Lala Pettibone's Act Two

by Heidi Mastrogiovanni

  “I just mixed a fresh pitcher,” Geraldine said.

  Don’t do it, Lala thought. Do not do it.

  Lala spun around on her heels and let loose a deep, loud, triumphant cackle at her adopted aunt.

  “And I just met your next husband! Shit! I did not mean to say that out loud!”

  That evening, Lala must have enjoined Geraldine dozens of times to “please, please, please, please forget what I said.”

  “I am serious,” Lala repeated. “I am instructing the jury to ignore the witness’s outburst. The witness is a jackass.”

  Geraldine assured Lala that forgetting was out of the question, so they might as well make the best of it, whatever form that might take.

  “We’ll revisit tales of my new husband another evening soon, yes?”

  “Good idea,” Lala said. “We’ll shelve it for now, and then maybe I’ll calm down in a day or two and not ruin it all by talking about it like I’m on crack.”

  After Geraldine made a huge, mouth-wateringly salty salad of chopped tomatoes and onions, both from her garden, Lala left her adopted aunt’s apartment to “go upstairs and start writing because I feel sure that if not all writers, then certainly at least Hemingway, would agree that when you’re potted is an excellent time to start a massive reworking of a project.”

  Once back in her place, Lala ripped off her clothes and tossed them on the bed. She changed into cotton drawstring pants and a sweatshirt top and covered her feet with thick cotton socks. Then she fussed with the sparse items on her very neat and uncluttered desk. And then she carefully took all of her discarded clothes off the bed and hung up those that needed to be hung up in the closet and folded those that needed to be folded and put them in a drawer because the clutter was driving her crazy.

  Yootza was on Lala’s lap the instant she sat down at her chair. Petunia and Chester sat beside her and glared at their brother.

  Jealousy hung heavily in the air.

  “Mama’s sorry, darlings,” Lala said. She picked up Yootza, who growled at the disturbance and who was then swatted so tenderly on his nose as a correction that no canine could have interpreted the motion as anything but loving praise from an overly indulgent guardian, and went to get Petunia’s and Chester’s beds from the other side of the room. She positioned the beds, one on either side of her chair, and sat down with Yootza, who settled back on her lap.

  Yootza looked down at his siblings, who had curled themselves into tight balls in their beds and were glaring up at him.

  “Mama loves me more than you,” Yootza’s smug little face seemed to say. “You fat-ass losers.”

  “Ohhh, babies,” Lala said, looking down from left to right at her larger dogs. “Maman est désolée. If you were three Chihuahuas, I might be able to fit you all on my lap right now. I’m afraid that life is not always fair. Being bigger has certain advantages. As well as certain disadvantages. As does being smaller. Trust me on that. I can’t see substantial portions of the world unless I stand on a stepladder. Which is quite impractical when one is walking down the street. Oh my goodness, I seem to have lost my focus already.”

  Lala lifted the cover of her laptop. The screen glowed to life before her.

  With some hesitation, and also a vague, almost unnoticeable stirring of excitement, she copied the Word document entitled “Dressed.Lady.Script” and named the new version “Dressed.Lady.Novel.” Then she moved the arrow on the screen to the new document and pounded her index finger on the mouse.

  Lala stared at the words in front of her. She thought she might be hearing faint, throaty voices . . . voices from the words on the screen that had come to life as malevolent cartoon personas to berate her.

  “Ohhh, look at the writer. She’s a writer. Go on, Writer, write something. Whatcha waitin’ for, Writer? Show us whatcha got . . . Hey, I don’t hear any typing . . . Anybody hear any typing?”

  There’s nothing to be nervous about, Lala said to herself. Just ignore them. Have fun. Have. Fun. Don’t do it if it’s not fun. Operative word for the day. F-U-N. Operative word for from now on.

  “Get stuffed, voices of resistance and terror in my own head!”

  In a sudden frenzy of activity, one that startled sleeping Yootza and made the spoiled little bastard growl again, Lala swooped forward and dramatically tapped her fingers on the keyboard.

