Chapter Three
Joey
Does that mean he’s a bottom?
It’s Sunday morning – my favorite day of the week. The day I can lay in bed all morning if I want. The day I can just lounge around in my sleepwear, make pancakes or waffles – adding as much whipped cream and syrup as I can digest - and get caught up on reading.
Except not this morning, because there’s someone pounding on my door who obviously doesn’t want me to indulge in any of that. Bastards.
Rolling my head on my pillow, I glance with blurry-eyed focus at the time on my phone. Eight-thirty-seven. Who the hell is so rude to wake we so early on a Sunday morning? Do they have a death wish?
I pull the sheet over my head and hope they’ll just go away. Maybe it’s my neighbor in 2C. I think his name is Devon. He’s a United Flight Attendant and semi-professional opera singer. He and his lover get in spats all the damn time. One minute they’re hurling insults and the next I can hear them…well, it gives new meaning to gay tenors.
A few minutes pass and the knocking stops. Peace and quiet. Now that’s more like it. Closing my eyes again, I turn to my other side facing away from the sliver of light from the window, plump up my down-filled pillow and sigh.
Much better. I’m just about to fall back asleep again, with just the fleeting glimpse of a naked Kris Bryant, third baseman for the Cubs, pulling me back into dreamland, when my phone vibrates on the table next to me.
Ugh. Mother, go away!
Reaching out blindly, I grab the phone and pull it to my face. My eyes are slits as I try to read the number on the display. It does not say, MOTHER.
Instead, it shows up as Unknown caller.
Yeah, nope. Not gonna happen.
I press End and toss it on my bed and it lands in a poof of downy comforter.
The phone vibrates again.
And then the knocking on my door resumes.
Are you freaking kidding me?
Is there a fire in the building I’m not aware of? I lift my head to listen for any shouting or sirens. It’s quiet, even for my Chicago city neighborhood.
Frustrated and extremely crabby from the interruption of my perfect Sunday agenda, I swing my legs out from under the blankets, and trudge to the front door.
Peering through the peep hole, I notice a man who looks vaguely familiar, his phone to his ear, looking exasperated. My phone continues to ring in my hand.
I peek again at my phone and then squish my eyeball to the hole for another look. Taking a chance, I answer.
“Hello?”
Big sigh. “I need your help. Please.”
“Who is this?” I’m still a little foggy from sleep and don’t know for certain I’m talking to the same guy that’s out in the hallway.
“It’s Theo, Patrick’s friend.”
Then I hear a yip.
Yip, yip, yip.
I go through the motions of unlocking the three bolts of security and swing the door wide open, completely unconcerned with the fact that I’ve just been woken up and am standing here with bedhead and rumpled pajamas.
Wait, I am wearing pajamas, right?
Alarm races through me based on Theo’s wandering gaze up and down my body. I look down my legs and am filled with relief to find I do have on a pair of my sleep shorts. One of the very important lessons my mother instilled in me at a young age. “Never sleep naked! What if you had to evacuate in the middle of the night and all you had on was panties? How shameful.”
