The Wednesday Regular
Wednesday’s are always rhinoplasty. Caleb picks up a lacrimal chisel and twists it in his long fingers. In the background Nicki Minaj tells us she is better than all the other rappers. She is hotter, wetter, and more talented.
“Rhonda needs an eye lift. She’s beginning to look droopy as hell.”
“Okay, so why don’t you give her one?” I say while bending over our patient’s nasal cavity.
“You can’t suggest that kind of thing to your wife.” He huffs. I don’t respond. Rhonda is a near perfect specimen. Age is not kind to women.
“Can we change the music?” I toss over my shoulder.
Pamela Anderson
In the waiting room, clients are tense and excited. I am very rarely in the waiting room. I stay behind my office doors. In surgery, I create lines where lines did not exist. I give shape to the jaws and the cheeks and the small of the back. A woman walks into my office.
“I want boobs like Pamela Anderson. Can you give me boobs like Pamela Anderson?”
I smile, because it is my job. Because there are always things women want.
“I can give you boobs like Pamela Anderson,” I say.
Hinge
I have learned to say every body is beautiful, even though they don’t believe it. Even though we all don’t believe it. There are very few women who meet me and sleep with me, who believe every shape is beautiful.
“Hi, Brandi?”
“Katie?”
“Sarah?”
Waves of lipglossed, Victoria Secreted women who ask me endless questions about what I do.
When I get home with Sandy, a waitress from Long Island (a detail I will forget by tomorrow) we drink wine on the lip of my couch. We listen to Frank Sinatra because he never fails to get women sentimental.
“I just hate this section of my thigh,” she says, pinching the part women refer to as “saddlebags.”
“Like how much would that cost? Roughly? And what is the recovery time on it? Approximately?” Women use the word approximately in my apartment seemingly every other night. Again and again, we talk about their bodily imperfections and approximately what could be done to fix them. And then we have sex. Usually they’re pretty distracted.
Rhonda
Every summer Caleb invites me to his house in East Hampton. Rhonda and I are friendly in the absence of Caleb’s interest. She’s your basic New York wife; leggy, popular, good taste. I enjoy the way we make fun of each other. We went to high school together, back when I was the geeky science guy and she was who everyone wanted to be or be with. She teases me a lot about the fact that I have no friends. I serve back something about drugs being her only loyal friends. Well, if they aren’t loyal fuck ‘em, she says.
2013 was the first year I caved and went up for the weekend. July 4th was Rhonda and Caleb’s baby. The parties they throw are legendary. Up there with the White party and the SoFo summer gala.
I arrived the night before the party, bypassing Route 24 traffic, and settled into the guest room made up for me. When I got downstairs, Rhonda was smoking a cigarette on the terrace. She walked into the living room and played a song and told me to listen. Caleb was on the couch scrolling social media.
“Singing, “Oh, love, get me out of the cold.”
If I promise that I’d take you there with me,
Would you go?”
She harmonized the lyrics sweetly. I didn’t love the song. It’s sappy and has a boring melody. Rhonda is really my only friend. She calls me sometimes and asks me about my life. She listens. While she was singing, I nodded and smiled at her then shifted my leg because it was feeling a little numb.
Sidney
I met a woman by the name of Sidney that same summer at the July 4th bash. She had lovely red hair and long almond shaped nails. She wore a slinky brown dress. I watched as she approached me. Drink in hand.
“I hear you’re Caleb’s partner.”
“Yeah, I am.”
“What’s it like working for that freak? I went to college with him.”
“We don’t talk a lot outside of business,” I admitted. I didn’t tell her I’d been dragged here by Rhonda’s incessant texts or that I’d much rather be eating Thai food and watching Criminal Minds.
We went to my room (the Lavender Suite on the second floor) a half hour later. She didn’t ask to be assessed. She didn’t use the word approximately, or many words at all. We moved in rhythm to the bass pumping Robin Thicke, “Blurred Lines”.
Sailing
Every summer following, I paid for Sidney’s ticket from Michigan to come join us for July 4th weekend. Her arrival was followed by credit card bills from Hampton boutiques, high end restaurants and boat rentals. Sidney loved sailing. I watched the wind whipping and cupping her backside. By the time the incident happened, I’d spent three summers with Sidney and Rhonda was relying pretty heavily on pills to get through the day.
