Miss Fortune

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Miss Fortune Page 20

by Lauren Weedman


  David suggests we skip going out after the movie to save money. We’re walking up to our apartment arguing about the apartment and which one of us drinks more alcohol when we get to our front door to find Ava-Rose sitting on the couch drinking hot tea with the door to the apartment wide open.

  “Don’t you watch horror movies?” I tell her. “Murderers love babysitters!”

  She responds in a very calm voice, “My safety and my happiness are under my control.”

  I grant her plenty of leeway, but keeping the door wide open in our hood at one A.M. is too far. Our apartment has a lot of foot traffic running beside it from the street to the back alley behind the building. We’re the only building in the neighborhood without a front gate, making it the perfect shortcut to get from the park across the street to the back alley. There are some things that nobody feels comfortable doing in public that they will happily do in the privacy the alley provides, like changing socks after a long day or shooting up into their scrotum. We’ve had packages stolen off our front steps numerous times. Somewhere out there are some beach pirates, as a posse of homeless men who live on the beach like to be called, using Christmas coasters from a year-round holiday store in Indianapolis for their Mad Dog 20/20 and wearing Thomas the Tank Engine toddler underwear.

  Ava-Rose is looking at me like I’m being insensitive to the plight of my fellow human beings. I’m not. There is a park across the street from us, and the folks who spend their days there are a part of our community. Some of the regulars I’d consider friends. The lady who spit on Jack on his way to school isn’t just the spitting lady; she’s my spitting lady. The bearded man with the giant beer belly who reads the newspaper saw me walking through the park with Leo once, irritated that there was no room for us to throw a football, counting, out loud, all the bodies that were spread out and sleeping in the park. Right as I got to twelve, he sat up and nudged his girlfriend, who was lying on a blanket next him. “I hope she’s counting to figure out how many sandwiches to bring and not bullets.” He called me out and he was right. I’d been walking around wishing I could rearrange the world for Leo like a Nazi propaganda film director.

  “Listen, Ava-Rose. Just this week I had a guy, completely drunk, covered in blood splatters and dried pee, come up to me as I was walking out of the apartment and try to grab a cookie out of my hand. And when I told him, ‘I don’t think so, buddy,’ he yelled at me to ‘fuck off.’”

  Ava-Rose asks me the same question that every one of my friends asked me after I told them the story: “Why didn’t you just give him the cookie?” The truth was that I’d been saving the last three cookies to eat on my ride to work, but I didn’t want to get distracted from the issue, so I tell her, “It wasn’t about the cookie; he was threatening me.”

  Ava-Rose stands up from the couch and grabs her leg in one hand in some yoga circus move and looks me right in the eyes—like she likes to do—and gives me the report on Leo.

  “So, I didn’t put the nighttime diaper on because Leo told me he doesn’t need them anymore because he just holds his penis shut all night, and I didn’t do the dishes because there were some dishes from when I wasn’t here and I was scared that if I did them it would be implying that I thought you should do your dishes. Does that make sense?”

  David starts to insist on walking Ava-Rose to her car. “This neighborhood can get very ‘land of the zombies’ at nighttime,” he tells her, but she peacefully refuses.

  “Are you guys trying to act like you live in some tough neighborhood? You live in Santa Monica, come on.”

  She gives me another hug, whispers, “That must have been a really special cookie,” winks, and walks out of the apartment with her shoes in her hand, barefoot. “And by the way—I love your apartment. I would kill to live here.”

  Date night ends with us listening to the sounds of the Florida newlyweds having sex for forty-five minutes.

  At three A.M., I wake up to find David not in bed. When I realize that he isn’t next to me, my heart starts racing, which seems a bit of an extreme reaction when he could have been having a pee or eating a bowl of cereal. I walk out to the living room, and there he is sitting in the dark watching The Walking Dead, wearing his sunglasses with a glass of whiskey on the table next to him.

  I ask him why he’s wearing sunglasses and he answers me like it was the most ridiculous question a person could ask another person.

