Going Sasquatch

by Jess Whitecroft

  “Get inside,” I said, and this time he did as he was told.

  I looked around, trying to spot the little fucker. Someone down at the lodge must have figured it out and blabbed. Or someone in town. Or that woman in the parking lot. Or just our old friend Patty Chive. Either way, they’d sniffed out our love nest and things were about to get even uglier than even I could have predicted.

  Luckily I’d spent half of my adolescence staring anxiously into bushes, looking for anything that might be moving within. I glimpsed the white of a running shoe and took off.

  The paparazzo broke cover almost immediately. I wasn’t even wearing shoes, but he had one of those other kind of Hollywood bodies, the type you don’t generally see in the movies. The kind that feeds on a diet mostly composed of coke, coffee and other people’s business. I had him by the hood of his sweater before he could even break into a sprint.

  He reached for his zipper, like he was trying to unzip the hoodie and escape, but I couldn’t give a shit if he did or not. I wanted the camera.

  “Get off me, you fucking maniac,” he yelled, thrashing back and forth like a large fish that doesn’t want to be landed. I held the camera, the strap still around his neck. “You never heard of the First Amendment or something?”

  “Oh, yeah. You’re a regular Carl fucking Bernstein, aren’t you? Watergate on steroids is currently unfolding in DC and you’re here, taking pictures of strangers’ dicks. ‘Cause that’s fucking news. Give me that, you little bastard.”

  He thrashed again, but he slowed this time, and that’s when I saw that Chase had thrown on some clothes and come down to join the party.

  “Finn, stop it,” he said. A moment ago he’d seemed on cloud nine, however fraudulent and temporary that cloud was. Now he just seemed tired.

  “Why?” I said. “This shithead just photographed your penis. Without permission.”

  “You are here,” said the shithead, looking at Chase. “I knew it!”

  He said it like he’d been vindicated in his belief in Bigfoot or aliens landing in his neighbor’s yard, like Chase was some animal he was better at hunting than anyone else. I gave the strap an extra yank, just out of spite.

  “I’m on vacation,” said Chase, still sounding tired and defeated in a way that just broke my heart. “Please just leave me alone. I never did anything to you.”

  Shithead kept up his tug-o-war. “Let go, meathead. This camera is expensive.”

  “It is,” I said, and the strap gave. I jumped out of his way as Shithead lunged at me, holding the camera aloft. “It’s very nice. It is it digital?”

  “Yes!”

  “Cool. So are you gonna show me how to delete everything on it or do I have to get Stone Age and do it myself with a large rock?”

  “Give me the fucking camera!”

  “No!”

  Chase sighed. “Fuck it, Finn,” he said. “Give it to him. I don’t give a shit any more.”

  “Are you kidding? You want to get outed by this sleazy little creep? It’s none of his goddamn business.”

  “Uh, technically Chase is a public figure,” said Shithead, and that was enough for me, the snotty, finger-waggy way he said it, like he was somehow entitled to other people’s private lives just because he’d seen them on a screen once. I dropped the camera. It landed awkwardly on a nearby jagged rock and smashed satisfyingly.

  “Oops,” I said.

  Shithead gathered up the bits, his face white. “Oh, you are gonna regret this,” he said.

  “Maybe,” said Chase. “After my lawyers eat your liver.”

  Shithead raised a middle finger and stormed off. “Fuck,” I said.

  “Well,” said Chase. “They found me.”

  “We can fix this…”

  He shook his head. “Someone at the lodge must have figured out it was me.” He sighed. “Guess I’m not that great an actor after all.”

  I took a deep breath. “Okay,” I said. “We need to talk.”

  He got very quiet. His eyes were too wide and the skin tightened over his cheekbones. For a moment I thought he might cry, but then he nodded - his throat working as he swallowed – and walked back up to the cabin.

  I followed at a slight distance, and found him sitting stiffly in the middle of the sofa.

  “Chase…” I said, but he held up a hand.

