Lala Pettibone's Act Two

by Heidi Mastrogiovanni

  “People, look at these blockbuster classics offerings! Pirates of the Caribbean, On Stranger Tides? I don’t give a shit what the critics said. Vicious bastards. They eviscerated that movie, and they did it because they’re jealous they didn’t make that movie. It is genius. It has got Johnny Depp. Who needs anything else? I mean anything else . . . plot, characters, dialogue, when you’ve got Johnny Depp? The man is a movie star. The man is a genius.

  “Green Lantern? It is a brilliant damn movie, okay? We’ve got Ryan Reynolds’s star turn as a cocky pilot selected to put on a glowing green body suit by a bunch of creatures of all shapes and sizes and configurations wearing glowing green body suits, so they can team up to defend everything in the universe from this huge, ugly, bizarre mass that kind of has a face and that gets more and more powerful by feeding off the terror it inspires. And if that’s not a metaphor for my college years, then I don’t know what is. We’ve got good. We’ve got evil. We’ve got sex; we’ve got survival; we’ve got transformation. We’ve got a sequel coming. And then probably a prequel.

  “And let me, once again, veer off topic for a moment to add that a ménage à trois with Johnny Depp and Ryan Reynolds wouldn’t be such a bad thing to suffer through either, huh?

  “We’re hammered, and our cups are runnething over with wine and love and entertainment at thirty-seven thousand feet.

  “Hey, look at this! Other channels! With other themes! ‘Lighter Fare.’ Is that a name for a genre, or what?

  “A teen romcom with that girl on TV who’s dating that singer guy whose name I can’t remember because I’m too hammered, and she’s poor, and she’s saved up enough to go to Paris with her friends, but then she ends up in Monte Carlo being mistaken for a duchess or countess or some fabulous shit like, that and they all end up in gorgeous ball gowns at the charity event of the decade dry humping a slew of lesser European royalty, and, Omigod, I just realized, it’s like The Prince and the Pauper, kind of, in a way!”

  Lala slammed her hand down on the podium.

  “This movie is genius! Yes! Yes, I will have another glass of quite lovely champagne, you delicious air host, you! OMIGOD! Transformers, Episode I-Don’t-Know-Which-But-What-Does-It-Matter! This is the one that got the People’s Choice Award, right? No? Well, then I suspect it was robbed. And I’m going to watch the entire film right now to see if my instincts are correct. Twice. Yeah, maybe two times in a row. Because you can do that on a plane. What? We’re flying over the Great Salt Lake? NO! It’s too soon! We’ll be landing in LAX shortly? NO! This flight was only a minute long. Because time has no meaning anymore because I’ve been transported to Magic Land! Because I’m in a plane, and I’m hammered, and I’m watching mooooovieeeees!”

  Lala paused. The audience looked at her, unsure if she was done. Lala closed her notebook. And the audience applauded.

  Lala’s aunt and her aunt’s date and her neighbors applauded. Helene and the other readers applauded. The cheerleaders applauded. Everyone applauded.

  Lala clutched her notebook to her chest.

  If I were to, I don’t know, pass out and die from an aneurysm at this very moment, she thought, with this image and this feeling and this experience as my last image and feeling and experience on this Earth, that would not necessarily be the worst way to go. Not by a flippin’ long shot.

  _______________

  Okay, I’m definitely glad I didn’t pass out and die right after my reading, Lala thought. Because they are serving a very nice white wine at this shindig.

  An older gentleman standing a few groups away from Lala caught her eye with a wave. He smiled and raised his hands in her direction to send a round of applause her way. Lala smiled and waved back, and debated running over and kissing the older gentleman full on the lips.

  And the adoration, Lala thought. The adoration, which is admittedly closer to some degree of validation than actual adoration, but I’m going to go ahead and up it more than a few notches in my mind. That and the white wine. Are definitely making me glad that I’m still alive. I’m alive! Still!

  These musings were putting yet another shit-eating grin on Lala’s puss. She was standing alone near the bar after having returned from the ladies’ room. It was the first time she was by herself since the readings ended.

  Geraldine and Monty and Stephanie and Chuck and Thomas had grabbed Lala right away when she walked off the stage and showered her with their enthusiasm.

