Scorpio Love

by S. Tamanaha

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that song.”

  “I have the forty-five record somewhere. It’s not a fabulous song or anything. It just always made me sad because they were so young and talented.”

  Johnny smiled. “You have forty-fives?”

  “And albums and a turntable that works.”

  “You like oldies?”

  “Love them. The songs these days, I can barely understand what they’re saying. The old music has soul and romance and feeling. What do you like?”

  “I like oldies too. I listen to them a lot when I’m driving around in my Chevy. Seems appropriate. For myself though, I learned mostly Broadway type music because I was in plays and live shows a lot.”

  “So you sang in stage productions?”

  “Yeah. I had parts in plays like Carousel and Oklahoma and the lead male role in Annie Get Your Gun. Off Broadway productions though. Sometimes way off Broadway.”

  “I can see that. Howard Keel roles would suit you. He had a deep voice like yours.”

  “You know musicals?”

  “I love musicals. I’ve seen mostly movie versions though. Not too many live productions. West Side Story is my favorite.”

  “That’s a good one. What else?”

  “Sound of Music, Gypsy, and Man of La Mancha. I saw a real stage production of that one. Did you enjoy stage work?”

  “Yeah, it was fun. I used to do a lot of plays and stuff in high school and some in college.”

  “Why’d you decide to go to Hollywood if you enjoyed the stage so much?” she asked then.

  “You don’t get rich or very noticed when you do plays on Broadway or off Broadway. My agent said L.A. was where I should be so I went.”

  “And now you’re very noticed and I presume getting rich so what’s next? How do you get that control that we were talking about?”

  “I’m trying to save the money I make and once I learn enough about this business maybe make my own movie. Right now my look may be right for Hollywood and the public, but who knows what’ll happen in a couple of years. People are fickle. When the fan mail drops off and a different kind of look is in fashion, I want to be set financially and able to move on to where I really want to be.”

  She couldn’t imagine his look going out of fashion in just a couple of years—or ever—but she knew that he was right about how fickle an adoring public can be. She had been right about this man; he had no conceit. He didn’t believe that he was special because of his looks. He was realistic and planning for the future.

  “I’m glad that I was right about you,” she said quietly, touching him once again with her words. “And now I understand why you’re so driven and why you seem to have this sense of urgency about you. You feel like you’re working against time. You’re worried that your good luck or your looks might run out before you’re ready.”

  He smiled a little and nodded. She really did understand.

  “Do you enjoy acting? Is it your passion? Or did it just seem like the fastest way to make the money you need in order to get the control that you want?”

  He smiled again. He couldn’t remember anyone ever asking him that before. “How would you define passion?”

  “Something that you love doing and that you’d do even if it wasn’t making you rich. The way that boxing was my father’s passion. Professional boxers never made a lot of money back then, not like today, but he loved it. It was something that was in his blood. Even after he lost his legs, he loved to watch the fights and a couple of times, I saw him shadow boxing when he was sitting in his wheelchair.”

  “Well, I enjoy acting, but truthfully, I enjoyed doing stage work more than this television stuff. On the stage, the whole story is told in order. Act One, Act Two, and so forth. You can get into the story and the character. You get to know the people you’re working with, if the play is successful and continues past the first night. And you get just one chance every night to do it right. In television and the movies, they jump all over the place when they film, you have to repeat scenes so that they can get different camera angles on you, and then they put everything together when they edit the film. But TV and movies are where the money’s at so I’m not sure if I could call what I’m doing now a passion. How about you? I know you said that after your father died you realized that you weren’t passionate about being an attorney.”

  “It came as kind of a shock to find that out. I was focused on being an attorney since I was fourteen. After being so single-minded in purpose for so long, to find out that it really wasn’t my passion sort of left me at a loss. But I guess if I had to choose something that I feel passionate about, it would be writing. I’ve always loved to write and last year I submitted a manuscript and won a Writer’s Award and a small publishing contract.”

  “You’re a published author too?” Johnny grinned. “Like I said, always surprising me.”

  “Unfortunately, I’m no John Grisham. I’m not able to pay my mortgage with my royalties so I have to work. Sometimes having to deal with life really gets in the way of living.”

  He smiled again. He couldn’t have said it better.

  “How do you do it—act, I mean?” she asked then. “How do you pretend that you love someone when you don’t or that you’re angry or happy when you’re not with dozens of people watching and a camera a foot away from your face?”

  “I don’t know how other people do it. I read the story, I try to think and react like I believe the character would think and react and then say the lines the way I think the character would. Then, of course, the director will tell me what he’s looking for in a particular scene or something. And the people and the cameras, you just have to pretend that they aren’t there. It’s hard at first.”

  “I think I’d find something like that so difficult to do. Impossible, actually.”

  “Haven’t you ever acted in a play in school or anything?”