  “Finn, I swear, if you’ve been leaking information…”

  “Fuck, no!” I said, and he seemed to relax a little. “Okay, I called Angie.”

  He stared at me. “You did what?”

  “It was blowing up, okay?” I said. “I…happened to glance at TMZ…”

  “I thought we said no TMZ?”

  “Yeah, we did, but I got worried. She was kind of already freaking out about you before you left LA, and I just…checked. To make sure things weren’t worse.” I tried not to think too hard about the headlines. “But they were.”

  Chase got up from the sofa, both hands over his mouth. “Oh my God, Finn. What did you do? What did you say?”

  “I just called her to let her know you hadn’t dived off the Hollywood sign and that you weren’t being eaten by coyotes in a canyon somewhere.”

  “Wait, what? People were saying stuff like that?”

  “Duh,” I said. “Do you know who you are?”

  “Yes,” he said, his voice rising. “I’m a person who needed a vacation.”

  “Chase, you’re a fucking A-Lister.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not real,” he said.

  “It is real. Look in a mirror. Look at your paycheck. Look on a billboard. That’s your ass up there.”

  “Yes, but it never felt real,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his stubble. “Oh God. Oh fuck. Give me your phone.”

  “Uh…” That was a bad idea. Maybe there was a better way to ease him into it.

  “Give. Me. The. Phone,” he said, through gritted teeth. Okay, maybe not.

  I handed it over. He snatched it, took a deep breath and tapped the screen.

  I didn’t know where to look. He turned his back to me, so I could just make out the TMZ logo over his shoulder. He was breathing too hard.

  “Oh my God,” he said, with a deathly softness that was far worse than any amount of screaming. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

  Now, there was the question. His life had been falling to pieces and I hadn’t told him he needed to step in and salvage it. Pretty sure that was grounds for a break up. And possible permanent exile to Tierra del Fuego.

  “I wanted to,” I said, choosing my words very carefully. “But you were…happy.”

  He barely restrained himself from throwing the phone at me. When he handed it back his eyes were wet. “Do I look happy now?” he said.

  “No.”

  “Do you think I would have been happy knowing they had fucking bloodhounds looking for me?” he said. “Oh my God. My Mom. I have to call my Mom.”

  God, I’d been so busy worrying about Angie I’d forgotten that there were other people who would be freaking out about his disappearance. Real people. And at once I was pissed. It was all very well for him to say nothing felt real, but he’d lost sight of what was.

  “Wait, you didn’t do that?” I said. “And you didn’t think that skipping out on fucking ComicCon wasn’t going to be a big deal? When were you gonna tell me about that, Chase?”

  “I don’t know, okay?” he said, his eyes bright and hard. “I couldn’t cope, Finn. I got overwhelmed with everything and I freaked out. Because I’m an actor. I’m a flake. I’m not a smart business person like you. I couldn’t build something up from nothing like you’ve done. I put on spandex outfits and pretend I can fly for the benefit of Russian heterosexuals or whatever, which is hardly fucking challenging, but for me it’s apparently impossible because I couldn’t keep my hetero-bro basic ‘brand’ together because I’ve been in love with you from probably the first day I met you…”

  Oh God. I felt sick. Which was definitely not the way I was supposed
to be feeling at finally hearing those words.

  “Chase,” I said, reaching out. Maybe we could fix this. Maybe if we loved each other enough we could get past this.

  “Don’t,” he said, flinching away from my touch, and I knew right then everything was fucked. Love couldn’t fix it. Love had made it worse. “Please don’t touch me, Finn. Just…just tell me the truth. How long have you known about this? How long have you been sitting on this shitstorm?”

  “A while.”

  His eyes were so green it hurt. “How long, Finn?”

  “Wednesday.”

  Chase gave a sharp sniff. The silence in the room was unbearable.

  “I’m sorry,” I started to say, but he cut me off.

  “Fuck sorry. Thursday, Friday, Saturday…you went right on fucking me while you knew this? You took me to meet your parents while you knew this? You let me say what I said to you last night while you knew this?”