The boat rides had the four of us nostalgic for our childhoods. It was the only time I liked Caleb. He was quiet and focused on steering and anchoring. Sometimes making a comment about the “point of sail.” There was no cell reception on the water and I sensed this greatly increased Rhonda’s mood. General conversation was limited to,
“Did you bring the Chardonnay?”
“Pass the chips please.”
“Is that a cucumber or tomato sandwich?”
The women applied tanning oil and took sips from chilled glasses, the sun glinting against the motor driven waves.
The dog
We arrived at the house this summer, like every summer, straight from JFK. Charlie, came bounding up, giant tongue hanging out like a swollen appendage. I found myself hoping he’d die from old age, every year, although he was just emerging from puppyhood. He was needy, wouldn’t leave you alone, the more you disliked him, the more he pawed at your leg. Once, I kicked him away under the table and he followed me for the rest of my day.
“Charlie baby, don’t bother the guests!” Rhonda yelled at him gently. She scooped him up before greeting us.
We made the appropriate hellos and I tried to hide my shock at the sight of Rhonda. Her face had filled out, her delicate cheekbones distorted by an unnatural puffiness. Her usually emphasized figure, hidden beneath a loose, black top. I gave her a toothy smile that felt alien. Shyly, she reached for a hug and I almost squeezed that damn dog to death. He yelped and she set him down.
In contrast, Caleb was in the best shape he had ever been. His body looked like stone. If you took a hammer to his ribs it might just chip and dust all over the floor of the house which had undergone renovations. Sidney and I commented on what a face lift had done for the place. Haha. The hallways had been broken into, walls let down so that the space seemed larger and less divided. The furniture had all been renewed. Modern was out, rustic-chic was in. There was a farm table where the round marble one had been. There were vintage filing cabinets instead of breakfronts and lights hung from rope rather than delicate encased wire. Either Rhonda had been bored or her interior decorator friends had worn her down. Sidney could not stop commenting on all the little details. A little excessive Sidney, I thought but did not say.
“Aren’t you nervous he’s going to ruin that beautiful white couch?” she asked Rhonda. We looked at the dog together.
“He’s a good boy,” she said, smiling in the direction he’d run off.
Bread
Sidney was getting her hair blown at the famed salon on Main Street. Caleb, Rhonda and I sat in a bistro we frequented for lunch. I watched Rhonda dip her bread into the oil that was pooled in a tiny dish at the center of the table. She mopped up the leftover balsamic and bit into it with hesitance. A woman who wasn’t used to the taste of bread without guilt.
“You look nice, have you done something new with your hair?” I lied. She laughed.
“Please, we both know I look like shit.” Caleb was typing out an email. I looked at him and then back at her and felt uncomfortable under her gaze.
“You look better than ever.”
“Aw, still so full of shit.” She glanced up from beneath thick lashes with a mocking expression. Caleb looked up.
“Okay, are we gonna order or what?”
Evening
The Hamptons and some of Sag Harbor piled into the backyard and drank champagne and snorted cocaine and ate a lot of red and blue and white cake. While this happened I was upstairs nursing a headache. My hip hurt from fucking the whole night. I was moody and out of it and I kept the lamp dim while downstairs Sidney kicked off her wedged sandals and danced.
I was scrolling through some emails, while trying to block out the sounds coming through the windows; shrill laughter, musical beats, the occasional scream. Out of nowhere the door burst open and in walked Rhonda.
I would later tell the police my experience in a formal, foreign voice. The way her striped blue and white linen shirt was flapping, buttons undone, breasts nearly all the way out. I would say she seemed very drunk and had smears of red butter cream on her lips.
“Heyyyyyyy,” she said, stumbling into my room.
“Rhonda, you ok? You don’t look too great.”
“Fuck you,” she said, chuckling and swaying some more. She was pitiful.
“What’s wrong?” I changed tactics.
“Life sucks,” she sank into the small rounded couch by the window, sounding like a teenager, tossing her head back, lolling it against the edge.
