The Way It Is

by Patrick Sanchez

Genres: Women's Fiction; Humor & Satire

Synopsis

Patrick Sanchez's wickedly funny debut novel, GIRLFRIENDS, shimmied off the shelves and brought him an instant legion of fans. Now, in THE WAY IT IS, he introduces three thirty-something roommates with insatiable appetites for life, love, and anything deep-fried in this delicious, delirious celebration of women whose hearts are as big as their hips. . .

When The Chips Are Down, These Girls Bring The Dip

Livin' large has never gotten Ruby Waters what she wants in life. Overweight and addicted to every fad diet on the planet, Ruby's sure that the only thing that stands between her and the good life are those extra pounds she can't seem to shed. But when a girl's stuck caring for an annoying ex-husband, an impossibly critical mother, and the world's most psychotic, incontinent Chihuahua, her best friend is a dozen doughnuts and a can of whipped topping. She'll starve herself tomorrow, and soon, she just might have the courage to go after what she really wants. . .the hunky coworker with the bod of steel. . .

Fat is where it's at, honey. That's plus-sized model Wanda Johnson's motto. The larger-than-life African-American goddess may top the scales, but there are plenty of men begging for her phone number. The only thing standing between Wanda and fashion fame is another model who wants what Wanda has and would do anything--that's anything--to get it. . .

Simone Reyes, D.C.'s most famous Latina, certainly goes after what she wants--and it's usually ripped with muscles and under thirty. As the city's sexiest anchorwoman, the glamorous, svelte Simone doesn't have time to mess with commitment. She's too focused on making it all the way to the top. . .while protecting a secret that could blow the lid off her whole fraudulent life. . .

In the nation's capitol, where the drinks are cold and so is the competition, these three roomies are joining forces, battling their way through a maze of Chubby Chaser web sites, scam diet centers, outrageous fantasies, romantic entanglements, power shopping, and plus-size fashion shows. . .because when life throws you a few curves, it's best to show them off!

Patrick Sanchez is a native Washingtonian, having grown up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. He is a graduate of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia and has been a professional writer for several years. He currently lives in Arlington, Virginia. He is also the author of Girlfriends, and is currently working on his next novel.

Release date: July 19, 2012

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

“Ruby!” Doris called from the living room to her daughter in the kitchen. “My arm is feeling numb. I think I might be having a stroke,” she continued with just a slight hint of panic in her voice.

“Well, go have it in the basement, would you? I just vacuumed in there,” Ruby replied with an utter lack of enthusiasm. She didn’t even look up from the kitchen floor she was mopping.

Doris gradually lifted her elderly frame from the sofa and meandered slowly into the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” she asked, looking at Ruby, already forgetting about her supposedly numb arm. Her words were saying, “What are you doing?” but her tone was saying, “What are you fucking up now?”

“What’s it look like I’m doing?” Ruby responded. “I’m mopping the floor.”

“Didn’t you just mop it an hour ago?”

“As a matter of fact, I did, but that beast of yours peed on it again,” Ruby said, nodding her head in Taco’s direction. He was sitting almost regally in the kitchen threshold and had been staring intently at Ruby from the moment she grabbed the mop and pail. He seemed to silently mock her for having to clean up after him. Taco was Doris’s tiny white Chihuahua. He had pink ears and a pink nose and had been Doris’s pride and joy for almost six years. Taco adored Doris and only Doris. He hated everyone else and growled viciously at anyone that came within ten feet of his tiny six-pound frame. He hated Ruby as much as anyone, but, having gotten used to her regular visits, she was one of the few guests that Taco would at least tolerate. He and Ruby had developed a sort of understanding. He agreed not to growl at (or attempt to maul) Ruby as long as she made no attempts to pet him, touch him, or otherwise engage him.

“Well, of course he peed on the floor. It’s raining outside.”

“What?” Ruby replied, halting the mop and looking up from the floor.

“You know Taco doesn’t like to go outside when it’s raining.”

“Well, he’d better learn,” Ruby responded before turning her head to Taco. “Did you hear that, Taco?” she said firmly to the dog, who immediately let out a slight growl, warning Ruby to leave him alone.

