Standing Room Only

by Heidi Mastrogiovanni

  “You don’t?” Lala said.

  “Where are you staying?”

  Shoot, Lala thought. He is way too cute. And I am way too only human.

  “I’m really sorry,” Clive said. “I’m not good with conflict. In life, I mean. I’m great with it on screen.”

  “You are,” Lala admitted. “In Partisans? You were painfully good with conflict. I couldn’t sit still when I was watching that movie. I was so tense during that damn movie, I thought I would lose my mind.”

  “Thanks,” Clive said. They were sitting in the small, charming restaurant of the Hôtel de l’Abbaye de Longpont, sharing mushroom crepes and an abundant selection of local cheeses and olives, along with a loaf of crusty bread that Lala had deemed obscene in its gorgeousness. Clive had ordered the entire meal in flawless French. His accent was equally flawless. The hotel’s owner was clearly smitten with the movie star and so was the nervous young waitress, who couldn’t stop giggling at everything Clive said.

  “Maybe don’t thank me,” Lala said. “I’m going to have to say that I could never sit through that film again. It made me way too nervous. I much prefer a comedy with a happy and hopeful ending. No offense.”

  “None taken,” Clive said. “I’m already thinking about what we should have for dessert.”

  “Yes,” Lala said. She smiled at Clive, and then she snuck in another glare at him, one she assumed went unnoticed as had all the others, she assumed, in her passive-aggressive wallowing during that entire dinner.

  “I’m really sorry I sprung that new scene stuff on you,” Clive said. “I don’t blame you for glaring at me. All night. All the time.”

  “Okay, that’s not strictly true. I have also smiled at you. Damn, I didn’t think you noticed the glaring.”

  “I’d have to be wearing an industrial-strength sleep mask not to notice.”

  “Shoot,” Lala said. “I was never a very good actress.”

  “It’s just that I knew that Matthew was going to talk to you about the scene, because we really do think it would add so much to the film if we up Terry’s edge and enhance the conflict.”

  Terry doesn’t like conflict, Lala thought. He’s sensitive and wonderful and perfect.

  The character of Terry in Dressed Like a Lady, Drinks Like a Pig was based on Lala’s late husband, Terrence. Who was sensitive and wonderful and perfect in Lala’s mind, and always would be.

  “I wanted to say something as soon as I picked you up, you know, to give you some warning so Matthew wasn’t springing it on you as a surprise.”

  “Instead you sprung it on me.”

  “I’m really sorry about that.”

  “It’s okay,” Lala said. “I think I forgive you.”

  “Thanks for being so gracious during the shoot today.”

  “I was thinking really aggressive thoughts in my mind,” Lala admitted.

  As opposed to thinking them in my ass, Lala thought. I hate when my dialogue is sloppy.

  “Where else would you be thinking them?” Clive said. “In your ass?”

  There was a moment’s worth of a pause while Lala glared at Clive, and Clive looked worried that he had unintentionally been rude by referencing Lala’s bum in this relatively early stage of their artistic collaboration, until Lala started guffawing and after a half beat Clive joined her in guffawing, and the hotel proprietor stared guffawing from this place behind the bar, and the sweet little waitress came over and brought them the dessert menu and giggled.

  On the owner’s suggestion, they shared two desserts, crème caramel and mousse au chocolat.

  “Sweet Rockin’ Kazoo,” Lala mumbled through the mouthful of beige heaven she had just ladled into her mouth. “If I die tonight, I will die happy.”

  Where did I get “Sweet Rockin’ Kazoo” from? Lala thought. And why am I talking about dying tonight?

  “Amen,” Clive said. “Not to you dying. To you being happy. Oh, and I like that ‘Sweet Rockin’ Kazoo’ bit. Did you just come up with that?”

  They ended up in the hotel bar, where the owner brought out a special bottle of Cognac for them.

  And it was at the adorable bar that Clive made what was a big mistake . . . unless he really, really, really desperately wanted to hear a very late-night, very effusive monologue.

  “So. Who’s Lala Pettibone? Details, please.”

  The bottle of Cognac was half-empty by the time Lala paused for a breath.

