by Compai
“So then, she said, ‘I will do it, Mr. Moon,’ and I said, ‘Melissa is going to be so happy.’”
“And I am,” grinned Melissa. “Don’t you believe me, yet?”
“Okay, I believe you,” nodded Seedy. “Catch you later.” He saluted and left.
“Catch you later, Mr. Moon!” Marco bellowed after him. Silence. Damn. The Moon family sure did love to shoot him down.
Melissa popped her abused laptop open again and started brainstorming a response to Ariel’s last jab. But it didn’t take long for guilt to set in. Melissa never acted bratty with her dad like that. And normally, she would have been so pumped about Miss P agreeing to move in. What was her deal? All Melissa could think about was that damn mermaid and his stupid mullet. Seriously, it was like an addiction.
Maybe she really did need therapy….
The Girl: Charlotte Beverwil
The Getup: Porcelain ruffled Kate Spade blouse, black pencil skirt and maroon velvet blazer by Theory, grandmother’s cameo brooch, Christian Louboutin lace and button booties
At that same moment, in a therapist’s waiting room across town, Charlotte was eagerly awaiting her first couple’s counseling session with Jake. Dr. Hortense Bonnaire’s office was right behind Le Pain Quotidien on Melrose, which, though not the most authentic French restaurant in the city, still appeased Charlotte.
Jake bought a chocolate croissant there to eat in the waiting room.
“This was a good idea,” Charlotte trilled, laying her tiny smooth hand on Jake’s corduroy-clad knee. Charlotte looked like a true miniature lady for the occasion, with her glossy black curls gathered into a low chignon, a frilly off-white blouse, and a maroon velvet blazer with the cameo brooch affixed to the lapel. As she perched on the delightfully beautiful and remarkably uncomfortable couch, tearing little shreds off of Jake’s croissant (and kind of wishing she’d gotten her own), Charlotte was as happy as she could be. Because for once, she was as French as she could be without actually leaving the boring old U.S. of A.
Jake smiled. “If we don’t like it, we don’t have to come back,” he said, more to himself than to Charlotte. The whole French existential therapy thing had seemed so suave at first, but now he was having second thoughts. What if the doctor didn’t get the whole Nikki Pellegrini thing? What if she turned Charlotte completely against him?
What if this was the stupidest idea he’d ever had?
The blond wood and stainless steel door opened, and standing there in a black turtleneck and gray pleated slacks was Dr. Bonnaire. She was six feet tall at least, her black hair sliced into an angular bob streaked with gray.
“Come in,” she announced.
Charlotte and Jake followed Dr. Bonnaire into her stark, charcoal-colored office and sat down on a couch as stiff and beautiful as the one in the hall. Their brand-new therapist lit a cigarette and settled into a chair that looked like a wooden crate. Charlotte instantly recognized the piece from French minimalist darling Philippe Starck’s infamous Crisis collection.
“So?” asked Dr. Bonnaire, her accent so thick that even the word so dripped in French-ish-ness; Charlotte was ecstatic.
“So, hi,” Charlotte began, “I’m Charlotte Beverwil and this is my ex-boyfriend, Jake Farrish.”
“Why do you come to tara-pee with an ex-boyfriend?” asked Dr. Bonnaire, eyeing the couple unsmilingly while her cigarette smoke slowly filled the sealed room.
“Well, we are hoping to become less ‘ex’ and more ‘boyfriend,’” Jake explained, before adding, “also girlfriend.”
“And so you think zis sing—zis romance—will fill zee hole you feel inside?” Dr. Bonnaire inquired to nobody in particular.
“Yup, that’s what I’m hoping,” Jake replied.
Charlotte shot him a glare, and he mouthed what, sitting up straighter.
“Do you love zis person?” Dr. Bonnaire asked Jake.
“What?” he sputtered. Right after he went blind and deaf.
“Do. You. Love. Zis. Person?”
“Well, um, we haven’t, like, said ‘I luh, I luh…’ But, you know. It certainly isn’t out of the question. I think.”
“Zen zis is good,” replied the doctor, gracefully exhaling another lungful of smoke. “You will make Uncle Zam very ’appy.”
“Uncle Zam?” Jake bristled. “Excuse me?”
