by Jack Baran
• • •
“Have you told Soong Lee about your sordid past?”
“She’s insanely jealous.”
Pete relights the joint. “I miss you man.” He glances down at the pool, sees…. could that be? “Barbara and David? What the fuck are they doing here?”
“David represents me.”
“Since when?”
“Since I was dropped by my last agent.”
“Them being here makes me very uncomfortable.”
“Isn’t he doing another Bergman deal for you?”
“What do you know about that?”
“My producer, Marcus.”
“He fired you.”
“I’m back in the series. Great part, an impotent investment banker accused of murder. I get to play against type, stretch.”
“That was my idea. How does the first season end?”
“Mayor and the chief finally get it on, I go on the lam, making me available for the next season which is a big secret.” Bobby stands. “I can’t wait for you to meet Priscilla and Jeff, they are such sweet kids.”
“I suppose I’ll be sitting at a table with Barbara and David?”
“And Soong Lee and me and others. Come on amigo, be gracious, this is a festive occasion.”
After Bobby leaves, Pete surreptitiously watches Barbara and the putz canoodle poolside. For the first time ever she has cut her curly locks down to the nub. Bobby appears, embraces Barbara and points up to the balcony. She waves in his direction. Pete retreats into the room, starts to shake. Using prana breathing he slowly calms himself.
What he would like to do is order up some food and watch Game Two of the ALCS, but it won’t start for hours. He shoots Cleo a call, still no answer. Suddenly claustrophobic, he needs to get out of the room.
Having packed without thinking, there’s only random summer stuff to change into. Pete chooses a pair of frayed cargo shorts and a clean T-shirt bearing witness to a crawfish festival in Louisiana two years ago. After lacing his red Converse hi-tops, he stands in the harsh bathroom light, adjusting the angle of his new porkpie hat, damn if he doesn’t look cool like Brad Pitt.
Pete shares an elevator with a Japanese couple in matching beachwear; they behave as if he weren’t there as they descend to the lobby. Muzak plays “Satisfaction” in the crowded atrium. Pete suddenly realizes he’s not invisible and everyone is staring at him. Not to worry, all he has to do is avoid eye contact, find the coffee shop and get some food into his system.
Guess who is waiting to be seated? Pete sees them before they see him. Should he turn around and leave? No fucking way. “Barbara, David,” Pete sounds affable as he joins them.
David ignores Pete’s offbeat attire. “Good to see you my friend. Good to see you.” He gives Pete a warm hug.
Barbara studies her ex-husband with interest. “You look like a dope dealer at Burning Man.”
“You look like a tufted titmouse.”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“Birds are a big part of my life.”
She smiles. “Beth said you’d gone hippie.”
“I live in the country where there are few demands on my wardrobe.”
David puts his arm around Barbara’s shoulder, insists he join them.
As they move to a table, it’s obvious to Pete that there is no body chemistry between his ex and his agent. He orders shrimp cocktail, a chicken salad and bacon sandwich on rye toast and ice tea. Barbara has half a cantaloupe with cottage cheese, David, rice pudding, hold the whip cream, decaf coffee.
“Everything straight with Marcus?”
“I’m going to get what you want.”
“Counting on a check next week.”
“Working again, darling?”
Pete hates when Barbara calls him darling. “Let’s say I have a couple of active projects.”
She stares at him thoughtfully. “David, with that hat, isn’t Pete a dead ringer for Walter Matthau?”
“When he played the sportswriter? There is a definite resemblance.”
Pete has always been sensitive about the size of his nose. He eyes his ex-wife defensively. “Barbara, darling, how about your new squeeze? I’d say David is a dead ringer for Bush’s poodle, Tony Blair.”
David doesn’t react.
“Who does that make me?” Barbara asks coyly.
“I’d never mistake you for anyone. You’re unique.” Pete doffs his hat freeing his crazy hair, keeps the shades on. The food arrives. Barbara and David immediately help themselves to a shrimp annoying Pete. “Hey, I haven’t eaten today.”
“Aren’t we sharing? Plenty of food at the wedding.”
Pete ends up with only two of the six jumbo shrimp. When David reaches for his sandwich, he explodes.” Why mooch my chicken salad and bacon when you can eat her in the room?” The buzzing in the coffee shop stops.
Barbara shakes her head in disgust. “Still a pig.”
David looks at him with disappointment. “Why say vulgar things, Pete?”
“Because it’s true.”
“If he does darling, it won’t be to spite you but to please me.” She exits to a smattering of applause.
David vacates the table. “I’ll close with Bergman next week.”
Pete watches them go as Bobby sits down. “Speaking your mind again?”
“Why is she with that putz?”
“Maybe she’s trying to get your attention.”
“Really?”
Bobby philosophizes in his Indian guru character. “At the Kama Sutra Research Institute we have concluded that any man can insert his lingam into any yoni, but only twenty five percent of couples achieve Haryana, the perfect fit. So it must be with you and Barbara.”
“Haryana? I never heard of that.”
“Very new. Only recently have we developed micro sensors for measurement.” He winks. “Very precise.” Bobby signs the check and steers Pete to a hair salon on the mezzanine for some restoration work.
