by Ayers, Ava
“Beth, this is a delight for you! You are sitting next to none other than the infamous artist, Tommy Holderfield. Tommy, this is Beth, a friend of India’s from the far-off land of West Virginia!”
“Hello,” he said and stood from the table and shook my hand. “Do you know my work?”
“Um, I-I’m sure I would if I-”
“Dicks!” a man in a gold robe, sitting across from Tommy said.
“Sorry?” I said.
“Ignore, my dear,” Tommy said and pulled my chair out. “The sourpuss with the foul mouth is my lover, Mikey Everheart.”
“Please to meet you, Mikey. Thank you,” I said to one of the maids as she filled a huge goblet in front of me with red wine.
“Beth, organic,” Lucia said and pointed at my glass. “Tannin-free, manually pressed, hybrid grapes from a practically uninhabited rainforest in Brazil. You can’t even find it on the map. You could try, but you wouldn’t.”
“I’m sure it’s delicious,” I said and took a sip of the strong-tasting wine as I noticed everyone at the table staring at me.
“Well?” Tommy said.
“Yummy,” I said and looked at the other guests as they smiled.
Althea stood from the table and grabbed two wreaths of flowers and walked around to me and India and placed the wreaths on our heads.
“Hand-picked, unpreserved, perennial Montauk wildflowers set upon slow-whittled birch branches with raw hemp twine,” she said into my ear. “You’re not allergic, are you?”
“No,” I said. “They’re beautiful. Thank you.”
I looked at India and she winked at me as she grabbed two bottles of beer off a tray one of the trotters held and put them in front of our plates.
“Get drunk,” she said into my ear, “makes it all the more bearable.”
I smiled as I scanned the huge table, covered in food and my stomach growled.
“I hope you don’t mind Paleo,” India said and grabbed an artichoke leaf.
“No, love it,” I said as I watched India’s 2-year-old sister Sahara crawl across the dining room table in a cloth diaper covered in heart patches.
Tommy chatted to Althea’s boyfriend Charlie on the other side of him as Mikey stared at me across the table squinting.
“Are you an artist too, Mikey?” I said and grabbed a chunk of cheese off a silver tray and looked around for a plate.
“Beth,” Lucia said, “that cheese is unpasteurized, dandelion-fed sheep’s milk, sun-cured, ochre provolone from a teeny-tiny town near Corsica.”
“Looks delicious,” I said. “Are there plates?”
Lucia looked at me and frowned.
“Oh, no, dear one, we don’t use plates. We only ever eat communally,” Lucia said.
“I am a performance artist, Jess,” Mikey said as he poured himself another glass of wine.
“Oh, yeah,” Tommy said as he rolled his eyes, “this one over here thinks he’s Frank Zappa.”
I looked across at Mikey and he held the bottle of wine as if he was going to throw it at Tommy.
“That’s right, Jess,” Mikey said, “and this one made his fortune in dicks.”
“Jess?” India said. “Her name is Beth.”
“I thought it was Jess too,” Charlie said as he looked down the table at me.
“She looks more like a Jess than a Beth,” Tyson, a small Asian man from Berlin said.
“No,” I said and looked at Mikey, “it’s Beth. So, you said Tommy makes his fortune in...”
“Yes,” Tommy said and sighed, “Mikey said dicks. However, it’s not so crass. I make phallic art, specifically, I recreate the religious totems dedicated to the phallus from the Roman era. I really want to start with the Yoni stamping, but this one is so jealous.”
“Yoni? I don’t know what that--” I said.
“Vagina!” Mikey said.
“Do you have Tourette’s all of a sudden?” Tommy said. “Yes, Jess, the Yoni are totems and sculpture representative of the vagina. Most of the prints are stamped with impressions of actual vaginas. Are you interested in art?”
“Yes, I love art. I’m not familiar with what you are talking about, but I do love art,” I said and knocked back some of the beer.
Mikey stared at me and put his hand to the side of his mouth.
“Tommy is asking you if he can use your vajayjay as a stamp, Jess.”
“Oh, ah, no, I don’t think that would be...good,” I said.
