by Ty Hall
The coin spider’s mating ritual is complex and counter-intuitive. The female coin spider is roughly two-and-a-half times larger than its male counterpart, and if she’s post-coitally voracious (which is most of the time) will devour the father of her soon-to-be-born spiderlings. Just eat him alive. Sometimes she’ll bite off one’s head before he even has a chance to pass on his DNA. Still, the male coin spider will fight to the death for a chance to plug a specific insemination duct. Either way, sex is suicide for one of the spiders, and it wasn’t going to be the poppet. The same could be said of Delia.
It’s not that she was physically bigger than Lisle (she was the only one who noticed the couple extra pounds she’d gained after she quit taking her SSRIs, and despite them still knew she was gorgeous). It was because, in her mind at least, she was bigger than all the little people around her. That is, she was important, and she was going to make it.
Delia was a first-gen American, born a big fish in a small border-town pond. Her parents gave her everything they never had in Tijuana, and she came to expect it. Terms like ‘hot’ were thrown around in conversations to and about her. She landed all the leading roles and musical solos throughout high school and came to believe that this not only indicated her natural beauty, but also suggested she had the savvy business mind of a top-notch negotiator. She seemed to know everyone wherever she went, yet no one was ever around (probably too intimidated by her beauty is the only reasonable answer).
Her paintings were occasionally hung in the coffee shop where she barista’d for a week, and her marketing plan of inviting prospective buyers to come to the inoperative school bus she’d claimed and refurbished into a studio/work-of-art-in-it’s-own-right to watch her creative process (and probably get a blow job) did not in any way diminish her artistic integrity nor the quality of her work. After all, numbers don’t lie—especially if theres a “$” in front of them—and she sold a lot of paintings.
She sold enough to pay for her fist semester of college, out of pocket, to triple minor in art, music, and drama (but she still applied for the federal grants). It was mid-fall Freshman semester that she met Felipe Pilar, but Delia called him Phil. Phil called Delia maravillosa, but she asked him to stop calling her that in public because it made them sound too Mexican.
Since she had already spent her federal student loan money on acrylics and wigs (and was nearing evection) Delia agreed to move in with Phil and his four additional roommates. Eventually, Delia took over Phil’s bed like a dandelion without him even seeming to notice and so now they were together he guessed. And when they fought about her probably needing at least get a part-time job to maybe help pay for the food, or bills, or even just the wine she drank, Filipe would sleep on the couch until Delia coaxed him back into bed like that was her job.
When she got pregnant by Filipe (she had no doubt) she didn’t tell him until one night when they were watching Seinfeld with the guys and she took the last slice of pizza without even asking and all of Filipe’s Latin passion came out and he went off on her exploding like an emotionally repressed Popocatépetl and the guys took all of the bottles and knives because they’d seen this play out before and put any other sharp, jagged, or object by which she could potentially draw blood (hers or his or both it didn’t really matter when they were at it like this) and threw them all in a Hefty and tied it up and took it with them to the nearest bar to be out of the way because they’d seen this play out too many times, and when they were finally alone she told the father of her unborn child that she was having it and there was nothing he could do about it, and he’d better give up painting because he needed to get a real job because this baby was just as much his responsibility as hers, and she was already giving up her body for it so he’d better man up.
“!Me cago en Dios!”“You know I don’t speak that spic talk.”“Shit, Delia. !Veta la verga!” When Phil threw up his hands and slammed the door behind him and Delia heard his footsteps descend the concrete stairs, she locked the door and went to the kitchen and popped the top off a Pearl and sat back down to finish watching the show and eating the slice of pizza. She didn’t really care if the baby would come out damaged or not. In fact, it might even be a plus if the baby came out weird, she thought. After all, if that was the case, Phil would have to stay home with their kid and the kid would probably get disability funds or charity or something and she could spend time flying between NY and LA for work. She pulled out one of the notebooks she kept shoved between the sofa cushions and started jotting down the script she had in her head the way it played out: her tragic and inspiring true story, the conclusion of which would be Delia (played by Delia) accepting three Academy Awards for Best Screenplay, Best Leading Actor, and Best Director, in the movie, for the movie (which would be totally meta and post-modern and how could they not make the ending come true with such prognostication because how perfect would that be?).
When Phil returned home and crawled through the unlatched window after shimmying up the gutter, he found Delia completely undressed in his bed, lips crusted purple from the wine she found (one of the bottles a roommate didn’t take in the Hefty bag because he was saving it for when his girlfriend came out for Spring Break—it was very expensive and, he thought, well-hidden). Filipe laid down beside her and put his hand on her belly and made a solemn Catholic vow to be a good father to their unborn child, and to the mother who would bear his genetic legacy.
