Bliss

by Shay Mitchell

  She went upstairs to their bedroom, and took a quick shower. Their king-size circular bed with the black satin sheets was neatly made, thanks to the staff of maids who arrived every day at noon to clean up after the “girls and boys,” as Harris called his cast of female and male actors. The “boys” were just as physically immaculate as the “girls,” with neatly hedged body hair and defined musculature. All the actors were complete slobs. Empty bottles and ashtrays all over the place, self-tanning spray smeared on the furniture.

  One more night of this zoo, and then they’d be alone. The movable feast would move on. Harris would turn off the Xbox, power off the TV, shut down his computer, and stare at her for hours on end. That was all she wanted, to be lavished with gifts, praise, and sexual attention. She could wait a few more hours for that.

  She put on the Versace outfit Harris had picked out for her, a black corset dress, with black patent leather super high heels, and went down to see movie magic in the making.

  She exited the rear doors of the mansion to the pool. Sure enough, silver umbrellas and lights were set up around the chaise lounges where Leandra had sunbathed that very morning. She felt a rush of excitement. Her house was going to be in a movie! She couldn’t see what was going on yet; the umbrellas blocked her view. She walked closer as quietly as she could.

  Harris and a dozen other people were watching the scene, including a handful of the girls and boys, and some older men who were Harris’s business partners. To be honest, when she thought of her future husband’s partners, she envisioned Christian Greys, rainmakers in $10,000 suits. She didn’t picture rotund middle-aged doofuses in Hawaiian shirts, sweatpants, and fat cigars.

  “Action!” said Harris, just as she got close enough to see what was going on.

  On one lounge, bikini’ed Cherri and Tammy rubbed coconut oil on each other’s bodies.

  Leandra’s jaw hit the patio.

  She watched in stunned silence as the emotionally deep love triangle plot unfolded. First, Cherri and Tammy did each other. Then Peter did Tammy. Then Peter did Cherri. Then the three did one another. Then Eric the Redwood entered the frame. He and Peter did Cherri while Tammy … Leandra wasn’t sure what she was doing.

  So it wasn’t really a love triangle after all. It was a love erectangle.

  Of course, it was only too obvious in hindsight. Why did this always happen to her? Leandra willfully ignored the clues when they were splayed out in front of her, sort of like Cherri’s body was right now on the chaise.

  The love of her life was a pornographer.

  The future father of her children made two-hankie spankies for fapsters.

  This was a lot worse than being tucked away and forced to cook in Charlie’s Bangkok house, or eating bark while counting backwards from one thousand on Holy Isle with Oliver.

  She had to look away when Greta Gagglo joined in. Too many swinging body parts. The moaning intensified. Leandra worried the furniture might break.

  Harris said, “On the face! On the face! Great, Eric. Nice, Greta. Okay, everyone. Cut.”

  The crew rushed in to give the actors water and towels. Harris’s investment partners put their heads together to discuss the scene and blow smoke at each other. Harris came over to Leandra, and asked, “So? You like? I thought it was too much coconut oil, but our audience loves it when we edit in wet, slapping, sucking sounds.”

  She wanted to say, “You let those people sit on my couch,” but instead, she said, “The lighting was good.”

  “You really like it?” he asked. His eyes sought her approval, like a child from his mommy.

  “Very artistic,” she said. “Taut dramatic tension.”

  “You know, babe, you’re hotter than any of the girls.”

  Leandra kissed his cheek. “Thanks, hon.”

  She went back into the house, up to her room, and curled into a fetal ball on the bed (that had probably been used for a fivesome) to examine her feelings. The worst part was realizing that Harris thought she knew what he did all along, and that she approved. He hid nothing from her.

  Earlier tonight, Sophia asked the question, for all their frantic movements, do they like what they were moving toward? Well, sometimes you moved frantically to get away from what you didn’t like. Leandra was going to move out of this sleaze factory as soon as possible. She let loose one ragged sob, but that was all she could spare.