We ate fig tartlets drizzled with cold-pressed, unfiltered maple syrup; persimmon and quail egg quiche in a crust made with flax and chia seeds; mango, kale and cranberry parfaits; raw green beans pressed in cashew butter and dusted with Mediterranean, air-dried, crumbled tofu; coconut milk and avocado custard with a unrefined, hand-extracted, blackstrap molasses brûlée and purple squash and lychee soufflé with a pink salt, organic ghee and elephant garlic crème fraîche. There were cases of gluten-free beer and tannin-free wine. And more beer and wine.
Althea looked across the table at me and asked me to sing a song with Pacho, the Gypsy guitar player.
“I don’t sing,” I said.
“Are you sure?” she said and looked at me as if I had lychee and chia seeds all over my face. “No, it can’t be! Tyson, doesn’t Beth’s face tell us she can carry a tune?”
Tyson pushed the blood orange, tangerine and watercress pie to the side and crawled up on his chair and knelt on the table beside Sahara. He reached across the table and put his hands on my forehead.
“Jess, it feels like you can carry a tune,” he said as he massaged my forehead. “Are you sure?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said.
“Tyson,” India said, “I’ve already told everyone that her name is Beth, not Jess.”
Tyson stared into my eyes.
“Althea, Jess is right, it’s not music you’re picking up on, it’s macramé,” Tyson said and smiled. “Aren’t I correct, sweetheart?”
“What do you make?” Althea said, “Plant holders? No! Dream catchers...hammocks?”
“I don’t craft,” I said as I slugged back a glass of tannin-free, ice-pressed, organic Icelandic wine.
“Shame,” Tyson said and crawled back across the table to his chair. “You should make some fig preserves with us tomorrow. Mikey and Tommy brought all of these figs. What are we possibly going to do with all of these figs?”
“I’ve always said that the fig looks most like a vagina,” Tommy said to me.
He held a fig up in front of my face and then pressed it against my nose.
Sahara crawled up and snatched the fig out of Tommy’s hand and shoved it into her mouth.
“Lucia, Sahara has a whole fig in her mouth. Won’t she choke?” I said.
Lucia sat in Adolfo’s lap right next to Baron Richter and she stood and looked at Sahara for a moment and smiled.
“No, she’s fine,” she said as she sat back down on Adolfo. “We’ve raised Sahara to be an intuitive eater. She refuses to put anything into her mouth that she may choke on.”
“Wish I could say the same thing for Tommy the Gay Blade,” Mikey said and scoffed. “Isn’t that right, boo? Lord knows you’re always putting things in your mouth you choke on.”
Tommy drank an entire glass of wine in two gulps and pointed across the table at Mikey.
“Is that a crack about my weight or about my love for penis that is not yours?”
“Well,” Mikey said and narrowed his eyes at Tommy, “if the crack fits, fuck it!”
Mikey reached over and grabbed a bottle of beer out of Althea’s hand and drank it down.
“You’re drunk!” Tommy said and picked up Charlie’s glass of wine and flung the wine into Mikey’s face.
“You, bitch!” Mikey said and rubbed the wine into his face with his hands. “You know, every time I look at your weird eyebrows, frozen with Botox more times that I can count, and your stretched-out face, I want to rip my fucking jugular vein out with a meat hook!”
“Whoa,” I said and looke
d at India who rolled her eyes.
“What do you mean stretched?” Tommy said and folded his arms across his chest.
“Just what I said,” Mikey said and leaned forward in his chair. “Your face is so stretched it looks like the Octomom’s vag!”
“Well, I will spare our dinner companions the description of your ass, speaking of stretched!” Tommy said and slammed a bottle of beer on the table.
“I’ve been nothing but loyal to you, you douche!” Mikey said and pouted as he poured himself another glass of beer.
“Loyal?” Tommy said as he hit me on the arm and turned to me. “This one has had more dicks in him than Truman Capote did at Halston’s birthday party at 54 in ‘78.”
“I-I have no idea what that means,” I said as I shook my head and looked at Lucia.
“Look who’s talking, Mr. Dick-In-The-Box,” Mikey said and scoffed as he pointed at me. “Don’t you dare think I’m so drunk I don’t notice you sniffing around this little hot thing!”
