Austin and Emily Read online

  “Mother?”

  “No, this isn’t your mother. This is Irene, your mother’s lesbian lover. I’ve moved in, killed the poodle, and I’m wearing your favorite underwear on my head.”

  “Stop it, Mother, this is serious.”

  “Tell me you found her, Austin. Tell me you found the girl, and you’re getting married, and coming home, and planning to spawn.”

  “We’re getting married in two days.”

  Lila McAdoo stomped her feet on the linoleum kitchen floor and let out a holler.

  “Holy crap, there is a God. I knew it.”

  “Settle down, Mother. I need to ask you a question.”

  Lila changed the channel with the remote. “Shoot.”

  “Hypothetically, if a wedding ceremony is performed by a person who isn’t properly licensed, are the people really married?”

  “That’s not the question I was looking for, Austin. I thought maybe you would ask something better than that. Don’t look for loopholes, boy. It’s a wedding. A commitment of the heart. Take the leap without the regrets or don’t bother to take the leap at all.”

  The desert dog let out a single bark at the bathroom door.

  Lila asked, “Was that a dog?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you join the circus?”

  “No, Mother, I didn’t join the circus. And by the way, why did you always make me watch the Wizard of Oz when I was a kid? You knew I was afraid of the flying monkeys.”

  “It’s a good movie. Lots of hidden meanings and important lessons. It ain’t about witches and green castles. It’s about life, chasing rainbows, figuring out Kansas. The lion found his courage, didn’t he?”

  Lila lit a cigarette. She switched back to the channel she was watching before. There was a peculiar smell in the house.

  “Hey, do me a favor,” she said, “during the ceremony, call me on a cell phone and hold it up so I can hear everything. And don’t screw this up on purpose, Austin. This is your shot. I’ve gotta go. My lesbian lover gets jealous when I talk on the phone too long.”

  She hung up. At first, Austin was angry. As he sat for a moment, the anger drifted away. He was left in the bathroom with a smile on his face.

  CHAPTER 14

  Austin lay awake in the hotel room for what seemed like hours while Kenneth slept in the chair. The dog found a place at the foot of Kenneth Mint and rested quietly. Austin wondered if Emily, several floors above, was also too nervous to sleep. They would be married in thirty-four hours, less than a day and a half. So much could go wrong. They’d known each other for such a short period of time. Maybe it was all a big mistake, but the train was moving, the date was set, the time had come for change, and sometimes change comes on its own schedule. Even the loudest noises eventually vibrate down to a drone and whisper away in the air.

  Austin awoke to the sound of Kenneth in the bathroom urinating with the door wide open. The stream was powerful and lasted an extraordinary period of time. Austin watched Kenneth move to the bathroom mirror, place his right hand on the center of his chest and push slightly. Kenneth struggled to remove the top of a prescription bottle and took a single pill without water to wash it down. He stared at himself in the mirror and then glanced at Austin to notice he was being watched.

  “What are you looking at?” Kenneth asked.

  “I really think you should wash your hands after you go to the bathroom.”

  Kenneth examined his face in the mirror. “This is the second conversation we’ve repeated. It means our relationship is on the decline. I told you already, it’s simply not hygienic. Besides, I don’t use my hands anyway. I’ve got a funnel system.”

  Austin envisioned a series of small funnels, each connected to the one above, attached by metal wires to the underside of Kenneth’s private area.

  Emily and Cremora were under piles of blankets and pillows in their freezing cold, messy room upstairs. It was like being inside a refrigerator, only with cats. Emily fell asleep early and slept soundly through the night without anxiety or doubt. She snored like a water buffalo.

  The night before, she and Cremora made a list on the hotel notepad of everything they needed to accomplish the day before the wedding. The list was long, but neither woman set the alarm clock in the cool, dark room. Cremora loved sleeping more than any other bodily requirement. It was almost a religion for her, with paraphernalia and rituals. She planned a good sleep several days in advance and even owned a sleeping mask made of yak skin.