  She shook her head. “In law school, they made us participate in moot court where you have to pretend that you’re already an attorney and present your arguments about a case before a make-believe judge in a make-believe courtroom. I hated it. I did much better when it was real.”

  “Didn’t you play pretend when you were growing up? You know, dress-up, tea parties with your dolls, that sort of thing?”

  She shook her head again. “I had one doll when I was growing up. It wasn’t even a doll. It was a little collie puppy with a furry body and a vinyl face. I always liked dogs. But I never pretended that it was real. Then when we moved here, there were only boys in the neighborhood, and well, I just never did all of those little girl things. But even without being a tomboy, I just never was much into make-believe. I used to wonder if there was something wrong with me sometimes. I never believed in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy or the Easter bunny. When I was about five or six and my father was trying to tell me that Santa would be delivering presents, I asked him how Santa was going to get into our house since we didn’t have a chimney. And then when it came to Easter, I wanted to know why a rabbit was delivering eggs because it didn’t make sense to me.”

  Johnny laughed. “What did he say?”

  She smiled. “He couldn’t think of a good enough answer either time. I guess that’s when I knew for sure that it was all make believe.”

  “So, you prefer to deal with reality? You don’t ever have the urge to get away and pretend that you’re someone else for a while, leading some other life?”

  “You mean like Cinderella at the ball? I’d always know that it wasn’t real and that the coach was going to turn back into a pumpkin. But I’m not sure if it’s a preference. I think it’s just how I am. That’s probably another reason why dating doesn’t really interest me.”

  “Dating? Why’s that?”

  “Have you ever noticed that when people are dating, no one is who they really are? The guy will take the girl to nice restaurants and dancing when he actually hates that kind of food and doesn’t like to dance. And the woman will p
retend to like his favorite sport when she couldn’t care less. I remember when my brother-in-law was dating my sister. He brought her home after a date and it was raining and he would have gotten much less wet if she had gotten out of the car herself, but she just waited in the car until he came around and opened her door. My father and I were watching out of the window of the livingroom and I asked him how long he thought the guy would be doing that—being so polite and opening her door. And he said, ‘until they get married’. And he was right.”

  Johnny laughed again. “So you don’t like that dating ritual, the game?”

  She shook her head. “I guess I don’t understand it. I mean, I know it’s human nature to want to make a good impression on someone if you like them, but there’s a big difference between making a good impression and pretending to be someone you’re not. If the guy doesn’t like dancing and she really hates football, they should just say so. They can’t keep up the pretense forever. Is it any huge surprise that a few years down the road they don’t recognize the person sitting across from them at the dinner table? I just don’t get it.”

  She was looking at the sky frowning a little, genuinely perplexed, and he smiled. She really was so very different from anyone he had ever met. He wanted to kiss her, but he fought back the urge. Maybe it was too soon. And he still wasn’t sure about what she was feeling.

  “You know, if more people thought like you, dating would be a lot easier,” he said. “There’d probably be a lot less divorces too.”

  “That’s what I used to think,” she said, “but I found out that most people like playing those games. I think it makes the dating experience more exciting for them or something. I don’t know. All I know is that when I used to date, some of the men didn’t like the fact that I opened my own doors or offered to help pay for the meal, even though they knew that I knew that dinner was going to cost them two days of pay. And some of them were intimidated because I was an attorney, even when they were highly educated themselves, or because I knew things about sports and cars and home renovations. You know, masculine subjects. And it’s not as though I bragged about the things I knew. It was just that if the subject matter came up, they didn’t have to explain it to me from scratch or I would ask a question that didn’t occur to them. It was as though they wanted me to pretend to be someone that I wasn’t so that they could pretend to be someone they weren’t. Sometimes I’d almost feel bad about it, as though I should apologize for being who I was. Most times, though, I would just get irritated because I’d think ‘Why are you dating me if it’s not me that you want?’”

  “Do you want my opinion?” Johnny asked.

  She nodded.

  “The guys you dated were morons.” He said it with disgust in his tone. “If they can’t appreciate someone who’s being honest and doesn’t want to play games, then I say good riddance and they deserve whatever unhappy relationship they’re going to end up with.”

  She smiled a little. “Thank you,” she said softly. “That’s kind of you to say.”

  “I’m not saying it to be kind,” he said firmly. “Do you know what I liked about you right off?”

  She shook her head.

  “The fact that you did open your own door and you knew how to lock my Chevy. You wouldn’t believe how many people don’t have a clue. Some women even think that the car has an electronic lock or that I should put one in.”

  She laughed a little. “Maybe some of them knew but just pretended that they didn’t. That’s how my sister and my mother manipulated men—by acting stupid and helpless. It seems to make men feel good. It seems to make them feel like they’re stronger and smarter than this poor woman who needs rescuing or something.” She shook her head a little. “The games that they played were so obvious to me but the men…it always amazed me how many of them fell for it. If it didn’t make me so ill, I’d almost be in awe of their skills.”

