Lala Pettibone's Act Two

by Heidi Mastrogiovanni

  “No, no,” Lala giggled. “Those are all terrible guesses. I wanted to tell you that I’ve been inside my home all the time, writing. A lot. I’m having fun.”

  “That’s great,” James said.

  “Hey, I met Jackson Platt. You were right. What a putz. I’m going to go back and read his masterpiece, and I hope and trust this time around I’ll think it’s for shit.”

  Lala enjoyed taking in James’s smile in response to her mea culpa. It was an especially warm and gratified smile, and so, to her, it felt warm and gratifying to have elicited this response in James.

  Woof, Lala thought. You are making me purr, Big Guy, just to mix species references.

  Lala smiled and nodded back to James.

  “I think I need to sit down,” she said.

  James and Andrew had Lala back on the couch in a second and then both of them sat down on either side of her, apparently ready to catch her if she should sway and crash.

  I am bookended by two devastatingly handsome men, Lala thought. One of is them way too young, so he’s out of the picture on aesthetic and moral, if not legal grounds.

  Just as Lala felt herself about to lean her head on James’s shoulder and declare, “I just love you, Big Hunka Burnin’ Love Jamie, y’know?” the door to the shelter burst open and a gust of energy took over the room, in the person of a dazzling, gigantic blonde woman.

  The woman was resplendent in jeans tucked into Wellingtons and a sweatshirt that was seductively too tight on her. Her long ringlets were piled atop her head. She brandished a shovel and a bucket with military confidence.

  “Andrew, my darling!” the woman said in a voice that, though appealingly energetic, was far softer than her stature might suggest.

  “Hi, Candace,” Andrew said. He got up and gave her a big hug. “I don’t think you’ve had a chance to meet Lala Pettibone?”

  “Omigod,” Candace gasped. She threw down her bucket and shovel and seized Lala, lifting her off the couch with far less exertion than James and Andrew as a team had been required to expend before. She hugged Lala and kissed her on either cheek, then she pointed to the dogs that were still happily sleeping in the pen.

  “You did this. All of this. I love you. I’m not kidding.”

  Candace released Lala, and Andrew caught her before she fell backward. Candace then seized James’s hand and pumped it vigorously.

  “Candace Isaacs,” she said. “Brand spankin’ new Volunteer Coordinator at this fabulous place. Are you James? I saw you on our list for today.”

  “Yes,” James said. “Great to meet you.”

  “Excellent! I’ll be cleaning out the dog runs in the back. See you all again very soon. Can’t thank you enough. Can’t. Gonna keep on trying, though.”

  Candace grabbed her shovel and bucket and, with bouncing steps, took her bright energy out of the room through a back door to the outside enclosures. Lala recognized how deflated the space suddenly felt.

  Wow, she thought. One word comes to mind. Dynamo.

  “I think I’ve exhausted myself,” Lala said. “Time to go home.”

  James told Andrew that he could escort Lala to her car so Andrew could get back to giving the old timers in the pen more of the loving they deserved.

  God, how adorable is James? Lala thought. How dear and kind and caring? How fuckable?

  Lala told Andrew that her Auntie Geraldine would come to the shelter tomorrow to pick up Eunice, and then James admired Eunice, and Lala told Eunice that she would be meeting her new brothers and sister very soon. Andrew gave Lala a hug and called her Grandma, and Lala pointed out that she had meant to tell Andrew to call her Ridiculously Young Grandma.

  James gently and carefully helped Lala out the front door. As they slowly walked toward Geraldine’s Lexus, Lala imagined them doing the same thing together decades from now, both in their dotage and still as in love as ever. Except that she would be shuffling then because she was so old, not because her leg, though quite a bit better than it had been, still hurt so goddamn much.

  Once the slow process of getting Lala into the driver’s side was finally over, James reached the seatbelt across her and snapped it shut.

  “James,” Lala said, “in Percocet veritas. You are my hero.”

  James smiled and said, “Can I do anything else?”

  You can throw me on the backseat and ravage me, Lala thought. Well, I guess that might be a bit much for my leg. For now.

  “I can go shopping for you. Whatever you need.”