Dr. Bonnaire yawned aloud, as though Jake’s very existence bored her to the point of exhaustion. “I will tell you two zomething that will sound very harsh to your ears, but that you must know. If you want to know zee truth, that is. Do you want to know the truth? Or do you prefer to be like zee—what is it”—she searched for the word—“or do you prefer to be like zee lemmings?”
“No, we want to know the truth,” Charlotte assured her, fiddling with her brooch and feeling unsure.
“Okay, then,” Dr. Bonnaire began, crushing the first of many Gauloises into a matte ivory white box and leaning back in her wooden crate. “Romantic love does not exist. Comme le pipe, n’est pas? Romantic love eez your Zanta Claus. It eez your fairy for zee teeth. It eez zee capitalist construction used to keep zee American lemmings busy while zare president takes zee country to war. Zare eez no romantic love. Zare is only sex. And war. And finally, mercifully, death.”
Charlotte tipped her china cup chin perplexedly.
“Um, Dr. Boner, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to disagree with you on that one,” Jake began. “Unless… is this, like, some sort of hazing process you do before you actually help us, or something?”
“What is zis?” Bonnaire frowned. “’Ow you zay, ’ayzeeng?”
“What Jake means,” clarified Charlotte, “is it’s difficult to believe all the stuff you just said… about how love is the tooth fairy and all—you know?”
“Oh, ’av I upset you?” She laughed, croaking like a toad in a bog. “’Av I caused you distress? As difficult as it eez to ’ear zeze sings, once you ’ave come to terms with the nothingness of life, of your zo-called love, of your very existence, uh? Only zen will you finally live zuh truth. But… ,” she sang. “Maybe you are not ready for truth?”
“No, we’re ready for truth!” Charlotte insisted. “Jake,” she nudged him. “Tell her how we’re ready for truth.”
Wow. Kissing Nikki Pellegrini had now officially been bumped down to the second worst idea Jake had ever had; because coming here today was definitely, unequivocally, the worst.
“People cannot cope with their irrelevance, their littleness,” mused Dr. Bonnaire, “and so they try to find meaning where none exists, by manufacturing myths like religion. And the only myth more pathetic than religion is love. But you are not here to learn these things, are you? That is not why you have come today. So let us talk about your relationship. About your ‘love.’ What went wrong?”
“Well, Jake cheated on me with this eighth-grade whore, Nikki Pellegrini,” Charlotte explained, “and now I can’t decide whether or not to get back together with him because maybe he will just do it again and also because it was so humiliating.”
For the first time, the deep vertical lines above Dr. Bonnaire’s mouth stretched taut and her teeth showed between her painted lips. She was smiling. The expression looked garish and strange on her usually somber face, like a crazy clown.
“Jake broke zee rules!” Dr. Bonnaire exclaimed.
“Yeah, exactly!” agreed Charlotte. “Jake broke the rules.”
“And whose rules are zoze?” pressed Dr. Bonnaire.
“Well, the boyfriend-girlfriend rules,” Charlotte replied, confused. “Everybody’s rules, I guess.”
“Zay are not my rules,” said Dr. Bonnaire. “Zay are not Nietzsche’s rules. Zay are not Camus’s rules. Zay are your rules.”
“I don’t follow,” admitted Charlotte.
“Your sense of right and wrong is your own creation. Morality is merely a fool’s attempt to ascribe meaning to the choices we all make each day. But how can a choice have any meaning when all of existence is meani
ngless?”
“So, Charlotte should just get over the whole Nikki Pellegrini thing,” Jake summed up.
“Yes,” agreed Dr. Bonnaire. “Charlotte should ‘get over’ it. And you should ‘get over’ Charlotte. And you should also ‘get over’ using ‘love’ to escape the truth, which is—”
“Lemme guess,” Jake interrupted, “that nothing means anything anyway.”
Dr. Bonnaire shrugged assent.
“So, riddle me this, Boner,” Jake began, perking up in his seat. “Why do penguins mate for life? Are they just trying to find meaning where there really is none? ‘Cause I don’t think penguins are complex enough to do all that. How do you explain their instinct toward what can only be described as love?”
“Zee penguins,” chuckled Doctor Bonnaire. “People always bring up zee penguins. Two penguins can make the heart shape together with their beaks, and so quoi? People sink zey are in love.”
