by Lux Zakari
“Just tell me. I don’t have all day.”
“You better be real nice to me.” E.Y. sat back in her chair with an arrogant twitch to her eyebrow. “Because as soon as I tell you what I have to say, you will have all day. You’ll make there be all day.” She paused. “I don’t really know what I meant by that, but that excited me. I should write it down.”
James made a motion to leave but E.Y. stopped him with a hand on his arm. “You know I’ve been reading fan fic since I was about twelve,” she said. “I’ve read the good, the bad, and the stuff of panty combustion. Some were harder to classify. Have you ever heard of Green Butterfly?”
He regained his seat and shot her a look.
She nodded. “Right, why would you? Anyway, Green Butterfly wrote very weird fan fic that I found when I was sixteen or so. Like, her stories were all about you, but they were more like flash fiction than anything. Still, I remembered them being really interesting and different. Then one day, the site vanished. When I noticed, I dug up the writer’s email address and sent a message, asking what was up. She wrote back, saying she took the site down for ‘personal reasons,’ but she sent me all the stories as a Word file as, like, a ‘thank you’ for giving a fuck, I guess. Well, last night I randomly stumbled across that file, and I cracked that open for curiosity’s sake and guess who the author was?”
“Wade.”
“That is actually an awesome guess and I wish it were true, but no. It was Greer Balladine.”
James stared, unblinking, awaiting the punch line.
“That, of course, is the maiden name of your wife, or ex-wife, or whatever she is to you these days.” Her eyes glowed. “I understand now that ‘personal reasons’ in Greer talk translates to ‘I’m totally having sex with real-life James Venora now so to hell with these stories’!”
For a few long seconds, James could only lick his lips and open and close his mouth, not knowing what to say. Greer wrote the crazy stuff he’d been wrangling dating ideas from? She was one of them?
Finally, he asked, “Can I see?”
“Of course.” E.Y. slid the stack of printouts across the table and was kind enough not to smile. Instead, she now looked more serious than he’d ever seen her. “You can have them. Take them home if you want.”
“Thanks.” James stood, holding the papers and staring at the words, although at that moment he couldn’t comprehend anything they tried to tell him.
“James.” E.Y. actually looked like she was concerned about him. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” he said, heading for the door on numb legs. “Let me get back to you on that.”
James returned to his house, and as soon as he through the door, he was on the couch in the living room, scanning the printouts E.Y. had given him with a fervor that bordered on manic desperation.
The work of Green Butterfly—Greer Balladine nee Venora—was crude, with all lowercase letters and run-on sentences. It was also unlike all the other fan fiction E.Y. had force-fed him. For one, her stories—the ramblings of a sixteen-year-old written the year before they met—were not so much stories as they were shapeless, stream-of-thought scenes that sometimes barely reached a page in length. Her words were young and amateurish, but rhythmic, dreamy, and cryptic. He didn’t know whether he was truly reading fan fiction or if something else was at work. They were so fragmented and random, they were almost artful, like the piece “Blonde”:
that boy, that james boy, the one with the long hair, the hair to hide behind, the hair to grasp in the throes of passion, the hair in tangles that begs to be combed by a feminine touch.
it’s the delilah in me. it’s thanks to tiger beat, supplying me with glossy centerfolds of him looking his absolute worst. but i hang those centerfolds on my wall anyway because his hair was in his blue eyes, giving him that dangerous, devil-may-care, oh-so-mysterious, touch-me-and-take-care-of-me look. he stepped out of my dreams, singing catchy choruses fresh on the brink of puberty with his blond hair streaming behind him.
that boy, with his hair, stood out in the crowd of xy chromosomes like a yellow flare, letting me know that he thinks different, he feels different, he was different. he wouldn’t see me through the foggy goggles of a seventeen-year-old boy with frosted hair and a football for a brain.
no, he, with the long hair, spoke to me with his locks, saying, “i like guitars and talent and creating and eccentric girls that keep me on my toes.” enter eccentric girl—me. i walk in a room like a tickertape parade and he takes notice. he thinks, “here comes the girl who will inject some meaning, some fun, some life into my life.” and he’d be right.
from that point on, we’d hold hands until our palms grew wet and our fingers went stiff, and we’d pass each other secret smiles like seventh-grade love notes. but best of all, when i’d be feeling sad, i’d stand on my tippy-toes and wrap my arms around his neck and lace my hands in his hair, little blond ropes around my fingers. he’d kiss my forehead in sympathy, and his hair would hang around us like curtains, like vines, like a veil.
James was enraptured and unsettled. Especially disconcerting was that the writer wasn’t just a faceless, morose Lolita with an Angelfire page and a celebrity crush. This was Greer, his frosty wife, the mother of his children, who never batted a goddamn eye in regards to anything he did, ever. Now this. What a fucking poker face.
Why had Greer never told him about this? Why had she never shown this side of her to him? Worry flickered through him. What if she had, and he’d been so blind and wrapped up in himself he’d never noticed? It was entirely possible.
