Life, Libby, and the Pursuit of Happiness

by Hope Lyda

  Ariel waved a piece of espresso cake on her fork and challenged the boys. “Hey, art comes in all forms. Max is an ideal example of how creative energy can inspire dialogue and controversy. That is art, my friends.”

  Oh, no. It was all coming back to me. The tattoo on Max’s chin was of a ewe. I put my head in my hands for a brief moment and then looked up and shook my head at Hudson—my warning to enter this conversation carefully. Or, better yet, not at all.

  “Well, now I’m beyond curious. What does Max do?”

  Pan sat up straight, eager to represent her former crush with the utmost respect. “Max was…is…on the cutting edge of live art. He orchestrates these fabulous displays of animals in their natural habitat…”

  “And takes a picture?” Hudson interrupted, genuinely intrigued.

  “No.”

  “Paints them?”

  “Good try, my man.” Ferris was coming out of his dark mood and becoming quite lively. We all were catching this turn of mood and riding the wave of one long, drawn-out, but nonetheless funny punch line. I found myself looking forward to Hudson’s response. The night was looking up.

  Pan reached for the salt-and-pepper shakers and a butter knife. She arranged these utensil stand-ins for roaming quadrupeds in a triangle beside her plate. “He creates a moving picture with live animals.” She made the pepper shaker “baa baa” in the direction of the butter knife.

  Hudson leaned in, his chest nearly touching the whipped topping on the slice of cake before him. All of his being was intent on solving this mystery. “Are they puppets?”

  Ferris, with his mouth still full of dessert, chimed in, too close to hysterics to hold in his opinion. “The guy choreographs living, breathing barn animals, for Pete’s sake!”

  Pan’s face fell as we all snorted with laughter. Hudson smiled but remained calm, seemingly to counter our rudeness. “Who watches?”

  “Brilliant question and the point of bafflement for us all. Nobody watches except for the artist himself and, of course, any starving documentary producer looking for a bizarre story,” Oliver responded. “However, speaking as an artist, I would like to offer up the dilemma, ‘If a so-called piece of art is ever-changing and nobody is there to see it…does the art still exist?’”

  Hudson immediately answered, “Yes, it does. Or else we’d have to conclude that art is only done for the end viewer and not for the sake of creation or expression. And that’d be a loss.” He paused and thought about this for a long moment, cleared his throat, and repeated, “It’d be a great loss.”

  I sat back in my chair and sighed the sigh of comfort, happiness, and satisfaction as the evening with a near-disastrous beginning came to a most uplifting close. Warmth rushed over me, and I wondered, only a little, if it was the second helping of double-caffeinated cake or Hudson’s surprising likability and his perfect answer.

  When friends morph into their “other” selves before your eyes, it is a fascinating process to witness. By the time Hudson and I were saying our goodbyes, I had watched Ariel and Pan both step into their Dating Barbie personas in response to Hudson’s charm, which seemed to multiply like yeast in the warmth of their glowing response.

  So avid was their desire to connect, I almost shut Ariel’s waving hand in the door. Pan was even more aggressive and had placed herself between Hudson and me until we stood at her car.

  With a whisper of nerves, she had rambled, “I forgot I will need my car for that thing tomorrow, Libby. Do you mind if I drop you off at your place? And, of course, I’m more than happy to drop Hudson at his hotel…” she left her eyes as wide open as her offer.

  I thanked her for her kindness and told her that there would just be one stop.

  “Are you two distant cousins?” Pan seemed perplexed and a tad possessive as she maneuvered the streets of Seattle with one eye on the traffic lights and another on the slice of Hudson she could take in from the driver’s rearview mirror.

  “Yes and no,” Hudson cooed the last part and we both watched Pan’s eyebrows flare with curiosity. Her typical cover of indifference was blown completely.

  “I don’t think a guy who hangs out with sheep for a living should add to his confusing reputation by indicating a too-close-for-comfort relationship with his cousin,” I said.

  This got Pan to laugh at us and herself. “Yes. Just because you look like a rock star does not mean you cannot end up imprisoned by a pathetic reputation.”