“Careful on the wet floor, Ruby,” Doris said as Ruby returned to her mopping. “If you trip with all that weight you might crack the tile,” Doris added with a giggle, as if what she was saying was a good-natured tease, when in fact, it was about the third snide remark Doris had made about Ruby’s weight since she arrived a few hours earlier. Ruby had cleaned the bathrooms and the kitchen, changed the sheets, did a little dusting, and ran the vacuum cleaner across the carpet. She made this trek out to LaPlata, Maryland, about once a week to check on her aging mother, help with any paperwork or bills, and keep the house in order. Doris was in her seventies and hadn’t fared well since Ruby’s father passed away a few years earlier. She suffered from all sorts of vague aches and pains and seemed to be in a rather chronic state of mild depression, about which Doris, of course, would do nothing. If Ruby so much as hinted at Doris trying therapy or taking an antidepressant, she always received the same response. She wasn’t “crazy” and she wasn’t “going to see any damn two-hundred-dollar-an-hour psychiatrist.”

Ruby finished up the mopping and dumped the soiled water down the sink. She watched Doris make her way back to the sofa for the second half of Wheel of Fortune while she headed for the bedroom to grab her purse and hit the road. As Ruby threw her bag over her shoulder she couldn’t resist checking on it—just to make sure that it was still there, waiting for her. She slid open the closet door, riffled past a few blouses and skirts, and found it—Doris’s little black dress. Ruby lifted it off the rod and held it out in front of her almost as if it were a wedding dress or some sacred piece of clothing.

“One day,” she said quietly to herself. One day she was going to get into that dress. It was one of the most classically beautiful pieces of clothing Ruby had ever seen, and the only designer dress her mother had ever owned. The dress always reminded Ruby of the first time she saw her mother in it. It was New Year’s Eve, 1976. She’d never forgotten the moment when Doris emerged from the bedroom in her new black dress from the now defunct department store, Woodward & Lothrop. Her mother was well into her forties by then, but it was one of the first, and best, memories Ruby, who was five at the time, had of Doris. To Ruby, that evening in 1976 was the most beautiful Doris had ever been. Ruby never got to see her mother as a young woman. Doris was in her early forties when Ruby was born—not unusual today, but when Ruby was born in the early seventies, a woman giving birth in her forties was much less common. Doris never talked about why she had Ruby later in life, but Ruby’s grandmother had told her that Doris and Ruby’s father had tried to have children in their twenties to no avail, eventually resigning to the fact that, for whatever reason, Doris was unable to conceive. Of course, after years of trying to get pregnant, Doris saw no need to use birth control, and life progressed without incident for years until one day in 1970 when Doris was late. She thought it might be early menopause and boy was she shocked when the doctor told her that at forty-one, she was going to have a baby.

Ruby raised the dress in front of her and gave it a long stare. She looked in the mirror and, as usual, focused on her face rather than her body. It wasn’t so bad looking at her full cheeks, lined with chin length red hair. She could handle seeing her blue eyes and soft nose. It was her body she couldn’t stand to look at. Somehow, she managed to look in the mirror and focus on the dress she held in front of her without looking at her body.

Since she was a little girl, Ruby had silently fantasized about wearing the little black dress despite the fact that, by the time she was ten years old, she was already too large for it. She had not inherited her mother’s petite frame or fast metabolism. Instead, Ruby had to settle for the unfortunate genetic propensity to gain weight that she shared with her late father—“the thrifty gene,” she’d heard some reporter on television call it. Before the industrial age it was an asset, coming in handy in times when food was scarce, and the ability to store loads of excess fat was essential for survival. But now, in an age of super-sizes and value meals it was, at best, a nuisance, and, at worst, a disaster of grand proportions.

Ruby looked at the dress. It was an Oscar de la Renta cocktail dress made of satin with a fine outer layer of chiffon. It was simply elegant with spaghetti straps and intricate beading along the bustline. It made Ruby think of Doris at her happiest and reminded her of a more pleasant time for herself when she spent her days playing on the neighbor’s jungle gym or watching Josie and the Pussycats rather than constantly obsessing over her weight like she did now as an adult. Her mother’s black dress was the catalyst for every diet that Ruby ever went on. She always vowed to, one day, fit into Doris’s little black dress.

“What are you doing in there?” Doris called from the living room.

