he spends almost all of his waking hours. So despite the fact that I have the power to make Dale’s underwear pink, I don’t. It’s like a silent contract between us. He keeps an expensive roof over my head and designer clothes on my body. He finances my Botox treatments, that one face-lift and the breast implants I got within those first six months of our marriage. I guess it’s his way of maintaining my once youthful figure—even though he doesn’t touch it anymore.
And I keep his laundry clean, ironed and folded.
He never thanks me for doing this. Many of Dale’s clothes reek of damp, stale sweat: an acrid sour smell from riding the stationary bicycle in our home gym for 45 minutes every morning. It’s ironic that his gut doesn’t go away; I guess it would help if he stopped drinking so much beer and finishing greasy bags of chips during the weekend sports games on TV. Monday through Friday, Dale is closed up in his office at our house. On the weekends, he’s horizontally laid out on the over wide leather couch, yelling at the referee in whatever game is on. Dale will even use golf as an excuse to drink during the day. Cocktails at five until he passes out are routine. Another repulsive aspect of doing Dale’s laundry, though, is encountering the dried, crusty spots on his boxer briefs from nocturnal emissions.
We have not come close to having sex in ages. I have gotten so out of shape that my everyday uniform has become BCBG sweatpants in tan, black, or white with the coordinating zip up jacket. When I undress, I see noticeable pockets of flab hanging over the back strap of my bra, hidden in the crevice between my armpits and side, and toppling over my waistband like a muffin. But all I’m asking for at this point is a mercy fuck. Sexual urges don’t fade with age—I know this now—they just subside because spouses end up hating each other.
However, I’ve survived the lack of a semi-regular orgasm by purchasing a hundred something dollar vibrator from a sex shop after a few months of celibacy. I made that move when I noticed that I grew damp just by watching a TV-drama love scene Monday nights. Dale is always asleep in his reclining chair, double chin overwhelming his round, reddish face. I have to remove the highball glass from his hand, so the melted ice doesn’t dribble out onto the leather or the hardwood. Dale’s snoring presence is much preferred auditory company than hearing his fingers clacking away incessantly on that damn computer in his office, which is near the kitchen—my office—on the main floor.
I’m not sure why we’ve held on to this big house. Once Jordan moves out, I’m hoping we can downsize. I’ve been looking online at some new condos being built in one of the high rises downtown. Dale has no idea of my clandestine real estate ventures, but I doubt he would care. He’s pretty easy to please in that sense: as long as there’s a comfortable couch, a big TV and a shelf in the refrigerator for his beer, he’s content. But Jesus, there is so little communication between us now, it’s like we’re estranged roommates.
But Dale is a good man to be married to because he works so hard—of course he does, we have very nice things—but I would say he is definitely a workaholic. And to keep myself from driving my new Audi convertible into a tree, I’ve recently started to get myself off in the mornings. I try to wait until he’s settled down at the computer in the morning and is opening the first of many emails. Since I have the time to dispose of, I get back into our unmade king sized bed after making his coffee and breakfast then I luxuriously take my time drawing out whatever fantasy is playing out in my head. Other mornings, I can sense a bad mood emanating from Dale the moment he gets out of bed and I end up rushing through it. Those days, I do the deed as quickly as possible, worried he might come upstairs to get something from the bedroom and catch me.
But when I caught him doing it, too, I was shocked.
It was a regular Wednesday morning. I planned on going to the organic grocery store to buy our whole wheat crackers and cheese singles, dried fruit and mixed nuts (that have more calories than a handful of Twinkies) and frozen pizzas with organically grown vegetables and chicken slices on it during the morning to avoid the late afternoon soccer mom crowd. Though there were great puffs of steam slightly fogging my vision, the shower doors are glass, and I could still make out Dale’s short, stocky frame. He hunched slightly with one arm pumping furiously, the other bracing his body against the shower wall. I had walked into the bathroom intending to use the toilet, but when I noticed his hands focused below the waist, rather than lathering and rinsing twice, I stopped and watched him as if a scientist studying an endangered creature in the wild. I stood there frozen in the doorway curiously drawn to the sight of my husband jerking off. In what felt like hours, but was only seconds, the full truth of the falsity of my marriage over the past years crashed down around me. My heart staggered, I forgot I had to pee. My mouth hung open in awe. Fuck.
