by S. E. Lund
ELLA: I don't think you would like to meet him. He thinks you're the enemy.
JOSH: That's no good. I don't want to be anyone's enemy. Especially not your father...
ELLA: It's the bad blood between them because of what happened to my father's business partner.
JOSH: I understand. They were friends as well as partners. He took it personally, I guess.
ELLA: Yes, and he still holds a grudge against MBS because of it. What's going on in La-La-Land? Are you having fun?
JOSH: They're working on music for a new EP at David's villa, so the place has been busy as you can imagine a rocker's villa would be.
ELLA: Lots of pretty young thangs? Groupies dying to be with the boys from the band? Should I be jealous?
JOSH: No, not in the least. There are a few women around, but believe it or not, they're actually girlfriends or wives of the band members. No groupies in sight. You'd think the guys were all hard rockers because of the music, but they're mostly just musicians and family men or in serious relationships. All except David, that is. He's a confirmed bachelor.
ELLA: In my father's parlance, that means he's gay.
JOSH: Nope. Just really sour on marriage. He's in between girlfriends but he makes it pretty clear he's not interested in anything monogamous.
ELLA: I guess he can get away with it. So, are you enjoying your stay?
JOSH: It's nice in SOCAL but I wish you were here with me. I'm going to Skype you, so I can hear your voice and see your face.
ELLA: Okay.
In a moment, my cell rang, and I answered it, positioning the phone so he could see my face.
“When are you going to David’s?”
“Tomorrow after the convention ends.”
“They’re recording an EP, right?”
“They are but he’s pretty under control when they’re recording, so I’ll be able to get work done.”
“That's good," I said, smiling, happy that even if we weren't together, at least I could see his face and hear his voice. "Are you excited about the coming week, and the new office?
"I am. I'm thinking of seeing if I could get a paper going on this coast. That way, I'd have both coasts covered."
"You're ambitious," I said with a laugh. "In an age when digital is taking up such a huge chunk of the market, that's going against the grain."
"I have a feeling people are going to continue to read actual print papers, but I would definitely have a digital side. Can't fight progress. We'll see."
We talked for another hour back and forth and frankly, I was glad that Josh didn't bring up a sext session. It was enough to just talk to him.
When I couldn't stifle a yawn and he saw me try, he laughed. "I can see I'm keeping you up. We'll try again tomorrow night and I promise to call you sooner."
"I'm sorry," I said and pouted. "I'm just beat from all the walking and talking. I guess I should take up some kind of sport and get in better shape."
"You could get a bike and ride every day like me."
"Oh, God, I'd be afraid I'd be hit by a car. Manhattan is a lot different from the roads of Concord..."
"You could take side streets to the bike path along the Hudson and you'd be fine."
"I'll think about it."
"Good night, Ella," he said with a soft smile.
"Good night, Josh," I said and blew him a kiss.
He mimed catching it and then signed off. I put my phone away and leaned back, glad that he'd Skyped me, so we could see each other.
I fell asleep almost instantly and didn't wake again until a full seven hours later.
I spent Monday with my mom, doing mostly touristy things. We went to the Museum of Natural History and walked through the exhibits, got some street meat at a vendor parked under a bridge, and then went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and checked out the collections.
Finally, when we were both exhausted, we went to the spa in the hotel and had a massage, pedicure and manicure and met my father for dinner at a restaurant he'd heard about near their hotel.
While I waited for my mom, I got a text from Josh.
JOSH: Wish you were here. The weather is fine, and the sky is crystal clear.
I responded right away, smiling to myself. I had to keep reminding myself that LA was several hours earlier than Manhattan.
ELLA: I wish I was there, too, but I am having a nice visit with the parental units.
JOSH: Enjoy them while you can. I wish I could do the same.
ELLA: I will, and I do. What's on your agenda for the rest of the week?
JOSH: Probably spend my time during the day at the office and then spend time with David at night.
ELLA: You should go surfing or something.
JOSH: I might hit up my brother between recording sessions. He surfs on occasion so he might be up for it.
ELLA: Wish I was there, too.
I said goodbye and wished I was there, but at the same time, I valued my time with my parents.
The Capital Grill was an upscale chop house with delicious food and a high four-star rating. It was a nice end to a very busy day. The talk was about my father's meetings with his political cronies about the upcoming by-election, and he and my mom did the whole inside baseball talk about who was who and everything I used to care about but no longer did.
When I was with Jerkface, that world was mine as well, but after we split, I was no longer so connected into all the political talk. I was just as glad to be free of it, frankly. I knew it was important, but at the same time, I was now jaded. I'd been burned and while I knew my father was an honorable man, I had a bad taste in my mouth after my experience of Jerkface being so politically ambitious, he would try to marry me to get an in with my father.
As a result, I didn't want to even talk politics.
"We're boring you, dear," my father said, when I hid my yawn behind a hand.
"Sorry, Dad," I replied and gave him a guilty smile. "I used to be interested, but I'm kind of out of the loop."
"Politics is too important to leave to other people," he said, softly chiding me. "I thought you understood that."