  Think practically, she admonished herself. In order to get away from Harris and his coconut-oiled minions (meanwhile, why coconut?), she had to line up her next boyfriend. No blinders next time! She wouldn’t idealize a scumbag! She was learning. This was good.

  Or, as a gritty alternative, she could throw some clothes into a suitcase and go to Sophia and Demi’s apartment. She could sleep on their couch, find herself a job, eat Demi’s food, drink cheap wine, and date a man her own age who was also in the process of becoming. She could have the typical life of a normal twenty-one-year-old recent college graduate. How bad would it be to leave luxury and laziness behind and work toward making a positive contribution to society? The more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea. She’d wear jeans from Levi’s and get her hair trimmed at Supercuts. There was a comfort to being a commoner. Look at Demi. She was chopping vegetables and cleaning fish for a living. It didn’t get lower than that. Perhaps stepping down from the grandstand, figuratively, would be a relief. For a while now, Leandra had been thinking about her next adventure, the next man, where her next filet mignon was coming from. No wonder she couldn’t live in the moment.

  Leandra vowed to stay in the moment exclusively, starting … now.

  She also made a mental note to have the maids scrub the pool chaises with bleach.

  22

  shining the knob

  Demi and Sophia didn’t speak for the entire ride back to their apartment. Sophia just kept that smile on, which Demi knew meant only one thing: She was furious. As well she should be! They’d caused the greatest love of her life to end, and then kept her in the dark about it for years. Demi couldn’t count high enough the number of times Sophia had cried and asked, “Why did he do it?”

  Well, now she knew.

  They got to the apartment. Sophia charged into her room and slammed her door. Demi was prepared to slink off to her room, but Sophia came charging back out.

  “How could you do that to me?”

  “I’m sorry! I was drunk and Leandra always seems so sure of herself.”

  “What? Are we talking about the same person? She doesn’t have any idea who she is or what she’s doing! Come on, Demi! You were her best friend for years.”

  Demi was confused. What now? Were they talking about how much she screwed up, or were they talking about Leandra? “About Jesse…”

  “Fuck, Jesse! This isn’t about him.”

  “What is it about?”

  “It’s about us. Me and you and Leandra. You lied to me, and you let her manipulate you. She screwed up with Jesse. Sounds like that situation got out of control. But she knew what she was doing with you.”

  “She bullied me into it.”

  “Bullshit! Leandra only messes with people who let her get away with it.”

  Demi shook her head. “And you let her get away with it! I know she’s funny and she was there for you in Toronto. But she’s a user. Those stories about the guys she dumped? That was brutal.”

  “You just don’t get her at all.”

  “Then explain.”

  “Leandra is damaged. She’s like half a person.”

  Demi sighed. “Stacy died eleven years ago.”

  “That doesn’t matter. She is who she is because of it. Leandra operates on pure survival instinct, like an animal. If she feels threatened, she lashes out. If she feels unsure of herself, she adapts to fit in. You see her as phony and think her stories are self-serving. I hear them all as the desperate acts of a lonely woman.”

  Loneliness radiated from Sophia. Unlike Leandra, who didn’t know how to connect, Sophia was
deliberately disconnecting herself from the people who would make her feel less alone in the world. She’d been avoiding Demi for weeks, barely responding to texts. She flicked David out of her life like a fly on the butter.

  “So you’re not mad about Jesse,” said Demi.

  “Who gives a fuck about Jesse?” screamed Sophia.

  “You are mad about Leandra?”

  “I feel sorry for her.”

  Demi inhaled. That left only one person. “You are mad at me.”

  “Living together hasn’t worked out the way I thought it would.”

  Oh, great. Now Demi was going to have to move? “Fuck you,” she said. “I’m trying as hard as I can to reach you, but you won’t talk. Fine! If you don’t tell me what’s going on, I’m leaving.”

  “Fine!”

  Demi charged at the front door, opened it, ran through and slammed it. Realizing, at once, that she didn’t have her purse, or shoes, or keys. She wouldn’t get far. Tentatively, she knocked on the door. Sophia threw it open.