“Fuck,” I whispered aloud, confirming the truth.
I felt like a driver passing a highway road crash, slowly inching by, just trying to process the image in my mind. Seeing him masturbate didn’t sit comfortably in my head and left a hollow feeling inside me.
I have failed as a wife for the second time in my life.
Another minute passed before his shoulders tensed, his body jerked and he let out a short grunt. I slowly backed out of the bathroom doorway as he turned to rinse his hand under the hot stream of water before reaching for his trademark Old Spice shampoo. I associated that scent with him every time I got a whiff of it emanating from his wet, thinning hair breezing past me to his closet doors on the opposite side of the bedroom. Sometimes when a male stranger at the gym walked by after showering, a trail of the slightly sweet, musky scent made its way to my nose, tickling my senses and sending a quick mental image of my husband to my brain.
I decided not to kill his post-orgasm high by confronting his naked, showering body right then. Instead, I quietly went into the powder room downstairs next to the front door to pee once I remembered I had to go. I really didn’t want Dale to know that I’d seen him. It would be impolite to blatantly acknowledge the fact that he no longer found me sexually desirable. Here I thought we were just going through a dry spell, even though it was lasting longer than any of our other dry spells that happened here and there over the years in our marriage. Usually work would get to him, and he wouldn’t roll toward my side of the bed or spoon me as we slept for a while. I figured maybe he wasn’t feeling very sexual and was preoccupied with the business. But, no, that wasn’t it. He still had the urges: he just didn’t want to fulfill them with me. This was a complete shock because when we first married, Dale worshipped the ground I walked on. He bought me lavish gifts, took me on three-week vacations to the Bermudas where I’d wear skimpy white bikinis, and constantly seduced me into the bedroom. How did I not notice this steady decline of tropical vacations and the utter lack of a rousing sex life? It’s not like I had much else to occupy my mind with.
Maybe this is what marriage was supposed to turn in to. The women at the club often gab shamelessly about their gardeners, mechanics and even one another’s husbands in such graphic terms I sometimes wonder if they are bold enough to actually act on it and have an affair. One time my friend Becca told me about a Friday night dinner she and her boring husband Harold had at another couple’s house. Back in high school, Becca was the captain of the cheer squad and was pursued by all the cute fraternity guys in college—yes, she was that girl. But during her senior year, she shocked all of her sorority sisters when she accepted a date—and then another and another—from a nerdy quiet guy with no muscle tone and already thinning hair. Everyone laughed when she accepted his marriage proposal a year after graduation. However, Harold soon came to be the sixth highest paid accountant in Seattle, so the joke was on us. Becca remained unemployed and does not complain about her dull husband: rather, she gloats. Yet I could still sense her dissatisfaction when she described that evening at Chelsea and Josef’s house, a couple they played doubles tennis with. Every heterosexual woman noticed Josef working out while he was at the club because of his short athletic shorts and ribbed tank tops that showed off olive skin and muscles upon muscles. Josef was a real estate agent, and a recently successful one at that. His last house sold for 3.2 million—he and Chelsea celebrated with a two-week cruise in the Mediterranean.
“I have to look good!” He told me one time when I joked with him that his arms were so buff they would rip through his suit sleeves. In between reps on the lat pull down machine, he explained to me his borderline obsessive attention to his looks while I secretly tried not to drool.
“When my customers see how great I look, they are more prone to see how good a house looks, even if the place is a total dump. You’d be surprised how many more places I’ve sold since I got a nutritionist and personal trainer four years ago.” I didn’t feel like telling him about the recent boom in the economy or the influx of new homebuyers since Microsoft opened a new branch downtown, according to the local news. I figured he knew this. Plus, why deflate his ego? I sure as hell didn’t mind watching him lift weights.
Becca went into detail about her evening at Chelsea and Josef’s as we stood in the locker room buttoning our J.Crew cardigans and denim capris. She illustrated Chelsea’s husband for us in such a way that caused my blood to pump faster and my cheeks to blush. We all had crushes on him; Josef has even starred in multiple fantasies of mine.
