Deadly Dues

by Linda Kupecek

  I heard a horrible noise, like construction going on in the next lot. “What’s that?”

  “What?”

  The noise stopped when she spoke, and I realized it had been the sound of her teeth grinding. If that was what I sounded like, I knew I would never get another gig or another date until I became more zen-like. Civilized women do not grind their teeth in the face of adversity. And unlike Sherilyn, I was civilized.

  Looking at Sherilyn, I had a flash, a realization, that no matter what, I would rather be me, with all my flaws, than this unpleasant and shallow woman. She might have more money and more shoes, but being Lulu Malone, rather than this unseemly and malicious creature, was cause for gratitude, even celebration.

  I felt a moment of pity for her. She was, after all, a totally unpleasant person, without friends or associates who valued her beyond her paycheques.

  “Sherilyn,” I said, remembering the great scene in Tootsie, “seek therapy.”

  I closed the door fast, and heard her portable phone hit the other side. There was a dent near the level of my ear on my side of the door. I decided that I should not lurk. Feet, don’t fail me now. I wasted precious seconds trying to remember from which comedian I had stolen that thought, and decided on Flip Wilson.

  I caught up to Hal and Horatio in the lobby, just as I heard Sherilyn shouting from her office.

  “Dogs! I hate them!”

  Or it could have been, “Dimples! I hate them!”

  I didn’t bother to run back and ask her to clarify.

  Hal and I loped Horatio out the door and into the back seat of my car. I jumped into the driver’s side, and Hal slammed my door, and swivelled into his Camry, damned fast for a guy who looked as if he would not be too rattled by anything.

  A pink tornado of rage burst through the door as we roared toward the exit. Something thunked against my rear windshield. In the rearview mirror, I saw a Prada shoe bouncing into the air and rolling on the concrete. Prada. Wow. She was plenty mad.

  The shoe thing was brilliant, although, I was sure, derivative. Nevertheless, I made a mental note to remember it if ever I were asked to play a meltdown scene. It was great.

  Rescued and Rejected

  At my condo, Horatio did a wobbly lope to his gigantic cushion and collapsed with a “glad to be home and nobody bug me” sort of sigh. Hal smiled and turned to me.

  “He’s okay for now. I’ll come back tomorrow and check on him.”

  I felt a surge of gratitude, which almost translated, briefly, into lust. Some women get excited when a man takes off his shirt. I get excited when a man does me a huge, extravagant, pull-me-back-from-hell good deed.

  “Thanks, Hal,” I said. “I really appreciate this. I know your parents strong-armed you into calling me. What you did today was beyond the call of duty. Big-time.”

  I tried a dimple. He ignored it.

  “Yes, it was. But this dog needed help.”

  What about me? I needed help, too.

  “I guess I should explain about the singing—”

  “I’ve seen the commercials.”

  I braced myself and waited for him to start singing.

  “They were excellent. Nice balance of humour and information. I sometimes refer to them in my lectures as an example of expressing affection for an animal while addressing its nutritional and emotional needs.”

  Somewhere in that overly academic sentence, I recognized a huge compliment. After years of having most people simply babble about my cuteness, it was amazing to have somebody actually recognize that some thought had gone into the writing (thank you, writers, never credited) and the execution (thank you, production team, Horatio and me). So few people see the skill that goes into work that isn’t in-your-face deep and profound.

  “Thank you.”

  He stood by the door, looking a little tired. He had whispered a lot today. And I hadn’t paid him a cent.

  “What do I owe you?” Oh, please, please, let him say nothing, because I have nothing, and I can’t afford to pay him.

  “Nothing.” Thank you, universe.

  Another awkward pause. Aha. I knew this preceded an overture to a date. And, for once, I wasn’t entirely jaded. This could be fun. A dog whisperer. He liked Horatio. We could be a harmonious threesome. And he definitely did not seem high maintenance, maybe the sort of independent soul who thought a date every two weeks would be perfect. My kind of guy.