  “Thank you, that is so lovely. I think I’ve got it covered.”

  James shut the driver’s side door and leaned on his elbows on the open window. He kissed Lala’s forehead.

  Hey, Lala thought, maybe if I take enough painkillers, we can boink tonight. I think that could definitely work.

  “Look,” James said, “just send me your stuff now. Okay? Whatever it is. Everything you’ve been writing. Why not take a leap of faith?”

  Lala smiled at James with forced confidence.

  Oh my fucking God, Lala thought. Why not? Maybe because I’m terrified you’ll hate it all?

  “That’s a great idea! I’ll do that as soon as I get home.”

  It’s Always Darkest Before When?

  Lala was sitting at the desk in her bedroom. Because she could. Because sitting didn’t hurt too much any longer. Nor did lounging almost horizontal on the couch with her laptop balanced just below her chin. Nor did walking up or down the stairs to her home.

  Almost a week had passed since her visit to Dogs of Love. Once Lala had started to feel better, the improvement increased exponentially. Lala was even beginning to envision a time in her life when she might be able to go back to the gym, and not just to haunt the smoothie shop in order to down Berry Banana Boosts and ogle comely trainers. She was actually coming close to realistically imagining herself working out again one day.

  Things in Lala’s life were starting to look to her like a genuine Act Two. One that didn’t involve limping and Epsom salt baths and heating pads and lots of hallucinatory dreams brought on by all the narcotics.

  Yootza was sleeping on top of a pillow on Lala’s lap. Geraldine had returned Lala’s beloved pets to her after Lala had assured her over and over and over and over again in English and then in halting, probably far too literally translated French, because “you don’t seem to be understanding me when I speak in our native tongue, so let me see if the language of Moliere and DeGaulle will get the point across any more emphatically, for chrissake,” that she was quite sure that she was healed enough to not be in danger of further injury from Yootza’s exuberant love.

  “Petunia and Chester and Eunice won’t try to jump on you,” Geraldine has said. “It’s the Little Terror I’m worried about.”

  And so Lala had suggested that they explain everything to Yootza. Geraldine brought the dogs upstairs to Lala’s place. Yootza was in his papoose. Petunia and Chester and Eunice came in, gave Lala lazy licks on her hands that were rubbing them all over their delicious old jowls, and then loped on over to their couches, where they climbed up onto the cushions and fell asleep as though nothing in their world had changed or ever would change, which clearly, as far as they were concerned, was a very good thing.

  Yootza had been straining against the bonds of the papoose the moment he saw Lala. Lala rushed over to him and tried to put his tiny head entirely in her mouth. Yootza trilled with joy.

  “Mama loves you, Mama loves you, Mama loves you, Mama loves you, Mama loves you sooooooo much! Now, listen to me, Monsieur Le Petit Bastard, no jumping on Mama for a while, okay? I’ll pick you up when you want to sit on Mama’s lap, okay?”

  And since then, Yootza had been very cooperative. He always waited patiently for Lala to lift him onto the pillow situated on her lap to provide extra cushioning. Life, in what was seeming to be her Act Two, might have been swe
et and comforting and optimistic had Lala not been forcing herself to spend the days since she saw James at the rescue group agonizing over what to do next and how she was going to do it. Until she had woken up that morning with the phrase, “Fuck it, let’s go for broke,” pounding in her head.

  Lala had edited her magnum first draft of an e-mail to James down to one paragraph, which she was now reviewing, yet again.

  “James, my dear,” Lala read aloud.

  Too presumptuous? she thought. And too asexual? And too Merchant-Ivory? Fuck it, I gotta keep movin’. Movin’. No “g.” No kiddin’.

  “Okay, clearly I was overly optimistic when I said as soon as I get home,” Lala continued.

  I never know for sure what should and should not have quotation marks around it, Lala thought. Fuck it. Keep movin’ where? Forward.

  “I’ve attached one of those zip file things because I’ve got a lot of stuff to send you. Because I’ve been inside a lot. Don’t ask how long it took me to figure out how to create a zip file. Really, that more or less accounts for the entire delay in getting back to you.”