  “My GOD, this is good Cognac. Where was I? Oh, yeah. So, Clive, the thing is, when my parents died, it wasn’t the same. I miss them, but my day-to-day life didn’t really change. With Terrence, nothing was the same. In everything I did, I felt his absence. Maybe that’s why I haven’t spent every day with anyone until I met David. I thought I was ready. Now, I’m not so sure.”

  “England is my primary residence,” Clive said. “And I travel a lot for filming. So we wouldn’t be in the same town most of the time. If that’s an incentive for you to maybe consider . . .? I have to say, I love women of a certain age—”

  “Please put air quotation marks around that phrase,” Lala said, even as she was annoyed with herself for blushing and for being delighted that Clive was flirting with her. “And I’m sorry, but David and I are in fact engaged-to-be-engaged.”

  Clive didn’t say anything right away. Lala watched him as he lifted his brandy snifter and twirled the liquid inside it before he took a deep and soulful draught.

  Poor sweet man, Lala thought. I’ve hurt him. I hope he can deal with the disappointment. I hope this doesn’t interfere with the movie.

  At last, Clive spoke.

  “What are you, seventeen?” Clive said. “What are you, seventeen and it’s the 1950s and you’re a character in a black-and-white film where you’ve gotten a scholarship to college, but you’ve got this boyfriend who’s a laborer so you’re eventually going to throw it all away and get married?”

  Lala took a long look at Clive. She curled her upper lip and wrinkled her nose in an affectionate sneer and winked at him.

  “Yeah, yeah, very clever, Mr. Smart Ass Movie Star. You are one blunt British bastard, and I hate to admit that I find that rather adorable.”

  Lala stood, a bit woozily for a moment, but she got her sea legs back in a blink. She stepped out from her side of the table and did a full, dramatic curtsy. She then stood erect and gave Clive a full military salute.

  “Lala out,” she said. “You stay here and finish the bottle with our charming host. Do NOT follow me upstairs! If you do, and if any”—and at this point she made sweeping air quotation marks that began with her arms stretched overhead as high as she could reach and that ended with her arms spastically pumping out rapid-fire quotation marks around her ankles—“‘funny business’ is attempted, there will be”—air quotation marks again with, if anything, even more intensity—“‘hell to pay.’”

  Clive nodded and blew her a kiss as she exited.

  “Dors bien, ma chère amie,” he said.

  Lala skipped up the stairs off the lobby to the second floor and opened the door to her small, cozy room. She took a quick shower and, after just dabbing her skin with a large, fluffy towel, slathered moisturizer all over every easily-accessible part of her body.

  “My sincere and heartfelt apologies to you, oh little area at the middle of my back which I cannot reach coming from the top over my shoulders and not coming from the bottom by wrenching my hands around my waist either, you poor, last-kid-picked-for-the-team-every-time-in-elementary-school of my personal body politic.”

  While she was walking around the room naked, waiting for the lotion to dry into her skin, Lala realized that she felt optimistic enough to chat with David, and she seized that momentary pause in her seemingly bottomless fear of death and loss to open her laptop and smack the keys until her Skype operator was trying to contact David’s Skype operat
or.

  How does it work? Lala thought. How? France talking to and seeing Southern California. Effortlessly. Such fascinating and bold times we live in. And yet we cannot conquer death, can we? Sheesh, I’m starting to sound like an overly caffeinated publicist for the Grim Reaper.

  She saw a message pop up on her computer, one telling her that Dr. David was not available to Skype.

  Merde, Lala thought. And she just as quickly felt an unbidden sense of relief.

  Lala wrote a quick e-mail to David to tell him that she had tried to call him and she missed him and she loved him and she was going to sleep now, bisous, bisous, bisous. She slammed her laptop shut, fretted once again that she might, in her exuberance, have broken it, and jumped into the large, soft, billowing bed. She propped the pillows against the headboard, always one of her favorite things to do, and she scooted under the thick comforter.

  That should have been her segue into a blissful night of sleep, but an unsettling idea barged in before she could nod off.

