by Swan Adamson
The Pet Away man picked up Crookedy and laid her in a nice cardboard box. “Would you like to say good-bye to your pet one last time?” he asked.
Sobbing, we went over and peered into the box he was holding. Then I looked up into the Pet Away man’s eyes. It was Bud Light.
His real name was Peter Pringle. The same day we met over my mom’s dead cat I invited him over to my place.
Pete was very romantic. “You’re so beautiful you could star in one of them slasher movies,” he panted as we made love.
“As the slasher?”
“No, as one of the beautiful girls who gets slashed.”
I’m highly susceptible to praise. I asked him if he wanted to move into my apartment. I didn’t want to live alone and neither did he.
Well, this time I really thought I’d found Mr. Right. Pete was clean-cut and had a steady job. All day long he drove around the city collecting dead dogs, cats, birds, snakes, hamsters, turtles, iguanas, monkeys, geckos, squirrels, bats—every kind of creature that you can imagine. He called himself an Animal Disposal Specialist.
A couple of times I went on his rounds with him. His van had a weird sweetish smell that could make you puke if you paid too much attention to it. It smelled like that roach spray the exterminator used in the dads’ apartment in New York. Pete was always respectful to the pet owner’s face. But then, when he got back to Pet Away, he’d flip the dead animal into the incinerator with a comical whistle. Sometimes he’d toss it in with an underhand lob, sometimes he’d slam dunk it in like a basketball. It all depended on the size of the animal.
He said the job didn’t get to him. “You can’t take it personally,” he said, “or you go crazy.”
I admired his orderly ways. “Neat Pete,” I called him. Everything had to be in its proper place. He said he couldn’t stand messes and asked if he could reorganize the apartment. Fine with me. I was still used to having my mom clean up after me. Once a week she’d come over to vacuum, pick up clothes, and scrub out the tub, sinks, and toilet. She didn’t have to be my cleaning lady once Neat Pete moved in.
Pete wanted to get a degree in mortuary science and eventually have his own funeral home. But, like me, he had a problem with plastic. He owed thousands in school loans already, and he couldn’t get out from under his debt load with the money he made at Pet Away.
He kept pointing out these programs advertised on TV that told you how to buy houses with no money down. “If you do it right, you can be a millionaire in a year,” he claimed. His credit line was maxed out, so I charged the program for him.
Pete didn’t want me to continue working at Terry’s Topless. I was sick of it myself, but I didn’t know what else to do. “What about cosmetics?” Pete said. “You see those ads all the time for Lorrie Ann Cosmetics. Those Lorrie Ann Ladies drive around in white Mercedes convertibles.”
The trip to hell always starts with a toll-free number.
It all sounded reasonable enough. I liked the idea of being my own boss. And as a former model and exotic dancer, I knew the importance of makeup.
What could be simpler? The more Lorrie Ann I sold, the richer I’d become. There were “Commitment Tiers” that you pledged yourself to: You agreed to order a certain amount of merchandise each month. It was nonreturnable, but your discount increased proportionately to the amount of merchandise you ordered. If you brought in other Lorrie Ann Ladies, you got extra credits toward that white Mercedes convertible or bigger discounts on your merchandise. And best of all, your monthly or yearly stock of Lorrie Ann cosmetics could be paid for with a credit card. You got an even bigger discount if you joined and paid for a year in advance. That’s what I did.
Pete, meanwhile, was trying to figure out how to buy real estate with no money down. We never went out to the movies. All we did was watch the No Money Down Real Estate System videos over and over again. All those people giving testimonials sounded just like us. They’d been bogged down in debt . . . they’d been sick of working for others . . . they were getting nowhere fast . . . and now they were millionaires!
But you were supposed to read this handbook, too. And I noticed that Pete never read it. Later on, I found out that he was dyslexic. Reading was a torment.
I pledged at one of the highest commitment tiers at Lorrie Ann. Before I knew it, boxes of shit were arriving. I freaked. Who was I going to sell it to?