  “Chase, don’t…”

  “Don’t what? Hold you accountable?”

  Okay, that was enough. “Wait, no,” I said. “You were the one who fell off the face of the earth without even telling your own mother, apparently. I don’t think I’m the only one who hasn’t been totally honest here.”

  “Me? When did I lie to you?”

  “You have another phone in your bag.”

  He stared at me like I was losing my mind. “I do?”

  “Yeah. When you told me to look in your bag to find the condoms, I found the other phone.”

  Chase stomped into the bathroom. I heard him rummaging around in there for a moment, then he came out, phone in hand.

  “Okay,” he said, switching it on. “You got me. And what’s this supposed to prove, exactly? That I was in touch with LA the whole time and lying to you about it?”

  “I don’t know. You never told me you were blowing off the biggest event of the nerd calendar. Or that your own mother had no idea where you were.”

  Chase jabbed angrily at the screen and showed it to me. It looked new, like a phone that had yet to be set up. No app shortcuts, no username, just the default background. “There, you prick,” he said. “I’ve never even used it. I didn’t even know I had it until you mentioned it. Do you know how many of these things I get given in goodie bags per year?”

  I didn’t say anything. Nothing I could say right now would make things any better.

  He gave me a tired, angry look and dialed the phone. “Hi…I’m calling for Angie Lorde…yes, I know she’s very busy. Just tell her it’s Chase Morrow…no, I’m serious. It’s me. My phone ran out of charge.” He walked towards the kitchen area as he talked. “No, of course I’m not dead…” He lowered the phone briefly to glare at me. “Although I am Bigfoot.”

  Shit.

  He vanished into the back of the kitchen, leaving me standing there in the middle of the living area with no idea what to say or do. I supposed it was time to face the music, so I picked up the remote control and did what I’d been forbidden to do all week.

  I turned on the TV.

  After a couple of channels hops (bored people selling exercise equipment, the health warning for a brand of anti-depressants) I came across one of the big morning talk shows.

  “Well, I mean it’s weird that she mentions Chase Morrow,” a blonde was saying, while Patty’s Bigfoot video played in the background. “But how can anyone look at this footage and conclude that she’s totally crazy?”

  “Please,” said her co-host. “It’s clearly someone dressed in a costume. It’s not tall enough, for a start. According to her neighbor that wall there is seven feet high, and Bigfoot is allegedly close to nine feet–”

  “–Brent, come on. People come in a wide variety of sizes. Who’s to say that sasquatches…or sasquatch? Can we get an official word on the plural? Anyway, the point I’m making…”

  …was that the whole world had apparently lost its fucking mind.

  Again.

  Only this time I had helped.

  *

  What had happened was this.

  Chloe Park had overheard me talking to Angie about Chase.

  Then the story about Chase had got bigger and Chloe – being the Z-list thirstmonster that she was – had spotted an opportunity to be part of the story.

  Cue Chloe running around town telling everyone how worried she was about Chase Morrow, and yeah, she totally knew him. He was really cool and nice, and did she mention she’d even worked out with him a couple of times?

  She had even gone up to his house, tied a goddamn yellow ribbon to the gatepost and Instagrammed it. Of course, by this point Alicia was also gone, having taken less than thirty-six hours to realize why the neighbor’s security lights had been driving Chase so batshit. So by the time Chloe showed up – oozing bug-eyed pseudo concern – Alicia and her Gauloise-smoking girlfriend were on their way to Venice. Venice, Italy, that is; Gauloise-girlfriend’s family owned a travel company.

  So Alicia elbowed her way across the Rialto and navigated the heaving crowds and told herself she was having a great time, even though Venice in August doesn’t smell all that great and a cappuccino in St. Mark’s Square will set you back the best part of a small mortgage. But she was with Gauloise-girl (whose name was actually Victoria) and they were crazy enough about one another for her to pretend that the crowds weren’t giving her agoraphobia and that the not-so-serene republic was still as romantic as it had ever been.

