Three Questions

by Meagan Adele Lopez

  “So, have you ever been in a long term relationship?” I ask him.

  “Not really, no. My mates pick on me because I seem to be eternally single, but I’ve never been in anything longer than two years.”

  “Ah, a commitment phobe, huh?”

  “No, I just don’t understand why you would want to waste time with someone you weren’t into. Not scared of commitment in the slightest. What about you? What’s your longest?”

  “Less than two years.”

  “See!” He pinches my side. “Taking the piss out of me when you’re worse than me.”

  I laugh. “Just wanted to make you feel bad for a second. But honestly, why not longer than that?”

  “I knew I would meet the right one when I was ready, and now I know why. What about you? What’s your reasoning?”

  “I have many reasons. Men in LA are assholes, for one.”

  “Oh, so, still a little bitterness there, then?”

  “Damn it, was it that easy to spot?” I ask. I bite my lip and curl my nose. “Didn’t mean to let that one slip. I wonder if that pain ever truly goes away? But, honestly, I haven’t met someone who I could imagine being with forever. Not really sure if that exists.”

  “Of course it does,” he swishes his glass.

  “OK, let’s get married here,” I throw it out there, half joking and half completely serious.

  “OK, yes, let’s.”

  “I don’t believe in marriage though. So, I guess that can’t work,” I say. BOOM. Brick thrown in face.

  “Oh.” Brick crushing his beautiful hazel eyes.

  “Well, not unless I really believed I would never get divorced, and divorce is pretty inevitable, don’t you think?” I backtrack as quickly as I can.

  “No, not really.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I don’t know too many who have gotten divorced, so I’d have to say no.”

  “What? I don’t know too many who haven’t gotten divorced. Are your parents still together?”

  “Yeah, definitely. For thirty five years.”

  “Jesus. Are you serious?”

  “I take it yours aren’t?”

  “Definitely not. Not since I was six months old, and five marriages and divorces between the two of them makes for a daughter who doesn’t hold out too much hope. Well, I mean, unless…”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless the daughter just decided to believe for once in what was in front of her,” I say.

  “I see. So, let’s get married tonight then?” He says with a twinkle in his eye.

  “Oh, God, that would be so cliché though. We can’t do that, can we?” I eye him up, and laugh at us. “Hey, at least you could then get an American passport and I could get an English one. I’ve always wanted to move back to Europe.” I am trying not to play games, but I can’t help testing a little bit.

  “I wouldn’t marry you for the passport.” He is sincere. Doh. What now?

  “You make me feel so…so….” I blush. I can’t finish my sentence. His eyes become tender again, the crinkles forming. I see my future, my present and the happy moments of my past in those eyes. He calms me into a cocoon of warmth and gentleness. I would marry him right now. Right this second. I would jump down that aisle and blast any of my self-declared statements about marriage and kids to the moon.

  But I don’t believe in marriage. It doesn’t work, I think. “Don’t look at me like that.” I turn my head, a bit over-dramatically. The booze and ooze is starting to get to me.

  “Like what?” He seems taken aback.

  “Your eyes. I can’t handle that look you’re giving me. Eeeeee,” That vowel being the only thing I can conjure up at this precise moment. We both laugh again. “You make me want to do things I promised myself I never would. You are detangling my finely woven web of protection. That’s not fair.”

  “In that case, I will always look at you like that.”

  “What about a five year plan?” I suggest. It comes to me.

  “Hmmm.” He seems tentative. “Yes, a five year plan.” His face drops just subtly. I would barely have noticed it had I not been so close to his face.

  “How do you know what I mean?” I say.

  “I guess I don’t. I’m just assuming. If ever anyone asks me for advice on whether or not to get married, I always give him the five year plan speech. Kind of ironic now.”

  “Why ironic?”

  “Oh, nothing,” he laughs, but his eyes don’t. “Never marry unless you’ve gotten to know the person over a period of at least five years, I always said.”

  “Yes…that’s what I meant. Two years isn’t enough because you can still be ‘on your best behavior’, and three or four aren’t enough because surely that’s when the worst comes out. Five years, and you’re in the clear.”