  “You were delightful, my dear,” Monty said.

  “I’m so proud of you,” Geraldine said.

  She grabbed Lala in a hug and whispered in her ear, “Jesus, I nearly plotzed when it looked like you were about to go helter skelter at the beginning.”

  “‘The Soused Cinéaste,’” Thomas said. “Great title.”

  “Too bad Doctor David wasn’t here tonight! Bet he would have really laughed at your stuff!” Stephanie exulted. “He’s so much fun.”

  Chuck nodded his head as his wife spoke.

  “Wish Doctor David could have been here. That would’ve been really great.”

  Lala couldn’t suppress a full-head twitch, but she was relieved to find that no one seemed to notice.

  Nearly everyone who had been at the reading was staying for the party, and quite a few of the audience members stopped by Lala’s circle to tell her how much they had enjoyed her work.

  As she was standing at the bar alone, gathering her overwhelmingly happy thoughts, the cheerleading squad passed by Lala. The girls were moving as though they were one ecstatic, ungainly mammal on tiptoes rushing to thrust themselves into the orbit that was d’Artagnan and his brilliance. Then, quite suddenly, one of the cheerleaders extricated herself from the collective and ran up to Lala.

  “Ma’am?”

  Lala looked to her left and to her right and behind herself.

  I think she means me, Lala thought.

  “Mmmm?”

  “I just wanted to tell you that I thought what you wrote was great!”

  “Oh, thank you so much,” Lala said.

  Lala paused, feeling instinctively that she should add something else. Feeling that, somehow, she hadn’t said enough to the cheerful and genuine young lady.

  “Thank you, dear.”

  The cheerleader nodded and happily patted Lala’s shoulder and skipped back to rejoin the acrobatic plasma life force.

  Ohhh, fine, Lala thought. Ma’am. One of the most fun nights of my life, and all of a sudden I’m matronly. Swell. And I’m using the word ‘dear.’ To speak to a young person. Because I’m suddenly so damn matronly.

  Lala watched the cheerleaders surround d’Artagnan in a clear attempt to absorb him into their pulsating energy field.

  Lala’s focus fixed on the Man of the Evening himself. The zygote scrivener was preening more than a peacock in mating season.

  Look at all that youth, Lala thought. God, I feel ancient.

  “I could be their . . . Sheesh, I could be their grandmother,” she whispered to herself.

  “Well, maybe, but those would have been some very early pregnancies because you certainly don’t look it.”

  Lala spun around toward the masculine voice, and in spinning, wedged her nose smack into the grain of a soft wool suit covering a firm set of pectoral muscles.

  She pushed herself back on her heels and looked up. Smiling down at her was a man with shoulder-length black hair.

  Notre Majesté Louis Quatorze? she thought.

  The man nodded toward the d’Artagnan vortex.

  “Is that an amorphous gaggle of youth, or is that an amorphous gaggle of youth?”

  Lala turned her gaze back to the kids.

  “Listen, stop me right away if you’re hopelessly enamored, and I’m just a bitter old coot,” the man continued, “but what that young pup read? Was that for shit, or what?”

  “Ohhh, yeah,” Lala
said.

  “He’s got a four-book deal, and they’re filming that crap we heard tonight in New Zealand right now.”

  “Sheesh,” Lala said.

  “You know what I liked about your piece? You focused on a woman’s reaction to movies as a woman. A specific woman with a hefty libido who speaks from her particulars to many other women, regardless of their circumstances.”

  Lala looked at the man to see if he was pulling her leg. Apparently, he wasn’t.

  “Yeah. I guess I react to everything as a woman . . . with . . . ummm . . . my specific libido and stuff.”

  Lala twisted her lips and wrinkled her nose.

  “You made that libido comment because of my age?”

  “It’s an appreciative comment,” the man said. “A very appreciative one. Made from my particular circumstances. Which, I guess, is the prism through which I view most everything. As it happens, I was married for over twenty years. For the last few of those, my wife lost her libido, so—”

  “Well, you know, there are a lot of factors quite beyond our control, and so I don’t think it’s fair for you to put the onus on her if –”

  “For me. I’m sorry, I didn’t express that clearly. It wasn’t lost. She found it just fine. With her business partner.”

