Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee(81)
That’s it. That’s why. It’s so anticlimactic. This is the question I drove fifteen hours to have answered. The question I wanted answered for more of the time I’ve been alive than not. The question that made me put myself on TV week after week. The question that tortured me, the ghost that haunted the margins of my self-identity. And the answer was basically It’s not you; it’s me.
Maybe I wanted him to say it was me. Maybe, for some reason, I needed to hear it was some fault in who I was that made me unable to keep him. Maybe I wanted his answer to do more to heal a decade-old wound. I don’t know what answer I was expecting or hoping for. I didn’t armor my heart for any of this. If I even could have.
“DeeDee?” he says.
“Sorry, I’m processing. It’s been a long—” I crumble, weeping, my hands over my face. Dad comes over and hugs me. He’s so much smaller, weaker, and less substantial than I remember him. We’re almost the same height. It’s like time has worn him away. Made him less. He smells completely different now. This is not the same man who held me in his arms under an October sky alive with the moon and stars.
I wonder if I unearthed more things than I’ve buried by making this trip, by stripping away the mythology I created. You want closure, but there are things you can’t repair. Hearing him tell me why didn’t fix the ten years of hurt. Not even when the reason was different from the assumption that had caused me so much anguish.
All at once, the immense, empty ocean makes me feel too puny and lonely. The shifting sand under my feet makes me feel too unmoored, like I could be swept away at any second and lost forever. I’ve spent enough of my life feeling small and alone, and like everything I have could be taken from me in an instant.
“Thanks for showing me the ocean, but I think I’m ready to go now,” I say between sobs.
I’m turning over in my mind what a calamity this night has been and my ever-deepening guilt about having prodded Delia to go see her dad. I hope that has been a success, at least. I somehow doubt it was. But…
“Well, that was a close one,” Divine says, even more jittery than before, blotting sweat from his brow with his silk hankie. “Let’s circle around for a while and maybe we can drop back in on old Wald when Hurricane Ulrike has passed. I’ll tell you, this reminds of the time when Scott Baio, an alpaca, and I—”
I cut him off. “Mr. Divine, I’m grateful for your time, but I don’t think we’re going to be able to work together. I’m sorry.”
He dismisses me with a scornful wave. “Now, see, that’s quitters’ talk, is what that is. If you throw in the towel when the going gets tough, you won’t get anywhere in this business. Believe you me.”
“I never said I was quitting. Just that I don’t think we’re a good fit to work together. So if you guys would please take us to our hotel, that’d be great.”
Yuri turns sharply into a parking lot, almost making Lawson and me bonk heads. “Not yet. Make money first,” Yuri grunts.
This is bad. My palms start sweating. I’m not a fan of the idea of even temporary hostagedom.
Yuri throws the SUV into park near a clothing donation bin, gets out, pulls a blanket and a box of DVDs from the back, spreads the blanket on the ground, and starts arranging SkeleTonya DVDs on the blanket. He clearly has a system; he’s almost done before Lawson and I even manage to get out.
Divine looks on sheepishly, scratching his head.
“Here’s the deal,” I say to him. “We need to get back to our hotel. Please take us. I have no idea where we are.”
“Even though I disapprove, on principle, of quitting, far be it from me to compel anyone to do anything. So if it were up to me, we’d go. But Yuri seems hell-bent on making a little scratch tonight, and he’s rather stubborn. ‘Like hippo,’ he would say. Come to think of it”—Divine nods at Yuri, who’s walking around slowly, scanning the donation bin—“Yuri uses the hippo a lot as a point of comparison. Strong like hippo. Stubborn like hippo. Hungry like hippo. Thirsty like hippo. Peed like—”
“Are you listening to me? I don’t care what Yuri wants. We’re not your prisoners or employees. I want you to take us back immediately.” I wasn’t having fun before, but now I’m really not having fun.
Yuri walks over, shaking out a garment he picked up by the bin, holding it aloft to study it by the orange parking-lot lights, pressing it to his nose to take a deep whiff. “Good shirt. No holes. You sell.”
“Oh, heavens, Yuri. How do I sell that?”
He shrugs. “Say is from famous movie star. Maybe Tom Cruise.”
Divine rolls his eyes and snatches the shirt. “I’m supposed to tell people that Tom Cruise owned this”—he squints at the tag—“women’s blouse from Ann Taylor Loft that you got out of the garbage?”
Yuri shrugs. “Maybe Johnny Depp.”
I try to keep my voice calm and even but commanding, in spite of my now being very afraid. “Yuri, we would like to go back to our hotel now. If you and Mr. Divine want to stay out until three a.m. and hawk DVDs and discarded shirts from a blanket in a parking lot after that, please, go nuts.”
Yuri looks at me impassively with hooded, bleary eyes. “You help sell.”
Lawson starts to say something, but I cut him off. “Yeah, me helping you sell DVDs and used clothes? That will not happen. I promise.” I look to Divine for assistance, but he’s over at the donation bin, craning, reaching his arm in.