Dirty Diana

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

—

There’s a room in our house that we rarely set foot in. It’s the third of three bedrooms, small and perfectly square, the room no one sleeps in. It’s also the only room that still has carpet—thick, creamy white pile laid down by the previous owners.

Oliver and I have come here searching for wrapping paper, just enough to wrap the small plastic mermaid he and our daughter, Emmy, bought for her best friend’s birthday. “They would have wrapped it for you at the store,” I say. I can’t help it. “For free.”

He glances toward the overstuffed closet. “We had to hightail it out of there, before Emmy swiped anything.”

“Oliver.” I laugh. “That was one time. Almost a year ago.” When she was five, our daughter stole a pack of Juicy Fruit from the grocery store checkout line, then feigned innocence in the car while trying to blow a bubble.

“She’s a thief, Diana. A stone-cold klepto.” Oliver smiles and backs out of the room, leaving me to hunt for the paper.

In the beginning, Oliver and I dreamed this room could be a work space for us both. It’s too tight for him to set up a proper workshop, but it gets great afternoon light and could fit the kind of drafting table he’s always wanted. And I’d have room for an easel and paints.

—

When we first met, I was twenty-six and living in Dallas with seven roommates in a run-down house we all tried to pretend was an artist commune. We called it “The Co-op” but it was more like a party house that no one ever cleaned. I once determinedly taped up a chore chart with a sign-up column, thinking this would fix things. Instead of marking down their own initials, my roommates penciled in Matthew McConaughey for toilets and The Ghost of Sir Alec Guinness for kitchen duty.

In the hottest part of summer, someone left raw meat in the broken garbage disposal and we got maggots, so I started stashing my food in my room. Some afternoons, I amused myself by sketching the house and my roommates, embellished and a little grotesque. I sent a handful of the drawings to my friend Barry, back in Santa Fe, and others to my best friend, Alicia, away at film school in New York. I signed them “ Dirty Diana ” because exaggerated stories of my filthy Co-op adventures horrified Barry and made Alicia laugh. They both sent back long, sweet letters, and once Alicia just sent a note that read, “Blink twice if I should send help,” glued to a clean kitchen sponge.

Then one night I got food poisoning, probably from the family meal at my waitressing job, and had to hole up in the Co-op’s downstairs bathroom. My housemates were having a party, and while I lay on the cold tiled floor, my long, dark-blond hair matted to my sweaty face, I prayed for the vomiting to end as partygoers stepped over me to use the toilet. Curled up near the bathtub, I noticed its edges had been graffitied in Sharpie. Someone had drawn a pretty good Bart Simpson on a skateboard, and someone else had composed a limerick: Now I sit, my buns a-flexin’ / I just gave birth to something the size of a Texan. My head was split open with a headache and in that moment I thought, Nice rhyme. But the meter is off. The next day I started looking for a new place to live.

I saw five studio apartments, all with leaks and strange smells, and then I walked up to the last place on my list, in a squat gray stucco building on a quiet street, with a cheerful row of pink rosebushes along the entrance.

A guy sat out front, calmly slapping at mosquitoes. “Ms. Reece?” He folded the paper he’d been reading into a perfect square and stood, tucking it into his pants pocket. He was dressed like someone much older, in pleated khakis and a mint-colored button-down shirt, so it was only when I got near him that I realized we must be close in age. He had thick brown hair, broad shoulders, and blue-green eyes that look the way I imagined a midwestern lake does at the peak of summer—no choppy waves, just warm, glistening water.

I apologized for keeping him waiting. “I got the wrong bus. Twice, actually. I got off the wrong bus to catch the right one and got back on the wrong one.” I searched his expression, those kind eyes, and imagined how I’d sketch him: perfectly straight nose down, looking up at me from under furrowed brows, a thought bubble over his head: Jesus, who sent this one?

But in real life, there was no judgment on his face, not even a ripple in his calm eyes. I pushed my bangs from my forehead, wishing I’d washed my hair instead of twisting it into the messy bun at my neck. “And then the AC on the third bus wasn’t working, so even though I was on the right bus, it definitely felt like—” There it was, a small but perceptive crinkle between his brows. “It was the right bus,” I wrapped up. “But it felt like the wrong bus.”

