Fag Hag (Robert Rodi Essentials) (15 page)

She got to her feet. “If you’re not going to help me, you can just—”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you.” He rose to his full height, and thus towered over her. “I just wanna make sure you got it in perspective first.” He tilted his head. “A grand oughtta do it for now.”

“A thousand dollars?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s that expensive?”

“From me it is. I got palms to grease.”

“I don’t have that kind of money. Can’t you—”

He laughed, stilling her voice in mid-plea. “Girl, tomorrow you’ll wake up and you won’t believe how silly you’ve been about this.”

“If I get the money, can I still call you?”

“Sure, sure,” he said, showing himself out. “But you won’t.” He shut the door behind him.

She sat on the sofa and cried, thoroughly humiliated.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
she called the temp agency to say she was sick and couldn’t work that day. The woman on the phone—an efficient, thoroughly despicable redhead named Monica—said, “Natalie, I have to tell you, we’re a little concerned by your recent performance.”

“What do you mean, ‘concerned’?” she snapped.

“Well, you’ve been a little haphazard in your work schedule. You turn down so many jobs, and miss days on the ones you do take, and—”

“So what? That’s the benefit of temping. At least that’s what your ads all say. ‘Work when you want to.’”

“Yes, but—”

“I’ve been on your books for three years now and I’ve brought in a lot of money. And I’ll bring in more. I type, I answer phones, I do all major word-processing functions, and last but not least, I bathe regularly. If you want to dump me, go ahead. I can always sign with another agency. But I can’t imagine
you’ll
find someone to replace
me
so easily.”

The grinding of Monica’s teeth was almost audible. “All we ask, Natalie, is that you give us a little advance notice whenever possible.”

“I’ll do that. Since you ask so nicely.”

She spent the rest of the morning looking out a window, wondering if she should throw herself from it. She’d hurt Peter last night, and it made her wonder if she was really capable of wreaking her vengeance on him—especially now that that condescending prig Curtis Driscoll had demeaned her for even having the idea. Who did he think he was?

The trouble was, he had scored a hit. He’d made her feel childish and melodramatic. Revenge was something people on bad TV shows plotted for. This was real life.

The phone rang. If it was that bitch Monica again…

“Natalie, it’s your mother.”

She colored with anger, remembering her conversation with Calvin. “Oh,” she said as unwelcomingly as possible. “Hi.”

Sandy didn’t notice. “I had such a lovely weekend with Darnita,” she said, her voice all chirpy with delight. “I took her to see a movie—a cartoon about a little dinosaur who’d lost his mother. I don’t mind telling you, it upset me—that poor sad creature, crying out for his mama! But Darnita enjoyed it thoroughly. Then we went to McDonald’s and I’d never been to one before. It was quite an experience! Did you know almost all the food there is deep-fried? I’m not altogether certain people should eat there as often as they do.”

Natalie was waiting for an opportunity to accuse her mother of lying about Calvin and Vera being offended by her behavior at the wedding, but Sandy just kept barreling on.

“Anyway, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that wonderful child, ever since the social worker came to pick her up this morning. I watched the car drive away, taking her back to oblivion, and I kept thinking, that dear little girl, I am her only hope! And then, do you know what? Her sister called and thanked me for taking such good care of her! The idea of such polite people struggling to live civilized lives in the projects just overwhelms me. If only I could do something more for them! I thought of setting up an educational fund for Darnita, but of course I don’t have the money. If I did, though, I wouldn’t hesitate. Would you?”

Natalie was taken aback by the question. “What?”

“If you had the money, wouldn’t you donate some to Darnita’s education?”

“I don’t have any money.”

“I know, but if you did, wouldn’t you?”

“Mom—” She still wanted to get around to the subject of The Wedding Lie.

“If, for instance, you suddenly came into a deal of money, you’d put aside a thousand or two for Darnita’s schooling, wouldn’t you?”

Natalie felt something tingle at the base of her skull. “What is this about?”

“Just conjectural, dear. Idle chatter.”

But she believed her mother capable of anything now. “No, you’re up to something. What is it?”

“I’m just hoping for the best for poor Darnita, so that—”

“No, something about me coming into money. Explain.”