  “So I can see the TV, Lauren.”

  It gives me an awful feeling of dread that seems out of proportion to the situation. Maybe seeing a man sitting in the dark with sunglasses on in the middle of the night stirs up repressed memories of being date-raped by Stevie Wonder. But I doubt it. Stevie is an angel visiting us from another planet, here to spread love. All I know is that it bothers me far more than it should.

  The Florida newlyweds are having sex all the time.

  “Okay, she’s giving him a blow job in their kitchen right now, so they’ll be moving to the bedroom in about ten minutes,” I say to Christina on the phone.

  Christina thinks I should write an anonymous note.

  “You’d be doing her a favor. They’re the kind of people that will always be living in apartments, so you’d be teaching her a life lesson.” She tells me she’d offer to do it but she’s super-busy dealing with that “new wannabe singer idiot” who moved in above her. “The police wouldn’t let me file a complaint about her singing in the shower but now her dumb-ass cat is knocking things off her bookshelf every morning, I totally have a case, but I have to act fast.”

  I write a note on typewriter paper in big block letters that looks like a first grader copied it off a chalkboard for handwriting class.

  The note says, “I’m so glad you guys are having a healthy sex life, but I live in the apartment building next door and would appreciate it if you’d close your windows.”

  I watch their doorway for them to leave, and once I’m sure they’re gone I run out and stick it in their mailbox. My hands are shaking like I’m planting a bomb. As soon as it’s in the mailbox, I freak out. Why didn’t I write it with my left hand? I forgot to melt wax on my fingers to hide fingerprints!

  Today I don’t even bother to make an excuse. “I’m going to the garage to weigh myself.”

  I pull the garage door open, a spring breaks and the door comes crashing down on my head. Before I know it, I’m in tears rolling on the ground in pain and hear the sound of Leo laughing. I look up and see him pretending to drink from a mud-encrusted liquor bottle he’s pulled out of the bushes next to our building. David must have heard me scream when I hit my head because he comes running around the corner in his sunglasses—“Lauren, you can’t leave the front door open like that! Leo went running out and I didn’t even know he was gone!”

  He walks over to Leo, takes the Mad Dog bottle away from him, and puts it back in the bushes. “David, throw it away—don’t put it back.”

  “No, my heart goes out to these guys. I’d be mad if my stash was suddenly missing and I had to go to sleep sober,” he says to me, and walks away with Leo.

  Have I done something to David that I forgot about? Crashed his car? Had sex with his brother? I follow them inside and wait until Leo is down for a nap to ask him what is going on.

  “You told me that you were going to give me credit for helping you when you produced Bust, but you never did. My name wasn’t in the program.”

  “David, that was like seven years ago . . . Are you serious? I can’t remember but I think the programs had already gone to the printer and . . .”

  My god, he’s obviously been looping this story in his head for years.

  “Oh. You can’t remember.”

  So I guess I did crash his car while having sex with his brother. He doesn’t feel appreciated. Oh god, that’s the worst. No, the worst is that it was seven years ago and I can’t do a thing about it.

  “Well, Davi
d, you look real pretty.”

  I’m not that funny anymore. Once that’s gone I can’t fall back on my looks. Oh boy. We need a new start. How on earth did he get so angry at me? What have I done? What can I do? Outside of anal, I’m open to suggestions, because I am completely confused as to why he is looking like . . . he hates me. It would be so awful, to be hated by the one person who knows me.

  • • •

  Eating breakfast while I’m checking for apartments for rent, I see Joel’s child bride walk by our window and there’s a woman with her. She’s got short spiky blond hair on top of an older version of the young bride’s face. Her mother. The two of them are chatting away and completely ignoring Joel, who runs behind them trying to get their attention. “Why don’t I take you guys to a movie! Let me take you to a movie!”

  His wife turns around and yells “No!” and keeps talking.

  “But it will be a funny one. Tell your mom it’s a funny one.”