  “I look like a rock star?” Hudson asked with farm boy innocence.

  From the passenger seat, I turned to scowl at him. His face seemed to float in and out of being as random rays from passing headlights turned intermittent spotlights on him. He was smiling.

  “Well, a little. You have a Bon Jovi forehead and a Rick Springfield mouth, and maybe a bit of Jude Shea in the nose.” Pan explained her flirty statement with bold strokes of matter-of-fact information. She was turning back into the former Pan.

  As we pulled up to the Regal Queen, I unsnapped my seat belt and said, “Funny you should mention Rick Springfield. I think Hudson resembles him most of all.”

  “He isn’t a real rock star. He is a persona. A has-been persona,” Hudson muttered as he climbed out of the backseat.

  “I’ll call you if I locate Max, Hudson.” Pan yelled out the window. “Happy birthday, Libby,” she said as an afterthought. It didn’t dampen my good mood at all.

  Twenty-Seven

  I fumbled with my key long enough that Hudson…Jude…considered trying out a credit card break-in tactic. But just when he removed a Chevron card from his wallet, I managed to unlock and open my front door.

  “Thank goodness,” he said. “The last thing I need is a breaking and entering charge on my record.”

  “Oh, yeah. That would ruin your reputation.” I laughed nervously like the disposable girl in the movies—the one who gets dumped or killed by scene 3, depending on the genre.

  We entered my apartment like a couple. Like synchronized acrobats, we dropped our belongings, shed unnecessary clothing, and headed to our assigned place. Me in the living room near the hide-a-bed love seat and he in the bedroom. I’d decided that it would be easier to hide evidence of a quest if I let Jude have the bedroom. Ten minutes of silence had passed when I blurted, “Are you going to bed?”

  “Just changing clothes. What’d you have in mind?”

  “A recap.”

  “I can’t do a nightcap, but I wouldn’t mind watching a movie.”

  Nightcap? “My cable…my illegal cable is out again, but I have tapes.”

  “Capes? Are you one of those Goth chicks?”

  The conversation quickly deteriorated. Jude reemerged from the bedroom with my bathrobe draped around his shoulders.

  “What superhero are you supposed to be?” I asked, laughing. His antics caused me to miscount the scoops of fresh ground coffee I was adding to my filter.

  “I thought you said to wear a cape. Let’s see…well, I’m Protector of Sheep,” he said, and then he raised his eyebrows at my late night caffeine effort.

  “Hey, superheroes don’t judge. I happen to like coffee at night. It helps my dreams be productive.”

  “Just think. You could get paid hourly at night.”

  I pointed to my nose. “Sounds like…oldest profession in the world.”

  “Not what I meant,” he said seriously and then laughed.

  I started my coffeemaker and turned to him. “You mock, but I do resolve inner conflicts. I come up with solutions for work issues. I sometimes solve world problems…but I rarely remember those upon waking.”

  “That sounds like a cop-out.”

  I shrugged. “I suppose. But I believe I really do tap into genius now and then.”

  “Or you think you do,” he said while taking my robe off his shoulders and hanging it on the coat stand.

  With his attitude, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to share my brain power serum. So I zinged him. “Like when you bungeed off of the Space Needle? That was g
enius?”

  Jude folded his hands over his heart. “That hurts.”

  “Sorry,” I said, meaning it.

  “Quite all right. I’ll take a cup of genius when it’s ready.” He settled into my couch as though he had done that a thousand times.

  And I kinda liked it. A couple minutes later I went to the coffeemaker and poured two cups of coffee.

  “Hey, interesting reading material.” Hudson saw the book from Aunt Maddie and picked it up. He read the back cover copy and then opened it up.

  I winced, not because I was embarrassed, but because I didn’t really want to explain my strange state of faith. I handed him his coffee. “I just got that, so I can’t tell you anything about it. My aunt suggested I read it.” I said that last part as though that would explain it all. It was my disclaimer as if to say: Don’t ask me about God…I read Vanity Fair. That is just to please religious relative. But, of course, I didn’t feel that way.