“Just wrapping up,” Ruby replied as she gently and reverently placed the dress back in the closet and made her way to the kitchen. She was about to open the back door and put the mop on the deck when she hit a slick spot on the floor and lost her footing. She let out a yelp as she fell face forward toward the floor. She tried to use the back end of the mop as a cane of sorts to stay on her feet. Trying to remain upright, she crashed the wooden rod into the floor, but she slipped onto her belly anyway—one hand still grasping the mop.

“Jesus Christ!” she said to herself, trying to regain some composure and get back on her feet.

“Shit,” she said quietly as she lifted herself from the ground and saw what she had done when she jammed the mop handle into the floor. There it was, staring up at her, plain as day—a small crack in the tile. Doris was going to have a field day with that.

“Oh, shut up!” Ruby said to a silent Taco, who had observed the whole spectacle with a condescending look while perched just outside the kitchen.

“Yep! Beer, football, and pussy,” Jeremy said to Ruby, who was sitting next to him on the Metro.

“Yeah, I’d have to agree,” Ruby replied as she and Jeremy observed a large man with a bit of a potbelly on the other end of the subway car.

Some people read or listened to music to make time pass on their commute. Ruby and Jeremy liked to play “Homo or Hetero,” an intricate game of skill in which the players choose an unsuspecting candidate from the crowd and try to figure out what “team” he or she played for. “Beer, football, and pussy,” was Jeremy’s standard way of saying that their current male selection was straight.

“He was an easy one. He has straight written all over him.”

“I don’t know. I’m sure there are gay men over thirty who have potbellies and look a little disheveled,” Ruby replied.

“Yeah, but we don’t claim any of those,” Jeremy joked.

“So the gay community is selective now? Only good-looking, fit guys need apply?”

“Absolutely,” Jeremy replied with a bit of a chuckle. “And if your body-fat quotient doesn’t make the cut, you don’t get your card . . . or your free toaster.” “Look, he’s married,” Jeremy added, noting the band on the gentleman’s left hand.

“Of course he is. Men can be fat and unattractive and still get married. Women, on the other hand . . .”

Jeremy just offered a slight smile in response. He really couldn’t argue with Ruby’s point. It did sort of seem that even the most unattractive and socially inept straight man could land a woman. Women just seemed to be more forgiving of imperfections than men. Women were supposed to put up with protruding bellies and receding hairlines, but the moment women’s hips started to get a little wide, or fine lines emerged on their faces, their husbands starting hunting for some twenty-five-year-old twinkie with saline tits and hair extensions.

Ruby and Jeremy were on their way back to D.C. from a shopping excursion in the suburbs. Ruby had agreed to help Jeremy find an absolutely gorgeous gown to wear in the annual High Heel Race. Just before Halloween, J.R.’s, a local gay bar, sponsored this event, which originally consisted of a few dozen men in women’s clothing and high heels racing down 17th Street. Although a few exuberant drag queens still raced for the win with everything they had, over the years, the event melded into more of a parade or a showcase of sorts. Every year the evening became less and less about the race, and more about a bunch of queens who wanted to try to outdo each other with the most outrageous and extravagant costumes. Jeremy was pulling out all the stops to emerge on top this year and garner the most enthusiastic response from the spectators.

“Sorry we didn’t find anything at Bloomingdale’s,” Ruby said before continuing. “Maybe it was just as well. Do you really want to spend a fortune on a dress you’re only going to wear once? Why don’t we look at T.J. Maxx or Marshall’s or something?”

“T.J. Maxx?” Jeremy said before raising his voice. “Blasphemy!”

“You’re only going to be dancing around and lip-syncing to music. I just thought we could find something more reasonable for the parade at . . .”

“Ruby! Do you think Britney Spears buys her costumes at T.J. Maxx before she dances around and lip-syncs to music? . . . And it’s a race, Ruby. Not a parade. There won’t be any dancing and singing—just running.”

“It’s a parade, Jeremy, and honey, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you ain’t exactly Britney Spears.”

“Well, of course not. She’s the ultimate drag queen.”

“Really?”

“Sure. She parades around in fabulous costumes and big hair, has great choreography, and lip-syncs to ‘Baby One More Time’ and ‘Oops, I Did It Again.’ You don’t get much more drag queen than that.”

