by Lisa Ferrari
I can’t be around Denise right now. She is sympathetic. At least, she tried to be in her own way. She tried to distract me by reading her text conversation with Mark about how she’s going to tie him up and blindfold him and gag him and do weird stuff to him with household objects. Yay for them.
I demolish all the food in my kitchen.
I punish myself with calories. I stop counting after 10,000. Screw it.
I sit on the sofa, surrounded by empty boxes and wrappers and containers and cartons, wanting to vomit because I’m so full. I contemplate going to the bathroom and sticking my fingers down my throat to induce vomiting in order to empty my stomach so I can eat more, like they do in The Capitol.
I scroll through my gallery, looking at all the pics I took during my trip to L.A. with Kellan. I stop and stare at the pics of us with the celebrities at the hotel.
Never in a gazillion years would I have expected that could happen to me.
Ever.
And it did!
Because of Kellan.
And I threw it all away because my mom and my sister and Stacy and Denise told me to.
I am so stupid.
I am so, so stupid.
I desperately, desperately want to text him again.
I don’t have the nerve.
He told me to fuck off.
That’s pretty clear.
EVENTUALLY, AFTER STARING at the walls for an hour, I have an idea. I get dressed, put on my Iron Born tee shirt and running shoes, and drive to the gym.
I tell myself I’m going to work out.
But I know I’m only going because I hope Kellan will be there.
He’s not.
I go through my regular routine Kellan taught me: warm-up on cardio, then lift. I try to do some machine presses and some lat pulldowns, but it’s a half-assed effort because my eyes are on the front door of the gym the whole time. I’m hoping to see him.
I even walk over and check the ab station where I first spotted him the night we met. But he isn’t there.
After 50 minutes or so, I leave Iron Palace.
I drive to Mel’s.
As I’m turning into the parking lot, I’m scouring the spaces for his green Huracan, or the icy-silver-blue Mister Beaumont, or the white Mercedes, or the black Stingray. Or the yellow motorcycle I never got to ride on the back of with my arms around Kellan, holding on to him for dear life (metaphor!)
But I don’t see any of them. He isn’t here, either.
I get a little psycho and drive out to Los Gatos.
But when I get there, I get scared so I pull over just before the gate, hoping the guard doesn’t see me. Kellan has probably issued explicit instructions, along with my photo I.D. and license plate number, to the guard to tell me to fuck off if he sees me.
I sit there for a while, staring at the gate, and at every car that comes or goes or even drives past.
Part of me wants to flee, but for some reason I stay.
“If You Leave” by OMD comes on the radio.
Pretty in pink I am not; more like a pink pig. I bet even Kermit wouldn’t do me.
It begins to rain, a rare Indian summer late-night thunderstorm.
Could I BE more of a cliché?
Someone knocks on my window.
It’s Kellan.
He scares the crap out of me.
“Claire?”
Kellan is soaked. His white tee shirt is stuck to his muscled body. His hair is wet. Little drops of water cling to his eyelashes. He’s beautiful.
I put my window down. Rain comes in. I start to get wet.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Nothing. Just out for a drive.”
Stupid liar.
I want to shout at myself.
I want to tell him that I came to see him, and that I came to beg him to forgive me for all the horrid things I said to him, and that I want things to go back to the way they were because he’s the best thing that ever happened to me and I don’t want to settle for a life of mediocrity if I can live a life of genuine passion and adventure and lust and friendship and love.
With him.
But I don’t say any of that. I simply can’t. It’s on the tip of my tongue. But I can’t. I should’ve written it down. I’m a writer not an orator. I could’ve handed him a letter or something.
“What are you doing?” I ask. Good, Claire.
“Out for a jog.”
“In the rain?”
“I’m not made of wax, I won’t melt. Did your car break down?”
“No.”
“Good. Then you can keep driving.”
Kellan replaces his earhooks over his ears and continues running down the road and through the gate. He waves to the guard in the guard house. The guard raises a can of Pepsi in return.
I throw my car into Drive and floor it up to the gate.
The guard comes running out of the guard house, Pepsi in hand. He stands in front of my car, blocking me.
I put my window down and stick my face out into the warm rain. “I need to get in!”
He comes to my window. “Are you a resident?”
“No.”
“Are you expected?”
“Um, not exactly. But I was here last week. I know him, that man right there, Kellan Kearns, I know him!” I point desperately at Kellan, who is jogging in the paltry glow of my headlights.
“I remember you,” the guard says.
“You do? Oh, wonderful. I remember you, too. Please, I need to speak to Kellan. It’s urgent. Can you just open the gate and I’ll zip in and right back out again? It’ll just take a minute, I swear.”
“Is Mister Kearns expecting you?”
“Um, to be honest, no, this is kind of an impromptu visit.”
“At 11:45 p.m. on a Sunday?”
“Please, I really need to talk to him.”
“I can’t let you in without resident accompaniment or prior approval. It’s policy. I’m sorry.”
Kellan is still jogging, getting further away.
“Please, he’s right there.”
“I’m sorry, miss, I can’t allow you in without resident accompaniment or prior approval.”
