Lux got up and opened the window over the sink. She stood there and did not return to the Formica table.
“So? What do you want?” Lux asked Margot.
“Uh, well, the law firm of Warwick & Warwick wants to apologize for what happened to you today.”
Lux’s eyebrows shot up nearly to her hairline and a small smile played around her mouth.
“Yes,” Lux said dryly. “It was awful.”
“I’m sure it was. Along with the apology we’d like to offer you $5,000 for your suffering provided you sign this release of liability for the firm.”
“Gimme,” Lux said reaching out for the papers Margot was pulling out of her briefcase. “Can I get a day to clean out my desk and take anything personal off of my computer?”
“You’re not fired,” Margot said.
Lux looked up from the contract, her pen poised to scribble her name.
“What? Is it my birthday? Or April Fool’s Day?”
“You waive your right to sue, come back to work tomorrow, and we’ll give you $5,000.”
“I don’t think I want to see Trevor again so soon.”
“Trevor has been let go.”
“Like fired?”
“No, not like fired, actually fired,” Margot quietly confirmed.
Lux pushed the papers away from her.
“Ten thousand then,” Margot said.
“You’re a fucking vampire, aren’t you?” Lux said.
“Fifteen thousand is my final offer. I’ll give you five minutes to think it over. After that, it’s gone,” Margot said.
Lux regarded Margot as if she were some strange new species of human being.
“I’m gonna take a guess here, right, and say you escaped from like some Midwestern town full of fatassed, goofy white people who all clap on one and five. You know what I’m saying here?”
Margot looked at her blankly. She had no idea what Lux was saying.
“I’m talking about, like, people who go on vacation wearing identical tie-dyed shirts so they don’t lose each other, right? So, you like, come here to escape but a person can’t escape, right. You can never, you know, escape from where you went to high school. What I’m trying to say is that a person can leave it and a person can say they don’t like it but even the leaving of it, it still stains you. Like, take me for example, wherever I run, I’m always gonna be slightly dented, and broken. I live with that. But you know, Trevor, he’s a clean guy. You follow me? Yeah, he thinks he suffered on account of he got dumped and had to give up his summer cottage, oh boo hoo hoo, but he don’t know broken. If I do this to him, he’s gonna know broken.”
“It’s not our intention to punish anyone, only to protect the firm from untoward publicity and expensive lawsuits.”
“I want the money,” Lux began, “but Trevor stays. I’ll quit. He keeps his stupid job and I get two and four.”
“No, the deal is $15,000.” Margot informed her in haughty tones
“Yeah, $15,000. Two and four means I always know where the downbeat is, Margot.”
Margot found it curious to sit in an orange and pink kitchen surrounded by a collection of supreme kitsch and be corrected by Lux Fitzpatrick. Maybe it was just the growing contact high floating in from the next room.
“We’re talking about music?”
“Yeah, people with, let’s call ’em, bland souls, alright? These people tend to clap on the first and third beat because they can’t feel the rhythm that snaps on like, the second and fourth. You know, beat, because we’re talking music, all right?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Now you do.”
“Thank you.”
Lux nodded.
“Return the favor and explain to me why it’s, you know, good to borrow against the equity of your house,” Lux ordered.
“Oh, ah, well, ok. Money is good and it’s a tool and it’s your money and you should use it. Don’t let it just sit there, make it work. If you have a hammer and you lock it away and don’t use it, it’s not very useful.”
“How do you get to it? How do you make it, you know, available?”
“You take a second on your home.”
“A second what?”
“Mortgage.”
“What if you don’t have a first mortgage?”
“Well, then you’re in very good shape. Any bank will, most likely, give you a line of credit if you own property outright.”
“So you get this line of credit thing at a bank. When you go to the bank, what do they want to know about you? You know I mean like the person who’s getting the money.”
“Everything.”
“Oh,” Lux said, deflating.
“I mean, every financial thing. Not your personal issues.”
“Do you need a job?”