  “Maybe you should have introduced your dates to your sister,” Johnny said. “Sounds like a match to me.”

  She smiled. “I wouldn’t do that even if I hated the guy.”

  “Not all men are that stupid, you know,” Johnny said then, feeling the need to let her know that he wasn’t like those other men. “Some of us still appreciate a smart, unpretentious woman.”

  “That’s good to know,” she said softly. She was happy that he wasn’t like those other men, but it also made her a little sad. The more that she learned about him, the more she loved him. But when she looked at him, his extraordinary looks just reminded her of his career and how far out of her reach he was.

  He glanced over at her. She was looking at the sky again with a look of sadness in her eyes. Again he felt the urge to kiss her but resisted.

  “Hey, stay still. You have something in your hair.” He reached over with his free hand and proceeded to remove a tiny leaf from her wet hair. In doing so, he pulled her closer to his chest. She could feel the heat from his body and it sent a shiver through her.

  “I’d better get inside,” she said. “It’s getting a little cold for me. I don’t want to get sick while you’re my guest.”

  “I’ll come with you,” he said. They climbed out of the pool together and she squeezed as much of the water out of her clothes as possible before going to the patio where Angel was stretched out waiting for them.

  He grinned. “Sorry about that.”

  “Of course you are,” she said, smiling, and then went to grab a couple of towels from the outside linen cabinet. She handed one to him as she tried to get a little drier before going inside.

  “Well, thank you for forcing me, literally, to relax. It was actually nice,” she said.

  “Thank you. For everything. I’m really glad I came.” He leaned down and kissed her cheek again, only this time his lips brushed close to hers. There it was again—that electrical shock that she hoped he wouldn’t notice.

  “Good night,” she said softly.

  Lying in the bedroom, Johnny turned on her virtual universe and imagined himself with her still floating in that pool and staring up at the stars and the moon. The more that he talked to her and got to know her, the more intense the feelings within him became. He liked how she spoke directly and from her heart and he found everything that they talked about to be interesting. She didn’t engage in a lot of small talk—that useless babble that he despised because he had to put up with so much of it in his line of work. And she didn’t like playing games, which was something else that he hated. He also felt that she was genuinely interested in his well being—in whether he obtained his dream, whether he was happy, whether he was pursuing his passion in life. But there was one thing that she seemed to be concealing. When he had kissed her cheek this time, he became even more certain that she in fact had feelings for him. But she was trying hard not to show them and she was a master at it. Nothing in her movements or her tone of voice suggested anything but friendship. He wondered if that was why she seldom looked directly into his eyes. Perhaps she was afraid that he would be able to see her real feelings if she did.

  In her space downstairs, she showered and then stood at the dresser and blew dry her hair slowly. Again she questioned the wisdom of having him in her space. Every time that he kissed her cheek or touched her, she could feel that jolt of electricity in her body and she was afraid that he would soon be able to notice. She didn’t want him to know that she had feelings for him. She sensed that he might respond, and although she knew that he wasn’t the type of person who slept with just anyone who was convenient, he might respond just because he was on vacation for the first time in a long time, he was relaxed and happy, and he was with someone he could talk to about other things besides his business. She didn’t want him mistaking those feelings and any feelings of gratitude for the real thing. If something happened between them and it was not the real thing, it would ruin the friendship that they had built. Above all else, she wanted to keep that friendship intact because she knew now, more than ever, that he needed a friend.


  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When Johnny came down the stairs the next morning, she wasn’t in sight but he could hear her voice coming from her room.

  “Did you get my email saying that I was out of reach this week?” she was asking someone.

  The bedroom door was open and he peeked in just to let her know that he was up. She was on her cell phone and seated at her desk. She motioned him in. The size of the room surprised him. It was fairly large with a Murphy style bed on one wall flanked on either side with built in drawers and cabinets. Around the desk area where she was seated, there were bookshelves lined with law books and a few paperbacks. On the opposite wall, there was what appeared to be a large closet and a cabinet with glass doors. The side of the room that was adjacent to the patio led into a bathroom that could also be accessed from the patio. On the other end of the room, there were large windows that let in a lot of natural light.

  “Okay,” she said to the person on the other end of the line, “but this better be a real emergency otherwise you’re buying me lunch. Can you read what’s on the form to me?” She covered up the mouthpiece and said to Johnny, “It’s okay, you can look around.”

  She got back on the phone. “And you’re confused because of what?” She listened and then laughed. “You owe me lunch Thomas. Why? Because this is the same problem that came up in training two weeks ago. The two boxes don’t match because there’s a pre-tax retirement contribution somewhere.” She laughed again. “Now, you see it. You’re so goofy. Okay, talk to you later.” She hung up.

  “Friend?” Johnny asked, feeling a twinge of irritation.

  “Yes, and one of my managers who doesn’t seem to understand what I mean when I say please don’t bother me for the next week or so. He’s a good guy though.”

  “Maybe he likes you.”