“Can you call him? You guys have resident phone numbers for deliveries and stuff, right? How did that truck driver get in when he dropped off the Aventador last week?”
“One moment.”
The guard goes inside and makes a phone call. Twenty seconds later, he comes back out.
“He’s not answering. I’m sorry.”
Kellan is still jogging.
I’m losing him.
I honk my horn and flash my high beams a bunch of times.
Kellan looks over his shoulder…but continues jogging.
I get out of the car and go to the gate. I grab the wrought iron bars that remind me of a prison cell. “Kellan!” Raindrops soak me.
Kellan jogs around the bend and out of sight without looking back.
Chapter 17
OVER THE NEXT few days, I try to get back into my old routine: work, Denise’s, home, reading, watching movies, eating whatever the heck I want just like in the good ol’ days. Visiting my parents. Visiting Beth.
But it all sucks.
I’m depressed. Everyone can see it.
Even me.
One night, as I’m clocking out, Chris invites me to the Turtle but I don’t want to go. I’ve barely said two words to Chris. I’ve barely spoken to anyone. Nancy has asked me if I’m okay three times. Three. I’m waiting for the day I come to work and what’s-her-name from Human Resources drags me to her office and makes me talk to a shrink. They can’t have me offing myself while I’m on the clock, or grabbing a giant butcher knife and putting it to Chris’s throat and stealing a golf cart from the cart barn and going on a long, slow, electrically-powered walk of shame until the SWAT team comes and takes me out, along with a bunch of residents on their way to the clubhouse for some Pinochle.
I go home and curl up on the couch and l
isten to “Livin on a Prayer” and “I Touch Myself” over and over and over.
The roses Kellan brought me are still in their big crystal vase on the table. They’re in full bloom now and smell so sweet and flowery it’s almost overpowering. The irony sickens me.
I proceed to do the same thing I do every night: lie there and scroll through my gallery of pics of Kellan while I stuff my face. Tonight, it’s jalapeno poppers and Ranch. You’re supposed to bake them but I microwaved them. Because who gives a shit. I wash them down with warm A&W Cream Soda, straight from the two-liter bottle. Warm-soda burps are epic. I bite into a popper and molten cream cheese squirts out. It lands on my phone. I lick it off. And then wipe my phone on my tee shirt. Because who gives a shit.
Kellan hasn’t posted anything online or to social media since he had a selfie on the plane heading back from North Carolina. He looked happy. He hasn’t tweeted. His Facebook page is out of date.
Stacy, on the other hand, has TONS of new pics of her and her tits in the Mister Beaumont. I discovered them yesterday. And not her in the passenger seat (that’s my seat, bitch!); actually driving! I try not to cry. I know I shouldn’t look at them. But I do.
THE NEXT MORNING, I am on my way to work.
I’m late, as usual.
Punctuality and soul-crushing sadness ne’er the twain shall meet.
Or something like that.
I see the Mister Beaumont going the other direction on Highway 65, which is a long, straight stretch of road with two lanes in each direction and a big, wide grassy median in between.
I slam on the brakes and do a totally illegal U-turn across the median and haul ass back the other way, chasing the Mister Beaumont. It has to be him. It has to be. That simply must be the only Azzuro Thetis Lamborghini Aventador in northern California.
I’m going to be really late to work, but I have to see him.
I catch up to him at a stop light.
When I get up to the car, Stacy is behind the wheel, alone. She’s primping her hair in the mirror at the red light and flirting with two guys in a black Wrangler. Stacy reaches way out and gives the passenger one of her cards. Slut.
I turn around and drive to work.
I clock in 18 minutes late. Nancy chews me a new ass. I don’t bother defending myself.
THAT AFTERNOON, I go to Denise’s after work.
She invited me over to watch football with her.
Muscular guys with nice round butts that remind me of Kellan. Just what I need.
I’m feasting on another fat log of raw cookie dough, praying for a blistering case of a heretofore undiscovered food-borne parasite and a resultant quick death. I tell Denise what happened, all about driving to Los Gatos and how Kellan just happened to be jogging past on Auburn-Folsom Road; what are the odds?
“Carmic,” says Denise. “Cosmic. Law of Attraction. All that shit. Secretly, you guys both desperately want to be together so all the invisible quantum superstrings we can’t see are like a giant harp played by angels and it creates an orchestra that is the soundtrack to our lives. You and Kellan are destined to be together so you saw each other. The universe put you guys together in that moment.”
“Where did you come up with all that? That doesn’t sound like you.”
“Mark has me reading this book on quantum entanglement. Think about it: the day I bought my Bimmer, Mark wasn’t even supposed to be working. It was his day off. He works seven days straight and then takes three days off. That day was his first day off and he was supposed to go fishing out at the lake but he felt like he needed to come into work for a little bit and just as he got out of his car and was heading into the showroom, I saw him and asked for his help. He took me on the test drive and we screwed each other’s brains out, and now we’re dating.
“Now, with you and Kellan, you were sitting around feeling pathetic and lonely and lovelorn over dear, sweet Mister Kearns, so what did you do?”
“I put on my Iron Born tee shirt that he really likes and went to the gym.”
