I decide that I should tell her what she needs to hear without lying about anything. There’s always a way to spin an uncomfortable truth into an acceptable story.
“Our parents run a corporation that owns and invests in nightclubs, restaurants, and apartment buildings. Occasionally, they are hired to help someone get out of legal trouble when traditional methods have failed, but they cherry pick those clients and most of them are rarely dangerous.”
“And you say I’m the drama queen? You're the real actor. How long have you been preparing those carefully rehearsed lines? You sound like their public relations manager,” she scoffs. “Do you work for them now? Is that what you’ve doing in Miami all this time? Training for the business?”
“I already told you that I was staying with my aunt in Miami because I needed to get out of town for a while and regroup. I apologize for not keeping in touch because it clearly appears as if you missed me,” I tease trying to lift the mood.
Gigi leans on her hands to lift her butt on the kitchen counter in another inadvertent attempt to distance herself from me. When I see her do this, I want to think of her as the little Gigi who used to sit on our kitchen island counter and swing her legs back and forth while my mom cooked us grilled cheeses, but all I see is big Gigi; sitting with her legs slightly apart, in a nightshirt, on this kitchen counter, and how it would be so damn easy to slide my hand…
I close my eyes and do what my therapist taught me. “Regardless of the situation, take a deep breath and count to five before you react, Knox.”
“I thought you were an independent thinker?” Gigi says. “Your own man? What happened to the Knox I grew up with? The boy who was the lone wolf? The guy that didn’t need anyone’s approval. The boy that wanted to build bikes for a living and ride across the country?”
My eyes suddenly pop open and hold hers in place.
“I’m still here, all grown up, and in full understanding of who I am and what I come from. Our parents came from nothing and worked their asses off to give us the lives we have now. That’s the difference between you and me, I’m grateful for all of that and not ashamed of anything.”
We’re in another stare off.
She thinks we’re having a power struggle, but what’s really going on is an internal battle with myself. I’m trying to quiet the loud questions that keep running through my head as she stares me down like this. Questions like, what would be the harm in me sliding my hand under that nightshirt and rubbing her clit until her angry eyes turned to needy ones. And other questions like: what will Gigi look like when she comes? How will she sound? What will she taste like?
“Are you saying that I’m not appreciative of what I’ve got? Are you insinuating that I’m a spoiled brat?”
I close my eyes and remember again what I’ve been taught.
Five, four, three, two, one.
“Hey, Jackass! Are you falling asleep while I’m talking to you?”
“I’m meditating.”
“In the middle of our conversation?”
“It’s necessary.”
“Because I get on your nerves that badly?” she questions with disbelief.
“Something like that.”
“That settles it. You’re sleeping on the floor again and you’ll be lucky if I give you a goddamn pillow.”
“That’s okay, brat, I brought my own.”
I duck as an empty bottle of sparkling kombucha flies straight for my forehead.
Crazy Queenie.
She almost got me that time.
Nine
Gigi
Monday
* * *
One of the things I love about my apartment, other than its distance from my family, is that there’s a small deck off of my bedroom. The deck is a pretty simple concrete structure with a black iron railing that all the units in this building have, but on it stands the prettiest white bistro table and chair set where I sit and have my hibiscus tea in the morning or run lines for work underneath the city lights at night.
Although my paycheck doesn’t reflect it properly, it takes some pretty intense preparation to work as a standardized patient. I have to memorize a lot of medical terms because not only do I have to play the role of a patient but I have to be able to tell the medical student if he or she has gotten parts of my examination wrong. This week I’m a 35-year-old mother of two who is presenting symptoms of a mild fever, cough, tenderness in my abdomen, and a rash on the backs of my legs.
These mock examinations happen weekly in a room with other medical students and standardized patient actors, plus a professor evaluating the students and a department supervisor analyzing ours. The job is actually kind of important if you think about it. I am training and preparing medical students for real-world situations, so it’s crucial that I get my “lines” right, but for some reason today I’m having trouble memorizing the terms that I need to know.
“Hey.”
I’m so engrossed in my notes for tomorrow’s work that I don’t notice that Knox is standing on the other side of the French door that leads to my deck which means that he’s waltzed inside of my bedroom without my permission or even knocking.
He’s been hovering around here all weekend, only leaving once to find a storage garage for his bike or something. But after a very heated discussion with my mom, I’ve accepted that Knox will be here for a few weeks and there’s nothing I can do about it. I just have to handle it. But this intrusion into my bedroom only proves that I’m going to have to set some very specific rules in place for his time here as my watchdog.
“Can I help you?” I ask sarcastically.
“I need to have a smoke.”
“You exercise like a crazy person and you smoke? That makes zero sense.”
“Thank you, Dr. Phil.”
I shake my head in disbelief at his TV doctor ignorance.
“He’s a psychiatrist, Jackass. You mean Dr. Oz.”
“Move your feet off of the chair so I can sit down.”
“Go downstairs and have one of your cancer sticks outside of the building if you must, but you’re not going to kill me with your secondhand smoke.”
“It’s easier for me to just come out here.”
Knox steps out onto the deck and can barely fit between the small space between the door and the table. It would be hilarious if I wasn’t so frustrated with him. He doesn’t listen to a word I say. Come to think of it, he never has.
“Seriously, you’re too big to sit out here. There’s not enough room.”
“I’ll make it work.” He slides my propped feet off of the chair and figures out a way to fold his massive physique into the seat. “See?”
“Since when do you smoke cigarettes?” I ask, with my nose still in between the pages of my notes.
“I don’t smoke cigarettes.”
I was only slightly curious when he said he wanted to smoke out here, but now he’s got my full attention.
“I’m confused.”
“You being confused is nothing new, Queenie. I’m going to smoke a joint, not a cigarette.”
“A joint? Like in marijuana? Oh, no, the hell you aren’t. There are no illegal drugs allowed in my apartment or this building, period. As a matter of fact, we need to lay some ground rules about what is and what isn’t allowed while you’re living in my house.”