by Rita Ciresi
“VP!”
“There are six VPs at Boorman, and three senior VPs and even an executive VP, and the whole corporation has more layers than my mother’s lasagne—”
“But, Lise, a conservative corporation like that—and didn’t you tell me there was a frosty dyke somewhere?”
I nodded. “She’s right on top of him—”
“And didn’t you tell me you were working on some kind of sexual-harassment code?”
“I just edited some of the language, the policy isn’t put into place—”
“Oy, how the plot thickens! Lisa, I think you do have a bad boy on your hands.”
“Really?”
“I mean, this guy’s either stupid or a reckless sonofabitch.”
“He’s anything but,” I said.
“A guy in his position? Screwing around with someone in your position? He’s risking something. He’s risking a lot. But maybe he gets off on the risk. Or maybe you’re the one getting off on it. Or maybe you both have a death wish.”
“Maybe you should stop playing analyst.”
“Well, let me ask you this: Would you still go with him if you didn’t have to hide it?”
“It would change things.”
“For better or worse?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Tell me something else then.”
“Like what?”
Dodie asked me the question that Strauss insisted I not answer, at least for the moment. “Tell me you love him.”
I hesitated. “I love his elbows,” I said. “Do you know what I mean?”
“Can’t say that I relate—”
“I mean, I want to stroke them all the time. When I see him in the hallway at Boorman, I want to grab his collar. I want to reach out and touch the cuffs of his shirt—”
“Where does he buy these shirts?” Before I could admit it was Brooks Brothers, Dodie said, “Cut the shit, Lise. Do you or don’t you love him?”
“I’m crazy about him, but I don’t know why—”
“Does he love you?”
“Yes. He told me. But he said he fought against it.”
“That’s even better,” Dodie said. His eyes lit up. “That’s like Pride and Prejudice!” Dodie, too, had the hots for Mr. Darcy, and he even had memorized that great passage where Darcy burst in upon the high-spirited Elizabeth and let down his ultradignified guard to passionately confess his feelings. He now quoted it: “ ‘In vain have I struggled! It will not do! You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you!’ ”
“Cut it out.”
“Christ! Why can’t someone say that to me?” Dodie sighed. “Congratulations, Lise.”
“Thank you.”
Dodie looked out at the scrubby pines along the side of the road. He added, almost under his breath, “Don’t undervalue it.”
Yes, Mom, I wanted to reply. But something inside me, my throat or my heart, felt so choked up, I was afraid I would begin to cry if I spoke. Finally I eked out an innocuous question—how much longer did I have to keep driving?—and Dodie said we had a while to go yet.
Dodie adjusted the cardboard container of coffee between his legs. His voice sounded pensive as he asked, “How do men—straight men—tell women they’re in love with them? I don’t ask to be facetious. I truly want to know.”
I gave him a facetious answer. “They give you lingerie. That comes on padded hangers. That isn’t red. That has a cotton crotch.”
“Sounds like somebody has a sister—”
“And they say, Wear this? For me?”
“You’ve got to get him to change the intonation. Get rid of those question marks. You want a man who commands you: Wear this. For me.”
“How do you know what I want?”
“You said you wanted rough and rude, not gentle and polite.”
“I’m not into being degraded.”
“People are degraded every day,” Dodie says. “For starters, we get up and go to work. And we say to our boss, ‘Good morning, how was your weekend?’ when what we really want to say is, ‘Last night I dreamed you were lying at the bottom of an elevator shaft, and boy, did you look good there.’ Although I guess you don’t say that to your boss.”
“I’ve told you, he’s not really my boss—”
“Can he fire you?”
As I released some of the pressure on the gas pedal, the car slowed down. “Well. Yeah, sure, I guess he could—”
“He’s your boss then, baby. And if you’re not going to quit your job, you shouldn’t forget it.”
