Hailing from Maryland’s inner shores, Jason Ferris is a fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a graduate of Susquehanna University Writers Institute, where he won the 2021 Senior Portfolio Prize and was published in RiverCraft and Essay.
I put on my TV face to observe Dean, who’s unlike any other actor I’ve encountered on Cam Boys. He’s hefty, flat-hipped, and when we start the video call, he lifts his shirt so I can see the hypnotic whirl of his belly button and a trail of hair that rises up his chest and spreads like wings.
I ask Dean where he’s been staying because I know he bums on friends’ couches when he’s not in the studio calling men like me.
With my TV face, I listen to Dean answer, nodding affably while I prepare a response for the inevitable, “And you?”
From the front, my house looks like a Victorian woman, I tell Dean: frowning, fat-cheeked with vermillion blush, asymmetrical eyes painted ornately like they’re hiding something, leaning, hair teased high like Marge Simpson’s, everything below the neck covered and hidden—a slim and classic beauty.
Dean nods and wraps his arms around his legs, milky and fuzzed around the knees like peaches. He asks what I love most about architecture, and, still with my TV face, I tell him what I tell all the students, interested or not, in my intro lecture: Houses grow, shrink, respond to touch, pressure, ornamentation, receive praise and reproach. I’ve always been taken with the idea of haunted houses because, if haunted means filled with spirit, then all houses are haunted.
“So,” Deans asks, “what are you interested in here?”
I tell Dean I have the honor of living in one of the Painted Ladies, a row of houses boasting Queen Anne dormers and wood trim, a wide jaw of porch. Which was common in the 1860s when the Gold Rush was still powering residential construction. We moved in, Russ and I, after I received a tenure-track position at City College of San Francisco and my great aunt died, fortuitously leaving me her Painted Lady. I didn’t expect a job on the West Coast. I even told Russ during the job search that we’d never leave New York, especially as his cooking show soared to the top slot in Food Network ratings. But my application was always a prayer, a wish upon change, any change, instead of a star like Russ. He made the move for me, he often says, he can work from anywhere, his ageless face full of support and, horizons behind it, of regret. For us, I choose to see the husband I desire.
“No, I don’t mean here like your house,” Dean says. “I mean here like with me.”
“Oh, well, I like talking to you,” I say. For the first time, I don’t watch myself respond in miniature in the corner of my browser window. “Looking at you, too.” My language sounds pornographic until Dean lowers his knees, hangs his legs over the side of his bed, letting his belly relax as if he’s completely comfortable with his weight, and then it’s as tender as a kiss on the ear. I come to Dean for transformation, which is why, in my four months in San Francisco and on Cam Boys, I’ve never wanted anyone else.
Dean smiles dutifully, and a comma forms in his cheek. It makes me smile until the house-rattling slam of the front door. Russ calls up to me. I tell Dean I’ll message him later, end the call, and shut my laptop.
Down in the foyer, I meet Russ, who’s sucking a kale smoothie from a waist holster and an oversized bendy straw, a prototype for his food and wellness line. Behind him are two dehumidifiers that look like the minifridge I had in undergrad.
“Ambrose, give me a hand.”
I have to lift with both arms, while just one of Russ’s is enough to hook under his machine and balance it against his shoulder. With the other, he jabs my side and calls me “jelly arms,” nearly causing me to lose my two-handed grip. Russ could have managed both dehumidifiers himself. He just wanted me to see that he’s stronger and more youthful, that he’s thriving even after I upended our lives. A quiet resentment, the kind I thought only afflicted straight couples with dogs and children.
We hoist the dehumidifiers into the kitchen and, after a short break, we descend into the basement, which is flooded on account of a sump pump malfunction. Green life has already started to bloom on the shadowy water, throbbing against the summer humidity. In the basement, it’s dense enough that I feel as if the house ingested syrup. We wade through it, splashing our boots against the liquid film on the house’s foundation until the dehumidifiers are at opposite ends of the room and, on Russ’s count, always his count, humming on. Russ wipes the sleeve of his windbreaker against his forehead, wicking away the efforts of this morning’s two-hour run.
“When can the repair guy get down here?” he asks.
“In a week.”
He sighs, lacing his fingers behind his head. Small swells of muscle rise on his arms, and his jacket lifts, unveiling the tall V of his back and the dimples above his new silicone ass. It’s sculpted perfectly, smoothly, like two scoops of ice cream. His latest enhancement. He’s also had electrolysis performed on his legs and pectoral implants tucked underneath the muscle with undetectable incisions. I like these artificial parts of my husband and have learned to treat them as part of him. They fill me now with desire, not to touch him, but to admire him. Like a statue, a cyborg, a god.
