Shall I Compare Thee to a Pair of Gucci Slides?
A lonely real estate agent’s audio-erotic fiction becomes a reality when she slowly begins to realize how much she’s missing out on.
“Yeah that’s a tear-down,” Andrea Cisco of Century Realty LLC says. She has stiff dirty blonde hair, filled with hairspray that forces her hair to contort into various oblique shapes as she drives down the Tampa interstate in her white Mercedes. She wears gigantic Gucci shades and a thick chandelier-like necklace full of heavy jewels that rests against her sun-damaged chest. A Bluetooth rests on her ear so she can use one hand to steer, and the other to smoke a cigar.
This is a woman who has dedicated her life to realty.
Bryan, a new agent whose last name Andrea didn’t care to find out, scoffs. “But Andrea, the only issue with the house is the lack of counter space. That’s an easy fix if we just put in an island–”
“Nah, tear it down. It’s beyond hope. Trust me, kid–hold that thought, I have to take this–” she puts him on hold to answer the new incoming call. “So?”
The girl on the other end sighs. “Mom, can you get out of work mode?”
“Sorry sweetie, just dealing with some crap at the office. It’s unbelievable. How are you? How’s school?”
Andrea’s daughter, Melissa, currently studies at Columbia University in New York City.
“It’s going alright, I met a few friends already that I get dinner with most days of the week–”
“How about your grades?”
“They’re fine, Mom.”
“You’re on honor roll, right?”
“...I never said that.”
“Hold on a sec, I have to take this, I’ll be right back.”
Andrea puts Melissa on hold, mumbles “I’m still waiting for my fuckin’ daughter to show up,” then switches back to Bryan. “You there?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bryan has never referred to Andrea as ‘ma’am’ until now. Although he makes fun of her behind her back constantly (to which she would never phantom) and is driven crazy with her demands, he still can’t help but be impressed.
“I have an idea: indoor jacuzzi. Right in the living room. It’ll compensate for the lack of counter space. It’s done. Let me know what you think. Be right back–” she says before he can respond.
“You there, honey?”
Melissa gives a delayed “Yeah.” She knows her mom could’ve just called her back instead of doing the whole back and forth, but this was Andrea’s moment. She loved to feel busier than she actually was.
“You’re still not allowed to date, by the way.”
“Mom–what? I’m literally twenty years old–”
“HA!” Andrea cackles. “I’m just messing with you. Who do you think I am? I’m a low-pressure kind of woman. Do whatever the hell you want, you’re an adult. Except, just don’t…”Andrea trails off, realizing how long the list of exceptions she has is. “I’ll be right back.”
“Is it done?” She asks Bryan.
Bryan is silent for a moment. “Man,” he breathes, “Ms. Cisco, you are something else.”
“What are you talking about? Are you on acid?”
“No, I’m not on acid, I’m just bewildered.”
“Ha! Some vocabulary you got. You could teach my daughter a thing or two.”
“Doesn’t your daughter go to Columbia?”
“Psh. Oh, right, I got her on the other line, gotta run–” she once again hangs up before he has a chance to respond.
“I’m back. I think that’s finally sorted out. Fuckin’ exhausting.”
“Did you say bye this time?”
“I think it’s self-explanatory.”
“Mom, you can’t just hang up on people like you’re a mob boss.”
Andrea smiles to herself, thinking: I basically am…
Late for her diversity and inclusion meeting, Andrea pulls into a handicapped spot just as an actual handicapped person is about to pull in. He honks loudly at Andrea but she waves him off, literally, without even having the decency to hesitate for a moment in her car to at least not be seen.
The last time she felt shame was when she was 16. She had pulled a Tonya Harding and cut all the hair off the prom queen at a slumber party. She was runner-up and wanted the title. She got it. But the shame–that was just from no one ever finding out.
On the 18th floor of her building, she bursts into the meeting room, still putting her sunglasses on top of her windswept hair as she continually drops papers out of the five files she holds in her arm.
She holds up her hand unoriginally, stiffly, in greeting, giving the same tight smile she pulls out anytime she doesn’t actually care. She crinkles up her nose, squints her eyes, and smiles like she’s blowing an Eskimo kiss to a baby. “Sssssorry!” she whispers. Eight faces turn to watch her sit down, then one by one turn back to the presenter, who is a skinny man in a blazer and Harry Potter glasses. He clutches his hands whenever he’s resting. Andrea sees him doing this and immediately decides she doesn’t like him–that his body language suggested he was begging. For what? She didn’t know, nor did she care. He was simply a beggar in her eyes.
“Ummm? So, as I was saying!” he chirps, in a tone that suggests Andrea had done something completely cringeworthy, and proceeds to continue in an overly cheery tone, like he thinks he needs to save the whole meeting.
“Feminism! Every-body is a feminist if they believe in basic human rights.” He punctuates each word. “Feminism is why you’re all here today. Yes, even the men.” There are some obligatory laughs.
“It really wasn’t that long ago that women were to remain at home. And look how far we’ve come, a room full of career women!”
Betty from Mortgages squeals and claps her hands, along with Lisa Chen, the receptionist that Andrea thought wasn't important enough to even be here. An ego boost is the last thing these two bitches need, Andrea thinks to herself.
Her sunglasses fall back onto her face and she pushes them up again, using her Louis Vuitton purse as a pillow. She actually had been a huge feminist her whole life, but was getting tired of being challenged as of late. She had gotten to where she had wanted to be. What more was there to talk about?
