After Delores by Sarah Schulman

was still standing there.
    â€œIf you don’t give it to me right now, I’m going to make such a scene that they’ll never let you back in this place.”
    Then I got scared. It wasn’t losing the bar so much, it was the reality of the situation, of how Delores was angry that I was alive and she intended to obliterate me.
    She yelled so loud, everything in that place stopped except the video games’ repeating jingle.
    â€œGive it to me now or I’m going to make a scene.”
    What could I do? I looked down at my table at The Blue and the Gold and slowly undid all the buttons. I handed her the wilted green shirt and sat there in my bra. You would think she’d at least leave at that point, but she took it back to her seat and sipped her drink. It was a while before Sal, the bartender, came over and told me to put on my jacket. That’s when my head split open. It wasn’t a headache. It was my skull. It cracked from the inside and nothing was keeping my brains together. I couldn’t even cry. I couldn’t do nothing.

14
    ALL THAT NIGHT I lay awake in a dream of my own invention starring Delores as the phantom devil because no mortal being could have such impeccable timing. I dreamed I was wearing a white corset and it started to fill with blood. No matter how much I tensed my muscles, I couldn’t keep it from seeping out. Finally the thing was soaked through and dripping red onto the carpet. I was in a fancy house with thick rugs and overstuffed sofas on wooden legs. I saw Delores coming and tried to hide the corset under the chair, but no matter how much I shoved it back with my feet, it kept poking out from behind the upholstery.
    My insides were sweating as the sun woke me up. Rivulets of salty liquid ran and dripped under my skin.
    â€œYou’ll be sorry,” I told her to myself, twitching like a rough cut in an experimental movie. “I should just kill you right now.”
    Where the fuck was she? I called her old job but the receptionist said she quit. Then I took Sunshine’s number out of the phonebook but got that fucking answering machine. I’m sure Delores was sitting there watching the color TV and screening her calls, that bitch.
    â€œBitch,” I yelled, after the beep.
    It was one of those days—cold on the outside but too hot under any jacket. I walked along the avenues realizing that all this time and after many incidents, Delores continued to ignore the state of my emotional life. The time had come to put a stop to this, to let her know how I really felt. On a whim, really, I bought a postcard of the Statue of Liberty and scrawled angrily on the back:
    I hate you Delores. I walk down the street dreaming of smashing your face with a hammer, but when your face was right in front of me, I had no hammer. What have you done that someone who once loved and cared for you could be made to feel this way?
    And I mailed it.
    By the end of that week my living room was filled with thirty novena candles. They were all on their fourth day of a seven-day flame. That way, when I would lie on the couch, there was a warm glow, sometimes feeling like a funeral, with me stretched out, open casket.
    The walls were ghost dances from the inside and from the street, gyrating disco-heaven. If I crashed on the couch with fire all around me, it was more peaceful. I had something to look at instead of nothing and something moving beside me instead of no one. I was lying in state when the phone rang.
    â€œDelores?”
    â€œNo. This is Charlotte.”
    I didn’t make a sound.
    â€œBeatriz and I just had a big fight about Marianne and I need to be with someone who cared about her. Do you mind if I come over?”
    I looked around the apartment. It was a mausoleum. What’s worse, Charlotte’s answering machine was sitting on the floor right next to Priscilla’s gun. I’d decided that morning that the two went together quite