  Oh, Christ, Lala thought. Here comes the closing. Sincerely? No. Xs and Os? No. Hug me, kiss me, throw me on the bed; I think my leg can take it now? No.

  Lala looked down at Yootza. Who had his head mashed into the pillow and was twitching his lip and snoring.

  “You are no help at all,” Lala said.

  And then she very quickly typed, “Mazel, mazel,” and hit “Return,” and then typed “Lala,” and hit “Send,” and then started to freak out.

  “Okay, yes, yes, ‘Mazel’ is probably safely in the Universal Lexicon, but I don’t know if he’s Jewish, and I don’t know if he knows I’m a solid non-practicing Jew from solid non-practicing Jewish stock so maybe that sign-off will sound incredibly affected and, Omigod, what if he hates everything I sent?”

  Lala slowly sank her head down on her desk until her forehead made gentle contact with the wood. She stayed there with her eyes shut, spastically panting her breath in and out, in an effort to shut off the voices in her head. Until she heard another voice calling, one that she recognized as the bottle of prosecco chilling in her refrigerator.

  Yum, she thought. With frozen raspberries floating in it. Yeah.

  Lala cradled Yootza and hugged him tight. He growled.

  “Shut up,” she cooed. “My leg doesn’t hurt much, and I’m more or less off painkillers, so I can drink again. Hallelujah. The possibilities are limitless.”

  Lala cradled Yootza in one hand and her laptop in the other. She walked out of the bedroom toward a land where a champagne glass could and would be filled and bags of popped salt and pepper potato chips could and would be snarfed and websites about agencies that provide classy male strippers could and would be surfed and Say Yes to the Dress or Tabatha’s Salon Takeover or Undercover Boss could and would play on TV in the background as mountains of festive research was done.

  “We can’t worry about James’s reaction right now, Surly Little Man,” Lala instructed Yootza. “We have got a bachelorette party to plan.”

  _______________

  “Brenda, Helene. Helene, Brenda.”

  This was not Lala’s first potentially very awkward encounter of the day.

  _______________

  Brenda’s bachelorette gift to Geraldine was a limousine with a wet bar and a flat screen TV and a driver who was far too cute—when Lala saw him, she felt sure that Brenda had clicked on the button specifying “far too cute” (right below the button specifying “not cute at all so there won’t be any worries about drunken misadventures en route”) on the limousine company’s website—to pick up the bachelorette party guests and drive them to Las Vegas.

  Clark, the adorable young limousine driver, was tall and sculpted, and his gently red hair underneath his chauffeur’s cap matched his lilting hint of an Irish accent.

  Lala wondered if Clark might not also be a male stripper, and then marveled that one still had to add the word “male” to the word “stripper” and wondered if maybe she could just stop doing that in her own mind for chrissake, no matter what an unenlightened fourth estate and blogosphere were still doing.

  Clark’s first stop of the day had been at Geraldine’s fourplex to pick up Lala and the bride-to-be. Stephanie had, of course, also been invited to the seventy-two-hour brouhaha in the desert, but she had to study night and day for a continuing education seminar she and Chuck were taking at USC to learn Mandarin so they could travel to China at least once a year to aid a global animal rights group in working to protect animals there.

  “That’s in addition to all the great pro bono work those two kids do all around the United States,” Lala said in the limo. “Sheesh. I get tired just thinking about those two wonderful kids. I promised Stephanie that you and I would make it our personal mission in Vegas to drink one cocktail for her per each cocktail we drink for ourselves. Hey, Clark, I’m gonna pop open a bottle of champagne. Just wanted to let you know so you don’t get startled and swerve. And I think we should pull over on the way to Vegas so you can have a glass. Or two. We can always flag down a taxi for the rest of the trip.”

  “Excellent, Ms. Lala,” Clark said.

  Petunia, Yootza, Chester, and Eunice would be staying at Stephanie and Chuck’s apartment while their mama and their auntie wreaked havoc on the sandy plains of Nevada. This made Lala very happy because “ya know, they’re vets and stuff, in addition to being absolutely delightful.”

