by Carol Anshaw
“I’m not judging you on any kind of moral basis. But it just—it seems like you and your sister were in an actual relationship. I’ve never had the issue come up before. Or even heard of anyone else having it. I guess that’s a little troubling.”
“It wasn’t exactly a relationship. We saw other people.”
Everything Maureen adds to this story only further tightens Cate’s cringe.
Maureen is ready to brush away the subject. “You’re going to have to get more information on me. So this thing doesn’t stand out so much. We need more space filled with more details.”
Cate nods, then looks over at Sailor, who is sitting at attention, begging a treat off someone way down at the end of the beach. He sees her, though, and by the time she and Maureen reach the parking lot, he’s caught up with them. She doesn’t need to look back; she can hear the clink of his tags behind her.
excursion
She loves to swim, but some winter days are not for diving into even indoor water, and she just heads for the gym.
The guy on the treadmill next to Cate today isn’t watching ESPN or CNBC, but rather the closed-circuit camera in the gym’s daycare room. Two toddlers are rolling a giant ball back and forth, rolling and laughing. The guy is in his fifties; she hopes the girls are his granddaughters.
Unlike him, most of the people who work out at this gym are inconspicuous, interchangeable; they don’t show up on her radar. She probably doesn’t show up on theirs. Over time, though, a core group has sifted out. The really sweaty guy, the corpulent priest, the scary anorexic. The lady cop with the terrific body and year-round tan from the beds in the gym’s basement, but so tough it’s hard to imagine working up the nerve to have sex with her, although Cate does imagine.
This noninteractive companionship is comfortable for Cate.
She used to swim or go on the mill two or three times a week, but since the election she works out almost every day. She needs to burn off a morning film of despair. She avoids the news stations on the monitors hung from the gym’s ceiling. To make forty minutes pass beneath her notice today, she watches a show about women buying wedding dresses. Two brides are being featured on this episode, both much older than women Cate would put in the virgin bracket, older with a bit of wear and tear. In photos, their fiancés look like bar bouncers. These weddings are not their firsts, but both of them say they want to feel like a princess on their big day. The bridal party of friends and/or relatives tears up as their bride emerges from the fitting room in a sequence of strapless gowns. One is fixed on the idea of “bling,” and they find her something with a cascade of rhinestones down the front. The other wants “a full mermaid,” which is apparently beyond her budget. The wedding party shares a moment of sorrow.
Maybe, Cate thinks, this show seems insane to her because she is queer. Maybe if she were straight, she’d be thinking about a full mermaid and should she get a second dress for the reception (a chronic consideration on the show). Maybe queer weddings will eventually get pumped up like this. She tries to remember her wedding to Graham. She was twenty. He was so different from anyone else she’d met—playful, original. They’d have sex, then talk through the night about art and life. They floated big ideas. This was before Pand-a-Rama!, before all the money. They had the ceremony in a friend’s apartment. She wore a sundress from the Gap. He wore jeans and a thrift-shop dinner jacket. Someone took pictures, but she doesn’t know where they have drifted off to. Pictures weren’t so important then; they weren’t so much a validation of experience. Back then, you had experience, later on memories, then you came across a small pile of old snapshots in the back of a drawer and thought how skinny everyone was back then.
The belt slows to a stop. The guy on the next treadmill is gone; so are the little girls on the closed-circuit TV. The daycare room is empty.
* * *
When she gets home, the little lobby of her three-flat is stacked hip-high with Amazon envelopes, squishy mailers, and boxes. She brings up as many as she can. She drops them to the floor to unlock the front door. Sailor’s nose is in the space created by her opening the door an inch or two. He licks her hand—more specifically, he licks her phantom fingers. He gives her this exact same lick at one point or another in any given day. He is probably the most empathic creature she will ever know.
Beyond him, a distinct shut-in smell greets her. A fusion aroma of Kleenex and orange juice. Sheets that could use some freshening.
