by Claire Adams
“Just role-play,” she says. “Go out into the hallway, walk around for a couple of minutes, and knock on the door. It’ll help me get in the mindset.”
“All right,” I agree. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
We stand there and look at each other a minute.
“Yeah, so any time you’re ready to pop out there, that would be great,” she says.
“Oh,” I answer. “All right, I’ll be back to pick you up in a few minutes.”
“Okay,” she says, and walks me to the door. “Remember to give it a few minutes.”
“All right,” I tell her, and I walk out the door.
You know, this is a pretty good addition to the relationship weekend. In the future, I’m sure I’ll want to figure out something better than just walking around the halls a couple of minutes, but it’ll be good to cover the anticipation of getting picked up or picking someone up.
I walk around the halls for a few minutes and, after knocking on the wrong door and being held captive in conversation with the occupant of that room for what has to be a good 20 minutes, I make my way back to our hotel room door.
I knock.
There’s no answer.
I knock again.
There’s still no answer.
I knock and call out Emma’s name, but there’s still nothing.
Finally, I pull out my phone and punch in Emma’s number. Apparently, I’ve forgotten which room is ours, and I really don’t want to have to knock on every door in this hall to find the right one.
“Hello?”
“Hey,” I say, “I think I forgot which room we have.”
“Were you just knocking?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I tell her.
“It’s the right room,” she says, “but I’ve had a little change of heart. I think that you and I need to have a little discussion about what we’re doing here, and this time, I think that I need to be the one to lead it.”
“Oh, give me a break, will you?” I beg.
“First thing,” she says, “I’ll kiss you because we’re going to be kissing onscreen, but we’re not going to spend three hours a night and—how did you describe it? Dozens of little interludes between now and when Dutch calls action?”
“I get that this makes you uncomfortable,” I respond, “but I really think it’s best if we stick to the plan.”
“Do you know where intimacy comes from?” she asks.
“It—”
“Intimacy comes from feeling safe with a person, feeling a sense of security and trust. Knowing that this person, the person that you’re with, isn’t going to judge you if you’ve made a mistake, they’re going to help you pick yourself up. Intimacy comes from two people who feel such affection for one another that there is no part of themselves that they are unwilling to share with each other. Call me crazy, but I don’t think we’re going to be covering intimacy in a weekend, but we’re going to try,” she says.
“What do you have in mind, then?” I ask.
“First off,” she says, “we’re not staying in the same room. Call me back after you’ve booked another room for yourself.”
“Emma, you’ve got to see how unreasonable all this is,” I tell her. “There are lot of things we’re going to have to cover, and we really don’t have time to go over the things we’re not even going to need to—”
“You know what the problem is with your movies, at least the romantic ones?” she asks.
“What’s that?” I return.
This should be fun.
“Whenever you’re with your onscreen significant other, you just come off as fuck buddies,” she says. “There’s nothing beyond the physical, though I will give you credit for making that pretty damn on the money. Why don’t we try things a little differently this time?” she asks. “Why don’t we branch out a little and see if we can bring something new to the screen?”
“You keep saying ‘we,’ but I’m getting the feeling you really mean me,” I answer.
“Good, you’re catching on,” she says. “Now here’s how the night is going to go…”
She goes on to describe just about the opposite of everything I had planned for this weekend with the exception of having dinner together nightly. So that much, it seems, we agree on.
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “My method has worked for me on almost a dozen films.”
“Yeah,” she says, “it’s worked well enough to get you passed over time and time again for more serious roles. Ever wonder why people don’t take you seriously enough to offer you those period characters or the troubled geniuses that win all the awards? Maybe it’s because anytime anything serious comes along, you make a joke out of it and just go with your instincts.”
That’s a little close to home.
“Look, I get that you’re trying to do the whole overhaul the Hollywood bad boy thing,” I tell her, “but just because you’ve got some fairy tale wet dream going on in your head doesn’t mean that it’s got anything to do with reality, much less with acting.”
That may have been a bit harsh.
“I’ll see you at dinner,” she says, and she hangs up.
Well, that could have gone better.
I don’t know what the hell we’re doing here anymore. I don’t even know why I thought it was going to be a good idea in the first place. Dutch suggested it, sure, but I’m the one that filled in the details.
This kind of thing can make an onscreen performance sizzle, but whatever’s going on here, it’s personal, and because it’s personal, we’re both fighting it in our own special way.
Why’s it personal, though?
I’ve been here, to this very hotel, for this very purpose, at least five times and I’ve never had so much fucking hassle right from the start.
Come to think of it, the whole blackmail thing’s probably got her pretty freaked out.
I pull the phone out of my pocket and dial the number.
“I don’t really want to talk right now,” Emma answers. “I’ll see you at dinner.”
