“Avery!” She grabbed Avery around the waist. “I’ve been staying away so you had time to sex up that hot woman of yours.”
“DX! Shh!”
The band swigged their beers and the drummer lit a joint the size of a cigar.
“They’re not paying attention,” DX said. “Guys, take five. I need a minute with my girl.”
The band filed up the stairs.
“Isn’t this place great?” DX said.
“Is it soundproofed?”
“No. That’s the point. Everything is soundproofed and remastered now,” DX said. “Here you’re right in the middle of a love song and bam! Some bus rolls by overhead, and that’s life. Right? You don’t get ten takes. Everybody who listens to that sound is going to be, like, ‘Yeah, I was there.’”
“Is that why people listen to music?”
It was DX. Of course her millions of fans would want to hear the truck go by.
“Guess what this place used to be,” DX said. “Smell it.”
Avery sniffed before she could stop herself. There was a faint smell of burnt metal and chemicals.
“It smells like cheap carpets.”
“It was a funeral parlor, but Portlanders aren’t doing funerals like they used to. They all want to get buried in burlap bags and composted. So the family rents this out as office space.”
“DX, it’s not an office,” Avery said. “Have you ever been to an office?”
“I try not to. Those fluorescent lights suck your soul.” DX grinned and perched on the back of one of the vinyl couches that lined the concrete bunker. “You look like someone stole your dog. Talk to me.”
“I don’t even know if I’d like a dog,” Avery said.
“How about a jackal-dog? I know this guy who breeds them in Australia. A golden jackal and a dog. You can pick your dog. I’d go malamute, but you’d probably want to water it down with a pug.”
Avery stretched out on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. It was like being at a really bad therapist’s office.
“I don’t want a jackal-dog. I’m just saying, I’ve never had a dog. I don’t know if I’d enjoy a dog. I decorate things for a living, and I don’t know how I’d decorate my own condo.”
“This is about Merritt.”
“She’s wonderful.” Avery closed her eyes. She wanted to repeat Merritt’s name over and over. She wanted to have kinky sex encased in nylon bodysuits, and she wanted to watch old John Cusack movies and eat ice cream with her.
“I don’t want to leave,” Avery said.
DX reached over Avery’s head and pulled a bottle from behind the sofa. “Real absinthe.” She took a swig and held it out to Avery.
Avery shook her head. “I’ve only known her again her for a couple of weeks. We were just supposed to spend the summer together, but it’s all gone so quickly, and I don’t want it to end. When we make love…she’s so tough and she’s so fragile.”
“Those are the best,” DX said, as though she were knowledgeably picking out peaches or lobsters at the Saturday market. “Tough but vulnerable. You want to save them, but you don’t have to.”
“I don’t know if she trusts me. Her friends are going to get married in a lesbian bar, and I can’t give her that.”
“What does Alistair say?”
“He says I’m complicated to someone like her. He says I have to be careful. If we stay together, I need to get her to sign a nondisclosure contract and date her like a normal person, tell people she’s my trainer. But what if Dan Ponza sees us?”
DX gestured with her bottle. “Forget Dan Ponza. I know a guy who can take care of Dan Ponza.”
Avery said “no” quickly and firmly. DX probably did know someone who could take care of Dan Ponza. Avery would be considered an accessory.
“I remember once when we were at Vale, Merritt and her uncle and his boyfriend went away for the weekend, and I missed her. Like everything was empty without her. So I told my dad I was going away with friends, and I drove to Astoria, where they were staying. I thought I would run into her.”
She remembered standing on the boardwalk on the mouth of the Columbia, the wind whipping rain in her face, and thinking how foolish the trip had been. She wouldn’t find Merritt. And then she had. At an antiques store. Merritt had been handling the receiver of an old telephone, putting it to her ear and saying, Hello, lovely, I’ll be home soon.
I’m home now, Avery had answered, and Merritt had whirled around, delight and surprise filling her face.