Graham looks way too startled when she puts her head into his doorway and says, “Hey. Beaucoup d’Amazon for you. Some in the hall, some downstairs. I couldn’t get all of them up at once. What’s up in here?” Here meaning his room, also the internet, also his mind. He plays Nine Inch Nails’s “The Hand That Feeds,” to cover their conversation. He points to the walls, then to his ears. When his phone buzzes and skitters around on the desk to announce a text coming in, he takes a look at the message, which appears to be a map.
“Lucille Rae. She’s found a likely data storage hub out in the desert in Nevada. She spends a lot of time on Google Earth. It’s beginning to pay off. We need to get a jump on things before January. Before move-in day at the White House.”
“Do you think he’s going to bring all that gold dictator furniture with him? And why aren’t you Skyping with her?”
“We have to be more careful now. We use something else now. It’s encrypted. And it disappears. What I’d like is for you to use it, too.”
“Why do I need to message you? We live together. You’re here all the time.”
“Just do this. Please. It may come in handy. I want to be able to reach you in case the shit hits the fan. Give me your phone. I’ll set you up.”
She wishes he was in here looking at porn like a normal recently separated guy. He’s in his fifties now; the thing of being a decade older than Cate seemed hip when she started up with him. She was in her early twenties, wandering around in an inchoate sexual half-sleep where she only knew she didn’t want any of the guys who were interested in her. She wanted something different, but what? So then it was a younger guy, then a couple of black guys. Then when she did sets for one of his plays, it was Graham. He was so compelling, she thought older must be what she’d been looking for.
They were together almost five years. And then she met a woman—a terrible woman, as it turned out, but with a lot of power and ramped-up pheromones—and Cate couldn’t fit her own response into a small box. What happened was nothing like a crush.
She came out to him almost as soon as she did to herself. She didn’t want to be a jerk to someone who’d been so kind to her. And his kindness has continued. Here it is, a decade and a half later, and she is so queer, and he has two more marriages behind him, is vastly wealthy, and now maybe a little crazy. And yet, life is long, and here they are, living together with a shelter dog, subsisting on a diet of curated cheese and buttery chardonnays.
“Why don’t you take Sailor out for a spin? You know.” She sniffs the air and nods her head at their gorgeous dog lying like a cutout on the carpet. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
“Sure. I can do that. I haven’t really been out all that much today.”
“In all this national uproar I forgot to tell you, I got a call from Ty Boyd.” She tells him about the play and her chance to do the sets.
“Oh, Catie, that’s so excellent. Really, really. I feel the big time rushing at you. And you’ll love working with Ty. I should call him. It’s been a while.” Meaning he will never call.
* * *
In the shower, Cate thinks how Graham’s belief system with its complex architecture that used to seem a little too complex—now, in this new normal—is beginning to look almost reasonable. In an increasingly crazy world, Graham doesn’t stand out so much. But he’s still crazy. Most of his money is now in gold coins in two banks in Singapore. He had to fly there to set up the accounts, and he hates flying. Actually, what he hates is leaving the apartment. Her apartment. Amazon is a big help in this respect.
When she’s showered and dressed, he’s back from walking Sailor. Now he’s ripping open one of the larger boxes. Inside is about five feet of crushed paper stuffing and a small box.
“Toothpicks,” he says sheepishly.
“Couldn’t they find a smaller package?”
“Sometimes this happens. I always assume some sort of nervous breakdown at the warehouse. I ordered these yesterday after I ate one of those Greek spinach pies.”
While it’s okay for Cate to think he’s troubled, she doesn’t want other people to. Much better he stay a little mythic. She has quit gossiping about him with Neale, and has avoided the matter entirely with Maureen, who knows everyone in the realm of Chicago theater. All she knows is that he’s staying with Cate while coming out of his marriage to Eleanor. By sequestering him, Cate is trying to buy him time to get his act together. Still, she probably shouldn’t be the only friend he talks to in person.
