by Nancy Kelly
I didn’t see how meeting with Kane could make any difference to my life now.
The good news was I had neither fears nor anticipation. It sort of felt like I was on a job interview for a position I didn’t want.
My cell phone, which I had turned to vibrate, suddenly went off in my pants pocket. So far, this was my only thrill of the day. “Hello?”
“Hi, it’s me,” said Holly. “We’ve got a job for Trash Athletics in Seattle. I’m booking flights for a week from Sunday.”
“I’m in.” What a relief. The working world. The real world.
“We’re picking up a coordinator up there unless you have someone in mind.”
“Sounds good.” As long as it wasn’t Barb, I was happy.
Trash Athletics. A snowboard/skateboard/grunge-type outfit. CeeCee’s style to the max. I wondered if there was any chance she could come with along as a PA. I’d be happy to buy her airline ticket. Wishful thinking on my part, as she seemed to have her job at the radio station—and her nonrela-tionship with Gerald—thoroughly under control.
I’d barely hung up when the phone vibrated again, this time in my hand. I nearly dropped it and went through a juggling act for a second or two. “Yeah?” I answered.
“I’m naked and waiting for you.”
It was Will. I thought of Holly, her warnings, my future employment. I realized I had zero sex drive when it came to Will. Maybe seeing Black Mark, whom Will reminded me of, had some play in that as well.
I said, “I’m at ‘Getting Able with Kane’.”
“Where? Who?”
I was actually gratified that he didn’t know what it meant, until he said, “Oh, that self-help guru?”
“I wouldn’t call him a guru.” I was firm. This distinction mattered, though if asked I wouldn’t have been able to quite say why.
“Can you leave and get over here? I’m going to grill some steaks on the barbeque.”
“Naked?”
“I’ll be wearing a chef’s hat.”
I smiled to myself. This was more like it but it still wasn’t quite enough. “Promise I won’t get any more snow globes thrown at me.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” He sounded pissed.
“We’ve got a logistics problem,” I said, stalling. “I’m not even close to your place.” And I’ve still got to meet with Kane. “Can we delay a couple of hours?”
“No, Ginny,” he said with extreme patience. “Hard-ons don’t last that long.”
I almost said, “Ever thought about Viagra?” but decided it wasn’t the right call. Instead I said, “If I walked out the door now, I’d still be forty-five minutes from the barbeque.”
“Fuck it, then.” He hung up.
I stared at my phone as if it were a Judas. He hung up on me? Because I was across town? It’s not like anybody’s ever near anyone else in LA! What a pain in the ass!
I ground my teeth. Hadn’t I warned myself about directors? They weren’t any better than actors. It was all about me, me, me, and there was no room for anything else. Didn’t I know this. Hadn’t I learned?
I heard a faint cheer go up and I checked my watch. It sounded like Kane was finally done motivating. Hopefully, this was the end of the event. I wondered if my friends were still hanging around outside or if they’d taken off in a cab. I phoned Daphne’s cell as she was the most reliable about answering but was instantly put through to voice mail.
“Still here,” I said to her chirpy direction to leave a message. “But it looks like the Dr. Feel Good is almost done.”
I was in the process of dialing CeeCee when the door opened and a couple of minions appeared, wearing their patented bright, white smiles, blue shirts, black slacks and red “Time To Get Able” stickers.
“Kane is almost ready for you,” one of the female ones said. The reverential way her mouth caressed “Kane” kind of gave me pause.
“But am I ready for him?” I asked.
They smiled knowingly at one another, completely missing the irony. “We’ll be back when the auditorium’s empty.”
“Go tend the flock. I’ll just wait here in my cell,” I said agreeably. Tiny frown lines briefly appeared between their brows, but then they must have spied their leader because they flew through the doors as if greeting a returning king.