“Now for this exercise, I want to go around the room and ask how feminism has benefitted your life. Yes, even the men.” He smirks, quoting himself.
Nancy goes first: “When I was a little girl, I wanted to be an astronaut. At first, I felt discouraged, but my mother assured me women could do anything men could, and that anything was possible.”
Andrea squints. If her daughter had said something like that to her, she knew exactly what she would’ve said: “Well, you’re five, so that’s not happening. And I’m not paying for eight years of school. Next.”
Also, Nancy wasn’t an astronaut. She was a real estate agent–and a sad excuse for one at that.
Personally, Andrea felt she was a real estate agent simply because if she was any other kind of agent, for example, an acting agent, she knew she would be the type to cover up all her client’s drug and assault charges to keep business going–and she guessed that was a negative.
Eyes turn to Betty. Before she even begins to speak, Andrea has already lowered her sunglasses back over her eyes. “I used to get picked on for being overweight, and not being as pretty as the rest of the girls, but feminism taught me that the right guy will love me for me, and I’m beautiful the way I am.”
No she’s not. Andrea rolls her eyes under her shades. Betty was two hundred pounds too heavy for Andrea’s taste–and with a personality like hers, you just had to compensate with your physicality if you wanted to get anywhere. The woman was in her mid-forties and still hadn’t figured it out. Of course, her husband was absolutely useless. His only perk was that he loved her for her, and to Andrea, the whole thing was absolutely pathetic.
It was her turn.
She clears her throat. “Well, I believe feminism had benefitted my life by turning me into an independent woman,” she half shrugs, because she thinks it is obvious, “although it’s turned me into a terrible cook,” she jokes. One man laughs.
The presenter pretends to give a little chuckle. “Well, I’m not sure if this is the place for that…”
Andrea lightly throws up her hand, still smiling, “Well I’m just making an observation! Hasn’t anyone noticed the countries where women have more rights have the worst food, while the countries with very little female rights have amazing dishes? Go to Morocco, you won’t regret it.”
The room is silent. Mr. cardigan cringes. He doesn’t know what to say, except, “Do you want to take your sunglasses off?”
What was this, school? She had wanted to actually, but for some reason she had just changed her mind. “No?” She shrugs.
A beat, then he says, “We must be moving on, who’s next?”
Andrea quietly decides that this is the last straw. For what? She wasn’t exactly sure…
Andrea pulls into the garage of her Tampa beachfront house. 3,000 sqft, giant picture windows, a roundabout fountain with water shooting out of a Dolphin’s blow-hole. She shuts off her car, gets out, and throws the keys into the driver’s seat with the top still rolled down.
She puts the code (0000) into the keypad and pushes the ancient-looking door.
She immediately kicks off her shoes, sending them flying. She throws everything else on the kitchen table, lighting another cigar pronto, intentionally blowing the smoke up at the ceilings. Obviously, this would damage them over time, but Andrea had no problem spending money, and thought that once you earned it, well, what was the point of hoarding it? She could get a new ceiling if she really gave a shit. It was her house. Therefore, for the first time, she could do whatever the fuck she wanted to it.
It was a Spanish-style villa she had paid to be built herself. She had wanted the builders to model it after Bill’s house in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill and had no shame in telling them so. “Yes, the scene where she finally kills him,” she had said. “That house. Beautiful, just beautiful.”
No husband, and even though she had kicked all three of her husbands out of wherever they were staying, she always ended up buying a new house because she believed this was the ultimate act of feng shui. She had a dog named Samuel, a French bulldog she had gotten because they were in style and she had no other existing preference to go off of. He didn’t bark so much as snort, which he did all over her pantyhose at this current moment.
She walks straight into the bedroom, ignoring the turned-off lights, as well as Samuel, as he tries to show her the same affection he desperately needed himself.
She throws herself onto the bed, grabbing her iPad and putting on a set of cheap cat-ear headphones she had grabbed from the store without even looking. She opens an app called “Quinn–autoerotic fiction” and brings up her favorite voice–a man by the name of Samuel Bourbon.
Samuel lets out a little “wait up” bark and jumps on the bed after her, snuggling up to her feet. She used to be uncomfortable with her dog being in the room for this, but she had stopped caring at a certain point, seeing as he couldn’t comprehend half of the things that went on.
Despite being a 54-year-old, thrice-divorced woman, she squeals when she sees Samuel Bourbon has put out a new audio recording for the first time in weeks. It is called “Home for Hanukkah.” She presses play.
A man chuckles. “You worry so much,” he says, “My parents are going to love you. All you have to do is be yourself.” It is the most sensational voice Andrea’s ever heard. It’s deep to a ridiculous degree. It’s smooth. It’s teasing. It barely feels like it belongs to a real person. It’s the kind of voice that makes you feel transported. Like she was caught all alone by some bandit in the middle of a Wyoming ranch, or found in the middle of the Scottish Highlands in a torn dress by Jamie Fraser (don’t even get her started).
“See? Look at the way my mother looks at you. Ugh, and the way you helped her in the kitchen. It’s like you guys already knew each other–like how I feel I’ve known you in another life.”
Andrea sighs, smiling, eyes closed. She imagines hot breath on her ear.
