Ally Hughes Has Sex Sometimes by Moulin Jules

Author:Moulin, Jules [Moulin, Jules]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-07-30T07:00:00+00:00

LIZZIE HAD FASHIONED HER costume at Weather’s. They stood in front of the bathroom mirror.

She was pleased. Brown ringlets hung to her waist. Fake red nails extended her fingers. Colored contacts turned her eyes blue. She drew, with precision, two fake birthmarks, one on her back and one on her belly, with waterproof mascara, and they both wore stilettos, shorts, and white tank tops.

“Wife beaters,” Lizzie said as they gazed at themselves. “That’s what these are called.”

“We don’t look like battered wives,” Weather replied. “We look like hookers.”

Lizzie turned to her and smiled. “Perfect.”

—

Ally took the train to Fourteenth. She walked eight blocks through the sweltering heat to Lizzie’s building.

She buzzed and buzzed with no real hope, then took out her phone and looked for a place to sit and wait.

Across the street, she found a stoop in a patch of shade under some blue wood scaffolding. From there she could see east and west across the whole block. She’d see Lizzie first when Lizzie came home.

“I already texted you. You ignored those,” she started, leaving her a message. “And we have a deal. Three calls—you call me back. Three calls. And this is, like, my twentieth. Two days. I’m upset.”

She left it at that.

She looked across the street at Lizzie’s building and wondered why they both lived alone.

Wasn’t it the millennial thing? Kids fresh from school living with their parents? Lizzie could have an entire floor on Cranberry Street.

Ally felt badly. She should have offered. Now she would. She called Lizzie back. “By the way, I’m sitting outside here, at your building, and I’m wondering why you’re paying rent when you don’t have to. I know you need your freedom—but it seems so silly. It’s really a very American thing. To insist on living on your own. Okay? Call me.”

—

Lizzie ignored her mother’s call. They rode the train to Brooklyn, hopped off on Carroll, and walked to Red Hook.

Across Third Avenue and under the Gowanus, they found the building. Only the ground floor looked alive, with a limousine depot and a small shop selling radiator parts. Fishman had rented the top two floors, the ninth and tenth, with fourteen offices inside each. The rest lay fallow, collecting soot.

They looked for the entrance for fifteen minutes and finally found it around the block, where Fishman was waiting.

Khakis, polo, no socks, tan, he looked as if he’d stepped off the Jitney, and maybe he had. “Pleased to meet you!” he called. “Thrilled!” He shook their hands. “Which one’s Jenny?”

“Me,” said Lizzie. “This is Weather.”

“Great,” said Fishman. “Ted’s like a brother. Teddy is great.”

“Yes,” said Lizzie. “Yes, yes, he is.”

—

On the ninth floor, they walked through the polished, winding halls.

“The building was built in 1901. It was a factory. Sugar, they say. A sugar mill.” Fishman led them past door after door, all of them shut. Music floated out into the hall. “You work the same studio. Room is yours, twenty-four-seven, except for one to three at night, when the cleaning crew comes.

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