Love and Loathing

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Love and Loathing Page 8

by Gigi Blume


  “Sorry I’m late.”

  Denny took the empty chair between me and Cole, rounding out our party of six. Presently, Denny the lip-syncing pirate, with whom I’d never spoken two words in succession, gave me an artless grin and claimed my water for himself.

  “You’re not drinking this, are you?” he asked. “I’m parched.”

  I just shook my head because, frankly, I’d never given it more of a passing thought that he could have any word in his vocabulary other than watermelon.

  “You all know my nephew Denny, of course,” said Cole.

  We all nodded and smiled, but Lydia twirled her hair and winked.

  “Hi Danny.”

  “It’s Denny. With an ‘e,’” he said nonplussed. “Like the restaurant.”

  “Oh,” she purred, casting her eyeballs all over him in open assessment. “Are you open all night?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” he said without a pause. “And I’ve got hot cakes.”

  “I like to call them flap jacks,” she cooed.

  Jorge laughed lightly—that beautiful, unaffected laugh—and he caught my stare. His eyes flickered over me with awareness, sharing a moment—the sort of telepathic moment that suggests Let’s blow this taco stand. Or maybe I was imagining things.

  All I knew was that this conversation was getting weird and oddly enough, making me hungry for pancakes. Denny’s (the restaurant, not the pirate) would have been much cheaper, less hipster, and best of all, have no karaoke.

  I had to admit, however, as the evening progressed and after a few margaritas, we all relaxed into comfortable intimacy like good friends. Cole surprised me the most with his easy humor. I suppose I never thought of him more than the stern director he wore as a facade at the theatre. He wore many hats as any professional would. It was a pleasant discovery on my part. It was also alarmingly plain there was a lot more going on between him and Holly than innocent flirting. I found myself watching them every so often through the night—the touches, the stolen whispers. What was the age difference between them? It had to be close to thirty years. And yet they were so beautifully matched and so incandescently in love, it hardly mattered.

  Lydia, never one to turn down a free drink, made good use of Cole’s generosity. He’d left an open tab for our table, ordering pitcher after pitcher of margaritas. And Phillip’s Gastro Pub, being overly trendy and hipster, had delicious and expensive artisan-crafted margaritas. We were all a little buzzed and so cozily paired, we danced all night. And when a patron on the karaoke mic would sing painfully off key, we’d cheer them on with raucous encouragement. To Cole’s amusement, and my astonishment, Denny and Lydia sang Don’t Go Breaking My Heart as a duet. Denny actually had a great voice as he channeled his inner Elton John. No lip-syncing at all. It was so contagious, I dragged Jorge on stage to join as back-up singers. He was reluctant at first, and I found the timid reaction an endearing, awkward garment he clearly didn’t frequently wear.

  “I’m a backstage guy,” he said later on. “I’ll leave the performing to you.”

  “You did great.” I laughed. “With the exception of all the ho-ho-hos.”

  “It’s not ho-ho?”

  “No, Santa Claus, it’s ooo-ooo.”

  The corners of his lips curled and leaned into me, brushing his stubble against my ear. “I’m really good at coming down chimneys.”

  His breath was hot on the delicate skin of my collarbone, and he wore the lingering scent of tequila like a fine cologne. It suited him very well. All at once, I didn’t care about any of those other things I was preoccupied with. Not Cole and Holly, not Lydia’s homelessness, not that Darcy guy. In a haze of onion rings and tequila, I wondered why any of those things mattered at all. I was having fun.

  The small escape from my cares was too short lived, and I crashed into sober awareness with the abrupt appearance of Denny. He flew to me with a whoosh so swift, he didn’t pause or halt his steps as he pulled me by the arm towards the back of the restaurant.

  “Lydia threw up all over the stage,” he said with a determined gait. “I was able to get her to the restroom, but you’d better check on her.”

  Wonderful!

  “Where’s Holly?” I questioned.

  He chuckled. “Are you kidding? She left with my uncle about an hour ago.”

  “Oh.”

  I was in Latin dreamland longer than I’d realized.

