Are You Going to Kiss Me Now?

by Sloane Tanen

  “What?” I was really very surprised by his accusation, but I could sort of see how Jonah could see things that way, too. That said, what was I supposed to have done? Should I have pretended he was right about Polaris when I knew he wasn’t? That wasn’t my style.

  “I’m not one of your fans, Jonah. I’m not just going to blindly follow your lead…especially if you’re wrong.”

  “And I’m not asking you to,” he interrupted. “I just don’t understand you,” he continued. “It’s like you’re more interested in proving how smart you are than in helping me deal with this situation. And it’s not like I can count on them. My dad’s an idiot, Chaz is lazy, Cisco’s useless, and Milan is…” he stammered, looking for the right word, “I don’t even know what Milan is. Detoxing, I guess.” He paused for a second. “You’re obviously smart, but it’s about more than that. It’s about working together for the greater good. I thought you understood that. Obviously I misjudged you.”

  Ouch. Now I got why kids look up to Jonah. His approval suddenly felt important to me. His sense of moral superiority was convincing and just a little bit sexy. That said, I wasn’t letting him know that. Judgmental drug addict! Who put him in charge anyway? I knew as much about survival as he did. His fires sucked.

  “I see you’re a real forgiving Christian. First Joe, now me. Very charitable. You think I don’t feel bad about what happened?”

  Jonah ignored me and began arranging the branches into piles according to size.

  “Whatever,” I said.

  “Yeah, Francesca. Whatever. It’s so cool not to care.”

  Careful, Your Roots Are Showing

  It was afternoon on day three, and we still hadn’t been found. What if we were trapped here forever? What if we were left for dead? Nobody talked about it, but we were definitely getting worried. It was nice to have potable water, but I hated the darkness of our “camp.” Even on this sunny day, the canopy of trees made it a damp shadow-land. It was depressing. I envied Joe on the beach.

  On the upside, at least we had a little food. I’d spent a few hours that morning gathering more coconuts, and we had a decent collection now. Milan, to her credit, had come up with an ingenious way of opening them. By twisting the clip of one of her extensions through the tops of each shell, we were able to make a hole big enough to drink from. Once the juice was gone, we shaved away at the hole until it was big enough to fit two thumbs inside. At that point, Jonah was able to pry them apart with his hands so we could eat the meat. By about two o’clock, after we’d all had our fill, Milan and I had prepared about five coconuts for Jonah to carry over to Joe at the beach. We’d even fashioned a usable canteen to carry water back and forth.

  It was getting dark by the time Jonah returned. The air was getting chilly, and the lowering sun was bleeding through the awning of trees with a popsicle-orange light. All day, while Milan and I had been sitting vigil with Eve and working on the coconuts, the men—and I use that term loosely—had been attempting to build Jonah’s survival shelter out of branches, mud, and leaves. Chaz looked like he was going to drop dead of a heart attack at any moment. The whole project was comic at best, but it’s not like there was anything else for them to do, and Jonah did have a way of getting even the most reluctant people to follow his lead.

  Milan and I were pouring small amounts of water into Eve’s still grotesquely swollen mouth. She hadn’t said a word in over twelve hours. Between the coconut assembly and our nursing duties, Milan and I had found a sort of rhythm. We got along surprisingly well. I actually kind of liked her. She was funny and smarter than I would have ever given her credit for.

  And she was so pretty. I watched her tend to Eve with secret fascination. I was smitten by her beauty. It was entertainment in and of itself. The short distance between her flared nostrils and full upper lip was almost cartoon-like in its feminine perfection. The curve of her eyelids reminded me of an Egyptian statue. Her skin was so glowy it looked like she did nothing but exfoliate from the moment she woke up in the morning until the second before bed. I looked at my freckled hands and winced. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to look like that.