  “What?”

  “I forgot my shoes.”

  Then they started laughing, hysterically, landing on the couch in the living room. It was a huge relief, incredibly, the first belly laugh session they’d had in weeks. When Demi could catch her breath, she said, “We really need to talk.”

  Sophia nodded. “Okay.”

  “Is someone at the show harassing you?” Since the home test bonanza, Demi assumed there was a man in Sophia’s life, but she had no idea who. “It’s not David, is it?”

  Sophia waved that way. “Not David. No one at work.” She made eye contact with Demi, and said, “Six weeks ago, a guy at a bar drugged my drink and I woke up in some bed with no memory of what happened.”

  “After the First Night party,” said Demi.

  “I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t tell anyone. I know I took my anger out on you, and I haven’t been a good roommate or friend. I’m sorry.”

  “Jesus, you were dealing with this by yourself, all this time? No wonder you were depresso. Did you go to the police? We have to report this.”

  “No,” she said. “I can’t do that with the show about to premiere. There’s no way to prove anyone’s guilt. I don’t even know what happened. Maybe if I went to the police right after, but I didn’t. I went to work.”

  “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Do you know who he is?”

  “I’ve tried to figure it out, but I can’t.”

  Demi drew Sophia into a hug. She was shocked by the news, and even more shocked that Sophia tried to bury it. Leandra was proof of that. She tried to bury her feelings about her sister, and look what happened. There was no burying something like this. “I could have helped you,” Demi said.

  “How?”

  “Just sitting here like this.”

  Sophia said, “You would have flown into a rage, and tried to find the guy and kill him. You would have made me take you to his house.”

  “So you know where he lives,” said Demi. “What was that address?”

  They laughed ruefully. Sophia said, “I just focused on work to get through the worst of it. The weight was heavy, but it didn’t crush me.”

  “I could have taken some of it off you,” said Demi.

  “I get that now,” said Sophia. “I feel lighter already. But you were doing well with the restaurant. I didn’t want to put my problems on you. But, yeah, I see that it would have been better for both of us if I told you right away.”

  “I’m grateful to know the truth, whenever you’re ready to share it,” said Demi. “I’m guilty of trying to bury some secrets, too. I should have told you about Jesse the very next day, and about my DUI. But I needed to hide in a hole for a while and process it before I could stand to hear anything from anyone, even you. I already blamed myself, and felt horrible enough.”

  Sophia nodded. “I blamed myself about the roofie night. It was irrational, but that’s how it was. That was another layer. I’d yelled at you about the drinking. I was doing shots that night. I felt like a hypocrite.”

  “Not the same.”

  “I know,” said Sophia. “I wasn’t thinking clearly for a while there. I needed to hide in a hole, too.”

  “In the future, let’s honor each other’s holes. Which sounds perverted, I know. We’ll honor the holes, and pull each other out of them.”

  They sat on the couch like that for hours, Sophia telling Demi everything since the roofie night, the morning after, doing all those tests, the incredible relief to be clean, the challenge of filming scenes while so upset, how she poured her emotion into her performance. “It helped,” she said. “This helps. I feel a lot better.”

  “Is there anything else you’re not telling me?”

  “That’s it. What about you?” asked Sophia.

  “I’m sleeping with my boss.”

  Sophia laughed. “I assumed.”

  “But it’s only good. If anything gets weird, I’ll tell you.”

  * * *

  Demi and Aiden had fallen into a rhythm. When she got to work, they fooled around in the kitchen. When Carole, the newly hired chef, and her staff arrived, they chased each other around his office. When everyone else had gone for the night, they did it in the dining area.

  “That’s all you need to survive,” he said. “Three hots a day.”

  Their fling was red hot and hilarious. She’d never laughed so much during sex before. Demi remembered that old adage from Woody Allen, that sex and comedy didn’t mix. Wrong. With Aiden, it was another kind of release, from the core, a deep explosion of emotion that worked on Demi like good medicine.

