Fag Hag (Robert Rodi Essentials) (21 page)

Well,
that
was a relief. They finished their drinks and, having nothing else to talk about, agreed to part. Natalie promised she’d call him as soon as she’d spoken to Curtis.

“And I advise you to go straight home to bed,
alone,”
she added. She’d caught him eyeing someone across the bar. “Don’t make my job any harder than it is.”

He grinned, kissed her on the cheek, and left. As soon as he’d gone, she wiped away his kiss with her sleeve, and gave in to a shudder of distaste.

She sat alone for a while, her mind working like mad. Plots and strategies flooded her head; it was all she could do to sort through them.

Should she have Lloyd’s store raided? She could have Quentin plant evidence that it was a front for the mob or something, and have Luigi storm in and find it. But no, Peter would just stand beside Lloyd and help him fight the charge; it would only bring them closer together, and she wanted them utterly ruined.

Should she have Peter arrested for possession of cocaine and have Lloyd on the books as the informant? She could arrange that, with Luigi’s help. But no, it was too complicated; and it would involve seducing Peter into using again, and that was too daunting a task to consider. Plus, if Lloyd denied having called the police, Peter would believe him.

Should she seek Luigi’s help in framing
Lloyd
for possession? Something as ridiculous as that might strike Peter as so absurd that it might be true—might plant a seed of doubt in his mind, that would ultimately kill his hero-worship of Lloyd. But no; Lloyd was just too straight-and-narrow to paint as a closet cokehead with any kind of conviction. Plus, he was so persuasive, he could talk his way out of anything. And, you never know, Peter might actually be
relieved
to learn that Lloyd had a failing.

She came up with scheme after scheme, and all of them fell short in some regard. But then, her concentration was less intense than it should have been, for she kept coming back to the big “if”—her ability to get Curtis back in Luigi’s arms.

She decided that waiting till morning would be too much agony. So she polished off her drink, squeezed herself out of the bar, and trotted the few blocks to Vortex, Curtis’s favorite hangout.

He wasn’t in the front bar, or the back bar, or on the dance floor, or in the video room; and she’d had just enough to drink, and enough dizzying emotion that night, to suddenly find herself disoriented by the lights and the crowd and the pounding music. And as she also hadn’t eaten anything in about a day and a half, she ultimately had to lean against a wall for a few minutes just to keep from fainting.

A steady stream of men passed her, laughing, singing, chattering at each other, or just silently, sexually staring—eyes meeting eyes with the smoldering, unspoken, eternal question. But none of those eyes held hers for very long; they focused on her and rejected her in almost the same instant, as though she were nothing more than a mirage, a trick of the light.

But soon, someone did in fact deign to notice her—albeit less than joyfully. “Oh, hi, Natalie. Didn’t know you came here.”

It was Curtis! She willed herself to snap out of her funk. “Oh, Curtis, darling, hold on a sec.” She pushed herself away from the wall.

He looked wary, as though fighting the impulse to ditch her. He was clearly on the prowl tonight, and didn’t want this wreck of a woman clinging to his arm. “What is it?” he asked curtly.

“I just had a chat with Luigi,” she said, steering him out of the flow of traffic and into a corner where they could talk.

“Man, that’s your problem. I told you, that guy is history as far as I’m concerned. I can’t help you.” He tried to pry himself away from her.

She tightened her grip on him. “No, that’s the amazing thing,” she said. “I don’t
need
your help. He doesn’t even care about the bug. All he could talk about was you.”

He pretended to be exasperated, but she could tell he would stand for a little more of this. Who can resist hearing what a former lover has to say about him? “Well, that’s too bad,” he said unconvincingly, “but—”

“I’ve never seen a six-foot-one Chicago cop cry,” she continued. “I don’t know what this guy meant to
you,
but you must’ve meant a lot to
him.”

He stuck his chin in the air. “Not enough to keep him from cattin’ around.”

“Everyone deserves a second chance, Curtis.”

“He had his second, and his third, and his fourth.”

Oh,
thought Natalie. Luigi had conveniently forgotten to mention that part.

She tweaked arm. “Come on, you’ve punished him enough.”