  Clark drove Geraldine and Lala to Beverly Hills. To pick up Helene. Which was one of the main reasons Lala had felt it was definitely not too early to start downing mimosas.

  Oy vey, Lala thought. I just can’t take a lot of awkwardness this weekend. Freight trains of unspoken prickliness. Massive dunes of terse and pointed subtext. I just can’t.

  “Any thoughts?” Lala asked Geraldine as the car smoothly cruised into Helene’s driveway.

  “Grace,” Geraldine said. “Grace and alcohol. A surefire combination.”

  Lala saw Helene glide out of her front door wheeling a very large weekend bag.

  Geraldine’s right, Lala thought. Grace.

  Lala jumped out of the limo and sprinted over to Helene to force a preemptive hug on her.

  When Helene responded to Lala’s almost frantically enthusiastic body language with what Lala perceived as equal relief, Lala felt a rush of gratitude. She was also cheered by the distinct aura of booze that surrounded Helene like an expensive Parisian perfume.

  “I’m so glad you invited me,” Helene said.

  “Oh, stop it,” Lala said. “Like I wasn’t going to invite you.”

  Okay, I did consider it for maybe three seconds, Lala thought. What am I, a freakin’ saint? And that secret goes with me to my grave.

  Helene pulled Lala off to the side with an earnest tug on Lala’s elbow.

  “I have to share something with you,” Helene whispered. “I have to apologize for being so self-absorbed sometimes.”

  “Listen, I am the last person you have to apologize to for that, because—”

  “Lala, I have the floor,” Helene said.

  “Oops,” Lala said.

  “My dad reminded me of something, and it’s made me take a look at myself, and I’m not entirely thrilled with what I see. He reminded me about my best friend in elementary school. Her family lived right next door to us. One day I was over at their house and Jill and I were playing and the phone rang, and she went to answer it, and she came back with a startled look on her face and said ‘Oh, Helene, I forgot you were here. I just said I would go over to Becky’s house to play.’”

  “Yikes,” Lala said.

  “Yeah. So I went home and I cried, and I told my dad what had happened and he commented that that wasn’t very nice of Jill, and I hadn’t thought about it for years, and my dad reminded me of how sad and di
smissed Jill’s ostentatious popularity made me feel.”

  Uh huh, Lala thought. I do of course understand that you’re Popular Jill, and I’m Banished Helene in our version of this story. But go on.

  “My dad also ordered me not to screw everything up by being, and I quote, ‘a total pill princess’ to his new niece.”

  Lala smiled.

  “Helene, this is a wonderful and very meaningful revelation all around, and I’m very grateful that you had the grace and courage to share it with me, but we’re kind of in a hurry here, so I’m going to sum up my world view vis-à-vis us, if I may. I’m really glad you’re coming to Vegas, and I’m really glad your dad is marrying my aunt.”

  “Ditto,” Helene said.

  Booze, Lala thought. And grace. Surefire.

  They returned to the car and Helene gave Clark her weekend bag, and the two women feasted on the sight of him loading it into the trunk. Helene winked repeatedly at Lala, who nodded and winked back and mouthed, “I saw him first,” which Helene couldn’t make out so Lala had to whisper far too loudly, “I SAID, I saw him first.”

  Back in the limo, after Geraldine and Helene hugged and after Lala made a fresh mimosa for Helene and then refilled Geraldine’s glass, as well as her own, and after many toasts were made, including one to eternal friendship and hot sex over forty in the same breath, Helene started fishing around in her voluminous handbag and pulled out four DVD cases.

  “I brought porn!” she announced. “Good stuff. Three-act story structure. Character arcs. Unbelievably hot actors. Titillation without the groan factor.”

  “Wow,” Lala said. “Helene, I have not given you enough credit. You are delish.”

  Despite the relatively short drive to LAX, Lala and Geraldine and Helene popped Will You Still Fuck Me Tomorrow? into the DVD player, reasoning that they could restart at the beginning when Brenda was in the car, and they were on their way to Vegas so that Brenda wouldn’t have to miss “a beat, not one, hello, who is that gorgeous guy, I think I saw him in an evening of improv at the Groundlings a few years ago.”