“Don’t feel guilty. I’m glad you’re here. I don’t think I could be on my own, right now. I hope that doesn’t sound needy. I’m fragile.”
“I can be a surrogate distraction.”
“I’d like that,” Carol said.
“Me, too.”
Chapter Six
Joy knew the minute she met the Lamberts at the house she was showing them that they would be trouble. They were standing in front of the house loudly discussing the pros and cons of shrubs. She sighed and got out of her leased black Lexus, a mere four hundred and fifty dollars a month. Her last car had been paid for, but it was an old Nissan and wasn’t fit to drive around clients. Why should they trust her to find them a home if she didn’t look the part of the successful realtor? Another tip from her mother, along with the ‘dress for success’ talk.
The reason Joy had nice clothes was because her mother had chosen them. She had impeccable taste and Joy appreciated the help and spending time with her mother shopping. Was there ever a better mother-daughter activity as shopping for clothes and then going for lunch? She missed her mother badly.
Her next best touchstone was Angela. She would stop by Angela’s apartment after work and have a cocktail like they used to do when Joy was living on her couch. That was one bright spot in what looked to be a difficult day.
“I’m telling you, it’ll cost a fortune to get those removed,” Mr. Lambert said. “What’s wrong with shrubs?”
“I don’t like them. They’ll look terrible after a few years and then they’re ugly. I want them gone before I even look at this house,” Mrs. Lambert said, not realizing the absurdity of her statement.
Joy walked up and interrupted the discussion. “I’m sure I can get the sellers to remove those if that’s an impediment to the sale.”
“Impediment? You call that spindly piece of shrubbery an impediment? It’s a deal-breaker,” Mrs. Lambert said.
“Honey…” Mr. Lambert said. “Don’t be difficult. Let’s look inside and then we can talk about the shrubs.”
“Don’t honey me. I don’t like brick either. You can’t change anything about that,” Mrs. Lambert said.
Joy wanted to say but didn’t, “Then why are we looking at a brick house with shrubs when you hate both those things?”
“You can paint brick,” Joy suggested. She didn’t think she could get the sellers to paint the house because Mrs. Lambert didn’t like the original color of the house, the red brick house.
“It is a seller’s market, so I don’t have a lot of wiggle room for fix-ups. If we don’t snap it up, it’ll be gone,” Joy said. They all knew she spoke the truth.
“Is that a threat?” Mrs. Lambert said.
Joy studied the woman. She had brassy, dyed blonde hair, wore a fur coat, and diamond earrings that could feed a family of five for a year. She looked like a bitch and her behavior substantiated it. “Perhaps we should look at another house. This one doesn’t seem to fit your needs.”
“I didn’t say that,” Mrs. Lambert replied harshly.
“Honey…” Mr. Lambert said. He was a mousy-looking man, going bald with an unconvincing comb over. It was more than evident who held the power in the family, and it wasn’t him.
“Shut up, Alan,” Mrs. Lambert said. “I want to at least see the inside since we’ve taken the trouble to come out here.”
There was no pleasing this woman. Joy would use strategy (as in reverse psychology) on Mrs. Lambert. She would point out all the bad selling points and have Mrs. Lambert either agree or disagree. This way they could move on, or Mrs. Lambert, being accommodated, might just go for the house. The inside was gorgeous. It had a huge kitchen with granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, a built-in fridge, and a wine cooler. The beauty of the kitchen quieted Mrs. Lambert’s complaints.
Joy started in. “The kitchen is all right, although stainless steel can prove difficult to clean, what with all the fingerprints and stuff.”
“Not the new kind, it’s fingerprint resistant,” Mrs. Lambert said. She touched the fridge to prove her point. It was working. Joy just wished the house wasn’t vacant. The owners had moved to Costa Rica, stored their furniture, and left the house in what they hoped was Joy’s capable hands. The house was amazing but would look better if it wasn’t sitting empty, like an abandoned relative.
“And then there’s the pool, that requires a lot of maintenance,” Joy said.
“That’s what pool boys are for,” Mrs. Lambert snapped.