“No,” Jake rejoined, beginning a long and futile attempt to illuminate Dr. Bonnaire on the intricacies of penguin mating rituals that proceeded to eat up the remainder of the session. Finally, thankfully, the good doctor cut him off.
“Ah non! It is time,” Dr. Bonnaire announced. She stubbed out a final Gauloise in the matte white box and rose to escort the couple out.
“Can I just ask you one last question,” Jake began when they reached the blond wood door. “Why do you even bother working as a therapist if everything is meaningless anyway? Or for that matter, why do you even get out of bed in the morning?”
Dr. Bonnaire nodded. “The truth eez everyone is bored, and devote d’emself to cultivating ’abits.” Then she smiled that freaky clown smile. “Camus,” she confessed.
“Yeah, well maybe you should give up the therapy thing and find a different ‘abit,’” Jake rejoined. “Like making lanyards or something.”
“Good-bye,” said Dr. Bonnaire. “Call me to schedule another session. Or don’t.” Then she closed the door.
Back at the Volvo, Jake discovered he had gotten a parking ticket. Forty-five dollars. Lovely. He started the car, but then turned it off and looked at Charlotte, who was curled up in the passenger seat as far away from Jake as physically possible, staring out the grimy closed window. The words WASH ME were printed across it backward in a childish scrawl.
“Before we go, I just want to say—”
“Jake,” Charlotte interrupted, without even turning her head. “Just drive, okay?”
Wow. So this was really it. He had really lost her. Jake turned to face forward and cranked the key in the ignition.
They were off.
The Girl (sort of): Don John
The Getup: Plaid Burberry shorts, nude Hide & Sleek Spanx cami (shhh…), red Modern Amusement tee, clear Baby-G watch, gladiator mandals
When Charlotte strolled into her backyard at 7 p.m. that Friday for some “twi-bathing,” her brother Evan was already on his fifty-fourth lap, and counting. Evan was one of the lucky few that dealt with depression not by shopping, binge drinking, or shoveling entire jars of peanut butter down his gullet, but by exercising. And exercising. And exercising. Since Janie flaked on their projection room date one day earlier, Evan had already run seven miles, surfed for four hours, and swum fifty-four laps—wait… fifty-five!—in the Beverwils’ Olympic-size pool. So why didn’t he feel any better?
An equally lovelorn Charlotte laid her Gucci beach towel on a lawn chair and sprawled out, for once, sans reading material. Twi-bathing sans Vogue was usually as unthinkable to Charlotte as steak au poivre sans pommes frites, but she just couldn’t focus today. And so the gorgeous Beverwil siblings cradled their respective agonies in shared solitude, while melancholy Erik Satie music poured out of the rock-shaped speakers. That is, until…
“Poo-kie!” wailed a painfully peppy voice from behind the ivy-covered fence. “Where be-ist thou?”
There were sixteen beeps, followed by a loud buzz and the steady purr of an electric gate opening. Ugh, why had Charlotte given Don John the key code? She really could not handle him right now. Or anybody else for that matter.
Don John skipped like a doe across the fresh-cut grass to the foot of Charlotte’s lawn chair and gasped.
“Eres!?” he intoned. “I die!” Don John was referring, of course, to Charlotte’s dazzling midnight-blue Eres bikini.
“Eres indeed,” Charlotte confirmed, slipping her massive Oliver Peoples Ballerina shades down over her eyes, despite the fact that it was dark out.
“So, you’d better get changed,” Don John began, “unless you’re wearing that to la cinema, which, b-t-dubbs, you totally should. But in the event that you do not want to see Pierrot le fou in a bathing suit, chop-chop!”
“Pierrot le fou,” Charlotte repeated. Merde. They’d had plans to see the film for weeks because a) Charlotte adored French New Wave cinema, and b) Jamie, Don John’s gorgeous copper-headed acting-for-television teacher, also adored French New Wave cinema, which had nothing whatsoever to do with the purely coincidental fact that c) Don John suddenly adored French New Wave cinema.
But there was no way Charlotte could sit through a movie right now. She was far too enchanted by her own misery for distractions. “I’m really not in the mood right now,” she said. “Rain check?”