"I do," I protested. "I vote, and I always know the local issues. You know me. But I'm just not that interested in New Hampshire any longer. I feel like I have to learn New York politics, if anything."
"Good God, don't say that," he said with a huge laugh. "One of the most corrupt states in the Union. Mafia bosses control pretty much everything."
"Daddy," I said, frowning. "It's not like that."
My mother must have kicked him under the table because he grunted and shot her a withering look.
"You'll find out for yourself, I guess," he said and focused on his dessert.
"She will find out for herself, won't you, Dear?" my mother replied, smiling to dissipate the tension.
"I will."
"That's settled," my father replied and motioned to the waiter for the check. "Let's go for a stroll. I've been inside all day and would like to see the sights."
After he paid the check, we got our coats and walked along 42nd Street, past the Chrysler Building, one of the most iconic buildings in Manhattan. We went to Bryant Park and then up Madison Avenue to the Ritz-Carlton.
It was nice to walk along Madison Avenue at night, exciting, and exactly what I thought of when I dreamed of moving to Manhattan.
Finally, I said goodnight to them both and took a taxi to my apartment, pleased with how the day had gone and glad that I wasn't grilled about the bicycle courier I mentioned the day before. They were leaving when my father's final meeting was over, so I would see them both for lunch and then say our goodbyes.
I couldn't wait to get home and spend some time with the bicycle-courier in question.
6
Josh
Since I wasn’t going into the office until Wednesday, Tuesday was one of those lazy days in LA when the sun was warm, the sky blue and I had nothing to do but lie around, read newspapers and think about what I'd rather be doing.
> Namely, Ella.
While I was sitting beside the pool, I got a text from Penny.
PENNY: My email is [email protected].
I realized that meant she was asking for some money. Had she already spent the hundred bucks?
Knowing junkies, she probably bought herself a lot of heroin and a tiny bit of food and had spent the last two days high.
Probably got her friends high as well.
I sent another hundred to her via an email transfer. If I really wanted to help her, I had to find her a rehab place. Maybe if she had it all paid, she'd go and get sober. Then, I could really help her. Find a job, get a decent place to live.
It was the least I could do to honor Grant's memory. How sad he must have been to see her like that. She was a party girl when I met her three years earlier, but I never got the sense that she would become an addict.
David's villa became exactly what I expected a rocker's villa to be like -- beautiful women in skimpy bathing suits, lying around the pool, music playing in the background as the band practiced.
Luckily, the beautiful women were all wives and girlfriends and so they left me alone. I could appreciate a beautiful woman, but after having been burned by a cheating fiancée, I had no interest in even encouraging a woman other than Ella to pay me any attention.
Whereas I might have welcomed some light flirting before, now that I was with Ella, I didn't want anything to happen that would either make me feel guilty or make me imagine the same thing happening to her. I was, at base, a monogamous guy.
My father had been monogamous, had always encouraged us to be honorable with women and treat them as equals, and he'd clearly been deeply in love with my mother. She was an amazing woman and accomplished for her generation with a degree in politics, and who did political consulting.
He never remarried after she died and focused instead of his large brood of sons. The brothers and I expected him to live a long time after she died, and for him to remarry, but unfortunately, that wasn't the case.
Theirs was the kind of relationship I wanted as well.
David sat beside me. "Soaking up the sun?" he said and pulled his sunglasses lower to glance at me. I was in trunks and had to admit I looked like a ghost compared to his tanned and tatted bare chest.
"Hey, do you know of any good rehab places? One that does the wholistic approach to getting someone sober and back into society?"
He frowned. "Sure," he said. "There are a few great places in the hills. A few people in the industry I know have gone to this one place called Cedars Second Chances. You have someone who needs rehab?"
"An old buddy's sister," I said. Then I told David about Grant's death.
"Oh, man, that's rough," he said and reach over to squeeze my arm. "If you want, I can get you the number. You gonna try to help her?"
"If she's ready for help."
He nodded. "You have to be ready or else it's a waste of time."
David got up and glanced around. "Well, I have to go back in. Record some more tracks. Are you okay out here by yourself?"
"I'm a big boy."
"Put some sunscreen on or you'll be a very burnt boy. You look like a ghost."
I laughed and took the sunscreen tube from him.
"Yes, little brother."
He cracked a smile and then left me by the pool.
An hour or so later, as I lay in the shade and drank a fresh coffee, David came back out of the house and flopped down on the lawn chair beside me.
"What's up?" I asked, putting down my paper. "You finished recording?"
"For the time being."
"What's on the rest of your rock star agenda for the day?"
"Mitch is a bit under the weather today with a cold. Wanna get the hell out of here?" David asked. "I feel like I've been holed up practicing for too long."
"Sure," I said. "I have today off, so whatever you feel like. What about surfing?"
"Yeah!" he said and sat up, looking excited. "I haven't been surfing for ages. I'll probably fall off the board and break my neck and there goes the EP, but what the hell. Terry will probably want to come, too. He's a really good surfer and the swells are really good this time of year."
