Joe

Popping the collar on my trenchcoat, I stuff my hands in my pockets and dash into the crosswalk, hurrying against the rain. It wasn’t supposed to be a full-on downpour. It was supposed to be a light rain, the kind that would curl my hair just a little bit. The kind that meant I got to wear this great vintage trench, with the buckled belt that I tied so sassily around my waist.

“Shit,” I mutter as puddle water sloshes into my peep-toe heel. “Just great.”

My hand automatically twitches toward the strand of hair that’s tickling my eyebrow, but I know if I touch it now I will just make it worse. There is a fine line between damply tousled and pathetically half drowned. I hope I make it there in time.

Everybody on the sidewalk gives me that glance, that drive-by sort of scrutiny that you get in Manhattan. We are all a little suspicious around here. It’s as though you’re always taking a snapshot of everyone you see on the street, just in case you need to pick them out of a lineup later.

But I notice that no one looks particularly alarmed, nor particularly offended. So I haven’t gotten too waterlogged yet, I hope.

I can feel my wet skin scraping against my shoe. I better get off my feet soon or I’m going to have blisters the size of half dollars. Flexing my toes, I try to minimize the squelching sound and lengthen my stride. Not sure that will do me any good, but it can’t hurt at this point.

Yellow taxis hiss by, dangerously close to the gutter and those menacing puddles of water that could splash up on me at any time. I want to get away from the street side, but there are too many pedestrians in the way. Even when it is raining, the sidewalks are crowded with people. This city is insane. And yet, I do love it.

“Smoke, sugar?” a voice asks me, sudden and too close. Automatically I flinch away and feel an immediate hand on my elbow, wrenching me back. For a moment I’m suspended between hurling myself toward the street and being jerked back by this hand, this too-strong grip around my arm. Instinctually, I draw breath to scream.

“Don’t fall now, baby girl,” the voice says, sweet and low and confident. I glance up to see the rain-streaked cheeks of a dark-skinned, broad-shouldered woman. She gives me a half smile, revealing a gap between her teeth on one side.

Something about her makes me relax and instead of trying to hurl myself into traffic, I let her nudge me back onto the sidewalk.

“What did you say?” I stammer, confused.

“You got any smokes, baby?” she drawls, her voice thick and unhurried. She seems just a little bit too relaxed, if I’m honest. She is not trying to get out of the rain. Not shielding herself in any way. It’s as though she doesn’t even realize the rain is happening. As I look up at her, I’m momentarily fascinated by the drops of water that march along the curly strands of hair that frame her face.

“No… I don’t smoke,” I explain, pulling away gently so I can resume my progress down the sidewalk.

She finally releases my arm and raises her hand in a three-fingered wave.

“That’s all right, cupcake,” she purrs. “Don’t even think about it. You go on and have a nice night.”

“Um, okay then,” I smile, already turning around. In moments she’s behind me, and I realize I’ll probably never see her again. I don’t live in this neighborhood. That was just one of the million one-off Manhattan encounters I will have before I’m through. Just drive-bys, like I said. Ships in the night and whatnot.

The bar sign is somehow nautical, but also minimalist. These days, it seems like everybody is going for the unexpected fusion of cultures, hoping to discover the next big thing. The latest trend. I duck into the doorway, shaking my shoulders like a St. Bernard to repel the rain and allowing my fingers to pluck at my hair until I am reassured it is still in the shape I left it.

Inside is a bit of a sensory shock. Instead of tables, there are glowing columns with people around them, leaning attractively on their elbows. Instead of chairs, there are more cubes artfully scattered about. Yet the walls are decorated with large seascapes, so large I’m practically seasick. I feel my hands go out as though to maintain my balance.

“Hey, there she is!” I hear a voice exclaim. “Joe! Sweetie!”

Smiling, I head toward the voice before I actually see them. There are a bunch of cubes arranged in a semicircle around a huge glass plug that has to be at least four feet in diameter. That thing must weigh a ton.