  “OK, so let’s do that. In five years after we have proven our loyalty and trust to each other, our devotion, we will get m-” I grab his face and kiss him before he can continue.

  ***

  Guy has twenty bucks left over. We had been up eighty dollars and then, of course, we lost it all. Now, it is 4 a.m. and it is looking less and less likely that I will be getting into that car and driving four and a half hours back to Los Angeles, working a full day, and getting Chelsea on her plane back to Baltimore this evening, but I have to try somehow.

  I haven’t seen Chelsea for almost two and a half hours now, and figure it’s a probably a pretty good time to go and look for her.

  I give her a call. She doesn’t answer.

  I don’t want to get rid of Guy. I am lucid enough to know that. I don’t. I also don’t want to wake up tomorrow with the feeling that I’ve gotten on many other vacations of wanton abandonment. Compulsively looking at my phone, wondering if he will call, only to end up concluding a few days later that it was fun and that was that and never hearing from him again.

  This is also the reason I refuse to go back to his hotel room with him. Not that he’s pushed it, but he has offered for me to stay with him. “If you don’t feel comfortable driving home, you could stay with me. I can even sleep on the floor,” he said. I’m not willing to put myself through something nonchalantly with this man. He seems too exceptional. No, he’ll have to work to get me in bed, which seems nonsensical considering we have discussed marriage already, but sexually, I want to take it slowly. I want to meet him in Chicago in four months and make it all worth it. And, if he is such a man of his word like he says he is, then he will meet me there. I know he will.

  I am far more sober than I should be with the amount of alcohol I have consumed, and I have not wanted a cigarette for hours. My composure has been found. I thought I had lost it when I turned eighteen, but here it is again.

  I call Chelsea again. She answers this time. “Hell-o,” she slurs into the phone.

  “Everything alright?” I ask. I hear giggles, talking in Spanish, (Oh, no. Not Spanish), and hair flipping. “Chelsea? Where are you?”

  “Huh?” She focuses back on the conversation at hand.

  “Where are you?”

  “Oh, we’re in a bar in the Palms.”

  “Us too. We have to go soon. I have work tomorrow and need to get at least an hour’s sleep.”

  “Yeah, OK…I’m just going to stay here a little longer.” She hangs up. I look at my phone. This is not what we discussed. I hate being hung up on.

  “Does Miles speak Spanish?” I ask Guy.

  “Miles?! Definitely not. That’s a good one though,” Guy laughs. Obviously, there is some inside joke that I don’t know about yet.

  “Let’s go find them.”

  “Is everything alright with her?”

  He grabs my hand.

  “Oh, I’m sure everything is fine. I mean, Miles is a good guy, right?”

  “Definitely. He’s a stand-up lad. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.” I didn’t think he would, but you can never be too sure. We leave our table that we haven’t moved from since we came down to the casino.


  On our way out, we pass by a few of his friends chatting in front of a two-dollar slot machine. It’s only about six yards from where we were sitting, but they were hidden by the rows and rows of machines.

  “Yo! Guy!” one of his friends calls out. I don’t want to be rude, but I need to find Chelsea. We head towards them anyway.

  “Ahhh, Mr. Valentine. How do. Natty, Nick,” Guy responds.

  “All right?” Natty or Nick says to me. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to answer that. Is he asking me if I’m all right? And why wouldn’t I be? It’s such a short one-word question. I figure asking him what he means will be best.

  “All right?” I ask, raising my voice slightly at the end of the word to emphasize my confusion. My question doesn’t get answered.

  “A little bored really. It’s dead around here,” Natty or Nick says.

  “Well, it is Easter Sunday,” I pipe up.

  “This is Adele. I found her in the Ghost Bar,” Guy says, pleased. He introduces me to each of the trio.

  “Ohh, she’s pretty,” says Valentine, licking his lips. I should be grossed out, but the way he does it just makes me smile, like it’s just one of his quirks. His hair is highlighted and he looks a few years older than the rest of the group. Perhaps he’s someone’s older brother.