  I know what I’m doing, she thought. I’m forcing myself to get used to not being with David. Just like I had to get used to being without Terrence. Because David might die before I do. Just like Terrence did. Well, this lovely little moment of self-awareness has shot any chance of sleeping all to crap.

  She seized the remote control for the small television that was comfortably encased in an antique bookshelf opposite the foot of the bed.

  I swear, there better be Les Feux d’Artifice on some channel in this precious little burg.

  Lala flipped channels and frowned.

  That’s not what it’s called, she thought. Feux d’Artifice means fireworks. Literally, it’s “fake fire,” and how cool is that? What is it called, The Young and the Restless? Oh, yeah, The Fires of Love, whatever that is in French. I can’t remember right now. I swear, it better be on.

  There weren’t many channels to check on the cable service in the small hotel that was once a monastery in the small town where Alexandre Dumas, père, was buried, so it didn’t take long for Lala to realize that she wouldn’t be watching her favorite soap that night. The last channel she checked before she was about to return full circle back to the first channel she had checked was a movie channel. It was playing Matthew Finch’s blockbuster hit, Tooters, dubbed into French. Lala sighed heavily.

  Fine, fine. I’ll watch this stupid movie again. Any voices will have to do, so long I don’t have to listen to the voices in my head.

  Lala had slept fitfully, if much at all, that night, and she woke up determined to remind herself that the Count of Monte Cristo had way more to worry about on a good day than she had ever had in her remarkably lucky life, early widowhood notwithstanding. So she showered and got dressed quickly and ran downstairs to convey to the lovely proprietor of their hotel in carefully considered French that Monsieur Clive would be having breakfast in his room, and could she please bring a tray with pain au chocolat and coffee for two upstairs with her. Balancing the bountiful and lovingly-provided tray, Lala carefully walked up the small staircase and banged on Clive’s door with her foot.

  “Up and at ’em, mon cher ami,” she yelled. “We have got some Dumasing to do!”

  They started out at the Fifteenth Century church of St. Nicholas, where Dumas was baptized. Their next stop was the Alexandre Dumas Museum, where Lala proceeded to have a shimmying meltdown on her happy tippy toes over “all this stuff from his actual life that he actually read and used and looked at ‘n’ stuff!” They visited the house where Dumas was born, and after that they stood in front of the bronze statue of Dumas. Clive read from his tattered copy of The Count of Monte Cristo, which he took with him whenever he traveled anywhere.

  “Clive, you would be perfect but for the fact that you take the abridged version with you,” Lala said. She had been savoring his reading of the section of the novel in which Edmond Dantès meets the man who will help him escape his imprisonment on the Château d’If and will lead him to the fortune which will transform him into the Count of Monte Cristo, so that he can enact his terrible revenge against those who have betrayed him.

  “Calm it down, buttercup,” Clive said rather adorably. “I have my unabridged version at home. God, you can be so damn smug sometimes, Ms. Thing.”

  “I would like to go on record,” Lala said as they had walked to the cemetery where Dumas had been buried until his ashes were reinterred in the Pantheon in Paris for the bicentennial of his birth in 2002, “as saying that I love flirting in general. I am not flirting with you specifically, Mr. Adorable Movie Star. And I guess my penchant . . .” Lala pronounced the word with an exaggerated French accent—pohshoh—that made her giggle and made Clive wince, “. . . for flirting in general is something that my fiancé-to-be-my-fiancé—”

  “Which remains an entirely ridiculous concept,” Clive said.

  “Kindly do not interrupt. It is something to which he will have to get used. My dear late husband wasn’t happy that I am quite such a flirt, but he ultimately accepted it as being an integral part of that which makes me who I am. Or something like that.”

  They walked around the cemetery and saw the resting places of Dumas’ parents and several other members of his family.

  “We are steeped in Alexandre Dumas, père, on this fine day in the lovely town of Villers-Cotterêts” Lala said. “And I am loving that.”

  “Moi aussi,” Clive agreed.

  They returned to the hotel and checked out. A short drive to the set, and they were there in plenty of time for Clive to get into make-up.

  Lala said hello to Matthew and looked around for his brother.

  Where is the little pisher? Lala thought.

  “Where’s Atticus?”

