Page 18 of Like a Love Story

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“Oooooh,” she says, with way too much interest. “That’s nice. Are you a friend of his?”

“Um, yeah,” I say, “I’m Judy.”

“Oh, of course, he’s mentioned you,” she says. “This is his mother, Mina. I’d love to meet you soon.”

I smile a little.He’s mentioned you to his mother, Judy. That’s a good sign. A really good sign.

“Is he, um, bringing a friend with him?” I ask.

“They said they were both meeting you,” she says. “He left with the hedge fund man’s son. He had left his bag here last time. What is his name again? It’s very long.”

“Oh, Art,” I say. “Bartholomew. Okay. Well, I’ll see them soon and, um, nice to chat with you.”

I hang up the phone. It’s a little weird that Art picked Reza up, and a little weird that he had left a bag there to begin with. But I don’t let myself get too in my head. I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation, or given Art, some unreasonable but hilarious explanation. I fix my makeup again, getting ready for showtime.

#54 Garland, Judy

The gay movement as we know it might not exist without Judy Garland. Some say that the queens who started the Stonewall riots, fighting back against decades of police brutality, homophobia, and oppression, did so in part because they were mourning Judy’s death. Perhaps we identified with her for generations because, like us, she was brutalized and victimized by the system and because, like us, she somehow created so much beauty out of it all. And perhaps once she was gone, we were ready to stop being victims ourselves.

By age sixteen, Judy was one of MGM’s most valuable stars. She was Dorothy, after all. The studio gave her pills to wake up, to lose weight, to go onstage. But the thing about Judy is that no matter how much artifice they imposed on her, and no matter how many pills they gave her, her raw authenticity still shone through. That’s why she was able to give the greatest performance everput on film inA Star Is Born. She lost the Oscar for that movie, and not just to anyone... to Grace Kelly! To a woman who was born so perfect and privileged that she was allowed to keep her name in an era when the studio system pretty much gave everyone a new identity.

The day our Judy was born, my sister and her husband couldn’t agree on what to name her. My sister favored the name Ernestine, after our mother, and her husband wanted to name her Carol, after his mother. I held newborn Judy in my arms as they argued. For a moment, it seemed one of those names would be the first name and the other would be the middle name, but they couldn’t agree on which would go first. And then... I whispered the name Judy, because when I gazed into my baby niece’s eyes, I could tell that she had an authenticity that would shine through any expectation the world imposed on her. I saw in her a force of nature that would never accept limitations. And I hoped, no, I knew, that someday, she would be a great friend to this friend of Dorothy.

Reza

I don’t know why I do it. Abbas already gives me an allowance, something my mother could never do when she was raising us alone and paying for everything from the sporadic money she made from interior-design clients. Back then, I never desired much that money could buy anyway. My mother bought my clothes. My mother bought my notebooks for school. My sister bought records when we could afford them, and we would listen to those along with a few old cassettes my mother brought with her from Iran. Consumption was not yet in my vocabulary. But now I want things. I think about things. Well, I think about one thing. Madonna. I think of Madonna constantly. I cannot explain it. I love her music, but there’s something deeper, like she is saying all the things that I want to be saying. It is out of desire for her that I sneak into Abbas’s bedroom when he showers on Saturday.

We are alone in the apartment. Saadi is practicinglacrosse. My mother is at the hairdresser, living a life of leisure she is quickly growing accustomed to. And me, I’m about to become a thief. In Iran, they would likely cut my hand off for this, but then again, they would also have cut my hand off for masturbating more than I brush my teeth, and for what I think about when I masturbate, and for the time I used the toothbrush as a tool to help me masturbate, thinking about Art.

Abbas sings Billy Joel in the shower. My father only sang when he was drunk, and his voice always had a threatening edge to it, even when he was singing a love song. I remember Art saying how easy it is to steal from his father. I enter the room. I wonder where Abbas keeps his money. It’s not on any tabletop that I can see, or in a drawer. Then I find his pants, hanging from a chair. A wallet in the right pocket weighs them down. I creep closer. The shower is still on. He is still singing. I think about what I want to buy, and I reach my hand in. The first thing I see inside the wallet is his driver’s license, with a much younger photo of him, back when he had hair. Then, in the pouch, I find bills. Three hundred sixty dollars in different denominations. I wonder how much would make him notice. I decide fifty dollars is a good number, take it, and run out. Art was right. It’s easy. So is spending it.

I’m staring at my new purchases as I get ready for Judy’s movie night. Two posters of Madonna now hang on my wall. In one, she’s in a wedding dress, the words “Boy Toy” on her belt. In the other, she has her armraised suggestively, a cross dangles from her neck, and her cutoff shirt reads “HEALTHY” in block letters. I decided on this one because that’s what I want to be. Healthy. Forever. There’s one more purchase, and I am wearing it. It’s a T-shirt with a decal of Madonna’s face on it. I love it.

A knock on the door startles me as I assess my new look and the posters I just hung on the wall. My mother enters. “Wow,” she says. “Did you go shopping?”

“It is, uh, just... I’m not used to having an allowance, so I used it.” I feel myself trying to sound relaxed and failing.

My mother gets very close to the HEALTHY poster. “Why does she have to show her armpit?” she asks. “A bit vulgar, no?”

“I like it,” I say.

She looks at me with a smile, then runs a hand through my hair. “My first crush was Alain Delon. He was a French actor. Gorgeous. I would rip his photos from magazines my aunt brought back from France and put them on my wall.” She smiles again, lost in memory. “I just hope the woman you marry will not be showing her armpits and her belly button all the time. You will discover all this soon enough, but there are women you have fun with and women you marry. Madonna is a woman you have fun with.”

What I want to say is...and there are women you want to be.

The doorbell rings. “Who is that?”

“Oh, right, that’s why I came in,” she says. “The doorman called and said your photographer friend is here.”

“Is he studying with Saadi?” I ask.

“I don’t think so. The doorman said he was here to see you.”

My heart. It seems to be bouncing inside my body, hitting the edges of me in different locations, until it sinks into my stomach and stays there. I don’t move.

“I can answer it,” my mom says. And she’s gone. To open the door. For Art. Who is here to see... me?

I can hear them from within my room, saying their obligatory hellos, and my mother giving Art a kiss on each cheek. Last time, it was a handshake. “Reza is in his room,” she says.