“My god, the man just glows. He wore this incredible cashmere sweater that showed his chest and arms absolutely bulging underneath,” Becca flushed as she said this, her blue eyes widening with desire. Poor Harold was not even average looking—completely incomparable to Josef, who oozed sex appeal from his perfectly tanned pores.
“Plus, his shirt was cream, so I could totally see his nipples. My god, I wanted to lean across the coffee table and lick the whipped cream from Chelsea’s pie right off of his stomach. Or lower!” she shrieked and giggled. I laughed along, picturing myself doing just that to him.
Women like Becca and other wives in the club sigh with resignation, daydreaming about a lusty affair they can never have because they soon come to their senses and remember that their husbands are the ones with the money: to cheat would be social suicide. Losing access to his bank account would put me and the other wives out on the street since none of us have ever held a serious job. We’ve been married since our early twenties and are professional housewives. Nobody wants to go back to looking like the plain waitresses or sorority girls we were back when our sweet husbands promised us a lifetime of comfort and security and slipped their grandmother’s diamond on our left hand. And even though my first marriage crumpled, I was able to live off alimony and child support until I remarried. So rather than disrupt the complacent relationship Dale and I have, we ignore our unhappiness and drown in our fantasies. He uses his hand and I have my vibrator.
I was still sitting on the toilet seat in the downstairs bathroom, elbows on knees, running these thoughts through my head a good while after I’d finished. I wiped, stood up and tied the drawstring on my loose pajama pants before washing my hands. The diamond on my left hand glistened under the stream of water. It was smaller than the one my first husband Richard gave me. The ring Dale gave me was a nice pear shape, but not exactly my style. He said that the diamond was passed down to him, the oldest son, through generations. I doubted that. He probably just got it from some cheap jewelry place like Fred Meyer during one of those post-Valentine’s Day sales. It made sense considering his proposal came during the first week of March. Sometimes Dale could be so cheap, which is stupid since he has a lot of money. His business is very successful. But the man can’t even relent and stop harping at me to buy the generic brands at grocery stores or leave the house’s thermostat at seventy. It has to be sixty-five, he always tells me. Saves on the electric bill.
I stared at my reflection in the mirror above the sink, examining my features to see what Dale looked at each day: my flattened but frosted pixie hair, the hint of strong bone structure in my face now layered in wrinkled and puffy skin around my eyes and jaw, double D’s that felt saggy in my thin strapped tank top. No wonder Dale was disappointed. I was no longer that unattainable blond beauty he lusted after at the country club years ago.
“Isabella? Are you down here? Iz?” I suddenly heard Dale calling my name from the kitchen. I quickly swiped the residual eye makeup and sleep from my eyes, switched off the light, and walked to the kitchen where Dale stood against the far end of the granite island.
“Morning, hun. Did you sleep well?” I asked sweetly, pretending as if I inquired about his sleeping patterns every day for the past six years of marriage. Our usual morning routine consists of us waking up at the same time. Dale showers, and I come downstairs to get the espresso machine and scrambled eggs with melted cheddar ready. We rarely speak in the mornings; he has work on his mind, I have Good Morning America. But if Dale wants a sexually inviting, loving, emotionally available wife, then I was determined to try and give it to him now. No more jerking off in the shower. For god’s sakes, it’s not as if I push him off of me at night. He just never tries anymore. I’ve gotten used to sleeping without his body warming mine or syncing our breathing together. How did I not notice the absence of these things? Have I been sleepwalking through the past years of my life?
“Iz? What’s wrong with you?” Dale stared at me with narrowed eyes, his expression skeptical. “Do you need my credit card for something?” Christ, how unaffectionate had we become with each other that I couldn’t even ask him how he’d slept! This was going to be harder than I thought. I blew out a breath between my lips, as if I were angrily kissing the air.
“No, Dale, I don’t need your credit card,” I said dejectedly. He shook his head subtly and continued rifling through the mail on the counter.