A petite young woman with wide eyes and a squeaky voice hands him a smock and shampoos his hair. Pete is extremely nervous as the stylist gives him a coconut rinse.
When he was a teenager growing up in the Bronx, a visit to Leo’s Barbershop on Mount Eden Avenue offered full tonsorial services and the opportunity to place a sports bet. Bookies operated out of barbershops, poolrooms, and newsstands, places where men gathered to discuss the important issues of the day. All these establishments had the same sign posted, ‘Gambling is prohibited by law,’ but if you wanted action on basketball or football or to put money down on a prize fight or horse race, you saw Pinky or Benny, Tony or Leo, men of honor who were in direct contact with Jimmy the Greek who made the odds and set the point spread in Las Vegas. If you won, these men paid off, but if you owed them money for too long they would break your legs. The barbershop was a man’s world where Pete learned the lurid truth behind the newspaper headlines: Nelson Rockefeller died fucking his mistress, New York City Mayor O’Dwyer was appointed Ambassador to Mexico to avoid prosecution for corruption, Grace Kelly was a nympho. He only abandoned Leo’s after he gave up the greaser look for a college crew cut that he came to despise. After his stint in the army reserves, Pete let his hair grow until Samantha trimmed it. From then on, only women groomed him, but these were stylists, clueless when asked what the point spread on the Lakers game was. As the years passed, Pete became very skittish about who wielded the scissors and he certainly never trusted anyone as much as Leo.
The stylist wraps his hair in a towel and moves Pete to a pneumatic chair facing a well-lit mirror. “Been a while, sir?”
“I live in the country.”
“Superstitious, right?” She starts to comb him out.
“Why do you say that?”
“Older men with great hair usually are.”
“What do you want to do to me?”
“Trim it, shape it, and make you beautiful, sir.”
“Do you mean that?”
“I do
.”
“Go for it, but leave it on the longish side.”
“Shorter looks younger.”
“Use your judgment.”
She starts cutting; Pete gets fidgety again. “Don’t worry, I won’t steal your power. I’ll leave it longer.”
He relaxes. “You have an interesting voice.”
“I didn’t speak until I was six.”
“Why?”
“They don’t know.” She carefully measures his hair and expertly snips. “Most people think I sound uptight.”
“You sound mysterious to me.” Pete stares at himself in the mirror. “How do you think I’d look with dark hair?”
“The gray is beautiful sir, I’d leave it alone.”
“I want my ex-wife to fall in love with me again.”
“Is that a good idea?”
“Probably not.” Pete stares at the confident young woman in the mirror. “I don’t want to be mistaken for Walter Matthau.”
She laughs, “You have my word sir.”
“Have you ever been in love?”
“I was engaged to be married but I didn’t really love him. He was killed in Iraq a year ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I would have married him if he came back.” She blow dries his hair.
“Don’t make me poufy.”
“Never, sir.” She applies a bit of gel and combs it back.
To Pete’s surprise it looks darker. To his dismay, his father, Big Petey, stares back at him from the mirror. The resemblance is disorienting. Pete buys a bottle of gel. “What’s your name, miss?”
“Rose.”
“Do you believe in past lives, Rose?”
“I’m moving to New Orleans, that’s where my spirit is.”
He gives her a fifty dollar tip,”
“That’s too much money.”
“You deserve it. Good luck in the Big Easy, Rose.”
CHAPTER 22
Back in the hotel room, Pete showers and shaves - does he actually look like his father? The only photo he has of Big Petey shows a serious man in his mid-forties, dressed in a suit and tie. Pete has no memory of him smiling, though he must have had carefree moments since there were comedians in the family. What he remembers most was his father’s suitcase and the packing and unpacking that went with it. Also, the presents Big Petey brought back from his travels. A fossilized dinosaur egg from Mongolia was his favorite thing in the whole world, surviving even the relocation to LA until it shattered in the move to Pacific Palisades. Another was a primitively carved wooden giraffe from Africa that he gave to Mary Ann Downing that summer long ago.
Franny rarely spoke about his father, called him her late husband. “He was a very possessive man.” Years later when she was living happily with Tamara, she finally told Pete that Petur Stefansson was a jealous sonofabitch who slapped her around whenever he came back from a trip, assuming she had been unfaithful while he was away. She hated Big Petey and was planning to divorce him when he died in a plane crash.
Father beat up mother, nice to know. Franny’s revelation motivated Pete to control his own temper. Samantha liked to push his buttons, willfully humiliating him at a surprise party on their seventh wedding anniversary by flirting shamelessly with an outdoorsy guy they all knew to be an asshole. She accused him of dancing sexy with Tanya, the actress friend of Bobby’s who fucked everyone. Back home, the argument escalated. She slapped and punched him; he grabbed her wrist and bent it back. She scratched his face with her other hand, drawing blood. He grabbed that wrist too and pushed her roughly against the wall. He wanted to beat the shit out of her but instead of inflicting violence, kissed her hard. At first she responded passionately, then she bit his lip. He let go of her wrists and she began punching him again. They wrestled to the floor and he roughly tied her hands behind her back with his belt. She called him a brute when he pulled her panties off, but spread her legs accommodatingly so that he’d go down on her. Before long, she was begging Pete to let her suck him off.