“It helps. But if there’s enough equity you can get a loan without disclosing income.”
“I see.”
Lux stood up, effectively ending the meeting.
“Thanks for coming by.”
Margot’s hands fluttered over her briefcase and her papers as she rose from the Formica table. She was just getting used to the stink and had a sudden urge to examine each one of the glow-in-the-dark Madonnas, but Lux was already standing at the front door, opening it.
Margot rose from her seat and followed Lux into the foyer. She didn’t want to leave. She wanted to peek around the wall into the living room and see what blobs lay in front of the TV. She wanted to crawl into Lux’s childhood bedroom and see if there were cheerleader pom poms still stuck to the walls. Lux opened the door and ushered Margot out of her mom’s house.
“What are you going to do about a job?”
“I’ll find one.”
“Doing what?”
“Dunno.”
“I’ll see that Mr. Warwick writes you a good recommendation.”
“Whatever. I’ll call your voice mail and leave my attorney’s telephone number. You can fax him the release and messenger over the check. Fifteen thousand; Trevor stays. I go. Aimee will be thrilled, I’m sure,” Lux said standing on the front stoop.
Margot nodded, said nothing. When did Lux become a woman, and a businesswoman at that? When did she get an attorney? Margot looked at Lux standing in the doorway. Same bad hair. Same bad clothes. Lux turned and walked back into the house.
“Have lunch with me,” Margot shouted through the screen door. Lux turned and looked at her like she was crazy. Margot upped the offer.
“If you have lunch with me I’ll tell you all about compound interest.”
“Trevor already explained it to me,” Lux laughed as she shut the door. A moment later she came out again.
“And if you love Trevor so damn much, how come you’re not saving his ass on this?” Lux demanded.
“I don’t,” Margot started to lie but then changed directions. “How do you know how I feel about Trevor?”
“What am I? A stone? I sat in that conference room and I heard your whole stories about Atlanta Jane and her man who sounds so much like Trevor. I know you because I know how you want to have sex. And you want to do him up against the furniture in his house. But you can’t now, cuz I beat you to it. So if you love him so much how come I’m the one who’s gotta protect him?”
“It’s, um, it’s, you know, it’s not my firm. I’m not even a partner. I just work there. And I have to be careful of my own job.”
Lux stared at Margot and then shook her head in disgust. She went into her mother’s house and, although Margot stood there, waiting, expecting something else to happen, Lux did not return.
20. Whores
“I GAVE IT MY ALL, Trevor. I wheeled and I dealed and I talked Lux into giving up her job so you could keep yours. It was hard. I mean, she really liked working with us, but I managed to convince her that it would be easier for her to get a new job than for you to start over again. In the end, I had to up it to $15,000 but she finally signed and now it’s behind us. So drop your pants and make love to me
quick.”
“I can’t tell him that,” Margot gasped.
“It’s close to the truth,” Brooke countered. “You rode out to Queens, saved his ass, got him out of trouble, and it cost the company $15,000.”
“She signed willingly and she gave up her job before I even suggested it. It was all really very, what’s a good word?”
“Weird?” suggested Aimee, lying flat on her back.
“Honorable. But some of it was weird, considering the house and the zombies on the couch. Boy, Lux lives in the Fun House.”
“You think she’s gay?” Brooke asked hopefully.
“No,” said Margot. “She was definitely having sex with Trevor and seemed to enjoy it. A lot.”
“Maybe she swings that way sometimes, though?” Brooke asked again.
“She didn’t give any indication of it, although we weren’t talking about sex. Well, we weren’t talking about more sex, just the sex she’s already had with Trevor and how it reflects on her work situation.”
“What’s she going to do for money?” Aimee asked from the warmth of her cozy bed. She had been stuck in bed for weeks and had missed the whole “Lux Slugs Trevor” headline at work.