“And that’s why she’s your idol?”

“That, and because she fucked Justin Timberlake.”

“Dated Justin Timberlake,” Ruby replied, correcting him. “The fucking part is debatable.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

The pair laughed as a few of the other passengers watched the gay guy and the fat girl ham it up on the subway—a fag and a tag. Ruby and Jeremy met more than ten years earlier when they were attending George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. One might guess it was fate that sat them next to each other on the first day of their freshman year when their professor had the ultra-original idea of each student partnering with the person next to them, quickly interviewing each other, and then telling the class the life story (in one minute or less) of their newfound friend. During the course of their respective interviews Ruby and Jeremy were innately able to relate to each other. As they talked it became clear that they had much in common. Ruby was from an outlying Maryland suburb of D.C. called LaPlata and Jeremy was from Fredericksburg, Virginia, about fifty miles south of D.C. Both towns had now grown into typical suburban communities, but when Ruby and Jeremy were growing up, both LaPlata and Fredericksburg had a little bit of a rural feel. When they started at George Mason in the late eighties it was their first time away from home. Neither of them knew anyone at the school, and they immediately sensed something about each other—they were both outsiders—Ruby, because she was fat, and Jeremy, because he was gay. They were two of society’s outcasts who happened to find each other in English composition class. They were never going to be fully embraced by the beautiful people of mainstream society, so they began doing the one thing that fat women and gay men have been doing together since the beginning of time—trashing all the people who shunned them.

Just minutes after meeting they started bantering like old friends. They made fun of the dim-witted story their professor had read at the beginning of class (of which he was the author, of course); trashed a girl on the other side of the room, who was an “obvious whore”; and debated the authenticity of the breasts belonging to some blonde bitch, who was telling her interviewer about her days as a cheerleader at Wakefield High in Arlington. They had such fun during their interview-turned-dish-session, that Jeremy asked Ruby if she wanted to grab some lunch after class.

Ruby was in love with Jeremy from the start. He was handsome with blond hair and brown eyes. He was about five ten or so with a nice average frame. He certainly wasn’t buff, or even fit, but he was thin. Ruby was astounded when Jeremy asked her out on what she thought was an actual date. What was a cute thin guy like Jeremy wanting with the likes of her? Ruby couldn’t figure it out, and a big part of her didn’t want to. She just wanted to enjoy the fact that Jeremy was interested in her. They went to see Heathers with Winona Ryder and Christian Slater on their first outing, and then out to dinner at Chi Chi’s at Fair Oaks Mall. On their next excursion they went to see Dead Poet’s Society and then to P.J. Skidoos. The third date was a trip to the multiplex in Merrifield to see Look Who’s Talking and yet another dinner at Fuddruckers in Annandale. In between outings to the movies and local restaurants they saw each other on campus every day—either in class or during lunch. Over the next few weeks Ruby saw lots of Jeremy, she saw lots of movies, and she saw lots of restaurants. One thing she didn’t see, though, was Jeremy’s dick. They were spending so much time together and seemed to really be connecting, but there was never any physical intimacy. Ruby figured that, as usual, he wasn’t interested in anything romantic with her because she was fat. The thought hadn’t even occurred to her that Jeremy was gay. This was the eighties—before Ellen and Will & Grace had hit the airwaves. Ruby was naïve—she didn’t know gay people could look like Jeremy. He didn’t have a lisp or a limp wrist. In fact, he looked like someone out of a J. Crew catalog. Although Ruby was disappointed, at the same time it was such a relief when Jeremy finally came out to her a few weeks after they had met. Knowing Jeremy was gay put a whole new kind of ease in their relationship. At least it was her equipment (or lack thereof) that kept Jeremy from putting any moves on her and not her weight.

“Look. Another man on deck! I think this one’s a big queen,” Jeremy said to Ruby as they watched an attractive thirty-something man in preppy attire board the train with a canvas briefcase over one shoulder and a copy of The Washington Post in his hand.

“No, I think you’re wrong about this one,” Ruby said.

“Ruby, how often am I wrong?”

“Not often,” Ruby had to admit. “But this one looks straight to me.”