It still was a good fifteen minutes before Kane entered the room. I used the time to stew about Will and his childish ways. I’d sensed a maturity in him that apparently was just a veneer. The good news was, I didn’t think Will could be considered an Ex-File. One sexual encounter does not an Ex-File make. Okay, maybe it had with Charlie, but not with Will. Charlie had been my first and that gave it more weight. This thing with Will was more like checking to see if we had things in common. And I was discovering that I didn’t really want to be with him or see him any more.
And besides, I reminded myself with new conviction, I hadn’t told anyone about Will except CeeCee. Jill and Daphne didn’t even know. So Will didn’t count. The fewer Ex-Files, the better.
Kane burst through the door at that moment, arms outstretched. A bevy of fresh-faced acolytes hovered by the door, their eyes adoring. He said simply, “Ginny,” and gathered me to him like a long lost sheep.
I let him hug me. I felt like crossing my eyes over his shoulder for the minions’ benefit. I held myself back at the last minute. Immaturity might not behoove me amongst the saved.
“You asked for Virginia,” I said to Kane. “Since when? I’ve never gone by Virginia.”
He laughed. “I always liked the name Virginia Bluebell.”
“You and no one else. Possibly my mother,” I conceded. “I didn’t even know you knew it.”
“When Mr. Tanlesky called roll, he asked for Virginia.”
Kane’s memory surprised and somewhat awed me. Mr. Tanlesky had been head of study hall, which I’d continually skipped, which had merely added more study halls on, which accumulated to a point where the threat of you will not graduate if you don’t attend study hall hung over my head. However, my grades had improved so drastically during my last semester in school, as I’d finally decided to be a student, that my mother marched into the school and suggested we rethink this whole graduation thing, pronto. Lorraine had made veiled threats about writing letters to the local paper about the lockdown policies Carriage Hill High pressed on the academically solid students of the school while truants with juvenile, nay, adult criminal records ran wild in the streets. Or something like that. Anyway, the school had relented and I’d managed to walk to the podium on graduation night. But it was testament to my rejection of authority that I’d been to Tanlesky’s study hall so few times he hadn’t even known my name.
“So, you actually made study hall?” I said, impressed.
“I had a tendency to stare silently into space just to bother the man. It was a highlight for me.” He released me and smiled benevolently down on me. I thought maybe he’d had his eyes done, too. After Mom, I was becoming an expert.
“But as you can see,” he went on. “I’ve learned a lot on my journey of life. That kind of passive–aggressive behavior merely drags you down.” For emphasis, he pulled his clenched fists toward himself. I copied the gesture, careful to keep my expression neutral so he would have to guess whether I was poking a bit of fun at him. He took me at face value. There was a roteness to his being, a staleness. He’d been at this game way, way too long. I silently mourned the maverick nerd of his youth. It looked like he was due for a little self-help shake-up himself.
“Ever been to Tony Robbins?” I asked curiously.
He sidestepped adroitly. “What are you doing now, Ginny? Are you happy? Feel productive? Useful to yourself and others?”
“I work in commercials as a production manager. Productive is what I am.”
“You look well,” he said.
“Well ... thanks.”
“What happened in the auditorium? I understand there was a miscommunication.”
I paused. “Actually, I t
hink we were communicating all right.”
“I understand you and your group were asked to leave?”
“We thought the guy behind us was an asshole and he thought we were ...” I couldn’t make myself use the “c” word. “He thought we were the problem.”
“You had a disagreement?”
I gazed at him in wonder. Did he seriously make money at this? “It was kind of a hearing issue,” I explained. “Some could hear, some couldn’t.”
“The acoustics weren’t effective?”
“My friends and I were talking and the guy behind us wanted us to stop. Tension grew. Ugly names were called. Luckily, one of your blue-clad assistants took care of the situation before it got out of hand.”
He gazed at me with, I swear, disappointment. “Do you need your money refunded?”
“You do that?” I asked in surprise.
“Well, of course.”
“We were all thrown out. My friends could use being reimbursed, too.”
“Thrown out is a hostile term. How many friends do you have?”
“Three came with me tonight.”