“I didn’t know you knew parts of the Torah. You learned that for me, didn’t you?” She can hear his smile.
It goes on like this for a while, the compliments, the reminiscing. “I am so, so proud of you,” he says, which is a line Andrea will repeat to herself every day for the next week in her head. “And ah…well, I’m just going to say it. Today, I believe, is the day that I’ve finally realized, I love you.” He kisses her, gently on the neck, or at least she pretends.
“Now,” he sneers. A door closes. “We’re finally alone. Thank god…they’re finally asleep.” And what Samuel says next, is one of those lines every woman hoped to hear–a line that was constantly hoped for, but rarely ever delivered outside of a movie scene: He lowers his voice into a whisper, “All I could think about all day was throwing you on this bed and fucking the shit out of you. In fact, it’s been torturing me.”
Andrea urgently shoots up in bed, making her little Samuel jump. She scurries through her bedside drawer desperately, finding what she’s looking for immediately.
Knowing it’s about to get really good, she takes this opportunity to pause the story and roll herself a blunt. When she licks the paper, she imagines Samuel sticking his thumb onto her bare tongue before she has a chance to slide it back into her mouth. She takes several hits and lays back down.
His breath from the word “torture” feels like it’s lingering on her neck. He slides a hand onto her shoulder to push the strap from her dress down her arm. It takes no thought for her to totally expose her neck to him, which he plunges into. “That’s right, spread your fucking legs,” he begins.
“But I have to take off my pantyhose first,” she groans quietly to herself.
“Ah, what’s this? Panty hose?” There is a loud tearing sound, and Andrea squeals in surprise at the perfect timing. She took this to mean, without knowing of her existence, he still, somehow, was thinking of her when making this particular fiction.
Twenty minutes later–standard love-making time–Andrea lays in a heap on her messed-up bed. Samuel the French bulldog has moved to his bed on the floor, where he gazes worriedly at Andrea who is hanging upside down from the bed, arms nearly touching the floor, jaw slacked from repeated orgasms.
After several moments of complete emancipation, she quickly straightens up, smoothing out one wrinkled patch of her dress, ignoring the other fifty. She opens her bedside table once again and pulls out a cigarette–not that she liked them very much, but it was also standard after lovemaking. She figured she could’ve been doing just that in a parallel universe, but instead she was standing there, just staring at the bed while she blew smoke instead of laying in it. She considers for the hundredth time to get one of those lavish mirrors for the ceiling. This was something she had dreamed of having, but felt that getting it, so long as she didn’t have a man, would only serve to remind her of her constant isolation.
She rests her elbow of her cigarette arm on her elbow, her dress on sideways, her hair a disaster at this point in the day, barefoot. She thought she must look like a tribal woman who raided a rich lady’s house, put on her clothes, and was now trying to figure out what “bed” meant.
Now, Andrea does something she hasn’t done in at least two months. Walking down her hallway, she opens her garage door. Flicking on the lights, she looks out at her five motorcycles from that past, the one where she was living out the last of her free days in Reno, going to dinky desert landmarks with her “bitches.”
There was one spot hidden in between Reno and Vegas: a gigantic art piece full of spray painted, dilapidated buses, some of which were deliberately stuck into the ground at 80 or 90-degree angles, some turned over on their side, spread out just as much as the artist wanted them to be since all there was was space and no trees to get in the way–only a few cliffs and pure desert.
That had been one of her favorites. Something about it moved her. It could’ve been that desert silence she wasn’t used to, having lived on the East Coast most of her life surrounded by bugs. It was gigantic. It was still. Something about that made her feel free.
She pulls on her lip with her finger, creating a resting place for her hand. She squints like they’re foreign, neither proud of herself nor amazed. She thinks about that past, one that wasn’t dramatic enough to make a big secret of, but one she still had tried to put behind her in order to grow up and to encourage her daughter to be different.
Simply, there was no good reason. This is what she was realizing.
She pulls back her shirt and stares down at the Hello Kitty holding-a-rifle tattoo on the soft of her hip. She thinks something isn’t working, but simultaneously, she has strayed too far from herself to ever truly reclaim it.
Andrea wakes up the next morning feeling hung over. She felt something–it wasn’t shame, but it could’ve been disgust. She was growing tired of constantly tempting herself, like Jamie Fraser would manifest himself if only she got horny enough. She worried she was finding herself nearing the bottom of a bottomless pit. Now, the bottomless pit didn’t get any darker, didn’t get any deeper–but the person falling down one was constantly changing, constantly trying new tactics to cope with being on the inside, until they one day forget how to cope.
What she really hated was being 54 and still considering herself “lonely” like she was 13. She imagined her daughter saying such a thing, to which Andrea would’ve replied “Honey, you’ll find someone. Look at all the dumbasses that are married. It’s just easier for them because there are more dumbasses to choose from compared to actual smart, capable women like yourself. Not get back to studying.”
“Forever alone,” made no sense at her daughter’s age, but at her age, it was proving itself right for someone who had tried again and again, and now being at the half-way-point of her life, still hadn’t found her life partner.
Right now, she was angry at herself for thinking too much about these things, as she vowed to never do. She didn’t believe in praying, nor did she feel she could ever be religious because she hated being told what to do, but she couldn’t help always feeling like she was fighting against the universe, who showed no mercy and was the big man in charge of letting terrible things happen to good people.