“It’s been 72 hours, hasn’t it?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says. She’s crying.
“What did you do?” I ask.
“I wrote him a check,” she says. “What do you think I did? He sent me texts with the pictures. He’s definitely got them.”
“Wanna talk about it?” I ask.
She sniffs and takes a deep breath. “If there’s any way we could get through this weekend without mentioning it again, I would be very happy,” she says.
“Okay,” I respond. “Do you want to come out and maybe just talk?”
I’m halfway down the hall, but in the distance, I can hear a door unlatch and Emma opens up, her hair still pristine, though her mascara’s running.
“Yeah,” she says into the phone, and hangs up.
Tofu.
My stalker carved tofu, covered it in raspberry sauce, and left it in a black garbage can on my gated driveway.
Right now, everything’s complicated and everything’s absurd.
Out there somewhere is a woman who thought the way into my heart was a way-too-familiar letter and that 30-pound bag.
Right in front of me is a soon-to-be-A-list, not to mention gorgeous actress with perfect hair and the saddest eyes. In that doorway is a woman who’s in one of the more ridiculous situations the world can throw at a person, just trying to find a way to focus on the job that’s going to make or break her career.
Maybe it’s time I throw her a rope.
I walk toward the room, but Emma shakes her head.
“We’re just going to dinner a little early,” she says. “That’s all. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
Maybe I should tell her about Jamie.
That really couldn’t serve a purpose here, though. The way that Emma described intimacy, I mean, it wouldn’t be out of line, I don’t think, but then again, how could it possibly be relevant?
I guess if the only point is to be vulnerable, that�
��s the story to tell, but I don’t think that intimacy, especially fake intimacy, demands complete vulnerability.
At the end of the day, two people are still two people, right?
The door opens and Emma walks out, saying, “I realized that without you knowing when I was going to be ready to go, it didn’t make much sense for you to come to the door. Either you’d be early, in which case making you wait at all becomes a useless exercise, or you’re late, and I’m stuck waiting there when you’re right on the other side of the door. All of that being the case,” she says, “I am ready to go to dinner.”
With all the uncertainty, the awkwardness, and the general reign of miscommunication, yeah: this is starting to feel like a relationship.
Chapter Seven
Backyard Carnivals
Emma
Dinner last night was all right, but we were both still very much in ourselves. What was better was brunch this morning. That’s when I really got Damian to stop being the cardboard cutout of himself and start actually being himself.
He seemed pretty uncomfortable doing it.
Right now, I’m standing in the locker room of the hotel spa. Damian and I are getting a couple’s massage.
I don’t know exactly how far down to strip in these places.
I’ve always heard that the general rule is that you don’t need anything but the towel, but having never actually been to a spa, it feels a little weird.
Just to be on the safe side, I leave my bra and panties on before I wrap the towel around my body and make my way to the next room.
Damian is already facedown on one of two massage tables.
He turns his head far enough to glance at me, and then puts his face back in the little hole. He doesn’t say anything, but his hands are moving down his body, and—yep, he’s mooning me.
Well, I guess that answers the question I had in the locker room.
“Will you put that away?” I ask, pretending like I’m not sneaking a peek when in reality, I’m a little turned on by getting such an up close and personal look at such a famous, and if I may, well-formed, ass.
“This is exactly the kind of thing I would be doing to you if we were in a new relationship,” he says. “We’re still doing new relationship, right? When do we move on to the petting and necking portion of the weekend?” he asks, and then makes some kind of noise that I can only equate to a cat growling.
“We’re moving from new to established relationship,” I tell him, “and there’s not going to be a petting portion of the weekend. We will be practicing our kissing, but only after you prove to me that you can handle it like an adult.”
“But Mom,” the still bare-assed, world-renowned actor whines through the hole in his massage table.
I approach the side of my table and just stand there for a moment.
Apparently, I don’t need the underwear, but I’m not so sure about dropping my panties when Damian can see through his hole.
I’m really not a prude, I swear. This is a unique situation.
I finally decide to go back to the locker room, but of course, that’s when the masseurs come in the room.
“Everything okay?” the short one with the bald head asks.
“Did you forget something?” the taller one with the hideous man bun asks.
“I just need to go back for something,” I stammer.
“We can have someone bring it in here to you,” Man Bun says.
“Please, lie down,” Bald Guy says in a soothing, almost cult-inspiring voice.
“Really, I should grab it myself,” I tell them. Now, even if I succeed in leaving the room unescorted, I’m going to have to pick something I brought with me to be that thing I couldn’t possibly get massaged without. This is some killer planning. “I’ll just be a second,” I tell them.
Bald Guy shrugs and Man Bun is rubbing his hands together over Damian’s back.