“Why?”
“I was hoping to see him there and maybe…I don’t know…say something grand and pithy that would make up for all that mean stuff I said to him.”
“Okay, and was he there?”
“No.”
“So then what did you do?”
“I’ve already told you all of this.”
“I know, but I’m trying to prove a point so bear with me. What did you do next?”
“I left the gym and drove to Mel’s.”
“And was he there?”
“No.”
“So then what did you do?”
“I drove out to his house. Well, up to the front gate, anyway.”
“And what happened?”
“I was scared so I pulled over on the side of the road and just sat there.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. Awhile. I wanted to leave but I couldn’t.”
“And then what happened?”
“Someone knocked on my window and scared the crap out of me and I turned and saw it was Kellan.”
“Dude, that’s pretty trippy. Think about all the stuff that had to happen to facilitate that moment. Begin with the moment and work backwards for each of you. We don’t’ know exactly what Kellan was doing but he was probably finishing his run when you guys saw each other, right? So, if he ran for, say, 45 minutes, it means that, 45 minutes prior to you guys seeing each other, he would have left his house. Before that, he would’ve had to put on his running clothes and his running shoes. Before that, he would’ve had to finish whatever he was doing, probably working on his computer doing business stuff or maybe working out, and all those events would’ve had to line up just perfectly.
“Same thing with you. You went to the gym and worked out and then went to Mel’s and then drove to Kellan’s. Imagine if you had decided to do an extra five minutes of cardio. Or another set of tricep kickbacks. Or if you had parked at Mel’s and actually gone inside. Or even if you had simply gotten stuck at a red light on your way to Kellan’s. The timing had to be just perfect in order for that moment in time to be created for him to knock on your car window.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t let me in. He left me there.”
“True. But he saw you. He knows why you were there. He knows you came to see him. Let him think about it a few more days and then try again.”
“How?”
“I don’t know…. Call him. Nobody ever makes phone calls anymore. Everybody just texts. It’s convenient and I do it, too. But it’s not the same as actually speaking. Having an actual conversation is much more terrifying. That makes it more significant.”
“Even if I do call him, he won’t answer.”
“How do you know?”
Scared shitless but determined to prove a point, and with a mouthful of cookie dough, I grab my phone and call Kellan on speaker phone. It goes to voicemail.
“See?”
“Keep trying. Don’t give up. Be tenacious. You know how you’re always saying there’s a word for a writer who didn’t give up? And that word is ‘published’?”
“Yeah.”
“So apply the same logic to the relationship you want with Kellan. It’s like when we were in college. Remember how they tried to screw me out of graduation?”
“Vaguely. What happened again?”
“What happened was that I spent four years and almost a hundred grand at that school and a week before graduation they sent me a cheesedick letter saying I hadn’t fulfilled the graduation requirements for my major, and that I was going to be allowed to attend the ceremony but I wouldn’t get hooded. Remember, those orange silk things they put around our necks? Those are called hoods. When a member of the faculty hoods you, you’re officially a college graduate. But if you don’t actually get hooded, they call it ‘walking through’. I was going to be allowed to walk through and pretend to graduate but then I was going to have to take summer school to fulfill their bullshit requirements. Th
at was horseshit. I busted my ass all four years in order to graduate on time. A lot of my friends said screw it and did a fifth year, but not me. I took summer school every summer in order to get my degree in four years. I wanted to earn my Bachelor’s and get my ass to law school to get a law degree.”
Denise points to the large, framed, and very impressive JD certificate displayed prominently on the wall of her home office. “Think about it: if an average annual salary for a decent attorney is $150,000 a year, then spending that fifth year in school would mean missing out on 150,000 dollars. Plus you have to factor in the cost of tuition, room and board, books, utilities, all that stuff. Which would’ve been at least another 25 grand. So that stupid letter was going to cost me $175,000. No freakin way. So I marched my ass into the Dean’s office and told him how they’d been jerking me around in the English department because the professor assigned to be my advisor had been out for intestinal surgery and I’d been shuffled around from professor to professor to professor and nobody had any freakin idea what my progress was. That school claimed to pride itself on its one-on-one interaction with its students and the low faculty-to-student ratio. It’s a great school and we got damned fine educations, but that was some seriously unprofessional shit. So once I laid it out for the Dean in those terms, he was forced to agree that I had a valid point. So he said, ‘See you at graduation’ and tossed the letter in the trash. I consider that having successfully litigated my very first case in which I was the plaintiff. I wonder if it’s too late to sue for damages.”
“So how does that relate to Kellan and me?”
“It demonstrates, quite aptly in my professional opinion, that you have to go after what you want. If you want something, or someone, man up, or in this case woman up, grab some balls, or some vagina, or perhaps some ovaries, and make it happen. Don’t take ‘No’ for an answer. Simple as that.”
“It’s not as simple as that. If he doesn’t want me, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Denise sighs heavily. “You like him. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not very convincing, Claire bear. Do you like him?”
“Yes.”
Denise throws a throw-pillow at my head and shouts, “DO YOU LIKE HIM?”
“I LOVE HIM, OKAY?!”