She asks if he wants to come to Mariano’s with her. “We’re out of everything.”
He astonishes her by saying okay.
* * *
“Look at this.” They’re in the produce department. “You can get salad in a bag.”
“Well, yeah? How long has it been since you’ve been grocery shopping?”
“Hey!” He turns to show her a small tray of tuna maki. “Right in the grocery store.”
“They have sushi everywhere now. I saw some in Walgreens the other day. Pretty soon it’ll be in vending machines. Convenience marts in the desert. It’s kind of frightening. I mean, it is fish. It came out of water somewhere, sometime, and it’s still raw.”
She’s slightly embarrassed to be out with him. When she first knew him, he was a sharp dresser. An excellent hunter-gatherer in thrift shops. When the money started pouring in, he switched without a beat to shopping on Oak Street. Now, though, he hardly ever wears anything but shapeless garments. If she didn’t know him and just saw him for the first time right now in putty yoga pants and a sand-colored tunic, she’d guess: alternative-medicine practitioner. Specialist in cranial-sacral therapy.
At the checkout he’s fascinated by the small bottles of energy boosters. “What do you think happens after the five hours? I guess you’d want to make sure you weren’t still on the icy highway in your big rig. You’d want to make sure you were already tucked in at the roadside motel.”
“Maybe a glass of wine?” She nods at the pretentious in-store piano bar, but she can see he’s done.
“Probably better to head back now,” he says, looking a little sweaty.
* * *
Basically, security is a state of mind. People are afraid to get on planes but there’s a way bigger chance they’ll get killed in their own car. They put all sorts of locks on the front of their house, but leave the backyard gate unlatched, or the garage open, or put in a fence that’s low enough to jump.
In the afternoons, when many people are at work or out shopping, Irene and I take walks in the neighborhood. First we jiggle doorknobs and look for windows left open. Today she has to break a basement window with a little duct tape and a quick hammer tap. Irene is a small person and can slip through. She’s elastic, like a rubber band. Like a mouse. She pulls away the glass and drops through, then listens for the possibility of anyone else in the house. If it’s all good, she lets me in. If she hears voices or footsteps or the tapping nails of a dog, she slips out the back door and we’re done there. We have to leave empty-handed, which we hate to do after having gone to the trouble. But if somebody comes in while we’re already there, we’re forced to deal with them. This involves physical connection and ups the ante. We never bring her gun. A gun carries the possibility of worse consequences.
This house is dark and empty. This is totally the house of rich homos. It’s not that I’m all that perceptive. I’m not thinking this because of their fruity furniture or going through their CDs. Right in the first bedroom we go into, on the dresser there’s a framed photo of two guys with hairy chests, holding each other in their faggotty arms. Both are middle-aged and balding, one heavyset like me.
We don’t discriminate. We don’t make judgments on anyone. We are only there on business. We are after certain things. Jewelry, iStuff, smartphones. We have buyers for these. Irene goes through dresser drawers, nightstands, boxes high on closet shelves. She pulls books out of bookcases and throws them to the floor. You’d be surprised how many people think that inside a book is a sneaky place to store cash. Or that the sock drawer is a genius place to hide jewelry. In the bedroom dresser here, I find a gold chain bracelet under the socks. Then I take a look through the bedside drawers and come up with a few poppers. In the medicine cabinet there are several bottles of Xanax. Someone here must be very nervous. I pocket the bottles. Irene comes in with a Bose radio, drops it in her shopping tote. I show her the bracelet.
Before we leave we usually do a little crazy shit. Like here she finds shoe polish and writes
FAGS MUST DIE
on the bathroom mirror, then I squirt some dish liquid on one of the pillows on the bed. This is just to scare them out of calling the police. It’s good if they think we are freaks who might come back.