“So what’s with the lack of espresso this morning?” Dale grumbled in an overly sarcastic tone to me. I hated the way he said that word. Expresso. There’s no fucking X in the word. “It’s not like my caffeine addiction suddenly disappeared,” I never realized how obnoxious his little demands were. I simply looked at him, my hip leaning against the counter, arms crossed, unmoving. I noticed that he didn’t even look up when he spoke to me. If he wanted to be an ass, then I could be one, too. Screw trying to be a good wife. He was pissing me off.
“Oh, is that right? Well maybe if you weren’t so lazy, you could make the goddamned espresso by yourself! And maybe eat something other than eggs in the morning! They have a lot of fat in them. And you’re not getting any thinner, you know!” I retorted, my voice escalating to a shout.
Dale completely stopped what he was doing with his hands and looked me full in the face with an expression of shock. He blinked twice before his pudgy face contorted with anger.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” He hissed through narrowed lips, white around their edges. Oh shit. He was mad. Shit. I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry as if I had just eaten an entire package of Saltine crackers. I needed some water. Damn—the faucet was nearer to Dale. I stayed where I was smothered with an irrational fear that his arm might lash out to smack me.
“It’s not like you do any fucking things around here except fucking mope around, dragging your fat ass around behind you, having a goddamned pity party with yourself,” he snapped. My brows rose towards my hairline but my mouth stayed shut.
“I wake up each day and actually work, Isabella! That’s a goddamned novel concept to you, isn’t it? Fuck, you’ve never worked a damn day in your life unless you call spending my money work!” His short stocky body shook from balding head to hairy toes. I didn’t realize I was such a lazy wife. I didn’t realize he resented me so much. Jesus, where have I been all this time?
“I…I…” I stammered. “Dale? Sorry.”
“The hell you are!” He retorted with spittle flying onto the counter, barely letting me get the apology past my dry lips. His eyebrows looked like two furry caterpillars fighting to get to the center of his forehead.
“Get your sorry ass out of my face right now!” With that, I jerked back as if actually slapped, and quickly turned and walked out of the kitchen, supremely conscious of my ass jiggling. Dammit, I’m sure he noticed that.
- - -
When we first met seven years ago, Dale couldn’t keep his hands or eyes off of me. At first, I thought he was just this short, ugly man with sparse brownish hair and an obnoxious, cocky attitude whom I’d see around the Bellevue Club. One time, before I even knew his name, he hit on me as I walked from the tennis court to the ladies’ locker room. I remember I had on a short white tennis skirt with a tight white polo that showed off my athletic figure and accentuated my summer tan. I knew that the other wives’ husbands admired me. It gave me a sweet sense of satisfaction. But when Dale approached me one day as I was walking past him and his friends, he made a comment to me that was so completely obtuse, my jaw dropped.
“Hey gorgeous. Those legs of yours must be tired, because you’ve been running through my mind all week,” he smirked. He was so corny! I felt utter repulsion. Who did he think he was? I’m inches from being six feet tall and naturally blond, though I’d begun highlighting my hair to blend with the silver coming in. I stayed thin through a yoga class and daily games of tennis. My skin stayed tan by regular vacations to Maui during the wintertime. The only wrinkles I’d acquired by then were from laughing.
But back to Dale: what kind of name is that anyway? It sounds like a cartoon character. He leered at me with his crooked teeth, sagging cheeks and that combed over dishwater hair of his. Not to mention his very substantial middle and the fact that he’s about five inches shorter than me. Christ, my standards seriously slipped.
Even so, I don’t think he will divorce me. Dale is somewhere in his mid-fifties and ugly enough that he doesn’t stand a chance of the possibility for a remarriage to someone better than me. I may not be in my twenties or resemble a supermodel, but I was a hell of a lot better looking than most of the wives in the couples that we were friends with, mostly from the club. The ones that have actually gone through divorces look haggard. Most can no longer afford the membership fees to the expensive club without their ex-husband’s financial backing. Hence, their sad decline into obesity, paleness and wrinkles. The men on the other hand have enough money that they end up remarrying girls just a few years out of college: breasts still perky, brains absolutely empty. But considering Dale has turned into one hell of an ogre, his chances of attracting even the most desperate divorcé were slim to none. Singleness for those women was probably better than treading on eggshells and putting up with Dale’s incessant complaining and bullshit. Plus, I’ve seen the way his twenty four year old twit of a daughter’s friends look at him. There is no way in hell he could ever attract even the ugliest of her friends.
