Fine.
Shows are boring now anyway. Too expensive, full of teenyboppers and rock stars, the scene nowhere near as cool as it used to be. Besides, Penny’s psychic, knows she’s gonna find a place soon, a home always on the horizon of her mind.
And she’s right.
Even if it turns out to be a gentrifier’s brownstone owned by two men who cook together and sleep together and listen to Dakota Staton records while homemaking preserves. Jack and Francis. Except Francis calls himself “Jill” and waits for people to laugh, which you could pretty easily decide is unbearable. Or you could just roll with it, since it’s a renter’s market and Penny has zero other options. Mainly because she rocks shaved sidewalls and inky bangs, calf-high Docs laced tight. No makeup except blood-red lipstick, always. A Slayer tat competing with skulls and cue balls across tiny, sleeveless arms.
If she weighs a hundred pounds, it’s mostly steel-toe.
What the hell is everyone so scared of?
For six weeks Penelope (known as Penny Laid in the last band she screamed for) has answered ads, seeped trustworthiness, lied about the security deposit she doesn’t have. She’s been shined off by Georgetown couples with this-closet-is-a-bedroom smiles and you’ll-end-up-babysitting-us toddlers. She’s been passed on by coder geeks sunk deep in crushed empties and multiplayer action. But it’s the older women who sting the most. With their frowns and armfuls of cat-calendar cats, with their arid infertility and smell of no one emptying the hair trap in the Roomba since last August.
“We’ll call you,” they say.
“Doubt it,” Penny answers, getting pre-emptive her signature move in the face of disappointment. “I gave you a fake number anyhow.”
So when she sees the little red smiley face on the index card at the church she never goes to and then takes the bus all the way out to Race Riot Central, halfway down a street that’s practically Lebanon except crack instead of religion, and then gets off right where Jack and Francis wait on a brick stoop holding hands like the twin princes of wearing matching sweaters just to fuck with all the humorless young queens who think they’re cutting edge, it’s way too weird and perfect to say no.
Yes!
Penny puts down her guitar cases in the front hall. One with a guitar in it and the other full of lipstick, underwear, and her tarot deck.
“Well, I guess that just means more shelf space for me,” Francis says.
“Don’t listen to him, minimalism is the new maximalism,” Jack says.
Penny unpacks, opens the bedroom window, can barely breathe. Her latest psychic flash: D.C. is hot. The temperature rises way up over a hundred like it’s proud of itself. She shuffles her tarot, draws the Irradiated Sun and then the Rascally Nubian, decides to take a walk through the neighborhood. It’s a forgotten triangle off Rhode Island Ave, a couple acres of blacktop and rotting trash that the hibachi-tenders and forty-guzzlers who holla at her every step call New Jack Shitty.
They say, “Hey, white girl, what you doin’ uptown?”
They say, “Hey, Trixie, you lost?”
They say, “Hey, punk rawk, lemme buy you a drink.”
No thanks, fellas, but I appreciate the warm welcome!
When she gets back, Jack and Francis are coloring Shrinky Dinks they found at the farmers’ market.
“Hey, Penny,” Francis calls, “I got markers for you, too.”
“They’re the sniff kind,” Jack says. “You have to try Mango Surprise.”
Penny takes the stairs two at a time, tells herself, The boys are talking, you should answer them.
Penny tells herself, Communication is the cornerstone of a happy household.
Penny tells herself, And besides, when’s the last time someone bought you Magic Markers?
Since the answer is never, she resolves to go back down and lean against the cutting board, gush about how great it is to have new friends plus a door that actually locks. But maybe first take a shower and then brush her teeth with Jack’s imported Sri Lankan toothpaste that tastes like saffron and Tamil blood.
Penny throws the wet towel on the carpet, picks a pair of fresh overalls. It’s punishing to wear black in the equatorial heat, and so her wardrobe long ago transitioned from tights and leather to a daily pair of white painter’s overalls that allow maximum wicking of perspiration even if they make her look like an extra from a Dexys Midnight Runners video. Besides, she’s so small and stridently vegan that her sweat smells clean and untoxic, sort of like apple puree, like maybe she should bottle it and sell it online to Okinawa business pervs for three grand an ounce.