He paused, as if to let me catch my breath. “I’m Oliver Wood. You’re here to see 4B?”

“That’s right. I’m Diana.”

We shook hands and I followed him to the elevator. The space was so tight that standing side by side my shoulder grazed his biceps and I could smell his aftershave, light and clean. When the doors shut, he leaned forward and pushed the fourth-floor button three times. Nothing happened. We waited in silence and he tried again. Still nothing. This seemed to fluster him, so I jumped up and down and the elevator jerked awake.

“Thanks.” He cleared his throat. “Have you lived in Dallas long?”

“Not really, no. About a year.”

“Are you in school?”

“No. I paint.” The elevator was hot and silent so I added, “I just published a book.”

“Really?” His eyebrows rose, like he was genuinely happy for me. “I’ll have to buy a copy.”

“It’s kind of hard to find. It was published by a tiny local press.”

“Oh.” His disappointment surprised me.

“I could send you a copy?”

The book was the whole reason I’d landed in Texas, after an editor had been so encouraging of my work and even found me a room at the Co-op. I pictured what might happen if I did pull out a copy in the tiny elevator, and together this polite stranger and I leafed through my paintings, some of them of women in various states of sexual longing, framed by interviews I’d compiled about their desires.

“My aunt paints,” Oliver piped in.

“Oh yeah?”

“Mostly portraits. Of her dog.” He lowered his voice as if she were near. “They’re a little frightening. But come to think of it, her dogs are pretty frightening so maybe she’s more talented than I think?”

“Maybe.” I smiled and felt his shoulders relax beside me.

Oliver showed me to the apartment door, then pulled a gigantic ring of keys from his satchel and tried one after another, the tips of his ears going pink. Finally there was a click and he sighed. “High security, right? Even the tenant can’t get into their own apartment.”

The apartment wasn’t much: a square room with two small windows, one overlooking the parking lot and the other overlooking the roses. A small kitchenette with a half-size refrigerator, an electric oven, and a sink. Oliver consulted his sheet of paper and said, “All new appliances!” And then he opened the refrigerator and found a half-empty bottle of ketchup, a jar of mayonnaise, and a Coors Light. “And look at the amenities!”

When I laughed, he looked relieved. “I’d give you more of a tour but you really just have to spin around,” he said. “Not that that’s a bad thing. Less to clean?”

I remembered the Co-op’s Sharpie poetry and sticky bathroom floor. “I like it.”

“Water and trash are included. Do you like baths?”

“I do.”

“Good. I like baths too.” He swung open a door just opposite us, and then paled when he saw the size of the bathroom, which barely fit a toilet much less a tub. “I really am horrible at this.”

“It’s actually the nicest apartment I’ve seen today.”

“Yeah, but you deserve a bath.” The intimacy of this took us both off guard and Oliver blushed.

“The kitchen is definitely the best I’ve seen today.”

“Do you cook?”

“Not at all.” Then, because I got the impression neither of us wanted the house tour to end, I opened the fridge and reached for the Coors Light. “I do appreciate the amenities.”

He smiled again and took the bottle from my hands, opening it with one of the many keys on his ring. The beer was cold and delicious and I handed it back, offering to share. “I’d get you a glass, but…” I gestured around the empty kitchen. “We could sit on my imaginary couch?”

He considered the invitation, or considered me, and while he did I pictured the Manga-style sound effect for deafening silence appearing over our heads. Oliver rolled the beer bottle in his hand. Then he waved toward the wall where a couch should be. “I didn’t expect you to go for the cherry-red leather, but it looks nice in here.”

I laughed. “Matches the coasters you macraméd for me.”

We sat on the floor and passed the beer back and forth. The last of the orange sunlight dipped below the west-facing window, but neither of us moved to turn on a light and the room grew dim.

I ran my fingers along the neatly vacuumed rug. “You can tell the carpet was just cleaned. Thank you.”

