GUD Magazine Issue 1 :: Autumn 2007

by GUD Magazine Authors

  "I've never had a successful affair. I don't know why I keep at it."

  Bolo-Beau is striding back from wherever it was he went.

  "I've got a pack of cigarettes in my purse,” I whisper hurriedly.

  "I take a break in fifteen if you want to join me out back."

  Delight flickers through her clear green eyes and suddenly I feel brave, reckless. I like her already. There is another person in this city of spiritual healers and chakra cleansers who eats red meat and craves cigarettes. There is another woman in a messy love affair uncertain of what she is doing.

  She makes me homesick. Granted, almost everything makes me homesick. Even though home was bad for me according to my therapist, and home was heartbreaking because of my adopted brother Neil, and home was painful due to my mother's refusal to speak to me. I came here to heal, and I'm so fucking healed I'm a thick, hard, impenetrable scab.

  I watch nimble Nadia work her sections like a ballerina's understudy, wishing I could shave inches off my height and add them to my bust. Being tall but not inclined toward modeling, basketball, or warehouse-stocking as modes of employment offers little satisfaction in such height. In movie theaters, people move away when I sit down. Men don't dare to ask me out, and when your mother and father are both under five foot three, it's easy to believe you don't really belong to them either.

  At seven forty-five, I pull my purse out of my employee cubby and pass conspicuously by Ceal's table with a raised eyebrow. She says something to Bolo-Beau that I can't hear and, after I've already lit my cigarette in the temperate evening, she joins me near the dumpster.

  "God, how do you work here?” she asks.

  I produce a cigarette before she has to ask for one and light it for her.

  "I don't eat the food."

  Ceal tosses her coppery hair and, though it should strike me as odd that we two strangers are smoking like old friends, I don't mind. If I had to choose between a night out with Nadia and a night standing around with Ceal doing not much more than this, I'd choose the latter.

  "So do you live in Sedona?” I ask.

  "Now I do. We'll see how long. Michael is challenging, but love is like that."

  I nod, trying to come up with a savvy response that doesn't give away my own unfortunate history. I can just about feel Neil's gaze on my neck, as if he's right there behind us. That brooding force of his when morals got in the way of things. I don't want to miss him, but I do.

  "And you?” Ceal asks, letting her cigarette burn down, awfully careless for someone who claimed to crave one.

  I feel the unusual urge for a second one.

  "California. Not really that far."

  Might as well be on the other side of the world.

  "Ahhhh.” She nods like she has just taken a psychic backseat inside my head and is reading the contents of my life. How nice, to be instantly known, to never have to explain oneself or beg for understanding.

  "Can I ask you something?” Ceal says, stubbing out the halfsmoked cigarette under her red snakeskin boot.

  I nod and gaze regretfully at the dead butt.

  "Do you think I'm a terrible person for sleeping with a married man?"

  Smoke catches in my lungs, or maybe just doubt, and I find myself deep in a coughing fit. Ceal pats my back with firm, splayfingered repetitions.

  "I guess that's a yes,” she says when I can stand up and breathe again.

  "No, no!” I say. “I don't ... I'm no one to ask about morals. And I don't even know you."

  Her green eyes ask a question I don't want to answer, but something about her, something about how much like me she seems, makes me willing to.

  But maybe the aliens have their own agenda with me, or maybe the vortex everyone is always talking about has taken hold of the situation, because Nadia peeks her head around the corner before I can reveal a single detail of my history.

  "Psssst, Amelia! Rosalie, she looks for you."

  Ceal seems horrified at being found back here, though all signs of her cigarette are crushed into the red dirt at our feet. She actually sneers at Nadia, and for a moment it feels like Ceal is just a projection of my mind created to say and do things I cannot. She smiles, apologetic, and runs off without another word.

  Nadia's expression is grim, like a child stumbling on her best friend trading secrets with another girl. “You know zat woman?” she asks.

  Though it isn't in my nature to lie when I don't have to, I do anyway. “Yeah, from California."

  Nadia blinks.

  "What does Rosalie want with me?"