“Sorry I’m so late,” I shrug as I pass the bar, noting that there is not a mirror that I can quickly check myself in. I’m just going to have to wing it, I guess.

“Oh, you’re not late,” Desi rolls her eyes. “Holly is late! Oh my God I love your coat!”

I wrinkle my nose and smile, watching everybody glance over at my coat. I knew when I found it that I had really scored something. It fit perfectly even though it has to be at least eighty years old or something.

I ignore my best friend, Didi, as she rolls her eyes and instead allow Hannah to pluck at my sleeve.

“What is this?” she marvels. “Is it… I mean, seriously, what is it?”

“Oh, it’s oilskin,” I reply breezily, as though I encounter these sorts of things every day. “Just a vintage find. You like it?”

Hannah nods and purses her lips around the straw of her drink. “It’s so wild! Looks like something my grandmother would wear.”

“It looks like something Joe’s grandmother would wear too,” Didi says under her breath.

I realize she’s actually accusing me of raiding my own grandmother’s storage for vintage treasures. I didn’t do that, but now that I think about it, it’s a good idea. I’m going to have to start.

“You always look so amazing,” Desi pouts. “The shoes, too. I sort of hate you.”

“Oh, stop,” I sigh, finally getting out of the oilskin, which I have to admit is actually kind of heavy and inflexible. “I didn’t know it was going to rain like this. I probably should’ve worn galoshes.”

“Well, let’s get a pitcher of margaritas or something!” Hannah chirps. “That’ll warm you right up!”

“Come on, it’s Didi’s party, let her pick,” Desi sniffs.

“Margaritas sounds good to me too,” Didi grins evilly. “It will get us all loosened up in a hurry. Perfect!”

She raises her hand toward the bartender and stage whispers our order for him. The bar isn’t too busy so it looks like the communication is actually successful on the first try.

Okay, I’m just going to have one drink, I tell myself sternly. If Didi plans on loosening everybody up, nothing good will come of it. I’m gonna have to be the sensible one. The one with no embarrassing stories tomorrow.

I’ve never been very good at holding my liquor, and Didi is just the opposite. I can’t even remember how many times I’ve been wobbly and slurring after just a beer or two while she is still pounding shots of Jack like a linebacker. While she thinks it’s funny, I don’t really like the spinning and the dumb things that tend to come out of my mouth.

I like to keep a cool head, as my mom used to say. And Didi is a hothead, as my mom also used to say. I figure since we’ve known each other our whole lives, we have enough compromising information on each other to cancel each other out.

Hannah and Desi are roommates, but also strangers. Hannah moved to Manhattan from Colorado Springs. She frequently has this startled expression on her face as though she just awoke from a dream and found herself here by mistake.

Tall and willowy, Hannah may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but she may be one of the most beautiful tools anybody ever saw. I have personally witnessed her gliding obliviously down the sidewalk while everyone stops, slack-jawed, turning to watch her as she passes with her corn silk-colored hair flowing out behind her.

Desi, on the other hand, is raven-haired and compact, as sharp as a switchblade. She grew up in Atlantic City and gives New York in general, but Manhattan especially, a great deal of side-eye.

She seems to expect to be disappointed in everything and everyone, and she’s often right. She’s also an extremely shrewd saleswoman, able to read a client before they’ve come all the way through the door. It must be in her blood or something.

Didi and I came here together, with about as much street smarts as two years of community college could have possibly given us. But we’ve had each other all this time and somehow managed to make it through, forging reasonably sophisticated identities out of our small-town backgrounds.

When we got off the bus together four years ago, we actually made a pact to act like we owned the place and to cover for each other when that act was, shall we say, less than convincing. We just stuck our chins in the air and figured everything else would fall into place.

Mostly, it has. We eventually landed jobs at Martha Adler’s flagship contemporary gallery, which is where we met Hannah and Desi. For the past three years, we’ve been the four musketeers, grinding away at gallery life until things just seemed to kind of fall into place.

“Shit, Holly says she’s not coming,” Desi announces, scowling at her phone.

Holly would be musketeer number five, if she showed up a little bit more.