- - -
Years before my life fell apart, when I was first dating and then married the man who was my first husband, Richard, we had a membership at a club close to his downtown Seattle condo. When I think of him, my stomach still gets butterflies. Those three years of marriage to him were the most passionate years of my life: the lovemaking and the heated arguments equally fiery. However, the fighting may have stemmed from our age difference considering that when we met, I was 22. He was 32, and already married with two children. I had no idea of this very important piece of information about him until a few months into our affair. I had no idea about most things when I first moved to the Los Angeles, leaving my parents’ home in our small Oregon town forever. Southern California, with its coasts of warm sandy beaches, glittery mansions, and beautiful celebrities seemed like the ultimate paradise to me.
Richard was the first man I met in that sprawling city and the first man I fell in love with. He made me crazy. I was entranced and utterly enamored with him. There were boys that had intrigued me when I was growing up in Redmond, but all of them seemed to be immature and simple, not sophisticated and strong like Richard. I wanted someone clever and confident in love and life. Richard gave me a taste of that.
- - -
My plane landed in Los Angeles in September of 1985. I felt at home immediately among the many other young, pretty blond girls. But I was still a girl in a city with no job, no friends, and only a mild grasp of my future plans. I thought I wanted to be an actress.
I walked out of LAX into the choking heat of July, seeing rows of yellow cars with pudgy dark-skinned drivers bellowing to the herds of people shuffling down the sidewalk toting their suitcases. Most of the drivers’ left arms rested on the ledge where the window was rolled down. White undershirts were practically a uniform for them, although they were tinged yellow from sweat stains.
“Where ya goin’ sweet cakes?” asked one cabbie in my direction. I ignored his suggestive tone because I was lost and alone, clutching my backpack, shoulder purse, and gray suitcase resting patiently on the ground beside me. I remember what I was wearing that day: a short white cotton summer dress with flat brown leather sandals to detract from my height and a cropped jean jacket. I felt breezy and free.
“Could you take me to the beach?” What I really needed to do was find a place to stay, something to fill my empty stomach, which had gnawed out my insides from nervousness on the plane, and directions to the DMV for a new driver’s license. I had no idea where to start, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to see some young men with “surf boards”: the kind of which I’d only seen on TV back home.
He shrugged his shoulders in his nearly see through shirt with half moon stains under his armpits. I wrinkled my nose slightly and precariously opened the back door like the other people leaving the airport. I slid onto the cloth seat that retained the sun’s heat, burning the backs of my thighs and making my body jerk upwards for a second in surprise.
He took me near Venice Beach—I think I gave him too much money when I paid him. I walked with my clutter of bags to a low-slung pale pink building with a flickering neon sign that read “Flamingo Motel.” Palm trees and pink plastic birds jammed into dry dirt surrounded the empty parking lot the aged building sat in. I settled on the seedy-looking motel because I was desperate for a place to stay for a while until I could find a more permanent living situation. At least I had some money from my parents; at least enough to get me through the first month without fearing I’d end up on the street.
I checked in and dropped my bags on the faded ocean blue carpet of the unremarkable room: number 301. It cost me $45 a night to hang my things in a tall closet with sliding mirror doors. The bed was covered with a shabby floral comforter that was ugly enough to notice the flowers that were once red, but had faded to a dying pink from one too many one-time uses. The walls were mauve. The TV was the size of my suitcase and sputtered with static when I tried turning it on. I shut it off immediately and slumped on the edge of the bed, unsure of what to do.
My stomach’s growling caught my attention as I got up to hang the few dresses, shirts, and pants I had packed into the closet. I decided the rest of my unpacking could be finished later, so I went downstairs and asked the lanky old man behind the counter at the front desk where I could get something quick to eat within walking distance. He named this hamburger place called Fried Frieda’s that was just a short walk north. I thanked him and swung my white leather purse over my shoulder and breezed out the door, feeling frightened and excited simultaneously. That feeling escalated when I saw the man that I fell into deep passionate love with ten minutes later. The small restaurant was dimly lit, smelled heavily of stale cigarette smoke, and had bulky wooden booths and red vinyl seats, Elvis songs blaring on the sound system, and tacky memorabilia from the fifties hung sporadically on the boarded walls. Fried Frieda’s was disgustingly over-the-top American, but the dark haired man sitting with two others at the bar’s counter was so beautifully all-American, like a real life movie star or a model on a magazine cover, I couldn’t bear to peel my gaze away.