  On the screen the words “FADE IN” were replaced with the words “CHAPTER ONE.”

  Lala stared at the new letters. For several minutes. Until they all began to float around.

  “Okey-doke,” Lala said. “That’s enough for the first session. Don’t want to burn out from the get-go.”

  Lala dragged the arrow up to “File,” found “Save As,” whacked her index finger on the mouse, and closed out of the document after indicating that the genie inside the laptop should replace the already existing work with the revised version.

  Lala very carefully stood. She cradled Yootza in her left arm and worked with her right hand to unleash her laptop from its wired confines, so she could take it with her to the couch in the living room.

  She padded out of the bedroom. Petunia and Chester did not bother to wake up and follow her.

  Lala slowly lowered herself onto the sofa. Yootza grumbled in his sleep. She placed him next to her, so she could balance the computer on a pillow on her lap.

  Lala logged on to her e-mail and typed a new communication to her best friend.

  The subject line read, “I HAD SEX.”

  Lala grabbed the remote and turned on the TV before she continued to the body of the missive.

  Lala believed just because e-mails were electronic, that didn’t mean they shouldn’t be written with the same lack of ridiculous abbreviations and bizarre-but-now-commonplace symbols that were absent from the handwritten communications that had been deemed worthy of preservation in a volume of correspondence between a turn-of-the-last-century-before-this-one author and his closest friend.

  “Hi, Brenda,” she typed. “I apologize for shouting, but I HAD SEX. With a great guy and then he left the next day to go on a four-month sailing trip around the world with his adult sons. Fuck me, can you believe that shit?”

  “Hmmm,” Lala mused. “I’m thinking ‘Fuck me’ didn’t show up much in the collected letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Lala saw a wonderfully familiar face on the TV screen.

  “Omigod, Yootza,” Lala yipped.

  She lifted the sleeping dachshund and wiggled his stubby right front paw at the screen. Because it always cracked her up to make it look like the little guy was waving at something. And the more unlikely the object of his greeting, the better.

  “Look,” Lala giggled. “Our favorite movie is on again!”

  Lala quickly returned to her e-mail to Brenda.

  “Gotta run. Casablanca is on again. I watched it with that great guy I just told you about. After WE HAD SEX. I’ll call you tomorrow to tell you more about that great guy. With whom I HAD SEX.”

  Lala hit “Send.”

  “I can’t believe I just typed ‘Gotta.’ I must be really drunk. ‘Got to run’ looks weird, though. Fussy. Nineteenth century. What’s a wordsmith to do in this modern era? How to balance colloquial and correct is the bedeviling issue of our time. Oy vey.”

  Lala placed the laptop on the coffee table. She swung her legs up so that she and Yootza were lying flat on the couch. She had her head propped up on the pillow that had, up until a moment before, supported the laptop. Yootza was completely horizontal on her chest and tummy.

  Lala watched as Paul Henreid marched up to the house band at Rick’s Café Américain and demanded they “Play ‘La Marseillaise’! Play it!” because the Nazis who were occupying Casablanca had started singing “Die Wacht am Rhein” in the café, and Paul was not about to stand for that, and of course all the band memb
ers had to wordlessly look over at Humphrey Bogart for permission to play the French national anthem because he’s their boss, and there are Nazis in the café, and, of course, Humphrey wordlessly nods his permission because that’s the kind of guy he is, and so the band starts playing, and everyone in the café stands up and sings the French national anthem and their voices drown out the Nazis, and the Nazis give up the fight. For now. And ultimately the Nazis lose the fight. Because of people like Rick and Ilsa and Viktor and even Claude Rains as Captain Louis Renault, who seems self-serving but is actually quite a hero himself.

  “My GOD is this movie great,” Lala gasped.

  She swung herself back to a sitting position. Yootza rolled off her and onto the sofa, woke up and started snapping and snarling at the air around him until his rage spent itself. Then he turned in a circle several times and fell asleep again almost immediately.

