The Garden District
New Orleans
Theirs was an unusual first date, Tyler thought, but far from the strangest in her checkered dating history.
Instead of a traditional getting-to-know-you meetup over coffee, Tyler’s poly amours from the dating app CINDER invited her to assist them in decluttering a client’s Greek Revival home in the Garden District at $25 an hour. On meeting Cory and Gloria at the curb, Tyler was pleased to find the couple even more attractive in person.
“Ain’t you a peach?” Gloria beamed, giving Tyler a peck on the cheek. She turned to her partner with a mock-nagging finger wave. “You don’t get no more’n a fist-bump with this lil’ lady ‘til I give the go-ahead.”
“Aww c’mon now, Glory,” Cory chuckled. His arms were burdened with cleaning supplies retrieved from the back of their van. “Gimme a sample squeeze.” Tyler hugged him delicately.
“Our client today is Mr. Wesley,” Gloria explained, gesturing toward the home. “His wife dieda the cancer last year and sounds like things went to pieces ‘round his place. Be a love and fetch the vacuum machine?”
When Mr. Wesley opened the door, his eyes were rheumy and he shook with a slight tremor. He was fiftyish and handsome in a weatherbeaten way, his translucent skin suggesting a long spell out of the sun.
“G’MORNIN’ MR. WESLEY!" Gloria and Cory called in unison, barging cheerfully past him into the entryway.
“Today’s the first day of all the rest, hon!” Gloria continued. “Lemme introduce you to the lovely Miss Tyler who’s gonna be assistin’ us today.”
Cory and Gloria delivered a stream of soothing, rat-a-tat patter as they explored the cluttered rooms.
“This mess ain’t nothin’ compared to what we get most days,” Gloria enthused.
“First off we’re gonna divide all this detritus into three piles,” Cory continued. “Trash, Keep and Donate.”
“We work with charities in the Parish to re-home unwanted items for the sake of those in need. The Battered Women’s Shelter is ‘specially dear to my heart as a survivor of spousal abuse,” Gloria revealed brightly.
“Hey, that was the last guy!” Cory joked, raising his hands with a grin. “Don’t look at me!”
Tyler winced.
Gloria opened a bedroom closet, neatly-hung with women’s clothing. “So I’m seein’ a lot of Ladies’ Things blockin’ your Energy Flow.”
“I don’t know what to do with it all,” Wesley murmured. “I feel so damn helpless.” He gestured toward a framed photo on the bureau, depicting his younger self cutting cake with his bride. “Charlotte’s stuff feels like the last connection I got.”
“Now I’m gonna be your Stern Nanny for a hot minute,” Gloria drawled. “You’ll always keep Charlotte tucked right inside your heart. Alla these material objects is just Things.”
“And sometimes it’s the Things that keep us from movin’ forward on the Path,” Cory added.
“Like devilish little beaver dams holdin’ back the Flow Of Life. Ain’t that right, Miss Tyler?”
“I s’pose,” Tyler waffled, making a mental note never to let them inside her apartment.
Gloria surveyed Wesley with sympathy. “Aw, look at you! Poor lil’ lamb. Eyes ain’t stopped watering’ since y’cracked open the door.” She opened her arms and embraced Wesley. “Lemme hold you.”
“I ain’t cryin’,” Wesley clarified into her shoulder. “I have chronic biephartis.”
“Ssshhh ssshhh,” Gloria hushed.
“Let’s all just breathe a minute,” Cory said. “Three deep breaths, ever’body. Nobody say nuthin’ and just Feel The Moment.”
After the foursome took their prescribed breaths, Gloria released the hug and turned to the closet. “We’re as much therapists as anything.” Paging through the garments on the closet rod, Gloria withdrew an elaborate hand-beaded jacket and checked the tag. “Well this has got to go.”
“I bought that for our tenth wedding anniversary,” Wesley reminisced. “Cost an arm and a leg but the expense was worth it, just seein’ her face light up.”
