by S. Tamanaha
“Think I’ll ever find anybody?” he asked sadly.
“I don’t think, I know. You’re talented and good-looking, when you’re not wasted, and it’s obvious that you have a heart full of love to give. All I’m saying is give that love to the right person. Give it to someone who loves you just as much as you love her. Cheryl isn’t that person. But if you’re so busy crying over someone who doesn’t deserve you, you might miss meeting that right girl. How sad would that be?”
“Pretty sad,” Jess agreed. Then he sighed. “I gave her everything, you know. Everything.“
“I know. And she gave you nothing but grief. But you know what? Think of it as a bad investment, like buying shares of stock in a company that goes bankrupt. Remember those penny stocks that you bought last year? Better to have invested only a hundred dollars than your life savings. You put in your time, your money, and your emotions into this relationship and it didn’t work out, but at least this investment only cost you a few months of your life, not your entire life.”
He sighed again. “Life … it really sucks sometimes, don’t it?”
“Sometimes,” she said gently. “But you control your own life, Jess, no one else. You can choose to let this thing with Cheryl break you or make you stronger and smarter. Just remember, when you let people who don’t care about you pull you down, they win because that’s what they want. Don’t let them win, Jess. Don’t let Cheryl win, okay?”
He nodded, but she wasn’t sure if he was really listening to her. However, she had done everything that she could do.
“Now, what did you take tonight?” she asked. “Did you just have a few too many drinks, I hope.”
“Yeah, my brother’s beer. Is he going to be pissed.”
“How much beer?”
“The six-pack.”
“You’re lucky the cops didn’t get you or you didn’t kill yourself or someone else. You can’t be drinking and driving, okay? Please.”
He nodded again.
“Finish that water and drink some of that soda,” she said. “They’re almost finished with the set. They’re going to clean you up and get you as sober as possible during the break and then you’re going to finish the gig, all right? Because I’m supposed to be at dinner with my friend, not filling in for you.”
“Don’t worry. I can play the stuff with my eyes closed.”
“I know. But if the owner walks in and sees that you’re wasted, you guys are going to lose this gig. You’re not even of drinking age yet. Think about the other guys okay? They need the money.”
“Okay, you’re right. Hey, is that your date? The big guy over there?”
“Yes, that’s John,” she said, helping him out of the car. “Thank him for being so patient. We’re supposed to have been at dinner ten minutes ago.”
Jesse smiled his goofy, lovable smile at John. “Thank you John. She’s a nice person, you know. Better take care of her.”
“I know, and I will,” she heard John respond. She looked at him and saw him smiling at her in a gentle way.
“Can you do me a favor and watch him until I can get the other guys?” she asked. “I hear the set coming to an end.”
“Sure, no problem.”
She went back into the bar and returned with the other band members and another bottle of cold water. She introduced the boys quickly to John and then turned Jesse over to them.
“Give him a lot of water and more caffeine. You’re not going to be able to get him completely sober, but try to get him alert enough to look like he is,” she said. “And call me later if there are any problems. Don’t let the owner see him like this and please, someone drive him home.”
Susan and John climbed back into her van and headed for the restaurant where she had made reservations for dinner.
“I’m sorry that you had to wait for so long and that your first night here turned out like this,” she said. “Now you know that I also babysit at times.”
“I’m not sorry. You were great on those keyboards and backup and that song. And Jesse, you were really great with him. What you told him about love and finding the right person, I was ... impressed.”
“Impressed? Why?”
“Where I come from, there are a lot of Cheryls.”
She smiled slightly. “Where you come from, I suspect that a lot of the men aren’t much better. I’m glad that you’re different though.”
He smiled, touched once again by her opinion of him. Then he asked, “That sister that you mentioned who is like Cheryl. That’s the one that made you decide not to have children?”
She nodded.
“Did she really do all those things?” he asked.
“Those things and a lot more. She’s caused a lot of people a lot of pain. She drove my father crazy, but he would always end up making excuses for her. Then he died and she did something unforgivable and I don’t talk to her anymore.”
“At all?”
“At all. It’s better that way.”
“She hurt you that much?”
“Not me. Him. She betrayed him. That’s something that I’ll never forgive.”
“Betrayed?”
She sighed. “No matter what she did, I always thought that she at least loved him because he was always backing her up, making excuses for her, even helping her financially. Then he got sick and died and I realized that it wasn’t true. She didn’t love him. She didn’t care at all. She behaved like a total jerk at the hospital and then caused trouble at his funeral. What kind of person does those things? Anyway, I never spoke to her again and I never will.”
She glanced over at him. “I know. It makes me sound cold-hearted. People always think that just because someone’s a part of your family, you need to make allowances. But I don’t. Not anymore.”
“I don’t think you’re cold-hearted. I cut my ties with my father a long time ago. I think I mentioned that to you before.”
