by Tanya Chris
Maybe I should have found a way to go to college after graduation, but there hadn’t been any money for tuition and with all my sisters out of the house, my mother had needed my contribution to the household income. Felix’s offer of an apprenticeship was a great answer to the question I still didn’t have a better answer for: what else would I do?
“I don’t know. Maybe act?”
“I do act.”
“For money. Why not use what you’re good at—what you actually want to be doing—to make money?”
I sighed and helped myself to a second slice of bread. I was starving. It wasn’t that I couldn’t afford to feed myself. It was just so much less convenient to have to arrange for the food myself.
“Good bread, Ma.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Ma answered.
“And don’t duck the question. When are you going to stop fucking around with sheetrock and follow your dream?”
Ma clucked her tongue because Desi had said fuck. I shrugged and kept chewing. “Follow your dream” was an easy thing to say and a much harder thing to do. I’d looked into it. I subscribed to Backstage Magazine. I read the audition notices in the print version every week and circled the ones I’d attend if I were going to attend any, which I wasn’t, because living in New York was hard and expensive and scary. Here at home, at Central Playhouse, I enjoyed being a big fish in a very small pond. Out there, I’d be shark food.
“Life’s good here,” I told Desi. “Theater’s just a hobby.”
“Like hell it is.”
Like hell it was.
~~~
“You’ll come for dinner tomorrow? Pick up your laundry?” My mother handed me the doggy bag I’d tried to refuse. It was a warm night and I wouldn’t be home for hours. Now my car was going to smell like brisket.
“I’ll come Sunday. I’ve got a date tomorrow.” I’d arranged to meet Jenny to climb in the afternoon, after which we’d probably go out for dinner and then rock/paper/scissors over whose apartment to get naked in.
“With who do you have a date?”
“No one special, Ma.”
“Then why would you date her?”
“She’s nice. I like her. But I’m not going to marry her and you don’t need to meet her.”
“I can’t know her name?”
I never told my mother their names. She might notice how often the names changed.
“Forget I mentioned it. Thanks for dinner and for doing my laundry. I’ll come by Sunday afternoon, OK? I have rehearsal Sunday night.”
“Come for lunch then.” She raised her chin towards me and I bent down so she could kiss my cheek.
In the car, I threw my to-go bag into the back seat. Even if the meat would keep until I got home, I was usually too lazy to reheat leftovers. I rolled the windows down on the drive to Billy’s, enjoying the fact that it was still warm at nearly nine o’clock. Spring had only officially started yesterday, but it already felt like June.
The parking lot at Billy’s was less than half full. The big crowds probably didn’t roll in until ten or eleven, but Sherry’s gig started at nine and Joshua had wanted to be there from the beginning. He waited for me outside the bar, loitering near the doorway with one shoulder braced against the wall. He wore a pair of light-colored pants and a knit shirt in a deep shade of brown. I looked down at my t-shirt and jeans.
“Am I underdressed?”
“It’s a country-western bar. What do you think?”
“I think I left my boots at home.”
“You’re fine. You look nice, actually. That’s a good color on you.”
“Thanks.” The green t-shirt was only a t-shirt, but I did think it was a good color on me. It deepened the blue of my eyes, or so I imagined when I looked in the mirror. “You look nice too. Fancy, even.”
“My wife dresses me. Let’s go in and get a table. I want to be somewhere she can see us.”
He held the door open for me, putting a hand on my back to guide me through it, then led the way between the mostly empty tables to a spot near the front. The bar was decorated like a dude ranch, with steer horns mounted to the wall and bales of hay fronting the small stage. The waiters all wore Levi’s with cowboy boots and plaid shirts. The only thing missing was the mechanical bull.
“Have you been here before?” I asked when we were seated.
On the dance floor, a man wearing white boots, denim shorts, and a hot pink crop top directed three women through the steps of a line dance. Hop, scuffle, hop, tap, turn. I had no rhythm but I figured even I could pull that off.