One story, “Base,” particularly resonated with him:
it isn’t supposed to be like this. he’s supposed to be in love with her.
and james was—at first. so it had appeared. maybe in some strange way he still is in love. this is just what happens when you love a musician: you cease to exist. you become predictable, reliable. you become “base” in a game of tag, with everyone running around and having fun. eventually, they rush to the safe zone when they’re tired, but when everything dies down and grows too dull to stay, everybody takes off at full speed. base can’t take after them. base is just there, always there, until someone comes running back.
it wasn’t like this in the beginning when james wasn’t famous. he’d always been around then. it had been fun to dream big with him, to talk of him being famous, to send off demo tapes with him, to talk about how good life would be once he became a household name. but everyone has dreams. everyone talks big, finds meaningless ways to pass time and reasons to live.
he’s beautiful when he plays the piano. he’d always been beautiful, everyone knew that. it was how he became so well known so fast. what’s more is that he’s not just talented; he’s good on the inside. he’s worthy of everything he gets. maybe that just makes things worse.
but he just doesn’t get it. he doesn’t get that she doesn’t get enough. the quick phone conversations and the moments he’s home are brief and few, and they just aren’t the same as if he was always in town. every other couple looks so happy to her with their hands locked together. isn’t she worthy of that? he has what he wants, so why can’t she as well?
to love, you must sacrifice. she sacrifices all the time. she sacrifices so much when she sees him smiling on the cover of magazines. she sacrifices so much when she sees how much the girls love him with a kind of passion she fears she’ll never be able to show. she sacrifices so much that she doesn’t know if she has anything more to give up, or what she’s giving everything up for anymore.
she had feared he would’ve forgotten her by now, but he is here now, in the next room, stretched out across the bed with a sleepy smile across his face. she is in the bathroom, trying not to cry. she doesn’t know why she isn’t used to this by now; they have never had a “normal” relationship. she believes that she deserves one, but ones can’t help whom it is that she loves.
would it be so terrible if everything were to end? maybe. deep dow
n, though, james is her “base” as well. he is what she knows. the only problem is that she is content to stay and not run. why does everyone always want to run?
she hears the bed squeak, and there’s a knock at the door. he yawns and tells her to come back to bed. his voice is sleepy but satisfied. he always appears so satisfied.
she knows she could be just anybody. that’s what kills her the most. but she dries her eyes, opens the door, and falls into his arms, trying to enjoy what she can.
James couldn’t have felt more like a jerk. She’d written the story before they’d met, but had he wound up making her feel like the girl in “Base”? When she was sad, had he ever held her like she’d described in “Blonde,” like she’d wanted?
He called E.Y. “What am I supposed to do now?”
“Well, if you decided that you do, in fact, want her back, then get her back. You have the blueprints of how she wants to be seduced. Go for it.”
He paged through the writings E.Y. had given him and had no clue where to even begin. Blueprints? Hardly. One of her stories—”Hey, You”—was nothing but dialogue. He stared at the words like they were hieroglyphics, and him without the Rosetta Stone. “I have no idea how to go for it.”
“You’ll figure it out, James,” E.Y. said. “You’ll figure it out because you want to figure it out.”
He was grateful for E.Y.’s faith, but he had a feeling it was going to take a different skill set than the one he’d used with the other women, and despite being with Greer for nearly ten years, he couldn’t say where to begin.
James rang the doorbell to Pierce’s townhouse, an act that was followed by the usual cacophony of tiny feet rushing toward him. The door swung open to reveal Noah’s toothy manic grin, tousled mop of blond hair, and a lack of any clothes aside from Spiderman underwear. “Hi, Dad.”
“Hey, buddy. Where are your pants?”
“Gone!” Noah let out the laugh of a madman and went tearing into the living room, flinging himself on the couch beside his sister, who stared at the TV in a trance. She wore a ballerina tutu paired with an Indian headdress and was drinking chocolate milk from a plastic Disney Princess goblet.
Amie glanced James’ way with mild interest as he entered the room then did a double-take between him and Peter Pan, her face alighting with a toothy smile. “Hi!” She stretched her arms toward him, zombie-style, revealing skin covered in cartoon renderings of butterflies, mermaids, and pirates. “I got tattoos.”
“I see that.” He approached his daughter and gave her a kiss on the forehead. He noticed as his presence rapidly lost its novelty; Amie tilted her head, attempting to see around him at what Captain Hook was up to now. “Where’s your mom?”
“In here.”
He followed the sound of Greer’s voice into the dining room, where she sat at a blond-wood dining room table, back-lit by sunlight streaming in through the glass-paneled door. Books and papers surrounded her laptop, open in front of her, and Pierce was mercifully nowhere to be found.
Greer looked up as he entered and gave him a smile. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself.” He dug his hands in his pockets and nodded to her mess. “What’ve you got going on here?”
“An awesome idea.” Her light brown eyes glittered and she scraped her teeth across her bottom lip as if fighting off an excited smile. “I thought a fun way to promote myself would be to make a few free e-cards available on my website.” She waved him over and turned the laptop in his direction as he slid into the chair beside her. “This is my Halloween one. What do you think?”
