Rosie had seen his legs that first day when she was moving into number two—ripped blue jeans with grease stains. He was under his truck, parked in slot number one. B was helping her move, the heavy futon giving them the most trouble, and B ahemed. The man ignored them. They managed, but B mouthed How rude. When they were done moving the big pieces, B sat on a kitchen chair and drank a Diet Coke, the large diamond on her ring glinting, and Rosie was anxious for her to leave.
Rosie’s stepfather had died three months earlier from a heart attack. B wanted Rosie out of her hair, and she wanted away: grieving was a private matter, and she wanted to leave B to it. Orange Coast Community College and the Bourbon Street Villas were a layover, until she decided what to do with her life. Eventually, she needed to catapult herself from her humiliating, impulsive, and rebellious predisposition into the law-abiding, ladylike, marriageable person her family wanted her to be. But at this point, she doubted if it was possible, and really, she’d never wanted that anyway.
Across from the Bourbon Street Villas in a strip mall next to a TOGO’S Sandwiches was a Red Onion restaurant and dance club. She liked to drink and dance at the Red Onion, especially on Thursday nights, Ladies Night. The bouncer, Teddy, let her in even though she was underage, because, as he explained, “You’re damn cute.” Businessmen in stiff suits and loosened ties bought her margaritas and tequila shots, sometimes letting it slip that she reminded them of their daughters, and she twirled on the dance floor with the colored lights, going from one partner to the next. She kissed the men in the darkened booths, the fathers of the daughters like her, and their tongues were eager.
She met Janice there. Janice lived in number six and drank at the Red Onion because she could walk there, thus avoiding another DUI. Her father had been the mayor of Villa Park. Janice bragged about throwing up her booze so that she could drink more, yet she kept her apartment spotless and had a manic way with order, evidenced by her insurance job, where she was granted menial organizational tasks.
“I don’t have any woman friends,” Janice warned her, that first night at the Red Onion. “Women hate me because they know I’ll fuck their boyfriends and husbands.” Later, Rosie wanted to bum a Djarum clove cigarette, and she opened the back door near the bathrooms, looking for Janice. She found her and one of the businessmen prone on the cement leading to the steps of the alley. It was dark but she recognized the man’s mustache: he was the one that reminded her of Tom Selleck. He’d been steadily buying them drinks. His pants were at his thighs, the buckle of his belt clanked against the cement, and his white shirt covered his backside, striped tie turned so that it rested on his back. She saw the side of Janice’s face, her mouth and eyes closed beatifically, her head bobbing slightly. She shut the door quietly.
Two days after the move, Rosie sat on a chaise by the pool, sipping a beer from a plastic cup, with White Mike and Black Mike, longtime residents of numbers ten and fourteen respectively. They could see a woman through an open doorway, folding her laundry, Lee Press Ons dramatic and red jutting from her fingers. She stuck out like a wild, exotic orchid, at least six-foot-eight in heels. She hung flannel shirts and folded slacks, and there was an air of loneliness so strong that Rosie looked away.
“Who is that?” she asked.
Black Mike took a sip from his beer. He had an afro and a mustache, and he kept a red-pronged pick comb in his back pocket. “That’s Christina,” he said. “Your neighbor. Otherwise known as Joe.” He looked off in the distance. She looked back to Christina, recognizing the Adam’s apple, the long, skinny legs, teetering precariously on spike heels. Black Mike’s tone was respectful. “Just leave her be,” he said, still looking beyond. “She just wants people to see her, that’s all.”
“But why?”
“How should I know? She doesn’t ever hurt anyone. The landlord has threatened to kick her out twice, but she doesn’t deserve that. Just leave her be.” Black Mike worked at Disneyland as a janitor and he had a side business selling marijuana. They liked each other, but she was careful: Black Mike had a jealous girlfriend. White Mike was twelve years old and he lived with his mother, but she was never home. White Mike kept his hair long and wore T-shirts with surfing logos. Black Mike was like a dad to him, and he wouldn’t let White Mike drink a beer, no matter how much he begged.