“I told her I just wanted to take my new Miata out for a drive. But I thought I could die right there, I was so happy to see her. Merritt’s uncle invited me to stay in their rented cottage. Merritt and I wrapped up in blankets and sat outside on the porch. The whole town is on a hill, and we could see down to the river. We could see the stars, and I almost kissed her, but I didn’t. I want to do something. I want to convince her. But what if I’m not good enough? What if Merritt dumps me? What if we get caught and I wreck King and Crown and then she leaves me? What if she makes it and then she doesn’t want me?”
“You mean on TV?”
“Yeah.”
“That girl doesn’t want to be a reality-TV star.”
“What if she gets picked up by a real director? Venner thinks she’s got what it takes.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. You’re worried that she’s going to get too famous for you? You think she cares about that stuff? You’re worried that she’s going to win an Emmy and dump you?”
“She could.”
“That’s your mom talking. All that”—DX affected a snooty accent somewhere between British aristocracy and Harvard professor—“‘I know your birthweight and now I know everything.’ Your mom doesn’t know shit about shit.”
“She knew you’d be huge.”
“I was a rock star at thirteen. She doesn’t get credit for discovering me.” DX took another sip of her absinthe. “Just quit.”
“I can’t do that to Alistair. He hitchhiked to L.A. from Wyoming. He slept in a sleeping bag in the snow so that he could get to Hollywood. And he made it. And he made me.”
“You made yourself.”
Upstairs the band had resumed their practice, and an acoustic version of DX’s “Uber to Hell” filtered through the ceiling.
“What would you do if you weren’t a singer?” Avery asked.
“I’d start a cult.”
“No, for real?”
DX’s face said, Yes, for real.
“What would I do?” Avery asked.
She was waiting for DX to tease her. If she had wanted grudging sympathy, she would have gone to Alistair. She hoped somewhere behind the absinthe and the bravado, DX might have an answer.
“What do you want?” DX nudged Avery’s shoulder. “Sit up.”
“I want to know that I’m good enough.”
Avery sat. DX put the absinthe in her hand, and Avery took a small sip. It tasted like flowers and liquorish.
“Good enough is being alive,” DX said.
“Says the woman who’s been downloaded a million times.”
“Three point two million,” DX said. “But you know what? If I kicked it all and moved to some tiny island off Greece and starved to death because I couldn’t fish worth shit, I’d still be a fucking rock star, even if I’d never recorded a single song.”
“You ever feel old?” Avery asked. “Or like you might be getting old? One day you’ll be old? Old is waiting for you?”
“Oh, don’t go on about eighteen to thirty-two like Alistair. I’m going to be like my dad but without the drugs. He’s sixty-seven, and when he gets onstage he rages like he’s twenty-one.”
“I don’t even own a house.”
“I have four. Do you want one?”
“Kind of. I always thought I wanted to travel with Alistair for the rest of my life. We’ve been together for fifteen years.”
“You said she gave you a dress for prom fifteen years ago. Do
you still have it?”
Eight (sometimes twelve) hard plastic wardrobes traveled by semitruck everywhere Avery went. Some were installed in her hotel, sometimes one in her trailer. There was always one she insisted on, although she never wore the clothes it held. They were hers. The camouflage sweatpants Alistair had given her. A pair of jeans with the ass ripped out that she had fantasized about wearing with a G-string. And the dress. Preserved like the wedding dress it was. She waited for it in every city.
“Yeah,” she said.
“She bought it for you before you met Alistair. You’ve known her longer.”
“That’s not how you think about these things,” Avery said.
“Or you fell in love with her in five weeks. You pick.”
“I’m not in…”
DX’s look said she wouldn’t believe the lie.
Avery knocked back another swig of the absinthe. DX put her skinny hand over Avery’s. She wore enough skull rings to make her own catacomb.
