“Yeah,” she said, squinting against the glare as we turned another corner. “Well like I said, I have a lot of important things going on today. You may remember the opening? Tonight? At the gallery where you get those checks you squander on washed-up loser Romeos?”
“Oh that’s tonight?” I said innocently. Then I looked around, realizing we were not getting any closer to my house. “Hey, where are you taking me?”
“You’re hanging this show,” she said.
“No! Bridget, come on! Look at me… I can’t be out looking like this!”
“Yeah, well, maybe you shoulda thought of that.”
“No, seriously!” I bawled, somehow near to tears. Was there anything good that was going to happen today? “Look, my shoe is broken… I’m going to break an arm or something. Think of the insurance premiums!”
She bit her carmine-stained lips into a thin line and jerked the wheel, cutting across traffic and into a parking garage. From the way she was working her jaw, I could tell I was on very thin ice.
“So the Burkes seem nice,” I said timidly, hoping the thought of ready buyers would take some of the heat off me.
“Did you not-fuck them too?”
I rolled my eyes and pushed my matted hair off my cheek. “All right, ha ha, you’re mad. I get it.”
“Yeah, I’m mad!” she bellowed, angling into a parking space and then jamming on the brakes so hard I almost cracked my head against the dash.
Turning toward me, Bridget gave me the full force of her attention. I flinched like she was going to hit me. She pointed a long, burgundy nail at the center of my chest. “You must have some kinda death wish, missy, because I can’t fucking imagine what kind of crazy shit goes through your head.”
I put my hands up in surrender. “OK, OK, fine,” I agreed hurriedly. “I’ll hang the show.”
“It’s not just the show!” she roared. “You have everything it takes to be huge, Mar. Huge! But when you’re not dicking around and missing deadlines, you’re giving me the same tired, antiquated shit that was out of fashion like 140 years ago.”
“It’s not tired. It’s traditional.”
“So you keep telling me.”
I scowled at her, mentally trying to convince myself to just let her have her say so I could get the hell out of that car.
“It’s like you want to fail. Like you want to lose your house.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You want to see what it’s like to touch the bottom? To see how far down it really goes?”
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, looking stubbornly out the front window.
“It was one night in San Francisco, Bridget. Don’t make a federal case out of this.”
“It was a lot of nights in San Francisco, Mar,” she corrected me pointedly. “And not a lot of reciprocal nights in LA either, I might add. Jesus! What is so special about that guy that you’re willing to spend your last penny just for a chance to fuck him?”
I sighed through my nose. “I love him, Bridge.”
“Really?” she snorted. Then I felt her hand on my chin, turning my head to look at her.
“Really?” she said again, arching her dark black eyebrows at me.
It took me a long time to think about that. I wanted to say Yes, definitely really, but the truth was… Well, the truth wasn’t strong enough to say yes.
“I don’t know. Maybe?”
“Ugh,” she groaned, letting my chin go with a disgusted flick of her wrist.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “He’s better than facing the alternative, I guess.”
“Oh yeah? What’s this supposed alternative?” she sneered as she grabbed her Guess bag and heaved herself upright on those extreme platform heels. Out of all the actual transvestites I knew, Bridget was the one woman who out-trannied them all.
“That I don’t feel anything about anything,” I muttered, gathering my purse and leaving the car. She hadn’t heard me and apparently didn’t care, and so I silently hobbled as fast as I could behind her, trying to keep up.
CHAPTER 3
I GOT SHOWERED and changed in record time, whirling through my closet like an insane prom date, tossing outfits back over my head by the fistful.
What most says: Please buy my paintings? I wondered as I went through outfit after outfit. I was going to be seen alongside goth chicks and maybe a couple Ren Fair castaways, not to mention the few socialite dabblers who would arrive in blonde and spray-tan, posing next to their producer husbands at discreet intervals around the room, prepped for paparazzi. Their work would be priced at three times mine, naturally, and then sell like it was going out of style.