  Christina texts me: “WHAT THE FUCK, LAUREN?! HE’S CRAZY!”

  “She married him for a green card and he’s been putting together some wedding-bliss bed from Ikea and potting plants for his front steps like he’s a fucking newlywed! Oh my god. If the girl wasn’t Russian, I’d turn him in so fast, but the Russian mafia makes the Sopranos look like the fucking Girl Scouts.”

  At the end of the week, I hear a screaming fight. I’d miss one of the words and Christina would fill me in. “She didn’t do what on Tuesday?” I’d text Christina. “She didn’t call him after she got off work.” It’s an epic fight. If we weren’t scared of Joel being another Whitey Bulger, I’m sure someone would have gone over and tried to break it up.

  “Her voice is so calm because you can tell she doesn’t give a shit,” Christina texts me. It’s twenty minutes of yelling: “You whore! What the hell do you think you’re doing? I did all this for you and you don’t call me when you’re late?” Followed by silence. Followed by the sound of a suitcase being wheeled down the sidewalk.

  Christina texts me: “Jesus, that was quick.”

  David, who is the non-snoopiest, most mind-your-business, most anti-gossip man I know, opens the curtains and watches her go. She’s long gone and he’s still staring out the window.

  I feel completely alone. Like Joel must feel.

  Last night I brought up the issue of me not giving David credit for helping me with Bust again. He told me that I’d never believed in him, and I didn’t know to convince him how untrue that was. Saying it really loudly and pounding myself on the chest as I said it didn’t seem to help. He told me that I took all the glory for myself. “But what good is glory if you don’t have people you love to share it with?” I’d said. It sounded clichéd, but I meant it.

  He’s started to say things like, “Lauren, you’re the kind of person who . . .” I jump in as quickly as I can with “Is good with ducks?” When he said, “Who doesn’t care about people,” it was actually a relief, because while I didn’t love that, it wasn’t going to haunt me for days wondering if it was true. I can be easily convinced that I have a lot of displeasing personality traits, but not caring about people isn’t one of them. The other day a homeless guy asked me if I had any change I could spare and I told him no but I had a smooshed granola bar in my purse if he wanted it, and he said not only did he want it, but it was perfect because he couldn’t chew that well anyway and pointed to his toothless mouth. So don’t tell me I don’t care about people.

  David has been wearing his sunglasses constantly. He never takes them off. He brushes his teeth with them on.

  He’s leaving me—one body part at a time. My life has turned into a Raymond Carver story.

  One A.M. It’s completely quiet. No fake sex.

  The next day it’s quiet too. No fake laughter either. Oh god, I worry. Maybe it wasn’t fake and my note killed her spirit, made her feel ashamed. What if after this, she’s never able to relax or have an orgasm again? The first night after the note, I bet he wanted to have sex and she’d started crying, “No! No! Don’t you get it? I’m a freak!”

  I didn’t hear any crying. I heard nothing.

  I lay awake in bed, picturing her husband holding her as she sobs as quietly as she can. Her vagina has dried up forever like a bad apricot.

  The next morning, Florida girl is pulling a suitcase down the sidewalk. Oh my god, I’ve broken up the marriage. I text Christina. That’s two suitcases pulled by women whose marriages have fallen apart. One of the wheels on my roller bag is stuck. Not that it matters.

  “You’re insane. And if you did, who cares?” Christina says. “She probably takes her roller bag to the library with her. Listen, she and her husband are going to break up and the next guy she’s with will thank you for stopping those fake sex sounds. And so will every neighbor she ever has.”

  Later that day, on WestsideRentals.com I find an adorable Craftsman three-bedroom house in Santa Monica for twenty-five hundred dollars. Most houses go for at least five thousand. At least. I email the owner immediately and look out my window and see Lurch.

  Outside getting her mail. I walk out to the mailbox to see if she suspects me. The guilt is killing me. Marriage is hard. They didn’t deserve this. I go up to her and she grunts at me. It’s a friendly grunt.