“It has a pool?” Mr. Lambert said. He evidently had not been privy to the house’s description.
“Alan loves to swim, why I have no idea, but I do like the idea of entertaining around the pool,” Mrs. Lambert said.
This went on for the rest of the afternoon. They looked at two more houses and then revisited the original house. In the meantime, Joy had gotten another offer. She told the Lamberts, who ended up offering twenty-five thousand dollars more now that a bidding war had begun.
“I’m telling you I want this house. You offer more until we get it,” Mrs. Lambert said. She was a competitive woman, Joy thought. It was perfect. She glared hard at Joy as if burning her instructions into brain. Get the house no matter what.
Mr. Lambert nervously said, “What about the shrubs, honey?” The jump in the asking price must’ve concerned him. Eight hundred thousand dollars was a lot of money. Joy usually didn’t sell this high-end, but the original realtor had bailed on the Lamberts, finding them too difficult to deal with and Joy had been recommended to take her place. Patty Stevens, the original realtor, would be furious when she found out. Joy had ended up with the difficult clients, but she also eventually sold them an expensive house.
Joy stood in the living room talking to the other potential buyers on her cell phone. Eight hundred thousand was more than they were willing to pay. The Lamberts were the proud owners of the brick house and its shrubs.
***
Angela was dancing around her studio apartment chugging off of a bottle of champagne; the good stuff. They had two bottles of bubbly, courtesy of Joy. She wanted to thank Angela for letting her live there while she was homeless, and to celebrate selling the house.
“I can’t believe you sold the Lamberts a house,” Angela said.
“Me either. I thought I’d be stuck with them for the rest of my career.”
“How’d you do it?” Angela said, taking another slug of her champagne.
“Reverse psychology. I made the house sound unappealing and then a bidding war started. I wish you’d use a glass,” Joy said.
“Naw, I’ve always wanted to drink expensive champagne out of the bottle. It’s so low-brow. I love it.”
Angela had been raised with a silver spoon in her mouth. Angela’s mother was a socialite who made her daughter behave according to Emily Post’s idea of decorum and manners. Whenever Angela was naughty as a child, she had been forced to write out pages of Emily Post’s tome on etiquette. Despite all that, they were good friends.
“Your mother would be scandalized,” Joy said.
“Like she’s got a lot of room to talk,” Angela said. She had run off with an Italian millionaire, leaving Angela’s father heartbroken. He had eventually remarried a nice, plain, and simple woman from the suburbs of Anton. She was a divorcee, so they had both gone into the marriage already knowing what a bad one looked like. As much as Angela despised her mother, she adored her stepmother and doted on her father. Her mother’s absence was considered a family blessing. “Anyway, that’s why it’s so appealing,” Angela said. She turned up the soundtrack to Boogie Nights and pulled Joy from the couch. “Come dance with me.”
Joy got up and they shook their booties until they were gasping and laughing.
“Fuck going to the gym. This could be our new workout,” Angela said.
“It’s certainly a lot more fun,” Joy admitted, “But I don’t think we could afford the daily champagne ration.”
“We only go to the gym three days a week.
We’ll only drink champagne and dance on the days we don’t go.” Angela teased. She was a devoted gym rat, and the only reason Joy went. She wanted to stay healthy and trim but hated what it required to stay that way. She and Angela took a spinning class together at the local YMCA.
“Speaking of doing things we don’t like, how are you doing with your new roommate, the serial killer?”
“She’s not a serial killer. She’s actually pretty nice.” Joy told her the story about the footboard and how Carol had saved her the expense of having to buy another bed.
“That was awfully nice of her,” Angela admitted. “I can’t believe she offered to help you put the rest of the stuff together. I’d offer to help but you know how I am with tools and directions.”
“You can say that again. We never did get your bookcase together properly.” They looked over at the unsteady bookcase. Angela had been forced to store neatly folded T-shirts on the shelves because it wasn’t sturdy enough to hold books. Of course, she had purchased the shelf from Big Mart and you got what you paid for.
“So, you like her?” Angela asked, her tone teasing.