My mom rounded up some of her girlfriends, and Grandma rounded up some of hers. I did my first Lorrie Ann Lady presentation to them. There was, like, no enthusiasm. One lady winced when she smelled the Midnight Lace perfume. “Smells like vanilla Clorox,” she said. Mom and Grandma said they’d buy the expensive Night Time Hydration Formula, and someone else bought a lipstick. That was it.
Then I got a bunch of my girlfriends together. We were jammed in my tiny apartment and I was trying to be the Lorrie Ann Lady while my friends smoked pot and drank beer. We started laughing and playing with the makeup samples until we all looked insane, and then we went to The Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight. It’s been playing at the same theater for over thirty years. It’s so old that my mom went to it when she was young.
The next day I tried to cancel my membership in Lorrie Ann. No way, they said. I was in it for a year. I was committed. The Lorrie Ann merchandise would arrive every month as per my signed contract.
I didn’t tell the dads about any of this. Mom kept doling out money. She was working as a secretary-receptionist for a big corporation.
One day Pete looked up from the toilet he was scrubbing and said, “Let’s get married.”
I didn’t say anything, just looked at him. I tried on the name: Venus Pringle.
“We could consolidate our debts,” he said, “and apply for new credit cards as a married couple. With the new cards we could pay off all the old cards and maybe still have enough credit line left to buy a house. I mean, if we charged the down payment.”
I was kind of dubious, but after a certain point in a relationship what do you do? You commit. You get married. Or you bail.
I loved Pete because he was so in love with me. All those flowers he’d sent to me when I was at Terry’s Topless; they must have cost a fortune. Pete adored me. He was so sweet. He kept saying he couldn’t believe he was having sex with someone as beautiful as I was. I was his queen. He did whatever I told him to. Half the time I didn’t have to say anything: He anticipated my desires. It was like having a mother, a waiter, and a boyfriend rolled up in one.
We did the civil ceremony thing. We drove to the courthouse in the Pet Away van because my car needed a new carburetor. When I told Mom, she was like, “Oh, sweetheart, why didn’t you tell me?” and started bawling. Right away she started in about having a party for us.
When I called to tell the dads, there was a long silence on the other end of the line. They were on separate extensions. Finally Daddy said, “Do we get to meet him?”
“Obviously she’s ashamed of us,” Whitman said.
“No!” I said, caught off-guard by the hurt in his voice.
Daddy suggested I bring Pete over for dinner. Whitman, ominously, said nothing.
The interrogation began the moment we walked in the front door. “I apologize in advance for being inquisitive,” Whitman said to Pete, “but our daughter didn’t even have the courtesy to tell us she was getting married, so I don’t know a goddamn thing about you.” He motioned for us to sit down on the new Italian leather sofa. “What do you do?”
“I’m an animal disposal specialist,” Pete said.
“Is that a euphemism for exterminator?” Whitman flicked his eyes in my direction.
Pete was confused. He turned to me. “What’s a euphemism?” he asked.
I racked my brains. “I think it’s something that means something else. Like ‘little girls’ room’ instead of ‘bathroom’.”
“I was asking if you’re an exterminator,” Whitman clarified.
“Oh. No, sir, I’m not. The animals are already dead when I g
et to them.”
Silence.
“Do you have a degree?” Whitman asked.
Pete shook his head. “No, sir, not yet.”
“But you’re working toward one?”
“Sort of, sir.”
“Sort of?”
Daddy brought in a beautiful tray of canapés: olive tapenade, crusty Italian bread, smoked salmon. He smiled. I stood up so he could hug me.
“Daddy, this is my husband, Peter Pringle.”
Daddy shook Pete’s hand.
“Pringle,” Whitman said, pouring drinks. “You’re not from the potato chip family, are you?”
Pete shook his head. “No, sir. I’m from Boring.”
“Boring?” Whitman said, a puzzled look on his face.
“Boring,” Daddy said to Whitman. “We’ve passed it on the way to Mount Hood.”
Whitman winced. “The place with all those little cabins and trailer homes?”