“I just need the house TV-ready,” he says. Back in New York, he had a studio. Here, he has our home kitchen, although outfitted with an eight-burner gas range and marble countertops. I said it would be good for Russ; all the best Food Network stars were doing it, inviting cameras into their staged kitchens with gourmet designs. And what was more gourmet than a house with history, aged to that point we call character? Russ agreed, and that was supposed to make us happy. Until our first rehearsal last week. When the director called, “Action!” Russ and I were consumed with TV faces. I had never given much thought before to TV faces, but mine felt as instinctive and performative as anything else I had ever done and wanted to do well: teach, date, fuck. I laughed at Russ’s jokes and watched him slice bursting cherry tomatoes for antipasto and drizzle lines of olive oil over his signature focaccia al rosmarino. I asked him to feed me a bite, at which he told me I’d had one too many of the Franco-Italian swizzles he’d mixed in an earlier segment. This was a new show with a new direction, he said later that day. Maybe it was best only he appear on screen. And I understood. If I joined him, we had to become queens, the kind you’d ask to select your outfit, not lovers, who had dick-sucking, ass-pounding, toe-kissing sex. This, daytime viewers never wanted to know. And I also did not understand. How could I?
“Don’t worry,” I say, patting the concrete pillar in the center of the room. “Old Beth here just needs a little upgrading.”
“Beth?” Russ glances over his shoulder at me.
“A house like this deserves a name,” I say. “I took it from Elizabeth Pomada. She named the Painted Ladies.”
Russ smirks. “So should I rename the show At Home with Beth?” He walks up to me and grasps the handles of my hips.
“Certainly pithier than At Home with Russ Marino.”
Russ slips his fingers under my shirt and crawls them up my stomach, which gathers at the lip of my pants.
I grab Russ’s wrists and kiss him, hard and pacifying. He smiles and unzips his jacket, which falls to his feet and reveals his flat midsection and cartoonishly powerful chest, hard nipples. He’s the antithesis of Dean, whose stomach sits widely and sturdily, like a boulder. Russ tugs at my shirt, and I tug it back down because I don’t like my stomach anymore, not since I turned forty and my weight ballooned from 170 to 206 pounds, even with my thrice-weekly run. Russ and I don’t run together anymore because he critiques my form and endurance. He’s three years older but could pass for thirty, which must make people think I’m well-endowed in one way or another.
“Ambrose,” Russ says, “if something’s bothering you, you know we can fix it now. We have the money. I can call Miles and Susan.” We met Miles and Susan, a straight couple who practice plastic surgery and dermatology respectively, at a party three months ago, where we started what would become a fast friendship. It was the beginning of summer, shortly after we’d moved into Beth. Miles looks as gentle as a wrestler, and Susan nervously chews her fingernails—her only visible flaw. In truth, she’s still fighting a heroin addiction that began in the nineties. Miles has singled out Russ as the main breadwinner of our household because it helps him delineate which of us is the husband and which is the wife. The thought of Miles examining my heft, its feminine hills and roundness, bothers me more than the surgery itself.
“I don’t know if I’m comfortable with them doing it.”
“They did it for me.” Russ paid them with his Food Network money at the beginning of the friendship, before the four of us got close. Another partner in their practice performed the latest surgery because he specializes in gluteal implants. I suppose I could request him.
“Aren’t doctors prohibited from working on their friends or something?”
“From working on family,” Russ corrects, lifting his eyes so that his crow’s feet crackle even from under Rapid Wrinkle Repair lotion. “And, babe, we’ve known them for three months. We’re not related. Let me ask you this: If you were Miles and Susan and wanted a house inspected, would you hire a stranger or call your good friend Ambrose, who only wants the best in real estate for you?”
“So you admit we’re good friends?”
Russ shoves his hands in his pockets, pushing down his shorts enough to see where the tawny line of his spray tan crashes against the sunless, olive skin above his penis. “Just answer the question.”
“Well, I’d call me,” I admit. “But this is apples and oranges.”
“Then just eat apples. Or is real estate the apple?” Russ taps his finger against the perfectly small divot of philtrum in his top lip.
“You’ve lost me.”
