Buddha Baby (30 page)

Yeh Yeh trailed off into his own thoughts as Lindsey digested everything. After a while, he slid off his stool and gestured to the back room. "You want Chef Boyardee ravioli? I heat up in microwave."

"No thanks," Lindsey said, her head about to explode with all this newfound knowledge. She wanted to go home and write everything down before she forgot anything. She said, "I think I'd better get going."

"Suit yourself," Yeh Yeh said. As he shuffled down the aisle, Lindsey tried to think of something poignant to say. She wanted to acknowledge that she and her grandfather had just shared a landmark moment by finally breaking through their family's wall of silence. But it was too late. Yeh Yeh had disappeared into the back room. Slowly, she turned and walked out of the store, with only the tinkling bell of the motion sensor to bid her goodbye.

The next night at the museum, Lindsey was meticulously cleaning the fur-lined teacups. As she was explaining to a couple of Junior-League-set, Tipper Gore types that Meret Op-penheim's 1936 original had been a triumph of surrealism, she spotted Dustin skulking around. When he made a little kiss noise to get her attention, the preppies turned around and giggled. Lindsey tried to ignore him as the girls twirled their hair and glanced back toward Dustin, making doe-eyes his way.

Lindsey placed the
Breakfast in Fur
mini-sculpture back on the shelf, then proceeded to mark down all the Jeff Koons merchandise that hadn't been selling. The Junior Leaguers moved a few feet away and began trying on the Warhol wigs, periodically glancing Dustin's way. Their flirtatious behavior plucked Lindsey's jealousy nerve. She wanted to brag to them that she knew Dustin way before he was a cool cat with a suede jacket and a kick-ass Norton parked outside. She knew him when he imitated androids and endured lapsits with a horndog nun.

She snuck a peek at Dustin and noted that somehow, in his cowboy boots, he came off as rugged and sexy instead of just totally gay. He caught her staring at him and winked. His bat-ted eyelash made her feel immediately less lonely, but also like a devious two-timer. She didn't like having feelings she couldn't control.

As the minutes passed, Dustin didn't budge from the artist monograph section, but snuck glances at Lindsey every few seconds, making obscene gestures at her with his tongue when he thought no one was looking. She wanted to tell him to stop, but at the same time, like a petty high schooler, she reveled in the fact that the cutest boy was actually paying attention to her. Hanging around Dustin made her feel, by association, all at once more popular, daring, and glamorous.

Over the past two weeks, she had seen Dustin shoplift a candy bar, smoke a joint on the street in broad daylight, and badger a teenage employee at the ice-cream parlor into giving them their cones for free. Being in such close proximity to bad behavior had given her a certain thrill.

Of course, she knew her behavior was getting more and more inappropriate. Just the other night they'd shared a Mexican dinner of chicken smothered in mole sauce and sexual innuendo. For every hand brushed against a shoulder, mouth closer than a distance of six inches, or word turned tawdry with a salacious glance, she knew in her heart that she was being a worm.

She was
acting the maggot
.

They hadn't done anything yet, and that's why she had to stop hanging out with him. Even if she rationalized that her actions could be construed as innocent, she reminded herself how, in movies, cheaters always claimed they didn't mean to hurt anyone. Naturally, they always said this
after
the fact. They only expressed remorse after they were caught red-handed in a naked, post-coital heap with a lover. Meanwhile, the unsuspecting spouse was left with only razor-slashed lower intestines and a decimated bank account.

Lindsey thought about how she and Dustin had bantered and flirted. They had even sipped from the same straw. At the time, she told herself it was all just innocent, clean fun. But now she felt sick with guilt.

Tidying up Zone Four, she waited until Dustin wasn't looking and then ducked behind the jewelry counter. He was no doubt waiting for her to get off her shift, so she snuck out the back door that led to the employee offices. Finding the assistant manager, she told her that she had a personal emergency and had to leave early. Racing out the back door and through the lobby, she ran across the sidewalk and hopped on a bus that had just pulled to the curb. She flopped on a seat and felt relieved. She was glad to have potentially saved herself from an evening of tongue wrestling with someone other than her betrothed.

But she couldn't stop thinking about Dustin. He appealed to some animal part of her and she felt cornered. This crush had somehow snuck up on her and pounced, and although she wanted to break free, her intellect and will couldn't seem to help her. Desire had taken her totally by surprise. It was like a trap that, in one swift motion, had clamped down on her. As the bus lurched past the familiar streets, she told herself that when she got home she needed to research which types of animals were known to get caught in hunters' snares and gnawed off their own limbs to free themselves.

The worst part of her crush was not telling Michael. Last night on the phone he had casually asked her what she had been up to and she neglected to tell him anything about Dustin. Maybe that was her problem. The things she and Dustin had done were not terrible in themselves, but her own secretive attitude followed by remorse was the bad part. If she just told Michael that she had been hanging out with an old school chum, he probably would have just said, "Oh?" and not given it a second thought. He trusted her.

But
was
she trustworthy? She certainly wanted to be.

Hopping off the bus, she walked the remaining distance home. She trotted up the stairs, went inside, and after changing out of her clothes, pryed open a bottle of Anchor Steam. She was on her second beer when the phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Hey. It's me. Sorry I haven't called, but I'm being watched all the time. I miss you so much…"

As Michael quickly regaled her with tales of the ashram's rutabaga exfoliating scrubs and kundalini-boosting diet of "Tofoysters," Lindsey suddenly felt the urgent need to get Dustin off her chest.

"Michael?" she interrupted.

"Yeah?"

"Did I ever tell you about my friend Dustin Lee? He's back in town and we've been hanging out."

"So?"

"I dunno. I just wanted to tell you. The other day you asked me what I've been up to, and he and I went to dinner a couple of times, had drinks…" She started to blather, telling too many details, like what Dustin had been wearing and how cool his socks were. At the end of her fashion report she said, "I just wanted you to know that you can trust me."

In the background she could hear someone harassing Michael for being on the phone. He held his hand over the mouthpiece but she could hear him say that he would be off in a minute. Although she thought her admission had gone all right and she was already feeling better, her little confession elicited a response she didn't expect.

Michael turned his attention back to her. Annoyance in his voice, he said, "Well, that's just great. I'm glad I can trust you, seeing as how we're getting married. You can trust me, too. You think I'm down here romancing protein-deficient waifs and having tantric sex with the
owsla
who are constantly searching my room for Flaming Cheetos?"

He paused but she didn't say anything. He went on, "At night I'm not even sleeping. I'm sneaking around like a store detective trying to snag samples of the pesticides and pork hormones they're using to dose the supposedly organic vegetables. And all the while I'm running out of excuses to get out of the celery-stalk, butt-flushing enemas and the only thing I get to eat is, like, three chickpeas a day. Meanwhile, you're eating porterhouse steaks and throwing back gimlets with some guy? I'm so glad you're
dating
in your spare time…"

Amidst the jumble of his words, she could hear the
owsla
wrestling the phone away from Michael.

"I didn't mean it like that…" she yelled into the receiver.

The line went dead and she listened to the phone silence for a while. Hmm. That hadn't gone so well.