Slightly Single Read Online Free PDF Page B

actor who shall remain nameless.
    “Cristoforo waxes your lip,” I repeat, not sure whether to be bemused or amused.
    “Not just my lip. My whole face. Believe me, Tracey, it’s better than shaving every day.”
    “I believe you, Raphael. So that’s how you keep that boyish look.”
    “You know it. Let’s go mingle with Alexander and Joseph,” Raphael suggests, promptly bouncing back to Giddy Enthusiasm as he links his arm through mine.
    We make our way across the room to where they’re standing. Along the way, I snag a daquiri from the tray of a passing waiter who’s all rippling muscles and washboard abs, practically naked save for a tiny thong.
    “You hired waiters?” I ask Raphael, who shakes his head.
    “Tracey! That’s Jones,” he says. “You’ve met him before.”
    “Jones? Just Jones?”
    “Just Jones.”
    “I don’t remember him.”
    “Yes, you do.”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “Of course you do, Tracey. He’s the dancer. The one from Long Island? The one with the tutu fetish?”
    Raphael has this annoying habit of insisting that you know people or have been places when you have no idea what he’s talking about. It happens all the time. I used to argue with him.
    Now I just shrug and go along, pretending to know Jones.
    Note that Raphael’s crowd, like the pop music industry, has more than its share of mono-monikered folks. Jones and Cristoforo. Cher and Madonna.
    I don’t know what to make of this, but it seems significant. I’m about to point it out to Raphael when he goes on with his explanation.
    “Jones is going to be doing a chorus part in a summer stock production of Hello, Dolly in Texas, of all godforsaken places, so I told him to grab a tray and pretend he’s rehearsing for the show. I thought he’d wear a tux, something classic with tails, but, Tracey, you know Jones and his infernal need to display his physique.”
    Like I said, I don’t know Jones or his infernal need to display his physique, but I pretend to, rolling my eyes along with Raphael. Still, I have to ask, because I don’t get the connection: “Hello, Dolly?”
    “Yes, yes, yes, you know—the Harmonia Gardens scene with the dancing waiters.”
    I do know, but before I can tell Raphael, he rushes on, assuming I’m clueless, “You know, the dance contest and the stairway and ‘so nice to have you back where you belong.’ Shh, shh, we’re almost there,” Raphael says impatiently, wildly waving his hand at me as though I’m the one who won’t shut up.
    “Almost there” means that we’re almost standing in front of Alexander, Joseph and the object of Raphael’s latest crush. Maybe it’s just that he’s positioned beside two of the most flamboyant men in the room, but he seems awfully low-key and—well, normal. Too normal for Raphael’s taste.
    “Aruba…Jamaica…ooh, I want to take him…Tracey, isn’t he adorable?” Raphael gushes in my ear against the opening bars of the song “Kokomo,” which is blasting over the sound system.
    “He’s pretty cute,” I agree. “But not adorable.”
    He looks aghast. “Tracey! How can you say that? He’s definitely adorable.”
    I reassess.
    The guy has short brown hair—just plain old short brown hair, rather than one of Cristoforo’s statement-making “styles” or tints that are so popular with this crowd. He has brown eyes, and a nice nose, a nicemouth—the kind of guy you’d expect to find teaching sixth grade, or pushing a toddler in a shopping cart, or raking some suburban lawn. The kind of guy you’d expect to find pretty much anywhere other than here.
    But here he is, an average Joe in a crowd of outrageous Josephs and Alexanders and Joneses—which is, I suspect, precisely the reason Raphael is so attracted to him.
    “Joseph!” Raphael cries, moving forward. “I love the sarong! Yours, too, Alexander! And you…whoever you are, I love the sweater. Banana Republic?”
    “I’m not sure,” the guy says, wrinkling his nose a