  Her hair was half gone by this point. The shorter pieces were brown, and the longer bits were platinum. When she wasn’t working on a coconut, she was yanking out the longer strands and tying them around her fingers until the tips went dark purple. I watched her do this for hours on end. If she weren’t a smoker, she’d assuredly be bald. This was a girl who needed to keep her hands in motion. And yet, despite the patchy hair, the red mosquito bites, and the dark under-eye circles, she was still a beauty. In fact, her flaws only accentuated the fact that this girl simply could not look ugly.

  The twitching had eased up, and with the exception of the insomnia, it seemed the worst of her withdrawal symptoms were over. Her sleep deprivation had made her vulnerable. It was hard to be a bitch on no sleep. It depleted what little energy she had left. She was too tired to be defensive.

  “How come you go out to clubs without panties on?” I asked, knowing she might actually give me an honest answer. I was confused why somebody so inherently “able” under primitive circumstances would behave like such an idiot in the civilized world.

  “I don’t know,” she said, without missing a beat. “Attention, I guess.”

  “Who wants that kind of attention? Isn’t it humiliating to see your hoo-ha on the cover of a magazine?”

  “I think it’s funny that people are interested. What do I care?”

  “C’mon,” I pushed.

  “People want a spectacle,” she explained, scratching her scalp furiously. “You kind of end up playing the part you get, you know?” She paused for a minute. I thought I heard clucking.

  “Anyway,” she continued, massaging her scalp with a look of ecstasy on her face, “since I’m not even considered for good roles anymore, I’m sort of an employee of the tabloids. If I don’t keep it interesting, I might lose the last good job I’ve got.”

  “But why don’t you get it together? You’re really a good actress.”

  “It’s not that simple, Francesca.”

  “Why not?” I asked. It seemed to me like she had every opportunity in the world and was doing everything in her power to make sure she ended up a Whatever Happened to Milan Amberson? E! True Hollywood Story. I didn’t get it.

  “Maybe you’re afraid of asking to be taken seriously. Maybe you’re afraid of failing,” I suggested.

  “Maybe so, Dr. Phil-ys.”

  “Nicole Richie got her act together,” I pointed out.

  “Oh please! Her day consists of crafting the right outfit to push Evergreen and Delilah down the slide in.”

  “Harlow and Sparrow,” I corrected her.

  “Sweet Christ,” she sneered, “there’s nothing at stake for her except a possible scolding from the Fashion Police.”

  “That’s true.” I hadn’t thought about it before. Milan’s tabloid sisters weren’t even actresses or models. Most of them were nothing but the privileged daughters of parents who were famous way back when my mom was young. I looked over at Jonah, who was driving a stake into the dirt, and wondered if he fell into this category. I didn’t think so.

  “Yeah, who are those girls anyway?” I asked, happy we were getting along so well.

  “Tragedies with stylists.”

  “Do they even have jobs? What do they live on?” I asked.

  Milan laughed. “They get paid to go places, Francesca. They, we, get paid to show up.”

  “Really? How much?”

  “It varies. Once I got offered three hundred thousand dollars to go to some kid’s bar mitzvah in New Jersey.”

  “Jesus. Did you go?”

  “I was going to,” she said, yanking out about six hairs in one angry fistful, “until I found out they offered Kim Kar-douche-ian five hundred thousand dollars.”

  “You turned down three hundred thousand dollars to go to a bar mitzvah?” I gasped. “Because they offered somebody
else more?”

  “I’ve got my pride,” she said. “I’m an actress. I should be worth more. Right?”

  I nodded. That the conventions and customs of Milan Amberson’s world were beginning to make sense to me was a little frightening.

  “At least Nicole Richie’s a mother,” I said. “That’s something.”

  “It is? I’ve got a uterus too. It’s not like getting pregnant requires some special talent.”

  “No, but she seems like a good mom.”

  “So what?” Milan rolled her eyes. “The whole ‘fashionable stars with their creepy, spoiled babies’ movement makes me want to barf. All anybody wants is attention. Good, bad, it doesn’t even matter. You think I check into to rehab biannually because I’m a drug addict?”

  I gathered “yes” wasn’t the right answer, but it was certainly the obvious one. I mean, the girl did like herself a pill.