My stomach felt sick as I thought of how Strauss and I argued the weekend before, the rather uneasy peace we had made by phone while he was in Atlanta, his promise to bring me back the Cracker Jack surprise from Yankee Stadium, the permission I as good as promised to give him to talk to Peggy on Monday. My hand went up to my throat and landed, unconsciously, on the thin gold chain Strauss gave me, which still hung around my neck. Dodie, of course, noticed the gesture.
“Nice necklace. Another present?”
“Could be.”
Dodie’s eyes went lower. “But I see you left off his lingerie this morning.”
I snorted. “You once swore to me you never looked at tits.”
“How can I help it? You’re letting them all hang out.”
“Yeah, after watching you—and Hot Fuck—let it all hang out last night.”
“You don’t like 800, do you?”
“What do you see in him?” I asked. “Besides his beautiful bod and face?”
“Love is blind.”
“And stupid,” I added. “I mean, this guy went to Yale, but he can’t even spell fuck right?”
“I wouldn’t knock 800’s business if I were you,” Dodie said. “You now own significant stock in it, and it’s making you money hand over fist.” When I clucked my tongue, Dodie said, “Relax. It’s a good bet. Especially strong in new-product development.”
“Like what—French ticklers that taste like Left Bank croissants?”
“Actually, their latest is a talking dildo.”
I paused. “What does it say?”
I was sorry I asked, because Dodie—obviously feeling too mirthful from just a few sips of coffee—got right down to business. He said he was urging 800 to do dildos with accents. He said the Brooklyn version could call out, Hoddah, hoddah. He said the Southern version could hillbilly-holler, Y’all come! He said the Fourteenth-Street-and-below version could lisp, I’ve seen bigger assholes at the last staff meeting.
“Frankly,” I said, “I prefer my dildo to be the strong, silent type.”
“For you, then, we offer the ten-inch marital aid known as Big Swede—dumb and hard as a post—possessing the immigrant work ethic—gets the job done right for half the cost—”
“You are so full of shit.”
“Aren’t I, though? And don’t you love it. Stop the car. Pull over. Right now. On this stretch.”
To the right lay a short, sandy pull-off that at first I thought was a driveway. But it didn’t lead anywhere. There was nowhere to park but on the gravel that backed up against a thicket of pine trees and then a stretch of dunes on a lot that was clearly marked with so many for-sale signs it only served to indicate that the going price, even for the Hamptons, was astronomically absurd. The land also was marked as private property, but Dodie told me he spent the afternoon here just last week with 800, and not a soul appeared on the horizon to bother them.
“What about cops?”
“It’s Sunday morning. They’re in church or Dunkin’ Donuts, where they belong. Besides, Homer knows the owner if anyone kicks up a fuss. Let’s get on the beach.”
Dodie rested the coffee—which was probably cold—on top of the car. I put up the autoshade, because the sun already was rising above the trees. Hot sand sifted between our flip-flops and our feet as we climbed the dunes and walked down the wide expanse of land to the shore, where we sat close to the water like a couple of kids about to build mud
castles.
After I finished my first tepid coffee, I used the empty cup to idly dig up big clumps of sand. I tipped the cup and watched the particles run back onto the beach. Then I looked up at Dodie. In the bright sunlight the lines that ran from his nose to his mouth seemed deeper, and his hair, which I thought was cut too short, seemed thinner than the time I saw him last. He was right. We were getting old, too old to live like this. I was glad I couldn’t see myself.
“What happened last night?” I finally asked, in a roundabout way of telling Dodie: I heard you weeping.
Dodie shrugged. “Lovers’ quarrel.”
“You can’t tell me you love a man named Hot Fuck—”
“I told you his real name is Homer Francis. And really, I’m starting to wonder at the nature of your objections.”
“But you don’t have anything in common with him.”
“How do you know?”
“He’s not your type,” I said, violating the lesson I should have learned way back in eighth grade—never to criticize a friend’s romantic interest. “There’s something about him that spells trouble,” I said. “Don’t get into trouble, Dodie—”
“Too late.”