Later that afternoon, the sky was a chalky orange from a fire in the mountains. She was driving to Albertsons supermarket when she saw Christina for the second time, walking down the sidewalk, pushing a shopping cart with three paper bags of groceries; the shopping cart’s front left wheel was spasmodic, and she was struggling because she wore the black spike heels.
Rosie slowed, pulled over, and rolled down her window. Christina teetered past a bus stop, and the hostile eyes of an old couple sitting on the bench followed her.
“Do you need a ride?” Rosie called out.
“No,” Christina answered. “I like to walk.” Her voice was deep and throaty. Cars whistled past; a truck thundered by, and her car shook from the aftermath. A horn honked and someone yelled, “Faggot!”
“Are you sure?”
Christina nodded, her foundation darker than her neck. She wore a stick-straight blond wig with a red headband. Her light blue eye shadow was swooped beyond her lids, and her eyes looked excited, fake eyelashes like black-gloved jazz hands. Rosie had never encountered a real-life transvestite before. She imagined it would make for great conversation, and it fit well with an image she’d been cultivating—friend of transvestites, that crazy free spirit—but the honest-to-God truth was that Joe/Christina scared her.
Two days later, she rang Joe’s doorbell. Joe’s eyes were brown and hollow, and there were purple crescents underneath, as if he hadn’t slept. “What is it?” he asked. The room had the hazy look of cigarette smoke, and behind him, she saw an ashtray on his coffee table, filled with butts. He looked grease-stained, all elbows, knees, and Adam’s apple, a longer, skinnier Neil Young, and she thought, I’ve been a miner for a heart of gold. He stared at her, impatient. He was nicer as Christina than he was as Joe.
“There’s a kitten,” she said. “I can hear it, stuck in a truck.”
Joe reluctantly followed her to a rusted Ford Bronco, abandoned beside a fence. The kitten mewed plaintively. Joe lay down on his back under the engine, his legs visible, and within minutes, there was a shrill cry as he grabbed the kitten’s tail. He emerged with the scrawny, dirty kitten, like a baby cupped in his hand.
They named the kitten Bronco, and Bronco lived between numbers one and two.
“You sure you don’t want to wear nylons with that?” Christina called out. “You can borrow mine.” The wind chimes jingled as Rosie walked by the patio, wearing a miniskirt and heels, on her way to the Red Onion. They’d been neighbors for over two months, and she was used to Christina critiquing her appearance when she passed the patio.
She looked down at her bare legs. “No thanks,” she said. Besides nylons being uncomfortable, she thought of them touching Joe’s crotch.
“Won’t you come in for a little bit? I’m real lonely.” Usually, Rosie declined, but Christina looked miserable, and Rosie unhooked the latch on the gate to the patio. There was a small barbecue that she hadn’t noticed before. Christina wore a flowing Stevie Nicks gypsy number, and her wig was long brown curls. She followed Christina through the open sliding glass door, and Christina shut the screen behind them, but it was stuck, and she had to push at it before it closed.
The lampshade was covered with a sheer red scarf, giving the light a muffled pink-bordello feel. Bronco was sleeping under the coffee table, his tail tucked beside his body. A portable heater sat in the corner, the size of a shoebox, its coiled prongs lit up orange. The couch was low to the ground and it sank even lower with her weight. She rubbed between Bronco’s ears and his purr became louder. Christina came from the kitchen with two wide martini glasses, and Rosie wondered if they were pre-made, waiting for this moment.
Christina set the m
artini glasses on the low coffee table and sat next to her so that their legs touched; Rosie shifted away. Christina’s long bent legs reminded her of a cricket’s. She sipped from her glass, grateful because the drink was strong.