“I knew it,” Didi smirks. “She said she broke up with Trevor but I’m one thousand percent certain that she didn’t.”

“Mm-hmm,” Desi agrees, twisting her glossed lips in a sneer. “You called it, sister.”

Didi nods smugly. “Hell yes I did.”

“I still can’t believe you’re leaving us,” Hannah pouts as the waiter places a giant flagon of pale green margaritas in the middle of the glass ingot.

“It’s temporary, it’s not forever. Just to set up the new gallery. And besides, I’m not leaving you, silly,” Didi smirks as she eyes her glass. The bartender fills it almost to the top and she takes a healthy slurp, leaving her upper lip dusted with salt flakes.

“No, you’re leaving the whole frigging country,” Desi snips.

“Oh, come on… It’s Florida! It’s not Paraguay!”

“Paraguay isn’t even a real country,” Hannah giggles into her glass.

She doesn’t see Desi raise her eyebrows at her. To her credit, Desi doesn’t even correct her. She used to and it used to kind of hurt Hannah’s feelings, but eventually it just seemed kind of pointless.

I hold up my hand to indicate I only want a half a drink, but the waiter smirks and fills my glass all the way to the brim. Tiny little shards of salt swan dive into the surface and dissolve immediately like miniature suicides.

There’s absolutely no reason I need to drink this entire drink, I remind myself. A little self-control never hurt anybody.

But the first sip is so salty and sweet, I practically want to guzzle it. I love the feeling of it on my tongue, the way it slides through the middle of my body and creates a column of cool.

“Oh, that’s my girl,” Didi smirks.

She tips her head back and finishes her first drink already, knocking the glass back down on the table with a thud.

Casting her a warning look, I press my lips together tightly. “Just one for me,” I murmur. “I have an early morning. Martha said there’s a Koons coming in. I’m supposed to be there at the crack of nine.”

“God, did she really say that? Nine??” Hannah marvels.

She has never really embraced the idea that any job could possibly start before eleven.

I just shrug. “It won’t be so bad. It’s one of his big pieces, so there will be a whole crew. I just have to make sure they don’t knock down the Chihuly or anything.”

Hannah pulls a face, probably remembering one of her slapstick screw-ups. She has practically set the gallery on fire at least twice that I know of. I’m sure Martha only keeps her around because she is so goddamn beautiful that she actually sells a lot of art. People can’t resist her. I’ve often told her she should start asking them for organ donations too. You never know when you’re going to need a kidney. It’s good to plan ahead.

“Well you can certainly buy me another drink,” Didi sniffs.

She twists a curl behind her ear and winks at me. Elfish and slender, she makes a lot of her tomboyish good looks. I wish I could pull off a pixie cut. I even tried in middle school and got called “Joseph” for a semester, back when that kind of joke was okay. Since then, I stick with my easy-care, chin-length bob.

“I’d be happy to buy you a drink,” I joke. “Just as soon as you finish the pitcher.”

She leans forward, narrowing her eyes. “Don’t test me,” she says, her voice threatening. “Because I totally will.”

Desi wags her finger in the air. “What is wrong with you two tonight?” she squints. “You in a fight or something? You got something we need to talk about here?”

Didi wiggles her eyebrows at me. I sigh and gaze at the ceiling in frustration.

“We are not in a fight,” I say, letting out a long, hot breath. “Didi just likes me better when I’m drinking. So she said that my going-away present is to, and I quote, get completely fucked up.”

Didi raises a fist triumphantly in the air.

“That’s right!” she announces. “That’s my present! Get started!”

I raise my hands apologetically. “But I just told you I have stuff I have to do tomorrow? I have to be at the gallery before any of you?”

“Nope!” she replies, popping the P decisively. “You promised, Joe. One last night on the town.”

“Yeah, I know, but—”

“You promised!”

Hannah leans forward and splashes another serving of margarita into my glass until it’s almost overflowing. She shrugs apologetically when she sees the evil look that I deliver toward her.

“Well, you did promise,” she explains meekly.