  Emily Dooley dreamed of her life with Austin McAdoo. In the dream, they lived in a tiny apartment in Tokyo and took their meals sitting cross-legged on the floor. She stayed home with the twins and Austin worked as a janitor at a local sports arena. There was a feeling in the dream of serenity. Peaceful color surrounded the Japanese day. Austin accidently dropped the serving spoon in the dream and the sound woke Emily. She smiled and pulled the heavy blanket over the top of her head.

  Kenneth said, “Let’s go have some breakfast. There’s a taco stand down the street.”

  “My bowels would certainly reject tacos for breakfast,” Austin uttered.

  “You shouldn’t let your bowels make the rules. We’re in Los Angeles, Spanish for the City of Angels, and people travel great distances from Mexico to open taco stands here for the purpose of bringing us authentic Mexican treats, like tacos.”

  Austin sat on the edge of the bed examining the scars left on his ankle by Glenn’s fangs.

  “That’s one of your problems, Kenneth. You don’t eat properly.”

  Kenneth said, “As a matter of fact, last year I was somewhere in Georgia. I figured out I could go inside the Pancake House, walk around like I was looking for somebody, and fill my pockets with those little packets of Concord grape jelly. When it was crowded, I could pull it off three or four times a day. Maybe get twenty-five or thirty little jelly packets.”

  Austin had forgotten his anxiety a moment. He looked to Kenneth for the conclusion of the story.

  “Only one problem,” Kenneth explained, “I started to turn lavender. The natural and artificial coloring in the jelly slowly turned my skin a light shade of purple. People thought I was dying. Hell, I even went to one of those free clinics in the city.

  “The doctor said, ‘You’re not dyin.’ You’ve just gotta stop eatin’ so much damn grape jelly’.”

  The two men looked at each other. Finally Austin said, “Is there a point to this story?”

  “There’s a point to every story, Austin. Now get up so we can knock down a few tacos.”

  Emily was in the shower talking about the upcoming honeymoon night. Cremora stood at the bathroom mirror examining herself.

  Emily confided, “Austin said he’s a loud and boisterous lover. What do you think that means?”

  “I’d rather not think about it,” Cremora answered.

  “I haven’t kissed a boy since Ernie Sullivan in high school. He wasn’t really a very good kisser. His tongue kept trying to get underneath my tongue, almost like a thumb fight. Mine would be on top, and his would be underneath, and back and forth.”

  Cremora’s skin was pasty. “Sounds very romantic. It makes me want to find Ernie Sullivan and make love to him on a beach.”

  Steam from the shower drifted over the top of the curtain, colliding with the air from the open door to the bedroom. Emily stopped washing her hair and thought of a question. “Do you ever think maybe you have a twin in this world? An exact twin you never knew you had, out there somewhere, doing things?”

  Cremora popped a blackhead. “No.”

  “And she doesn’t know about you, but sometimes you can almost see what she’s seeing, or feel what she’s feelin’?”

  Cremora said, “I bet your twin freaked out when you kissed Ernie Sullivan.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “O.K., no, I don’t think about a twin. But it’s a normal thing. As normal as anything else. You need to hurry up. We’ve got lots of wedding crap to do.”

 
; Emily thought about her dress.

  Austin and Kenneth walked down the street together on the way to breakfast.

  “Your shirt smells like cat piss,” Kenneth said.

  “I know,” Austin responded. “It won’t come out, which is understandable. Cats mark their territory with urine. It was designed to retain its special odor as long as possible in the elements.”

  They walked along for a while.

  “You think you’ll ever get used to it?” Kenneth asked.

  “I hope not,” Austin answered.

  They turned a corner, and Austin ran smack into two men. He nearly bowled over the older, smaller man.

  When all parties had regained balance, Austin said, “Mr. Lemule?”

  Buckshot Lemule said, “Ham thief?”

  “What are you doing here?” Austin asked his old boss, the owner of the Dixie Deluxe Canned Ham Company.

  “I’m on a business trip. If I wasn’t on the way to a meeting, I’d kick your white ass up and down the street. You owe me twenty-two canned hams.”

  Kenneth was enjoying the situation. “You stole hams?” he asked.