You know, from this angle, massage is the strangest thing…
I get into the locker room, drop my towel long enough to completely disrobe, unintentionally flash an older woman who’s coming out of the showers in what looks like a nightgown with legs, and feel through my pants for something, anything I can take back in there with me to explain why, oh why, I would delay the healing powers of massage, but all I have are my keys and my room key. Everything else, even my cell phone, is back in the room.
Room key it is.
I go back into the other room and set the room key under the hole in my table so I can look down at a constant reminder about how I wasn’t quick enough on my feet.
Finally bare—with the exception of the towel—I lie down on the massage table and scootch into position.
This is actually pretty nice.
“Everything come out all right?” Damian asks.
“What?” I respond.
“Never mind,” he laughs. “So,” he says, “tell me more about what it is to be intimate with someone.”
“Well,” I start. I start, but I don’t continue.
Last night, I was basically listing off qualities that were opposite to my experience with Ben. Now, I don’t know, I guess I really don’t know what intimacy is.
“It’s not something you are,” I tell him, “it’s something you find in the other person.”
“That tells me absolutely nothing,” he says. “Come on, you were so spirited about it last night. What’s next? What is it that we’re really looking for here?”
“Tell me a story,” I tell him, “something real, you know, something that’s happened in your life.”
“Like what?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “What is your best memory of your childhood?”
“That’s boring,” he says. “Ask me something harder, something closer.”
Something harder, something closer.
“What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?” I ask.
“Maybe something a little softer,” he says, “at least for now.”
“Fine,” I say. “Have you ever been in love?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’ve been in love a bunch of times. It’s never really the same, though. Everyone talks like love is one set emotion that everyone experiences the same way, every time,” he says. “For me, love is when you don’t know what to expect, but that’s not a bad thing. I guess if there is one single thing I can tie to my experience with love, it’s being able to let go of all my shit and just be Damian Jones without all the actor shit even coming into it. Being able to do that and not have a nervous breakdown is a pretty good indication that I’m in love.”
“So being able to give up control of your image is what tells you that you’re in love?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “Why? What is it that lets you know that you don’t just like a person, you love them?”
“I don’t know,” I start. “It’s hard to describe. I think love is simple. It’s just that perpetual wish to be around a person. Love is what happens when you only care if one person takes you seriously. Everyone else just doesn’t matter quite so much.”
The room’s quiet a moment except the sounds of hands moving over oiled-up celebrity.
“That was very nice,” Man Bun says.
“Thank you,” I answer.
“The last time I knew I was in love—probably the only time I really knew was with my high school sweetheart, Jamie,” Damien says. “With her, it wasn’t just the swirl of emotions, but a full-blown tempest all the time.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“What do you mean?” he answers. It’s a stall, and a pathetic one at that. “She got pregnant,” he says. “We were going to have a little baby girl. We’d even started picking out names for her and everything. When Jamie went into labor, though,” he sighs, “there were complications. Neither she, nor the baby, survived.”
I’m trying to do the right thing and brush my first thought aside, so I give the quick response. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” he says
, “me, too.”
There’s something almost sadistic in having this talk while getting a massage. It’s not an unwritten rule as far as I know, but it just doesn’t feel right for anything pleasant to be happening right now.
“When did this happen?” I ask, that question being the first thing that popped in my mind.
“Are you asking me when it happened or are you asking me how it is that you never heard about it?” he asks.
“Both, I guess,” I respond, though I’m more interested in the second answer.
“It happened when I was about 20,” he says. “That would be, what? Nine years ago? Anyway, the reason you never heard about it is that you’re forgetting I was just a normal guy for quite a while there.”
“Yeah, but you were on that show when you were a kid,” I tell him. “Child stars who never worked again wouldn’t be able to keep something like that out of the public eye. I guess I’m just curious how you did.”
“We weren’t engaged or anything,” he says. “When Jamie died, I wasn’t the next of kin. The paperwork that was going to have my name on it was going to be the birth certificate. When there was no more need for that,” he says, “there just wasn’t anywhere else for my name to go. Her dad took possession of her remains, told me he didn’t want me anywhere near the funeral or his family, and that was the last I saw of any of them. The bastard even filed the baby’s death certificate without my name.”
“Why was her dad so pissed at you?” I ask. “It doesn’t sound like it was your fault.”
“It wasn’t,” he says, “but that didn’t change the fact that his daughter was dead, and if it weren’t for me, she’d be alive.”
“Okay, now that sounds like it is your fault,” I say.
“If she weren’t pregnant,” he says, “she wouldn’t have died in labor. I didn’t have anything to do with the blood clot that ended up killing her, but her body wouldn’t have been under that stress if it weren’t carrying a baby. She probably would have been fine if we’d never gotten pregnant.”