Filipe picked up a job as a dishwasher over the summer while Delia was in New York with money from a student loan in Phil’s name, having persuaded him to take out the additional debt because she had to immerse herself in Broadway and absorb the energy of the city for inspiration. Simply had to. He signed the lease on a new (albeit smaller) apartment sans roommates so they could raise the baby alone as a family. He called the hotel Delia was supposed to be staying at to tell her the big news, but was told there was no one by her name there (the name she’d used was Ophelia Fitzgerald). So when she came back she had no idea of her new living arrangements when Filipe took the blindfold off to reveal his grand gesture.
Disappointed in its size compared to their last flat, Delia started shouting and Phil started shouting and she couldn’t understand how he could afford a new tattoo (a small $35 hamsa hand on his wrist to ward off the “evil eye,” which at the moment did not seem to be serving its intended purpose) for himself while she was gone but not get her anything and he looked around in disbelief and said with his hands ‘do you not see this apartment?’ but that wasn’t good enough and at some point it came out that Scott (a film student at NYC) had fingered her one night in a bar because she could tell Scott was going places and the whole reason she went up there was to make connections after all and it’s not like she actually screwed him or anything it was basically a business handshake, really, because he said he’d put her in his next film and besides if she had to use her body to open a couple of doors it would be worth it in the long run and that was absolutely just the last straw for Filipe. His psychic backbone broken, Filipe told her she had to go.
“You want me out? Fine! But I’m taking your baby with me. That’s right! And you’ll never see it because I’ll get an abortion before the stretch marks ruin my body. So, yeah, fuck you, Phil.”
Her clothes were still in moving boxes carefully folded by Filipe. He said she could could leave what she wanted with him for a week, she could trust that everything’d remained untouched until then, but at the end of seven days anything she left would be going to St. Joseph’s. But she wasn’t listening and didn’t have time for his negative vibes. Besides, she was too excited by the prospect of spending her first night homeless. Inspiration you just can’t buy. It would be another chapter in her story which she found herself writing in a 24-hour diner mononymously dubbed WAFFLES. She ordered a bottomless coffee and asked the waitress if she had a cigarette. She did, and Delia lit up and took one puff and put the cigarette out in the ashtray and didn’t notice the waitress’s version of the “evil eye”. Delia kept scribbling notes for her one-woman play until she was interrupted by an older gentleman who asked what she was up to.
Delia told him in great and embellished detail every single event since her sophomore year of high school that had led her to be currently slumming here, at WAFFLES, with him, right now, and “What time is it anyway? Exactly?”
The old man looked down at his gold watch. “11:09,” he said. You know, I used to be in showbiz a long time ago. I was a producer, if you can believe it. I might be able to help you miss?”
“Yesemena,” she answered. “Delia Yesemena.”
“I’m sure I can help you Ms. Yesemena. I could look at that play you’re working on, give you some pointers (as if she needed them) and maybe even produce it, off Broadway, of course, at first.”
“What time is it now, exactly?” “11:11.” Delia’s eyes doubled in size like moist Irish soda bread dough and she blinked out a tear.
“This was meant to be. It’s synchronicity (she stoped to write down the accidental couplet she uttered in case there might be a musical scene at this particular part of the show). I believe there might be a lucky spirit in our midst. I knew when I landed this morning that today was going to be an auspicious day indeed!” She threw her arms around the man as if he were her grandfather. “Oh,” she continued, “what’s your name, by the way.”
“Prescott,” he said, making it official. “You look tired. Why don’t I get you a room at the Days Inn? I can drive you there. Let you get some beauty sleep.” They stood and Prescott looked her over, migrating north from her ankles. The baby wasn’t showing yet. They almost crashed while her head was in his lap, but they made it and it as worth it for the $50 he left her and the temporary nest to sleep in, indefinitely, as long as he could get in touch with her whenever he wanted. And since he was going to manage her, he said, he’d get her a credit card for theatre- related expenses. He even started to believe all that himself.
The weekly lodging and allowance were good while they lasted until the baby began to show. But Delia found out when the older gentleman grew tired of her that other men (gentle or otherwise) would pay good money to do things to a young pregnant Latina. She got so consummate at charming them that she could keep them in the palm of her hand for hours without ever touching them and this power she discovered she had over men was better than any relations she’d ever have. She saved enough money to get the fetus aborted and canceled most of her standing appointments with enough money left over to get some professional headshots done at Kmart, which netted her a modeling gig for a locally-owned teen swap-shop run by one of her high school friends back in Harlingen. So now Delia was a bonafide star (though the cardboard picture in the window has faded a bit).
Her reputation proceeded herself in ways she hadn’t foreseen and made it difficult to find work involving clothes. So she headed north until her truck ran out of gas in front of a cinderblock bar called the Jim Backus Saloon and went inside because who knows what kind of adventure she might find, what destiny might be triggered like the vibrations of a struggling butterfly caught in a spiderweb. When the Universe shows you a door, always go through it.
So when the reporter asked, she gave her name:
“Delia. Delia Yesamena.” She turned to Lisle and whispered, “Because I always say ‘yes’.”
Fishbowl Press 