  “Our respective parents think we would be an interesting combination—”

  Uh-oh. This didn’t sound promising. Wish I could run it back in fast reverse and hear something else. When there are that many syllables in a sentence, it never bodes well. Too much intellect, not enough passion.

  “—and I have done my best, but—”

  Could he do any worse in this ill-conceived although no doubt well-intended speech? Why not just put an arrow through my heart and be done with it? Sshh, Lulu. You are a big girl. You have dealt with worse. Just listen.

  He shifted from one foot to the other, leaned against the door, looked at his boot, then looked back at me.

  “You are indisputably adorable—” I winced “—and have an offbeat appeal, in a retro sort of way. I’m not into dimples, but yours, especially with your other curves—” was this an insult or a compliment? “—are quite compelling.” A compliment.

  He paused. I wondered if this was a cue. My skills honed in years of improv theatre workshops appeared to have escaped me. I was working on a snappy answer, but it was snail-slow. And my snappy answer was impeded by the fact that I had just received one of the most longwinded and indecipherable rejections of all time.

  “You apparently have a lot going on in your life right now,” he said, so pleasantly that it hurt. “You seem a little—” I knew a euphemism was coming, and it was “—preoccupied”.

  “Of course I’m preoccupied!” I wailed. Then I stopped. What could I tell him I was preoccupied with? I was going to have to step up the gingko biloba. I was having trouble remembering what had officially happened and what had really happened.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I was. “I do have a lot going on right now. All I can say is that you are a prince for helping me out with Horatio. And I apologize for manipulating you into meeting me at the film complex. Both Horatio and I are grateful.”

  Horatio, hearing his name once more, woofed softly from the corner and put his head under his massive paw. His version of I vant to be alone.

  “No need to feel awkward,” I smiled, using my Big Grown-up Girl Voice, the one that had served me so well when I was the therapist in the kleptomaniac TV movie. “Our parents don’t have to know whether or not you call me again.”

  Hal smiled in relief. Relief! Aaaaargh. Where’s a trap door when you need one?

  “No problem,” he said. “I’ll be by tomorrow to check on him. He’s a very sensitive dog.”

  I closed the door behind Hal and thought, and I am a very sensitive woman, but I have to keep that under wraps or I will start bursting into tears at inappropriate moments. And I have already done enough of that in the past few days.

  So I didn’t burst into tears, even though I felt like it.

  Realistically, what would I have been crying over? Not a rejection. Any grown-up has plenty of those to contend with in work, love and friendship. I had already cried at the pain of seeing Horatio in such distress, and the horror of looking past Sherilyn’s mascara into her dark soul, and over general malaise and anxiety, which in some cases might be caused by too many truffles, but in this case was the result of too many unanswered questions and more intrusion into my life than I could handle.

  I had a right to sing the blues. I was alone. I was stressed out. I was losing my chops in the basic male-female interaction department. More incandescent eyes in future exchanges, and fewer dimples, I vowed. On the bright side, I was overjoyed to have Horatio back, however ungrateful that drugged-up mutt was to be back, whoops, Lu, be kinder and gentler.

  On the drea
ry side, I was still the target of various unknown assailants of varying levels of expertise. If they continued to have the smarts and experience of Alphonse, all I had to do was wait at the door with a baseball bat and knock them off as they bungled through.

  However, there was a terrible chance that Sherilyn might hire a better quality of thug. I hoped she would inform them of the danger involved, after Zonko’s demise on my loveseat. Oh dear, I still hadn’t visited his mother. I also hoped this news would eliminate quite a few thugs from her roster. (Criminals generally like the easy route—unless they are psychopaths. Don’t go there, Lu.) I didn’t want more efficient criminals breaking down my doors—no offense to Alphonse, whom I hoped was on a bus to Kansas City or Montana at this very moment. Somehow I thought not. That poor kid was probably whimpering his way into danger in some pool hall right now and didn’t have the brains to run when he should. Maybe I should have given him more bus fare.

  I fleetingly wondered if crooks, criminals, murderers and fraud artists were unionized. If so, where would their union be? Underground, in the sewers, like the world of The Madwoman of Chaillot, only with nasty and non-poetic people? Did they pay their dues? Did they have an ethic? How did they feel about their life versus real life?