Sandy sighed. “Well, I might as well tell you, you’ll find out soon enough. Your father set up a trust fund for you; you get fifty thousand dollars when you turn thirty. I’m the trustee. Well, you turn thirty in two months, and it was going to be a surprise, but I wanted to touch you beforehand for Darnita’s sake, not for mine. You’ll remember your little ‘sister,’ won’t you? You’re the only ones who can help her, you and Calvin.”

Natalie wasn’t seeing anything; there was a hazy white fog before her eyes. “You never mentioned this before,” she said. She felt like vomiting.

“I had my reasons, dear, believe me. I wanted you to have a career, and I thought if you knew you had fifty thousand dollars coming you’d have no ambition. You’d just coast until you were thirty and never even try.”

“But I haven’t tried. I don’t have a career.”

“I know, and that’s my greatest disappointment. But at least I know it’s not my fault. At least I know I didn’t do it to you.”

Natalie was so furious that it took her a moment to find her voice. “You—are such a bitch—” she garbled, tears brimming on her lashes.

“Natalie! How dare you speak to me that way!”

“I don’t ever want to speak to you again. If I’m such a fucking disappointment, give me my money and get the hell out of my life.”

“There no cause for such disgusting lang—”

“Shut up and leave me alone!”

“Darling, I don’t understand why you hate me all of a sudden, but that doesn’t change what I’ve asked you about Darnita, I—”

“Sell your fucking house, Mom! Sell your fucking jewels and your goddamn Landseer, if you’re so concerned about her!” She hung up and immediately dialed Calvin at the bank.

“Hey, Tubs,” he said brightly.

She didn’t return his greeting, but said, “Did you know we get fifty grand when we turn thirty?”

“You
get fifty,” he said. “I get a hundred.”

It was like two bolts of lightning had struck her in one day. “How come you get more?”

“Our father’s will. I wasn’t born yet when he died, so he stipulated if I was born a girl, we’d get an even fifty-fifty split, but if I was a boy I’d get two-thirds.”

She almost levitated out of her seat with hatred. “You think that’s fair?”

“Fair, schmair. It was all settled a long time before I came along.”

“And you knew about this all along but never said a word to me?”

“Mom asked me not to.”

“Thanks so much, Cal. My loving brother who almost regretted going on his honeymoon because I’d needed him. Christ, what a load of shit!” She turned off the phone and hurled it across the room. It hit a framed poster and shattered the glass.

There was nothing left of her life now, just a series of betrayals. She’d been betrayed by Peter, by her mother, by Calvin, by the father she couldn’t even remember. The truest person in her life right now was that pig Monica at the temp agency.

She started to tremble and couldn’t stop. She’d never felt such self-revulsion before, and all for having been stupid enough to care for these people.

Revenge was her consolation. She might have nothing left in her life, but soon she would have fifty thousand dollars, and what vehicles for vengeance that would buy she could only imagine.

She raced over to the phone, plucked it up from amidst the shards of glass, and turned it on. Fortunately it still worked.

“Hello,” said her mother. She sounded as if she’d been crying.

“It’s Natalie. I want to buy Carmen DeFleur.”

A stunned pause. “You what?”

“You’re always complaining about what a burden she is. Well, I’ll take her off your hands. You want money for Darnita? Sell me the dog. Five hundred bucks. Not a bad offer, given her age.”

Sandy gasped. “I don’t know you anymore,” she said, her voice breaking. “You’re not my daughter.” She hung up.

Natalie cackled, and dialed Curtis Driscoll.

N
ATALIE FELT A
peculiar elation looking at the squirrel she had just run over. It had darted into the street in front of her, and rather than swerve to avoid hitting it, some kind of fit had possessed her, and she’d pressed her foot to the accelerator, sending her van careening into the helpless rodent. She heard a little pop, like a walnut being cracked, then stopped the van and peeked out the window at the creature she’d just nailed.

She’d run across its head, and its skull was smashed. There was something about the seeping carnage that thrilled her, even as she strove to figure out why on earth she’d done such a thing. A poor, defenseless squirrel—but, hah! That’s the last time it would get in
her
way!