  "Beats me,” Nadia says, clearly proud of this little piece of slang she has mastered.

  I tuck my cigs away in my purse and slouch back inside, longing for the smell of onions grilling, chicken roasting, things smoked and burnt and animal.

  Rosalie is at the computer, sweating. I have often thought that what with her preference for synthetic fabrics and fast food, if she weren't the owner's niece, she would never be allowed to run this place.

  "What is it?” I ask her, approaching the computer. Rosalie clicks somebody's tab up and prints it without looking at me once.

  "Yeah, look, I'm sorry to do this to you like this, but I'm gonna have to let you go."

  I search for the crack of that big yellow-toothed smile of hers, a loud “Just shitting you!” to come flying from her mouth. She has been known to play practical jokes.

  "Excuse me?” I say. “My shift isn't even over until ten."

  "We're slow tonight; you can go home early."

  I scan the restaurant for some sign that might illuminate this moment. Redhead and Bolo-Beau are gone and I suffer a flash of anxiety that something I said to her led to this.

  "Why?"

  "Well, to be perfectly honest, your smoking habit is really not in line with the concept of this restaurant."

  I want to smack Rosalie's glistening pock-marked cheek, a battlefield where acne has proved victorious. I want to grab her by the hair and toss her to the ground, start a catfight with claws out and lots of public yelling.

  "That's not in the Handbook,” I say. “It's perfectly legal to smoke outside.” And what about your artery-clogging cheeseburger habit, you disgusting troll? “That's it? My smoking is getting me fired?"

  "Yeah. That and I don't like you very much."

  I blink, then stroke my earlobe as if to tune in to the station that delivered Rosalie's words.

  "I don't know if you're aware that I can take this to court. Firing someone because you don't like them is illegal!"

  Rosalie scratches her nose, actively, and then sniffs. “Yeah, well, you always take extra-long breaks—which you've been warned about—longer than the allotted fifteen minutes. And besides, you have no proof of shit."

  I gawk at Rosalie, trying to understand this sudden cruelty. She's never even said a mean word to me. Granted, she hasn't exactly been friendly either.

  I glance over at Nadia, who is looking at me, and it hits me, she knows. Though I want to spend time with her about as much as I want to gorge on shiitake mushroom pudding, now I have to go out with Nadia tonight. To pump her for information.

  "Well fuck you very much,” I say, taking off my apron. Throughout this whole conversation, Rosalie hasn't looked at me once.

  I walk to the center of the dining room and announce, “Well, why would I want to work in a place with cockroaches running around? And what's the point of lying to customers, huh? I mean, lard is animal fat, Rosalie, no matter how you swing it."

  For the first time, the whole restaurant has ceased eating to pay attention to me, including UFO Man. And Nadia.

  "See you tonight, Nadia. My place, ten-thirty!” I say and shoot out of there, feeling tears of injustice just waiting to break on through.

  Out the door, out into the last minutes of daylight. I turn toward the horizon and catch sight of something I have always heard of but never seen: that mysterious flash of green at the finale of a sunset that seems to signify a transition. B
itter tears streak my foundation as I walk home to my apartment.

  Once home, I shower and change into jeans, a soft T-shirt, and a cardigan. As I tuck my wallet into my pocket, I realize that I left all my tips in the apron I so cavalierly dropped on my departure from Tempe's. I can kiss that money goodbye.

  It is still only nine o'clock and I have to wait for Nadia for another hour. I'm regretting my decision to go out with her more as every minute passes. I could be out when she comes by. Or I could take a few of the Vicodin I have left over from ankle surgery and be in a deep, imperturbable stupor.

  Instead I slip in a disc of The X-Files, comforted by insecure, fact-seeking Scully, whose red hair reminds me of Ceal. Rather than try and figure out why a stranger would ask me such a personal question about her infidelity, I remind myself that a waitress is in a position to be projected upon at all times. She becomes whoever the client wants her to become. Nadia could practically run a service getting guys off just by serving them food in her skimpy arrangements.