“Are you kidding me?” Jeremy said, looking the man up and down as discreetly as possible. “Banana Republic pants, J. Crew shirt, Timberland boots, socks from Structure, and the belt looks Coach,” Jeremy continued. “And I bet the tighty-whities are Calvin Klein.” Jeremy had a unique talent for identifying where anyone and everyone bought their clothes. “Now, if he had mixed in a pair of JC Penney socks or Payless shoes with the ensemble, then I might consider him being straight, but . . .”

Ruby laughed as Jeremy cut himself off in mid-sentence, realizing that Ruby had won this round.

“Ha! I win,” Ruby said as the two of them watched the gentleman get settled into a seat, sort through his newspaper, and go straight for the Sports page.

The day after the unsuccessful shopping outing with Jeremy, Ruby was on her way home from the bank after making a withdrawal from her savings account. Outwardly, she called it her Christmas Club, but it was actually her “Thin Ruby” account. She’d opened it years ago and had three percent of her paycheck directly deposited into it every two weeks. She also made random deposits into the account when she came into a little extra cash. She had amassed almost three thousand dollars—three thousand dollars that she was going to blow on fancy clothes, makeup, and salon visits as soon as she lost weight.

It pained her to be making a withdrawal from her Thin Ruby account for purposes for which it was not intended. Lately, she was having trouble making ends meet and was forced to tap her Thin Ruby account just to meet her monthly expenses.

Ruby could manage most of her bills. She didn’t spend much money on clothes, and Lord knew, she had virtually no social life. Besides her car expenses and her grocery and restaurant bills, she wasn’t a big spender. It was really only her mortgage payment that constantly left her strapped for money.

The only thing Ruby had asked for in her divorce settlement with her ex-husband, Warren, the year before was to keep the house—and, oh, how she loved her house. She and Warren had bought the three-bedroom brick row house just before they were married. Ruby fell in love with it the moment she saw it. It was nearly a hundred years old, and, although it had been updated here and there over the years, it was definitely a fixer-upper. That was one of the reasons Ruby liked it so much—it needed work, just like her, and it was also one of the reasons she and Warren could afford it. The house was in the Logan Circle neighborhood of the District, which, until recent years, had always been considered a marginal area of the city. When Ruby and Warren first started looking at real estate, Ruby really had no interest in living in the city—after all, D.C. had only recently started to recover from years of neglect and corruption under a crack-smoking mayor, services like snow plowing and trash collection weren’t always reliable, and Lord help you if you had to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles—getting a driver’s license renewed was an all-day ordeal, and that was when the computer system was actually up and running. But Warren had grown up in the city, and he sold Ruby on living close to work and being able to take advantage of public transportation, top restaurants, and a multitude of cultural activities.

When Ruby and Warren began looking for a new house in D.C. their realtor kept telling them about Logan Circle and how the whole neighborhood was going through a renaissance—how new shops were opening, how trendy restaurants were starting to sprout up along 14th Street—and, in more of a hushed tone, how white people were starting to move back in.

After realizing that the Dupont Circle and Capitol Hill neighborhoods were out of their price range, Ruby and Warren decided to give Logan Circle a look-see. After shuffling through a few dozen houses, the couple finally settled on Ruby’s current residence just off Rhode Island Avenue. It was a classic three-story row house with a kitchen, combined living room/dining room, and a small den on the first floor. The second floor housed two small bedrooms and a full bath, and the third floor was a master suite that spanned the entire length of the house. The day after they closed on their mortgage, Ruby, with limited assistance from Warren, immediately set out to spruce up the place and continued renovating and remodeling for years. She landscaped the tiny front yard with all sorts of flowers and shrubs. She repainted every room in the house, had the hardwood floors buffed and stained, and hired a contractor to completely update both bathrooms. In a couple more years she hoped to save enough money to have her kitchen completely remodeled, although she had no idea how that would ever happen with the current state of her financial affairs. At this point, she wasn’t really sure she could afford to keep the house at all.

