This should never happen.
Every week, I create an elaborate assignment grid that I not only email to each Golden Gay but also laminate and hang in the pantry. It details whose turn it is to park in the garage, who can have the turnaround area and who must park on the street. It lists whose turn it is to go to the grocery, who picks up the dry cleaning, who is home for the pool and spa cleaning, who places the ads for our show. This is ignored each and every week just like...
Me.
And yet, like the bighorn I just saw, I operate out of instinct. I must make everything right.
I head back inside and gather up the key rings scattered around the house as if I’m a squirrel collecting autumn acorns. I rotate the cars like a valet, return the keys and lock the door once again.
I again glance at the Zsa Zsa sign on the house, but this time, I touch my heart.
“Ron, you need to wear a sign that reads Disease to Please,” I say to myself.
I get in my beloved vintage Mercedes, wrap a scarf around my head à la Audrey Hepburn so the wind won’t ruin my coif and turn on Petula Clark.
Finally—finally!—I head downtown.
Teddy
“Excuse me? How much is that?”
I jump at the customer’s voice. I had been deep in thought wondering why the spawn of Satan has continued to call me multiple times out of the blue. Perhaps she had just butt-dialed me. Lord knows her butt is ample enough to have its own area code.
“I beg your pardon?”
I follow the woman’s manicured finger.
My mother’s Bakelite bracelet lives in a shadow box on the wall behind the front counter.
“Oh, that’s not for sale,” I say. “But all of the jewelry in the counter display is. Let me know if I can show you anything.”
I smile at the woman and return to styling a mannequin in the front window of Dorian Gay. In honor of Valentine’s Day and Modernism Week, my front window is a tribute to TV legend, gay icon and former Palm Springs resident Lucille Ball and her famedI Love Lucychocolate factory episode.
Lucy and Ethel mannequins are standing before an assembly line of chocolates. Behind them, a big red heart fills the window, like the logo from the TV show. Instead of being dressed in pink uniforms like in the famous episode, the two are dressed head-to-toe in fabulous red frocks, heels and jewelry, vintage scarves tied in their hair.
Have a Ball this Month in Palm Springs!my sign reads.
“Name your price,” the woman presses. “My mom had a bracelet just like it. I don’t know what happened to it.”
I stop mid-motion.
“My mama did, too,” I say. “And I’m sorry, but it’s NFS.”
“I’ll pay any price you ask,” she answers with great confidence. “And you know what I always say? NFS simply means Not For Sure.”
The woman stares at me, head held high.
Suddenly, I remember her face and her voice. I eye her carefully. I sold her the brightly colored geometric pattern caftan and orange fruit salad earrings she is currently wearing. She spent a fortune here last year. So much, in fact, that I popped a bottle of champagne.
Be kind, Teddy, though I know that’s a big ask.
I glance again at the Bakelite bracelet. It hovers like a UFO in an acrylic orange box against a backdrop ofBrady Bunchwallpaper.
“See?” The woman laughs. “I can see the wheels turning. You’re not for sure, are you?”
Why am I holding on to this bracelet? What hold does it have on me?
I do not have amber-colored memories of my childhood like most kids. In fact, I try not to have any memories of my past at all. I have locked them away, airtight, just like that bracelet.