She lights up another cigar, even though she knows you’re only supposed to do such a thing after feeling accomplished.
She woke up. The sun was shining, and she wasn’t actually hung over. That was enough to her.
There’s a knock at the door. She grabs the bedside clock next to her and shoves it in front of her face. 9:40 AM.
“The fuck?” She says, rolling into a sit, and when she feels like it, a stand. They’ve already knocked twice more.
Her bare feet smack against the marble, and little Samuel is already staring up at the door, wondering what’s taking Andrea so long.
She first goes to the window to peek through the curtain to make sure they aren’t Jehovah’s Witnesses. When she sees that they’re two young college-aged girls, she fluffs up her hair and puts a smile on.
She opens the door. “Hey, kiddos.”
The girls seem happy to see her. “Hi!” the one girl pauses. She’s brunette. The hiking, minimal make-up type. Andrea assumes she’s still a virgin because she probably rides horses too. “We hope we didn’t wake you–”
“Oh, no you’re fine honey. I needed to get my ass out of bed anyway.” You could talk in whatever tone you wanted when you were rich–you always had a step up in the conversation, she thought. She also reconsiders, and thinks, maybe the girl isn’t really into horses and is instead just a lesbian.
“Okay, perfect!” Horse girl exclaims. “Well my name is Lucy, and this is Steph,”
Steph gives a nod. She seems like a shy, unsuspecting girl. Andrea studies her for too long, wondering if she secretly listened to Quinn too. She seemed like the fanfiction type.
“Um,” Lucy says in the middle of her sentence, gauging Andrea’s attention. She looks away from Steph, and reminds herself to look at people less like houses, and more like people. “We’re just going door to door seeing if we could recruit, or take donations from people for the Feminist Elite society.”
At this point, Andrea looks away from poor Steph, and snaps her attention to Lucy. “Feminist Elite Society?”
“Yes ma’am!”
She squints drunkenly. “What do you guys do?”
“Oh, we create a lot of petitions, educate schools on the history of women’s rights, and hold events.”
A beat.
“So…not much at all?”
Lucy frowns. “Ah…I believe we spread the word, and encourage others to–”
“Honey,” Andrea sighs, deciding to put up her Gloria Steinem books that day, “You seem like a bright girl, why don’t you focus on college? There’s nothing left to fight for. Plus I bet the ‘Feminist Elite society’ is all women. You’re lucky to be surrounded by boys in their prime, you’re really going to pull yourself away from that?”
“There are guys in the society,” she says flatly.
“Oh honey,” Andrea says, genuine concern in her voice, and utters a phrase she never thought she’d ever hear herself say, “But they’re all soy boys. Let me tell you girls something: being a career woman is overrated. None of it matters if you don’t have a man who loves you.”
“I happen to have a boyfriend who loves me very much!” Lucy scoffs, still trying to maintain her smile.
“But does he really?” Andrea asks, making Lucy flush. “You know he’s looking at other girls though. The real issue you guys should be talking about is porn. That’s what really messes people up.”
Unsuspecting Steph speaks up. “What’s next, you don’t think we should allow immigrants across the border?!”
Andrea turns her head slowly to face her. “Honey…do you really think I give a shit if a 19-year-old girl thinks I’m racist?” Steph immediately flushes too.
“Oh, and funny of you to go knocking on the biggest house in the neighborhood for donations, like I got anything to give.” She chuckles and slams the door in their face. An innocent bystander would’ve thought she had needlessly bullied a few Girl Scouts selling cookies. But no, it was only 9:50 in the morning and Andrea Cisco had just had her last nerve prodded.
For the first time in weeks, Andrea Cisco puts the top up on her convertible. This is only because she wants to hide, ashamed of where she’s pulled up.
Shame, yes, she thinks, that’s what it must be, as she pulls a scarf over her head and puts her thick sunglasses over her eyes.
She gets out of the car and locks it too, then stares up at the sign that reads Ms. Alessandra’s Tarot and Psychic readings.
She had picked Alessandra because she liked the sound of her name. It made her think of those blindfolded Greek women of the past who were actually schizophrenic, and for some reason, this led her to believe this woman knew her stuff.
In truth, she had had her tarot cards read years and years ago and hadn’t since then because of how freakishly accurate it had been. It spoke of an only daughter she hadn’t yet had. It told her of a man who was on his own journey, who divorced her two weeks later. It said she would have a sexual awakening one day, but that one was hazy.
Andrea could not think of anything else to do at this point in her life.
She walks in, taking off her scarf, her shades. It all made her feel very Muslim, as there were no men in here–just Alessandra herself, emerging from a curtain. “Andrea?”
“You really are a psychic,” she jokes, and for the first time, the subject of one of Andrea’s jokes laughs in return.
Five minutes later, they sit at a table, Alessandra on the end and Andrea on the side. The lighting is soft, and comes in through the curtains like the room is glowing–and she feels it, the second they sit down. Something she cannot place–it’s like she’s enveloped in something warm that tickles her heart. It’s strange until she thinks of it in terms of weed. It’s just like it without the lung damage. She relaxes.
She liked Alessandra immediately. She wasn’t wearing a stupid turban, some boho bullshit dress. She was simple and unpretentious. There had to be another reason she was here besides smooth talking.
“Ask yourself three questions. Say one aloud, and keep the other two to yourself,” Alessandra instructed. She had some kind of foreign accent–it sounded Mediterranean, like she had drank a lot of tea and thought about a lot of shit throughout her life.