She’d designed a 1950s-style illustration of a skeleton in a witch costume, a witch in a vampire costume, and a vampire in a skeleton costume. The three trick-or-treaters stood in a field of pumpkins beneath a starry night sky. James couldn’t help but match Greer’s smile; her happiness and pride was contagious.
“That’s cute,” he said. “It looks like a ‘Powerpuff Girls’ cartoon.”
“I can’t believe you just brought up ‘The Powerpuff Girls,’” Greer said. “That’s what’s cute.”
He smiled, feeling heat rise to his cheeks. What was he—twelve, blushing because some girl called him cute? Greer wasn’t even “some girl,” either; he’d been married to her for years.
But, as recent events reminded him, she was a stranger to him.
She turned the laptop toward herself again, and he watched her, not truly knowing how to talk to her. She’d had a whole secret life she’d never bothered to share with him, even when it concerned him. How was he supposed to talk to her now? What else was she hiding?
A better question was “How did Greer suddenly become the most fascinating person in the world?” He had so many things he wanted to ask her and had no idea where to start without giving away what he knew or looking like a lovesick lunatic.
Greer caught him staring and he quickly looked in the direction of the living room, where his children giggled on the sofa. “So Amie’s turned biker babe and Noah’s inching toward nudism,” he said. “Looks like I’m missing a lot.”
“Yeah, Amie got bored with face painting and instead makes me give her a new temporary tattoo on her arm before school every day. As for Noah, I’d rather him be a nudist than pee on the furniture. And it means having to do less laundry.”
“Makes sense.”
“You should’ve seen them last weekend,” she said. “They were playing with the old Halloween makeup, and Amie had eye shadow up to her eyebrows and Noah had just drawn a dark red line across his forehead to be Rambo. Then they had me record them doing a music video.”
Would that he could’ve seen them last weekend, and all the ones before it. “What song?”
“Let me show you.” She reached for her smartphone and, after a few moments of her thumbs crashing on the screen, passed it to James. For three minutes, he was treated to the sight of his kids mumbling the verses and screeching the chorus to Johnny Preston’s “Running Bear,” their happy, painted faces comparable to circus clowns.
“Oh my God.” He laughed. “Is this going on YouTube?”
“I wouldn’t be so cruel. I want them to have prom dates someday.”
Pain filled his heart at everything he was missing. He shouldn’t have to be hearing about this secondhand; he should know about it already. This was his family.
“So what’ve you got planned for them this weekend?” Her voice was even and suggested no feelings of betrayal, no reminder that they were getting divorced, no reminder they were even married. This was how they were going to talk to each other from now on; it was going to be all lighthearted chats about the kids and her business and his tours, all fluff and fresh starts. It sounded like it ought to be a good thing. Why did he feel so miserable?
He cleared his throat. “Wade wants to take Noah to the comic book store, so I’m going as the wallet. As for Amie…” He trailed off, ashamed that he had no idea how he might go about entertaining his own children for the following two days.
“You could take her to the party store,” Greer said. “She’s been really into dressing up lately. Even though it’s more than two months away, she already knows what she wants to be for Halloween.”
“Which is?”
“A Valley Girl.”
“A Valley Girl?” He wrinkled his nose in confusion. “I don’t even know what that is.”
“I didn’t think she did either, and when I asked her what she thought they were, her definition was just that they say things like, ‘Gag me with a spoon.’”
“What has she been watching?”
“Your daughter’s become very dramatic, James. The other day she told me she wants a piano so she can lie on top of it.”
“She can lie on top of mine. There, the crisis of what to do with Amie for the weekend has been diverted.”
Greer’s lips parted in mock surprise. “You’d let her in your sanctuary? I never thought there’d come a day.”
“Yeah, well…” He’d no explanation as to why his studio
had been off limits before. Yes, it’d been his one place he could truly call his own, and he knew that it was okay. So why did he feel so guilty about it? Greer also looked embarrassed, and he didn’t know whether that made things better or worse.
Then Noah charged into the room, wearing Amie’s princess dress. Amie trailed him, clad in only her Indian headdress and a pair of Wednesday underpants, batting a hand over her mouth and letting out a war cry.
Greer shot James a sheepish look and pointed to Amie’s underwear. “Those are clean, I swear. She just put them on this morning.”
“I get it. She’s just defying the constraints of time.” A warm, relaxed feeling of peace filled his chest at the comforting chaos around him.
“Right, I think that’s totally what she was going for when she got dressed.” Greer turned to her children. “Time to get dressed, you guys.”
“I am dressed.” Noah spread his arms triumphantly.
“That’s your at-home outfit.” Her gaze flicked to James. “You need to put on your going-to-the-comic-book-shop outfit.”
“Comic books!” Noah tore off down the hallway.
Amie jutted out her lower lip and slumped her shoulders forward so her hands hung near her shins. “I don’t want any stupid comics.”
“I figured,” James said, “so that’s why we’re getting you your Valley Girl costume today.”
Amie let out a squawk of joy reminiscent of exotic island birds and raced in the direction of her brother.
“Poor Noah.” Greer shook her head. “If he’s not running around in just his underwear, he’s in a dress. I think he’s drowning in estrogen.”
James nodded. “The little guy needs a brother.”