“I feel like I’ve been in every bar in the area by now, but not this one. Sherry’s not a country singer. Her own stuff is kind of power-rock ballads, self-accompanied, but when she hasn’t got a gig of her own, she rents herself out to whatever band needs a woman singer. This is her first time with these guys. They’ve got a male lead singer but they wanted someone to sing backup and do a few duets with him. Hopefully, she’ll get to do a number of her own somewhere in there so you can hear her really let loose. She’s about five foot four but she can belt it like my grandma singing gospel.”
“Your grandma sings gospel?”
“Doesn’t yours?”
“Not that I’ve ever heard.” I didn’t mention that I’d never met either of my grandmothers. “I’m the only performer in the family. They humor me.”
“I’m not humored so much as tolerated. Singing hymns is a glory to God whereas acting is one step away from doing the devil’s work. Sherry isn’t their favorite either, for reasons that are probably going to become obvious.”
A waiter came over and asked us what we wanted to drink. I ordered a beer, but Joshua only asked for a club soda.
“I don’t drink,” he said with a shrug when the waiter left. “So if you feel like getting drunk, you’ve got a built-in designated driver.”
“You don’t drink ever?”
“I don’t drink anymore.”
I felt like I’d barged into private territory. I looked around the room as though it interested me, trying to find something else to comment on but it was Joshua who came up with another topic of conversation.
“So what’s the deal with Deb? Where does all the angry come from?”
“Mostly she’s just pissed at me. You know, for being a lowlife womanizer. I’m sorry you got sucked into it.” At the rehearsal yesterday, Deb had been coldly scathing to me, as expected, but she apparently hadn’t forgiven Joshua for his attempt at flirtation either because she’d spread the scorn around freely.
“Speaking of not drinking,” Joshua said as the waiter set our drinks in front of us, “she had been.”
“You think so?”
“When you haven’t had a drink in five years, you can smell it on people.”
“I’m sorry. Should I not be drinking this?”
“Nah, it’s fine. It’s not unpleasant, like you’re going to have onion breath or something. I only meant I could smell alcohol on Deb. Both nights.”
I toyed with my beer, not drinking from it. I knew Deb got into periods where she drank more than she was comfortable with because she’d mentioned it before—needing to cut back or planning to quit altogether—but I didn’t feel right gossiping about her to Joshua and who was I to say what was too much?
I didn’t drink before rehearsals because I liked feeling sharp on stage, but some people preferred to feel loose, and if she had a glass of wine after work, that was no different than what Desi had been doing.
“Did you have a drinking problem?” I figured we might as well get it out there so I wouldn’t have to fake an interest in the overdone décor anymore.
“I do have a drinking problem. Believe me, if I drank, there’d be a problem.”
“Is it uncomfortable being here?”
“Not for that reason. Like I said, I’ve been in every bar in a sixty mile radius to hear Sherry sing. Go on, drink up. It’s fine.”
I lifted the bottle to my lips, my eyes on
Joshua’s. He watched me closely, like the beer was something he yearned for, but when I set the bottle back down, his eyes didn’t follow it.
“You’re young to be sober.”
“If I didn’t get sober, I wasn’t going to get any older. There were a few bad years there.”
“How old are you?” When I looked at him I saw someone my own age, but steadier, as though he were already used to taking care of others instead of expecting to be taken care of.
“Twenty-eight. I started college late—the result of those few bad years. How old are you?”
“Almost twenty-seven.”
“Twenty-six and a half?” he joked.
“Three quarters.” I smiled my shy little boy smile.
“Sherry’s only twenty-three. She wasn’t even old enough to drink when I met her, not that that was stopping her.”
“Where’d you meet her?”
“At an open mic night. I was sober, she wasn’t, so I was doubly the bad guy—robbing the cradle and hitting on someone who was maybe too drunk to legally give consent. Luckily, she had no regrets when we woke up together the next morning. We’ve been together ever since.”