“That’s what I’m saying!” Didi giggles. Her cheeks are already flushing, bringing out that spray of freckles she works so hard to cover with makeup.

“You know what, I didn’t even eat today,” I add. “I actually feel pretty tipsy already. Maybe we can get some food?”

“I actually heard the shrimp here are pretty good,” Desi shrugs as she opens a menu and scans it.

“You don’t have to control everything all the time,” Didi sniffs. “Why don’t you let your hair down! Live a little, Joe!”

I feel a tight smile spread across my lips. Didi looks up at me, then away, as though she’s already pretty sloshy. But she knows that I hate it when she uses that “control freak” thing on me. I realize she’s trying to pick a fight and promise myself that I’m not to take the bait.

“Okay, Didi, you’re the boss,” I drawl. “Whatever you say.”

She smirks, satisfied, and I pick up my drink to smile into it as the realization dawns on her. I may hate being called a control freak, but she really hates being called bossy.

“Maybe you need a boss,” she huffs. She is still smiling, but I know in the back of my mind this could go either way.

“Maybe I do,” I shrug, knowing that it’s probably really grinding her gears right now. “I kind of already have one, don’t I?”

Didi’s eyes are bright with mischief as she glares at me, her nostrils flaring with every breath. Then she smiles suddenly and turns toward Hannah and Desi.

“Joe has always been kind of controlling,” she announces, her voice suppressing a laugh.

Desi’s eyebrows go way up. “Oh really? Care to share?”

I reach out and touch Didi’s arm, delivering a gentle warning pinch.

“Well, I’ve only known her for her whole life,” she continues, ignoring me. “Do you know that she wouldn’t even let her mother pack her lunch for school? Joe always had to do it herself.”

“Seriously?” Hannah blanches. “You wouldn’t even let your own mother make your lunch for you?”

“Shit, I wish my mother would’ve made my lunch for me,” Desi mutters.

“Oh, jeez, it’s not that big of a deal,” I laugh, hoping my breezy attitude will make this story completely uninteresting to everybody. “Lots of people make their own lunches for school.”

“Lots of people have to make their own lunches for school,” Didi corrects me. “Not a lot of people insist they make their own lunches for school.”

“This is a boring story, isn’t it?” I ask Desi, looking for some backup. “You probably had to make your own lunch too, right?”

“I usually just ate somebody else’s,” Desi shrugs. Hannah glances at her in surprise.

“And when she made the lunch,” Didi continues in a louder voice, “it was all, like, perfect. Perfect little sandwich square, right next to a perfect little juice box, that made the perfect little cubby for a perfect stack of carrot sticks.”

“What? I like puzzles,” I explain.

“So you guys have been friends forever?” Desi asks shrewdly. “Like forever? How come you never mentioned this before? What’s Florida like?”

“Actually it’s kind of like Atlantic City,” I shrug, remembering the smell, the filth, and the obnoxious people.

That’s not really what Willowdale is like, but people seem to enjoy the mythology. As Floridians, we are obligated to keep northerners in the dark, at least a little bit.

“Only hotter. And there’s alligators,” Didi adds.

“I hope I never have to go there,” Hannah pouts.

“That’s what we want everyone to think,” Didi replies smugly. “There are already way too many people in Florida. You guys just stay up here, and we can keep things how we like him. All old-timey and shit.”

“Old-timey as in age of the dinosaurs?” Desi quips.

I can see that Didi is actually getting a little defensive. “No, like a Hallmark card,” she snaps, too tipsy to realize that she is directly contradicting the point she just made about not wanting anybody to know. “Like small towns and neighbors and old-fashioned values. The good stuff. It’s not all mosquitoes and poisonous snakes, you know.”

“You can be neighbors... with the snakes,” I add wryly, ignoring the poisonous look that Didi shoots at me.

“You expect me to believe it’s like Little House on the Prairie or something?” Desi arches an eyebrow.