“Excuse me.” Kane left the room abruptly.
Well, now what was I supposed to do? Wait while Kane cut us a check? Or would we be getting vouchers for future Getting Able sessions? Somehow I didn’t think this meeting was really helping me in any meaningful way. It hadn’t even brushed on what reconnecting with the Ex-Files was all about. Sad to say, but the only one of my exes who seemed to really want to get to a touchy-feely reconnection stage had been Don.
To my surprise I heard familiar voices: Daphne, CeeCee, and Jill. They entered the room with Kane following. All of them had their eyes on him, really checking him out. He glowed under the attention.
Daphne sported a faint blush. “I didn’t expect a one-on-one. Especially after what happened.”
“It’s a one-on-four,” CeeCee pointed out. She was turning an unlit cigarette end-on-end on a pack, assessing Kane through narrowed eyes.
Jill said, “Are we ready to go?”
For his part, Kane couldn’t take his eyes off Daphne. At first I thought he’d chosen our weakest link, so to speak. Daphne was niceness personified. But then I realized our weakest link was currently Jill, as she was so shattered. The look on her face, though she sought hard to hide it, was pure misery.
“So, you’re all friends who live in LA together,” Kane remarked.
“Makes the lonely city a little less lonely,” Daphne said, smiling prettily.
CeeCee shot me a look. “I’ve got to leave.”
“How long are your sessions?” Jill asked him.
“They’re tailored for the individual.”
“How long to get over a really, really bad breakup?”
“It takes a while, but you come out the other side. It does happen.”
“But how long?” Jill was raw.
For an answer, Kane slipped her a card. As an afterthought he gave one to Daphne, pressing it into her palm. “I’m going back to my hotel in a few minutes. Why don’t you join me in the lobby bar?”
“That’d be great,” Daphne said a bit breathlessly. She didn’t even bother checking to see if it would be “great” for the rest of us.
“I have someplace I have to be,” I told them even though I had no intention of going over to Will’s now.
Daphne grabbed me by the arm, hard. “Later,” she said cheerily, then practically propelled me out of the room.
If I’d thought my night couldn’t get much worse, I was dead wrong. Jill and CeeCee let it be known that they did NOT want to meet up with Kane at his lobby bar or anywhere else. But Daphne insisted that I needed to talk to Kane, and that we weren’t being fair if we didn’t help make that happen. I tried to say that I felt Kane and I had talked enough, but I was overridden. The voices of my friends swelled so loudly that my ears were ringing as we walked into the lobby bar of the Beverly Westside Hotel, straight into Jackson Wright and his date. Carmen Watkins.
“Peachy,” I muttered under my breath. Whatever his reason had been for calling me could scarcely matter now. If he was dating Carmen, I wasn’t interested in keeping up on the friendship.
Carmen, as pulled and stretched as I remembered from my view of her in her convertible, looked at me as if she hadn’t the faintest idea who I was. I chose to ignore her as Jackson detached himself from her arm—which was quite a task, as she was wrapped around his arm like a boa constrictor—and walked toward me. He gave me a quick hug, which sent the needle of my anxiety into the red. What was this? Instantly I thought of my fat thighs, my flat hair, my red stretchy shirt that really should have been thrown away months, maybe years ago. I actually leaned backward a bit, but he folded me into the warmth of his hard chest, sending my heartbeat into the stratosphere. I prayed fervently that he wouldn’t notice and that this message wouldn’t be sent to my sweat glands. Sometimes the human body just wants to ruin things for you, you know?
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said, sounding like he really meant it. “I called you, but I didn’t get through.”
“I know. I heard you.” My voice was a squeak. I cleared my throat and added, “I would have called you back but I didn’t have your number.”
“I thought I might see you at Kane’s meeting. I remember you dated in high school.”
That stopped me. I cringed a bit inside. Sometimes I forget that Jackson went to Carriage Hill with Charlie, me, and yes, Kane. “Kind of like an old home revival meeting.”