  “He left me his credit card,” said Denny. “He’s gonna be livid when he gets the cleaning bill.”

  I found Lydia in the first stall, huddled over the toilet. She was a shade of pale puce and strands of her hair were plastered against her face. One of her spaghetti straps hung low on her shoulder, causing her dress to sag low on her tiny boobs.

  “You okay, hon?” I asked, stroking the hair from her neck.

  “You’re holding my hair as I hurl into the toilet,” she managed to say with some humor.

  “That’s what friends do.” I smiled.

  She looked like she was going to say something else endearingly sappy but gagged again and let more party evidence spill into the toilet.

  “How much did you have to drink?” I asked but thought better of it a moment later. “Never mind.”

  It didn’t matter at this point. I needed to get her home—hopefully without damage to the interior of my Volvo. I stayed with her until I deemed it safe to move her. Jorge and Denny met us at the door, carrying both our purses. I would have made a cheeky joke had I not been determined to get Lydia the Eddie Flagrante out of there.

  Denny was a little more anxious than I was. “Let’s go before there’s more damage,” he cried. “The busboy is giving us the stink eye.”

  “I don’t blame him,” I said with sympathy. I’d never had to deal with drunk customers at the lodge, but I’d cleaned my share of messes. Mostly idiots playing with the ketchup or Tabasco. It gave me an unhealthy aversion to condiments.

  Jorge gathered Lydia in his arms and carried her out of the pub. We made it to my car without incident, and he gently lowered her into the backseat. “I better ride with you,” he said. “To make sure she’s okay.”

  “I can handle it, really,” I protested.

  “Are you going to carry her into the house?” he argued. “Besides, I’m a little too tipsy to drive.”

  He climbed into the seat beside Lydia without another word and cradled her head on his lap.

  “I feel like a dip-head,” said Denny. “I didn’t even realize she had that much to drink.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  I would have hugged him, but I suspected traces of Lydia’s vomit got on my clothing. “Are you okay to drive?”

  “I am now,” he blurted. “Nothing like a little drama to kill the buzz.”

  We parted with a nod and an awareness of the new friendship an experience like that produced. I drove home with these thoughts in the forefront of my mind. New friends already forming a tender attachment to my heart just because we spent an evening laughing over margaritas and bad karaoke. I wondered if Jane was having as much fun with her new acquaintances. I imagined her meeting Bing at a bar, maybe one of those posh martini bars. And wouldn’t it be a riot to be joined by Will and Caroline.

  Gag me.

  I wished her well, but as long as Bing relied on such meddling friends, she’d always be under their scrutiny. There was no sign of her when we arrived at the apartment.

  Jorge helped me get Lydia situated on the couch. She was totally passed out, but I put a barf bucket next to her just in case. I wasn’t interested in losing my security deposit. Before I even noticed what he was doing, Jorge had disrobed down to his boxers. I almost leapt into the barf bucket.

  “It’s not a good party unless you’re covered in vomit.” He shrugged, holding his soiled clothes. “Do you mind if I wash these in your bathtub?”

  “Oh! Of course.”

  I looked down at my own clothing and noticed patches of caked-on residue. “I’ll get you some deterge
nt. And a robe.”

  The evening had played out just a little differently in my imagination when I was preparing to go out. Jorge was in my living room, exposing more skin than should be legal, but my fantasies never included a barf fest. I consoled myself with a quick shower and fresh pajamas while Jorge washed his clothes in the guest bathroom, and when he met me in the kitchen with the Hello Kitty robe I lent him, I had a pot of boiling water on the stove.

  “You look dashing as ever,” I teased.

  “It suits me,” he said, modeling the robe. “I think I’ll keep it.”

  “Sorry, the laundry room is locked at this hour,” I apologized. “Tea or hot cocoa?”

  “Cocoa, if you have milk. My mom used to make it with milk.”