“I get that,” I said.
“We havta tell the waiters to refill the canapes by the way. In the back room, there are more in the back room,” she said.
“I think the party’s gone way past the canape stage,” I said, smiling.
“No! People love that shit. We needa…” she drifted, “we needa tell them.”
“Okay, I’ll tell the waiters.” She looked at me through hazy eyes, like she kind of remembered me. Then she burped.
“I ate too much cake,” she laughed.
“You can eat as much cake as you want, it’s your party.” I wanted her to leave, but couldn’t figure out how to tell her this. She was pinching the fat beneath her shirt and giggling.
“Be honest-have I become unfuckable? I know the answer, I just wanna hear it from you,” her eyes were on me, despair wrinkling its corners.
“Rhonda, c’mon.”
“I really wanna know.”
“Rhonda you’re a beautiful woman.”
“He’s fucking someone. I know he’s fucking someone.”
“I’m sorry.” She was beginning to tear up. My skin itched.
“Men..so predictable.” She shook her head, looked out the window and brushed away a strand of hair that had fallen into her eyes a few minutes before.
“You don’t want to fuck me though, right?” She asked. And there it was. The little chink in the armor that we wore, exposing the opportunity of being shot and bleeding out.
“I’m your friend. I will always be your friend Rhonda,” I said. She snorted.
“You sound so motorized.” I didn’t respond.
She looked up suddenly with a dead seriousness.
“We need to tell the waiters about the canapes.” I stared at her, unsure what to say next. I felt like it was the first time I was meeting her. She began to cry. It was hard to listen to with the migraine pounding at my temples.
“I’m gonna go tell them about the canapes, okay?” I asked. I felt a pang of guilt at leaving her there, but I couldn’t wait for an answer. I headed to the door, her sniffles growing louder in my wake.
“In the back-”
“In the back room, I know.”
“Come back soon..” she trailed.
I entered the party to the sound of Christina Aguilara’s moans. I made my way through throngs of crop tops and tight crochet midi skirts, in search of a waiter with a slim glass of champagne. Before I could find one I was pulled to a stop by my shirt sleeve.
“There you are,” Sidney whined in my ear. “I wanna dance.”
“Okay,” I said. The rest of the night passed quickly. We grinded, then drank, then grinded. My headache grew worse but it was easier to ignore. I looked around to see if Rhonda had rejoined the party, but didn’t see her anywhere. At some point I glanced up at the window of my room with a small sense of curiosity, but it stood empty. The dim lamplight, white gauze curtains.
12am the fireworks went off. I covered my ears instinctively and Sidney pulled them down, laughing.
“Is it too LOUD for you, daddy?” she screamed. I cringed from the word. The terrible, trendy word.
“I have a headache,” I said.
“Oh boo-hoo,” she imitated tears with an exaggerated motion and pronounced frown. Then she pulled my arms around her, as if the moment was suddenly romantic.
When I went up to the room to shower Rhonda was gone.
July 5th, 2014
“Any reason for her to run away?”
“Was she drunk?”
“Who saw her last?”
The cops came the next morning in a flurry of importance. Uniforms and badges. We were a crowd of concerned individuals, situated around the kitchen. Sidney and I, Caleb, Maurice and Shannon who’d fallen asleep in the Jade Suite and Jack Lowell, Caleb’s buddy from med school. Rhonda rolled her eyes whenever he showed up, humming in my ear that he was a man whore. She never referred to me that way. Perhaps, she knew something I didn’t know about myself.
When I said I’d seen her in my room shortly before midnight, I became the focus.
I explained that she’d been upset, drunk yes, and that she was crying when I left. I didn’t want to go into detail about her marriage concerns.
“You left her alone like that? Crying?” Sidney asked. She’d thrown a Hermes shawl over her short nightgown, nipples hard from the breeze drifting through the open terrace door. I got up and looked for my cardigan but could not find it.
“You asked me to dance!” I called from the closet.
I saw Caleb pull aside a detective with a furtive glance back at me. They began whispering and I grew uncomfortable and announced I was stepping out for a smoke. I pulled out my vape. Cherry Cinnamon. I rarely vaped, but it seemed the only viable reason to escape.