“That’s sweet.” I wondered where him flirting with Deb fit into that. “So you sing too?”
“No more than I have to. I was there to read my poetry. Don’t judge.”
“OK, I would not have pegged you as a poet.”
“What would you have pegged me as? And before you answer, I have to warn you that if you use the word thug, this relationship is over.”
“I was going to go with jock. Your guns are impressive.”
In the low light of the bar, I could see the edge of a tattoo peeking out from beneath his sleeve. I brushed my hand along his arm, pushing the sleeve up to get a look beneath it. The tattoo there was small and simple: a triangle nestled into a circle. Below the circle were four hash marks slashed diagonally by a fifth.
“It’s a sobriety thing.”
“You add a mark every year?” I swiped my thumb across the hash marks.
Joshua nodded. He seemed to be holding his breath. Did he think I’d judge him in some way?
“Congratulations on five years.” I let the sleeve fall into place. “It makes your guns even more impressive.” I picked my beer back up. The bottle was cold after the warmth of his skin.
“I have this on the other side.” He pulled up his other sleeve, rotating towards me to reveal the classic theater masks—one comedy, one tragedy, overlapping at the chin. “Sherry would cover me in tattoos if I’d let her. That’s her day job.”
“What’s your day job?”
“I work for an insurance company doing desktop support. Ask me what I went to school for.”
“What did you go to school for?”
“Not that.”
I laughed. “Does anyone ever?”
“I was a theater major. So, just FYI, I’m certifiably a better actor than you.”
“Oh, God. Here we go.”
Before he could answer back, the lights got even dimmer and a group of guys dressed not much different from the waiters ran onto the stage. One of them stepped up to the mic and introduced the band—two guitarists, a guy on keyboards, and a drummer—then himself.
“And tonight we’re featuring Sherry Diáfano on vocals.” He swept an arm towards stage right and a woman bounced on stage dressed like a punk-country hybrid in black shit-kicker boots, a flouncy plaid skirt in shades of black and brown, and a denim bustier. She was plump, with breasts piled high above the bustier and thighs round beneath the short skirt. The golden glow of her skin beneath the yellows and reds of the stage lighting suggested either a deep tan or a more naturally dark skin tone.
She smiled widely, her cheeks forming rosy balls of flesh on either side of her grin. Even from twenty feet away, I could feel her energy. The lacy flounce on her skirt, the high mounds of her breasts, the mass of cork-screwed brown curls flying around her chin and ears—all bounced in rhythm with her enthusiasm.
“She’s electric,” I said, unable to take my eyes off her.
“It never wears off,” Joshua agreed. “She still zaps me.”
Chapter 5
I was swallowing the last of my second beer, warm and flat by this point, when Sherry came flying over to our table. She threw herself into her husband’s arms like he was made out of something softer than he appeared to be. I watched the two of them exchange a passionate kiss, appreciating the chance to check Sherry out without her knowing it.
She sat on Joshua’s lap, her legs wrapped around him, her breasts pushed up even higher by the squeeze of his arms. Up close, her cheeks were so fat I wanted to pinch them like a child’s, then play “who’s got your nose” with that adorable button in between. I didn’t envy Joshua for being married to her, but I envied him for getting to take her home tonight. I’d bet my car she was a wild ride.
“So, this is Nate,” Joshua said when he got his lips unlocked from hers.
“Hi, Sherry.” I held out my hand to her. “You were fantastic.”
“Well, hello, blue eyes.” She used my hand to pull me in for a kiss, which she planted on my lips. Without thinking about it, I angled my mouth to make the most of the lingering contact between us.
“Cute and a good kisser. Do that again.” She tilted her head and I leaned across Joshua’s arm and brushed her mouth with mine lightly, restraining myself from doing more.
“You brought me a present?” she asked Joshua when I let her go.
“That’s wasn’t the idea.” He turned his head to frown at me. I winced. That had probably not been appropriate, though it had been enjoyable. He lifted his wife off his lap and set her onto the chair next to him. “Tequila?”