“Live at home, I guess, and oh my god, you would not believe what her mother’s house looks like. It was decorated in what I would call the Crazy Toddler School of Design. Every wall is a different color and there are these collections of old toys and kitsch all over the place. It explains so much! Of course she dresses the way she dresses. She grew up inside some wacky children’s show. Well, a drunk and stoned children’s show. My god! The smell of cat pee and marijuana from her mother’s kitchen was overwhelming! I’m amazed and impressed that she got this far in life.”
Margot and Brooke both looked involuntarily at Aimee.
“What?” Aimee asked.
“You don’t mind us talking about Lux?”
“Why should I mind?”
Whether she realized it or not, Aimee had Queen Bee’d them into avoiding Lux, or at least, pretending to avoid Lux. And though they were too old to fully bend to her will, neither Margot nor Brooke spoke about Lux to Aimee.
And yet they were in contact with her. Margot had a professional need to call on Lux again and was looking forward to it for personal reasons. Brooke invited Lux to Croton-on-Hudson, her parents’ pool house to begin a portrait. The portrait would require several sittings and Brooke hoped they would stay friends. The women were grown up enough to do as they pleased, but could not bring themselves to suggest including Lux in their witty, congenial salons at Aimee’s bedside.
They tried to check in on Aimee at least once every day. Brooke and Margot stopped by Aimee’s apartment bringing groceries, DVDs, and good cheer. On Tuesday afternoon, they brought The Tuesday Erotica Club.
“Who wants to go first?” Margot asked.
“I do,” Brooke and Aimee said at the same time.
“No, no, you go ahead,” Brooke said. “Mine’s just a little ditty I zipped off last Friday on the A train.”
Aimee opened her manuscript. The computer was impossible to use while lying flat in her bed and so she had handwritten her piece. She keenly felt the lack of instant computerized “spell check.” After so many years of typing she found she could not remember how to write cursive. Printing made her hand cramp and, of course, erasing was a bitch. In the end, she scribbled out the bits she didn’t want and, rereading her manuscript, she realized her efforts did not look so different from the papers Lux produced.
“I’m standing at the door,” Aimee read. Lying flat on her back, she held the paper above her head. “He puts the cash on the table and I start to do all those things that look like love, but they’re really all about money and survival. I’m wearing a dress that barely covers me. It’s easy to get out of and hides the stains. He’s been here before so I kind of know what he likes. I wait until he tells me to take my dress off.
“He tells me to show him my tits so I slip the top of the dress down my body, revealing my breasts one at a time. He likes to look at my individual parts. Me, whole, doesn’t do anything for him. He likes my breasts pushed into each other creating a luxurious cleavage, so I push them into each other, taking care not to cover the nipples. He likes to see the pink nipples poking through my fingers. My breasts are supple. It doesn’t hurt.
“He gets up from his chair. It’s a sudden, compulsive move as if he too has urgent needs to fill. He grabs my breasts in his own hands, and I’m caught off balance as he pulls a nipple into his mouth. He pushes me up against the wall, pulling the rest of the dress off my body.
“‘It’s fifty extra for the bottom,’ I remind him. He nods and grunts, agreeing to the price, promising to pay when he’s done with me.
“‘Cash on the table,’ I whisper, pushing his hand away, lest he forget who we are and what we’re doing. He digs out the cash and counts it out on the table where I can see it. Is he relieved? Or angry? It doesn’t matter. He comes back to me. He pushes my body down to the floor and spreads my legs apart. He’s paid for the bottom, and he’s going to use it.”
Aimee stopped reading. She let the manuscript fall to her chest.
“Then what happens?” Brooke asked.
“Well,” Aimee said, “after writing that last sentence, I sat here in bed watching the sun move this little square of light across the covers. I didn’t move or do anything for a really long time. When the light got to my chest I called the bank and transferred all the money he’s sent me from our joint savings into my private checking. Then I called his agent and got the hotel phone number where he’s staying in Tokyo. Then I called my lawyer and had him fax the initial divorce papers to Tokyo.”
Margot and Brooke sat quietly, unsure of what to say.