“My point is I’m genuinely happier since my surgery. And you’ve said your weight bothers you, and there are easy ways to fix it. Easy as a phone call.” Russ is like a dog when passion strikes. He bites down and doesn’t let go. He’s forceful but also wide-eyed, and he smiles big and goofy, even though his teeth are slightly crooked in only the most charming way—the face of love. It’s why, after six years of dating, I agreed to marry him.
“Okay.”
“Yeah?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Yeah, I mean, I’ll suddenly look thinner than my profile picture.” City College of San Francisco has the same picture I gave my previous university when I was thirty-two: less hair on my back, tighter thighs, smoother complexion, toned biceps, and what all my hookups called the most beautiful ass they’d ever seen, not that any of these things are visible in my headshot.
“Your students will be hot for teacher.” Russ unbuckles my jeans and leans his chin against my shoulder so I can feel his breath, warm and oniony. He whispers that I can leave my shirt on.
This man loves me.
. . .
Two weeks into the filming of At Home with Russ Marino, I go under the knife. Miles and Susan consult, but I have one of their partners perform the procedure: liposuction targeting the abdomen and hips as well as a slight skin reduction. Before I’m released back home, Susan tells me everything went well, and I should be able to keep the weight off so long as I control my diet. She hands Russ a dietary pamphlet. And she hands it to Russ because she knows I love his shelly sfogliatelle, his pignoli cookies, his tiramisu—his generations-old and very Italian displays of affection.
When I get home from the hospital, Russ resumes his long mornings cooking in front of the cameras. In bed, I open my laptop on a wooden breakfast tray I bought Russ last year for our fourth wedding anniversary. After spending time writing a syllabus for the upcoming semester, I find myself calling Dean again, asking what he does when he’s not on camera.
“I’m a student,” he says.
The two of us have mastered talking without talking, exchanging pleasantries and checking our phones in front of each other. It’s nice. I know there’s something wrong with calling Dean because I’m married and won’t tell my husband about it. But I’ve also never touched Dean, just observed the creases in his stomach and the way his dick grows and retracts without his noticing, a true specimen.
“What are you studying?” I don’t ask him where because I fear he’ll say, “City College of San Francisco,” and I won’t in good conscience be able to continue talking to him.
“History. I like war documentaries. Especially the Civil War.”
“Admirable,” I say, because I don’t really know how to talk to Dean, even after all this time.
“Tell me something dangerous,” Dean says, lounging femininely on his comforter, like something you might see on the cover of a magazine.
“Dangerous?”
“Yeah.” He pulls his foot up to his waist and massages a bunion, which I find strangely comforting because he’s so blasé about showing it. “Tell me something you’re afraid to tell me. You know I’m discreet.” Dean’s bed has a white headboard with diamonds of pink stitching and tall rounded bed posts that look like scepters. Something about the room reminds me of a slumber party, and I suddenly feel like it’s safe to talk freely. Or maybe like I should be supine on a clawfoot couch, free-associating for a psychoanalyst. A trite cinematic feeling.
“Alright, I’m game. Let’s see.” I pause to think, even though I already know what I want to say. “Well, I just had plastic surgery.”
“What kind?” Dean asks, unsurprised, which bothers me slightly.
“Liposuction.” Sliding the breakfast tray down the bed so that it hovers above my knees, I lift my laptop and angle it at my abdomen where white bandages surround the newly contoured fat.
“I guess professors get paid more than I thought.”
I laugh. “No, my husband’s the one with the money.” It occurs to me that Dean doesn’t know anything about Russ, at least not explicitly, which makes our calls feel more lurid, more exciting.
“Maybe your husband wants to join one of our calls,” Dean says with practiced seductiveness, lowering his voice and smiling boyishly. He says husband as if he’s surprised or maybe jealous.
“No, no,” I say. “You’re just for me.” If Russ were here, he’s all Dean would look at because everyone looks at Russ first, at all the beautifully and ghoulishly manicured parts of him. Now, Dean’s focus is on me alone. I sweep back my hair, voluminous and dark and my favorite part of myself, because I want to impress Dean in ways I never have before.
“Do you and your husband screw a lot?”
I remember the first time Russ and I had sex, a hookup where Russ pinned me onto my bed, rubbed the back of his penis up my leg, and said, “No struggling. First thing you need to know about being a bottom: Do what the top tells you.” I had bottomed before, but Russ made it feel new and exciting, and at the time, I liked surrendering control as much as Russ liked taking it. It’s hard to imagine dating for the first time now.