  Lala grabbed her laptop and conjured a blank document onto the screen. She typed with lust-filled urgency. And with a desire to remember her thoughts before they evaporated from her increasingly challenged mind.

  “David, David, David, David, David . . . Casablanca is on again, and I wish you were still here so we could watch it again together and then HAVE SEX again together. Is there a moment in all of cinema more stirring than when Viktor Laszlo orders the band to ‘Play “La Marseillaise”! Play it!’? Oh, I think not. And I think no one will have the cheek, the gall, the misguided foolishness to argue otherwise with me—because if they were to argue with me, then they would have to listen to a diatribe in response that only consisted of the words ‘Are you out of your mind? You’re out of your fucking mind, right? What, you’re fucking crazy, or what?’ repeated over and over again on an endless loop and how tiresome would that be? Bathos alert, David . . . I miss you already . . . Wow, that came out of (Note to self: consider replacing with ‘outta’) nowhere, huh? But it’s true, and it apparently had to come out . . . because I seem to be powerless to stop the truth from revealing itself . . . and I have a feeling you’re asking yourself right now, what’s with all the ellipses, huh? God, are we in tune with each other, or what?”

  Green-Eyed Monsters

  The following weekend started with yet another gorgeous, sunny day. Lala had finally persuaded Geraldine to just check out Lala’s new friend with the broken leg. It took some doing, as Geraldine had almost immediately abandoned the reasoned approach to the idea that she expressed when Lala first blurted it.

  “I’m not in the mood,” Geraldine said. “I don’t feel like welcoming any major changes into my life right now.”

  “Oh, come on, it’s no big deal,” Lala responded. “There’s no obligation. We’ll just go over and see what you think, yeah? For fun. Just for the fun of it.”

  Geraldine was cradling Yootza in her arms like a baby as they walked toward Monty’s house on the excuse that they were out walking the dogs—which was true because, of course, the dogs had to be walked often—and they had just happened to find themselves in front of Monty’s house, no big deal—which, given the amount of coaxing and maneuvering it took to get Geraldine on the road, was aggressive bullshit. And especially so, given how long it took them to get dressed before they left. Multiple outfits were created and discarded before the two women emerged in studied, casual chic. They both were now in cute, comfortably tight jeans, sneakers that were meant for strolling and not for working out, and lush, warm, cotton sweaters. As much as they might justifiably be accused of looking like a mother/daughter ad for the Gap, the effect was working, and they knew it.

  For some reason, shortly after they started out, Yootza sat down on the side of the road and refused to walk another step. So now Geraldine was carrying the stubborn, little pill.

  “Why is this gentleman my next husband?” Geraldine asked. “I’m asking because I’m curious. Not because I’m necessarily even interested in having a next husband.”

  “Because he is,” Lala said. She had Petunia and Chester on joined leashes around her waist, and she was swinging her arms in exaggerated optimism and encouragement as they walked. “Splendid day, eh? Splendid! A magical day! A day for magic.”

  “Why isn’t he your next husband? Because I’m wondering where you got the idea that I want to get married again?”

  “Fine,” Lala huffed. “So he’s your next boyfriend. Paramour. Hunka hunka burnin’ love. Name your label.”

  “Why isn’t he your next boyfriend, paramour, hunka—”

  “Chester, please stop pulling. Mama’s going to topple over face first. Is that your goal?”

  Lala turned to Geraldine and stuck her tongue out at her and did a long, trilling raspberry in Geraldine’s direction. “Because he’s yours. He just is. He’s not mine. Trust me, I wouldn’t be sharing him if he were.”

  They walked in mutually stiff-backed, mutually semi-irritated silence for a minute or two until, out of the corner of her eye, Lala saw Geraldine suddenly smile broadly and wondered what the hell that was all about.

  “Have you heard from David?”

  Lala pursed her lips. Geraldine noticed this out of the corner of her eye and worried about what the hell that was meant to indicate.

  “We agreed not to contact each other.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, why?”

  “He’s on the ocean. I’m by the ocean. At this point probably not even the same ocean. I don’t want to like him any more than I already do.”