  Used to. That didn’t escape my notice, but I didn’t want to ask after the night we’d had. Instead, I continued to tease him, offering him my fluffy slippers to match the robe and suggesting we give each other manicures while watching chick flicks. We joked over cocoa and laughed louder than we ought to with a sleeping reprobate just a few feet away on my couch. She was so barbecue, she never stirred an inch. After some time, he thanked me for a lovely evening and prepared to gather his clothes to leave.

  “But they’re still soaking wet,” I protested. “Are you going out like that?”

  He shrugged. “This is L.A. I’m sure the Uber driver has seen weirder stuff than a guy in a Hello Kitty robe.”

  “What if I don’t let you take the robe?”

  He shrugged it off his shoulders and held it out to me in one fluid motion. “Like I said, this is L.A.”

  He was a sight to behold—pure, chiseled man flesh, the defined features and golden brown of his skin more pronounced in the low light of my apartment. I swallowed hard and squeezed my eyelids tight. “Put that back on before I—”

  I choked on my words, not entirely sure what I planned to say.

  “Before you what?”

  Gah! I lost all sense of sentence structure around this guy!

  “Just put it on and stay.” I sighed. “You can’t go out like that. Just crash here.”

  My eyes were still shut. I heard him chuckle under his breath as the swoosh of the cloth brushed against his body, and I rendered it safe to open my eyes again.

  “You are something else, Beth short for Elizabeth and sometimes Lizzie.”

  He drew near to me, invading my space. Even with a silly bathrobe barely covering his tall frame, he was still way too gorgeous. I began to regret this whole evening. The temperature in my apartment was always a slight chill in November, but the heat from his presence was downright tropical. He locked his eyes with mine as his arm wrapped behind me, barely grazing my side, and I heard a screech.

  “Shall we sit and talk then?”

  The screech was a chair he pulled out behind me at the breakfast nook. What a ridiculous tweenager I’d become. My innards crumpled into a heap of nerves whenever he was near. Get it together, Beth. I reminded myself he was a player. He had to be. The question was, did I care?

  “Some people call me Eliza,” I blurted. “But I don’t like it. Too much like Eliza Doolittle.”

  He smiled at my admission. “Okay, Beth short for Elizabeth sometimes Lizzie but never Eliza. Got it.”

  An awkward silence fell over the room as if after a full day of easy banter, we’d finally run out of words to say to one another. I went over the inventory in my head. Yep. Tank was empty. But what I really wanted to talk about, what I was burning to know, was something I didn’t feel the confidence to ask. The showdown in the scene shop earlier in the day seemed like so long ago, but the feelings it stirred were still fresh on my mind. It turned out the same thoughts weighed on Jorge’s mind as well, and his countenance shifted to somber reflection.

  “I want to apologize about this afternoon,” he began. I didn’t interrupt him. I let him speak without reservations lest he change his mind. “You probably noticed the… less than cordial greeting I exchanged with a certain person today.”

  I nodded, understanding he was referring to Will, but waiting for an explanation I was anxious to learn. What could be the story between these men who were polar opposites of one another? How could their paths have crossed in life to have triggered such a response? The eager features on my face gave him the encouragement he needed to continue.

  “Let’s just say he and I don’t exactly get along very well.”

  That was it? No, no. He opened Pandora's box and now, he would show me all the ugly contents inside. I didn’t want to pry too hard. Best to keep the questions neutral. Respectful.

  “How do you know each other?” I asked as innocently as possible.

  Perhaps I didn’t do innocent very well because he ran his fingers through his hair and apologized, “I’m sorry. If you two are friends, I don’t mean to—”

  “NO,” I blurted a little too loudly. “We’re certainly not friends. I had the unique displeasure of being locked in the costume shop with him all night. I could definitely understand your visceral reaction to him today.”

  He relaxed into a relieved smile, and I could almost hear the wheels turning in his head. He was no doubt thinking what I was thinking. There was an agreement between us. Something unspoken but heady in the air. We were very much alike right down to the people we couldn’t stand together. It’s the little things.