  I like that his friends are all shapes and sizes. I like that none of them fit a mold. “Yes, well. I do try hard to be pretty,” I say, teasing him.

  “It pays off. So, what have you two little love birds been up to?” Valentine asks us. The words he uses don’t seem at all out of place, nor does it embarrass me.

  “We almost got married in Vegas, but we decided a five-year plan would suit us better. So, we’re getting married in five years.” In my head, this sounds hysterical, but once it comes out, I realize how stupid it seems out of context. It falls flat, and their faces look at me hollowly.

  “Ohhhh,” Nick gives Guy a shove.

  “Hmmm.” Natty shifts uncomfortably and rubs his bald head.

  “Well, ya don’t say?” Valentine looks pleased, still staring directly at me. Never have I seen guys squirm so much. My face becomes hot. I dare not look at Guy who is probably completely and utterly terrified. I glance down. I fight the urge to tap dance to avert their attention from what I just said. I feel a pair of eyes on my neck.

  I peek up at Guy, and I see – is that? No, can’t be. I scan his face to make sure. Can that be a glimmer of – wait…shame? No. Shock? Definitely not. No, OK, that is…yup, confirmation. That is pride, Houston. There is pride shining down from his eyes towards me, and something else I can’t quite put my finger on.

  It’s definitely not embarrassment, he’s not running down the casino and into the arms of that big-breasted woman walking towards us – he is actually staring down at me like I’m his very own personal treasure. It’s that look that I’ve seen other men stare at women with – admiration and adoration. That look that I never imagined could be bestowed upon a woman of my… nature.

  The kind of look that’s saved for extraordinary women who never said something out of line, whose hair certainly wasn’t yellow or any hue close to it and who always covered their mouths when they laughed, but who also could play tennis perfectly.

  Even after I felt I made a fool of myself in front of his friends, he looks upon me with affection. It’s for me. And in public, with witnesses. I attempt a smile back, and clutch my purse close to my body. I don’t know what else to do.

  Then, I remember there are others around. “I’m sorry, I just have to ask. Is your name really Valentine?” I do just have to ask.

  “Jasper actually. Valentine is a nickname. But you can call me Thunder,” he says seriously. I raise my eyebrow, my mouth half opened and look up at my wonderful Guy. He nods his head.

  “Right. Well, maybe I’ll just call you T-Dog. Does that work?” Because T-Dog is so much better than Thunder, Adele. Guy laughs out loud. Thank God for him.

  “Ha. Yes, I like that. T-Dog,” Valentine repeats.

  “OK, so Natty, is it? And what is that?” I say.

  “People say I look like a bulldog. That’s the British mascot – our national symbol – National, and that turned into Natty,” Natty says. He does look similar to a bulldog. His eyebrows are thick and angry, but his belly softens him up.

  “Wow. And Nick, how did you get stuck with such a normal name?” I ask.

  “I used to steal stuff a lot when I was a kid,” Nick says. This is the same man with the purple polo shirt who led us up to the Playboy club.

  “I don’t get it,” I say.

  “Nick – nicked. Like ‘he nicked my phone’,” Guy interjects.

  “What does ‘nicked my phone’ mean?” I really have no idea.

  “To nick something means to steal something,” T-Dog says very slowly as if I am dumb and deaf.

  “Ohhhh.” I have a lot to learn obviously. This could go on all night. “Well, we should go to find my friend Chelsea. Have you seen her? She’s with your friend Miles.” I realize I must ask where the names Miles and Guy come from, it didn’t even occur to me that they could be nicknames as well. I’m scared to ask.

  “Ah ha. Yes, indeedy we did,” Natty says. “That little sneaky wanker. They just walked by. Guy, you’d like this.” Natty pulls out his phone and holds it up. There’s a very blurry photo of a man’s back. A figure of a woman is leaning into him. I recognize the red dress and curly hair. If I didn’t know Chelsea, I would have thought the pair were kissing. “I’ve never seen him walk by so comfortably with a girl,” Natty continues.