  “I’m a recreational pill-popper, not a drug addict,” she clarified with some annoyance. “Rehab gets play when all else fails. I’m addicted to attention. Who isn’t?”

  I wondered if maybe Milan was right. Maybe we were all addicted to attention. Maybe we were all insatiable narcissists. It certainly explained Facebook. Maybe civilians just didn’t act out so dramatically because there wasn’t a receptive audience. It explained the inanity of my friends tweeting about their boring whereabouts.

  “I really should just pop out a baby,” she mused, snorting like a pig. “I’ll name it Lollipop and let the press take pictures of me buying sparkly diapers and Louboutin booties at Kitson.”

  “Kitson?” I asked, knowing full well what it was but not wanting to betray the depth of my tabloidism.

  “It’s a shop where those girls parade around for the paparazzi under the guise of shopping,” she sighed. “Man,” she spat, “I can’t wait until we get back home. Not being dead is gonna be so good for me and so bad for them.”

  “It really is,” I said, trying to fathom all the media coverage.

  “Boring people suck.”

  “Don’t you hear that?” I asked, holding up my hand and straining to hear the distant clucking noise again.

  “No,” she said, squishing a little bug that had popped out of her hair and landed on her tan thigh.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “I’m a singer now too. I’m working on an album.”

  “Oh yeah?” I cringed, hoping she wasn’t going to start singing. That kind of thing made me really uncomfortable. What if she was bad? What would I say? I enjoyed being part of an anonymous and judgmental public group. I had no interest in being an audience of one. She immediately launched into the yet-to-be-released single off her debut album, artfully entitled Let’s Drink and Get Nasty. She sounded like Elmo being de-furred.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “It’ll sound better in the studio,” she explained, “It’s all in the mix.”

  Unless “the mix” included another singer, I wasn’t convinced. I nodded, smiling awkwardly. I really was speechless. I just couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that she seemed to act like an idiot on purpose. It was counterintuitive. Then again, she was gracing the covers of the magazines that I was shelling out my allowance to buy. So maybe I was the idiot.

  “I wrote it myself,” she said, ignoring my discomfort and continuing to hum the catastrophic chorus.

  “Listen,” I interrupted, holding up my hand.

  “To what? I don’t hear anything.”

  “Stop singing. Listen!”

  For a second I could hear clucking again. Then it stopped.

  “That’s just Chaz hyperventilating,” she said. We looked over at fat Chaz, shirtless, who was gracelessly propping up branches like an unsteady parade float.

  “Jonah’s hot, don’t you think?” Milan asked me, staring at Jonah and canvassing her scalp for the best patch of hair to attack. Despite what appeared to be his total lack of interest in her, I could tell she was hatching her plan to seduce him. She had a satisfied smile on her face like the victory was already hers. I was pretty sure she was used to success in this arena. Bald or not.

  “No,” I answered.

  “That’s because he calls you on your prissy bullshit.”

  “Um, no. That’s because he pretends to be a good Christian and he doesn’t even know what the word means. He’s so self-righteous. I can’t stand people like that.”

  “Or maybe it’s because you’re so obsessed with Cisco you can’t see straight?”

  “Oh my God, that is so not true,” I protested. “As if he’d ever even look at me anyway.”

  Milan nodded in agreement. Rude.

  “Can you light a fire?” Milan asked. “I’m getting cold.”

  “Listen, there it is again. Don’t you hear it?”

  She paused.

  “No,” Milan finally said, straining to hear, “but my ears are kinda blown out from listening to music.”

  “Me too,” I smiled.

  “What do you listen to?” she asked, looking at me. I knew this was a test of some kind, and loath as I was to admit it, I didn’t want her to think I was a loser. I like old country music but sensed Loretta Lynn wasn’t the right answer.

  “I like Radiohead,” I said. Everything else went clear out of my head the way it always does when anybody asks me what my favorite anything is. Saying “Radiohead” is the equivalent of saying your favorite food is pizza. Safe, but really boring.