“Will my daughter be successful in life?” was the one she said aloud–the least embarrassing of the three.
“Will I die alone?” and “Will I make the same mistake I made three times again?” were the other two.
She draws out her cards. Alessandra lays them out flat, and Andrea feels the world quiet–that same feeling she got off on in the desert.
“I’m seeing that you are someone who is very put together on the outside, but on the inside things are a little more complicated.”
Andrea blinks, already feeling like she might break down. It was never this easy. Maybe she shouldn’t have stormed out on her therapist, after all.
“You live lavishly even though it doesn’t enrich your soul, and you want your daughter to follow in your footsteps, I suspect. But her success won’t come from career, it’ll come from being successful in life, which are two different things.” Andrea didn’t have to ask what she meant. She realized she had already explained all this to those two girls on her doorstep, something she hadn’t learned until she was 54–specifically, one day ago.
“She’ll find love? Like, true love, with someone on her level?”
Alessandra smiles. “I believe so.”
Andrea sighs, relaxing immediately, and begins to tear up. She still doesn’t know if she believes in this type of stuff, but her gut was made to feel satisfied, and she thought that had to count for something. “Thank god,” she groans.
A few minutes later and Alessandra looks right into Andrea’s eyes, smiling warmly, and Andrea never thought she’d have a mother figure at this point in her life, but there was something so maternal about it that she forgot all about the $150. “And no, you will not die alone.”
Andrea frowns. It was one of the questions she had kept to herself. There was no way for Alessandra to know. But Andrea didn’t care. She was too happy to be bewildered, nor did she give a fuck. She did believe the universe worked in mysterious ways, but those ways, she believed, were beyond our tiny comprehension. They didn’t sort themselves out in terms of fairness, or convenience–things people are wired for. That was why we needed to go with the flow of life–otherwise, we would get torn up. You can’t win against the universe. There was no figuring it out–there was only enjoyment. She knew all this, but she also knew it didn’t mean she implemented her own beliefs into her life at all.
“Okay,” she throws her arms on the table, seemingly trying to grab and shake Alessandra without actually putting her hands on her. “But when? Will I meet the love of my life a day before I die? Or next week? I gotta know if there’s something coming.”
Alessandra smiles, pulling up a card to Andrea’s face. She stares at it cross-eyed. It’s literally a knight on a silver stallion. “All I can tell you is that he’s already on his way. There is no work that needs to be done on your end.”
She places the card back down, and Andrea stares down at her desperate-looking hands as they grasp the tablecloth.
“What I can tell you, is that, for yourself, you are someone who moves too fast,” She stops looking at the cards and turns her whole body to face Andrea in her seat, putting her own hands on top of Andrea’s. “You have worked so hard all of your life, yet you’re miserable.” Andrea flushes. She knows she’s right.
“Treat yourself. It’ll help make things…well, make more sense.” She smiles.
Back home, it is 11 PM, days after. Andrea tries masturbating to Samuel Bourbon’s voice, but just can’t get there. It feels too overplayed–and it is. She’s listened to “Home for Hanukkah” about ten times now and knows all his moves.
Finally, she throws her iPad across the room (it has an indestructible case for moments like this) and gives up, taking out a cigarette, which immediately makes her feel worse because she 1. Didn’t want it, only did it for the appeal, and 2. Didn’t have sex, nor came close this time. She lay there smoking, thinking, that maybe she would buy one of those ceiling mirrors–that maybe she could put on a wig and briefs and masturbate to herself dressed as a man. At least, then, she could make her semi-imaginary Samuel Bourbon do whatever she wanted.
She thinks about her tarot reading. She still didn’t know exactly how to feel, but she thought the end of the session was a little silly, how Alessandra told her to treat herself, like that would really impact her life significantly. But she plays with the idea, because hasn’t she been impulsively indulging this whole time? She might as well be tactical about it.
“Hello, I’d like to order a large pizza, one half pepperoni, one half olives, artichokes, and red peppers.”
When she’s done with the call, she throws the phone onto the couch like she’s saying “There. Good enough?”
While she waits, she goes outside to her backyard which has lately turned itself into a toilet for Samuel. She decides to walk out to the fence through the grass, which she’s careful of, stepping around Samuel’s shits. A few times doing this and she realizes how elegant it all is, this stupid ballet dance Samuel is making her do, like he was deliberate with every shit he took, to form a pattern that would make her seem beautiful. She wondered if the universe had anything to do with it–that something told Samuel exactly the spot to shit in, each time, based on something in his gut, just so she could see herself in this light she wasn’t used to anymore.
She imagines herself turning into Bill, taking his last five steps after Uma Thurman inflicts the five point exploding heart technique on him. He takes five steps and collapses, face first, into the grass. She has enacted this scene many times since living here.
She takes some deep breaths and thinks she will give up in her life. Not in a depressing sense, but in one where she was just too fucking old to take the reins any longer. She had decided that whatever is, was, and whatever it was, didn’t really matter anyway.
The doorbell rings and she hears “Pizza delivery!” in almost what sounds like her sweet Samuel’s voice. But she knows she’s imagining it, too high from all the “what could it all mean” talk, and heard it in the same way she saw herself dancing. She was simply dodging shit.