  “They were full on holding hands and the lot,” Valentine says, pleased with himself. I know my friend better than they do, and as much as her marriage is in trouble, she would never cheat on Victor. However, my curiosity gets the better of me, and I have to find out.

  I call her phone at least half a dozen times again, and still no answer. She knows I want to go. That little devil. I can imagine she and Miles canoodling, her looking at her phone as I call, only to silence it over and over again.

  Guy and I have strolled around the first floor of the casino three times now, stopping every once in a while to make out or hug. Maybe I’m not minding Chelsea not answering her phone after all.

  “Should we just forget it and get a drink?” I say finally and take a good big sigh.

  “That’s the second best idea you’ve had all night.” I don’t have to ask him what the first best idea was. I already know what he means. We step into a platform that leads us to a bar, the temporary fixture creaking as we step onto it. Wood panels surround the room, closing it off from the rest of the casino. I can peek through the panels to spy on passersby.

  Three guys lounge with their shirts unbuttoned, one undone button too many, in a booth. Empty shot glasses are lined up on their table. One of the men is laid out on the leather booth and is dreaming of sugar plum go-go dancers.

  “What are you having?” Guy asks me, diverting my attention back to him.

  “I’m gonna have a scotch on the rocks please.”

  “Oh right. You have that side to you.”

  “What does ‘that side to me’ mean?”

  “You’re a tough girl.” He’s got me pegged. I feel myself start to become defensive, but instead ignore him and head to the booth at the far end of the bar.

  He eventually moseys over to me, his height is surprising from where I’m seated and I feel so pleased with myself that he’s mine for the night. I cuddle into the crook of his arm. We could lie like this forever, or at least I could.

  I take out my camera, and hold it above our heads; I take a picture of us cuddled together, then one of us kissing, one of us smiling and one of him looking at me. I do everything I can to embarrass myself. Everything that would normally embarrass me, at least, but tonight it just feels natural. I’m not sure if I’m pushing my boundaries, trying to see how far he’ll go with me, how much he’ll accept my geekiness, or if I’m just that comfortable with him an
d him with me.

  I ask him if he’s ever had butterfly kisses. He hasn’t, so I flutter my eyelashes on his cheek. I even tickle him at one point. He bites my ear back and I pinch his nose.

  “So, you don’t have a girlfriend or anything, do you?” I ask looking up at him from his lap.

  “Are you kidding me? Are you seriously asking me that question?”

  I don’t answer him.

  “Well, you never know. I’m just making sure. Hey, we’re in Vegas. We’ll probably never see each other again, and you may just want to have a good night.”

  “You are being crazy. I do not have a girlfriend, and I will see you again. At least I hope so. So, can you shut up please and stop ruining the moment?” He takes my finger and puts it in his mouth and chomps down lightly.

  “Oww! OK!” I laugh. “I’ll stop being crazy. You know what? I don’t normally let guys call me crazy. That’s a pet peeve of mine.”

  “Oh yeah, how so?”

  “I usually believe that if a guy is calling you crazy it’s because he’s lying about something, and wants you to feel like your mental stability isn’t quite up to snuff. If they can make you feel crazy, then you’ll believe that you actually are the crazy one and there’s no way your man would lie to you.”

  “Wow. You really are crazy, huh?”

  “I’m being serious, here.”

  He stops and takes a moment to adjust so that he can look me in the eyes. “You’ve had some bad experiences in the past, huh?”

  “Oh, just the usual. Anyway, down that drink and let’s find Chelsea,” I say. Don’t get too attached, don’t get too attached, don’t get too attached. My new mantra for the evening. He can see through me, I can tell. He doesn’t move for a moment, just watches me adjust myself as I try to hide some more of myself.

  I down my scotch, and am finally feeling a little buzzed. But I’m still convinced I can drive back to LA.

  We descend from the platform and are back on the casino floor when we see them. Right in front of us, tucked away in a small little corner, are Miles and Chelsea talking intimately. They appear to be talking. Very closely. Wait.