As Ruby drove home from the bank she thought about ways to remedy her financial situation. As far as she could tell, she really only had two options if she wanted to keep her house: pick up a second job, or get a roommate. Neither option appealed to her, but she wasn’t going to give up her house. She had put so much of herself into the house over the years. It was her little oasis from the harsh world. And the realtor had been right—the neighborhood kept improving after Ruby and Warren moved in. It had become an interesting mix of poor city residents on government assistance, a sizable population of gay men, and an emerging abundance of well-to-do DINK (dual income no kids) straight couples, who bought older homes and spent a fortune renovating them. Some upscale restaurants had opened as well as a few bars and nightclubs, but the neighborhood hadn’t really “arrived” until the Fresh Fields organic food market opened on P Street. All of a sudden, everyone in Logan Circle proudly referred to the Fresh Fields when explaining where their home was. People would say things like, “Yes, I live over by the Fresh Fields,” or “You know, near the Fresh Fields, that’s where I live,” as if having an uppity supermarket within walking distance of their home automatically transformed the neighborhood into Bel Air or something. Despite the Fresh Fields and the influx of trendy eateries and hot spots, the neighborhood was still home to its share of riffraff. Hookers still gave blow jobs and dealers still moved crack and ecstasy, only now, they did it in alleys behind restaurants with white tablecloths or stores that sold organic apples and unbleached flour.

As Ruby continued her drive home, she gave the idea of getting a second job brief consideration. There seemed to be a limited number of options when seeking part-time work that would fit around the schedule of her regular job. She wasn’t interested in working at a mall or waiting tables, and the idea of telemarketing gave her the creeps—she faced enough rejection in her life without hundreds of people regularly hanging up on her. She also reconsidered getting a roommate to help defray her housing costs. Other than Warren, she hadn’t lived with anyone in years and knew it would take some adjusting, but maybe it would be okay if she found the right roommate.

How bad could it be? Ruby thought.

After weighing her options, she decided that looking for a roommate was a lesser evil than getting a second job. Maybe she could run an ad in the Washington City Paper or The Washington Post. It would be nice if she knew someone who was looking for a place to live, but the only people Ruby socialized with on a regular basis were Jeremy and her mother. Jeremy owned a condo in Arlington, and the idea of Doris living with her made Ruby’s heart palpitate. Ruby concluded that she would have to find a roommate the old-fashioned way—by running an ad and sorting through candidates in hopes of not ending up with a total freak for a roommate.

Ruby was reclining on the sofa, typing on her laptop computer, and half watching a rerun of Designing Women on Lifetime. In between giggling at the antics of Suzanne Sugarbaker and Mary Jo Shiveley, Ruby was preparing an ad to run in The Washington Post classifieds. She was trying to develop a brief description of the house and what she was looking for in a roommate—and with the price of the ad by the word, Ruby was trying to make it as concise as possible.

As Ruby proofed the draft, and added her phone number, she heard a knock at the door and immediately knew who it was. Only one person had such a slow, deliberate knock.

“Just a sec,” Ruby called as she set the laptop aside and made her way to the door.

“Hello, Ruby,” Warren said as she opened the door. Just like his knock, his greeting was slow and punctuated. It was never “Hey,” or “Hi.” It was always “Hello” or something even more formal.

“Warren? What’s up?” Ruby replied. She loved saying things like, “What’s up?” or sometimes, “How’s it hangin’?” to Warren. It was fun to counter his proper expressions with informal slang. Such behavior annoyed and perplexed Warren, and lately, that was a good thing as far as Ruby was concerned.

“I was in the vicinity and ascertained that it would be advantageous to stop by and collect the last of my belongings.”

Ruby paused, as she often did after Warren spoke, to make sense of his words. He loved to spew ostentatious words and stretched out whatever he was saying into inappropriately long sentences. He perpetually sounded like those random bystanders that get interviewed on the news because they happen to be in the area when a manhole explodes or a Starbuck’s gets robbed—the ones that desperately try to sound intelligent on the local news by throwing fifty-cent words all over the place.

“Oh. Your stuff,” Ruby finally concluded. “It’s over there yonder,” she said, pointing toward the kitchen. Ruby never used the word “yonder” but figured it might annoy Warren, and annoying Warren was such fun.

“Yonder?” Warren questioned.

“In the kitchen. I’ll grab it. Be right back,” Ruby said, leaving Warren in the entryway to collect a few of his things she’d found while cleaning out the attic a few weeks earlier.

Ruby had met Warren about four years earlier when he started with CrustiCare, the HMO where Ruby had been employed for seven years. Warren was part of the IT support staff and was responsible for things like troubleshooting compu. . .