The Stranger You Seek - By Amanda Kyle Williams Page 0,89

connected we are and it kills me later, Keye. I ache for you. I do. Why can’t it be like this all the time?”

Maybe he was sincere. Maybe it was a line from a play. Maybe he was back in daytime television. I couldn’t tell anymore. I wasn’t sure he could. He’d been acting for so many years, rehearsing for one role after another, always waiting for the role, the one that would put him over the top.

“So what do you think about me staying here?” he asked. It came out of nowhere. I must have looked at him as if his lips just fell off, because he added hastily, “I mean, just for a week or so. There’s a gas leak or something in my building. Everybody’s kicked out. They’re digging up the street.”

I got up and yanked my bathrobe around me. White Trash caught a bad vibe and leapt off Dan’s chest onto the floor, fighting hard for traction on the hardwood. She vanished under the bed.

“So that’s why you showed up with flowers and all the I-was-such-a-bad-husband crap. This was just another goddamn audition.” I smacked my forehead with my palm. “Sonofabitch. I bet you’ve got a suitcase in your car. You do, don’t you?”

“Wait, Keye, listen. It’s not how it looks.” He was out of bed, hurrying behind me naked as I stomped toward the kitchen. There was Greek yogurt cheesecake with a pomegranate glaze in the fridge from the restaurant downstairs, and I meant to have it. Some people reach for a Xanax. Cheesecake is my mood elevator.

“I said those things because they’re true. And the apartment thing, I hadn’t even planned to ask. Really. It just crossed my mind and I blurted it out without thinking.”

“Uh-huh.” I opened the fridge and found the cheesecake. “So, what’s the truth about your apartment, Dan? Did you let the utilities go? Or forget a little thing like rent again? You need money?”

The telephone rang.

“Don’t answer it,” he ordered.

I grabbed it before the second ring and Dan threw his hands up and stalked to the long windows that face Peachtree and the Fox Theatre.

It was Rauser. “You busy?”

I covered the mouthpiece and told Dan, “Would you get dressed? Peachtree Street is probably only half as interested in your dick as you are.”

“Gee, sorry to interrupt,” Rauser said. “I really would love to hear more about Dan’s tiny cock. I was beginning to think you no longer liked men.”

“I don’t.”

“Maybe you’re a lesbian.”

I looked at Dan’s exposed genitalia and considered that seriously. I had never been given cause to label my sexuality. I’d never suffered through a sexual identity crisis or needed therapy to reach orgasm. In my most liberal assessment of myself, I like to think I could fall in love with a woman. But I’ve never tested it, unless you count a college make-out session after four lemon Jell-O shooters.

“You always think women are hitting on you,” Rauser continued. “You know you do.”

“I do not.”

“ ’Member that waitress at Hooters?”

“She was hitting on me.”

“Uh-huh, and what about Jo? You thought she was hitting on you too, didn’t you? That night at the Brooks scene?”

“How’d you know that?”

“She could tell.” Rauser chuckled. “She told me you got all weird when she touched your arm. Like you were gonna curl up in a goddamn fetal position or something.”

I sighed. “Great.”

“Homophobes are usually just big ole closet cases,” he said, and made some kissing noises.

My front door opened and my mother walked in. I looked at her, looked at my nude ex-husband sulking at the window, then back at my mother. I hung up on Rauser.

“Mother! What are you doing here?”

“Neil gave me the new key. I thought you were leaving town.” She glanced at Dan, then at her own shoes. A smile played lightly at the corners of her lips.

Dan turned from the window, nodded at my stunned mother, and said, “Nice to see you, Mom.” His calm took me by surprise considering the thing he was most proud of in life had withdrawn to about the size of my thumb. He and his poor shrunken penis walked past us and down the hall. Mother held a covered dish in one hand and a small suitcase in the other. She seemed unable to speak, a rare occurrence and one I might have enjoyed had I not been so completely irritated.

“I’m glad you two are working things out,” she said, her eyes following Dan’s bare ass, which was, thankfully, almost