His expression was earnest. “I have to tell you. I’m not really the broker. This building belongs to my parents. Connie, the woman who usually shows the place, had to pick up her kid, so I said I would do it.”

I was relieved that we both had something to confess. “To tell the truth, I can’t really afford this apartment. I have enough for the first month’s rent and the security deposit. But I can’t afford the last month’s rent up front.” I leaned my head against the wall. “Also, my credit is terrible.”

As I talked, his gaze flitted between my eyes and my lips. “Do you have a job? I mean, aside from painting?”

“I’m a waitress. At Momo’s.”

“That thirties-gangster-themed place? The place where they make the waitresses say ‘fuhgeddaboudit’ every time a customer says ‘thank you’?”

“That’s me.” I put up my hands, like it was a stickup. “You’ve been there?”

He shook his head. “I saw it on the news. The owner’s a sex offender, isn’t he?”

“Mmm.” I considered this. “That would make sense.”

“Well.” Oliver looked down at his lap. “I will now be dedicating my free time to finding you a new job.”

“Thank you.”

He leaned close, gently nudging my shoulder with his own. “Fuhgeddaboudit.”

—

Eight years later, when we moved into this three-bedroom house in our Dallas neighborhood, I was already pregnant with Emmy. We spent the next few months getting ready for the baby, deciding on paint colors and puzzling over IKEA instructions for her furniture. Oliver, who could make beautiful wood furniture from scratch, was as confused as I was by the assembly instructions. “That can’t be right,” he said, turning the pages upside down and back again. “Are we missing a piece?”

Then Emmy arrived, and so did sleepless nights and bouts of crushing anxiety, sandwiched between pure joy and unending loads of laundry.

Now Emmy’s six, and this room is full of plastic storage bins jammed with toddler toys she’s too big for, clothes she’s grown out of, and an enormous collection of Madame Alexander dolls that Oliver’s too afraid to tell his mother give Emmy nightmares. We’ve labeled the bins “DONATION” and we promise ourselves, again and again, that next weekend, we’ll clean them out. It’s now a running joke. At night, when we fall into bed and one of us is thirsty but too lazy to move, we’ll say, “If you get me a glass of water, I swear I’ll donate the bins. Tomorrow. ”

What these bins don’t have in them is a single scrap of wrapping paper. I wind through two plastic towers to get to the closet at the back of the room. I turn on the overhead light and survey the shelves. I find extra blankets, a deflated air mattress wadded into a ball, and an old tackle box that holds spare paintbrushes. A few old canvases are stacked against the wall—an oil painting of bluebonnets, and a beach scene, both of which I painted in a night class years ago.

I make my way deeper into the closet. Behind the tackle box, I spot a battered red shoebox. I had forgotten it was in here. It’s sealed with painter’s tape, so I find a scraper and slice it open. Inside is an old minicassette recorder and two rows of minicassettes. Each cassette is labeled with a first name: “Jess,” “Claudia,” “Brynn,” “Theresa,” and so on. A familiar feeling returns—like I’m getting away with something. Underneath the shoebox is an old portfolio crammed with sketches, all portraits of the women on the tapes, intended to be paintings in a second book one day. They had been sketched hastily in thick charcoal pencil—the profile of a woman staring out the window, another reclining in her chair, her hand pulling at the back of her neck.

When I moved to Dallas, the editor I worked with on my first book liked to take me out to shoot pool and get drunk on light beer. Through heavy eyelids she’d pitch my own book to me, as if I’d never heard of it. “The perfect intersection of chronicle and art,” she’d say and I’d nod along, unsure what to add.

A few weeks after the book was published, she moved to Michigan and never returned to work. Her assistant, a young guy with a quiet voice, took her place, but he was shy and awkward and not up for meeting in person. I sent him some rough ideas for a second book and he told me the sketches were nice but too soft. “Try to find the grit. Really mine for it, you know?” The day Oliver showed me the apartment, I’d been mining, very slowly, for months.

Now I take the box of tapes out of the closet and sit on the floor between two storage bins, a space big enough to stretch my legs out in front of me, but small enough to feel hidden. I flip through the tapes, one by one. All these interviews I’d packed away and never returned to.

