The Home For Wayward Ladies by Jeremy Blaustein Read Free Book Online Page B

deep on both sides of Duffy Square. The penguins huddle while they wait. Tickets don’t go on sale for another hour, so I’m supposed to kill time by wandering up and down the line looking capable of answering these simpleton’s questions. I grab a few stacks of flyers for the shows that I like most and limp sluggishly along to hand them out. It’s business as usual. Foreign tourist, foreign tourist, American pretending to be a foreign tourist so he doesn’t have to talk to me, foreign tourist, some bitch that takes a pamphlet before throwing it on the ground. But then one family gives me pause. 
     
    The three of them look on me with the intent to disembowel. It’s as if someone forgot to lock the front door to the asylum and they mistakenly wandered into the heart of Times Square. To make matters worse, they’re hideous. Their ringleader is a revolting woman who has outgrown the confines of her tattered overcoat. Her skin is like a nonpareil, all bumps and blemishes, and her hair is worn in two rainbow tie-dyed puffs, one on each side of her bulbous head. Her brother, who’s looming to her left, wears a black trench coat that swoops down to his ankles and has a beard that rivals anyone in ZZ Top. His look is very, “Columbine Killers: Where Are They Now?” Their mother, and presumable dark overlord, stands to their right. Her choice of black lipstick makes her bear resemblance to Morticia Addams, that is to say, if Morticia Addams’ mother had mated with a goat.
     
    It’s my general rule to not trust the ugly (although the ugly would do better off to not trust me). I cautiously move closer and remind myself that no one died and made me Estée Lauder. There is no longer a standard of beauty for the average theatergoer to uphold. Gone are the days when men wore hats and would take them off the moment they entered a theater, or even when women wore stockings and would take them off the moment they got home to thank the men for a night out at the theater. Nowadays, if you buy a ticket, you reserve the right to wear pajamas. It doesn’t matter if you look like fresh doo-doo pie. But how the hell the three of them decided to take in a Broadway show is miles beyond me. It’s safe to say they don’t seem the type. Their gothic mystique makes them appear better suited for a visit to Ripley’s Odditorium where they could inquire about posing for a new exhibit. 
     
    My boss is watching (from a safe distance, mind you) so I try to make a show of doling out the ol’ Applebaum charm. I say to them through my chattering smile, “Do you folks have any thoughts on what you’d like to see today?”
     
    The woman with the tie-dyed hair steps forward to speak on their behalf. When she does, her kinfolk are bemused. They look on me like they’ve discovered the last unicorn. Could it be? Am I their first ever encounter with a real-life homosexual? I remind myself to not reinforce stereotypes, which is a little difficult considering how often I choose to reduce myself to one.
     
    “We’re visiting the city and we want to see a show,” she says.
     
    “Then you’ve come to the right place!” I use this line as a barometer because it typically evokes a chuckle out of ignorami. Not this lady though. She looks back at me with the vacant expression of a horse whose salt lick contained trace amounts of LSD. “What kind of show do you want to see?” I ask, pressing on. Her indecision is expressed through a cough which she doesn’t even pretend to cover. I try another angle. “Were you thinking about a play or a musical?”
     
    Overwhelmed with a 50/50, she looks again to her family for assistance. They are nowhere to be found. Some time during the last sixty seconds, they must have ducked out of line, disappeared like gorillas in the mist. I didn’t see them go; I was transfixed by their sister’s unibrow. Looking over her shoulder, I spot them by the Olive Garden across the way. They’ve joined a swarm of people