  “And from you I’m taking advice on romance,” Geraldine said.

  Lala nodded her head in the direction of a house just a few yards down the street from where they were.

  “There he is. The one with the broken leg and the wheelchair. You can’t miss him.”

  Geraldine narrowed her eyes to improve her focus.

  “Cute,” she said. “I think maybe very cute. I think maybe I like.”

  “But don’t take any romantic advice from me,” Lala said. “What do I know?”

  A tall, brunette, imposing woman exited Monty’s house carrying a blanket. She placed the blanket on Monty’s legs. The woman was maybe in her late thirties, and she was very attractive, in a slightly rigid way.

  Lala and Geraldine stopped walking.

  Merde, Lala thought. Monty’s got a girlfriend.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Geraldine whispered fiercely. “He’s got a girlfriend.”

  She spun on her heels, but Lala grabbed Geraldine’s arm before she could complete her trajectory in the opposite direction.

  “No, no, no, I bet that’s his nurse,” Lala said.

  “Oh, look at the nice timing,” the two women heard Monty cheerfully call in their direction. “Lala, I want you and your beautiful companion to meet my daughter.”

  Better still! Lala thought. I hope I don’t burst into maudlin tears of grateful relief. Must not do that. Must not burst into maudlin tears of grateful relief.

  “Hi! We just happened to be walking in your neighborhood! Walking the dogs! In your neighborhood. And you’re outside in your yard. While we’re walking by your house. Fun coincidence, huh?”

  _______________

  Monty’s daughter, Helene, was a wonderful hostess. She whipped up a delicious vegetarian lunch for their guests. During which Benedict the Great Dane stayed under the table and kept trying to park his snout on Lala’s crotch. And after which, having been fed enough treats to actually satiate their hound appetites for a brief period, her three dogs lay together on their backs on the plush rug nearby, with their legs flopping open to expose their bellies as they all grunted and snorted in their sleep. Upon seeing this, Benedict finally removed his snout and went over to join his new friends. He put his big head on Petunia’s tummy and sighed heavily. This did not wake up the beagle, though apparently Petunia did have a terrifying nightmare shortly after the large cranium settled on her gut, judging by the amount of twitching and whimpering that was
going on.

  During lunch, it was revealed that Helene was a published author. And a member of the acting company at a small but very prestigious theatre in Burbank.

  I want to go home, Lala thought. To New York. Now.

  Geraldine had instantly recognized that Helene’s life would be upsetting to Lala. She gave Lala a comforting smile as Helene waxed rhapsodic about the joys of book tours, where apparently even the frustrations were actually answered prayers dusted in gold.

  “Yes, it was well after midnight, and I hadn’t eaten anything all evening, but that’s what happens in a small town when the local bookstore is filled with fans. You can’t get away. You just can’t. You owe it to your public to chat, to answer questions, to inspire future authors. And it’s more than owing. It’s a joy. A joy. You just have to trust that there’s a Denny’s somewhere in the county that’s serving eggs and hash browns at 2:00 a.m. And usually there is.”

  Lala was grateful when Geraldine discreetly reached over and gave her hand a comforting squeeze during Helene’s monologue. But now they were all comfortably settled in the living room playing Trivial Pursuit, and Lala was starting to feel mightily jealous about the clear gaze of admiration and affection that Geraldine was already showing the warm and gracious young woman.

  Hello, everyone, Lala thought. Just call me Cinderelly before the ball.

  Monty had just asked his daughter a history question.

  I know this, Lala thought. It’s Molo—

  “Vyacheslav Molotov,” Helene said.

  Damn, she’s smart, Lala thought. And throwing in the first name. Like we wouldn’t have accepted the answer without that. I knew it was Vyacheslav. I wonder if she knows what Lenin’s real name is.

  “I don’t mean to be pompous,” Helene said, smiling charmingly. “It’s just that I had a Soviet History professor at college who placed great emphasis on the details. So it seems I will never forget that Lenin’s real name is—”

  “Vladimir Illyich Ulyanov,” Lala said.