“We’re roommates. Wait until you meet her. She is stunning. She wouldn’t look twice at someone like me as being part of her dating pool.”
“I don’t get why you don’t think you’re pretty. You have a cute perky nose and very kissable lips and let’s not even talk about your taunt calves and thighs,” Angela said.
“How do you know my lips are very kissable?” Joy asked, having never kissed Angela. They’d only ever been friends. It was that way in the beginning and had remained so over their years of their friendship.
“I’ve heard tell,” Angela said, widening her lovely, baby-blue eyes.
“I bet they told you that before the breakup and they hated me. I wish I could get along with them afterwards, but lost love doesn’t seem to work that way for most of us.”
“Glenda and I are still friends,” Angela said.
“You were girlfriends when you were twenty. I don’t think that counts.”
“Sure, it does. It shows that some exes can be friends.”
“For you maybe. Now, let’s toast to my new roommate and to selling big expensive homes,” Joy said. “Now and in the future.”
Chapter Seven
Carol was sitting on the couch in the dark when Joy got home. It was two-thirty in the morning. Angela and Joy had drunk both bottles of champagne and watched old black and white movies until Joy was sober enough to drive. They used to drink wine and watch old movies until the wee hours when Joy had been staying there. They’d had a lot of fun and Angela had been sad to see her go but Joy couldn’t have stayed much longer; no one needed someone permanently installed on their couch.
“What are you doing up?” Joy asked, squinting into the candle-lit fuzz. She sensed Carol wouldn’t appreciate her turning on the overhead light.
“I don’t sleep much these days,” Carol said.
“Can’t you get something from the doctor?”
“I tried but the foggy feeling in the morning isn’t much better than insomnia.”
Joy had suffered her own bouts of chasing the goddess of sleep—usually after a breakup. She would spend all night going over what went wrong with the relationship. Joy was a hindsight-learner. She figured if she could fix what was wrong with her, next time she would do better in her love relationship.
She needed to find the right girl. It seemed she had everything in her life but the girl. She was a successful realtor, had a nice apartment now, and she thought of herself as a nice person. She supposed an ex-girlfriend or two might refute that claim. “I’ve been there. I’ve got some sleepy time herbal tea if that would help,” Joy said.
“I don’t think this can be cured with tea, but I appreciate the offer.”
“Do you want to talk about it? Or is this best left untouched?” Joy asked putting her keys into the bowl on the sofa table. It was made from an old LP formed into a bowl by low heat. Joy had purchased it at an art fair. Carol liked it.
“I don’t know. Maybe I will have that cup of tea and we can talk?” Carol said, her voice rising on the question mark as if she wasn’t certain she wanted to share or that Joy was willing to listen.
“Sure, I’ll be right back,” Joy said. She went to the kitchen and put the tea on. She noticed a pamphlet on the kitchen counter. She picked it up and looked at it. The pamphlet showed a lovely woman next to a mural, explaining that it was a new piece down in the Castro District where it seemed the woman had other murals.
Joy studied the new mural. It showed a woman with silver hair and great beauty, although how the artist had achieved that in a mural, Joy wasn’t certain. She looked closer. The woman looked suspiciously like Carol. The woman was surrounded by butterflies. There was a giant tree in the background full of crows. What did they call a bunch of crows together? A murder. She saw chrysalises hanging from the tree like Christmas ornaments. Behind it was a woman marching with rainbow flag draped over her shoulder like a shawl. She had dark, curly hair and enormous blue eyes.
Had this upset Carol? It seemed unlikely. The woman in the mural looked like Carol but it could’ve been anyone. Perhaps the sublet on Carol’s old apartment didn’t go through and now she would have to deal with her old life and face the ordeal of moving stuff out and remembering all the times good and bad that had transpired in that apartment. Joy finished making the sleepy time tea and brought it out to the living room.
“It’s herbal. I don’t usually put anything in it. I forgot to ask if you took anything in your tea.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never had herbal tea. I’m not much for tea but if this’ll help me get to sleep, I’ll give it a try.”
Joy handed her the tea. Carol cupped it in her hands like a tired, desperate person coming in from the cold. Even in the dim light of the candle, Joy could tell Carol had been crying. The tissue box on the end table was another clue.