  “Ohhh, sorry,” Lala said. “I get strident sometimes. Please excuse me.”

  The man took a silver card case out of the pocket of his jacket and handed a business card to Lala.

  Lala read, “James Lancaster.”

  Nice name, Lala thought.

  Lala read, “President, Lancaster E-Publishing.”

  Holy shiiiiit! Lala thought.

  “I’d love to read some more of your stuff,” James Lancaster said.

  I’m gonna barf, Lala thought.

  “Ummm . . . yeah . . . great . . . that would be great. So you live here in town, yes? I mean, there’s no urgency, right? I can get it to you sometime . . . very soon . . . ish?”

  Fever-ish

  “Oh, for the love of God, honey, do not buy that dress. Trust me, you do not want to look like that on your wedding day.”

  The warm, reassuring lights of impending dawn were just starting to rise outside the many windows in Lala’s living room. She was stretched out on the sofa, precariously balancing her laptop just below her chin. The cord connecting the computer with its power source wove around and over valleys and mountains of warm, unconscious dogs. The amount of cozy fleece on the couch in the form of drawstring pants and a crewneck shirt and infinite blankies was epic.

  Yootza was positioned directly below the laptop and was functioning as a semi-smooth surface for the device. He had his little body draped out long on Lala’s stomach, and his head was wedged between her breasts, where his mouth, surrounded by graying fur, was engaging in molasses-paced exhalations and inhalations that were punctuated by a whistling sound and occasionally interrupted by the staccato whimpering of a very lively dream.

  Lala lifted the laptop slightly and looked at her dachshund.

  “I confess I’m no natural fashion maven,” she admitted to Yootza. “But even I know she does not want to look like that on her wedding day.”

  Lala had once again been trying to transform her screenplay of Dressed Like a Lady, Drinks Like a Pig into a comedic novel. She had begun the effort close to seven hours earlier, after she had come back from a delicious, relaxing dinner with Aunt Geraldine at a wonderful French restaurant that was within walking distance. They had shared a bottle of expensive red wine that was half-off because every Tuesday all the bottles of wine were discounted.

  On that particular Tuesday, two of the letters on the tricolor neon sign above the entrance to the restaurant were out, so that Le Petit Bistro read as Le tit Bistro.

  Lala’s flirtatious French with the adorable young waiter, who had grown up near San Diego and did not speak a word of the language of the Gauls, had become more fluent and more panting with each glass of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

  “What is his name?” Lala slurred at her aunt. She scanned the crowded bar area to see if she could catch sight of her muscular conveyor of things vegetarian and things fermented. “Is he adorable or what? What did he tell us his name is? Is it Jean Luc? Thierry? Valery?”

  “I think he said it’s Steve,” Geraldine said.

  “Jean Luc!” Lala brayed when she saw Steve emerge from the kitchen. “Je dois parler avec toi!”

  “Lala,” Geraldine hissed, “it’s not really the decibels that are making your voice carry quite so obnoxiously, it’s the timbre. Tone down the timbre. Now.”

  Lala ignored Geraldine as she gazed up at Steve and smiled.

  “You are one long verre d’eau, aren’t you? You don’t mind if I use the familiar form of ‘you’ when we parler, do you?”

  “No, ma’am, I sure don’t,” Steve said. He cheerfully handed them each a small menu. “Did you ladies save room for dessert?”

  Geraldine snatched the menu out of Lala’s hands and gave both back to Steve without opening her own.

  “My niece will have two servings of your brioche bread pudding. As a sponge.”

  Steve nodded and smiled and headed back to the kitchen to put in their order.

  “‘Ma’am?’” Lala said. “‘Ma’am’ he calls me?”

  In addition to the absorbing powers of the two large helpings of doughy, vanilla-ganache-covered dessert that Lala had effortlessly devoured, the crisp evening air of the quick walk that Lala took with the dogs right after she got home had also helped to clear her head a little.

  But Lala was still a bit potted by the time they got back and by the time she had prepared and served the day’s final meal for her precious hounds and by the time she got into her loungewear and by the time they had all piled onto the couch, but—unlike the wonderfully liberating effects the alcohol had had vis-à-vis Lala’s ability to speak French more fluidly because she was too drunk to give a damn if she used the present regular tense when the subjunctive was in fact required—having a buzz on had not much helped elevate her writing skills.