“That’s Boring,” Pete said.
“It certainly is,” agreed Whitman.
It wasn’t a successful evening.
We thought we were going to be yachting around as millionaires, but within six months we were drowning in credit-card debt. Every day, every night, there were threatening letters and phone calls from all the credit-card companies that had been so welcoming just months earlier.
As our dreams collapsed, Pete became more and more obsessive. There was always this trapped look in his eyes. It was kind of scary. He insisted that the dishes and glasses had to be arranged in a certain pattern on the shelf. The bed had to be made in a certain way. Our clothes had to be hung or folded just so. Every time I stubbed out a cigarette, Pete grabbed the ashtray and cleaned it. He showered in the morning and came home at noon to shower again, and then showered a third time when he got home from work and a fourth time before going to bed. He kept complaining of strange odors.
I had to find some kind of job. Pete didn’t want me to go back to Terry’s Topless. He couldn’t stand the idea of having his wife dance in front of other men. I called Darlene. She’d left Terry’s Topless and was now doing lingerie modeling.
There are all these secret worlds out there. Worlds you never knew about as a kid. Worlds your parents hoped you’d never discover. Worlds you don’t know about unless you’re poor and looking for a job.
Like the world of lingerie modeling.
It worked like this. There was a dark, stuffy, windowless room with a bed and a chair in the center. It was like a theater set, surrounded on three sides by creaking chairs taken from an old movie house. Men paid to come in and furtively jerk off as you strolled around and posed provocatively in lingerie.
The goal was to get them to hire you for private modeling sessions. If you agreed, you got thirty bucks guaranteed plus whatever tip they gave you. For fifteen minutes of work.
The private modeling rooms contained a bed and a chair. The owner didn’t want his business to be raided as a house of prostitution so there were strict rules. The client had to sit on the chair while you posed on the bed or stuck out your rear end for him to drool over. They could j.o. but you couldn’t touch them. And you didn’t want to. In fact, you didn’t even want to look at most of them.
Except there was this one guy. An older gentleman, about my dad’s age, beautifully tanned, with thick silver hair and a hawklike nose. He was always impeccably dressed, as if he’d just come from a board meeting. Dark suit, white or pale blue shirt with French cuffs, an expensive-looking tie, and Italian shoes. Every week he’d hire me for a private modeling session. He would always give me a fifty-dollar tip.
He wanted to get friendly, so I let him talk. He told me his name was Marcello. “Like Mastroianni,” he said, but I didn’t know what he was talking about. He had a deep voice with a foreign accent. Italian, I guess.
He was so polite in his requests for poses that I never minded. It was like working for a cameraless photographer. “Could you just pout a little bit more?” he’d say. “Good. Ohh, buonissimo. Now, cross your beautiful legs and lean back. Look impatient! Now pout. Now look angry.”
All the while he’d be pumping his dick and dabbing at his face with a white linen handkerchief. With an agonized sigh, staring into my eyes, he’d ejaculate into the hanky. He’d sit for a postcoital moment, eyes closed, breathing deeply. Then get up, toss the hanky into the wastebasket, and leave.
I wouldn’t date him. Wouldn’t even meet him for a coffee. “I’m married,” I said.
“Married?” He looked surprised.
Every week he pried out a little bit more. “Why is a beautiful young woman like you working in a place like this? Why isn’t your marito, your husband, supporting you?”
“He can’t. And he doesn’t know that I’m working here.”
“What does he think you do all day long?”
“He thinks I’m out selling cosmetics.”
“So you do this because you love him. You want to help him. You’re a very noble girl.” He was silent for a moment. “Why don’t you become my mistress?”
No, I didn’t become Marcello’s mistress. But I was really losing it with Pete. One of us had to do something to get us out of the credit-card quagmire, and it wasn’t going to be him. He spent all his free time arranging and cleaning and trying to please me.
“You must be the top-grossing Lorrie Ann Lady in Portland,” he said, watching like a hungry kid as I counted out my tip money.