“Yes, please. Wanna do a shot with me, Nate?” She grinned that happy grin at me, making tequila seem like the best idea in the world.
“I could do one.”
When Joshua left, Sherry slid over into his seat. She leaned her elbow on the table, opening herself up to me. “You have seriously beautiful eyes.”
“All the better to see you with.” My inner flirt kicked in faster than I could put the brakes on it. “You know, for a tattoo artist, you don’t have many tattoos.”
I avoided looking directly at her most noticeable tat, an intricate flower ornately woven across the tops of her breasts. There was a smorgasbord of skin on display in front of me. It radiated warmth and smelled delicious.
“Actually, I’ve got a lot of them, just no real big ones. I have trouble being passive.” She looked up at me from under heavy eyelashes, implying something sexual with the words. I licked my lips, trying to steer my mind away from licking her neck. “I tried tattooing myself once, but it didn’t work out.” She held out her right wrist to me. I hadn’t looked closely enough before to realize that what encircled it was inked onto her skin and not a bracelet.
“It’s beautiful.” I brought her hand to my lips and kissed the soft skin on the inside of her wrist. She smiled her approval.
“Yeah, but that’s because someone else fixed it for me. My original work is under there somewhere but you can’t see it now, thank God. Hard as it is to sit still and be done-to without doing, I learned my lesson.”
“Where are the others?”
“They’re tucked away all over. I’m like an Easter egg hunt. You’re going to have to go looking for them.”
I dropped my eyes to the flower growing out of her cleavage.
“I see you found one.”
“Sorry.” I brought my eyes back up to hers.
“Don’t be silly. If I didn’t want people looking at my boobs, I wouldn’t decorate them.”
Joshua returned with our drinks. He dropped one shot glass off in front of each of us, then lowered himself into the chair on the other side of his wife with a refilled club soda. Sherry held her shot up and I tapped mine against it, before downing it in a single gulp. I shuddered from the sensation of tequila hitting the back of my throat, noticing that
Sherry didn’t.
“Don’t try to outdrink her,” Joshua warned. “She was raised on that stuff.”
“Joshua won’t let me tattoo him,” Sherry said, directing a flirtatious pout at her husband. “Even though he has tattoos.”
“From before I met you. If I ever get a new one, you’re my man.”
“He won’t get a new one,” she told me.
“Do you have any?” Joshua asked me.
I shook my head.
“Seriously?” Sherry lifted the hem of my t-shirt as if to check. “You’re a completely blank canvas? Now I want to get my hands on you in more ways than one.”
I reluctantly moved her hands away from my body as Joshua said, “Tell her why you don’t have any tattoos.”
“I get grief for being commitment phobic—which is probably true—but it’s more about my body being my medium. Even if the character I’m playing would have tattoos, he probably wouldn’t have the ones I have. It always seemed like it would be too much of a pain to have to cover them.”
“It is,” Joshua agreed. “Regular makeup doesn’t work and the shit that does work stains your clothes. That’s why I’m not getting any more, as I’ve told her before. Thanks for backing me up on it.”
“I just want my name on your ass, baby. Is that really too much to ask?”
“You never know when my ass will need to make an appearance.”
“How about your ass, Nate?” She turned to me with a wink. “Has it ever appeared on stage?”
“Only in cameo, but it would if it needed to. Not to say anyone wants to look at my ass.”
“Nothing wrong with your ass,” Joshua said. “Guys don’t need to have big butts, not like this beauty here.” He reached behind his wife and copped a feel. “Now that’s what I’m talking about.”
She leaned over and kissed his cheek, then turned her attention back to me. “I’ll have to trust Joshua’s judgment on your ass, since it’s sitting in that chair, but the rest of you looks good.” She put her hands back on my body, pressing them against my lower rib cage, the potential for them to slide either up or down humming between us.
Joshua picked up both our shot glasses with one hand. “I assume you want another. You want one, Nate?”