Downstairs, Francis bangs a cowbell with a spoon, partly because of a joke about Blue Öyster Cult that she doesn’t understand and partly because every Thursday is roommate dinner night.
“Hey, señorita, grub’s ready!”
There are salads and wine and experimental things on crackers. Billie Holiday alternates with Édith Piaf. Francis leans across the table, face flushed, two glasses in on a merlot with an overdesigned label. He’s tall with glasses and wavy bangs, a lawyer for a nonprofit that defends black people in situations where it probably would have been smarter to be white. Jack is a therapist. He has a tiny blond mustache and specializes in body relevance issues. They just want to make it official that they totally get Penny’s aesthetic. All she needs is a direction. Francis thinks she should apply to architectural school. Jack thinks she should start an all-girl band that’s essentially the D.C. Pussy Riot, except not Russian and with a different name because people are so uptight these days, “May I offer into evidence Janet Jackson’s flabby little tit?”
There are so many reasons for Penny to be annoyed.
To feel dismissive and superior in an abrasive way that will eventually lead to being kicked to the curb, guitar case flung open in the middle of the street and forget about your deposit, gutter punk!
Instead she finds that on most nights she loves the boys unreservedly.
Like when they open mail together in the front hall after work, make fun of catalogs.
Or haggle at the farmers’ market with the old woman who looks like a candied yam.
Or huddle under the afghan, crunch spice-infused popcorn all through Houseboat with Cary Grant, then tear Inception a new ass, not only because that shit made zero sense, but Leo the Cap is totally overrated!
By summer, Penny can’t wait to come home each day and do something fun. Like make aprons out of oven mitts, or play Risk for a nickel an annexation. She comes to depend on Francis and Jack for all number and variety of familial experiences heretofore unfurnished or even subconsciously recognized as lacking, which include long, supportive talks about her boyfriendlessness and the possibility that she could meet a cute little Martha or a Susan instead, no one would judge. Not to mention regular rent extensions, which Francis is 77 percent cool about and tends to remind her of in a ridiculous cowboy accent, It’s check writin’ time, darlin’. Penny is totally paying what she owes. Which is 2.6 months’ rent. She’s good for it. Really. She has a job doesn’t she? Of course she does. At a deli called Food 4 Thought where all the sandwiches are named after famous people. Like the Andy Warhol is an open-faced beef. The Bo Diddley is spiced ham. The Sarah Palin is mayo on white, which Penny thinks only dolts still laugh at, like shooting fish in a performance art piece about fish shooting.
But then on the morning she’s about to run down and jump in their bed, give Jack a tarot reading on the coverlet that’s so soft it feels like unborn orphan rhino skin, which is what vicuna actually is or maybe Francis was joking, she accidentally drops her deck on the floor.
Lying exposed, the Emperor of Meat.
Which means the boys are taking a trip.
Penny hates being alone, hates announcements.
Ten minutes later Jack and Francis sit her down for a big announcement.
“We’re taking a trip!”
She shuffles the deck again.
The Collector
of Cups.
Which means they also intend to acquire half the remaining trinkets of the ancient world and crate them back to D.C. in order to assemble a display of sometimes cursed and other times simply overpriced artifacts that will span two rooms and every remaining empty shelf.
“Where?”
Jack unfolds a “Welcome to Istanbul” brochure. There are fabulous arrays of tiles and minarets and invigorating spa treatment packages. A gorgeous green pool stretches to the horizon line above a city Alexander the Great once conquered, or at least aggressively visited. Penny can taste danger at the tip of her tongue, which is where she’s most psychic. Pure frozen metal. Sand fleas and pipe bombs and every fifth tuk-tuk driver wearing a suicide vest. But she doesn’t have the words to warn or explain. And if she tells them how she knows what she knows, the boys might stop thinking it’s a coincidence she wins at every board game, knows every answer, maybe even mind-melded them into letting her move in to begin with.