“So, what’s up? Bad day at work?”
“I wish it was that simple. I saw Debra’s mural today.” Carol sipped her tea and stayed quiet. The dim light and the warmth of the tea gave the room the air of confession – long after midnight when, in the wee hours, people could admit to themselves the sadness and evil of a world of death and broken hearts. Losing the person you loved the way Carol loved this woman was like a little death.
They said that sneezing and orgasms were both like little deaths. Surely a broken heart constituted a form of death. Joy thought of the murder of crows.
“I’m sorry, but who is Debra?”
“She is the love of my life. I mean she was and probably always will be. I wish I knew what I did to make her stop loving me. I never cheated. We didn’t argue often and when we did it wasn’t the door-slamming kind. How can I ever get over this if I don’t know what I did in the first place? Did I kill our love? Did she get bored with me? Was I inadequate in bed?” Carol burst into tears.
Joy, who’d been relaxing in her own chair, was astonished and raced to Carol’s side of the couch. She took Carol in her arms as sobs racked her body. “It’s going to be all right,” Joy said, patting her back.
Carol pulled away. “Is it? Is it ever going to be okay?” Her tear-stained, anguished face spoke of a soft and damaged interior. Debra had really messed with Carol’s head.
“Probably not,” Joy said.
Carol wiped at her eyes. “Sorry, about that. I’m usually not such a mess.”
“You should see me when I have a breakup. I’m a huge mess. My friend, Angela, always has to pick up the pieces. Of course, her track record isn’t much better than mine.”
“What did you do to make them stop loving you?” Carol asked, her face open and hopeful.
“Any number of things. I work too much or I don’t work enough because I set my own schedule and business is either good or bad. I don’t pay enough attention to them. They stop wanting to have sex and the list of my faults go on,” Joy said.
�
��I’ve only ever loved Debra,” Carol said.
“Is she the only partner you’ve had?” Joy asked, astonishment in her tone.
“No, of course not, but we were together for a long time. Perhaps too long for Debra.”
“Did she call today or something? I don’t mean to pry,” Joy said.
“But you are,” Carol teased. “Do you realize this is the second night in a row we’ve talked by candlelight?”
“I hardly know what you look like in the daylight,” Joy teased.
Carol studied her hands and sighed heavily. “I saw the mural today. One of my customers brought in the pamphlet. She knows Debra and I are friends but not anything more. I knew the minute I saw it that it was me and it was about the death of our love. And the murder of crows, what’s that supposed to mean? I murdered our love.” Now, Carol was angry. “I didn’t murder anything. Debra is the one who left!”
“Your ex-partner is a muralist?” Joy asked stupidly. Of course, she was a muralist – she had painted a mural. Joy was aware of the murals in the Castro but had never gone down to see them. Evidently, they were a big tourist draw in the city and Joy tended to stay away from the summer sightseeing crowds. That was the problem with growing up in a city that boasted of such a high demand destination point: the residents only saw the sights when people came to visit them, otherwise the city dwellers steered clear of the crowds.
“She is,” Carol said. “I met her at art school. She was studying to be a painter and I was getting my degree in textiles. We lived in Mexico while she studied Diego Rivera’s work. It was a wonderful time. We were young and madly in love. We worked all summer and saved up the money to spend two months in Mexico, traveling around. We were poor, but we were happy.”
“Then life got in the way?” Joy queried.
“Yes, I guess that’s it. Life did get in the way. She fought with the men of the mural committee because of the sexism. They wanted revolutionary themes showing the disenfranchised people. They didn’t see the hypocrisy of the perpetual disenfranchisement of women. To top of it off, she’s a lesbian, interested in LGBTQ rights and the fabric of our lives. She started to get commissions from the gay community and then the men began to take notice. This is a big commission she’s gotten and I’m in it. Normally, I’d be thrilled. Look at me spouting off all her rhetoric, but she is such a big part of my life. How can I even talk about my past without talking about her? We were together for fifteen years.”
Everything but the Girl Page 5