  “He stayed in Paris. He said he wanted to get ready for your first writing session together. Lala, I am so excited about this, and I’m really appreciative of your enthusiasm and flexibility.”

  Is the blank stare on my face conveying enthusiasm and flexibility? Lala silently asked herself. Because that is definitely not my intention.

  “You bet!” Lala said. “Anything to elevate the project!”

  Which is actually true, Lala thought. Oy. Ambivalence! Oy vey!

  “I’ll e-mail Atticus as soon as I get back to Paris tonight so we can set up a time to start working.”

  It was a short shoot for that afternoon, and they wrapped in time for Lala to insist to Clive that she would catch a fast train back to Paris rather than ride back with him because she needed “to be alone with my obsessive thoughts.”

  Kenny was washing the outside of the windows of the apartment building when Lala entered the courtyard.

  “Salut, mon ami!” Lala called out to him.

  “Hey! Welcome back! How was the shoot?”

  “Really something else. Details over a bottle of wine as soon as possible. You need help?”

  “No, mon Dieu, no, my grandfather would kill me if I let you help me with the windows. Or anything. You coming to the restaurant for dinner?”

  “I’d love to, mon trésor, but I am exhausted. I think I might go out and get a little something and then curl up with a book.”

  “How about I bring you a brie sandwich on our signature crusty French bread and a salad with my own special mustard dressing?”

  “How about I faint from joy and gratitude?”

  By the time Lala had changed into her comfortable flannel pajamas, Kenny was at the door to her apartment with a box filled with food and wine.

  “Sweet Sassy McGillicudy,” Lala said. “This is paradise in a box, Kenny. I don’t know where I’m getting these exclamations from. The other day I said ‘Sweet Rockin’ Kazoo,’ if you can believe that.”

  She was going through the treasures and finding, in addition to a gorgeous cheese and bread creation and a huge salad, a Tarte Tatin that definitely did not look like an individual serving, and a
box of madeleines and a jar of homemade strawberry jam for breakfast tomorrow.

  “Kenny, you and your grandfather are now officially family to me, and I should warn you that that probably entails more obligation than it does advantage.”

  Lala sat at the small dining table in her living room and ate the entire sandwich and all the salad.

  Merde, she thought. This is the best food I have ever had. I’m going to convince Kenny to go into business with me to sell this mustard dressing. Seriously.

  While she was eating, she was audibly expressing her utter delight in increasingly louder outbursts of ecstasy, none of them actual words and all of them accompanied with the impassioned slapping of palms against her chest or the raising of her open hands to the heavens in a universal gesture of “How the fuck is something so delicious even possible?”

  The lovely food gave Lala a fresh wave of energy and inspiration, so she spent the next two hours on her brand new novel, which she had given the working title, A Woman of a Certain Age. It was almost eleven o’clock when she signed off on the manuscript efforts for that day, and she did a quick calculation to determine that it was afternoon in California.

  “You free?” she texted David.

  Her phone dinged to announce a response in a heartbeat.

  “Yes, but I’m not cheap.”

  What followed was a Skype sex session between Lala and her intended-to-be-her-intended that, as Lala subsequently described to Geraldine in an e-mail she composed right after logging off with David, was basically a walking letter to Penthouse.

  “Well, thank goodness you’ve surfaced again,” Auntie Geraldine wrote back. “David and I were wondering what the heck was going on with you and your sudden radio silence. He called me, and I assured him that I hadn’t heard from you either.”

  Yikes, Lala thought. My “head-in-the-sand” approach to the rest of my life is becoming noticeable. Yikes.

  Despite her concern about that, Lala somehow managed to focus on the matters at hand long enough to get an e-mail off to Atticus that suggested they meet at either her place or his place to work, whichever location suited him best, and would tomorrow, late morning-ish, be a good time for him? Atticus joined the ranks of the distressingly prompt men in her life whose seeming self-assurance acted as a stinging rebuke to how vermischt she was currently feeling when he wrote back immediately to say that that would be “swell, and why not meet at your place since I think that might be more convenient for you, plus, I’m kind of an instant pack rat wherever I go, so there’s not much open space here in my hotel room.”