Dodie reached over, pulled the empty coffee cup from my hand, and flung it out toward the water, where it lay on the wet sand for a moment before a wave surged up, crumpled it, and took it back to sea. And then my cousin—with whom I had shared my secrets, my toothbrush and razor and bed, and his no-sex-tonight pajamas—told me his latest lover might have looked like King Midas, but what Dodie had given him in return was anything but gold.
My bout with mono in high school was my first taste of mortality, an illness that mocked the slow decline of the body just before death: the breathlessness that came just from sitting up in bed, the disinterest in food, the inertia of my imagination, the lack of awareness of time, the heightened power of memory, the need to sleep and sleep and sleep and the blessed moments before I fell into unconsciousness, in which I seemed to feel the parts of my body shutting down, one by one—the lungs, the mind, the heart.
When Dodie told me he had tested positive, I imagined that same slow decline overcoming his body, and then I felt my own body all too well—the way it began to rock, the way men pray at the Wailing Wall, the way mourners keen. Dodie’s hand on my hand seemed the only thing tethering me to the earth.
Then I broke away and put my head in my hands, for my fear of touching Dodie suddenly was strong and even more overwhelming than the sobs that came out of my parched throat—so loud and ragged I wished I still had that empty coffee cup washed out to sea, so I could have scooped up a pile of sand and stuffed it into my mouth, silencing my voice forever.
“Please stop crying,” Dodie finally said.
“But I can’t. I can’t believe it, I don’t want to believe it, I’m crying for you—”
“Then put a lid on it. For me. Please.”
I wiped my nose on my arm. Then—because there was no other option—I blew my nose into the tail of my T-shirt. Dodie looked away. After I finally stopped sniffling, he said, “I knew I shouldn’t have told you. At least not without a jumbo box of Kleenex nearby.”
He gave me a sad smile. But I didn’t dare do anything more than nod, until I finally got a grip and asked, “How long have you known?”
“For sure? A couple of weeks. But since the beginning of summer I had a feeling. I didn’t put it together. I didn’t want to put it together. That weekend I came up to see you. Remember, I had the runs?”
“You said you’d eaten Mexican—but why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t know then. Right after I came back I started to think—”
“But you should have said … all summer long … to carry that around without saying anything—”
“What was there to say? Beyond what I’ve just told you?”
“I could have helped you. I could have said I was sorry, oh, Dodie, I’m so sorry—”
“What good is sorry going to do me now? Oh. My God. That crying again … Lise, stop it. Enough. Really.”
“Maybe the test was wrong.”
“It wasn’t wrong. I have it. And so does Homer.”
“He gave it to you,” I said.
“George gave it to me.”
“Are you sure?”
“How can I be sure—”
“Ask him.”
“I can’t. He’s dead.”
I put my head back in my arms. “Oh God, oh God—”
“Please stop saying oh God—”
“But when did that happen? How did it happen?”
“Pneumonia. His mother called me. Fourth of July. She accused me of giving it to him. That was some great conversation I had with her, trying to tell her it was her son who messed around behind my back, after we both agreed—oh, Lise, we both agreed we were going to be careful—why didn’t he just take a gun and put it to my head? He did me in, I’m sure it was him, but there isn’t any way of tracking it, and even the doctor said it could have been sitting around inside me for years. I mean, this stuff about it being in the blood supply is pretty scary.”
My stomach dropped. I looked out on the water, and the waves almost seemed to stop coursing in for a moment before the last whitecap crested and broke on the shore. “Dodie,” I said, trying to keep my voice level, all the while listening to it get higher and higher. “We shared your razor, remember, when I stayed at your place? I put a Band-Aid on your hand, remember, that time you came down too hard on the Spanish onion? Your nose was bleeding one time when we did some coke—”
“That was a long time ago.”
“—and we shot up together, remember, way back at Sarah Lawrence—”
“That was light-years ago.”
“You said years. Sits around inside you for years.”
“You get it from fucking, Lise, and we’ve never fucked, so what are you getting all bent out of shape about?”