  And what was real life? I wavered between my own life experience and what I had learned on film sets over the course of two decades. Pete addressed life situations with the repertoire of skills he had picked up in TV movies. He could pick a lock as well as any criminal or undercover cop, because he had played so many over the years. Geoff simply used his macho screen image to great effect in personal life. Bent never had a real life, as far as I could tell. He lived in the world of computers, camera angles and esoteric treatises on underground films nobody had ever seen. Gretchen wasn’t acquainted with the real world. If she had been, she would have sprung for a housekeeper and maybe a bat removal service. She just pointed herself in a direction and started to drift, inexorably, while men fell by the wayside.

  I tried to remember just why Gretchen and I were friends. One falls into an acquaintanceship, which turns into an easy and convenient friendship, often eased by similar professional challenges and shared friends, and then years later you are stuck with this person and you don’t have a clue anymore why you should like her. Or keep her on your speed dial.

  Gretchen never shared details of her life with me. I guessed she was wealthy, judging from the house she inhabited. I didn’t know if she had other friends. She was clinging, needy and terribly pointed. (I still reel when I think of the painfully pointed questions she asked about the various points of the stuntman I had once dated …) But she had never really told me anything about herself. Except for her recent disclosure about Sherilyn, I had never heard anything about her personal life until her relationship with Geoff had turned explosive.

  I went into the kitchen, pulled a chilled bottle of water from the refrigerator and poured it into a tall glass, savouring every slosh. Things were bad when water looked better than Chardonnay. But I had drunk more than my quota in the past few days and needed to keep a clear head. Once this was over, and if I were still alive, I could inhale as much Chardonnay as I wanted.

  That was because I needed my chops. And not male-female stuff. I needed to think. To figure out why things were happening, why things were happening to me, and what I could do to deal with these mysteries.

  I checked Horatio, who looked like a snoring Mount Helena, and decided he was back to his old self.

  The phone rang.

  Diana shrieked into my ear.

  “Lu, where are you?”

  The Arts for the Animals fundraiser, at which I was to be the star attraction, started at six-thirty. It was six o’clock and I hadn’t even started to get ready. I had forgotten. But I had a very good excuse.

  “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  “Make it fifteen minutes.”

  She had a lot of nerve, I thought, as I ran up the stairs to the bathroom. I wasn’t being paid a cent to hobnob with the wealthy for a good cause. I should have been flattered that I was still considered important enough to appear at a fundraiser, but then I also knew that several megastars had turned them down before they offered the non-paying gig to me.

  Nevertheless, I had promised, and so I somehow managed to pull myself together. I chose an A-line ankle-length black velvet skirt that made me look ten pounds slimmer, a hot-pink shell (one dollar at Salvation Army), a spangled Donna Karan jacket (a find at my favourite consignment store) and gold metallic heels. For somebody who was a wreck, I looked not too bad. My hair could have stood a good styling, but years in the trenches of promo had taught me how to make do with the minimum in just a few minutes. I covered my fading black eye with high-priced foundation, and sculpted my face and dimples until I looked more than presentable. Three coats of mascara and I was beyond cute. I was almost glamorous.

  I called Mrs. Lauterman between mascara coats. “I hate to ask, but could you babysit tonight?”

  “Of course. But you have to bring the big boy here. I have my television planned.”

  “I have a television.”

  “Yours is too new fangled. I’m used to mine.”

  So I hauled a semi-dozing Horatio over to Mrs. Lauterman’s. She oohed and aahed over my outfit, which boosted my morale considerably. I gave her a sanitized version of his ordeal and said she had my permission to step up the garlic. He’d smell like a giant garlic clove when he got home, but I knew he would feel safe with Mrs. Lauterman. She was opening a bag of garlic croutons as I went out the door.

  I drove downtown to the Convention Centre and circled the block five times before I gave up and decided it was better to pay for gold-plated parking at the Convention Centre than be mugged on the street by passing drug dealers, as I staggered to my car in high heels, looking far more wealthy than I was.