“Me...hot?” I said and adjusted my flower crown. “Thank you, I’m flattered. Really.”
Tommy looked at me and shook his head.
“Puhleeze! I banged Cindy Crawford back in the day!”
I grabbed an open bottle of wine off the table and drank out of it.
“I knew it!” Mikey said and stood. “You are a beast who has done nothing but emotionally abuse me for twenty-two years. Well, no more, ass clown! Tonight is the night! I’m cutting my dick off!”
Mikey grabbed the cheese knife out of the unpasteurized, dandelion-fed sheep’s milk, sun-cured, ochre provolone from a teeny-tiny town near Corsica and held it to his waist.
I looked at India and pressed my lips to her ear.
“I’m drunk,” I said. “Is this guy really going to cut his penis off at the table?”
“He threatens it at every single dinner. This is the furthest he’s gone though. Maybe tonight is really the night?” she said and shrugged as she grabbed another bottle of beer.
All of the guests stared at Mikey and none of them said a word. No one tried to wrestle the knife away from him; no one made a move to stop him. They simply waited for him to dismember his member with a hand-oiled, French polished, unstained teak and surgical stainless steel cheese knife from Helsinki.
“Do it!” Tommy screamed at Mikey as he slammed his hands on the table. “Finally, do it!”
“I will,” Mikey said as he unbuttoned his red vegan pleather pants.
“Well, here we go!” Tommy said and rubbed his hands together. “Someone call the mohel, we’re about to have a bris up in this motherfucker!”
I laughed and choked on my beer and it sprayed out of my mouth, across the table and hit Sahara in the face.
“Oh my God!” I said as Sahara wailed. “I’m sorry!”
“It’s okay,” Lucia said and picked Sahara up off the table. “Tilda! Towel, please?”
Mikey threw the knife on the table and grabbed a bottle of manually-stomped, moon-cured, tannin-free Cabernet from Madrid and drank it.
“Coward!” Tommy said and turned to me. “He’s been threatening to cut his dick off since ’92 when I took off for Kiev with Linda Evangelista and George Michael.”
“The baby...” I said as I drank another beer and watched Lucia wipe my beer spit off Sahara’s face.
“You just wait Tommy Holderfield, when you least expect it, I will cut my dick off and shove it down your throat so I don’t have to listen to your lispy whine anymore,” Mikey said and sat down.
Tommy hit me in the arm and stared at me with one eye open.
“Seems to me if this queen actually follows through with it, which will be the first time he’s ever followed through with anything in his life, he will be the one talking with the lisp.”
“How about I just cut your dick off, Tommy?” Mikey said and stared at the knife. “That should finally shut you up.”
“You know I can regenerate!” Tommy said and turned to me. “Jess, I was on a dig in Tunisia in ’97 and was touched by the ancients with the power of regeneration.”
“Don’t listen to his bullshit, Jess. He was touched by the ancients with a liter of mushroom tea and the clap! When I cut your dick off, you will remain dickless, Tommy Holderfield!”
“Go ahead, cut it off, I’ll just grow another dick,” Tommy said.
“Then I’ll cut that one off!” Mikey said.
“Then I’ll grow another!”
“Okay, ladies,” Adolfo said, “I’m feeling that you are both getting a little intense. Should we start the dancing?”
“A little intense?” I said into India’s ear. “Regenerating dicks is intense, but cutting dicks off with a cheese knife is fine?”
India snorted and grabbed another bottle of wine.
“Lucia,” Charlie said, “don’t you think it’s time for the dancing?”
“Perfect!” Lucia said and stood from Adolfo’s lap with Sahara. “Mikey, why don’t you make the selection?”
Mikey looked across the table at Tommy and took a deep breath.
“Fine,” he said and brushed a piece of hair out of his face. “New Order, Temptation.”
“Baby,” Tommy said as he looked across the table at Mikey, “which version?”
Mikey looked at Tommy and tilted his head.
“Temptation 87, of course,” he said and smiled.
Tommy gasped and moved his head closer to mine.
“That’s our song,” he said into my ear.