She nodded. “Because he left and didn’t do his job. I remember.”
“Two married people can’t get along, okay. But you don’t just walk out on your kids because you get tired of working hard or you want some other kind of life. You know, we’d go and see him occasionally for a while but then I realized that I didn’t respect him and didn’t like being around him so I stopped.”
“My sister taught me about the kind of person that I don’t ever want to be. Your father taught you the same thing. I guess as long as we learned something valuable it wasn’t a total loss.”
He smiled a little. “Rise above? Don’t let them pull you down and win? Like you told Jesse?”
“Exactly.”
He liked her attitude—her willingness to stand her ground even when others thought that she was being too hard. Some people would have encouraged her to forget the past, to forgive; he was a Scorpio and he understood.
“You’re pretty amazing, you know?”
“Not amazing,” she said. “Just a survivor.”
“You handled that drunk guy pretty good too. I was ready to walk over there.”
“I know—and thank you—but that would have only escalated everything. I can usually handle the harmless drunks like him. I think I told you that my parents owned a bar, didn’t I?”
John nodded. “So what did you say to him?”
“I told him I had someone waiting for me and that the band would be back in a couple of weeks. He could buy me a drink then.”
“You made a date with him? That’s how you handled him?” John felt a little upset.
She laughed. “Trust me. He won’t remember what I said tomorrow morning and even if he did, he won’t in two weeks. I don’t plan on being there anyway. The band isn’t scheduled to play there again until next month.”
“How do you know he’s harmless?”
“I can just tell.”
“Oh, that’s right. You read people.” He said it almost sarcastically.
She smiled. “Are you making fun of me?”
“No,” he said and reminded h
imself to check his tone. “It’s just that ... how do you read a drunk like that if you don’t even know him?”
“Most guys who get plastered like him, they’re trying to forget their real life. They don’t like their real world. It’s a Thursday night, it’s still early, and he’s already sloshed and sitting at a table with friends, not a date, so it’s obvious he doesn’t have some significant other or he does and she’s another Cheryl. I happen along and he starts to flirt with me. Maybe because he wants to look like the smooth operator to his friends or so that he can feel better about himself. If he feels like that and I put him down in front of his friends, then he might start to get ugly. But if I just sort of humor him, then he can feel like the big man and I can leave without incident.”
John smiled. “Okay, now I’m really impressed,” he said. “Of course, it didn’t help that you sang that song so sexily.”
“You thought it was sexy?”
“Very.”
“Well, thanks. We actually use it just to stall when we need to. It frees Trevor up to look for Jess or fix the sound or whatever.”
“So, you just look at someone and at the situation and you can read them.”
“Most of the time. Not every time. And sometimes, with certain people, I just sense things about them.”
“And I’m one of those people?”
“Yes.”
“So tell me what you sense about me other than what you told me on the phone.”
She smiled and shook her head. “I don’t think that I should. Like I said, some people don’t like being assessed and I think that you’re one of those people.”
Well, she was right about that. He didn’t like it when people tried to analyze him or when they assumed that they knew what kind of person he was. But this was different. He was intrigued by her and wanted to know what she thought about him.
“No, go ahead. It’s okay. I won’t get offended or anything.”
“I’ll tell you one day. I promise. But not right now. Anyway, we’ve arrived.”
She pulled into the parking lot of a small shopping mall situated near a canal. After getting out of the car, she began leading him down a walkway past a row of shops, most of them closed for the day.
“The restaurant owner, Changsai, is an amazing guy,” she said. “He came from Thailand with nothing. Then he started making money by selling fresh vegetables that he grew in his garden out of the back of his truck. Later his wife started selling little lunch plates and the food was so good that people started lining up in droves. They finally made enough money to open a restaurant and they work really hard. They open at ten in the morning and they don’t close until eleven. It’s usually fairly busy but it’s a Thursday and we’re a little late so there shouldn’t be much of a crowd.”
The restaurant, located at the very end of the walkway, was a small but quaint place with a comfortable atmosphere and low but attractive lighting. Christmas lights had been hung in the windows and along the walls of the restaurant in celebration of the holidays. Several of the tables were still occupied by customers, but it wasn’t crowded or noisy. The man at the door greeted her warmly.
“Hi, Miss Susan,” he said with a distinct accent. “Glad you make it.”
“Sorry we’re late, Changsai. This is my friend, John.”
“Hi, John. Happy to meet you. Come, I have your table.”
He led them to the back of the room to a table that overlooked the canal and was a little secluded from the rest of the crowd.
John noticed the handwritten sign on the table—“Reserved for Susan”.
“You must come here often,” he said as they sat down.
“I try to stop by about once a week, usually in the afternoon. I bring my laptop and do some work.”