“In a way, it kind of is,” Didi insists, her gaze going far off as she visualizes our little town and turns it into some kind of fairytale setting. “I mean, we have old-fashioned houses with porches and lawns. We have a general store right on the main drag, which just got its first stoplight about three years ago. As a matter of fact, our doctors even make house calls! Tell me when was the last time you heard about that!”

“No way, nobody does that anymore,” Hannah insists.

“Yeah, it’s totally true,” I nod. “Dr. Warner took care of all of us from my grandparents on down. He even delivered me right there in the bedroom, just like in the olden days.”

Hannah’s eyes widen, a circle of white around the sky-blue medallion of her irises.

“You were born… in a house?”

“Well, her mom was in a hurry,” Didi chuckles, her southern accent suddenly making an appearance in her tipsy voice. “Dr. Warner didn’t really have a choice that time. We weren’t all born in woodsheds or anything. But like I was saying, we just have a lot of nice things, old-fashioned things. Stuff you don’t want to give up just because the world is different now.”

“Well, some of us like the modern world,” I sniff, unable to stop myself.

Didi narrows her eyes, sucking the margarita through the straw and swishing it around her mouth before she swallows.

“Well some of us are taking the modern world back home, Joe. Some of us are practically cutting edge!”

I put my hands up to show that I am innocent.

“Okay, jeez, fine,” I grumble. “You’re a missionary from the future. We get it.”

“Wait, I want to hear more about this old-fashioned stuff,” Hannah interrupts, trying to relieve the tension in the air. “What else do you have? I mean, you guys have cars and stuff, right?”

“Oh, for the last year at least,” I chuckle. “And I hear we’re getting another phone line this year.”

“Dr. Warner still gives lady treatments,” Didi interrupts, her eyes sparkling.

I shoot her a warning look, flaring my nostrils.

“What are you talking about?” Desi asks, apparently intrigued by my stiffening body language. “What’s a lady treatment?”

Didi grins, her cheeks dimpling. She stares right at me with evil delight dancing in her eyes.

“Oh, you don’t know what a lady treatment is? You guys never heard of that?”

“I have a doctor for my lady parts,” Hannah shrugs. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

Didi purses her lips suggestively. “Does your doctor… Give you the treatment? As in, to completion?”

Hannah shakes her head, her eyes vacant.

“Didi, stop,” I sigh irritably.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Desi insists.

Didi shrugs, drawing the conversation out. She looks down and brushes a few stray salt crystals from the lettuce fringe of her midnight-blue silk blouse.

“It’s some Victorian medical stuff… Just weirdness,” I interrupt breezily. “I’m sure he doesn’t even do it anymore. In fact, those are just rumors, really. Just small-town gossip stuff.”

“That is not gossip,” Didi shoots back snidely. “And it is not just some old-fashioned thing… It’s a real thing, with real benefits. It’s something even your mother enjoyed, Joe. So there.”

I feel my cheeks get hot instantly. My instinct is to gulp down more of my drink, but I don’t think that’s really going to help.

“Somehow I doubt that,” I retort, but the words come out all meek and transparent.

“Wait… I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” Desi fusses, sloshing another serving of margarita into her glass and then raising the pitcher over her head until she catches the bartender’s attention. “What is a lady treatment? Is this a real thing?”

“Back in Victorian days,” Didi starts, sitting up straight and brushing the tabletop with her fingertips like she’s giving an academic lecture, “doctors used to think that women got… backed up, you might say. And so they devised a treatment to, you know, release them.”

“Are we talking about pooping?” Hannah gasps.

Desi smacks her lightly on the arm. “Don’t be stupid,” she hisses. “If we were talking about pooping, Didi would’ve said pooping. And besides, men poop. We’re talking about… lady issues? As in—”

“Orgasms,” Didi nods excitedly. “Your doctor would give you an orgasm.”

“No way!” Hannah exclaims. “Like your doctor-doctor? Your real doctor would get you off?”

“Totally!” Didi answers. “In fact, that’s how vibrators were invented! They’re medical equipment!”