Besides, she’s proud of how proud they are of their extemporaneousness, which in itself is a word three vowels and four syllables too long to argue with.
Penny reaches down, turns over the Curiously Aroused Brigand.
At least she won’t be alone.
“When?”
“Next week,” they say, click imaginary glasses.
PENNY HOLDS HER shit together for six and a half days.
It’s not so much the heat as the humidity.
It’s not so much the impending as the doom.
Her mood is lethal, like a hole’s been cored in her forehead, vital prefrontal bits vacuumed out and a grim sludge poured back in.
C’mon, girl, make it work!
She can’t.
It’s gonna be okay!
It’s not.
The phone’s about to ring!
No shit.
“Penelope? Phone!” Francis calls, rolling his carry on carefully over the sustainable hardwood. For some reason there’s an extension in the upstairs bathroom, mounted above the toilet. Penny slides from a knot of sofa pillows, her cellphone cut off because she never really sent in the first payment let alone all the other ones, so she’s stuck with the land line, although is fairly sure no one has the number. Not even work. Not even Mom, who might have died two years ago, and definitely not Dad, who was, basically, theoretical.
She lines the toilet seat with strips of Charmin, picks up the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Penny Laid!”
“What?”
“Hey, relax. It’s Kurt.”
“I know who it is.”
“Cool. What you been up to?”
What she’s been up to is reading a lot of philosophy. Kant. Leibniz. Husserl. Jack owns many, many books, and because of the views of various morose Germans, Penny has come under the thrall of the idea that meaning is relative. Or that everything is relatively meaningless. It’s a theory supported by generations of doctrine and precept, as well as the fact that she fucked Kurt in the utility closet at work two days ago.
And then spent the night reeling in a priori mortification.
Even if it wasn’t fucked exactly. Not dictionary fucked, but definitely parts of him inside of parts of her.
“I don’t have a raincoat,” he’d said, grinning. “So let’s just play some games.”
Games?
The word had made her want to howl at the planet and all the things wrong with it, the very worst of them being how everything was so appallingly casual. She almost made it through the next shift by pretending there were no games, let alone ones that had been played, when Kurt pinched her ass in front of a regular.
If there were a tarot for Groper Never Gropes Again, she would have whipped it out and kabobed it to his chest.
Instead she botched a meatball Bebe Rebozo, toasted a Timberlake, slathered gravy on a Kate Moss, and then made the Truman Capote with corned beef instead of cold blood. Or no, wait, salmon spread. The waitresses began to complain. They already hated Penny as it was, mainly since she never wore a bra, which was number one-through-five on the list of Ten Things That Will Make a Waitress Immediately Hate You, even though she only got stares from boys who liked girls who looked like gutter punk boys, so where was the competition? Penny had tried to be friends, admired how the waitresses counted their greasy tips twice and made jokes about their endless periods and all had toddlers named Liam or Conner that they failed to hurry home to at the end of every shift.
But the haters weren’t having it.
Food 4 Thought’s manager, who everyone called Uncle, finally shook his big gray dreadlock head and told Penny he had no choice but to put her on probation, Due to an avalanche of poorly constructed sandwiches plus staff unrest. Which basically meant she was demoted to condiments for the foreseeable future.
It was total bullshit.
Or totally deserved.
One of them for sure.
“I’M NOT UP TO anything,” Penny says, releases a stream of hot pee. “Okay, Kurt?”
“Fine. What are you so grumpy for?”
“I just found weevils in my Cheerios.”
It’d actually happened a few days ago. Six of them wiggling in the milk. A portent. Evil Weevil was a rare card, delivered only one message: chaos. Penny screamed and dropped the bowl. Francis rubbed her shoulders while Jack cleaned it up.
“Harsh. You okay?”
“No.”
“What’s all that noise?”