  During downtime, they’d disappear into his office and go, as the Aussie’s put it, “up to the guts with nuts.” They also cooked for each other, filling the restaurant with aromas and their mouths with flavor and textures. It was the most sensual relationship of her life. He engaged all of her senses—touch, hearing, smell, sight, taste—deliciously.

  He seemed to like her a lot, too. A foodie with an oral fixation, Aiden loved to kiss, deep soul passion that left Demi gasping. James, on the other hand, hardly ever kissed her mouth. He kissed other parts plenty, but she understood now that it’d been to make him feel like a master, not necessarily for Demi’s sake.

  Demi couldn’t help comparing her ex with her boss. For the most part, she came up with dissimilarities. The only aspect of the two relationships to worry about: Demi’s world revolved around Aiden. In the beginning, any new relationship swelled up and pushed everything else away. The phenomenon wasn’t unique to Demi’s, although it was her pattern to go to extremes.

  She was ever hopeful that it was possible to fall for a man without losing herself. The trick, she decided, was to establish firm boundaries. She and Aiden didn’t see each other outside the restaurant—by mutual consent. A couple of times, she asked him to come along on her daily lunchtime beach walk, but he chose to stay behind in his office to catch up on phone calls and emails.

  Demi used her alone time to do the daily spot check on her life. She was going places, and not only on foot. After a long and annoying process of sitting through a class, and taking a written and a road test, Demi was the proud owner of a brand-new California driver’s license. If she had a car, her life would be complete. Her salary was decent, but Ubering and the California lifestyle was expensive.

  “I’m going for my walk,” Demi said to Aiden. They’d just finished a meeting about the soft open with Carole. It was only a week away and the preparations were chugging along.

  He said, “I’ll be here.”

  Instead of going out the back to the beach, Demi snuck into Aiden’s office and hid in the closet. Her plan was to jump out, naked, while he was on the phone, and surprise him. She quickly shed her shirt and shorts, bra and undies. Through a crack in the door, she watched him sit behind his desk and turn on his computer. Her perspective was of his back, the screen visible over his shoulder. He tapped
away on the keys. The screen turned blue and she heard the sound of a dial tone and a phone ringing. He was Skyping? Okay, she couldn’t burst out naked now. The person on the other end would see her.

  “Hallo?” A woman’s face appeared on the monitor, a pretty blonde around thirty.

  “Morning, Sheila,” he said.

  “Can’t talk long today,” she said. “I’m running late. The transfer came through, so I paid off the contractor. But the washing machine delivery didn’t happen. I spent all afternoon on the phone dealing with it…” She kept going, the details of life flowed uninterrupted. Aiden just sat and nodded.

  A knock on the door. Carole poked her head in. “Boss? Can you come into the kitchen for a minute? I want you to taste the crab fritter.”

  “Two seconds.” To Sheila onscreen, he said, “Got to go. Send the delivery guy’s email address. I’ll try you later, if I can. Otherwise, tomorrow. Love you.” He made kissing noises. The woman kissed back. He ended the call, got out of his chair, and left the office.

  Demi redressed quickly, crept out of the office, and onto the beach without anyone seeing her. Instead of doing her regular stroll, she doubled back to the boardwalk, and went into the nearest bar. She ordered a vodka on the rocks, and sucked it down in one gulp.

  The last time she’d done the “Surprise! I’m naked!” ploy was when she found James with that Slavic bimbo. She had learned he was a cheater, and life as she knew it was over. This time, in a twist of fate, she discovered that she was a cheater. You could argue that she had no idea that Aiden was married or whatever he and Sheila were, and that he alone was the cheater. But not knowing didn’t make it right. Ignorance wasn’t absolution. Every lunch hour when she took her walk, he’d been Skyping with Sheila. Afternoon in Los Angeles was early morning tomorrow in Sydney. Aiden was an electronic presence at breakfast back home. If she weren’t sleeping with him, she’d think that was sweet.