I dig around the room for Love’s panties. I am a hunter. I want to smell Love, taste her. I find them eventually and they’re in the trash, mixed in with a banana peel, numerous price tags from Neiman Marcus, and a half-full jar of face cream. I move the trash bin across the room so she’ll see it when she wakes up and I fall asleep too.
I wake up the next morning to her laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I ask.
“I see you figured out my little indulgence,” she says. “I never wear the same panties twice. I know.”
“You throw them away every day?”
She kisses me. “But now that I have you, you can keep them all and you can sew them together and make them into a quilt.”
“I’m not sewing your fucking panties, Love.”
“Oh, yes you are.”
“Oh, no I’m not.”
We kiss. She licks my earlobe. “Ya wanna take a shower or ya wanna fuck?”
I WANT A BLOWJOB GOD DAMN IT. #mydayinla #chateauproblems #cantgetmydicksucked
“Joe says let me taste you.”
She pulls away. “Joe,” she says. “Is this gonna be a problem?”
“There is nothing even remotely resembling a problem in this room,” I say. “I was just playing around.”
I can feel a story coming and I’m right. Love has never been comfortable with anything oral. Her mother claims she never gave Love’s father a blowjob and she told Love that if a man loves you, truly, he doesn’t need that.
“Wow,” I say. “I can’t believe you talk about this stuff with your mom.”
“We don’t really have boundaries.”
“Huh.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Joe.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but they met in middle school. Do you really think your dad has gone his whole life without getting his dick sucked?”
She shakes her head. “That’s the part of the story I’m getting to,” she says, and then she tells me about the year she and Forty had their sweet sixteen, a giant Beverly Hills bonanza with hundreds of people. She got a horse as her present and Forty got a massage. “And Forty gets home,” Love says, “And he is messed. Up. And I am like what’s wrong? And he is like, I can’t tell you. And I am like, you have to.”
“And?”
“And my dad’s masseuse sucked his dick. And she told him she did that for my dad once a week.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s fucked up.”
Love shrugs and says that we can play Joe Says all day long but she’ll never do anything oral with me. Or anyone. “I know you want to know if I did this for Michael or Trey,” she says. “And the answer is no.”
I strategize. “I’m just thinking, you know, it’s different for everyone,” I say. “What your mom doesn’t like, you know, maybe you would like.”
Love says that she is thirty-five years old and she knows exactly who she is. She kisses me and grabs a room service menu. We order eggs benny and coffee and pancakes and we both look at mimosa on the menu but champagne is a sore spot. I tell her I like her. She says she likes me too.
We sink into the bed together and this is what it is, sex, then a knock at the door, then food, then rest, then movies, then sex, then we think about leaving the room and we don’t leave the room, then sex, then sometimes we get in the tub, then movies, then food, then sometimes a song, then sex, then Joe Says/Love Says. Love has a butler named Henry and she texts him and he shows up with Animal Style In-N-Out burgers. We half watch movies on TBS (Love’s favorite station) and when Bride Wars begins, she says she never cheated on either of her husbands. I tell her I never cheated on anyone either.
“But you were never married?” she asks.
“No.” I don’t want to tell her about Beck or Amy. That’s what feels so unique about this room, this thing with Love. I’ve been trying to find Amy for so long and now to break away from all that hunting, to rest. In this room, in this bed, I rarely think about the mug of piss in Rhode Island. It’s as though there are invisible guards outside, like nobody can get us, our DNA, our pasts. It’s only been five meals, maybe two days. I genuinely don’t know. Love is a drug. The more she opens up about her life, the less I want to share my own stories with her. My life feels too small, too gritty.
“Okay,” she says. “You’ll let me know when you’re ready.”
Love is patient. She doesn’t push. It’s actually fun to watch Cocktail with her because, unlike Amy, she takes it for what it is. Love likes Hannah and Her Sisters but she doesn’t love it the way she loves Crimes and Misdemeanors. Just when I think she might be perfect, she claps for the opening credits of Dirty Dancing. She hits the mute button. “Let’s not have any sound,” she says. “I’ve seen this so many times I don’t need to hear it to watch it.”
I blindfold her to see if she can watch it without hearing it or seeing it and I kiss her all over her body, underneath her knees, her elbows, her inner thighs. I do not eat her out. I make her come without touching her vagina. She says that’s a first.
“Does this place have a pool?” I ask.
It does and Mr. Mooney was wrong; the pool is not cold and dirty. The pool is a giant blue oval, as welcoming as Love’s vagina. My phone falls inside of it and Love swan dives to the bottom and emerges with it in hand. Her butler puts it in rice. I’m tempted to ask him to throw it away. Love says my broken phone is a sign that I’m supposed to relax. And maybe I am because it’s hard to care about my life before Love.
This is why people go west, smashing rocks and hoping to spot something shimmering in the creek. Dip a pan into the rocky water and lift it and strain it and then feel solid gold in the palm of your hand. Everything I did was worth it because it led me straight into Love’s arms.
20
I can’t decide what I like more, this bed or these sheets or this view or the balcony or the jam and toast that were waiting here when I woke up. Chateau is Adult Disney World, the kind of place where they’re one step ahead of you. I didn’t have to ask for my phone. It was here when I woke up, in a little basket by the bread, by the silver coffee pot, so much more elegant than Keurig. Love’s still sleeping and I put on a robe and pour my coffee and spread jam on my soft, blond bread and walk out to the balcony.
I am awkward at first, not used to having toast and a balcony and a robe. I’ll have to look in the mirror after I finish my breakfast because I’m curious to see if I look different, if all this luxury closed my pores. Maybe I don’t even need to buy Henderson’s skin care products. I’m happy and they could evict us right now and I wouldn’t care as long as they let me take that dirty little minx in the bed. Even the no blowjob bit; I’m a man. It’s good to have a goal.
I lean on the balcony rail and turn on my phone. When it finally boots up, it proceeds to buzz like it’s having a heart attack from trying to keep up with all these texts from Delilah.
Hey! What do you think about tomorrow?
My mom says hi LOL
My mom loves Dan Tana. Seems good, right?
Hey
Joe?
Asdjkasdkasdsda
Hey are you ok? Harvey says you never came home. Calling hospitals.
My mom is only here til Monday . . . this is fucked.