  My cell phone rang and I jumped up from my chair across from Hudson and scrambled to locate the miniscule equipment. I knew it was Cecilia, so I took the phone and headed for my fire escape.

  “Hello?” I grunted as I opened the reluctant window and then exhaled as I tried to close it behind me. A two-inch gap remained. “Hold on,” I barked at Cecilia before she could say anything.

  I leaned down to speak through the gap. “Turn on the television, would you?”

  Hudson looked at me. He understood that I wanted privacy, but instead of turning on the television, he nodded to me, took the book, and headed to the bedroom.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about him reading my special gift from Aunt Maddie. But what was I sure about in my life right now?

  “Anyone frickin’ there?” Cecilia hollered into her phone and startled me. I fell hard onto my rear on the metal grate.

  “Ow!”

  “Considering that one of your few job responsibilities at Reed and Dunson has been to answer phones for the past five years, you’re really quite bad at it.”

  I checked my watch. “It’s after midnight, Cecilia. If you want professional phone etiquette, call during business hours.”

  “Honey, you’re on the clock 24/7 for this project.” She coughed into the phone. “You haven’t reported in about the package. If I hadn’t just had a cut and color by Giavanni at the spa this afternoon, I’d be pulling my hair out. Why haven’t you checked in with the computer? Or did you think that was just an extremely generous donation to the almost-out-of-work secretaries’ fund?”

  Without thinking, I spoke the truth. “I got back late from my birthday party. I was going to log in before I went to bed. All has gone well. The package was at the airport…”

  “Hold on, little miss bad judgment. You left the package alone on its first night in the city? What part of ‘mess up and…’ don’t you understand?”

  “I didn’t leave it.” Dang. She wouldn’t like that, either.

  There was a long, long silence. I pulled the phone from my ear to check to see how many bars I had. The battery was fully charged. After a few more seconds, Cecilia let out a shrill, haunted house laugh. I was about to ask what it looked like on the other side of the deep end when she stopped laughing and spoke in the acerbic voice she used to train anyone new to the ways of the corporate food chain.

  “I’m the one risking the most by placing this vital project in your hands. If it was your birthday, you should have ordered in cupcakes from the Dandelion bakery. And then you should’ve sat with the package in your dismal apartment with the shades drawn until the delivery boy knocked on the door. And then you should’ve opened the door just wide enough to retrieve your one “celebrate me” cupcake so you could then sing to yourself and pretend to blow out a candle, because a real candle might be seen from outside your thin, cheap shades. Do you see where I’m going with this alternative plan?”

  Crazy land? “You don’t want Hudson to leave the apartment. Got it. My friends had planned this party for weeks, and I wasn’t…”

  “Libby, don’t say anything that would indicate subpar loyalty or performance. I can’t handle it. I’m on the brink, as they say on the D ward.”

  “What is the plan? I have to go to work on Monday. He’ll be alone then.”

  More silence. I could see her examining her nails one by one the way she usually did when anyone wanted a direct answer. She was buying time.

  “This needs to be carried out before Blaine returns. I can’t lie to…”

  “Mm-hmm,” she said knowingly, as if she expected this comment. “I want this resolved as much as you do. I need to get back there; my maid quit on me. I can only imagine what she did to the place.”

  “Then come back. We can communicate in person.” Did I say that? I envisioned Cecilia dragging me into her office throughout the day for plot updates. Scratch that. “No, you’re right. You get the plan in motion before you return. I promise to check emails every few hours.”

  “Good.” She seemed surprised and relieved by my on-board attitude. I was about to hang up when she added, “He is quite nice on the eyes, isn’t he.” She did not inflect for a question—it was a statement. “I’d worry about you and him and this time alone if you were anyone else. Normal, I mean.”

  “Please save further insults for email.”

  “Lib-by,” she said sternly and with two distinct syllables, “you cannot risk Hudson being in public again. What if one of your friends lives in the real world? They’d know in a heartbeat that the pursuit of Jude is only heating up thanks to Paulo Carrera.”

