One guest, a woman, Ma’s age, she’d paid a premium to get an appointment with me and I was having trouble focusing because Willa wanted to start filming the next day and I was jittery. The guest was telling me that she’d always suspected she might be gay, but was raised religious, got married to a man she liked, sure, but definitely didn’t love, had kids, got old. She was shy and embarrassed and she looked like she was in pain. She said, “Sorry, I’m blabbing. I’m nervous.”
“I’ve always had a thing for Willa Jordan,” she said, when I asked what she wanted from our time together. “Those are the kinds of crushes I let myself have because it seems like other women, straight women, they let themselves have those kinds of crushes. On celebrities, I mean, because they’re not real people, you know? It’s not really like a gay crush because it’s a crush on an idea more than a person. And ever since I saw California Girls I’ve had a crush on Willa Jordan, and then I saw that video of you, you know the one, and some things resurfaced and, well, you really do look just like her, and I thought, What do I have to lose? I mean, really, what do I have to lose?”
I asked her again what she would like from our time together, and she laughed. “Maybe I should just go,” she said. “I’m sorry, this was stupid.” She stood and winced.
I said, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’ve got this . . . I’m sick,” she said. “It’s nothing.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve got this tumor,” she said. “And I kind of thought, I thought that before I died I might as well, you know, try this out. I might as well see what it’s like to be, you know, with a, you know.”
“You’re dying?”
“The tumor. I fundraised all this money for the surgery. And then I woke up, and the doctors told me they didn’t manage to get it all. I’d need another operation, and even then they weren’t sure that they could get it all out. I couldn’t afford all of that, but I could afford to do something.”
“And you chose this,” I said. “You chose to see me.”
She picked at a hangnail. Her blush was deep and spreading across her chest. “I’m going to go,” she said.
“Wait,” I said. “Stay. Will you please stay?”
She paused.
“I’m nervous too,” I said.
“You’re nervous?”
I nodded.
“Why’re you nervous?”
“Honestly,” I said. “I’m better with men than I am with women. I know men. Women . . . women make me nervous.”
“Women make me nervous,” she said.
“Can I hug you?”
She nodded. I held her. She smelled of spring.
“I can’t believe I just told you all of that,” she said. “I’ve never told anyone that, and I just told you, a total stranger. Can you, I mean, do you have, like, doctor-patient confidentiality?” She laughed. “Of course you don’t. Stupid.”
“I can offer you collateral, though,” I said. “I’ll tell you something no one knows about me.”
She stepped out of our hug, but I pulled her back in, aware of that little red dot on the ceiling, of Daddy, who was always, always watching.
“I’m pregnant,” I whispered in her ear.
“You are?”
She knelt and kissed my stomach, and her touch was soft and sweet and I swallowed and swallowed to keep from sobbing. She reached for my fly and looked up and said, “May I?”
I smiled down at her. I wanted her to. I wanted her. I stepped out of my costume.
She gestured to my underwear. “May I?”
I nodded and she pulled them down, and for someone who had spent her life denying her own sexuality, she was good with her tongue, had the right ratio of quick to slow, soft to not.
When she left, she kissed each of my cheeks and thanked me. “And,” she said, turning back before disappearing forever, “for what it’s worth, you’ll be good at it.” She pointed to my stomach. “At that, I mean.”