“Why talk about him when you’re here?” I say.
Dean hikes down his shorts so I can see his bulge pressing against rubber duck boxers. “Feeling bold today, huh?”
“Maybe I was just nervous before.”
“But you’re not now?”
“I don’t know. Tell me something dangerous, and we’ll see how nervous I am.”
“Alright.” Dean sits upright and crosses his legs into a pretzel, the way I was taught to as a kid. “My mom came up with the tell-me-something-dangerous game. And we’d tell each other all these crazy things we’d done years ago because they’d passed their statute of limitations.”
“Why come up with a game like that at all?”
Dean half-smiles so that his cheek encroaches on his left eye. “Easier than talking about the things you actually have to talk about.”
I assume Dean means his sexuality because no one likes telling their parents if they tell them at all. I waited until I was twenty-six and in my doctoral program, proof I could be a productive member of society in spite of my urges. There was no dramatic disowning, but there was no dramatic embracing either. Unease coiled between me in California and them in Nebraska, like a spring, squeezing all the time. I decide to tell Dean about this. He nods, and from the tightening of his shoulders, I can tell he understands.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand: my five-minute warning that Russ is about to finish filming. I tell Dean I have to go, but I want to play this game again tomorrow.
. . .
I meet Russ downstairs for lunch—prosciutto on toasted sourdough with tomato and arugula. He tells me his producer loved the story he invented about cooking with his mother—everyone loves a mother story—that he’s filming a commercial tomorrow, that he wants to experiment more with an asparagus tagliatelle before the next taping. I nod pleasantly as married people do. In the middle of Russ telling me the sink is backed up and that I’ll have to call the repair guy again, I realize I’m wearing my TV face. I thought I was done wearing it around Russ since my surgery, except it still feels like we’re filming, like I have to wait until the episode’s finished to say the things I want to say. I’ll handle the sink, I tell Russ, knowing all matters of the house fall to my character.
. . .
Over the coming week, I tell Dean the things I want to say. We talk dangerously. I tell Dean I’ve been married four years, that Russ and I met at a coffee shop where he was writing a food blog, that I’m teaching a seminar next semester on haunted houses—their museumification, their reception, the clash between historical purity and modern utility—that I had a girlfriend in undergrad whom I brought home to my parents. I even tell him that I had a dream about sludge monsters in the pipes, surely a manifestation of Russ’s quarrel with the house. Dean tells me that he wrestled in high school, that his parents divorced when he was eight, that he drinks beer on Fridays, wine on Saturdays, and has only smoked pot once because he got too paranoid. He reveals that his middle name is Lewis. And we exchange all of this, whispering when the house creaks with the phantom steps of no one’s approach, while Russ is downstairs in front of the camera.
. . .
When the fourth week of filming begins and my bandages are off, my belly flat and newly hairy like cattails on the edge of a river—down to 175 pounds—Dean asks what my husband does for a living. Today, he sits on the edge of the bed in gym shorts and a wifebeater, his arms exposed and the hair of his pits sprouting like grass. I tell him Russ is a celebrity cook and food blogger. When Dean asks Russ’s name, I cautiously give it to him.
“You’re joking,” Dean says.
“No, I’m really married to Russ Marino.”
“My mom’s obsessed with that guy!”
I try not to think about it, but Dean’s mother and I might be the same age. “Well, he’s filming now.”
“Prove it.” Dean sits forward eagerly, like a big dog who still thinks he’s small.
“You want me to interrupt a taping?”
“Just peek the camera into the kitchen,” Dean insists. “And wear headphones.”
I look at Dean incredulously, and then he says, “Oh, come on. I thought we were talking dangerously.”
“Talking, not living.”
Dean tightens his fists, smiles with teeth, and leans toward the camera.
“Alright,” I say. “But no talking in case the headphones don’t work.”
He nods, and I string the headphones from my ears to the computer, hook my arm under the warm machine, minimize Cam Boys, and pull up a PowerPoint for my haunted houses course to look busy and characteristically professorial. Before I exit the bedroom, I admire a slide with an image of the Winchester Mansion and tell Dean it looks like an overblown version of my house: forty staircases, two-thousand doors, built by the widow Sarah Winchester, who used her vast inheritance to fund twenty-four-hour construction until her death. She was under the impression that her Victorian mansion hosted the spirits of everyone killed by the Winchester rifles her late husband designed. To make room for the dead, she built a labyrinth: ten thousand windows, forty-seven fireplaces, thirteen bathrooms, nine kitchens—a perfect explication of the effect of stories on architecture. And now, docents lead tours there every day. It’s called the most haunted house in America. Well, at least in San Jose.
