“Okay,” I said, trying to remember to breathe.
“Then you are going to sit with him all day and answer his every single beck and call. I don’t care what he asks for. I don’t care how uncomfortable it makes you. You are going to do whatever he asks because you hit him with your car and for some goddamn reason, he goes over to your house and tells you he could love you.”
“Well, he told me he could love me first and then he came over to my house.”
“Paul!”
“What!”
“Don’t you sass me!”
“I’m not!”
“Pajamas!” Sandy hissed. “Anything he asks!”
I felt bad. “He already asked for a beer,” I admitted. “I told him I’d get him a juice instead.”
Sandy groaned as if I was the most insufferable thing on the planet. “Okay. From this point on, though. Okay?”
“What if he wants to fist me?”
Sandy snorted and tried to cover it up so he could still sound stern. “Has that come up?”
I’d meant it as a feeble attempt at a joke, but now I was worried. “No.” But what if he did? How does one politely turn down a fisting? I appreciate the offer, but I don’t want your arm up my butt. I like my intestines shaped the way they are.
“Paul, I’m going to tell you the same thing my drag mother told me when I was first starting out. ‘Helena,’ Vaguyna Muffman said, ‘you can’t worry about fisting until it actually happens. You’ll live your life in fear and you’ll never unclench your anus.’”
“May she rest in peace,” I said, and we had a moment of silence for Vaguyna. She’d passed away a few years ago from cancer, and it had been hard on Sandy. When he quoted his drag mother, the one that’d taught him everything she knew about drag, you knew Sandy was serious.
“Is that all?” I asked him after a respectful amount of time had gone by.
He thought for a moment. “No. Because knowing you, you’ll do exactly what I say, but you won’t say anything for the whole day. So in addition to everything I’ve said already, you must learn seven new things about him. I will call you tomorrow after I get off work, and you will tell me those seven things you learned about Vince. And they can’t be something stupid like he’s pretty or he’s nice. They have to be real.”
“He is pretty, though,” I muttered. “And nice. That should count as two.”
“It doesn’t. Seven new things, Paul. By tomorrow.”
“This whole new deadline thing you’ve got going on?”
“Yeah?”
“I hate it and I hate your face,” I said as savagely as possible.
Sandy wasn’t fooled in the slightest. “You’re welcome. Do you need to write any of what I said down or can you remember it?”
“I’m not going to do anything you said!” I swore.
After a time, he said, “Feel better now?”
“Bite me,” I mumbled.
“That’s going to be Vince’s job.” I could hear the smirk in his voice.
“You’re a bitch.”
“Seven things. By tomorrow.”
“I’ll see you in hell.”