  So then, why is it that a waitress cannot be what it is that she wants to be? Why is it that I could not be the upstanding daughter that Dick and Virginia Batz thought I was? I can hear my mother's voice drilling into a high whine, the kind that signifies horror and lack of understanding. “How ... could ... you?"

  And me, bent forward like a penitent sinner begging forgiveness, my knees wet with tears where my face and skirt had momentarily been joined.

  Why did I come to Sedona?

  On my television screen, Agents Mulder and Scully are haggling out the details of an impossible crime. Mulder thinks it's aliens again; Scully is demanding the truth of the situation, listing out rational courses of action—though she seems to know it's hopeless with Mulder, a determined believer. Their onscreen sexual tension is palpable, and almost as forbidden as my own love.

  Two episodes later, Nadia is knocking at my door, or so I hope.

  I peek through the tiny porthole in my door but see no one, and I am in no mood for practical jokers or ghosts. I open the door to find Nadia kneeling, tying the laces of a pair of definitively un-sexy tennis shoes. She's wearing khakis and a shapeless blue shirt. Her coat of slick work makeup is gone and she hasn't applied any party-girl makeup. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail. Her complete under-transformation is as shocking as if she'd shown up naked, painted like a Van Gogh again. While she could never be completely unattractive, in the dim light of my hallway, a man wouldn't look twice at this Nadia.

  "Vell,” she says, in that beguiling, cute accent. “You've had rough night."

  "Yes,” I say. Now that she is not doing something worthy of derision, and not in her usual mode, I feel shy, like we are on a blind date.

  "You are not too tired?” she asks.

  "I'm exhausted, but what the hell? I might as well have some fun before the new job search."

  Nadia glances around my apartment as if looking for something specific. Then she takes my arm. “Let's go,” she says in a very convincing American accent.

  "Oh, cute, can you do other accents too?"

  She sighs as we walk to her car, a maroon Honda. She lets me in and then gets in herself.

  "Yes, but I prefer the Russian one.” Again, she says this with a very accurate American accent.

  "You mean the American one?"

  She laughs and then adopts a hysterical California valley-girl accent. “Like, Amelia, I totally would've thought you'd have seen through this by now."

  I stare at her. Flagship Awareness docks in my brain.

  "You're not Russian?"

  "Well, I am by blood."

  I shake my head as Nadia begins to drive. Naturally, I want to ask, “Why the subterfuge?” But I've got a feeling the truth is just going to come oozing out of the cracks any minute, no matter what I do. It's the feeling you get right as you realize that everything is about to be revealed, the curtain pulled rudely from before the wizard's chamber, the audience about to gasp with horror and delight—a quivery sense of wanting it all to stop and wanting it all to move faster at the same time. Just like I felt before I left home.

  I can still see my mother twisting a napkin into a tight spiral over the dinner table, glancing nervously at my father and at Neil and saying, “You're not ashamed of your family, are you? I mean, we wouldn't embarrass you in front of your young man."

  Neil casting his eyes downward. Oh, how I wanted to kiss the crown of his head just then.

  My father, reaching for the salad bowl, pausing, looking up at me with that cruel squint at the corners of his eyes. “You're not a lesbian, are you?"

  Who would have foreseen that Neil, in his urge to defend me, would have given us away? “Stop badgering her. She's not a lesbian. She doesn't bring home any guys because she's ... with me."

  My unspoken thought, But it doesn't stop you from bringing home girls!

  My mother laughing first, because of how little sense his statement made. My father choking on a carrot.

  "What do you mean, she's with you?” he demanded.

  And Neil, oh Neil. I felt the world shift underneath me then, the table and the food and our parents crumbling into fragments.

  I wanted to believe he did it out of love, but I am beginning to think, with time and distance as powerful lenses, that it was the only way he knew how to stop: by turning them against me.

  "But he's your.... You're not serious.... Ohhhhhh.” My poor mother.

  "We're adopted! Not the same blood!” I remember crying, throwing my napkin up in the air like I had just graduated from somewhere. My grandmother's old green light fixture over the table swung as if someone had pushed it out of their way.