I shook my head. "We don't have to, if you're not up to it. I can amuse myself if you think surfing is too dangerous for you."
"Oh, I'm up to it. I have to be safe about it though. I'm insured but I don't want to delay the EP in case anything happened."
"We could boogie board instead," I said with a laugh.
"We could at that," he chuckled. "Probably more my speed."
“Nah,” I said and we both laughed.
So, while the band took a couple hours off from practicing, David and I and one of his band mates, Terry, went to Venice Beach and did some surfing.
"Venice Beach has pretty mellow waves," Terry said, who was the expert surfer among the three of us.
"That's exactly what we're looking for," I said.
"That's exactly as much as the two of us can handle," David said with a laugh. "It's been at least a year since I went surfing."
"Me, too," I replied. The last time I went surfing had been on a trip to visit David when I was still with Christie.
David drove us to Venice Beach in his slick new BMW SUV. For the next two hours, from three o'clock until five, we spent our time in the waves off Venice Beach, and I noted that David still put his all into it, despite claiming he didn't want to risk hurting himself. He was a good surfer, much better than me, but he'd spent the last eight years in LA and had more time to improve.
As the big brother, I tried my best to compete with him, but each of us had our own talents. Surfing was not my best sport.
"That was a magnificent wipe out," David said to me after a spectacular fall I took while trying a wave that was perhaps a bit too big for me.
"It was. I think I won the competition for today."
"You did," David said with a laugh. "I'll grant you that."
"I think that deserves at least a beer," Terry said and so the three of us returned the surfboards to the rental company, packed up and walked along the boardwalk, enjoying the sights.
We came to a restaurant along the boardwalk that served fish tacos and cold imported beer and decided to make a meal out of it. We sat for about an hour, eating and talking business, the band, the Chronicle, and our plans for the future.
"Have another beer," David said. "Let's celebrate."
"We have to drive back," I replied.
"I'll drive," Terry said. "You two brothers have another beer. Enjoy yourselves."
"Thanks, bro," David said and ordered us another beer.
Finally, at about six thirty, we piled back into the car, with Terry at the helm, and drove back to Brentwood.
Only, we didn't make it.
Coming around a sharp corner on Sunset Boulevard near Rustic Creek, we hit another vehicle head-on that wandered into our lane. It happened so fast, there wasn't really any time to avoid the car and while we weren't traveling too fast, it sounded like two freight trains hitting as our front end mashed into the front end of the BMW.
While it took only seconds, it seemed to take forever for the cars to stop skidding along the road before we stopped. After we hit the BMW, our vehicle slid into the embankment, the SUV flipping over onto its roof. The other vehicle crashed into the trees on the side of the street.
For the first ten seconds, I blinked, trying to figure out what to do, but then my survival instincts kicked in. I wasn't hurt too badly. I was hanging upside down, but the air bags had deployed and since I was in the back seat on the far side from the driver, who took the brunt of the hit, I was fine.
"Are you guys okay?" I called out to David and Terry.
There was no answer at first, and I struggled to unlatch my seatbelt. I finally managed it, bracing myself with one arm so that I didn't injure myself when I fell from the seat onto the crumpled roof.
A car had stopped on the side of the road and as I tried to
kick open the side door, I saw the driver get out and take out his cell. I assumed he was calling 9-1-1 but the safety app on the SUV's dashboard had already done so.
The front of the roof was really crumpled. I managed to crawl out and after I checked myself out, I tried to get the passenger door open. David was still hanging upside down and wasn't moving. I didn't hear anything from either of them, and from what I could see, Terry's side of the vehicle was pretty mangled.
I didn't think. I just did.
The engine was smoking, and I was afraid it would catch fire so although I was worried about removing David before I knew whether he had a back or neck injury, I didn't want him to burn alive in case the fire spread.
I finally managed to get the passenger door opened and the man who called 9-1-1 helped me to get David out. He had a gash in the side of his head, but I couldn't tell if anything else was broken. We laid him on the ground a dozen feet away on the grass, and I listened to his heart, which was slow and steady. He was alive, and he was breathing, but he was still unconscious. I took off my shirt and t-shirt, so I could use the t-shirt to bandage David's head, then I hands down David's arms and legs, checking for broken bones and any cuts. Thankfully, there didn't appear to be any.
Another car stopped, and someone ran to the other vehicle that hit us. It was pretty badly banged up and I hoped that whoever it was, they were okay, but they had a BMW and it wasn't as sturdy as our SUV. The good Samaritan who was helping us was named Don. He went back to his vehicle and grabbed a fire extinguisher from his trunk, which he used on the engine to extinguish the flames that were sprouting from interior. Then he went to check on Terry. A third car had stopped, and the driver was helping him check out the car to see if they could reach him, but the vehicle was wedged on its roof against the side of a hill.
I slipped my shirt back on and held a corner of my t-shirt to David's cut over his right eye. Finally, David's eyes blinked open.
"What the hell..."
I wiped some blood out of his right eye.
"We were in an accident," I said, keeping my voice calm. "You've got a cut over your eye, but you don't appear to have any broken bones."