Dean tells me I’m stalling.
“Fine, fine. I’m going.” I point the computer outward so Dean can see. I walk him into the hall, take the staircase with a landing halfway down, turn into the foyer, and enter the threshold of the kitchen, which looks into a breakfast room full of bay windows and is empty of the antique, mahogany tilt-top table my aunt left us. Camera crew now fill it with tripods, a directorial foldout chair, and a boom pole aimed at Russ. People will one day get into bidding wars over the house in which Russ Marino filmed. I’ll perhaps get a footnote about being his husband.
Russ mixes a sauce on the new island stovetop, wafting tendrils of spicy floral steam to his nose and moaning in a television approximation of delight. “I hope my mother would approve,” Russ says to the center camera, which sits on a tripod and is manned by a scrawny guy whose glasses slip down his nose. It strikes me that Russ’s body modifications are imperceptible from this distance. His chest pushes slightly against a mauve button-up that’s tapered at the waist and paired with short sleeves and a pointed collar. The shirt complements his eyes, which are a mild brown. His jeans hug tighter to his thighs because of the extra mass in the back. These changes are slight enough to the camera that the average viewer wouldn’t possibly notice anything had changed.
“Holy shit,” Dean whispers through my headphones.
Russ tells the camera that his mother loved Indian food, god rest her soul, which is what he always says when he describes her. I’m not sure if it bothers me because I feel the Food Network should be indisputably secular or because it makes his mother out to be a saint when she wasn’t. The first time I met Russ’s mother, she called her nail technician an unrepeatable slur that didn’t even match his nationality. With tongs, Russ picks fried cubes of chicken from a platter and lowers them in the thick amber sauce. He spends a few minutes stirring the chicken tikka biryani while telling the story of the first time his mother cooked it.
Then, he lifts a white bowl with vines painted around the rim, fills it with rice, and ladles the sauce overtop. He smells it, takes a bite, shuts his eyes, and smiles with his TV face. It’s a beautiful TV face—less wrinkles than he should have at forty-three, a spray tan, foundation and bronzer to even his complexion.
“Just the right amount of spice,” Russ says while chewing. “You can taste the acidity of the yogurt and lemon juice. Oh, and it’s perfectly balanced by the warm notes of garam masala. The chicken is fried beautifully and, on a traditional bed of jasmine rice, this is perfection. I think my mother would approve.”
The director calls, “Cut!” and Russ turns to the back counter, plucks a paper towel off the dispenser, and spits into it. He lobs it into a garbage can out of camera sight lines while I back out of the kitchen. Russ calls after me and asks what I’m doing down here. He knows I keep my distance when he’s filming.
“I smelled good food,” I say, pointing the computer at him as he walks toward me and brushes my wrist. Even though this is San Francisco, the eyes of one of the cameramen widen slightly. Not in offense, I think, just surprise. Dean’s breath quickens, and I angle the camera up at Russ’s face. I want to impress Dean, to know what it feels like to be a celebrity, to be loved as easily as Russ. And part of me is hoping Russ will notice Dean and that I can introduce them, not because I really want them to meet but so that Russ knows the truth.
“I’ll make you a plate.” Russ moves through the kitchen to prepare my lunch. “But no rice. You don’t need the carbs,” he says. I hope Dean can’t hear this. Russ delivers me the bowl when he’s finished, and when it passes hands, the sink gurgles, and bitter brown sludge invades the basin. “I thought you had that fixed.”
“I did,” I say. “Don’t worry, I’ll call the guy again.” I try to sound forceful, especially for Dean, but Russ has a way of making me feel wilted and not in any way that’s deliberately malicious. He’s the sun, and I grow toward him. At least, that’s the way it’s always been.
. . .
After I settle back in bed, sit my bowl on the nightstand, and tell Dean it’s safe to talk again, he asks if Russ didn’t like the food. I ask what he means, and he says, “Ambrose, he spit it into a paper towel.” The way Dean uses my name has the condescension of mothers, as if I’m too naive to see the obvious. Except I know spitting is just part of the TV magic. Viewers want to learn to cook and want to see the cook enjoy the food, make it seem as appetizing as possible, but they also want to watch TV people. I know it matters that Russ looks young and beautiful, like maybe he could be your well-mannered son or your neighbor or your lover—people you wish you had in your life but don’t. He’s supposed to look just left of unattainable, just out of reach. So he can’t put on weight. At least not until he’s older and pleasantly portly, at which point you can pretend he’s your grandfather. Who wouldn’t want to be with on-screen Russ?