  I tried two credit cards in the Centre’s pre-pay machine before I finally found one that wasn’t spat back at me with an “unauthorized— over limit” message. My glamorous life, I thought, as I waited for the elevator in my finery.

  Diana swooped down on me the moment the elevator doors to the ballroom opened.

  “I thought you’d never get here! How could you be so late?”

  I glanced at my watch. I thought I had done well to be only eight minutes late. I was annoyed. In the far corner, a string quartet was playing a semi-classical version of the Tom Jones hit, “What’s New, Pussycat?”

  “And Diana, how much am I being paid for this?”

  She looked aggrieved. “Well, you’re getting dinner and drinks. What more do you want?”

  It took a lot of willpower to not turn on my heel and stride back into the elevator. Before I could respond to her rudeness, she grabbed my arm and shoved a glass of wine into my hand.

  “Lulu! This is Brad Saunders.”

  I recognized the name. He was a well-known philanthropist and the star of a reality TV series in which he awarded hefty cash prizes to businesses that raised money for charity in enterprising ways. I had fleetingly hoped that I could find a project to pitch to him on the show, but then had realized it would be unseemly for Lulu Malone to appear so desperate on network television.

  His handshake was warm and firm. He had lovely blue eyes, greying, wavy hair and a confident air that appealed to me. I guessed he was in his fifties. Too bad I was such a wreck.

  “I loved those commercials,” he said. My eyes lit up. He had dimples, too.

  I was just about to emit a warm response, when a fiftyish woman wearing jewellery that was worth more than my condo, and a mid-calf dress that couldn’t have been more unflattering, joined us.

  “Didn’t you used to be Lulu Malone?” she trumpeted.

  “I still am Lulu Malone,” I smiled. “I am hosting the evening.”

  “Isn’t that nice for you?” she said. “I guess they couldn’t get anybody more famous.”

  “Oh well,” I shrugged. So much for impressing Brad Saunders wit
h my great fame.

  She was elbowed aside by a woman who must have been ninety years old, ninety pounds, with ninety thousand wrinkles on her face. I recognized her as a famed millionairess known for her outspoken opinions.

  “You! Lulu Malone! How dare you!” she shrieked.

  I thought this was bizarre behaviour from somebody to whom I had never been introduced. Diana was hopping around behind her, making gestures that indicated she was a big source of money for the fundraiser, so I dimpled and listened.

  “How dare you make those gawdawful commercials?” she shrieked again, loudly enough that heads turned across the room. “They are an insult to dog lovers. That revolting song! That dog who can’t act!”

  The last sentence hurt, and I was about to respond when Diana, sensing trouble, as she knew I was loyal to Horatio, elbowed her way between Brad Saunders and me, oozing charm. “Oh, Emily, we are so glad to hear you say that. Perhaps Lulu will mention your comments in her speech. You are so important to the animal and arts community.”

  As she was dragged away by Diana, Emily looked over her shoulder, obviously wanting to have at me for another few rounds (not that I was contributing in any way to the exchange). An understandably awkward silence fell between Brad Saunders and me.

  Without a word, we helped ourselves to the shrimp and avocado tapas, the cheese and olives, the smoked salmon and the chilled cucumber dip. The hot food steamed at the other end of the buffet, but I wasn’t inclined to brave the crowds to get there. I was grateful that Saunders didn’t abandon me after the last exchange. Instead, he concentrated on his shrimp and lifted two more glasses of wine from a passing tray, handing one to me.

  The string quartet was now playing a sprightly classical version of “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?”

  I used those moments to contemplate the fact that I was driving a beater, had been fired from McDonald’s, was wearing thrift store clothes, and was the star of the evening, surrounded by people who had no idea of my real situation.

  Then I heard the dreaded sound. “Doggie Doggie Bow Wow!” Two of the young caterers, in their white shirts and white hats, had paused at the table beside us, their arms laden with platters of shrimp, lemon and avocado. Much as I usually dreaded these words, the two kids sang in perfect pitch. They were probably acting students moonlighting as catering staff.