Confessions of a Recovering Slut by Hollis Gillespie

Author:Hollis Gillespie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Lost Love

MILL’S MITTENS ARE MISSING. Yes, she wears mittens even though it’s uncommonly hot out. They’re tokens of comfort, I figure, like a blanket. Daniel calls them gloves and taught her to say it, only she often drops consonants when she talks. Our cats Lucy and Tinkerbell have become “Oosy” and “Inky” to Milly, and her gloves, which are so small they didn’t even bother sewing fingers into them (they’re just fuzzy pouchlike things) are “love.” Yesterday, as I read the paper, I felt her fleeced little hand on my face, and I looked up to see her smiling at me, proudly sporting her mittens. “My love,” she said sweetly.

After that I knew I wouldn’t be going to Nicaragua to help my sister Cheryl tend to my mother’s best friend Bill, who, if he had any strength left, would probably use it to beat me with a fireplace poker. He’s pissed at me for disclosing that the hotel he runs down there doubles as a brothel, which is no surprise. It was in Costa Rica (where he owned a bar that was as profitable as a huge hemorrhage inside his wallet) that he was about to go into business with a Nigerian woman who ran a hotel/whorehouse on the beach up the street. When I last visited he gave me a tour of the place, careful to point out the laundry facilities.

The arrangement was to have been that the African madam would populate Bill’s bar with high-end whores every night, thus attracting an increase in patronage to his establishment. I don’t know how Bill planned to compensate the madam, or perhaps he didn’t, as they never did become business partners, though Bill left Costa Rica insisting his next business venture would be a facsimile of hers. I believed him, as Bill usually does what he says he will do.

Except die. He’s been blathering about how his end is near for years, only he keeps breathing, regardless of his recent heart attack. My sister Cheryl is bereft, and dropped everything to be by his side. She loves Bill like a musty old bedtime toy treasured since her infancy. They’ve spent countless hours together since my mother’s death; drinking, chain smoking, bitching about life in general and me in particular. I’ve changed, they complain. I used to be fun. I used to be brazen and braless, booze-addled, boy-crazy, and adventurous. Another one lost to the establishment, they toast, promising that they themselves will never sell out. And they never will.

Occasionally Bill tries to shake Cheryl free. It’s nothing personal, it’s just that Bill is unaccustomed to lasting attachments, even if you count my mother. When he met my mother she had only four years left to live, but through her Bill acquired Cheryl and, spiky old bag of magma that he is, Bill has become Cheryl’s token of comfort in life. He can’t shake her free. If he is lost she will find him, even in a jungle in Central America.

I made plans to go, too, and got Lary to commit as well.

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