Lauren Holmes - Barbara the Slut and Other People

“Do you honestly like working there?” he asked.

“Yes, I do,” I said.

“Okay, well, I want to say one thing,” he said. “Whatever you want to do, I will support you. But you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to work. I know you think you have to but you don’t.”

“We need the money,” I said.

“We don’t need the money,” he said. “And even if we did, that job wouldn’t help.”

“That’s not very nice,” I said. “What would I do if I quit?”

“Whatever you want,” he said. “Volunteer for legal aid.”

“That would make my dad happy,” I said.

“Is that why you’re doing this? To make your dad unhappy?”

“No.”

“Then why are you doing it?”

“It’s not my fault I can’t get a law job.”

“You’re not applying for law jobs.”

“I applied for two,” I said.

“You don’t even want a law job.”

“Whatever,” I said.

“Come on, babe, I want you to be happy. You could quit. We could get a dog.”

“Well if we’re going to get a dog, we might as well get a baby,” I said, sort of joking but sort of not really.

“Ha,” said Danny. “Let’s start with a dog. A little rodent one like you want.”

“Fine,” I said.

• • •

On Monday I went to work with my head spinning. I wondered if I should quit, or if Pam was going to fire me first. I was giving myself a neck massage with the Hitachi Magic Wand when my dad walked through the open door and then walked right back out.

I followed him. He looked smaller and older than I remembered. At first he just sputtered. Finally he managed to spit out, “Brenda.” Then more sputtering and then, “I thought this was another one of your goddamn jokes.”

I didn’t have any words.

“Turn that goddamn thing off,” he said. I realized I was still holding the vibrating Magic Wand and that the cord was what had prevented me from getting farther outside. I switched it off and put it on the floor inside the door.

“I tried to tell you it wasn’t a joke,” I said.

“What in the hell are you thinking?”

“I need a job.”

“You’re a licensed attorney in the state of California.”

“Yes, I remember,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“I came up to see a client,” he said. “I went to your apartment.”

“Good thing I gave you this address,” I said.

“You and your goddamn jokes, Brenda. You think life is so goddamn funny.”

“Actually I don’t,” I said. “I don’t think it’s funny at all.”

A motorcycle stopped in front of the store, and for the first time I was glad to see Pam.

“How can you live like this?”

“I don’t know.”

Pam took her helmet off and approached us.

“You’re throwing away your life.”

“Why do you even care what I do?” I said. “Don’t you just want me to be happy?”

“Not if this is what makes you happy,” said my dad.

“I think you need to leave, sir,” said Pam.

My dad looked at Pam. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

“It’s okay,” I said. “This is my dad. He was just leaving.”

He turned around and left without saying anything.

“Oh my god,” said Pam. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I am so sorry,” she said.

It took me a second to understand why she was sorry.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“It’s not okay,” she said. “I feel awful. That was awful. No one should ever have to go through that.”

“It’s really okay,” I said. “He’s a dick.”

“I’m very upset,” she said.

“Don’t be,” I said. “I’m totally fine.”

“He doesn’t deserve to have you as a daughter.”

“Yeah, that wasn’t about me being gay,” I said.

“What?” said Pam.

“That wasn’t about me being gay.”

“I think it was,” she said.

“I’m not gay,” I said.

Pam stared at me. Finally she shook her head and said, “Damn it.”

“Sorry,” I said.

She didn’t say anything.

“Am I fired?” I said.

“I think so, yes,” she said.

“I’m really good at pretending I’m gay,” I said.

“You’re really not. Not even with the haircut.”

“So?”

“So lesbians don’t want to buy sex toys from straight women.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I hope Eunice can come back,” said Pam.

“Me too,” I said.

“Why is that on the floor?” Pam pointed to the Magic Wand.

“I was massaging my neck,” I said.

She started to walk back to the street.

“Did you stop by for a reason?” I said.

She turned around. “Just wanted to check on you, say thanks for coming to the party.”

• • •

When Danny got home that night, he said my dad had called him to tell him that I was wasting my life and that he should do something about it.

“We might not see him again for a while,” I said.

“That’s fine,” said Danny.

• • •

That Saturday, Danny took me to an animal shelter in Pacific Heights. He’d made his assistant look for dogs, and she had found one that she thought was perfect. I wanted to find my own dog, now that I was unemployed, but I agreed to go look.

When we got there, I told the woman I needed a dog to replace my fiancé.

“Ha, she’s kidding,” said Danny. “We’re looking for a dog named Ruth?”

She brought us to a cage with a little nothing, ten or twelve pounds of stringy brown hair. I said hi, and the dog started throwing herself into the walls of the cage.

“Whoa,” said Danny.

“She’ll calm down,” the woman said. Now Ruth was panting hysterically, and her tongue was hanging out one side of her mouth. The woman said it was because they’d had to remove her diseased teeth, which was all of them. She took her out of the cage and handed her to me.

The dog clung to my chest. Without any warning, I started to cry.

Danny put his hand on my back while I sobbed.

“We’ll take this dog,” he said to the woman.

When everything was settled we got a cab and I cried all the way home. The dog sat on my lap, shaking.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “It’s okay.”

I hadn’t had sex in over a year, partly because I didn’t like anyone I met on the internet and partly because I adopted a pit bull who wouldn’t let men into my apartment. In August I decided to try again and agreed to meet a Swiss guy at a bar that served Swiss absinthe. It was hot as fuck outside, and as soon as I got out of the subway, sweat started collecting on my lower back and between my boobs. I stopped to mop myself off and got a text from the Swiss guy that said, “I conquered us places at the bar!”

When I got there he stood up and waved. He was wearing round, very Swiss glasses. He had a goatee, but he had a great smile. He kissed me on both cheeks and we sat down. We started talking and couldn’t stop. The bartender kept coming over to get our order, but we kept forgetting to look at the menu. Finally we ordered whatever fancy drinks we could pick out on the spot.

The Swiss guy had a PhD in economics, and he was in New York doing a postdoc on wage inequality and the American gender gap. He was thirty-six, which meant he was an actual adult. He showed me pictures of his two brothers and their families, and it seemed like he loved them all a lot. He wanted to know everything about me, which was a nice change of pace from the dates where I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. He was especially excited that I was a teacher because his mom was a teacher. I thought that was sweet, even though she had taught kindergarten in rural Switzerland forty years earlier, and I taught humanities in an inner-city middle school with metal detectors and police.