Same here. Not that I get bombarded by IMs. I’ve almost joined an on-line dating service. Almost. They all require a picture, and I don’t want men scrolling past my face on their way to find a prettier woman.
“Yes, I got your flowers, Q, and they’re beautiful.” I’m sure they are—if they’re outside my door and they’re still alive. “Thank you. Um, where am I off to next?”
“I’d rather discuss it over dinner this time, if you don’t mind.”
Dinner? Q, the duke of drawers, the king of kinky, the prince of—no, I won’t say that word—wants to meet me for dinner? In public? The paparazzi will have a field day, especially after that Maxim cover. It is so hard to see your food with all those flashes going off. “Um, Q, do you think that would be a good idea?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean we’d go out, Ginger. We could order in.”
He called me Ginger! I feel a flush come over my face, even though I don’t want it to. Is he asking me out? That didn’t make sense. We’re ordering in, so how could he be asking me out? I’ve had a minor crush on him for ten years, but I haven’t pursued him for fear his mama would put me out on the street. It seems that every woman Q has seen for more than two weeks has vanished from the planet, and I saw the last model he dated in a department store window as a living mannequin.
Harsh. But aren’t all models living mannequins? Is this what J. K. Growling is trying to say about the modeling industry? I know, I shouldn’t hate these women for their beauty. They were blessed. I just wish I could find a man who didn’t “read” a woman with his eyes. I want a man who will “read” every chapter of me…. Whoo! Just the thought of any man turning all my pages is making me hot!
But my face is so hot! I haven’t had this feeling in…I can’t remember having this feeling. “Um, yeah, Q, that would be great.” But where? I look at the random clumps of clothes on the floor of my bedroom. Definitely not here. “Your place, right?”
“I was hoping…yours.”
My fingers tingle, and I get cottonmouth something fierce. Lord Jesus, help me here. “Oh, I don’t know. My place is a wreck. I haven’t been home in weeks, so maybe not.”
“I’ve already gotten us a pizza, and I’m calling from the sidewalk right under your window.”
I wrap the comforter tightly around me, go to my bedroom window, and look down ten stories to the sidewalk. I see a man holding a pizza box and wearing a baseball cap. “Are you wearing a Yankees hat?”
“Yes. I’m incognito. No one has recognized me yet.”
I look at the nothing I’m wearing. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll let security know it’s okay for you to come up.”
I can’t be too careful. When I first started out and had Mama and Rosemary living with me, we had a few scary evenings with our backs pressed into the condo door because of several stalkers who got by the doorman.
“Don’t make me wait too long. The doorman is looking at me funny. We wouldn’t want him to call any photographers.”
“He won’t,” I say. But Dwight the concierge might. I’ll bet Dwight makes more money tipping off gossip columnists than working here. I limped in one day last year after stumbling during an aerobics workout, and the Star had me as a victim of a mugging the very next day. “The doorman looks at everybody that way, Q. See you in a few minutes.”
I hang up, shut the drapes, and look at my messy bedroom. “He is not coming in here, no matter how much he wants to,” I say to the piles of clothes as I head to one of my bathrooms. I have three and a half bathrooms to go with three bedrooms, which was fine when Mama, Rosemary, and I shared the condo, but now…I live in a 2,165-foot, $15,000-a-month cavern with south views of the city, sunset views of the Hudson River, and breathtaking views of Central Park. I should really move out, but I haven’t found the time.
And now I hate Psyche again. Fifteen grand a month? I could pay off this little house in four months with a salary like that! Why in the world do we pay the beautiful people so much money? Oh, this world is getting too trifling to bear sometimes!
I stop in front of my bathroom mirror. “And he is not coming in here either, no matter how much I want him to,” I whisper.
Sorry, Lord. I can’t help it if I’m horny. It’s how You made me. And You made him…beautiful. Q’s not too tall—those basketball players have always made me feel like a midget. Q’s not too uppity—those rappers made me feel as if they were God’s gift to women, and they weren’t, with all those tattoos, piercings, and bee-otching. And Q’s not too worldly.
Yes he is, girl.
I bite my lip.
Okay, he’s worldly, Lord. Maybe I can, you know, bring him back into the fold, make an honest man out of him.
Not a chance.
I bite my lip again.
Then he wouldn’t be Q. Hmm. This could be tricky.
I feel my hands, and they’re sweaty. See what he does to me, Lord? I hear he can be very persuasive, and I’m tired, and weak, and it’s been so long since I was even kissed for real. Posed kisses in magazines do not count.
I throw cold water on my face. It’s only a pizza, Ginger, and you don’t even like pizza, because it goes straight to your thighs. And it’s not like you can throw on a designer dress to eat pizza. I’ll just throw on some sweats, not put on any make-up, and wear a Mets cap.
“He’ll just have to take me as I really am.”
Did I just say, “Take me”? Sorry, Lord. I meant that Q, in all his sexiness, will just have to see me as I am: sanctified sister Ginger Dane, from Athens, Ohio.
I shut the book. So far, I have a love-hate relationship with this novel. I like Psyche because she has a soul, even though she’s far too pretty to be believable. Q has no soul, Venus sounds as if she’s out to take Psyche’s soul, and…and what else? Yes, it has my attention, but…
I pick up Thicker Than Blood. “Grandpa Joe-Joe, here I come.”
8
Jack
After making three trips to the Salvation Army with Noël and Stevie’s clothes, many of them tear-stained, I had made the world’s worst-looking snowman in the backyard.
You’ve made worse.
The sticks I had used for arms were bigger than the snowman’s body, the eyes were two mismatched wood chips, and the hat was an upside-down bird’s nest.
At least it doesn’t have crushed beer cans for ears like last year.
I had tried rolling the snow into balls, but it wouldn’t stick together until I added some dead grass, old clover, and dirt. It sure was colorful.
I know Stevie is up there giggling about it.
And Noël is, too.
“It’s a nice snowman, Jack. And thanks for skipping the beer ears this year,” she’s saying.
Beer ears this year. Yeah, that’s something she would say. She was always better at rhyming than I was.
I had sat on the big swing for the longest time, gently gliding back and forth, as more snow floated down. It was…peaceful. It was as if Nature was covering up my world with a fresh, clean blanket.
Until the snowman