Andrea answers the door in her silk kimono, cigar in her mouth, slippers actually on. As she walks past the mirror in the front hall, something deep in her gut tells her to fix her hair, and she complies.
She opens the door, immediately blowing smoke into the pizza delivery boy’s face.
The haze clears, and she freezes, suddenly at a loss for words.
She couldn’t believe he was wearing a Domino’s uniform, the man who was probably one of the most handsome she had ever seen. He didn’t exactly look like her man, Jamie Fraser, but someone of the same breed. He had longish, curly hair and stubble. His eyes were narrow, green, and his smile was cartoonishly handsome, the way it curved up only on one side, like his anatomy betrayed itself for the sake of being hot. A long necklace with a peace sign stuck out from his button-down, showing a hint of individuality.
And then he finally speaks. “Mm, you smoke Cubans? A woman with class, that’s what I like.”
Andrea drops her jaw, and her cigar falls right onto the ground. She isn’t aware.
“I’m sorry if it was something I said,” he smiles, that dopey grin, as he reaches down to pick it up and hand it back to her. It takes her a minute, but finally she’s able to bring herself back to reality, least to not leave him hanging.
She smiles like she’s been out in the desert sun all day, like she can barely see any longer. “Has anyone ever told you to go into voice acting?”
“All the time, ma’am.” He smiles. It’s like he’s already playing her game despite not knowing the rules.
Little Samuel scrambles to the door, just realizing a person is there. He throws himself to the man’s shoes, rubbing his butt over his laces, desperately trying to claim him.
“Oh my goodness,” the pizza man says, “Someone’s excited.”
For a second, she thinks he means her. It’s too late though, she’s already blushing.
He bends down to pet Samuel with his one free hand, the pizza still in the other. He tugs at his loose skin, pinching his cheeks and rubbing his ears down intensely. It almost puts little Samuel into a trance, and Andrea too, as she curses her dog for being so fucking lucky.
“What’s his name?” He asks.
Andrea already knows the course of the future when he asks this. She can feel the path of her life change right then.
“Samuel.”
The pizza man looks up at her, surprised. He smiles open-mouthed, “My name is Samuel too.”
He stands back up. She notices he doesn’t give the pizza over.
“Samuel Bourbon?” She asks, like she’s finally met her long-lost whoever.
“Ye…yeah. How did you…do you…do you listen?” It was the first time she was able to put a face to the voice she listened to religiously–she just didn’t expect him to be so handsome.
“Every night.” She scoffs. He had millions of fans, what did it matter? Now, she had become merely one of them. It might’ve been best to remain anonymous.
“Well I’m flattered,” he says.
She looks up from little Samuel, who she thinks is about to hump big Samuel’s leg. Was that a compliment?
“I mean that as a compliment,” he assures. “I mean, you named your dog after me, I suppose.”
“That’s correct.” At this moment, Andrea seemingly sniffs the metaphorical ammonia she keeps in her back pocket, and knows she has to be herself, or at least, less of a loser, if she wants to show this man what the difference between her and any regular fan was.
“I’m gonna be honest…I really hate that I just let you know I’m a fan. Do you understand what I mean?”
He nods. “Yes.”
There’s a moment of silence. She waits for him to hand over the pizza and say goodbye to this mess of a woman, but he still stands there studying her–what for, she didn’t know–not to mention it was in the same careful way she studied others, although arguably less judgmental, and because he seemed almost completely unaware at this point of little Samuel who was now humping his leg, that all of this meant–
“You want a cup of coffee?” she asks. She didn’t know when she became like such a schoolgirl. She always imagined her fantasies with Samuel to be fiery, commanding on her end–but she guessed it made sense how when finally faced with the man of her dreams, it would be as pathetic as this.
“He’s already on his way” made a lot more sense, if this was what Alessandra referred to–only she could’ve never imagined her knight in shining armor would show up in a pizza delivery truck.
Andrea leads him into her kitchen, and you bet she loved having him walk through her house. It finally made all the renovations worth it. She couldn’t remember the last time she had a guest, aside from the cleaners.
“Wow,” he says, “It reminds me of the house in Kill Bill, the one where she finally kills him–”
In front of Samuel Bourbon, he’s unable to see her face turn nuts into a smile, then a scoff of disbelief.
She shakes her head. “Fucker.”
“What was that?”
She faces him on the other side of her island, smiling big to reassure him. “I had this house modeled after the one in the movie.”
“What?” He chirps. “You have that kind of power?”
She smiles again, and again, and again, just in different ways. “I’m a real estate agent.”
He seems to rock back on his heels. “That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“The cigars, why the house is so nice. The pizza.”
“What’s the pizza got to do with it? You like Cuban coffee too?” She begins pouring the grounds into her high-tech espresso machine.
“Do I. And I’d imagine someone like you ordering takeout regularly, as someone who works so hard.”
She scoffs, thinking of her line ‘Success means nothing if you don’t have a man who loves you.’
“What?” He says, so she says her line, because other than that, she didn’t know what to else say.
She tucks a strand of her frazzled hair behind an ear. “Success means nothing if you don’t have a man who loves you.”
“Mmm,” he says, sitting down on one of her bar stools. “Amy Winehouse quote?”
“All me.”
He laughs, then lets it become quiet. “You don’t have anyone who loves you?”