  “No,” Austin defended. “It was a misunderstanding. Woody must have made a mistake. Besides, you owe me a paycheck.”

  “I owe you a boot in the butt,” the feisty little man said.

  Austin ran. It wasn’t a conscious choice. He just turned and ran, looking over his shoulder, big arms pumping down Hollywood Boulevard, shoes slapping on shiny stars, the one breast bouncing harder than the other. Gut instinct. Survival. And he ran faster than he’d ever run before, except the time he was chased by the world’s largest chicken.

  Kenneth hesitated, laughed, and took off after Austin, leaving Buckshot Lemule and the other man standing at the street corner.

  The other man said, “He smelled like something bad.”

  Buckshot watched the two men hauling down the block. Truly, if it weren’t for the business meeting, Alvin Lemule would have run the fat man down, tackled him to the cement, and beaten the holy shit out of Austin. It was the way men handled problems. Quick, to the point, and then over. The debt paid with a broken rib, or a chipped front tooth.

  Austin ran with the grace and stamina of a wildebeest, finally coming to a stop when his body suggested, standing outside a jewelry store, bent over at the waist, coughing uncontrollably between gasps of polluted air.

  Angelo stood next to Emily in her white wedding dress. “You look bootiful,” and he smiled.

  “There’s something wrong underneath my arm. It doesn’t fit right.”

  Angelo patronized the bride. “You just nervous. The dress is fine.”

  Emily was getting frustrated. “Something’s just not right here. See it? Here?”

  Angelo waved it off. It was the wrong thing to do. Emily’s frustration turned to anger in the time it took for Angelo to circle his nubby Italian hand through the air.

  Before Cremora could make it across the room to intervene, Emily had Angelo in a headlock. They fell to the floor together, the bride on top of the olive-skinned dress maker, Angelo’s head tight in a vice of white lace.

  The man let out a gurgling sound. Cremora got down on her knees and knew better than to try to loosen the grip. Instead, she put her hands on Emily’s cheeks, made eye contact, and said, “If you let him up, he’ll fix your dress.”

  Emily froze, slowly loosened the vice, and stood above Angelo as he rolled into a fetal position.

  “I’m sorry,” Cremora said. “She’s just a little on edge about the wedding.”

  She helped Angelo to his feet. His eyes were still slightly rolled back in his head, and one ear was incredibly red.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  Cremora seized the opportunity. “You fell.”

  “I fell?” he asked.

  “Yeah, maybe it was something you ate. Rotten sausage or something. You just fell.”

  Emily didn’t like the idea of lying. The poor man’s ear looked like a radish.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  Angelo smelled burnt plastic.

  Emily said the first thing that came to her mind. “Will you be in our wedding, Angelo?”

  Cremora looked at her sideways. Emily stared back, determined to somehow right her wrong, compensate for nearly squeezing the man’s head off his short neck.

  “We don’t have a best man, do we? Kenneth is doing the ceremony. Angelo can be the best man.”

  She turned to Angelo. “Please? Could you do it? Cremora won’t have anyone to stand with. Pretty please?”

  Angelo couldn’t remember eating any rotten sausage. His head slowly cleared and the redness turned to pink on the ear.

  “Please?” she said, sweetly again.

  Angelo, still cross-eyed, looked at Emily, though he appeared to be looking at Cremora, and said, “I will. I will do it.”

  Kenneth and Austin stood at the window of the taco stand. Two Mexican boys in their early teens were inside, one at the window to take their order, the other behind to prepare the meal. Austin struggled to catch his breath. Beads of sweat the size of corn kernels welled and then rolled down his bloated face.

  One of the Mexicans said to his friend, “Yo pienso que el hombre gordo podr’is morir.”

  Austin asked Kenneth, “What did he say?”

  Kenneth answered, “He says you’re the size of a sperm whale.”

  Austin looked with displeasure at Kenneth, who shrugged. He then turned and looked upon the Mexican boy at the window.

  The cook said loud enough to hear, “Van ellos a comer o no?”

  Austin glanced at Kenneth for an interpretation. Kenneth repeated, “He says he bets you could eat seventy-five bean burritos.”