I pull out a tape labeled “Jess” and put it in the recorder. I hit play and hear her voice:

He was tall. And, like, that’s all it took for him to have confidence. That’s it. He was tall. Can you imagine? Women have to have their shit so buttoned-up to feel even a little bit good and I swear all it took for him was some height. Tall, good shoulders, and all of us girls were like “okay, yeah, I’d sleep with him.”

But really, honestly, I didn’t actually think I would. Have sex with the bartender. I’d never had a one-night stand. But then like, here I was, newly single—okay, recently dumped—cocktail waitressing in a strange city, and acting like I was so cocky. It was easy to be confident at work because the place was always packed and everyone there was desperate to order drinks so even though you were technically waiting on them you had a kind of power. If a customer was shitty, you just ignored them all night, and you got the other girls to ignore them too. Anyway, this guy was a decent bartender and he flirted with every single waitress in the place. He could have sex with any of us, even the hostess and she had a boyfriend. All night as I was working, carrying tray after tray of drinks, I kept thinking, yeah, I want to sleep with someone I don’t know. Someone whose body will be a total surprise. And when he touches me, I won’t know what it’s going to feel like or what’s coming next.

And so, when I handed him my tables’ orders I’d write, like, Vodka soda. Scotch rocks. Let’s get out of here.

It was a joke between us all night. And my notes got bolder each time. Martini up, twist. What’s your place like? Want to show me?

Then, like, Two Stellas. Margarita, rocks. Sex on the Beach—oh, that one’s too easy. Stupid, silly stuff, you know? But it made us both laugh.

And then it was 2 a.m. and our shift was over and the music stopped. They flipped on the bright overhead lights and I thought for sure the mood was gone. But as I was cleaning up, I could feel him still watching me. He had these bright blue eyes and they were playful even with the lights on. And as soon as I finished cashing out my tips I felt his hand on the small of my back and it sent a kind of charge through me, like, I’m really going to do this.

When I turned to face him, he took me by the hand and pulled me out onto the street. It was raining but somehow we got a cab so maybe it was meant to be. And we jumped in the back, so fast, and in the dark, my hands were down his pants and he was up my shirt…I don’t remember his name—I honestly don’t—but I remember how his hands felt under my bra. They were cold, but it felt good, like my whole body was waking up. I wanted to take off all my clothes right there so I could show him. So he could touch me everywhere. So I could see how he felt. I wanted him to touch every part of my body—

“Diana?” Oliver calls from the hallway and I jump. I hit stop and shove the recorder in my pocket. Then I shut the lid on the shoebox of tapes and bury it deep inside a bin of Emmy’s baby clothes.

Oliver appears in the doorway. “Any luck with the wrapping paper?”

“Nothing.” I shake my head. “I’ll pick some up while I’m out.”

He hands me a travel mug of coffee and wraps his arm around my waist.

“Thank you.”

“Of course.”

He nuzzles my neck. “You smell good.”

I feel my body tighten when it should relax.

He pulls me closer and eyes the door. “Emmy is still sound asleep.”

I scan every part of my own body and wish for the right feeling—but any longing to return his affection feels just out of reach. I pull away and smile.

“What?” he asks.

“What do you mean, ‘what’?”

“You’re looking at me funny. Staring.”

“No, I’m not.” Yes, I am. I’m staring specifically at the hair curling out of his left nostril. Don’t focus on the hair. Focus on the kind eyes. The coffee mug, those hands, the steam.

Oliver wipes at his chin like maybe there’s food on his face.

“You just have…this hair.” I point. “There.”

“Shit.” He laughs. “I’m turning into my father. I’ll use that trimmer you gave me, I promise.” He swipes his nose with one finger, trying to push the hair back into place. “Better?”

L’Wren is honking outside. Three quick blasts.

“I wish I didn’t have to go.” I slip from his arms with a kiss on the cheek.

He gazes around the room at all the cleaning out that needs to be done.

“Next weekend?” I smile.

“Sure.” His eyes aren’t on me, but on all the mountains of discarded stuff.