“This isn’t hard, Aves. You tell Alistair you’re sorry. You’ll be careful. He’ll still be your bestie. Then you tell Merritt you love her. You say, ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been clear. I want you to own me like the moon owns the sun. I know that I’m in the closet, but look around at these other women. I’m a frickin’ star!’ You don’t have to go back and forth about this. Save yourself the trouble. This is just who you are.”
“DX, if good enough is being alive, aren’t all those other women moons and stars too?”
DX grabbed her by the back of the neck and gave her a shake. “Do you think I would have been friends with you for twenty-three years if you were just as good as everyone else?”
Chapter 27
Much to Greg’s dismay, Merritt insisted on an evening off. As much as she longed to spend every remaining second with Avery, she had to breathe too, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe near Avery. She couldn’t look at her without her chest tightening and her heart seizing in her chest. She was losing her. It was ending. She didn’t know what she would do when Avery left.
“We have six days!” he protested, standing in the newly lawn-carpeted hallway of the apartment that would soon be hers.
In the bathroom, Alistair and Avery were submitting to Tami’s expertise. The light in the Elysium was making Avery look bloated and had given Alistair dark shadows under his eyes. Gould, Tom, Setter, Colton, and Meg were standing in the bedroom waiting for their assigned tasks.
“We don’t take evenings off!” Greg said. “This is television. You mortgage your life to be on television. You don’t pop in at nine and leave at five.”
“You work the day after you’ve crashed your bike,” Merritt said bitterly.
Greg’s face softened. “I would never have put Avery on if Venner hadn’t insisted. We’re not like that. We’ve just got work to do.”
“I know,” Merritt said. “But I looked at the call sheet. I’m not on after filming replacing-the-kitchen-counter.”
“We might need you,” Greg said.
“You’re leaving in six days. There’s only so much you can do in six days. By now you’ve done it or you haven’t. If you’re late now, me staring at you staring at Gould staring at Alistair isn’t going to help.”
Six days. Six days. Had she done what she was supposed to do? Did she know what that was? She felt like she had at boarding school. First the principal would call her into the office, sympathetic but firm. Her parents were behind in tuition. Of course it wasn’t her fault, but they had found another school, with a payment plan, a better situation all around. She would count down the days until her departure, whatever little bit of comfort and security she’d developed at that school slipping away day by day.
Greg also seemed to be mulling over difficult thoughts. His dilemma, Merritt guessed, was whether to let her go despite the off chance they might need her or argue with her and lose valuable seconds.
The seconds counted more.
“Fine, fine, fine. Go. Be back here first thing tomorrow. Five a.m.”
Merritt had worked construction. Five a.m. in the summer was nothing, although her nights with Avery were taking their toll. Sex could substitute for sleep but only for so long.
* * *
“What are you doing?” Iliana protested when Merritt walked through the front doors of Hellenic Hardware a little while later.
“I know you’ve got everything under control,” Merritt said, “but I’ve been out of the shop for five weeks. There’s billing to do. We’ve got shipments coming in.”
Iliana grabbed her by the elbow and walked her past the interns who were sorting bolts. In the privacy of the lumber section near the loading bay, she said, “You’ve got a week left with your girl. Why aren’t you on set?”
Avery’s eyes had asked her the same question as Merritt nodded and walked out. Of course Merritt had wanted to stay. If she could stare at Avery all afternoon, she’d stay. But Alistair’s words and Avery’s departure hung in her heart like the last reverberations of a gong.
“I have to do something.” Merritt looked around for something out of order, but Iliana kept the shop like it was her own.
“You’re supposed to be making love to her every second you’ve got. You’re supposed to be walking around the Elysium like you’re going to take her on the floor. You’re supposed to tell her how you feel.”
“Iliana, I need my own life back. She’s leaving in less than a week, and no matter what we say, it will end.” She raised her palms to the ceiling of Hellenic Hardware. “And I need this place to matter more. I have to be able to get back to the shop and love it. This is enough for me.”
