Prettyboy

6: Eh Bien, Pas Du Tout

Kerchief around her head, sunglasses covering her eyes, she slumped out of the car looking like an exotic Marilyn Monroe. My exotic Marilyn. She flashed a white smile as soon as she saw us, and I say us, because Gerard had decided to suddenly make an appearance—and, oh, what a surprise that his majesty made the effort. We hadn't seen each other at all since that night—I reckoned we were avoiding each other—and yet there he was, strutting out of the house as if nothing had ever happened. 

Clever thinking. I totally hadn't been thinking of him for a whole day. 

My exquisite Marilyn wife rushed to us in her black high heels and beckoned Gerard to come closer so that she could embrace us both. Simultaneously. I would prefer a separate, husband-to-wife embrace first, but who gives a damn? And then, there came the cocky commissioner; the only stud duck in his cycle. I'm talking about my father-in-law, of course, who, despite his daughter being forty, was still lurking around to keep a close watch on her. That said, he sent me a hawkish glare, hollering daggers at me as if I had done something wrong—I've been purified by holy water, you can't tell me I've not been vindicated, Leonel. And anyway, what was the bitter cat doing here? Go vent about taxes to somebody else. 

And for a moment, some kind of paranoia made me think, just for a second, that he knew. He knew about what I had done, or rather, what was done.

It was not my fault. 

"Oh, Frankie, has my Gee been getting on your nerves?" she joked, planting a kiss on my cheek. Then her son's. "Don't worry. We're carting him off to school tomorrow, and it's gonna be just us in the house from then on. My sugar pop, we're going—"

"Mother," he grunted, the grown-up that didn't want to be called an abbreviation of his beautiful name, "I really don't wanna know."

She planted another kiss on his forehead and released him from her embrace. Off he went, not giving me one fleeting glance. 

He looked like he was really trying.

"Oh, my boys," said my Marilyn, as if she was apologetic for leaving me for two days—question is, had she the option to go back in the past and alter it, would she have chosen not to let me drive her son back, just two days earlier? "My boys, how much I missed you."

***

It took a while to breathe it all in. The first week of school, the day after Leonel left us to ourselves, I cherished that alone-time with Lana at home, and we talked about whatever we hadn't talked about up to then. However, when she was required to return to her workplace, I found myself in the familiarity of the predicament, not knowing what to do with the empty house and the silence that could only be subdued by turning up the stereo or by the noise pollution emitted by our noble next-door neighbors. My thoughtfulness held me back from ringing Ray and rattle his head; his little devil eight-month-old and I.

September came just in time. And sometime around mid-September, I got the chance to put on an exhibition with another photographer friend of mine, since art school, Robert Sullivan. Nice fellow. He knows how to have fun, Robert, damn right he does. We got around drinking after the show, as it had been quite a success. And as I recalled Gerard telling me that Lana doesn't like drinkers, I spent the night at Robert's and tottered out the next day, midday, I daresay. Lana didn't make a big fuss out of it, but she clearly disliked it. I made a mental note in my mind.

Stars began to hide, the weather deteriorated, and dead leaves fell upon the dirty ground. The highlight of my every day was getting out of bed. That's when I got the most of the day; after that, my life felt like a perpetual waiting game. Waiting for Michael, who arrived home first. And then, I waited for Lana; food in stove, salad on the table. My camera had somehow vanished from the drawer I last put it. As for Gerard, I barely saw him, as he was meticulously making the most out of his day, hanging out and around. I began to feel so bored in that house, I actually admitted it to Lana. But I can't say that went as I had expected it to.