I stared, my lips slightly ajar, faltering in the doorway of the restaurant whose stench of fried meat immediately seeped into the fabric of my clothes. A flash of wonder crossed my mind as I thought about whether there was a Laundromat near the motel. But when the handsome movie star angled his blue-eyed gaze towards the doorway—to me—and away from his laughing friends (maybe he had just told a funny story?), my heart sputtered. There weren’t very many other customers in the restaurant; the buzz from conversations was a very dim white noise to my ears. I don’t know why my eyes caught his first, but I could tell he noticed me by the way he paused mid-sentence with his friends—gaze locked with mine for the length of a blink.
My jaw hammered shut and I bit my lower lip with my teeth, causing me to flinch in pain. The waitress standing in front of me in her red shirt and wrinkled pants frowned, bluntly saying, “Bar or booth.” She barely even asked. I slowly tore my gaze away from its resting place on the movie star and shifted it to her droopy, cow brown eyes. She wore no makeup, and her greasy hair—an indescribable shade of brownish red—was falling out in strands around her pale face. “Casey” her nametag read.
“Um…a booth?” I said, the word heavy on my lips, like peanut butter gluing my tongue to the roof of my mouth, then slipping loose and having it smack down again. It seems my language skills had abandoned me in favor of focusing all of my body’s senses on fully absorbing the image of the handsome man at the bar. I was a girl possessed.
Casey’s humdrum expression made her face look about as attractive as a peeled potato. She nodded twice, turned with a plastic coated menu in her pudgy hand, and led me to one of the many open tables in the deserted restaurant, her thighs rubbing together in her khakis.
“The specials today are the Philly Cheese Steak sandwich and Taco Soup.”
I stared at her blankly from my seated position in the vast booth, the menu clutched in my hands like a newspaper.
“I’ll get you some water, then.” Casey nodded twice, turned, and walked away to where I couldn’t see her anymore. I took a deep breath, and tried to internalize what the colorful, descriptive adjectives meant on the laminated menu in front of me. Somehow I couldn’t wrap my mind around a teriyaki Hawaiian chicken burger with waffles fries or coleslaw. My stomach’s growling had disappeared; hunger seemed a distant nuisance when now compared to the very important dilemma in front of me. I had to figure out how to attract the movie star’s attention. I glanced at his friends again, over the top rim of my menu, like I’d seen spies doing on TV. It was very melodramatic, but boredom had set in.
Casey brought me a tall plastic glass of water with about two ice cubes in it and took my chicken Caesar salad order. I drank the warm water, my face scrunched in disdain. With my menu gone, I had nothing to occupy my hands on the wide wooden table in front of me. I hadn’t thought to bring a book or magazine to flip through as a distraction. I fiddled my thumbs; bit my lip. My gaze wandered over the many decorations flanking the sticky wood paneled walls with a slight frown on my face at the hideousness of it. I conjured ways of attracting the model’s attention toward me: maybe I could pretend to be choking and he would rush over and perform CPR on me. But then that wouldn’t really work if he didn’t know CPR, or worse, if someone else came over. Someone gross like Casey.
I finished my salad, and dabbed the corners of my mouth with my paper napkin, took another sip of water, and left a ten-dollar bill on the table for Casey. As I walked to the ladies room before I went back to my motel, one of the guys at the bar called to me:
“Hey beautiful! Hi!” I stopped in my path, not realizing they meant me.
“Yeah, you! Come here, we want to ask you something!” I slowly faced the three guys wearing business attire, top buttons undone on their collared shirts after the workday, ties loosened and slack on their shirtfronts. They all looked at me expectantly, cheeks glowing red from their buzz, their hair slicked back earlier now disheveled. I looked right into the blue eyes of the man I had been gazing at all evening. This was my chance and I couldn’t pass it up. A coy smile suddenly formed on my lips. I stepped forward and leaned my palms against the bar counter. The guys whooped; the model smiled at me, showing two rows of flawless teeth. I returned the grin, taking advantage of the moment.