“It seems he’s making amends?” I said.
“Tilda!” Lucia said. “Please queue New Order, Temptation 87.”
I looked at India and she grabbed two more full bottles of wine off the table and handed one to me.
“Drink up, buttercup,” she said as she touched her bottle to mine and sighed, “things are going to get odd.”
“Going to get...” I said as the music pumped through the speakers in the dining room.
Everyone around the table bobbed their heads to the music and Tilda took Sahara and trotted out of the room.
Two maids trotted in and cleared the table.
“Leave the booze!” Baron Richter said.
I kept my bottle of wine tipped to my lips as I watched Mikey climb up on the table and dance. Althea jumped up and danced around the table toward the Gypsy guitar player. She grabbed him and grinded against his leg. The music got louder and louder as I looked around. Lucia crawled up on the table and danced with Mikey. Charlie and Tyson stood and started jumping up and down to the music. Mikey reached down and took Tommy’s hand and pulled him up onto the table with he and Lucia. Adolfo jumped up next to Lucia and the two of them started dirty dancing as Baron Richter stared at them and frowned while he drank.
“Beth!” India said. “Come on, Beth!”
India pulled me out of my chair and we danced in circles as New Order’s Temptation 87 shook the walls of the dining room.
There was a moment, as India and I swung each other around and the music bounced through my body and rattled my teeth, I felt like I floated to the ceiling and watched from above.
There was no sadness and we were free from distress. All of us together, jumping to the same beat, melted into the music and each other.
We were open, savage, graceful, odd, wasted. Beautiful.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I opened my eyes when I heard the music and was curled up at the bottom of India’s bed with my forehead pressed against her metal footboard. I still had the dress on and it was dark and cold in the room. I sat up as the room spun and I tried to adjust my eyes to the dark.
“The song,” I said and leaned against the footboard, “Cut Dead.”
“Yes,” India said, “I’m sorry if I woke you.”
I stood up and held onto her bed and I tried to orient myself. I saw her in her long, white dress, but it looked like she was floating above the ground.
“No, I didn’t know where I was,” I said.
I walked toward the dres
s and the cold. I realized the window was unshuttered and wide open. She sat on the window sill with her feet dangling outside.
“Whoa,” I said as I stuck my head out the window and looked down.
“Sit next to me,” she said and moved over to make room.
“Okay,” I said and took a deep breath as I sat on the window sill and hung my feet outside.
I rested my head against the window casing and held onto the shutter as I stared at her.
“What time is it?” I said.
“Four-ish,” she said and looked at me.
“What’s going on? You’re crying and playing the song.”
India looked down at the ground and shook her head.
“I was just thinking that it’s nice to have a friend,” she said and wiped her face.
“Yeah,” I said, “it is nice. So why are you hanging out a window eighty miles above a stone patio?”
“Devon broke up with me, Beth,” India said and looked out at the beach. “Four days ago. I was too embarrassed to tell you.”
“India, I’m so sorry. I’d hug you, but I can’t let go of the window.”
She looked at me and smiled.
“What happened?” I said.
“Same thing that always happens...they don’t love me and I think that they do. He said, simply: I’m not feeling it. How is that even possible? That someone can break your heart with those five silly words. What does that even mean, I’m not feeling it?”
“Yeah, I don’t even know if it’s grammatically correct. And you think that they’d at least have the decency to say I am instead of I’m, right? I mean, take the fucking time.”
“I don’t know, Beth,” India said and chuckled. “How can I be feeling it, if he is not?”
“Stephanie says that when we are in love, something happens to our depth perception and we get tunnel vision. We don’t see the things we should and are too busy looking at the things we should not.”
“All these games, Beth. All these games are exhausting,” India said and stared at the patio below us.
I listened to the music and closed my eyes.
“You know what I love about this song? I love that line, you’ve got me chasing honeybees. That’s what it feels like, doesn’t it? When you’re in love and you want so bad for him to love you, it feels like you’re running around trying to capture all these things, right? Why did he say that, what does that look mean, why did he write that? And all you want is for him to look at you and say it, to declare it, to you and everyone: I love you. That’s all you want. I love you.”