He looked down at her, furious. “I don’t see that that’s any of your business.”

“Curtis, I’m
not
going to let you make a mistake like this! I won’t let you throw away something so beautiful!” She tightened her grip on him, so that he actually yelped in pain.

He yanked his arm away from her. “Jesus, girl! You outta your goddamn mind? I’ll haul off and slug you next time you dig your nails into me like that.”

She reached for him again, but he took a quick step back. She saw the look on his face—startled, almost frightened—and she knew she’d come on too strong. It was just that she was so close now—so maddeningly close! It was so unfair of him to resist—so unfair of God, or fate, or whatever, to
allow
him to resist. Not when her second chance depended on him giving Luigi one as well. She felt a little spasm of fury that made her want to simply club him into unconsciousness and drag him to Luigi’s door.

But instead she had to calm down, and look at this as rationally as possible. Here it was, her future, standing before her in the same shape of a silly, slim-hipped, self-obsessed little waitperson. She must try to think like him, to figure out what she might say to him that would change his mind.

He was smoothing out his sleeve now. “You wrinkled me,” he snarled. “Damn it, Natalie, this is
linen.
If it’s gonna get wrinkled tonight, it’s gotta do its job first. Keep your damn cat’s paws off me!” He started moving away from her, but the bar was crowded and his progress was incremental.

Christ, she wanted to rip his head off! Anger stung her face like a swarm of killer bees. But she bit her lower lip, balled her fists, and shook off her anger. She called after him, “Curtis, please—you don’t know how Luigi loves you! He spent half an hour talking about nothing else—and the things he said, my God! I only hope to live to see the day someone loves
me
half as much.”

“Don’t want to hear it,” he said. “Don’t even want to hear his name. Goodbye, Natalie.” He was about three yards from her now, trying to squeeze through a phalanx of nearly identical bleach-blonds in white T-shirts and plaid blazers.

She arched an eyebrow. Why didn’t Curtis just edge around the blonds instead of insisting on pressing through them? The bar wasn’t
that
crowded. She was certain he could be making greater progress than this. No, he must be deliberately holding back; despite himself, he did want to hear what his ex had been saying about him.

But it might take all night to convince him to let her tell him; he’d make her grovel first, to exalt his ego, until he could gratify his desire to hear her out while at the same time seeming to do her a tremendous favor by listening.
Transparent little flake,
she thought;
as if I’ve got all night.
She made up her mind to call his bluff.

“Fine,” she said, hiding her anger as best she could. He was still trying to make his way through the wall of blonds, who were visibly annoyed at the way he kept batting against them, like a moth against a window pane. “Fine, Curtis; I understand. And I respect your feelings, I really do. So…good night.” And with that, she turned tail and headed up to the front of the bar.

As luck would have it, someone vacated a stool just as she arrived at the counter. She grabbed it, eliciting a murderous look from an ageing lothario who’d been on his way to the same seat and who had apparently had his eye on it first. She gave him a phony smile in return, then swiveled around and ordered herself a Bacardi. She sipped it slowly; she had time to kill. Curtis would have to invent a reason to speak to her again, and he wasn’t very bright. It might take him a good ten minutes. She checked her watch, intent on timing him.

She underestimated his desire; in a little under six minutes he was brushing up beside her. “Oh,
you’re
still here,” he said, as if just noticing her. “Listen, I just want to order a drink. Don’t start in on me about Luigi again.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she assured him, and she enjoyed the kind of panicked look that flickered across his face when she said this. She was thrilled by his discomfort.

He wasn’t very assertive about ordering his drink. She noticed that he only waved his five-dollar bill in the air when the bartender had turned his back to him.

Natalie nursed her Bacardi quietly, feeling her blood race through her veins. It was an almost metaphysical experience; she’d never known silence could be so cruel a weapon, never known she could inflict such pain just by sitting still. She liked the feeling.

Curtis was visibly shrinking beside her. His shoulders slumped. Now he dropped his head and looked down at the crumpled fiver.

“It’s just that he hurt my feelings so much,” he said, his voice small. She could barely hear him above the whump-whump-whump of the loudspeakers.

