He had a nice ass, though. At least Helena knew how to pick a great ass.
The clock on the nightstand said it was ten till eleven, which meant people were going to start showing up soon. Maybe he could just sleep it off in here and I could kick him out later. It wasn’t ideal, but I didn’t have time to handle my tragic messes. I had to look amazing.
I opened the walk-in closet. It was completely filled with hundreds of articles of clothing, dozens of pairs of shoes, belts, and scarves and almost anything that my heart could desire. It was a wonderful place.
And I had absolutely nothing to wear.
Ten minutes later, the walk-in closet was a mess and I was having a slight mental breakdown because I wanted to wear that one shirt I’d worn that one time, like five years before, and I couldn’t fucking find it.
The doorbell rang.
I balled a silk scarf into my mouth and screamed.
It felt good.
Two minutes later, my bedroom door flew open and Paul Auster entered.
And then stopped.
He stared at the naked man in my bed.
He then looked over at me collapsed dramatically in my closet buried in a pile of clothes and screaming into a scarf.
“I don’t know what it says about my life,” he said, “that nothing about this situation is surprising.”
“He won’t wake up,” I said. “And I can’t find a single thing to wear.”
“Is he dead?”
“Probably,” I said. “I couldn’t make my frittata, I boned a guy to death, and Darren fucking Mayne is coming over to my house. This day couldn’t get any worse.”
“Well then, we just need to make it better,” an old lady announced as she hobbled into my room behind Paul. She paused, glancing at the college buffet on my bed and wrinkling her nose. “Corey was right, it smells like reall
y potent salami in here.”
Nana. Paul’s grandmother. The greatest gift to old ladies anywhere.
Today, she wore a floral print muumuu, the fabric orange and the flowers blue. It was really quite hideously amazing, and somehow, she pulled it off. She’d told me that she was starting to lose her hair and had taken to wearing some of my wigs. Today she was wearing my permed Cher from the seventies wig, great black curls cascading down her shoulders, and I swore it was like she was turning back time.
To cap it all off, she was wearing her old-lady slippers because, according to her, bunions were a great big son of a bitch and she didn’t have time for heels anymore.
In other words, she looked like epic.
“Why are you pouting in the closet?” she asked me. “You haven’t done that since you were thirteen years old and didn’t know what your dick was for.”
“I killed a man with my asshole,” I said morosely. “And now I can’t find anything to wear to show up my archnemesis who Paul invited for brunch, that bitch. Also, I’m still drunk.”
“I’m not a bitch,” Paul muttered. “You’re a bitch.”
“Ah,” Nana said. “Sounds like my normal Tuesdays. Paul, you get rid of the body. Take it to the bathtub, chop it to pieces, and then dissolve the remains in acid. I’ll help Sandy get dressed.”
Paul sighed. “The fact that you would even think that’s an option here really says something about your state of mind.”
“I’m old,” Nana said, coming into the closet with me. “I don’t have to give two shits about anything anymore. It’s my reward for living this long, though some people don’t seem to agree with that. It’s why I’m not allowed in Safeway anymore. They don’t like it when I try to steal ham or detergent. Come on, Paul! Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“I’m over thirty years old now and in a stable relationship,” Paul said. “My idea of adventure is going to the mall and trying on skinny jeans, which I should never do again. They’re too tight. If I fart, it has nowhere to go and I fall down.”
“Ah, the problems of today’s youth,” Nana said.