“You don’t respect yourself,” Christina said sadly, lifting her glass by the stem; her fingers were large and calloused, and her fingernails had shooting stars on them. She knew Christina was referring to Lance: he’d been spending the night. She’d met him in her Religions and Ethics class. He was from Florida (although he had an odd Australian-like accent), he wore vests, and he dealt cocaine. Handsome, like Robert Redford, he talked about living all over the world. She suspected he was a liar, but she liked him because she’d seen him crying when the professor showed the film about the Holocaust. In the dark classroom, he’d looked over at her, wiping at his tears with his sleeve. That was the first night she’d slept with him. He’d been more interested in the cocaine, insisting she try a line. They sat on the carpet, naked, and he chattered like a teenage girl. He kept saying, “Didn’t I tell you? Isn’t it great?” She felt like she was suspended, and every time he touched her skin, it crawled, as if she might burst open. She preferred the deadness—the steadiness—of alcohol, but she agreed with him, just to make him happy.
There were two women in her Religions and Ethics class, Avery and Leah, best friends and roommates, one short the other tall, who hated her although she’d done nothing to them. Leah said that she was Lance’s girlfriend, and that Rosie had better stay away from him. Lance told her that Leah was his connection; he got his Valiums from her, nothing more. Avery and Leah frequently glared at her in the campus parking lot and yelled that they were going to kick her ass.
Lance would come through her sliding glass door at night, and she would let him stay. Once, he pissed and crapped in her bed, and he sobbed like a baby. She stripped him and washed the sheets and clothes in the early morning while he slept naked. She dressed him. He didn’t remember any of it, and he left soon after waking, hung over and unhappy, no goodbye. She wasn’t sure why she let Lance use her, but she didn’t want to discuss it with Christina, so she left for the Red Onion.
She woke the next morning on her floor, a fuzzy, unrecognizable blanket covering her, a pillow near her head, and vomit tangled in her hair. She probed her tongue around the inside of her mouth, hoping to generate saliva, but the tissue continued to have the consistency of sandpaper. She touched her cheek, hot and with the imprint of the carpet. She couldn’t remember anything beyond dancing at the Red Onion, spinning, free, the colored lights snowing on her, the music loud and tasteless, a rotation of men.
She rose slowly, her head throbbing. There was a note on the kitchen table, stationery bordered with multicolored hearts:
Rosie,
You left your keys in the door and your purse on the ground. You didn’t even make it inside. I found you by the pool!!! That is very bad and I worry for you. I took the keys out and they are in your purse. Don’t worry. I will take care of you.
Love,
Christina
Bronco was crouched in the litter box below the cutlery drawer, back legs kicking, sand airborne. There was an odor of fresh cat feces. She opened the front door, and Bronco sprinted through.
John Wayne visited Rosie later that morning. He’d hitched a ride from Newport Beach to her apartment, and he sat on her futon, waiting, his skateboard next to him, while she took a shower, attempting to wash off her hangover. She looked forward to hanging around the apartment and doing nothing, not even talking much; maybe ordering a fat submarine sandwich from TOGO’S loaded with meats and pickles and cheeses and lettuce, and eating it with her friend, since she hadn’t eaten anything in a long time, and the food would probably make her feel better. She was coming out of her bathroom, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, a towel wrapped like a turban around her hair, when she heard a knocking on her front door. Even before John Wayne opened the door, she knew that it was Christina, by her signature knocking song: dum da da dum dum—dum dum.
“Oh,” Christina said, sizing up John Wayne, “aren’t you cute.” Without acknowledging Rosie, she moved inside, made her way to the kitchen. “Butter,” she said, opening the refrigerator and leaning into it. She spoke into the refrigerator: “I’m making shortbread cookies.” She wore a white leather miniskirt with a matching short jacket, fishnet stockings, and white heels. Her backside looked bony. “Should’ve known,” she said, turning to face them. “No butter, only beer.”