Both frightened by her loss of control and ashamed of herself for being frightened, she dismissed the incident from her mind, rolled her window back up, and drove another few blocks before parking along the side of a street.

She checked her wristwatch; thanks to the phosphorescent glow of the Keith Haring “monkeys,” she could see that it was 5:08 a.m. She reached up and turned the ignition key toward her, stilling the van’s engine.

She sat for a while, enjoying the quiet, occasionally sipping from the thermos of hot coffee she’d brought with her. The little neighborhood was bathed in silvery winter tones; it was the kind of delicacy of color no camera could ever capture. Patches of snow caught the moonlight and held it, so that everything was illuminated, everything was visible. She sighed in contentment. These were her favorite moments, alone with the riches of a February dawn, sole witness to all this fragile beauty.

But within a few minutes the cold had invaded the van, and she started to shiver. She checked her wristwatch again: 5:17 a.m. “Time for the boys to get up,” she said aloud. She crawled from the driver’s seat to the back of the van, where she switched on a receiver and a reel-to-reel tape recorder she’d hooked up to a battery pack. She had a gas heating unit back here as well, but was she was a little afraid of it and seldom used it.

She donned a pair of headphones. At 5:20 she heard the telltale bugling of Lloyd’s alarm clock. He and Peter would be getting up momentarily. Why Lloyd had chosen 5:20—not 5:30, not 5:15—was something she’d often wondered about; it seemed so perverse. Like the man himself.

Two minutes later, the alarm was still trilling away. She took off the headphones, returned to the front of the van, and peered out the window at Lloyd’s house, which was right across the street. No lights in the bedroom window yet. “Come
on,”
she growled. “It’s
cold
in here!” She went back and reluctantly turned on the heater, then sat down and put the headphones back on.

In another half minute the alarm was stilled and she could hear Lloyd’s sleep-drugged voice: “I’ll shower first.” Then she heard what must be Peter’s mumbled assent.

This was followed by the sound of Lloyd’s footsteps as he left the bedroom, and the distant sound of the shower being run.

She’d chosen to bug the bedroom, over the other rooms in the house, because it witnessed the couple’s most private moments. She’d placed the device there during her second and final visit, which had occurred after her friendship with Peter had soured and he had become wary of her. She’d dropped by just before the holidays with a combination Christmas present/housewarming gift/peace offering and had been received with cordiality. After several minutes of stilted conversation she excused herself to “powder her nose,” then dodged upstairs to affix the bug to the back of the headboard.

“What were you doing upstairs?” Peter asked suspiciously when she came back down.

“I told you, I had to visit the little girls’ room,” she said, smiling sweetly.

“We have a bathroom down here, for guests.”

She claimed to have forgotten, and apologized. Then she kissed them both goodbye and said she’d see them soon. But she hadn’t called them since, and they never called her.

In fact, she was out of touch with nearly everyone these days. It had been a lonely Christmas—she’d refused to go home and face her treacherous mother and brother, and had ended up drinking her Christmas dinner with poor, desperate Kirk Bergland at a Halsted Street bar with the other dregs of gay society. She’d ended up in floods of tears, and that was the last she’d seen of Kirk, too.

So no one knew of her inheritance, and when Peter and Lloyd left the house and drove to work each day, they couldn’t begin to suspect that the plain white Chevy van that was always parked across the street from their front door belonged to her; nor could they suspect that she herself was inside it, having monitored their private moments with an electronic surveillance device she’d gotten illegally—and expensively—from Curtis Driscoll.

Actually, it had turned out that Curtis really
was
just a flighty waiter; but his boyfriend was a Chicago cop and had access to tantalizing mounds of physical evidence taken into police custody on various criminal raids—evidence that included all manner of electronic gadgetry. While the case in which it played a part was awaiting trial, Natalie was free to use all this listening equipment (as long as she continued to supply Curtis with enough cash to keep “greasing the right palms,” as he put it).

While the faint sound of Lloyd’s shower and of Peter’s delicate snoring continued, she flipped through the notebook of transcriptions she’d been keeping since beginning her surveillance, shortly after her thirtieth birthday. Her favorite pages were denoted by yellow Post-It stickers. She turned to one now.