  "You're awfully silent,” Nadia says. “I didn't mean to shock you."

  I turn and look at her soft skin and thin, pretty neck. I can't get used to this modest, American Nadia.

  "First, where are we going, and second, why are you being so secretive?"

  "To my studio. I don't think of it as secretive, more like discriminating."

  "Art studio?"

  She nods.

  "You knew I was being fired, didn't you?"

  Nadia turns left down a road lined with scraggly junipers and we park. I don't see any studio.

  "I knew. Rosalie's just a bitch."

  We get out of the car and I suck in that tangy southwestern air that smells like spit on a metal pole.

  "I don't see any studio."

  "We have to walk a little way. Not far. I have a flashlight."

  We begin to trek out over a rocky hillside and I am surprised by the emotions passing through me like sonic vibrations, making my torso clench and shiver, tears dance behind my eyes. I have no friends here. I have no lover. I have no family.

  "Did she tell you why she fired me? Did she tell you she ‘just didn't like me'?"

  Nadia laughs, though it doesn't seem to be at me.

  "She said it was cutbacks, that the restaurant is losing business. Oh, here—” Nadia pulls an envelope out of her pocket. It's full of cash.

  "My tips?"

  "I rescued them for you."

  I tuck the envelope into my back pocket, and then I trip over something I can't see, a small pothole or a rock. Nadia reaches for my hand and pulls me up. Before long, we are at a small gardener's shack, or so it appears in the outline of her flashlight.

  She digs a key out from a hiding place I can't make out, unlocks the door, and ushers me into what is a fairly bare room. No canvases are strung on the walls, nor any sculpture or collage. There is one bouquet of dried roses on a small table and four wardrobes with mirrors on their doors and a Chinese screen depicting rather lewd, though beautifully drawn, characters. I have a sudden urge to run, Nadia transforming into some crazy serial killer in my mind.

  "Um, there's no art,” I say, my voice shaking.

  She nods, like she has only just discovered this fact. I wonder for a moment if she might have some kind of multiple personality disorder.

  "Watch.” She opens
a wardrobe and pulls out a handful of clothing, then disappears behind the screen. I shiver, though it isn't really cold.

  She is humming something that sounds like a Billy Joel song. “Just the Way You Are."

  When she steps out from behind the curtain, Nadia as I recognize her is completely gone. I see a teenage girl, not more than perhaps sixteen, hair in side pigtails, short Catholic-schoolgirl-style skirt, white T-shirt. It's not really the clothes, though; it's some attitude, some persona she's embodying.

  "Excuse me,” she says. “Do you know what time the bus gets here? I'm s'posed ta meet my mom in an hour at the mall."

  Nadia then snaps her posture up into adult Nadia, though in her getup the effect is a bit jarring. “Performance art on a real-life scale,” she says.

  "You're an actress?"

  She extends her arm in a flourish, like a dancer.

  "Nay, arteest, not actress,” she says in her Russian accent, which, with reality on my side, I realize is a little off, as Ceal must have noticed.

  "For what? I mean, I don't get it."

  Nadia doesn't answer. She opens another wardrobe and points to a tree of wigs.

  "Put one on,” she says.

  I shake my head. This all feels so weird, so overwhelmingly bizarre.

  "Try it. I don't have lice."

  I look over the assorted fake scalps: a shiny red bob, a curly mane, a Cher-like trail of long black hair. I choose that one, so different from my own frizzy blonde hair.

  I put it on and Nadia adjusts it for me, tucking my hair in properly until it does actually seem as if this hair could have grown from my head. She sorts through other wardrobes until she settles on a dusky purple prom-type gown with spaghetti straps and a tight bodice. She hands it to me and, though this whole scenario is strange, there is something I like about permission to transform into someone else.

  I move behind the screen and slip off my jeans and T-shirt, kick out of my tennies. The material of the dress is cold and smooth and I slide into it with ease. Despite the fact that it is made for a woman with bigger breasts than mine, when I come out and peek in the mirror, I like what I see.

  Nadia smiles.

  "Why do you keep all this out here away from civilization?"