“Louis Vuitton don’t come cheap,” Gloria murmured. “And she was a size six, God rest her sweet soul.” Tyler noticed Gloria’s eyes dart briefly toward a full-length mirror as she held the jacket in front of her. “Think of how happy this is gonna make some poor beaten-down lady.”
Inside of an hour, the entirety of the deceased Charlotte’s wardrobe was bagged in contractor clean-up bags placed in the Donate pile. “Now brace yourself. This part’s gonna be a trial,” Gloria intoned. “We’re gonna sort through the decedent’s jewelry.”
“I think I might wanna put some of this in the Keep Pile,” Wesley ventured as Gloria held up an elaborate necklace inlaid with iridescent mother-of-pearl.
“And what good is this old chain gonna do anybody, all sequestered away in a dusty drawer?” Gloria queried.
“I could sell it, I s’pose,” Wesley offered.
Gloria clucked. “Is that really how you wanna honor Charlotte’s memory?”
“I guess not,” Wesley replied, his shoulders slumping.
“And furthermore, don’t you wanna find a companion to make your days less lonely?” Gloria gestured toward Wesley’s left hand, which clutched the lapel before his heart. “What lady’s gonna open up to a man who still wears his wedding band?”
“It’s all just stuff,” Cory reiterated, eyeing the 65-inch flatscreen TV on the wall.
The Cozy Rooms
“If I were a real Dom Top I’d paint this dungeon Barbie Pink,” Ariel joked as he poured a dollop of flat black paint into a tray. “You don’t like my pink dungeon, boy?” he whisper-growled to a hypothetical submissive. “Well this ain’t about your needs, now, is it?”
“You said you worked in Customer Service,” Gage reminded his father.
“If ‘customer service’ means ‘Give ‘em what they’re asking for’ - meaning they want me to take control - then Barbie Pink it is.” Ariel handed Gage a paint roller. “Alas, the Dominant is not in control whatsoever, while creating the illusion that he is. Especially when he’s getting paid to send his clients over the moon. And finding that balance, my boy, is the art of the Art.”
The Mop Room was stripped down after two exhausting workdays spent moving the clutter to a dumpster parked at the curb outside. The floors were mopped, the walls scrubbed, leaving the former storage room a blank canvas for renovation.
Ariel’s phone buzzed. “Oh hell, I hope it’s not Betty again.”
Though no one had seen her for three days, Ariel’s mother had been calling nonstop, her numerous text messages automatically dispatched to Ariel’s spam folder.
Ariel glanced at his phone to find a text from Brian.
“Uh oh,” Ariel groaned. “A storm’s brewin’ upstairs at Brian’s. You mind starting off the painting? I’ll be down once the coast is clear.”
“Sure,” Gage replied. “Can we, like, put a blorp on the wall together? Like cracking a champagne bottle?” He offered Ariel the paint roller.
Ariel smiled, placing his hand on the handle over Gage’s. They dipped the paint roller into the flat black paint and painted a heavy vertical stripe on the wall.
Ariel furrowed his brow as they admired their work. “Hang on.” Taking the roller again with Gage, he guided him in drawing two black circles to the right and left of the base. “There,” he said, giggling.
“Grow up,” Gage pschawed, rolling his eyes.
Brian’s Apartment
Ariel surmised Rose’s situation the moment he saw the Corner Pocket’s famous door-woman perched in a sling chair, running her mouth at a mile a minute.
“…don’t get me wrong,” she continued emphatically to Brian, ashing a cigarette onto his carpet with bright-eyed enthusiasm. “I’m hardly one to fall prey to a conniver as one who knows from conniving young scalawags, don’t forget my history, my herstory, not my theirstory, fuck that, mind my pronouns, now, my herstory as a onetime queen of the consorts, by which I mean streetwalkers, ‘presiding over the Presidio’ as the poets say, but sometimes when one is up against a conniver one might actually find one’s self up against a cabal of connivers, a conniption…”
Brian raised a significant eyebrow in Ariel’s direction as Rose continued chattering, oblivious.
“Hey Rose?” Ariel tried.