  By this time the shit – a large volume of it happily flung by Chloe – had already hit the fan – and when Alicia saw and said that Chase had told her he was going out of town for a few days, it was already too late.

  You know that old quote about how a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth has even finished getting its boots on? Yeah. That.

  I fired Chloe, on the grounds that the dog-vomit incident had set me back so much on steam cleaning that it simply wasn’t cost efficient to continue with clients who couldn’t be relied upon to keep their stomach contents on the inside. That and I couldn’t stand the goddamn sight of her.

  The pool got refilled.

  I came clean and apologized to Ivy, who was annoyed with me for a while but slowly came back around.

  Chase didn’t call.

  And everyone was still talking about Bigfoot.

  Not that the Bigfoot thing even felt that weird anymore, not in a world where the orange guy from The Apprentice was a) president and b) the entire Republican party was behaving like it was somehow normal for the president to tweet memes and bait North Korea into a nuclear exchange via Twitter. The world had gone mad a long while back and we were just sitting around attempting to adjust to the bewilderingly crazy new normal. Nothing had felt real for some time, I realized, and Chase was no different, or at least that’s what I told myself.

  The whole interlude, the whole idea that we could escape this strange, demented twenty-four hour world even for a week had been nothing more than a spectacular, sex-filled delusion.

  You couldn’t keep anything secret any more. Not on a planet full of Chloes given to tweeting their every thought and Instagramming their every Starbucks. And I’d been an idiot to think any different.

  Dad called, but he was in no shape to talk about the latest catastrophic failure of my love life. Our sasquatch escapade had had the unfortunate side effect of pissing on his life’s work.

  “She was on the morning news and everything,” he said, as I stared out morosely at the newly filled pool.

  “Who?”

  “Patty Chive. Who else? Do you know what they called her? On the goddamn chyron and everything?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Bigfoot Expert. Patty Chive, Bigfoot Expert. Can you imagine?”

  Someone came in the front door. “No,” I said.

  “She wouldn’t know the Skookum Cast from a hole in her ass…”

  “…yeah, that’s delightful, Dad, but I gotta go.”

  It was Chase.

  It had been four
days. Four days in which I told myself over and over that what we’d had wasn’t real. It was an interlude, a break from reality in which we fucked a lot, dressed up as Bigfoot and decided we’d fallen in love, but that the whole thing was totally unsustainable in the cold light of day.

  Yeah. So much for that.

  This was real. This hurt like hell.

  He wasn’t here for the gym. He had no bag and he was wearing chucks and jeans, with a cute little gray striped vest over a tight white t-shirt. His hair looked softer, a shade darker, and he was still wearing those glasses that I loved. Yes, loved. I loved every damn inch of him, from his toes to the ends of his hair.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey yourself.”

  He swallowed and shifted his weight from one foot to another. He looked as awkward as I felt and already I had this horrible sinking feeling that whatever he was about to say was going to hurt a whole lot more.

  “Are you still mad at me?” I asked.

  Chase shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m mad at myself. At this whole situation.” He sighed. “I don’t know any more. I’m too tired. I…I haven’t been sleeping well.”

  He always slept so well with me. When he caught my eye I could see we were on the same page, remembering how he would drift off in my arms before the sweat had even finished drying on our bodies. I wanted nothing more than to take him upstairs to my bed and fuck him until he came hard enough for it to practically knock him out, and he would sink down, his gasping lips against my shoulder and his eyelashes resting on his flushed cheeks.

  “Come upstairs,” I said.

  He hesitated, and I thought I’d forget how to breathe. “I know I hurt you…” I said, but he shook his head again.

  “You lied to me.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “A lie of omission is still a lie, Finn,” he said. “And I know you were trying to protect me, but out of all the people in this stupid bullshit town I thought you were the one I could rely on not to lie to me.” His eyes glittered green behind his glasses. “You always saw through me. Jesus, you’d call me out for eating cheeseburgers if you saw I’d gained–”

  “–you’re not great with wheat,” I said, a stickler for accuracy even now. “You’d get that little eczema patch behind your ear…”