“He has plans to eat lunch with me,” I tell Dean. “Probably doesn’t want to spoil the meal.”
Dean chews the inside of his cheek like he’s still deciding what to think of Russ, and I tell him our time’s up for the day. When he waves goodbye, I wonder why I lied.
. . .
In the fifth week of filming, Russ and I have Miles and Susan, our friends and plastic surgeons, over for dinner. We spend the hour before they arrive arguing because a pipe bursts in the basement and we have to shut off the water, forcing Russ to buy gallon jugs from the supermarket, which he insists are murdering the planet. I call the repair guy.
Miles and Susan follow me into the house and stand in the kitchen while Russ pulls the foil-wrapped roasted duck out of the oven. They tell us about their vacation to Alicante, Spain—making sure to call it España—where they bronzed enviably and, even more than usual, walked with the confidence of beautiful people. Miles lifts my shirt to examine my stomach, taps the flesh like it’s Jell-O, and concludes that I’ve healed nicely. Then we all settle in the dining room, curtains parted with views of Alamo Square Park, which is actually a rectangle containing crop-circle-shaped zones, one of which is filled with kids dangling from a playset. In the 1990s, Alice Walker used to take strolls there, dredging the land with the kind of inspiration tourists sniff out like bloodhounds, the kind that made San Francisco so alluring to me.
Russ serves everyone’s roasted duck and potatoes, handing plates to Miles beside him, to Susan across from him, and to me beside Susan. Meanwhile, I decant the pinot noir. Susan asks how to properly pair wine and food, and I repeat the adage as I’ve heard it from Russ: “What grows together generally goes together.”
Susan nods, and Russ says, “Have you heard of terroir, Susan? From the French terre, meaning earth or land. Microclimate, topography, geography—all these things affect the character of a wine. Because pinot grapes are commonly cultivated in areas where duck is consumed, they’re a classic pairing for my roast. So you see, vinification and wine-pairing are delicate projects.” I know he’s trying to help Susan, but I find it irritating that Russ has to lord over all food, as if no one ever cooked before him and no one will ever cook again or as well.
I try to adjust the dimmers on the chandelier lights, except the bulbs spark and die. Russ’s jaw tightens. Yet another of the house’s maladies that I’ve failed to solve. I can see in Susan’s eyes that she registers the tension, especially when she suggests we light candles instead. “Better ambience anyway,” she adds.
When the candles are lit and the pinot has my head bright and spritely like soda, Miles asks how filming is going in the new house. Russ says it’s going fine, except that the house hates water. “And apparently electricity, too,” he says, gesturing up to the darkened brass arms of the chandelier.
“Don’t worry.” I hold up my palms. “The repair guy and I are best friends now.”
“I think we need a new repair guy,” Russ says, laughing and recounting to Miles and Susan the growing frequency of burst pipes, flooding, and backups over the past month.
“Well, it kept me busy while I was recovering,” I say, trying to change the subject.
“What does the guy think is wrong?” Susan asks, picking apart the dark skin of the duck with her fingers and tearing off bites like it’s licorice.
Russ watches her in abject snooty horror while I explain that the pipes are old and prone to cracks and leaks. The repair guy can’t understand why they keep getting backed up but assures me a complete plumbing overhaul is the only real fix.
“What, the Food Network not paying you enough to replace some leaky pipes, Russ?” Miles says. As the identified “husband” in our relationship, Miles has determined Russ to be the master of our finances.
“Well, first off, I can’t really stop filming to fix all the pipes without major issues in the production schedule, and second, I shouldn’t have to sink any more money into this house.”
“I inherited it,” I say, suddenly aware of how singularly I feel I own the house, my Beth.
“Actually,” Russ says to Miles, “Ambrose and his parents inherited it, so we had to buy their half, which wasn’t cheap. And then there was the kitchen renovation and the floor re-staining.”
“But it’s a beautiful place to film,” I say. “Unique for anybody, even the Food Network.”
“It is a classic,” Susan agrees.
“That’s what the repair guy tells me, too,” I add.