“Quelle tragédie,” Don John exclaimed, barely concealing his mirth. He kicked off his gladiator mandals, slipped his newly pedied feet into Charlotte’s gold Dior thongs, and asked, “so where should we go instead? It’s Friday, so Social Hollywood will be off the hook, but Mike and Mike promote Tropicana Bar at the Roosevelt Hotel on Thursdays, which means we could totally get in, and then we could sneak into Teddy’s through the back entrance! Or we could do Hyde? But I really think Hyde is going downhill. Last time I went, Jeremy Piven was the only celeb there, and every girl in the bar was stuck macking on him. It was really depressing. Actually, that guy from Sum 41 was there too, and he’s actually much cuter in person, P.S., but he was there with Avril, so obviously he was off-limits. Did I ever tell you about how Avril stood up on her chair and started dancing?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Okay, so anyway, I’ll give you my top three and then you give me yours. Mine are Social, Teddy’s, and Bar Marmont. Oh, wait, and Winston’s! Can I have four?”
“You can have as many as you want, DoJo, I’m not going out.” Charlotte flipped onto her stomach to sun her back in the dark.
“Eew, why?”
“Because I have a big decision to make and I need to think,” Charlotte replied.
Don John kicked off Charlotte’s thongs and pouted. What was it with people always thinking alone? Couldn’t they think and party?
“A bunch of people are going to the Creatures of Habit show at the Troubadour later if you want to do that,” she offered. Also, she thought, he can report to me on Jake, who will totally be there.
“Creatures of Habit?” Don John inquired.
“It’s a band,” Charlotte explained. “Kind of punk rock.”
Don John actually shuddered. No, thank you. He’d rather dance in an empty 7-Eleven parking lot to the sound of a distant car alarm. He was fully prepared to tell Charlotte precisely that, too, except, he realized in awe, Evan was emerging from the pool. Was it just Don John or did that boy actually walk around in slow motion? The twilight shone against Evan’s impossibly chiseled abdomen, illuminating the water droplets that clung there like morning dew. He looked like Ryan Gosling without the totally distracting and therefore entirely unnecessary DARFUR t-shirt. Evan looked even tanner than he had earlier that day. How was that possible? Had he not just been swimming in the dark? But Evan had that gift, he guessed. Just when he got as tan and blond and generally godlike as a guy could get, he got a tad tanner, a bit blonder, and just a touch more generally godlike.
Instead of reaching for one of the fluffed and folded towels in the bamboo hutch behind Charlotte’s chair, Evan shook off like a frisky golden retriever, soaking his sister and her gawking sidekick in th
e process.
“E-van!” whined Charlotte, scrambling up to sitting.
“E-van!” he mocked. “You know you’re outside, right? By a pool? You’re supposed to get wet.”
“There’s this great new invention called a towel,” Charlotte rejoined, plucking a chartreuse Ralph Lauren beach towel from the always stocked hutch and chucking it at her dripping brother. “Learn it, live it, love it.”
Evan roughed his sandy locks with the towel, then tipped his head to the side and smacked it to knock the water out. “Hey,” he inquired, balling the towel in his fist. “Were you guys just talking about Creatures of Habit?”
“Yeah,” Charlotte replied.
“Janie’s friend is in that band.”
“So?”
“So, I don’t know.” He frowned. “I’ve actually been meaning to check them out.”
Charlotte narrowed her eyes in suspicion behind her oversize shades. “You know they sound nothing like Bob Beaver or whatever, right?”
“Seger,” Evan corrected, rolling his chlorine green eyes. “So when are they playing?”
“Ten,” Don John informed him.
Evan nodded, chucked his wet towel at his prissy sister, and headed for the French double doors.
“I’ll come with you,” Don John volunteered. “You shouldn’t be left alone with those troub-boobs.”
Charlotte shot him an accusatory glare.
“What?” he defended himself, bugging out his Bette Davis eyes. “You said you needed to think. And besides,” Don John sniffed. “Evan’ll need a wingman.”
The Girl: Miss Paletsky
The Getup: Knee-length stonewashed denim skirt, purple Merona turtleneck sweater, “suntan” L’eggs pantyhose, black suede Capezio pumps, sterling silver dangling sun and moon earrings
It was too much. This couldn’t really be the guesthouse, could it? Miss Paletsky looked down at the key in her small, pale paw; the key that dangled from a silver heart-shaped Tiffany key chain; the key that had been waiting in an envelope marked “Lena” underneath the doormat of Moon Manor; the key to her new life.