I didn’t fully understand Caleb’s hostility toward me, but I knew not to challenge it.
The house turned up empty of clues. Hotels, hospitals, friends homes-empty. Her clothing remained in the closet. Her credit cards weren’t used. There simply were no leads. The dog was deranged, running from room to room. Searching for his mistress. Seeking attention. The police told Caleb not to worry. Perhaps she had just needed some time alone.
Where’s Poirot When You Need Him
“This feels like a movie,” Sidney said. We sat on wicker chairs on the back patio, watching Caleb pace back and forth inside the kitchen, his cell pressed tightly to his ear. When someone is missing it doesn’t really feel appropriate to lounge at their pool or suntan at the beach. We waited awkwardly with Jack while Maurice and Shannon disappeared into their Jaguar and urged us to let them know when we knew more.
That night Rhonda’s family came into town. We went through another round of questions from her parents and sisters. None of us had a clue what happened. It began to feel like we were the guests everyone wanted to kill. We didn’t belong and we were taking up room. When I mentioned this to Sidney she said that she felt bad leaving.
“What if they need us?” she whispered to me in bed that night.
“To do what? Identify a body? There’s plenty of people here for that.”
“Like, what if the police have more questions for you.”
“I’ve told them everything I know.”
“I can’t believe you just left her there crying.”
“I didn’t leave her there crying, she asked me to tell the waiters to refill the canapes,” I said.
“She was crying and asking you to refill canapes?”
“Yes Sidney, she was drunk.”
“Oh,” she said. She reached for my dick. You seem really broken up about it Sidney, I chose not to say.
The following morning a thunderstorm woke us. We came down to the kitchen rubbing our eyes and the room-Caleb, and Rhonda’s parents-fell silent. The only sound was the frenzied weather outside and Charlie barking in a low, hoarse voice. He came up to me and nuzzled my shoes. I tried to hide my distaste by moving behind the island counter and throwing him a kick.
Emanuel
“Who are you again?” Rhonda’s sister Emanuel came out from the pantry carrying a couple of napkins. She was looking at Sidney with that sort of look that women give each other. I’d heard a lot about Emanuel, called Em, over the years. She was resented for her pretentious art history degree (Rhonda) and negative opinion of Caleb (Caleb).
“I’m-uh..I’m a friend. I was invited for the weekend. I’m Sidney.” I wasn’t sure what Sidney was feeling, only that she seemed defensive. Sidney and Rhonda wouldn’t be classified as friends in the traditional sense. They didn’t really know each other.
“Okay,” Emanuel said.
“We’re gonna head out for some coffee and muffins,” I invented. With Della Femina closed, I wasn’t sure where we’d go but I figured Sidney knew of some trendy cafe that had opened in its place.
“Yes! Anyone want anything?” Sidney offered. The family shook their heads and watched us walk out the door.
We sat in the coffee shop replaying the timeline because we needed to talk about it outside the house. Away from glances of suspicion and oppressive desperation. Somehow it was the perfect breakfast. We spoke in hushed whispers. I tucked a strand of Sidney’s hair behind her ear and looked into her eyes. I comforted her. Commiserated. We agreed that we would leave this afternoon. We almost fell in love.
Motive
About a week later things were looking bad. Rhonda still hadn’t shown up. Her credit card was inactive, her friends and family mystified. Caleb was angry with me. He insisted that because I was the last to see her I must have something to do with it. Or some special piece of information I was holding back. He claimed that I was flirtatious with her. That perhaps more had gone on in that bedroom than I was willing to let on. Thankfully, the police hadn’t taken him seriously.
Sidney was not quite sure what to do with herself. She had not yet gone back to Michigan and was currently taking up residence in my New York loft. We were spending our nights at Broadway shows, fashion events, and uptight restaurants. I had returned to work. Someone needed to be keeping up with their appointments. Caleb called me heartless, cold.
At Balthazar
“What do you know that you aren’t telling me?”
“Caleb I know nothing. If anyone has a motive to make her disappear it’s you,” I said in a low tone.