  Austin was unsure what to believe. The Mexican kid at the window seemed to have a smirk on his face. Austin tried to take a big breath and began to cough again uncontrollably.

  The kid at the window said to his friend, “Realmente pienso que el gigante podr’is morir.”

  Austin regained his breath again.

  “What did he say?” he asked.

  “He says the giant would taste delicious in a chalupa.”

  “You’re an idiot, Kenneth. I don’t believe you speak Spanish. I don’t believe you’re a preacher. I don’t believe you have a license to marry people in California.”

  It just came out. He’d been wanting to ask, but it just came out, sooner than he’d planned.

  Kenneth waited a long moment, turned to the Mexican kid in the window, and said “Yo tendre’ tres tacos, con todo, y un Coque. El gigante tendra’ una mierda burrito y un vaso de la orina de burro.”

  The Mexican kid turned around to his friend and barked out the order in English, “Three tacos, with everything, Coke, and the Giant wants a shit burrito and a glass of donkey piss.”

  Austin listened to the order. He finally said, “I’m not eatin’.”

  “Why not?” Kenneth asked.

  Emily, Cremora, and the wedding dress left Angelo’s shop. It was a beautiful day and Emily hoped the next day would be equally beautiful. She was satisfied with her apology to Angelo and also satisfied with the dress after alterations to the armpit area.

  From behind she heard, “Vanessa?”

  The name didn’t ring any bells, and she walked along, almost skipping, down Hollywood Boulevard.

  “Vanessa?” she heard again.

  Emily had almost forgotten her stage name. Even though it was only days away, it seemed like years. She turned around to see Alvin Lemule.

  “Buckshot?”

  “What are you doin’ here, girl?”

  Emily hugged him like she’d hug an uncle. Cremora and the younger man stood by and waited, nodding the way people do in such situations.

  “Oh, my God,” Emily said. “What are you doing in California?”

  “I’m out here on business. What are you doing here?”

  Emily said, “I’m getting married, tomorrow, here, on Julia Roberts’ star.
”

  She noticed Cremora. “Oh, this is Buckshot. He was one of my best customers, and nicest, back in Tampa.”

  She turned to Buckshot. “Remember the time you gave me two hundred dollars to put your eye next to my nipple as close as you could without touching?”

  Alvin Lemule smiled. The man with him seemed confused.

  “Anyway,” Emily said, “can you come to the wedding? Please? Please? It’s tomorrow, at ten o’clock in the morning, on Julia Roberts’ star. You can meet my husband.”

  Buckshot Lemule had lusted for many women in his life, but few like he lusted for Vanessa. He found reasons to travel to Tampa, frivolous reasons, untrue reasons, and left his wife behind for short so-called business trips. But Buckshot was a realist. He knew his time with Vanessa was short, and she would move along, and he’d find another stripper in another dance club willing to sit with him naked while he sipped whiskey sours. He also remembered looking at her nipple a quarter inch from his eye.

  “Yeah, I’ll come,” he said.

  Emily smiled. She leaned over and gave the crusty man a kiss on the cheek.

  “Oh yeah,” she said, “my name’s not Vanessa. It’s Emily.” And then she turned and walked away.

  The other man waited a few moments and said, “You sure know a lot of people, Mr. Lemule.”

  “Well, Corey, I don’t believe in coincidences. This happened for a reason. Remember that.”

  •

  After leaving the taco stand, Kenneth and Austin went to Angelo’s to pick up the tuxedos. Austin’s enlarged breast had reduced in size but still stood out prominently.

  Angelo seemed disoriented. First he brought out two very small brown tuxedos from the back room.

  “I don’t believe these’ll fit, Angelo. Why’s your ear red?”

  Angelo touched his ear the way a man might touch the ear of a baby.

  “I fell,” he said.

  “When?” Kenneth asked.

  “Today.”

  “Where?”

  Angelo pointed to the floor where earlier he’d rolled into a protective fetal position.

  “Why’d you fall?” Kenneth asked.

  Angelo mumbled something about sausage and went away to the back room.