- - -
“So you’re from Oregon? Why? L.A. is the best place on earth!” said Ted, one of the model’s coworkers. We had been sitting there for about ten minutes. I gave my drink order to the bartender and then listened to these guys. Ted was the loudest one out of them. Each time he shouted something—and everything he said came out as a shout—a spray of spittle would fly in all directions. His toothy smile was glued in a grin. He looked like a kindergartener with his flaming red hair with hints of curls around his goofy big ears and his blushing cheeks covered in millions of freckles. I immediately felt at ease around him because he was so childish looking.
“Where else can you get a hooker, a Ferrari, and authentic sushi on the same street?” The other guys chuckled and raised their sweaty beer glasses in mock salutation. For the last twenty minutes, the guys and I talked and laughed about the most random things: provocative hip thrusting, obnoxiously sized side burns, and sequined body suits. Okay we talked about Elvis Presley. But when the guys first called me over, my momentary hesitation and confusion must have shown, because they suddenly feigned insult.
“Whoa, sorry! Didn’t realize going to the bathroom was such a serious mission!” the guy named Ted said. I laughed along with them.
“What’s your name doll face?” asked the one seated between Ted and the model. He had longish jet-black hair, slicked back and wet looking, from his prominent, lined forehead. His humongous brown eyes with their sparse lashes stared expectantly at me. I focused on his puffy, maroon lips. He went by “Stan” but he was from India. He pronounced his full name to me later, but it went in one ear and out the other.
“It’s… Isabella,” I stated shyly. Ted whistled suggestively. Stan’s eyebrows danced on his forehead and gave a hungry grin. The model gave a small smile but stared at the foam in his beer glass.
“Well, come on and pull up a seat, Izzy. Do you mind if I call you that? My aunt’s name was Isabelle, but we only called her aunt Izzy. I’m just used to that name, is that okay, Izzy? Great! Have a beer!” I soon figured out that Ted’s conversation style tended to be almost entirely one-sided and always very drawn out.
“So, Oregon, huh? My man Richard, here, is from up north somewhere. Right, Rich? Somewhere cold and rainy and way to hell and gone from perfect L.A.? Me? I’ll never leave. I was born in San Diego, and I’m staying down here until I die. The furthest north I’d go is Vegas,” Ted only paused to sip his beer.
“Seattle, Ted. It’s not in Oregon,” the man named Richard—the model—finally spoke up. His eyes remained downcast. For the last few minutes, my gaze kept gravitating toward him, under the pretense that I was trying to look at the TV screen behind his head. I couldn’t care less about the football game on TV, but if he caught me staring, I might have pretended I was checking out the score.
“Seattle? Isn’t that pretty much Canada?” Stan and Ted both sputtered then laughed. Stan told me how he moved directly from India to the Silicon Valley ten years ago. Last year, he got transferred to L.A. where he now worked with Ted and Richard. I was unsure of what exactly they all did, but it was only a Wednesday evening, and their bar tab neared a hundred dollars. That didn’t include the margarita Ted had just ordered for me. They oozed financial success.
I sat there smiling on my bar stool, as Ted and Stan rambled on, telling loud obnoxious jokes. Richard would chuckle, and even occasionally let out a real laugh at some of his friends’ stories. Why did they call me over here? I didn’t know what to say around these guys. I had nothing to contribute conversationally.
But when I started looking at Richard again, my heart sped up and my worried mind shut off. My skin grew warm all over, almost uncomfortably so, causing dampness under my arms and above my lip. I kept swiping the back of my hand across my upper lip, in an effort to stop looking as if I were sitting in 110-degree heat. But that’s how it felt. This man unnerved me. He caused me to fantasize so far into the future, I was afraid I wasn’t going to come back. I envisioned our wedding day, then the moments after giving birth to our first child. This man was my future. And here he sat just two bar stools away from me with his top buttons undone, slowly sipping a beer. His blue eyes rarely glanced upwards, as if he were content on counting the endless bubbles floating to the surface. I studied his face: his strong jaw and high cheekbones, his straight nose, the dark brows rimming beautiful eyes and girlish lashes, and his mouth. His mouth seemed to say a lot, without any words. It sat in a straight line, framed with light wrinkles. I read from Richard’s silence. His lips spoke of dissatisfaction. Unhappiness. Discontent.