“Brandice is nothing.” He looked like he was about to throw something at me. Maybe he had a right to. I didn’t know anything about his relationship. I only saw the veneer, frosting on Hampton house cake.
“Just tell me what she said man.”
“I don’t understand why you’re so suspicious.”
“There’s something off about you,” he said. He emptied his glass of bourbon without taking his eyes off of me.
I told him I’d do anything I could to help. He called me a cunt.
Boarded Up
We dissolved our business that fall. Caleb moved to California. He served the housewives of Beverly Hills and advertised 3 for 2 packages during award season. He was thriving in a house in Malibu with the dog, Charlie, and several cars. I passed our office sometimes on the way to RedBox because I still liked to watch DVDs. I thought about Rhonda more than I thought about Caleb. How had she done it?
The Great Escape
At a bar in Bushwick she sat in a booth, wearing a turtleneck sweater dress and a wide hat. Her skin sagged around the corners of her eyes and she had lost weight. I stood on the corner staring into the windowed storefront. She was surrounded by a group of friends and they leaned in to talk and leaned back to laugh in a see-saw motion.
I imagined going in and waiting until she went to the bathroom, discerning if it was really her. Her ass different, rounder, firmer like she’d been going to SoulCycle. I started for the door, intending to find out the truth. I wanted to call Caleb and report what I’d seen. But he wouldn’t believe me. I could hardly believe it myself. Rhonda had never been heard from again. Her family was still holding onto hope that she’d show up. I’d lost touch with Caleb. With Sidney. With everyone from that past life.
I imagined confronting her when she came out of the bathroom.
“Rhonda,” I’d say, when she breezed out. She’d turn toward me sharply.
“Oh, it’s you,” she’d say.
“It’s you.”
“I’m only in New York for the weekend. What do you want to know?” she’d ask in a voice like she wanted to curl up under a blanket and fall asleep.
“How did you? I mean where did you go?”
“I took off with a waiter. He was going to Denver. Paid him two hundred bucks. It wasn’t hard.”
“And you survived out there?”
“The way people who aren’t rich survive. By working a small job and living simply.”
“Was it so bad here?” I’d ask her. It’s what I always wanted to ask her.
“You saw me that night. What do you think?”
“Not out of the ordinary for a Hamptons wife.”
“That’s sad. I’m happy I’m not part of that anymore.”
“Don’t you want a divorce? And your family. They’ve been so lost. They insist you’re still alive.”
“Yeah, they know I’m alive.” Her tone, flat.
“You’ve spoken to them?”
“No. But even when I was a kid, I didn’t like them very much and I told them if I ever got up the courage, I’d disappear. They’ve known this about me since I’m young.” They are totally assholes, especially Emmanuel, I would choose not to say.
She would be nonchalant, she would be bored. Unknown.
“And Caleb?”
“Fuck Caleb.”
I wanted to ask her why she couldn’t have let me know, if not anyone else. And whether I had caused any of it. The need for escape. If she had been serious about refilling the canapes. I let the air hang pregnant out there in the cold and then she turned in her seat and I saw that in fact it was not her. A sharp blue eye color glinting against the sun, small teeth flashing in a smile. Unmistakably not Rhonda.
Robots
I thought about Rhonda obsessively over the next few days. While picking up groceries at my corner bodega, dancing on an underage girl who’d snuck her way into the club, watching TV at 4 in the afternoon on a Saturday. I brought the image of her to my mind again and again. Her smile had been content. I returned to the bar a few times, stood out in the cold, shivering. My joints creaked as I bent my knees to create blood flow. I imagined her life in Denver. Bundled in leggings and a coat she got from a thrift store, walking through the white snow while I stayed in slushy New York, consistently answering questions about love handles and sagging breasts. Perhaps she wasn’t in Denver. Perhaps she lived on the ocean in Tulum. Or served coffee in Connecticut. I wished I could ask her. I wished I could ask her if she felt alive. It seemed that where she lived, she was floating, cloudlike. Tomorrow I had a rhinoplasty and breast augmentation scheduled. Then I’d go home and fuck my secretary. I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that while she floated, I remained chained to the ground.