“Don’t untie me.”
When it was over and he released her, she curled into his arms and told him she loved him. He told her the same, but it was a lie and both knew it.
Naked, Pete checks himself out in the mirror. He sucks in his gut and moves horizontally in and out of frame; this angle renders his potbelly unnoticeable. He can do all the yoga he wants but still needs to lose ten, fifteen pounds.
He lays out a black silk shirt and slightly rumpled linen suit. What he’s forgotten are his pointy dress shoes with the slick leather soles for dancing. Pete steps onto the balcony and dials Cleo. No answer, he disengages without leaving a message; maybe she’s writing and doesn’t want to be disturbed.
He gets dressed; the linen suit and silk shirt make him appear thinner and the red sneakers add a quirky touch. Pete meticulously combs his hair. Rose did a nice job and the gel glistens darkly. He clips on his shades, checks himself out one last time in the mirror and feels good until he opens the door and finds the straw porkpie hat that he discarded in the coffee shop returned to his threshold. He picks it up, steps back into the room and sends the hat sailing over the balcony railing.
As Pete waits for the elevator, Barbara and David appear at the far end of the corridor. He watches them approach. Still no loving body language that he can detect. His agent dresses conservatively, likes to blend in. She looks fabulous in a metallic lime green sheath that rides tight over her torso, so sexy after all these years. Stiletto heels accentuate her legs; red lipstick highlights her voluptuous lips. She always knew how to package her attributes. When they first met, a button was always popping open on her tight shirt and her hair tended to the wild side. He loved her curly tangled mane and all the fussing that went with it. Tonight the only off note is her birdlike do.
She regards Pete with a wry smile; she picked out what he’s wearing, minus the sneakers, five years ago. “You clean up nice.”
“I even washed my mouth out with soap.”
“Is that an apology?”
“Seeing you with him was a shock to my system.”
David observes the ex-couple bantering playfully, feels acid refluxing in the back of his throat. “I’m glad you left Matthau in the room,” he interjects breezily. “Marcello is a way better look for you.”
“What movie?”
“Divorce Italian Style.”
The wedding of Priscilla Gasparian, an Armenian/Italian-American and Jeff Johnson, black father/Jewish mother, is a joyous, multicultural affair. Set outside against a backdrop of sailboats, powerboats and water skiers, the bride and groom are to be married under a traditional Jewish chuppah at sunset. Officiates include an Armenian Orthodox priest, a rabbi, a Baptist minister and a Catholic monsignor. A string quartet plays Bach with a Jazz feel.
Pete sits between Bobby and Barbara, comforted to be thigh to thigh with his ex-wife.
“Beth is really excited to be working with you,” she whispers.
“She made it happen. You look great in that dress.”
“And there’s a boy involved?”
“Jackson, talented kid.”
“You know she dropped out of Santa Cruz?”
“Didn’t you go to France in your junior year to get away from a history teacher who wanted to marry you?”
“Was she doing drugs in Woodstock?”
“Besides smoking grass?”
“Were pharmaceuticals available?”
“Everything is available everywhere.”
“You know your daughter is taking antidepressants?”
“Kind of.”
“I was actually happy she left that college, I thought Paris would be a good experience for her. She needs to get outside her culture for a little while.” Barbara starts to cry. “I’m so worried.”
Pete holds her hand. “Woodstock is good for her.”
Barbara pulls away. “She said you’re in love with a porn queen.”
“We have a professional relationship.”
Before he can explain, Bobby elbows him in the ribs.
“Soong Lee wants to know how you feel?”
Pete smiles at her. “No headache and no back pain.”
Bobby nervously taps his foot a mile a minute.
“You okay?”
“I’m losing my daughter.”
“You just found her.”
“Don’t be smart.”
“Like you putting me on the same floor as my ex and the putz?”
“You need to come back to the fold.”
“What fold?”
“Marcus still wants you on the series.”
“Bobby, let’s enjoy the wedding, that’s why I’m here.”
“Do you think it’s too late for me?”
“For what?
“To finally get married.”
“You were married to Morgana.”
“Less then a week, she had it annulled, so technically I never was.”
“Did Soong Lee say yes?”
“Not yet, but I’m hoping she will.” Bobby takes Soong Lee’s hand and kisses it.
The string quartet plays a fanfare. A young man wearing a teal suit leads an older black woman with white hair and a shining smile to a front row seat.
Bobby narrates. “The best man escorts the groom’s grandmother on his father’s side. She’s eighty-five years old, very sharp.”
Another groomsman in a matching suit leads a stunning Jewish woman down the aisle to her seat; she’s had a lot of work done.
“The groom’s grandmother on his mother’s side, eighty…. Both grandfathers are deceased.”
Pete isn’t paying attention; he’s fascinated by Barbara’s beautiful neck revealed by her short haircut.
Bobby continues as Pearl Gasparian, a stylish woman with big hair, strides down the aisle solo. “Pearl, the bride’s mother, owns a beauty salon in West Palm. Do you think if I had married her my life would have been different?”