  “Who?”

  She sighed heavily. “This ignorance eases my worries only slightly. He’s a big-time lawyer, but that doesn’t matter. Forget I mentioned it.”

  “Is Hudson suing? Is the label suing?” For some reason I whispered this. “Shouldn’t Hudson know if there is a suit?”

  “I’ll inform you on a need-to-know basis. If you don’t screw up, Hudson will be unveiled and back in talks with FreeTime in no time. Suit or no suit. Gotta go. It’s late.”

  I flipped my phone to the off position. My heart was racing. I was no longer worried about messing up my status at Reed and Dunson. Hudson’s entire career and probably life were dependent upon this plan succeeding. I prayed that whatever came out of Cecilia’s head would be phenomenal. The woman had several star moments in her career. Sadly, I’d witnessed mainly the sadistic ones.

  Like when she figured out that college interns often work for free.

  She signed up for two dozen with a local university, but instead of exposing them to the world of public relations, she had them paint her apartment. Then she bused them out to her cabin in the San Juan Islands and had them fill the huge holes in the winding five-mile stretch of gravel driveway. She made them camp alongside that road with limited provisions and no form of communication for four days until they finished. That was the end of our intern program.

  I climbed back into my apartment and shook out my leg cramp. There was complete silence in the bedroom. I tiptoed over to the doorway. Hudson had fallen asleep propped up on a stack of pillows, the book loosely grasped in his left hand. I walked over to him and removed the book gently. I noticed the calluses on his fingers from years of guitar playing. Just like Angus. I examined his face now that I could without embarrassment. His features were perfect. His cheeks, forehead, and brow were wide, open, and accepting…unlike the gaunt, angry look I’d seen in photos. Maybe this is what rehab had done for him. Maybe this is why even Pan hadn’t recognized him. He was a new person. There was a half-smile playing on his lips. I found myself mimicking it with my own lips for a split second. Then I turned off the nightstand lamp and walked out backward.

  My coffee was wearing off already. It had been quite a day. Quite an enjoyable day, even. I kicked my shoes off and lay down on the couch fully clothed. I never did get a new pair of pajamas.

  A stream of moonlight illuminated the cowboy hat resting on the floor by my bookshelf. I always thought I’d be one of thos
e women who might never be able to get married and co-habit with someone else. By the time I moved out of Ferris’ place I had written a list of more than a thousand great reasons to live alone.

  That cowboy hat lassoed by the God’s night-light seemed to override every one of them.

  Twenty-Eight

  I held a paper bag of bagels and cream cheese with my teeth while I maneuvered the door of Caffe Ladro and two cups of coffee. Under my arm was another bag with a cheese Danish in it for Mr. Diddle.

  Hudson stood on the corner looking around at his old neighborhood. The cowboy hat rested on his head as it did yesterday, but looked much more natural in the morning light. This tall, nicely built man seemed more at ease today. When he shifted his weight and turned toward me, he smiled warmly. I wondered if I was just a convenient, new groupie to him.

  He took the bag from my mouth and one of the coffees. “I have missed Seattle’s world of coffee. Did you know there are parts of the U.S. that do not have three coffee shops on every block?”

  “Get out of here. That cannot be!” I pretended to be shocked. “While you’re enjoying being back in your old territory, you have to promise me that you’ll keep a very low profile. I got chewed out by the queen of mean last night for taking you to Ariel’s house. I should probably chain you to the sofa, but instead I’m going to trust you.”

  He bowed his head slightly. “I will be good. I feel bad enough that I’m invading your life. What’s your motive for all this? Is it purely out of love for Cecilia?” He let a little laugh escape his lips.

  “Motive sounds a bit sinister.”

  Hudson gave me a look that pulled the truth out of me.

  “Maybe I’ll have a chance to redeem a sidetracked PR career. I wasted a lot of time believing that if I just kept my head down and did the work, I would receive the proper recognition.”

  All he said was, “Recognition?”

  “Well, advancement.”

  “How’d that work for you?”