“By then it was after six. And I just lay here in bed until suddenly it was ten. I think I was waiting for tears. Didn’t come. I couldn’t move. I think if I had to get up and go to the office I wouldn’t be able to. I felt like I couldn’t do anything but lie here and look at the ceiling, which works really well considering I’m not supposed to do anything but lie here and look at the ceiling. Eventually, I’ll probably have to move,” Aimee said finally. “Out of the apartment, I mean. I can’t afford this big place myself.”
“Wow,” Brooke said.
“It’s because of this,” Aimee declared, waving her manuscript in the air. “I thought I’d play and explore what it might be like to be a prostitute and guess what, all the feelings were already here in my chest. I mean, I’m not the sex whore, but I’m the love and affection whore. He sends me money so he can treat me like shit. So he can be loved when he feels the need to dip into a family. Fuck him. That’s not me.”
“Geez,” Brooke said, “from now on I’m going to be very careful what I write about.”
Margot and Aimee laughed.
“How do you feel now?” Margot asked.
“Triumphant then terrified. Relieved and then frightened. Like, right now, everything’s fine, but I really didn’t want to be a single mother. When I told my mother I dumped him and that I was afraid of being a single parent she told me, ‘Lesser women have survived it.’”
“She’s right,” Margot said.
“Yeah, but I was expecting her to say something like ‘you’re not alone darling, Daddy and I are here for you.’”
“I’ll help,” Margot blurted out.
“Of course, we’ll both help you, Aims,” Brooke said softly.
Aimee knew that a baby started out in life as a well of need so deep it cut almost to the center of the earth. She was afraid if she and her baby started asking for help they would never stop. Brooke and Margot, at the same moment, were thinking that if they shared the load they could share the love.
“Thanks,” Aimee said. “I think I’ll be ok.”
“No, really,” Margot said, “I want to help.”
“Ok, but it might be more than just navigating a toy store,” Aimee warned.
“We’re here
for you,” Brooke said.
Aimee smiled and was surprised to find her cheeks growing red and her eyes getting wet. The bold act of filing for divorce had made her feel so strong until the moment after she had done it.
“So, anyone have anything else to read?” she asked, brushing her hand over her face. She didn’t want to wallow in anything, be it sorrow or love. She wanted to break away from the pain he had caused her and push on with life.
“Nothing to compare to your great personal insight,” Brooke said, “but I did try my hand at a little poem about masturbation.”
“Knock us out with it,” Aimee said.
“Ok, here we go,” Brooke said. She recited her new poem from memory.
“While resting my hips on a pillow,
I indulged in my own peccadillo.
And tried not to think
How my mother would drink
If I up and married my dildo.”
“Oh! Bravo! Bravo!” Margot cheered.
“Not a perfect rhyme,” Brooke confessed, “but then what rhymes perfectly with ‘dildo.’”
“Well, ‘Bilbo,’” Aimee offered, “but I can’t see that fitting in your poem.” As they tried to find the perfect rhyme for Brooke’s limerick, Margot’s thoughts drifted from ‘vibrator’ to ‘sex’ to ‘love’ and then settled firmly on ‘money.’
“Do you think that’s what it’s really like?” Margot asked. “I mean, to be a prostitute.”
“I have no idea,” Aimee said. “Ask Lux.”
“That is unkind,” Brooke said.
“I didn’t mean it nasty,” Aimee said. “I meant she blew up big time, and I only intimated that she was selling it. And I’m thinking that maybe it cut closer to home than I could ever understand. I mean, if it’s not a possibility, then you’re not afraid of it and—oh my god, do you think Lux was really a prostitute?”
“She does have some money stashed somewhere,” said Margot. “She’s not asking for references and she doesn’t seem to have any intention of getting a job. She’s got an attorney on retainer, a really old guy. One of those guys who has been dead for three years but keeps coming into the office anyway. I looked him up and sure enough, vice was his main cash flow. He’s only got Lux and this one other old lady as clients.”
Tuesday Erotica Club Page 18