  Inspired by the confidence he sensed in me, he proceeded to tell me the story—the long story—of his childhood and how he came to be a close member of the Darcy household. To truncate his lengthy explanation, to which I was entirely enthralled but kept us up until almost four in the morning, Jorge lived the first eight years of his life without a clue about his real father. Why his mother kept it from him, I didn’t know. I got the impression she was nervous about getting deported back to Costa Rica and never revealed to her erstwhile lover he had a son. When she fell ill and could no longer care for Jorge, she confessed the truth to a very shocked and overwhelmed Greg Wickham, who was (you guessed it) Martin Darcy’s publicist. The relationship between Greg and Martin was so close to brotherly, Martin himself accepted Jorge as a nephew once the truth was made known. The passing of his mother brought Jorge into a new lifestyle, spending long hours at the Darcy house while his father worked or played golf with Martin. It was a culture shock and complete contrast to his humble beginnings.

  Jorge then explained the distance of only a few years between himself and Will, and that they would often play together. But he described Will as a spoiled child and a poor playfellow most of the time and then went on to relate memories of some rather unpleasant pranks Will would play on him, all in the name of some ‘good ‘ol fun.’ He was quite the little brat.

  The untimely death of Greg Wickham brought Jorge once again to a crossroads in his unlucky life, and he was taken in by Martin, a single father himself by that time, in the hopes to give Jorge a family. Although Jorge didn’t find much of a brother in Will, he became like a mentor to Will’s young sister Georgia. She’d follow him everywhere. He was like a hero to her.

  “She’s at Juilliard now, right?” I interjected, remembering the conversation Will had with Caroline.

  “Yes, she is. She’s a truly gifted musician. They don’t let you in that school if you’re not. But it’s gone to her head. She used to be such a sweet girl. Now she’s almost as bad as her brother. I don’t know where they get that entitled attitude from. Martin was such a humble man.”

  I was sorry to hear that but not at all surprised. Will and his sister were born into privilege. They’d never know the struggles of people like Jorge—or me for that matter. We were worlds apart, and more often than not, people like that became conceited.

  Unfortunately for Jorge, his suffering was only beginning. His studies at UCLA had opened all sorts of doors for him in film production and he was on course to a successful career. But his world came crashing to a halt when Martin Darcy died suddenly.

  Jorge’s eyes welled up with tears as the memory flo
oded into view.

  “He was like a father to me,” he said woefully.

  Cue the tug on my heartstrings. Imagine the loss this man had to endure—first his mother, then his father, then his foster father and friend—it was overwhelmingly painful to hear. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

  When Martin’s will was read, Jorge was left with a considerable sum as well as some sentimental personal items. He didn’t expect anything at all and only wanted a book of poems Martin would sometimes read to him. It was a special item and held a lot of happy memories. But once the dust settled from the funeral and following weeks, Will cut Jorge off completely from the estate. He had found some kind of legal loophole to shut him out. This in itself didn’t bother Jorge half as much as what he did next.

  “When I came to claim the book.” Jorge winced at the painful memory, “he flat out refused to give it to me.”

  “Why not give you the book?” I asked incredulously.

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “At first, he said he couldn’t find it, but then after some prodding and looking around on my part, he finally admitted he had no intention of letting me have it. What would he want with a book of poetry? That was a little petty, don’t you think?”

  “More than a little,” I agreed.

  If I were a cussing person, I might have chosen a few choice words a little stronger in context than ‘petty.’ But there was even more to the story to add a gruesome cherry to an already distasteful pudding. Just as Jorge was making connections, close to advancing in his career, Will flexed his celebrity muscle and had Jorge blackballed from every studio worthy of working for. Nobody would hire him. All his hard work and Martin Darcy’s wishes wiped away with one sweep of Will’s callous influence.

  I could hardly believe my ears, but Jorge was the sincerest I had ever seen in a human being. There was deep misery in his features. It was a fascinating vision to see such a different man than the one who’d been flirting with me all day. He was a broken, tortured man, afflicted with a life of disappointment after bitter disappointment, and here he was in my kitchen, telling me his heart-wrenching story, wearing nothing but boxers and my Hello Kitty bathrobe. I was moved beyond words.

 

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