  Nor had James Lancaster’s assurance the evening of the reading that Lala could get her “stuff” to him whenever suited her best helped ease Lala’s anxiety.

  After slightly less than an hour of fitful work, which had consisted chiefly of the actual writing of anything being interrupted by frequent trips to the bathroom and the kitchen and frequent grabbings of the remote to turn the sound back on “just for a few seconds so I can catch my favorite scene in Now, Voyager of which, as you know, there are many,” as she had explained to the dogs—who were, at best, uninterested in Lala’s excuses, and, at worst, contemptuous of her lack of discipline, if their sleeping through everything she said or did was any indication. Lala decided to stop using her screenplay as an outline and just write whatever came into her mind while she kept the general goals of the story in view.

  This new plan of attack had resulted, after four hours of actual time and maybe an hour and a half of actual work, in five pages of prose that Lala, after rereading her night’s work twice, had decided to file under “unspeakable crap, but there may be some hope for it not to suck quite so bad if I rewrite the living shit out of it at some point in the future, and isn’t that why Baby Jesus calls them ‘first drafts’ in the first place?”

  And now the sun was nearly up, and Lala had been spending the past two hours watching all the episodes of Say Yes to the Dress that she had stored up “for a rainy day or sometime when I’m trying to write.”

  As she watched, Lala typed.

  Dear David, this is another chapter in my bizarre kind of a diary but kind of not a diary and really more of a long, rambling letter to you that has multiple chapters or something, I don’t know. I wonder where you are. I wish I hadn’t insisted that you not contact me. No, wait. Pretend you didn’t hear that. The jury is instructed to disrega
rd that outburst. If I may suggest, why don’t you write to Chuck and Stephanie? They would absolutely love to hear from you. And then they could tell me all about your adventures. So, tonight’s episode of ‘The Soused Cinéaste,’ which has also become, at least in my crazed mind, a paean of sorts to you, though the official line is I’m doing it as a writing exercise, will be an exploration of two of my favorite reality TV shows, also known as the only reality TV shows I watch, I swear to God, other than The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. But those don’t count because, at the beginning of every new season, I swear I’m not going to get sucked into the madness again, and every new season I do. I tune in to the first fifteen minutes of the first episode, and I get caught up in the lunacy. Because, inevitably, someone comes out of one of the limousines that deliver the contestants to the eagerly waiting world, and I instantly want to clean their clock, and so then I have to continue to tune-in to find out if anyone does, in fact, actually clean their clock during the course of the season.

  Don’t you hate when people say or write ‘a couple things’ instead of ‘a couple of things’?

  I know language evolves, but I really wish it didn’t. For me, ‘language evolves’ is just another way of saying, ‘What used to be wrong is now going to be right because we’re too lazy to make the effort to maintain standards.’

  Also, as an aside, I’ve been thinking about writing a series of fake interviews with famous people, alive and dead. With the alive ones, I would write in big letters in whatever venue they appeared that it was a FAKE interview, and that I never actually met the famous person, I was just MAKING THIS SHIT UP to maybe amuse one or two readers, which I trust would protect me from being sued. Fingers crossed.

  Okay, so back to Say Yes to the Dress and Tabatha’s Salon Takeover. I don’t imagine you watch either of them. Seriously, what are the odds? And, to be frank, if you did watch either of them as faithfully as I do, I’d be forced to question your sexual orientation, our epic night of screwing notwithstanding. The dress show is about brides-to-be making a pilgrimage to the Mecca of Bridal Salons—Kleinfeld’s in Brooklyn. Had I known about that place back then, I would have bought my wedding dress there instead of wearing a cotton dress I picked up at a boutique on Lexington Avenue that made me look like Little Bo Peep. I’ve got the photos to prove it. The salon show is about a formidable British hairstylist who rescues American salons that are in trouble because either the owners or the staff, or quite often both, currently suck at what they do. And you know why I find these shows so mesmerizing? Because they’re both about transformation . . . about becoming something more . . . something happier, something cleverer, something better dressed than you were before the magicians showed up.