“No kidding.” Jackson smiled. I could tell he thought the whole thing was bogus, which warmed the cockles of my heart, whatever they are.
“Are you here to meet him, too?” I asked.
“Actually ... no. I was already leaving by the time you got thrown out. I wondered what happened to you. Carmen and I crossed the street and got something to eat, and then you all came out and I heard you say you were meeting here. I decided to take a chance on catching up with you.”
I was struggling to process. “You ... came to see me?”
Carmen was hovering so close that her breath stirred my hair. Jackson smiled at her and said, “I need to talk to Ginny for a sec, okay?”
He stepped away and I went with him. Carmen might have ignored his tacit rejection but Jill suddenly said loudly, “Carmen Watkins! Good grief, girl. What have you been doing since college?”
Bless my friends. They came through at the most unexpected times.
Jackson guided me over to a corner where we sat on a loveseat-like affair situated in a quiet corner of the bar, hidden behind a black Baby Grand currently not in use.
“I’ve written a screenplay,” he revealed. “I’ve already got the financing. It’s all in place. I’m the executive producer and I want you on the production team. Truthfully, I need your help.”
My jaw dropped. “You wrote a screenplay?”
“Yeah. Weird, huh?” He shook his head in wonder. “We’re making a film!”
He was as excited as a little boy. I couldn’t blame him. “Good God,” I said.
“So ... ?”
“So, yeah. Yeah. No kidding. I’ll do it. Of course, I’ll do it. When?”
“In about a month.”
I calculated quickly, my brain spinning wildly. “Perfect. I’ve got a commercial in Seattle and then I’m free.”
He suddenly hugged me again. It took my breath away. I couldn’t help inhaling his scent. The musky cologne was just right. My cell phone vibrated silently in my pant pocket, next to Jackson’s thigh.
He said, “Is someone calling you ... or are you just happy to see me?”
You have no idea, I thought, as I checked the Caller ID. It was Will. Now, what?
“I gotta take this,” I said.
Jackson released me to give me some privacy. I was sorry to lose the warmth of his arms. Carmen, however, had edged away from Jill, who’d determinedly followed her and kept up a fast conversation. They both noticed me take the call and Carmen instantly p
ounced on Jackson. I turned my back to them, but my attention was diverted.
“Hey ...” Will’s voice was full of apology and he’d only uttered one syllable.
“Hey, yourself,” I said cautiously. “I’m kind of involved in something here.”
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he said.
“That’s great.”
Jackson had shifted closer to me to make room for Carmen, who was trying to get close to him. I could tell he was being merely polite, however, and it put a smile on my face.
“Are you coming over?” Will asked.
“Um ... well, actually, I had a change of plans.”
My mind was on Jackson, the screenplay and ten other things. I didn’t have time for Will, his relationship with Rhianna, and the sexual coaxing I suspected might be involved with giving him an erection—which didn’t have to last much more than a few minutes, let alone an hour. I wondered, suddenly, with a freezing of my blood, if Will was involved in the Trash Athletics commercial. Surely not. Not the way he’d treated Holly.
“You know Jackson Wright?” he demanded, sounding like my cavalier attituded had started his temper simmering.
That snapped me back. “You know I do,” I stalled, remembering we’d had the Jackson Wright conversation in Sedona. Could he know Jackson was right here, next to me? How?
“He’s got all the investors lined up for a film he’s putting together. I’m directing it. I suggested having you on the team.”
I closed my eyes. I’d never been so deflated over such ostensibly good news. “Really?”
“I thought Jackson would have gotten hold of you by now. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure he does.”
My ears started buzzing. Will talked on but I heard nothing else. I must have made the appropriate responses because pretty soon I’d clicked off. He’d made another attempt to get me over to his place, but I’d politely refused and he ended up hanging up on me a second time, though I sensed he was more perplexed by my attitude than infuriated. I must have sounded like a zombie because that’s how I felt. Not alive. Running by brain stem alone.