“Any little thing that you can do to help the business of hard-working people survive?”
She looked at him and smiled. “Now who’s reading who?”
They ordered yellow chicken curry, spring rolls, and pad thai noodles. The food was delicious and given in generous proportions. Towards the end of the meal, Changsai walked over and put a plate of Thai coconut pudding on the table. “This for you. From me,” he said.
“You don’t have to do that,” Susan protested.
“No, no. I happy see you come here with a man. No computer. This much better for you. He very good looking too. Match you.”
She was embarrassed, but she just smiled. “Thank you so much.”
“Sorry about that,” she said to John when Changsai left. “Everyone’s a match-maker.”
He smiled and the candlelight made his blue eyes sparkle. “I don’t mind.” Then he put his forearms on the table and leaned forward. “Okay, tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“What you sense about me.”
“I said I would one day.”
“No, tell me now,” he insisted.
“Well, I can tell right off that patience is not exactly one of your virtues,” she remarked.
He smiled. “Nope.”
She sighed. “Okay, I’ll tell you. But only if you promise not to get upset at anything I say and you tell me if I’m right.”
“I promise,” he said.
She looked into his eyes then with her beautiful dark eyes—something that he noticed she didn’t do often enough—and he felt that she was looking directly into his soul. She was, although before doing so, she had to consciously block entrance into her own.
“I feel that the person that exists inside of you is very different from the calm, poised, and charming image that you present to the world. I sense that you’re a man who has a great deal of strong emotions, including a bad temper although not many have seen you really explode. You keep your true feelings hidden from most people. You think that most people wouldn’t understand those feelings and exposing your inner self makes you feel vulnerable and you don’t trust many people enough to allow yourself to be vulnerable in that way. You especially keep your temper in check because you know that you have to in order to get ahead in your business and to live in this world in general and because you don’t really like losing control like that. You dislike not being in control—not just of your emotions but of any situation. I think that’s what makes being in your profession especially difficult for you. You don’t like the fact that your career, your future, lies in the hands of other people, many of whom you don’t particularly like or respect.
“When you do get upset, it comes out in the form of impatience and irritation, especially with people who you feel are incompetent or don’t care about the quality of their work, with those who put on airs or who act as though they’re better than you are or who have every excuse in the book about why they can’t do what they’re supposed to do. And when you’re impatient and irritated, you can be very cutting in your remarks. You tend to become a little sarcastic and can say hurtful things. Sometimes when you’re feeling that way, you also become reckless and do things that could injure yourself, physically and otherwise, and many times you only realize it after you’ve acted. It’s a form of rebellion or release of some of that irritation or maybe just a release of your true self that you have to keep hidden so much around other people. I sense that your true self often feels out of place in that world that you now live in; that in spite of your busy schedule, in spite of all the attention that you receive, you often feel that you’re alone.
“A lot of your impatience and irritation comes from the frustration that you feel when you look around at the people who are running things. You feel that if given the chance you could do a much better job than they’re doing but yet, for now, like I said before, you’re the new guy so you have to put up with it. But one day, you plan on being the one calling the shots and then you can show them all that they underestimated you—that beneath the looks that they’re all raving about now and trying to capitalize on, there’s a serious, competent, and very intelligent man. You want to make them eat their words. And you probably have a list somewher
e or at least a mental list of all the people you wouldn’t hire once you are in control. There’s also a sense of urgency about you, as though that day when you’re finally in control can’t come fast enough to suit you.
“Your looks attract a lot of people to you and you can be very charming when you want to be but you don’t really have many people in your life who you consider real friends—maybe no one—because you haven’t found too many people in your lifetime who you feel would understand the real you or who have been able to live up to your standards. You find most people to be superficial. They look at you and expect you to be a certain way, to act a certain way because of the way that you look or the fact that you’re a celebrity and that irritates you too. Sometimes you’ll go out of your way to act exactly the opposite because you don’t like it when people have those kinds of expectations. And in spite of the fact that you are blessed with looks, you aren’t conceited. You don’t think that having looks makes you special because it’s not something that you earned. It’s only genetic luck of the draw. A lot of young actors would, if they were in your position, feel that they’ve arrived. They’ve taken Hollywood by storm. They’d get caught up in all of the hype and their own press. For you, you’d rather be recognized for your accomplishments. You want respect, not just adoration. You understand what I was trying to tell Jess about looks being transitory. So for you, your looks are but a means to an end—the end being that one day you’ll be in control. In the meantime, if you’ve got the look that’s right for what Hollywood wants now, fine, let them pay you for it.”
She stopped. “So am I close or completely in left field?” She knew that she was right on target from what she saw in his eyes, but she wanted to see if he would keep his promise.
He was seldom speechless but he found himself without words for a few long seconds. “How could you know all that?” he asked finally.