  “Hey!” I say, full of guilt. “Man, I got a note in my mailbox from the neighbors complaining that our kid was too loud. It came from the building next to ours. Not our building. I think the building over there has some very unhappy people in it that won’t let people be happy. Geez. Anyway—I’m just going to ignore the note.”

  She looks directly at me. Her hair, beaten to death by curling irons, is held back on each side by barrettes intended for a little kid. She doesn’t look guilty. Or relieved. She just looks blank.

  “We’re moving,” she blurts out. “We were only living here until our house was ready. So I don’t really care.”

  Her head slumps to her chest and she shuffles away. Happy. She’s got her man. She doesn’t care what anyone in this building thinks of her because this was never her home anyway. Now that really is one Lucky Lady.

  A door opens. It’s Joel.

  “Listen, Lauren, let me ask you something.”

  Joel points to a large floodlight on the side of the building. “Okay, now, you ever see that light working?”

  I tell him that I hadn’t because it was true. I hadn’t.

  “It’s always been dark out here at night—right? ’Cuz that light—it’s never worked—right?”

  “Um, right . . . I didn’t even know it was there, actually.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Okay, well, I changed that light bulb and so now it’s working and I’ve been asking around and the other tenants are all saying how nice it is. How safe they feel now. Right? You feel safe?”

  I didn’t feel any safer.

  Joel touches his novelty hair and nods at me. “That’s right . . . you feel safe.”

  My phone rings. It’s Christina—

  “If Joel asks you if the light has ever worked before, say yes! He’s trying to extort money from the owners. So just say yes, it’s always worked! And, hey, what’s up with Ray Charles? I saw him coming last night and I was like, hey, freak, it’s nighttime. Take your sunglasses off. How do you stand it, Lauren? I don’t get it. Hey, do you ever wonder if something is going on with David and that babysitter? Not the New Agey one but the one with the big boobs?”

  She reads too many People magazines.

  Joel very patiently waits for me to get off the phone with Christina.

  “You done?”

  Yes, I’m done.

  “How long have you lived here?” Right as Joel asks me this, the light makes a popping noise and goes out.

  “Cocksucker!” Joel takes off his hat and stomps off to his apartment.

  By the time I get back inside, the owner of the
house has responded—

  “The place is yours! Enjoy! I’m currently tending to business affairs in Nigeria. Would you be so kind good friend to deposit a check for $9,000 as quickly as possible?”

  It’s a scam. A fake listing. That’s okay. Wherever you go, there you are. Right? We live eight blocks from the beach. #grateful #blessed

  I go into the living room determined to find a way to remind David who I am, who we are, and there he is, sitting in the dark watching The Walking Dead wearing his sunglasses again. I ask him if I can talk to him for a moment. He pauses the TV and turns his head toward me. I ask him if he could take his sunglasses off and he tells me, “No, Lauren, I can’t,” and un-pauses the show.

  Impending doom starts to make life feel surreal.

  At a dinner party I hear him telling a little clan of attractive women that he’s the sole caretaker of Leo. One of the women sits next to me at dinner and asks me if I’ve had a chance to meet that man over there, and points to David. “He’s amazing. He’s a widower and stay-home-dad taking care of his kid full-time . . .” She doesn’t even know I’m with him.

  In the car afterward I ask him why he said that. “You keep telling me how you’re ‘happier than you’ve ever been in your life’ being a stay-at-home dad, but you seem so unhappy. At least with me. I can’t take it anymore. Listen, David, if you’re not happy, if you don’t want to be married, then let’s split. We’ll be good co-parents. We’ll—”

  “Yes. I think we should.”

  Everything I say is a lie or a test. Remember?

  I didn’t mean it. I was only saying all that to try to scare him into showing a little love. But he jumped right on it. By the time we got home it was decided that we’d have a trial separation. In the apartment I tried to stifle my sobs so Christina wouldn’t call the cops on me.

 

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