“Careful,” Miles says, nudging Russ with his elbow. “Sounds like Ambrose might have a secret thing with the repair guy.”
Heat swamps in my temples, and I squeeze my corduroy pant legs, wondering what Dean’s doing right now. It’s Saturday, so probably drinking wine. Maybe studying or messaging men, too. His whole world is online, at least as I understand it.
“Ambrose, is that blushing I see?” Susan asks. “How hot is this repair guy?”
“He’s not,” I insist. When I look across the table, I see Russ half-laughing for the benefit of Miles and Susan, maybe even my dignity. This act, at least, he cannot fake.
My phone buzzes against my thigh, startling me with the sultry chorus of “Kiss from a Rose.” I excuse myself from the table to answer. It’s the repair guy, telling me he’s at the door. I lead him through the kitchen and usher him down to the basement. The repair guy is gangly, skeletal, surely on the brink of retirement. A perfectly nice old man with a tool belt that slides down the sheer drop of his ass.
Miles snickers, cups his hand over his mouth, and says to Russ, “I didn’t realize you were competing with Father Time.”
Susan kicks Miles under the table, and the two of them have a conversation with their eyes.
The repair guy returns twenty minutes later, explaining he sealed the leak but that he’ll need to return to replace a wide segment of piping. When I bring up my phone’s calendar to set an appointment, I almost open an email from Dean, one I know contains a video of him stroking himself and asking me to meet him in person even though we both know I never will.
Dinner concludes with Miles and Susan talking about Alicante, and then we all retire to the back patio, where we drink in gently rusted metal chairs and rest our glasses on a square translucent table. A lull in the conversation sets in when everyone finishes their wine, which indicates to me that the night’s over, at least with Miles and Susan. They stare into the neighbor’s yard, and I watch Russ, who squints at the empty light-polluted sky. In the two years since he was cast on the Food Network, I haven’t been able to read his thoughts the way I once did, and our lost telepathy scares me now more than ever.
“I want to show you all something,” Russ says. He disappears into the house. Miles and Susan raise their eyes at me, and I shrug. When he returns, it’s with his laptop. He folds it open on the table. My throat dries and tightens. He knows about Dean, and this is the big embarrassing reveal. The one he’s been contemplating this whole time in the backyard, even all through dinner. Russ opens a video, and just when I think I’ll die or cry, I see a pixelated image of him in the kitchen. He hits play, raises the volume, and asks what we hear. The three of us lean forward as if our ears can squint for clarity. Russ tells the camera about his mother’s Italian twist on pierogi.
“I’m sensing talk of dumplings,” Miles says. Susan swats his arm. Russ tells us to wait.
When Russ starts the flour and water for the dumpling wrappers, a layer of static invades the audio like water film.
“I think your boom operator dropped the ball,” Miles says.
“I don’t know,” I say, breaking my silence. “It doesn’t sound like a bad mic. It sounds like interference.”
Russ nods and increases the volume. “There! Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Susan asks, jerking slightly in her chair. The static becomes hollow for a few beats, like soft O’s.
“Is that moaning?” Miles asks.
“You tell me,” Russ says. He shuts the computer lid, and the three of us jump. Susan presses a hand to her chest like her heart might explode, and Miles’s eyes widen. I breathe. Russ crosses his legs and studies us.
Susan says, “Could it be—”
“No, no,” Miles interrupts, anticipating what she’s about to say. “You’ve been watching too much Ghost Adventures.” I’m suddenly more jealous of Miles and Susan than I have ever been, and I want them to leave.
“Ambrose,” Susan pleads, poking her head forward like I might have some insight into the supernatural.
“Well,” I say with my TV face, “EMF detectors have read weird interference at supposedly haunted houses, as you all know from the TV shows. Maybe they’re hoaxes. There’s no scientific proof one way or the other. But whether or not they’re real, haunted houses always have some kind of especially emotional history, and, as far as I know, this house hasn’t seen any death or violence.”
“See,” Miles says to Susan. “Even if ghosts are real, they’re not here.”
Susan nods, and Russ stares overhead at the sky again or maybe into the neighbor’s yard, where a short-haired cat leaps in the grass like an antelope, then slumps over to nap. I can’t tell, does Russ think the house is haunted? Does he even believe in the supernatural? And why don’t I have answers to these questions? We’ve talked plenty about my fascination with haunted houses, except he never really reacts, just listens and nods.