This all seemed a little dull. There would surely be a stack of unpaid invoices. One, maybe two, contractors who needed a little reminder from collections. A friend at the grange had texted her about an old farmhouse being deconstructed near Hillsboro. She could drive out and bid on the windows. It felt small while everything with Avery felt vast. She’d never been to Cincinnati, where King & Crown was going next, but she’d googled attractions. The oldest brick house in America was in Cincinnati. She’d like that…if Avery asked her to visit her in Cincinnati. And there was a museum of old signs that would be lovely...especially if Avery could forgive Merritt for taking her on the least romantic Cincinnati date ever.
“What’s this about really?” Iliana said, sitting down on a neat stack of railroad ties.
Merritt sat down beside her. “Alistair talked to me.”
“About what?”
“About what would happen if someone found out about us. I’d ruin everything.”
Iliana grabbed her knee and squeezed a bit too hard, looking Merritt in the eye. “And Alistair is the boss of you?”
“He’s her best friend.”
“So he has to say shit like that. You cannot mess this up. You’ve been happy for once in your life. I can tell. You look less like a bloodhound.”
“I do not look like a bloodhound.”
She had all of King & Crown to back her up. It was strange working with people forever telling her how beautiful she was in a way that made it sound like inventory on a shelf. She wondered what it was like for Avery to live in a world that told her she did not have that inventory, and she wished she could stay in Avery’s life to remind her not to listen.
“Just act like a normal person and tell her how you feel,” Iliana said.
“What if she says she’s done with me? What if I ask her to be my girlfriend and do…girlfriend stuff? Cook. Watch reruns. What if she says she was just in it for the sex? What if she realizes that I’m okay for a few weeks, but I’m not the kind of woman you’d want to—” She shrugged.
“What?”
Merritt traced a gash in the wooden railroad ties. “Stay with.”
“Why would Avery think that?”
“It’s my fate.”
“There is no such thing as fate.”
“What’s the chi, then? You say it’s the energy that moves th
rough everything. What if you get the bad energy? If you read history you’d see. One person crosses the Oregon Trail, sets up an orchard, marries the only woman in town, has ten children, and writes a blissful memoir. Another person loses everything in a fire, and then their whole family dies of the flu.”
“Get a flu shot. We’re not on the Oregon Trail, and you’re not doomed. You’re a brat.” This was the old Iliana come back from the mists of pre-Lei-Ling history. “I had a shitty life,” Iliana went on. “I had a dad who beat me. I had to leave my house at sixteen and buy a fake ID so I could work. You had a fake ID so you could go to Darcelle’s drag club. Your parents didn’t beat you. Your stepdad didn’t molest you. He paid to send you to a dozen fancy boarding schools. Then your uncle willed you a business, which you happened to have a gift to turn into something really amazing.”
“And every time I like a girl, she text-dumps me because she says it’s the most I deserve.”
“Well, you’re old-fashioned.”
Iliana stood up. Merritt looked up at her. “It’s not old-fashioned to not want to get dumped on LinkedIn.”
“Get up,” Iliana said. “Everyone e-dumps. It’s less embarrassing. You dump someone over dinner, and you have to figure out whether you wait until dessert to tell her. Do you tell her right away? Who pays if you’ve already ordered? If the girl cries, what do you do?”
“I never cry.”
“So you’re perfect for a repressed TV star. Come on.” Iliana nodded toward the dojo. “Let’s work this out. If you practiced more, you might not have to agonize over everything,”
There was no resisting Iliana when she really wanted to practice. It was probably the strength of her chi pulling Merritt into the quiet dojo.
“If you meditated,” Iliana went on. “If you practiced regularly instead of just walking in here every so often to show off.”
“I don’t show off.”
“You show off all the time. It’s a form of deflection.”
Iliana took off her boots, set them by the wall, and bowed to the shrine. Merritt did the same.
Worth the Wait Page 18