“Happy Birthday, honeybunch,” I say, squeezing him.
“You didn’t dress up, Tracey!”
“I didn’t?” I feign horror and look down, as though expecting to find myself naked. “Don’t scare me like that, Raphael.”
He swats my arm. “I mean you didn’t dress in keeping with the theme.”
“What did you expect me to wear? A bikini? Trust me, Raphael, it’s better this way,” I say, motioning at my black turtleneck beneath a black blazer, worn with trendy black pants I splurged on in French Connection. Hopefully, the monochromatic effect is more slimming than funereal. “Great outfit on you, though.”
“You like?” He does a runway twirl, modeling his tropical print shirt, short shorts and Italian leather boots. “You don’t think it’s too gay, Tracey?”
In case you haven’t noticed, Raphael is a frequent name-user. He likes to think of it as his conversational trademark.
“Since when are you worried about being too gay, Raphael?”
“Since I saw the man Alexander and Joseph brought with them. Tracey, he’s delicious, and incredibly understated. You’d never suspect he’s a homo like the rest of us.” He motions over his shoulder at the reasonably good-looking, straight-looking man deep in conversation with Alexander and Joseph, who tonight are wearing matching sarongs with their matching gold wedding bands.
“The rest of us? Speak for yourself,” I tell Raphael, and add, eyeing the guy’s not-in-keeping-with-the-theme blue crewneck sweater and jeans, “Anyway, maybe he’s not a homo.”
“Oh, please. Kate!” Raphael screams her name as she rejoins us. He grabs her and plants a big kiss on her—his standard greeting—then steps back, tilts his head and frowns, wiping at her upper lip with his thumb. “Sorry, I slobbered my daquiri on your face.”
“Oh, hell.” In her accent, which is suddenly full-blown, it comes out hay-ell. “That’s not daquiri, Raphael. Tracey!” She turns on me, asking darkly, “It does not look okay, does it? It’s still all raw and red, isn’t it?”
I hedge. “It’s not that bad.”
“It’s not that bad? Raphael thinks it’s slobbered daquiri!” Kate rushes off to the bathroom.
In response to Raphael’s questioning glance, I explain, “Lip wax.”
He nods knowingly, and says, in his barely there Latin accent, “Poor thing. And with her complexion…From peaches and cream to peaches and blood. Tracey, lip wax kills.”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m a bleach gal myself.”
“Trust me. Wax kills.”
“Trust you?”
“I’m serious, Tracey.” His eyes are big and solemn.
There are two basic Raphael moods: Giddy Enthusiasm, and Earnest Concern. He is not currently sporting the facial expressions that accompany Giddy Enthusiasm.
“You wax your lip?” I ask incredulously.
“Tracey, I don’t do it.” He winces and shudders. “I have Cristoforo do it for me.” Cristoforo would be his stylist and erstwhile lover who has since taken up with a well-known, supposedly straight soap opera actor who shall remain nameless.
“Cristoforo waxes your lip,” I repeat, not sure whether to be bemused or amused.
“Not just my lip. My whole face. Believe me, Tracey, it’s better than shaving every day.”
“I believe you, Raphael. So that’s how you keep that boyish look.”
“You know it. Let’s go mingle with Alexander and Joseph,” Raphael suggests, promptly bouncing back to Giddy Enthusiasm as he links his arm through mine.
We make our way across the room to where they’re standing. Along the way, I snag a daquiri from the tray of a passing waiter who’s all rippling muscles and washboard abs, practically naked save for a tiny thong.
“You hired waiters?” I ask Raphael, who shakes his head.
“Tracey! That’s Jones,” he says. “You’ve met him before.”
“Jones? Just Jones?”
“Just Jones.”
“I don’t remember him.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Of course you do, Tracey. He’s the dancer. The one from Long Island? The one with the tutu fetish?”
Raphael has this annoying habit of insisting that you know people or have been places when you have no idea what he’s talking about. It happens all the time. I used to argue with him.
Now I just shrug and go along, pretending to know Jones.
Note that Raphael’s crowd, like the pop music industry, has more than its share of mono-monikered folks. Jones and Cristoforo. Cher and Madonna.
I don’t know what to make of this, but it seems significant. I’m about to point it out to Raphael when he goes on with his explanation.
“Jones is going to be doing a chorus part in a summer stock production of Hello, Dolly in Texas, of all godforsaken places, so I told him to grab a tray and pretend he’s rehearsing for the show. I thought he’d wear a tux, something classic with tails, but, Tracey, you know Jones and his infernal need to display his physique.”
Like I said, I don’t know Jones or his infernal need to display his physique, but I pretend to, rolling my eyes along with Raphael. Still, I have to ask, because I don’t get the connection: “Hello, Dolly?”
“Yes, yes, yes, you know—the Harmonia Gardens scene with the dancing waiters.”
I do know, but before I can tell Raphael, he rushes on, assuming I’m clueless, “You know, the dance contest and the stairway and ‘so nice to have you back where you belong.’ Shh, shh, we’re almost there,” Raphael says impatiently, wildly waving his hand at me as though I’m the one who won’t shut up.
“Almost there” means that we’re almost standing in front of Alexander, Joseph and the object of Raphael’s latest crush. Maybe it’s just that he’s positioned beside two of the most flamboyant men in the room, but he seems awfully low-key and—well, normal. Too normal for Raphael’s taste.
“Aruba…Jamaica…ooh, I want to take him…Tracey, isn’t he adorable?” Raphael gushes in my ear against the opening bars of the song “Kokomo,” which is blasting over the sound system.
“He’s pretty cute,” I agree. “But not adorable.”
He looks aghast. “Tracey! How can you say that? He’s definitely adorable.”
I reassess.
The guy has short brown hair—just plain old short brown hair, rather than one of Cristoforo’s statement-making “styles” or tints that are so popular with this crowd. He has brown eyes, and a nice nose, a nice mouth—the kind of guy you’d expect to find teaching sixth grade, or pushing a toddler in a shopping cart, or raking some suburban lawn. The kind of guy you’d expect to find pretty much anywhere other than here.
But here he is, an average Joe in a crowd of outrageous Josephs and Alexanders and Joneses—which is, I suspect, precisely the reason Raphael is so attracted to him.
“Joseph!” Raphael cries, moving forward. “I love the sarong! Yours, too, Alexander! And you…whoever you are, I love the sweater. Banana Republic?”
“I’m not sure,” the guy says, wrinkling his nose a little.
He is pretty adorable. And I see that his eyes, which I assumed from a few