“Holy shit,” Desi marvels, shaking her head in disbelief. “I cannot imagine Dr. Epstein rubbing one out for me. I don’t think I would want him to even try. How would I look Mrs. Epstein in the face ever again?”

“It’s therapy,” Didi insists. “They really believed that women had to release all that pressure inside them, you know? And if you couldn’t do it yourself, or if your husband couldn’t do it for you… Well, somebody had to do it! Who better than the doctor?”

“That’s amazing,” Hannah sighs. “I wouldn’t have minded that. It took me three years to figure out how to come. It would’ve been nice to have some training.”

“It’s practically a public service,” Didi nods.

“It’s practically malpractice,” I observe into the top of my glass. I meant to say it quietly, or maybe in my head, but when I hear Didi’s intake of breath I know I said it out loud.

“Well, some of us beg to differ. And nobody’s complaining,” Didi shrugs.

“Yeah, is that legal?” Hannah asks.

“Who even knows?” I reply. “It’s just going to disappear in the next generation anyway. Just one of those small-town things that everybody learns how to live without.”

“Some of us live without it all the time,” Didi adds sarcastically. “Some of us could actually think about using those services. Maybe work out some of that blockage, don’t you think?”

I narrow my eyes and shoot her a warning look. “Some of us are just fine.”

“Seriously, you guys,” Desi drawls, “what is going on here? What are you even talking about?”

Didi turns away so she doesn’t see me silently begging her to shut up.

“Joe just doesn’t like anything about where we came from,” she answers, skating over the thing that she is threatening to say. I breathe a sigh of relief, acknowledging that she just let me off the hook.

“I just like Manhattan,” I explain. “If I wanted to stay in Florida, I would’ve. But I like it here.”

“You can’t outrun your roots, Joe,” she lectures me. “You’re still the same country control freak you always were, even if you like to pretend you aren’t. Look at you… You even dress like a country girl. You just pretend that it’s some kind of vintage pinup ideal.”

Automatically my fingers drift up toward my hair as if to push it back into place.

“I love the way you dress, Joe,” Hannah says, rushing to my defense.

“This isn’t a control-freak thing or a country thing,” I pout. “I just like to dress like this. Is that so wrong?”

“There’s nothing wrong with it, is what I’m saying,” she replies. “You should just stop pretending that you’re something you’re not. Loosen up.”

“I’m fine!” I insist, finally starting to lose my patience. “Why are you even picking on me? Just leave me alone, Didi.”

“Yeah, you are a little bit of a control freak, though,” Desi sighs, her nose wrinkled. “But I do love the outfits.”

“Maybe you should just come with me back home?” Didi suggests. “Get Dr. Warner to give you a lady treatment. Loosen you right up!”

“You know what... it actually is getting really late,” I shrug, grinding my teeth and pushing my drink away from me. “I have to get to the gallery in the morning—”

“Because did you guys know that Joe has never had an orgasm? That’s probably it.”

Silence falls across the table. Somehow my heart seems to both stop and speed up at the same time.

“Like, that’s why you’re such a control freak. Or maybe being a control freak keeps you from being able to come? I don’t know. Kind of a chicken and egg thing.”

“Didi, I think you’re drunk,” Hannah mutters, her eyes downcast.

Great, even Hannah is humiliated for me, I think to myself. Wow. Just wow.

“What… You guys didn’t know that?” Didi says innocently. “It’s no big deal… Lots of people don’t know how to come. I’m just saying that maybe Dr. Warner—”

Desi grimaces and blows me a pantomime kiss as I force myself to get up from the table and put my heavy oilskin trench back on. Suddenly it feels very conspicuous, and not like something I would even want to wear.

“I’ll see you at the gallery tomorrow afternoon,” Desi says in a low, sympathetic voice.

“Hey, you can’t leave!” Didi announces, too loudly. “You promised me that we would hang out and drink. You promised!”

I don’t even know what to say to her. I just back away and leave her sitting there with her mouth hanging open, too awkward to even respond. As I stomp toward the exit, I ignore the pain of the blisters that have definitely formed in my shoe, and head back out into the rain.