All that noise was the taxi to the airport, the driver carelessly banging Jack’s matching brushed-chrome Vuittons down the lacquered steps.
“My roommates are going on a trip.”
“Where?”
“Jersey City. I gotta go. I’m gonna be late for work.”
“Hold on. I was thinking maybe I could swing by. We need to talk.”
There’s a vintage Mr. Spock clock on the wall, his pointy right ear the minute hand.
Not a good idea, Spock says. You’re already on thin ice.
“Not a good idea,” Penny says. “I’m already on thin ice.”
“Nah, Uncle’s cool. I’ll bring beer. We’ll go in late together, tell him there was a bus strike.”
Penny still hasn’t figured out why she let Kurt take her into the stock room to begin with. Unless it was to punish Jack and Francis. Unless it was because she dreaded being alone, even for an hour, stuck in the big echoing house with all eight thousand framed pictures vying for her attention.
On the other hand, maybe she was the one who grabbed Kurt’s elbow. Maybe she was the one who winked and tossed the bolt, mashed him against sixty pounds of red onions, the Imbecile’s Seduction, strains of imaginary flute punctuated by cooks hammering at the door.
Kurt, with his way-blasé hair and trigger grin.
Kurt who really does smell like teen spirit.
Kurt, who takes arty portraits with discontinued film stocks, who was born to be in the liner notes, who probably owns a shiny kayak and has an interview lined up at that new animation studio down by the water.
“I don’t want to,” Penny says.
“C’mon. Why not?”
“I don’t like you very much.”
He laughs. “Yeah, right.”
“No, for real. You need to shave your stubble. It’s so obvious. And wear less-tight shirts.”
“Hang on, let me write these down.”
The Charmin has turned to gum beneath Penny’s sweaty thighs. She puts down the receiver and goes to her room, where her sister’s picture is tacked above the bed.
May looks annoyed. Asking for trouble, as usual.
Penny loves May, but girlfriend has her own problems. Like for instance no husband and then two feral boys who eat a pound of macadamia brittle a day and refer to their sister as “Stink Crevice.”
Joel is older now. Todd sees a professional on Fridays. But forget that, you’re gonna get yourself canned.
Penny has lost plenty of jobs before, but she likes Food 4
Thought. She even likes Uncle, who was mean about the condiments but has a big belly and rainbow suspenders and nips off a flask of Southern Comfort while telling funny stories about once being a roadie for Canned Heat. On the other hand, it’s only a matter of time before she gets fired anyway, some cash or expensive knife set will go missing and she’ll be too easy not to blame.
You want to start looking for another place to live? How’d that work out last time?
“Crappy,” Penny says.
Then why take the chance?
Because Rousseau said that all is chaos and contentment is death.
Because Locke said that men deserve reparations for the injustice of their labors.
Because Penny’s framed picture of David Lee Roth does a scissor kick and gives her a raging thumbs-up.
It’s party time! Go for it, babe!
Only a fool ignores Diamond Dave.
Penny has forty minutes to get dressed and make her shift. She puts on a double-coat of lipstick, goes back to the bathroom, and picks up the phone.
With any luck he hung up, Spock says.
“You there?”
“Yeah, baby,” Kurt says.
“I’ll be ready in twenty minutes.”
“Righteous.”
“But if you say righteous again, it’s off.”
“Solid.”
“Same.”
“Okay, okay, Jesus.”
Penny hangs up and goes downstairs to say good-bye to the boys.
KURT TAKES IN the brownstone’s facade, whistles. He’s wearing chinos and a dirty shirt. Lean, unshowered. A cook’s hands. Grill burns. Forearms all veins, an interstate from wrist to throat.
“Sweet place. And let me get this straight, you kick it with two dudes?”
“I thought you were bringing beer.”
“I said we’d go get some.”
“No, you didn’t. Besides, it’s too hot to walk to the grocery store.”
“Walking’s for the impoverished underbelly. Anyone owns this place definitely has a ride.”
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