I wanted to press my lips against his and dissolve all of those feelings for him.
“Alright missy, why is that margarita still half full? You see, Stan, I am a glass half full kind of guy!” Ted and Stan laughed at their inside joke that both Richard and I apparently missed. I smiled at the guys, lifted my drink and took a large gulp from it, causing some of the ice and cold drink to swish over the wide mouth of the glass, spilling down my chin and neck. I cupped my palm under my chin, attempting to catch some of the runaway margarita, but failed. I looked like an inept child drinking. I made my second attempt to clean up by blotting my face with a napkin. Richard watched me during this entire sequence with a humored smirk. I blushed under his coveted attention.
“Guys…I think I am going to call it a night,” I said once I’d folded the now destroyed napkin on the bar by my glass. “I have so much to do now that I’m in a new city!” I smiled.
“Aw, don’t, Ishyy! We’re abouth to order anuh-zher drinksh! Rich-shard, ‘nother beer?” Stan slurred. Clearly, he had passed his limit a while ago. I stood, gathered my coat, and was prepared to ask the bartender to call a cab when Richard stood up, too.
“Guys, I think I’m headed out, also. Early morning tomorrow,” Richard stated, squeezing Stan and Ted on the shoulders. He glanced over at me.
“Would you like a ride? My car is just right out front.”
“That would be wonderful, thank you,” I responded shyly. Richard nodded once, his lips still in their unfailingly straight line. I wanted to make them smile.
“Goodnight, I had a wonderful time meeting you all tonight,” I said.
“Be careful with Richard, Izzy, the last person he drove home ended up on the side of a milk carton as a missing person,” Ted joked. Richard let out a single guffaw, and then reached his hand out to escort me toward the door. Ted didn’t even look up from the bar. Stan slumped over and started to snore.
- - -
Richard and I walked outside together into the dusty pink air, the California sky sweetly kissing the sun good night. Richard walked two strides ahead of me, I couldn’t tell if he was in a hurry, excited, or maybe took long strides.
“Here you are,” he drew out each word like a mock to chivalry. He opened the passenger door of the shiny silver car. I focused my eyes on him, the door between our bodies like a short wall, but lowered myself onto the tan leather seat when he didn’t make eye contact. Again I smiled up at Richard, but he only flashed the briefest of closed mouthed smiles—and then it vanished back into his neutral non-expression—before he shut the door. I jerked my head back like I’d just encountered something sour. But I watched him circling the hood of the car, tapping his fingers on the hood. I shrugged and wrote him off as being shy.
Inside the car, I felt enveloped within the warm capsule of new leather and a sweet, citrus smell. Richard opened his door and seated himself assuredly in the driver’s seat. I immediately identified the tangy scent as his cologne by the burst of air rushing toward me in a quick puff. Richard stared ahead and turned on the car, the silence from a moment ago suddenly dissipated as the engine purred like a content feline. I grazed my fingertips lightly against the light brown leather, admiring its butter-like quality. The silver emblem on the steering wheel and the silver words engraved in the dashboard read Mercedes-Benz. The car was very spacious and oozed luxury. The music on the stereo, barely audible because he had the volume down low, sounded like the smooth jazz my dad listened to when he read the newspaper at home. It gave me a sensation of comfort, finding this little similarity between the new and the familiar. I sighed, once again inhaling the soothing scent of wealth and let the seat envelope my bare shoulders as Richard drove.
- - -
SHIREEN MCCLEARY says her only talent is in my writing. She has spent the last four years of college writing what my professors tell me to. So even though she has ideas, there is no time to work on them yet. So nothing’s published. Yet. I live in rainy Seattle, intern at a nonprofit right now and am Seattle’s blogging guide to fashion on a budget.