“…because even though it most certainly sounds like ‘it’s the drugs talking’ - hello dear - sometimes, as you well know, people lean in to such things, feeding on so-called drug-induced paranoia for their own benefit…”
“Honey, stop,” Ariel said, gently. “You look like shit.”
Rose froze, stopped talking and squinted at Ariel. “I always look like shit.”
“Not true,” Ariel corrected her. “When you’re clean, you have this like, glow from within that softens it all, and you’re downright fetching.” He gestured to Rose’s craggy, pock-marked face. “But when you’re doing speed I can see every miserable mile.”
“Well I won’t give you what I came here to give you, then, if that’s what you call Southern hospitality.”
“Plus,” Ariel added, “you need to remove your make-up before you spackle on a new layer. Otherwise you get what the ceramicists call a ‘crazing’ effect.”
“You said you came for business. What do you need?” Brian asked her.
“Just some coke?” Rose ventured, making an ‘itty bitty’ gesture with her forefinger and thumb. “A pinch? A whisper? I just need something to help me down. A little assist. A friend. Who are in short order these days. Not either of you, mind you. But others.”
“Mmm-hmm. What happened?” Ariel interrupted. “Did you party last night, hon?”
“Life’s a party!” Rose tried gamely, then her face fell. “Yes. Last two nights.”
“Did a little Tina, perhaps?” Ariel offered, referring to the drug culture’s pet name for crystal meth.
“Perhaps." Rose paused. “But I’m stepping down from that.”
“Onward to coke?” Brian asked.
“Now I’m only going to speak in one-word sentences,” Rose pouted.
“So how did it go down?”
“Guy.” Rose drew a finger across her lips with a ‘locking away the key’ gesture, then continued chattering. “This cute lil’ piece showed up to dance at New Meat Thursdays, but Bruce sussed him out and asked me to remove him from the premises. But my lands he was fun, and we got to talking on the corner, and one thing led to another after my shift.”
“Honey, you were doing so good,” Ariel noted in a supportive, nonjudgmental tone. “How long were you clean?”
Rose’s eyes searched the sky as if recalling a long-forgotten acquaintance. “I’ll be clean for two years, in two months.”
“Now you can be clean for two years in two years,” Ariel joked lightly.
“You’re one to talk!” Rose scoffed.
Ariel began to speak, then stopped. Silence fell over the room as Rose ground her cigarette into Brian’s carpet with the heel of her boot. From the floor she pulled a bedraggled tote bag overstuffed with skeins of yarn and wrapped it in her arms. “I got kicked outta Serenity,” Rose confessed, referring to the halfway house where she’d lived for half a year.
“Did they catch you using?” Brian asked.
“No, but the bitch on call could tell.”
“An astronaut gazing down from the International Space Station could tell,” Ariel noted.
His stab at humor worked, and Rose’s lips curled into a tiny smile. “I was wondering if I could rest my head at the Cozy Rooms for a spell.”
Beyond Rose’s view, Ariel grimaced at Brian. “Honey, you know we love you, right?”
“I know,” Rose groused. “‘But I think you need some help,’ you’re gonna say. ‘More help than we can provide,’ you’re gonna say. You ain’t gonna use the word ‘rehab’ but that’s where you finna dump me.”
“Oh, I’ll use the word ‘rehab,’” Brian said. “I’m perfectly comfortable with that. Rehab.”
“Why don’t we take a ride in the Green Tortoise,” Ariel offered gently. “We’ll get some grub at the Waffle House, my treat, and then we’ll get you signed in someplace. A little food in your tummy will trigger your sleep.”
“I hate you,” Rose declared after a long pause. “I hate you both. But all right. Don’t need to twist my arm. Thirty years ago you’d need to. Now in my dotage I just waddle on in. Oh, and by the way,” she added, pulling a crinkled ball of paper from her tote. “I found this on a light pole in the Bywater. Don’t he look familiar?”
Ariel opened the paper to find his son staring back.
###
Thanks for reading. See you next week.
☮️ & ❤️,
