Liz Taylor

Not Eva's best short story, but not bad either!

I walk into Beau’s kitchen and look around. Liz Taylor sits on a stool by the bar, drinking red wine out of a glass. Not the real Elizabeth Taylor, of course. Just a forty-something-year-old man who plays her in a cabaret show in the French Quarter. Right now he’s wearing a white polo shirt and tight jeans, but I can imagine him in a black wig and sequined gown. There’s something feminine about his face. The pout of his plumped-up lips, maybe. Or the smoothness of his chin. He’s had a lot of work done. He notices me looking at him and winks. “Dana, honey, come here,” he calls, reeling me towards him with the curl of one long finger.

I walk across the kitchen, smiling at a group of people who have gathered around the liquor bottles and plastic cups that litter the granite countertop beside Beau’s new stainless steel refrigerator.

“Darling.” Liz Taylor takes my hand and pulls me towards him. Pursing his lips, he makes a wet kissing noise next to my cheek. Up close, his face is fascinating. His makeup is thick, and white as paint spackle. Like the real Liz Taylor, his eyes are an unnatural blue, framed in heavy, curled lashes.

He squeezes my hand, red-painted fingernails against my skin. “When is this party really getting started?” He wrinkles his nose, winking at me again, and I know he’s talking about cocaine. Liz Taylor is notorious for snorting other people’s coke and never giving them anything in return.  

I stick out my bottom lip and bat my eyelashes at him. “You’re not having a good time?” I tend to flirt with everyone, even aging drag queens. Beau’s a big flirt, too, which is probably why people say we’re perfect for each other.

He lifts one shoulder in a lazy shrug, and lowers his mouth onto the rim of the wine glass. He sips loudly and looks up at me. “Oh, you know me, honey. I’m always looking for ways to escape reality.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Beau leaning against the doorway to the formal dining room, talking to a girl in a very short skirt.

Liz follows my gaze and puts his wine glass down on the counter. “You and Beau are such a beautiful couple it makes me sick. He’s tall, dark, and handsome, and you’re the curvy blonde bombshell.”

 “Thanks, but you know it’s not natural.” I run my fingers through my hair.

“At least you’ve got your real boobs.” He waves his hand at the crowd in the kitchen. “Unlike half the girls here.”

My boobs are real, but I wonder how Liz can tell. He’s right, though, tonight Beau’s house is filled with a bunch of top-heavy girls with blonde highlights and too much makeup. All night they have teetered up to Beau in their heels, touching his arm and giggling. It makes me wonder sometimes, the way he acts with these young girls, but I know he’s just a harmless flirt.

Liz picks up his wine glass. “I hope ya’ll have hundreds of babies and populate the world with your perfect genes.”

“Hundreds? Oh boy. That’s a lot of college tuitions.”

“Are you kidding, darling? You’ll get your own reality TV show and be millionaires.” He swats me on the arm.  

Beau and I have been dating for over a year now, since I turned thirty, and I guess at some point we made the crossover from dating into couple-dom. Even Liz Taylor knows it. Last night Beau asked me to move in with him, and I surprised myself by saying I needed to think about it. For the past few years, I’ve been telling all my friends I’m ready to settle down with a nice man in a nice house and start a family, but now that things are moving in that direction, I’m freaking out. I keep thinking about my first date with Beau. I asked him what he wanted in life, and he said have fun and make money. “What about love?” I asked him. “Sure,” he said. “That, too.”

There are lots of things I love about Beau, like the dimple in his chin, and the way he pets my hair when we watch TV. He dresses well and is in good shape for thirty-seven. We go out to all the best restaurants, and we get treated like New Orleans royalty. With him life is easy and fun. But sometimes it seems like everything is on the surface, and it’s so smooth I’m afraid he’ll slip away from me, and I’ll be alone again. I want to break through his facade and find something deeper inside him that I can really hold onto.  

I tell Liz I need a refill and move towards the alcohol. I pour rum and Diet Coke into my plastic cup and walk through the house, sipping. It’s not until I see Beau in the living room that I realize I was looking for him. He’s sitting on the couch, a little too close to the short-skirted girl. He looks up at me. “Hey, Dana-Baby. Have you met Sophie?”