“But, Dodie.” My voice jangled. “That coke. And the poppers. And the needle—and you and me and George, we all smoked off the same bong.… Oh God. How am I going to tell Strauss—”
“You aren’t. Don’t. You don’t have it.”
“But, Dodie. That’s wrong. That’s worse than George. I could be a loaded gun.”
Dodie bit his lip. We looked at one another, then looked away.
“Get the test,” Dodie said. “If you’re really worried, just get the test and find out for certain. Now calm down. You don’t have diarrhea, do you?”
I shook my head.
“Night sweats?”
“I always kick the sheets and blankets off, Strauss says I kick ’em—”
“Nothing swollen along your neck?”
“Is that how you found out?”
“The sweats came first. Then like—lumps, right here—like mono. When I got more runs, I was pretty sure that was it. Still, I kept hoping. God, I kept hoping.”
I looked into Dodie’s black eyes until I saw, in the wet reflection of his pupils, my own eyes beginning to well up with tears again. I reached out and clasped his hand. We sat there in the hot sun until we couldn’t stand the silence any longer. Then Dodie told me he had a weird memory the moment he found out his test results. It was a picture of Zio Gianni standing with his gut hanging out by the chain-link fence at the neighborhood YMCA, hollering at us kids above the rumble of the summer thunder, “Everybody out of the pool! Party’s over!”
Just the mere thought of Uncle Gianni—his threatening stomach, his Pacific theater tattoos, the way he squished his beer can in the palm of his hand—scared me. I shuddered. “How are you going to tell your mother?”
“I’m not,” Dodie said. “And you aren’t either.”
“But how will I hide it? When I see her?”
“You’re a good actress. Find a way.”
The lull of the tide coming in should have soothed me, but every sea gull swoop and caw made my nerves jump. “I’d give anything for a Valium,” I told Dodie.
“Or a lude—”
“It just so happens I have the next best thing.” Dodie looked up and down the deserted beach. Out of his shirt pocket he pulled a plastic Baggie tied with a red-and-white twist—two fingers’ worth of pot, which Dodie informed me was the very finest of Hawaiian sin-semilla, borrowed from 800 just that morning. “Now regardez: Ceci n’est pas une pipe?” Dodie pulled a very tiny pipe out of his shorts pocket, but I didn’t laugh. I kept staring at the mouthpiece until he looked at me and in a split second he read my mind—that I was frightened to share it with him.
“I don’t blame you,” he said.
He went down to the ocean and dredged the pipe in the salt water, then wiped the outside of the pipe on his T-shirt. He waited awhile for it to dry inside, then packed the pipe and handed it to me. I put it in my mouth and turned my head away from the water and the wind, and he tilted a silver lighter—also probably swiped from 800—down toward the bowl and lit up the pot. I took a megasuck of breath. It was the smoothest dope I had ever smoked. It hardly burned my throat, and it left me feeling like I was levitating toward the sky, like the slumber parties at which girls chanted incantations and then lifted one girl’s body up, on two fingers alone, toward the ceiling. I passed the pipe to Dodie. The waves lapped the sand, the grass rustled on the dunes, and Dodie’s body seemed close and far away from mine at the same time. We sat there for what seemed like forever.
“I’ve got to get out of this sun,” I finally said.
Dodie gave me a hand up. He offered to drive—slowly—back to the boat. But even though he clearly was in better shape, I hung on to my keys. I wanted to drive. Dodie had already taken me, on that morning, plenty of places I did not want to go.
The beach was wide, and it took awhile to climb back up to the dunes. Our feet sank so deep it seemed as if our flip-flops would leave a permanent impression on the sand. As Dodie and I rounded over the last dune, the sea oats cutting and chafing at our calves, I looked over at my Toyota, unable to believe my eyes. In my eagerness to get out on the beach and drink my coffee, I had turned the autoshade the wrong way. In large red capital letters it read: NEED HELP. PLEASE CALL POLICE.
“Smart move, Lise,” Dodie said, as we climbed into the car. “Good thing no coppers drove by.”