In the brief, but wonderfully removed moments of unconsciousness I dreamed of love, of lying on a large bed with the man of my dreams — not Glen, oddly enough, but another man, a shorter man, and this dream might have gone on to its logical and possibly orgasmic conclusion had I not, out of the corner of the dream, heard my brother’s voice.
“The redwood stain hadn’t dried?”
I opened my eyes just wide enough to see Oliver, standing beside a tall, muscular man in a snug black turtleneck.
“The hotel, it’s new,” the man was saying, “Still under construction.”
“New hotel or not, someone should be held…” And that’s when he saw my open eyes, or at least the one eye that wasn’t sealed shut. “Maybelene?”
He only calls me Maybelene if something is wrong, so I was pretty sure something was amiss. I sat up, felt my head, which seemed intact, and when I looked down to see what body parts I might have been missing, what happened to be missing were my clothes. Not quite all of them, however. A young girl’s kimono was covering, barely, my chest.
“Who are you?” I said to the man.
“This is Harold,” Oliver said. “He’s from Switzerland.”
“Hallo,” the man said, with a kind of wave-like salute. I saw his eyes momentarily leave my torso and move to my right, and when I followed the direction they had taken I saw, curled up in a tiny pocket of the king-sized bed, my little niece. She was wearing a Catwoman costume, and her hands, like mine, were stained the color or artificial redwood.
“Apparently Harold,” Oliver nodded toward the burly blonde, “found you in a half-finished bar just as security men where about to carry you off. You and Twink. I guess he saved you.”
“From what?” I said, the word stigmata vaguely echoing in my brain. “And how did I get… in this?” The kimono was nice, but several sizes too small. “And why does she still smell?”
“I can answer that.” Harold stepped forward.
“And who are you again,” I said. “Sorry, but I…”
“I am the lover.”
“Oh. Wonderful,” I said, as my hand, as if with a mind of its own, reached for an imaginary drink. I thought I needed a drink to understand what was happening, but then suddenly I did understand, because that’s when I heard, coming from the bathroom end of what apparently was the hotel’s honeymoon suite, my mother’s voice. She was emerging from a fog of shower steam, wearing a kind of reindeer outfit.
“Mom?”
“You’re incapacitated, sweetheart.” My mother’s voice was half Lucy, half Lauren Bacall. From year of smoking when we were kids. “I called Bruce and I told him, in no uncertain terms… Look at you, all lovely in that lovely red… and Twink. I wish I had a camera.”
Harold offered her his cell phone but she waved him off. I turned to Oliver, who was now pretending to be ministering to the sick and infirm and sound asleep Twink.
“Harold, honey, meet my daughter. She speaks German.”
I didn’t speak German, had never even been to Germany, and I had very little interest in meeting this…
“I’m Swiss,” he said.
“I’m decorating,” my mother said. “And I need you all to help.” She reached up and patted her furry, polyester antlers. “Do you like my costume?”
“How did I get in this bed?” I said.
“You can thank Harold for that,” she said and blew him a kiss. “He called me in the middle of a winning streak, said you were wounded and bloody, and so I cashed in my chips and came right over.”
The thought that this large, Germanic man had put me to bed was more that I was willing to grasp at the moment, plus my mother’s presence was unnerving me, plus Oliver had moved from Twink and was now mixing himself a drink from the rations of the hotel mini-bar. “I’d like one too, please,” I said.
“Let’s all have one,” mother said. “And someone call Alan. It’s Christmas Eve for goodness sake. One of you clean up the little one, and Harold…” As she reached up on her tip-toes Harold hoisted her by her hips and the two of them began a disgusting display of Sweitzer-American tongue play.
Oliver was stirring what I hoped was an especially strong drink, and I was imagining the cool, warm, silky liquid coursing down my throat when Bruce, not quite literally, burst into the room. Apparently he had a key. Either that or the door was unlocked.
“God fucking damnit,” he said. “Where’s the whore?”
No telling who he was talking about, but he walked past my mother to the bed, holding out to me what looked like a dress. It wasn’t, however, the one I’d been wearing during the redwood incident, the dress I was desperately hoping I had removed myself and sent, with common sense, to the hotel cleaners. What he was holding belonged to his wife, Lizzie. She’d been a chorine when he’d met her — I think that’s the word —and since they’ve been married she’s been spending time with other hoteliers, of deeper, more expansive pockets. He’s been trying to give away everything that was hers, which was fine by me except instead of a dress it looked like a costume from one of her showgirl routines.
“That’s sweet, Bruce, but really,” I said, “I’m fine in this,” and I got out of bed, covering myself as best I could with my red, size small, kimono.
“Who’s the big guy kissing mom?” He dropped the dress at the foot of the bed, said hello to Oliver, and then muttered to no one in particular, “Goddamn it.”
I love my brothers, Oliver with his perfectly turned Manhattans, and Bruce with his lingering Tourette’s. And my mother.
She broke away from the thick lips of Harold, ran back to the bathroom and came back with a large bag, filled, it turned out, with an assortment of furry, bell-bedecked reindeer-style antler hats. Harold took one and Bruce took one, and Oliver took his and put it on. Then Mother went to Twink, still curled up, placed the antlers on her sleeping head and adjusted the elastic strap. Then she passed one to me. “The red matches your eyes.”
Oliver stepped away from the mini-bar with a silver salver. “I’m calling it Viva Lost Vegas,” he said, walking with his antler head and passing out drinks to everyone but Harold, who said he was in training. Twink was beginning to sit up and, thoughtful as ever, Oliver had made her a non-alcoholic version. Then, as if on cue, the rest of us put our antlers on. We raised our glasses — Harold raised a protein bar — and someone, I’m pretty sure, was about to make a toast when the door opened and Alan, wearing only underwear and a pair of sheer black socks staggered into the room.