The sudden presence of Christina both confused and alarmed Rosie; she wasn’t embarrassed for John Wayne to meet Christina, like she might’ve been had it been someone else meeting Christina, especially someone from her family (her dad!); but she was worried that Christina might associate him with the other men that came through her door, or think he was stupid; and she felt as she often did after a blackout, plunged without warning into a panic at the reality of her life, her inability to escape. And for a moment she experienced an intense longing to be someone else, to be a better person, but this emotion morphed into resignation because she knew that it was useless: she’d tried before.
John Wayne had been watching a television show about drug trafficking, and the television was still on. He was barefoot, as usual, wearing shorts and a long-sleeved Shark Island T-shirt, and there were dark bruises at his kneecaps. His long hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in quite some time, and she decided that after Christina left, she would make John Wayne shampoo and deep-condition his hair, and she would comb out the tangles.
“Does he talk?” Christina asked Rosie. Then, turning her attention to him, she said, “Do you talk?”
John Wayne shrugged, a gesture vague enough to allow Christina to read whatever she wanted into it.
“Hmm,” Christina said.
Rosie felt protective of John Wayne—even more so since his boating accident—and of their relationship. She hoped that Christina would leave. Christina sensed it, walking to the door, big manicured hand at her hip. Before she left, she turned and said, “He’s the first one I like.”
Within that same month, four notes:
Rosie,
I knocked last night. No answer. I haven’t seen you in a couple of days. You were making a sad moaning noise, but when I knocked, you were very quiet. I just wanted to know if you were all right.
Love,
Christina
Rosie,
There was a man hanging around outside your apartment. I stared at him until he left. He didn’t look so nice. Be careful!!!
I would like it if you can come over tomorrow night. Spend some time with me. Maybe take some pictures and have some fun. I am really lonely plus I would really like to see you in nylons and all dressed up.
Love,
Christina
P.S. If you want to, tonight you can come in and give me a big good night KISS.
Rosie,
I found your keys in the door for the third time!!! That is very dangerous! Your purse was in a bush and you were by the pool again! I cleaned up the yuck you made on the bathroom floor. (You almost made the toilet!)
Love,
Christina
Rosie,
Please be careful! He told me he got out of jail only last week! And you let him stay with you?
I was hoping that you would have been around Saturday. It was my birthday and I didn’t even get a hug or a kiss from you for my birthday. Maybe tonight you’ll have time to come over and give me that present. Christina would like that (42 and sexy).
Love,
Christina
Rosie worried at the mildly salacious suggestions in the notes; but that feeling was nothing compared with the dismay she experienced at the undeniable proof of her behavior during blackouts, presented in Joe/Christina’s loopy handwriting.
Two days after the last note, White Mike stole her car in the late morning; she’d left the keys on the kitchen counter, and he said he just wanted to watch cartoons, but he was gone in a flash. She c
alled Black Mike and Janice and they came over. Black Mike leaned on the kitchen counter, and Janice sat on the couch, her legs tucked under her. Janice was no good at comforting: she was a fair weather friend and didn’t pretend otherwise.
“Don’t call the cops,” Black Mike said. “He’ll be back soon. He’s had a hard time of it. They’ll send him back to juvie if you call the cops.”
She was crying: she knew she was crying for other things, but she couldn’t help it. She thought of the sirens from the ambulance. The paramedics had rolled her stepfather onto the stretcher. They had put a lime-colored sheet over him. She remembered B, crouched in the center of her bed, sobbing—a gasping cry—with the bedspread wrapped around her. She had comforted B but it was awkward.
“Maybe you could call your boyfriend,” Black Mike said.
She thought about the men, counting in her head: she would get AIDS and embarrass her family. She thought about her bathroom: she threw up when she drank, and her bathroom smelled acidic, no matter how much she cleaned.
The door opened and White Mike walked in sheepishly, setting her keys on the kitchen counter, in the same spot he’d taken them from. He stood next to Black Mike. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking down at his feet.
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