She looks into his eyes when he says this, to figure out what he could mean. He seemed to genuinely feel bad, despite having just met her. If he had asked her this at any other time, she would’ve probably had to of relieved herself, but at this current moment, she was still deciphering what about this interaction was real and what wasn’t.
“I had three husbands that did, but in the wrong ways.”
“Mmm,” he nods.
He needs to stop doing that, she thinks. His ever-plummeting voice drove her crazy. It didn’t matter what he said–it all sounded sensual.
She hands him his coffee. He still looks mostly at her, and she realizes she’s the closest she’s ever been to him. She doesn’t smell cologne, but a subtle Old Spice deodorant for functionality, which pleased her, knowing he didn’t intentionally get himself all sexed up before running deliveries, suggesting he didn’t do this for the sake of hooking up with random women.
“You know that Johnny Cash quote? The one where he’s defining Heaven? ‘This morning, with her, having coffee.’ I like that quote.” Samuel says as he sips, teasing her. It would’ve been easier to figure him out if he was purely interested in sex. But he wanted to talk? She wonders briefly if he’s gay, but catches herself attempting to catastrophize the situation and stops.
The only reason Andrea hasn’t lost her mind yet, she thinks, is because she’s still trying to decipher if she’s dreaming, or if universe is about to play a cruel joke on her. Any second, a piano would drop out of the sky, through her roof, right onto Samuel. And she wouldn't even think it to be unbelievable–it would’ve just been her luck.
“Except it’s not morning,” she lightly clinks her glass against his.
“Ahhh,” he says, “But it is. 12:06.”
She stares at him through the vapor as she takes a sip of her own mug. “What are you, like some kind of male Marilyn Monroe?”
“I’m misunderstood…Miss?”
“Andrea.”
“Andrea…” He repeats. She almost loses her shit.
She feels the need to pinch herself, so she says, “Or are you some kind of Oedipus?”
He laughs, hard, leaning back in his chair and grabbing his stomach. Andrea watches in wonder. “No ma’am, I like to think of myself as more of a Harold. Harold and Maude.”
She’s quiet again, feeling like she’s walking on eggshells as she understands what an incredible pocket of the universe she’s landed herself in, and is borderline terrified of once again rearranging the course of her path and ending back up in her empty home with nothing but cigars and pizza.
“Why’s that?”
“It’s about what’s in the soul, everyone’s at different points in their life. The more life someone has, the more interesting they are. They just know better. Know what they want.” He gazes at her as he says all this. “Or maybe there was something in that cigar smoke you blew at me.”
Andrea still isn’t convinced. “Are you recording this?”
“No,” he laughs, “But I’m flattered you’d say that.”
She sips suspiciously. “Why are you here?”
Now, he looks at her with a raised eyebrow, recognizing the challenge. “I like badass women, what can I say? I like a woman who had it all and said fuck it. I like a woman who knows how to shoot a gun or ride a motorcycle. I like a woman who answered the door with a cigar in her mouth. When have you ever seen that? Also, you invited me in. Why did you do that?”
She half smiles. “Do I really need to answer that?”
He waits for her to.
She waits for him to give up.
He does not.
“You cheeky son of a bitch,” she says, making him crack up.
“You’re beautiful when you’re mad.”
She raises both her eyebrows. “Did someone put you up to this?”
Now she can see he’s starting to wear out. “I’m sorry, honey. This is all just a little unbelievable for me, you know?” The whole situation seemed destined to be a porno.
“I understand, Miss. Andrea. I’m not going to pretend to be in love with you, we just met. But I’m drawn to you in the way any man would be after meeting someone they know they could love, if they’re allowed. And that’s all there is to it.” He shifts. “Also it’s very common for a young man to be into older women.”
Miss. Andrea? Allowed? She feels faint, but maintains her composure, least so that she can let it all fall apart when it’s safe.
She realizes she might scare him off if she continues, and that what she was doing wasn’t exactly “going with the flow.” She was focusing too much on the logical, when she had all the answers she needed just looking into his eyes. They were attentive to everything she was saying, studying her, watching her every move. But why? Although it could easily be argued that he didn’t love her, he might’ve loved everything he knew about her thus far and loved it 100%.
She wonders if this is how men feel when they’re talking to any woman.
“Well,” she begins. “I can’t understand why any man who’s ever loved me has…well, what do you say we do now?”
“Let’s just keep drinking coffee until we turn into Johnny and June?”
She half smiles. He was a little corny, but he seemed aware of it and played with himself as much as he did with her. “Alright, handsome,” she says.
What ensues next involves Andrea pulling out a blunt to compliment their coffee. She did not want to simply be Johnny and June–she wanted to be Andrea and Samuel. Just like that, the veil lifted, and she was able to relax.
Next, she takes him into the backyard where she shows him her ballet dance. She doesn’t have to explain what she’s doing–he sees it. The dog shit has nothing to do with it.
She does what she envisions the five point exploding heart technique to be like on him (rapidly poking him in the heart a bunch of times) and when he gets up to pretend to die and falls to the ground like he’s entertaining a child, her own heart feels like it’ll fucking explode.
It starts to make sense. She’s older, he’s probably twenty years younger, but her spirit is young. That’s what happens when you’re 3x divorced–you say fuck it and return to square one. Now, she just wanted to have fun in the way any 20-something would.