We go out the back way, through the kitchen. Outside, in the alley, it’s nearly dusk. I put my arm around Irene’s shoulder. We go to the Mexican chicken place for a little dinner.
at ease
Cate knows most people are attracted to working in the theater because of the hubbub—the accumulating and quickening pace of getting something ready, the fluid (sometimes romantic) camaraderie of cast and crew, the excitement of having pulled together and done something as a team. The last-minute crises (lead actor comes down with flu, uncle’s mustache goes missing between acts) and their rushed resolutions (understudy steps in, passable mustache is cut out of an old fake beard). The thrilling sounds in the darkness beyond the stage—the satin shiver of coats being shed, the light flapping of programs being opened. The quiet that descends on the room as the stage lights come up. The hoped-for perfection of performance.
For her, it’s different. She’s not a particularly social person. Out of necessity she has developed into a team player, but for her the best part happens when she is alone, reading the play and imagining it at work on the set she will create. Filling in the negative space between the actors, giving them what they will require for whatever moves they make. She starts with inspiration drawings, then uses Vectr to make 3-D renderings of sets. She also makes models. Old-fashioned, but they still give the most reliable idea of what the finished set is going to look like.
For local shows in small venues, she roams around prop rental houses, or more often junk stores where the used this or rented that can be obtained. What she’s bought, she modifies with paint, hammer, glue. She’s a little skittish around saws, still.
What happens during the performance will then be snug inside its setting. Once the curtain goes up, Cate’s job, for the most part, is over.
Tonight, the opening night of At Ease, she lies up in the fly gallery with her assistant, Stig. From this perch, if she drops her head, she can see Neale and Joe in their seats. They come to opening night of anything Cate works on. If the subject matter is too adult (a revival of Bent when Joe was only nine), Neale comes alone. Tonight, Cate is embarrassed that they are going to witness this loser, but she couldn’t put them off. She tried. It’s hard enough just to lie above this play and see it herself. The company could have had a million-dollar budget and the play would still sink with the weight of its awfulness. Below, Eleanor Quinn is giving everything she’s got to one of the terrible lines she’s been dealt.
“I lahk a uniform on a man. Even bettah, I lahk the uniform on the floor next to my bed.”
Eleanor is playing Layla, the voluptuous nurse on the bleak army base. Layla makes the best of her situation by bedding enlisted men. The one she’s speaking to now as they pass an afterglow cigarette back and forth lazily in the midafternoon, in an empty barracks, is Corporal Mason, who will b
e murdered in the second act.
When Eleanor gets to this terrible, Mae West line, Cate and Stig cut their throats with invisible knives, hang themselves with imaginary nooses. The line is the cue for the closeted, jealous Sergeant Tragg—Corporal Mason is a hunk he’d like to bed himself—to come briskly through the door and discover them. Howard Foster, the mildly famous, occasionally Steppenwolf actor they’ve borrowed to add name recognition to the cast, is at the ready, behind the door, positioned to come abruptly in. He has a stomachache tonight and Cate is worried this will prevent him from bursting through with gusto. As often happens, it turns out she’s worrying about the wrong thing. What she should be worrying about is the crummy door, which is made of some pulpy wood that bloats in ambient humidity. They’ve planed it twice, but it appears to have swollen again and is now keeping Howard from doing any bursting at all.
“Fuck,” Cate says. Although they are so very close, only a few feet away, the distance they need to cover is, regrettably, vertical. They can’t drop straight down to help; they’d wind up in a pile of their own broken ankles. They have to run a gauntlet of steps and ladders to the stage.
Meanwhile, as Howard continues to give the door hearty thumps with his shoulder, Eleanor and Denny Cochran, who plays the corporal, at first pretend not to hear the thudding, and, with no further lines, start making out, then add some sexy moaning. A thin ripple of laughter lifts off the audience. After what seems like an hour but is probably no more than a minute, Cate and Stig reach the door. Stig nudges Howard aside while he hits the door with a brick wrapped in a sweatshirt. The scene lumbers on from there, a cart with a broken wheel.
* * *
Later, Cate is too dispirited to chew out the stage manager, who was smoking a joint out back when his door stuck.