The Year of Yes by Maria Dahvana Headley Read Free Book Online

usually brought in as a savior after he’d electrocuted himself a few times. He was a tall, skinny, Colombian guy in his early forties, with a crest of black hair, a motorcycle jacket, jeans, and cowboy boots. He rode a Harley around the neighborhood. His only tools seemed to be a screwdriver and a hammer, and with these, he worked miracles.
    This did not mean that I wanted him to see me dressed in a hand towel.
    It was, however, too late. The Handyman walked in the door, looked me up and down, and gave a low whistle. I gave Pierre a glare that, if directed at any normal guy, would have induced internal bleeding. In Pierre, though, it only induced a smirk.
    “Hola,” said someone at about knee level. I looked down. A little girl was holding the Handyman’s free hand.
    “This is Carmela,” he said.
    Carmela was six. She had two haphazard black pigtails, and a small suitcase in one hand. I felt my stomach drop. As a result of a couple of kids’ plays I’d written, I’d developed a horror of small children. I would’ve taken an entire audience of New York Times reviewers over one critic dressed inOshKosh. The little girls were like Elizabethan audiences: They tended to boo and throw things. Had they rotten tomatoes at their disposal, we would have been pelted. The little boys typically slept through entire performances, only to surge forth, weeping, during the quietest scenes.
    Carmela dropped the Handyman’s hand, marched to the corner, sat down Indian style, and opened her suitcase. Something in her manner gave me the impression that she was carrying a disassembled sniper rifle. I allowed myself a fantasy. Maybe she’d take out the twins. Or the feral cats that hissed for hot dogs every time I passed through the courtyard. Or Pierre. Especially Pierre.
    “Later,” he said, spinning on his polished heel. The Handyman and I listened to him dancing his way down the stairs, and then turned to each other.
    “You gotta leak, mami? You need me to fix you up?”
    In fact, no. I just liked having strange men over to my apartment when I was looking like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The Handyman must have seen the frustration on my face, because he jerked a thumb at the bathroom and departed. I fled into my hut for clothing and a newsboy cap to stuff my plastic head into.
    I could hear the Handyman banging about and swearing. Our bathroom was three feet by three feet and boasted a triangular sink the size of a measuring cup, and a shower stall constructed of what seemed to be cellophane. The water had only two temperature options: Vesuvius and Siberia.
    I cringed inside my hut, having severe second thoughts about the yes policy. The Handyman had asked me out before. In fact, the Handyman asked me out every time I saw him. He was that kind of guy. He was, indeed, a handyman,in both the usual sense and in the two-fisted-assgrabbing sense. He hadn’t actually grabbed my ass, but I felt that that was only because I’d never turned my back on him.
    Did I really have the balls to do this? Was it insane? Maybe I needed to be hospitalized. I had a brief fantasy of abdicating responsibility à la Blanche DuBois, deep-ending on the kindness of strangers. Attendants to bring me juice, and hold my straw while I sipped. Someone else to do my laundry. A white-sheeted bed with a real box spring. It had been years since I’d had a box spring. Unfortunately, Zak and I had recently watched the filmed version of Marat/Sade, the Peter Weiss play set in the asylum at Charenton. All those crazed inmates, flinging themselves about, babbling and scrabbling, speaking in Brechtian tongues. I’d been traumatized. Marat/Sade was appallingly similar to my own life.
    “Chica!” The Handyman came into the room, wrench in hand. “Chica, chica, chica, you gotta problem, but I’m gonna fix it for you no charge, ‘cause you’re sexy.”
    Let it be said that I had a severe allergy to the metaphoric conceit that women were as easy to (ful)fill