Plus, it could make perfect sense why he was the way he was. Yes, he was a total catch, but he wasn’t a model. He might’ve been gassed up constantly by others about his voice, but he probably didn’t get to hear how handsome he was–she figured he was one of those solitary men who thought of himself as being very average-looking because he wasn’t told otherwise enough. Worked online, didn’t leave his home too much–like any normal guy, except he didn’t know the extent of his capabilities. A part of her felt an immense sadness for him.
They go upstairs, finally, to eat the pizza on her bed. Samuel makes a pillow fort by pulling the sheets up behind her headboard.
And of course, they make love.
She locks little Samuel out this time by throwing a pizza crust out the door.
Andrea couldn’t believe her life at this moment, that she’d be having sex with Samuel Bourbon, let alone be feeding him pizza in the middle of it, laughing, because his and her life both were totally absurd, and what else was there left to do?
They may not have had a lot in common, but they laughed about the same things. They didn’t get offended when they teased one another. She was starting to think that if he ever got a dog, he would name it Andrea just to be cute.
She was starting to believe that some people were born to be together. She didn’t believe in soul mates, but she believed there were plenty of people out there, compatible with one another, and it was up to them if they wanted to be together. It had nothing to do with age, or career. They were picked by the universe, and there was nothing they could do about it. It could even be called a curse, if you wanted.
Afterward, they lay in bed smoking cigarettes, and the act finally felt overrated and silly, smoking after sex. She thought, why ruin this by making it like any other movie? No, that’s not what she would have this be.
“Why are you a pizza boy?” Andrea asks as they both stare up at the ceiling. She blows her smoke straight up at it with force, like she wants it to reach the very top.
“Fuck you, ceiling,” says Samuel. Andrea giggles and smacks his arm. “It’s just my day job. I still don’t make quite enough money doing what I’m doing to rely on it.” He blows his smoke directly at the ceiling, like her. “Miss Andrea, my life is absurd. I know you think your life is absurd, but mine really is…not to say I don’t like it.
She shrugs. Nothing like that mattered when you were hot, she was just curious. And maybe it was true that his life wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. He worked two different solitary jobs. It was likely he didn’t have many friends, or even that people were afraid to get close to him because of how seemingly perfect the man was. If she had seen a man as handsome as him by himself as much as he seemingly was, she would assume he was probably just schizophrenic.
She looks around for a place to ash her cigarette.
“Right here,” he says, sticking out his tongue. She giggles hard and does as he says. He struggles to swallow it as he attempts to maintain his smile and not gag. Andrea enjoyed the degradation. This amount of boyish stupidity was just what she needed at her age. It made her feel light.
She turns over onto her elbow to face him.
Then she says something that she hasn’t talked about for years. “Now my other question…how did you know I drive a motorcycle?”
He turns to face her, too. “Whaaaaat? I didn’t know that,” he unleashes his smile. “I just brought it up as an example.”
“Well,” She gets up, throwing back on her kimono. She picks up Samuel’s pants and throws them at his head. “Let me show you.”
She leads him to the garage, and on the way down the stairs, there’s a moment where he stops to stare at one of her pictures. It’s of her around the time she was his age. She doesn’t have to say who it is, he just knows. She studies his face. He’s smiling, looking at the girl in the photo not like he’d rather be with her, but like he’s looking at a child; like Andrea’s already his age at this very moment, and what he’s looking at instead is a baby picture.
She understands what he meant now when he said we were all in different stages of our lives.
Andrea figured that this all would’ve been a lot simpler if she had just slept with him quicker. The fact that he was still acting the same way towards her even after he came said it all, bizarre as it was.
It’s as quiet as it’s been since Samuel Bourbon arrived when Andrea opens up the garage door and he stares in wonder at her five motorcycles.
“Wowww…” he breathes, then slowly walks ahead, touching the bikes with his hands, revving the handlebars. Even this is unintentionally sensual.
She watches him while she bites her nail in the form of concentration. “What do you think?” She says after a few moments.
Slowly, he brings his head up to face her. “I wish I knew more about bikes.”
Andrea laughs.
“But from what I can see, they’re all covered in dust.”
She nods solemnly. “I gave it up after I had my kid.”
“Well, she’s in college now, isn’t she?”
Andrea nods knowingly. “I’m just realizing that.”
“Well,” Samuel grins. “Let’s go.”
Andrea stares at him, slack-jawed and confused. “It’s 3 AM.”
“Less people on the roads?” He holds out his arms. He really is just a boy.
She shakes her head, unsure.
Samuel comes over to her, holding both her hands, looking into her eyes. “Come on, it’ll be fun. Come on,” he smiles. “This isn’t the moment when you realize ‘he’s too young for me’, this is the moment when you remember what you’re missing out on.”
She felt like she really belonged to him at that moment. “I just can’t believe you’re smart, too.” What she also realizes is that all true love can be considered unbelievable to a degree.
Ten minutes later, Andrea changes into something more durable, and with Samuel behind her, hugging her waist, she barrels down the seaside road and it all comes back to her right away.
Each of them packs a small bag. She decided it was also time to give up on time constraints. She didn’t have work tomorrow morning, and that was as far as she was willing to think ahead. She would just have Samuel’s sweet bravado call up her agency and tell them all she was dead, and they would believe him, because how couldn’t you with a voice like that?
He leans forward, putting his mouth to her ear, like she fantasized about so many times, and feels his breath roll off her as he and tells her “Cute tattoo, by the way.”