“I think this is the end of the night for us,” Miles says. He squeezes Susan’s shoulder and walks her through the house and out to their car like she’s infirm.
When they’re gone, Russ and I settle back on the patio at opposite ends of the table, our backs to Beth, our beautiful house. Russ asks, “So what do you think it is?”
“I study the history of houses, not their spirituality.”
“No, I don’t want the professorial answer, Ambrose. I want to know what you think.” He says it without looking at me. I get the feeling he has an answer in mind and that I’m meant to divine it.
“I think they’re real,” I say. “I have a hard time believing spirits don’t leave a trace because everything else does: age, construction, fire, blood stains, water damage.” Inexplicably, I remember the sludge monster dream I recounted to Dean in which I could somehow see into the pipes of the house and follow them, almost like I was tracing them with my finger. Inside, something gurgled, which I had told Dean was sludge, figuring I was nervous about Beth. Except now, when I strain my mind’s eye, it’s not sludge I see. It’s a light orange something. Like a mimosa.
“Hmm,” Russ says.
“Why, what do you think?” I ask, annoyed at his vagueness.
“I think there’s something wrong with this house, is what I think.” The wind cuts through us, surprisingly cold for summer.
“You think she’s haunted?”
“I think it’s constantly falling apart.” Russ drops his hands, slapping them against his thighs.
I cross my arms. “And I guess that’s my fault.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you were thinking it,” I say, pointing at him.
Russ turns to me. “This insecurity thing is not attractive, Ambrose. Especially after I paid to fix it.”
Between us, something telepathic is exchanged. It’s violent and remorseful. “And here I thought the surgery was supposed to be for me,” I say.
Russ gathers his hair into a fist. “That didn’t come out right. You know what I’m trying to say.”
“I don’t think I do.”
“I just want you to be happy.”
“Well, am I?” I turn away from him. The neighbor cat licks one of its snowy front paws in the light from the Painted Lady beside us. The couple there is probably having a loving and perfectly ordinary Saturday night.
“Are you seeing someone else?” Russ asks. He suddenly looks sallow, his skin wrinkled and heavy like it’s sat out in the heat too long. I’m afraid to hurt him, like all the youth might drain from his face if I say too much.
“I haven’t had sex with anyone else,” I say.
Russ sniffles and wipes his nose. “Was that you watching porn? In the footage, I mean?”
“Would you care if it was?”
“You know, my mother used to tell me marriages are made in heaven: pasta and cheese, fruit and salt, even peanut butter and jelly. All was decided before we ever discovered them.”
“Russ, can’t you just talk like you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You, not words of wisdom you, not TV you. You.”
Russ lifts his chest, then exhales. “I’m trying to say that, if we committed to each other, there has to have been a reason.”
“And you don’t think people ever just stop working?” I turn forward, my heart slamming against my ribs. It’s the kind of courage that makes me want to call Dean.
“The people in my family don’t get divorced,” Russ says, like he always does, always deciding how things are, unequivocally, inarguably. I want us to be equals, and we’re not.
We sit quietly, drinking more wine. I study the row of Painted Ladies in view, standing tall, stately, and oblong. I watch the neighbor cat bite the head of a baby squirrel, jerk from side to side, and spit the head into the lawn. Then, it drags the body into the azaleas behind the house.
. . .
I fall asleep sitting up and dream again my gurgling pipe dream. I can see the orange liquid inside the pipes, sloshing viscously. I strain and realize it’s fat, the kind Miles and Susan’s partners sucked from my belly and deposited in a plastic container with measuring marks on the side. This fat is alive and howling, clogging Beth like an artery. It explodes out of the pipes and engulfs Russ while he’s filming, swirls and contorts around him, then leaves him flat-chested, flat-assed, hairy, and lighter than he’s looked since he started spray-tanning. Unmarred, unintimidating, completely sexy.
When I wake, it’s still dark, and my head throbs. Russ snores beside me in his metal chair. An ugly full-bellied snore. I drag a chair over the patio, prop Russ’s legs up on it so his back won’t hurt in the morning, and fetch a blanket to drape over him. I slide it up his legs, and when I reach his belly, I brush the back of my hand against his stomach, admiring its perfect ridges and smoothness. Russ flaps his lips and sinks down the chair when I pull the blanket over his shoulders. He kneads a few folds of it into a makeshift pillow. I make up my own chair bed and try to sleep beside him, the table between us, and Beth behind, where she’s watching, surely wondering how we’ve lived here this long.