  Milan nodded and smiled, looking really bored.

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “Wanda Jackson, Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, and Willie Nelson.” Then she started singing.

  These shabby shoes I’m wearing all the time

  Are full of holes and nails,

  And brother if I stepped on a worn out dime

  I bet a nickel I could tell you it was heads or tails.

  To her astonishment, I joined her for the last chorus.

  I ain’t gonna worry wrinkles in my brow

  Cause nothin’s never gonna be all right nohow

  No matter how I struggle and strive

  I’ll never get out of this world alive.

  “That’s so cool you know Hank Williams!” she said, laughing.

  “I love country music.”

  “Old country.”

  “Yeah, just the old stuff. I can’t believe you know Hank Williams! Hey, why don’t you do a cover of one of his songs?” I asked, by way of broaching the fact that Let’s Drink and Get Nasty sucked. I knew she wasn’t going to abandon her musical aspirations, but I could at least steer her in the right direction.

  “You think?” she asked. I could tell she liked the idea.

  “I don’t think most people would get it,” she said.

  “You gotta make it your own, dawg. It’d be hot!”

  “You totally watch American Idol!” she howled at my Randy Jackson imitation.

  “I do,” I admitted. “And I kinda love it.”

  “Holy shit!” she yelled.

  “You don’t like Idol?”

  “There’s a chicken in my Balenciaga!”

  I turned around and saw a perfectly huge, full-grown chicken with its head rooting around Milan’s bag.

  “Don’t move,” she ordered, as she slowly stood up.

  “Shouldn’t we call Jonah?” I asked.

  “Why, so he can preach to it?”

  “C’mon, he does know what he’s doing. What about Cisco then?’

  “What about Cisco then, what?” Cisco said, suddenly standing behind me. A shiver ran down my spine as I felt his warm breath on my shoulder. I thought I might faint at his proximity. I focused on looking ahead, as I knew if I looked at his face my knees would buckle. I pointed to the chicken. Why I hadn’t yet absorbed that Cisco was just an actor and not a hunter or an action hero is beyond me.

  Without a word Cisco went clumsily lunging after the chicken. He looked really short and silly in his squatting hunter mode. His clumsiness made me like him even mo
re. It was sweet.

  “Don’t scare it!” I yelled, clapping my hands like a cheerleader at the big football game.

  Instead of running away, the chicken just stood there staring at him. Cisco skidded to a halt and put his hand in front of the bird’s mouth so it could smell him like a dog. It was fairly obvious Cisco thought this was his redemption moment after the aardvark episode. The chicken pecked his hand, hard.

  “Ouch!” he yelled. “You asshole,” he shouted, rubbing his hand.

  “Did you just call the chicken an asshole?” Milan laughed.

  Cisco reached down to grab the chicken by the neck, and it pecked him again and again. Before he knew what was happening, the chicken was forcing Cisco to back away.

  “Cock fight!” Milan cheered.

  “Round one to the chicken!” I laughed.

  “You really are a douche,” Milan said to Cisco. “I can’t believe you got your ass kicked by a chicken.”

  “You think you can do any better? It’s got no fear. It’s a psycho chicken.”

  Milan walked over to the chicken and swooped it upside down by the feet before getting a hold under its belly. It struggled a little and then relaxed. She wandered back over to us triumphantly.

  “OK, twist its neck,” she commanded, eyes darting back and forth between Cisco and me.

  “Are you out of your mind?” he asked her.

  “C’mon you guys, we need to eat. I’ve had it with the animal rights love-in. Have your PETA party back in L.A. where somebody gives a shit.”

  I had to agree with Milan, but I still didn’t think I could kill the nice chicken.

  “Here, then,” she said, handing the bird to me to hold. It was squirming around a lot now, and I was squeezing it hard. I could feel its little heart beating fast. Without a word Milan patted the bird on the head and broke its neck. I dropped the dead bird on the ground, horrified.

  “Where did you learn to do that?” Cisco asked, in awe. We both stared at Milan with newfound respect and fear.