I felt kind of guilty for fooling him. But when I said I was “selling Lorrie Ann,” it was sort of true. “Laurie Ann” was the alias I used for lingerie modeling.
I don’t know how he found out. Maybe he always knew. Maybe he was just too shy to say anything. One afternoon while I was modeling, I looked up and saw him staring at me from the last row.
Some people split their assets when they divorce. Pete and I split our debts. There was no rancor between us. On the day the decree came through I was feeling kind of sentimental, so I called Pete and we reminisced a little.
“I’ll always remember those beautiful flowers you sent me at Terry’s Topless,” I said. “I think that’s what made me fall in love with you.”
“What flowers?” Pete said. “I never sent you any flowers.”
So that’s how I finally ended up in bankruptcy court. And it was in bankruptcy court that I met Tremaynne Woods, the man I was going to marry tomorrow.
“Okay, you like?” the Vietnamese girl asked.
I held up my hands and gazed at my black nails. “Perfect.”
Chapter
6
The wedding ceremony took place in Carolee’s hot, tiny living room. The temperature had shot up to a broiling 95 degrees, so we kept the front door open and Mom’s big electric fan turned on full blast. The colorful streamers Mom tied on to the front snapped and buzzed as the fan swished hot stale air back and forth.
I waited nervously in Mom’s bathroom, unable to sit down, while all the guests gathered in the living room. I’d chosen my wedding attire with special care, knowing that I had to stand out and make an indelible impression on Tremaynne. I had to dress like a memory that he’d carry around with him for the rest of his life. No one knew what I was wearing, not even Mom. It was going to be a huge surprise.
Tremaynne and I had worked out a short ceremony with one of my old club friends, Pastor Lucifer of the Church of Now. I’d done all the planning because Tremaynne had never been married before and didn’t know the basics.
For an altar, I dragged out my mom’s computer table and decorated it with two red roses and four black candles. Pastor Lucifer and Tremaynne were going to wait for me there, at the altar, right in front of the TV. The CD player was all set up and ready to play “Raging Hearts,” the music I’d come out to, walking down the hallway from the bathroom to the altar in the living room. All Carolee had to do was press one simple button. I showed her a million times.
Of course she fucked it up. A violent rap number came blasting out of the CD player. Everyone st
opped talking. I had to stick my head out and call for her.
“That’s not the right song!” I hissed.
She looked frightened. “I pressed the button you showed me.”
“It’s supposed to be ‘Raging Hearts.’ Track six!”
“What should I do?” Mom asked.
“Turn it off. Tell Daddy to play track six if you can’t figure it out.” I pulled my head back into the bathroom and shut the door in her face.
A few minutes later the right song came on. When I heard those woozy guitars, I opened the bathroom door and started down the hallway, walking slowly, carrying two red roses.
I was all in black, feet bare, my toenails and fingernails painted black. My dress was a cross between a tight, low-cut gown and a voluptuous satin negligee. It showed off the tattoos on my chest and back.
I thought I looked beautiful. I thought I looked stunning. I thought I looked hot. I thought I looked totally original, unlike any bride I’d ever seen in any magazine.
But the first face I saw, when I entered the living room, happened to be Whitman’s. And he looked so shocked that it shook me. I quickly turned away, toward Tremaynne, waiting at the altar.
My husband-to-be was wearing what he always wears: blue jeans, cotton shirt, hiking boots. I approached him, smiling, and handed him one of my two red roses. He was so nervous he didn’t know what to do. Just stared at me with a frozen smile. “Take it,” I whispered.
Pastor Lucifer kind of fluffed out his long black cape. While he gave his short spiel about why we were all gathered there, etcetera, I secretly checked out my audience in the mirror beside the TV. Mom was dressed like she was going to a garden party. She wore a billowing floral-print muu muu with various diaphanous scarves and a large, weird hat. Grandma was in a lime green polyester pants suit with white running shoes. Daddy wore his lightweight Armani summer suit and Ferragamo dress shoes. He looked incredibly handsome.