“Excuse me?” she said loudly, adding to his torture. “You say something?”

He looked at her with wide, vulnerable eyes. “No,” he said hastily. “Forget it.” He took a discreet glance to his left, then his right, and when he determined that no one else was listening in, he repeated in a stronger voice, “He hurt me. Hurt my feelings, I mean.”

She cocked her head, as if disappointed in him. “Lovers never do that, Curtis? They never hurt each other?”

“But, lots of times,” he said, a little break in his voice. “Not just once.”

“I ask again: lovers never do that? Lovers are always perfect and considerate and never cause any trouble for one another?”

He turned away from her, his jaw jutting out. She could tell he’d found a final reserve of pride, one last little bastion of no-no-no. She might lose him altogether now, if she weren’t careful. She uncrossed her legs and spun around the stool to face him.

“It’s not so much a matter of how many times he’s cheated,” she said, “but of how many times he came back. Which was every time, right? He came back every time.” And she thought of Peter, of whom this could no longer be said, and her determination fired up again. If Curtis didn’t buy this line, she’d do something drastic—offer him money to go back to Luigi; fifty bucks, a hundred—a thousand. And if he didn’t take it…well, she might just lose her mind and kill him. Or herself.

He pursed his lips. “Where’s the fucking bartender, anyway?” he rasped, looking down the length of the counter. He waved his fiver pathetically, then dropped the pretense and said, “So he loves me. That’s supposed to solve everything?”

She put her hand on his arm. “I’m going to leave now. You look around this bar tonight and see what there is to see. Maybe you’ll find someone you like; maybe you won’t. But when you wake up tomorrow, it won’t matter if you’ve got someone with you or not; you’ll still miss him. Just like he misses you. He’s in bed, alone, right now. I happen to know that.”

Curtis looked at her as though she’d just told him she was from the planet Remulak. “Luigi, at home on a Friday night? Right, girlfriend.
That’ll
happen.”

“Call him if you don’t believe me.” She pecked his cheek, then slid off her stool and started pushing through the crowd towards the door. Just as she stepped outside, she turned for a quick look back—and saw Curtis at the pay phone, dialing.

What she had pulled off tonight was a feat worthy of her old self. Instead of trying to apologize for Luigi, instead of trying to absolve or explain his infidelities—none of which would have worked—she’d shown Curtis that apologies, explanations, and absolutions were beside the point; she’d shown him that he loved Luigi in spite of himself, and in a way that he couldn’t deny. And it had taken her mere seconds to settle on that plan of attack. Sometimes she wondered if anyone alive could withstand her manipulations.

Which of course made her think of Lloyd Hood.
Well, we’ll see what we’ll see about Lloyd the Wonderful,
she thought. There was little doubt now that she could count on Luigi as an ally in her plan for revenge.

Out on the sidewalk now, she moved within an aura of cigarette smoke; it wafted from her clothes and clung to her hair like a halo. It had probably permeated her skin. For a moment, she thought of sitting on the curb and airing out, but without Peter it would have been too poignant a thing to do. Instead, she flapped her arms and shook her head back and forth as she walked down Halsted Street, knowing she must look like a complete nut case, but not caring.

And all that shaking seemed to shake something loose in her head—something that rattled around between her ears and took shape as an actual idea.

A truly magnificent idea.

The walk up Aldine Street was quiet and restful; she could almost believe she was alone in the city. The old houses on either side of the street were mostly dark; a few upper-story windows were lit, but as Natalie passed them, these went out, one by one. The lights of Aldine extinguished while the lights in her head switched on. She was delighted by the symmetry of it.

As she drew closer to home, the plan took fuller form, and she marveled at its intricacy. She would need Luigi’s help, and Quentin’s, and now both owed her favors. It was a plan that would thoroughly discredit Lloyd in Peter’s eyes, and provide Natalie with a glorious opportunity to take her revenge in person, without suffering any consequences whatsoever. And as an added bonus, it would even enable her to retrieve the bugging device from Peter and Lloyd’s bedroom.

She swept into her apartment, shut the door, and did a little pirouette into her living room; she was thrilled with what the future promised.