Page 13

13

Solitaire

Dodi

He’s the first person I’ve told my secret—in so many words.

I drop my new shoes by the door and the bag containing my red dress slithers to the floor. The apartment is silent as a tomb. Here lies the sex life of Dolores dela Cruz. In the darkened living room the TV casts a flickering light, like the votive flames of a funerary altar. I hadn’t realized I’d left the TV on. I turn it off, but I’m not ready for sleep. I feel twitchy and edgy. I feel alive.

I could walk down the hall and rap on my neighbor’s door. Have a drink. Spill the tea about the date with the wrong man. She wants to be friends, I think. I estimate that I have about two more months of her goodwill before she finally takes offense and stops trying. My estimates are fairly accurate after all these years of the same scenario playing out over and over. But it’s too risky, having friends. They clasp their hands around their coffee mugs in their warm, clean kitchens and tilt their heads to one side, eyes dilated wide with concern, and say, How did he…pass? and What do you do for a living? and Dolores dela Cruz…that sounds familiar. I can’t tolerate any of that. Everything has been so neatly buried.

I chuck Verity’s head into my freezer. In the bathroom I reach into the medicine cabinet for my toothbrush, the back of my hand knocking against the men’s safety razor that’s been sitting, unused, since that last morning when I kissed his smooth cheek good-bye, and he waltzed off to meet destiny.

I feel the phantom of Jake’s stubble prickling the pads of my fingers, and I shut the cabinet.

I look different in the bathroom mirror. My hair is piled on top of my head, my makeup is smudged, my lips stained with wine. My cheeks burn pink, and my eyes are glittery and strange. This is what he was looking at when he almost kissed me just now. I wish I’d kissed him. I wish he was here right now, on top of me. I’m so glad he isn’t. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to let him keep his glasses on.

He had his glasses on tonight, though. I peel off the bandage dress and leave it crumpled on the floor like a deflated potato skin and stare at my reflection in the mirror, sobriety and self-consciousness creeping in. He was stone-cold sober tonight, while I minced around drunkenly in my panties and bra, confidence fueled by the miracle of table wine. I touch my belly, a part of my body I haven’t loved in a long while. How much younger than me is he?

He…rejected me. In the car, just now, didn’t he? He didn’t want to come up.

I won’t be able to meet his eye tomorrow.

And yet, he knows my secret, he knows who I am, and doesn’t flinch from meeting my eye.

A distraction. Spider, or Pyramid. Maybe a nice game of Yukon. Solitaire is the perfect game for someone like me. I know two dozen ways to play by myself, two dozen different ways to arrive at the same conclusion: hearts to hearts, spades to spades, clubs to clubs, and diamonds to diamonds. Everyone with their own kind. The soft, tender, bleeding ones in one pile, the cold, unfeeling rocks in another. The murder weapons over here, and the shovels for burying the evidence over there. I sit cross-legged in the middle of my bed and take the decks from my bedside table, the ones with the holes punched through the middle, the luck snuffed out of them, and shuffle. Caesar’s Palace. Thwick. I’ve always had a knack for shuffling. But as I lay the cards out, they fall into a familiar pattern all on their own. I’m dealing blackjack for someone who isn’t there, again.

I wonder if Jake knows how to play. He has the best poker face I ever saw. That perfect deadpan just now as he teased me in his car about allergies. The way he’s always talked about my cat has been a coded acknowledgment—cheeky, but respectful in its own way. He’s aware of what my life is outside of this fantasy world we’ve built to contain our flirtation, and he knows we have to keep reality and fantasy separate. This isn’t real life.

That’s why he didn’t come up.

I smooth a crinkle in the bedspread and uncover a decapitated head with dark hair and glasses. She’s claimed the dismembered Ken doll as one of her own toys, and the pieces turn up in the strangest places. I carry it down the hallway to where the little musical jewelry box sits on a shelf in the living room. I nestle it in between the severed limbs, and the music tinkles sweetly in the dark for a moment before I shut the lid.