by Gigi Blume
It was Friday afternoon when it became such a problem, Lydia frantically interrupted my shift at the lodge.
“What time are you off?” she inquired anxiously, barging into the dining room like a ferret on fire.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
Lydia was the type of girl who’d never set foot in a place like Lucas Lodge. Yes, she was wild with a side of crazy. Yes, she was poorer than dirt. Yes, she had her share of dancing on tables at sports bars. But she was also overly vain with her hot girl image. I guess Lucas Lodge was below even her low standards. Therefore, I knew there had to be some urgent business for her to seek me out at work. A slew of images ran through my mind. Did the landlord finally get fed up with her party girl antics and evict us?
“Did you go skinny dipping in the pool again?” I asked, bracing myself for her answer. She stared at me for a second with her big Disney princess eyes. I could almost hear the gears clicking away as she contemplated my question.
“There were no children present this time,” she said defensively. “But that’s nothing.”
Here we go.
“It’s Jane,” she said with a heavy exhale.
“Jane went skinny dipping?”
“No!” she cried. “She’s been watching Spanish soap operas on marathon.”
That was bad. That was really bad. Jane didn’t understand a word in Spanish. She couldn’t pronounce taco correctly to save her life. The last time she watched telenovelas, it took three people to peel her off the couch and force her to take a cold shower.
“Is she eating?” I asked.
“Just dry cereal straight out of the box,” she said. “We’re out of Cap’n Crunch.”
This was serious. More serious than last time. She needed some next level intervention.
“You need to come home NOW,” Lydia continued. “I can’t even cross the living room without her demon stare shooting hexes in my direction. I’m this close to calling an exorcist.” She held up her thumb and forefinger to illustrate.
I had another forty-five minutes before my meal break. If Charlotte could cover my remaining tables, I might have time to check on Jane before the dinner crowd. God bless her sweet freckled face, because she pulled through for me without hesitation. I got the rest of the night off.
“Take the weekend,” she said with a smile. “You deserve it.”
I found Jane in the darkened living room just as Lydia described her—slouched on the sofa, staring mindlessly at an over-acting Latina bombshell with rivers of mascara trailing down her cheeks. Her hairy chested love interest had his chiseled jaw set in a scowl so fierce he could cut steel with it. He was lustily saying something that had her wailing in a pool of tears and when her manicured hand flew to slap him, he caught her wrist and pulled her in for a forceful kiss. She melted in his arms, and they fell to the floor. Fade to black. Then a commercial for Tide filled the screen. That was my cue to open the blinds and force Jane to return to the human race. Preferably the English-speaking variety. But when I reached for the remote, she clawed it close to her chest and hissed.
“Give me the remote, Jane,” I warned.
“Go away.”
“I live here.”
She pouted in silence.
“I paid for half of that TV.”
Oh yes. I went there.
She shifted on the couch, giving me more of her back.
“Okay,” I said, stomping towards our flat screen Visio. “You asked for it.”
It was time for some tough love. I reached behind the TV, sifting through the tangle of cables to where I could disconnect them randomly. I didn’t know a thing about how to plug them back in, and neither did Jane. It was a sabotage I was willing to make even though it meant I’d miss the next few episodes of Outlander.
“No!” she cried in panic, almost flying off the couch. “Don’t do it.”
I turned slowly to her with my hand extended, bidding her to give me the remote like in a hostage situation.
“Give me the remote.”
Her fingers were white around the little device, clinging onto it as a lifeline. I’d never seen her so wild looking. Her face was so pale, it was almost translucent, and there were bits of Cap'n Crunch in her disheveled hair. Geez, whatever Bing did to her, he would pay big time—as soon as I got the current situation under control. Lydia stood to the side of the couch with her knees bent and her arms extended… ready for what? To catch Jane in case she flew in her direction like a fly ball?
“Give me the remote, Jane,” I warned again. I felt like I was talking Meg Giry down off the Coney Island Pier. (#spoilers)
Give me the hurt and the pain and the remote, Jane.
She shook her head in tiny protests, but I could tell her resolve was crumbling. The commercials were almost over, and I had to act fast. With careful steps, I inched closer to Jane, my palm outstretched in gentle supplication. I was moments from my target when Lydia reached for the spray bottle we used to mist the plants and squirted Jane in the ear, momentarily distracting her. I grabbed the remote, and Jane dissolved into a heap on the floor, bellowing like a tired toddler. I shut off the TV and flew to her side, rubbing her back and pulling her sticky hair from her face. Lydia joined us on the floor, and we group-hugged in a mess of wet tears, sweaty pajamas, and sticky Cap'n Crunch hair for a full ten minutes.
At length, Jane allowed us to take her into the kitchen for a paper towel, which she wiped her face and blew her nose with it as she sat at the table. I gave her a minute before speaking, exchanging the dirty paper towels in her hand for clean ones. Toilet paper would have been better, but the bathroom was too far. I didn’t want to lose my patient.
“Are you ready to tell me what happened?” I asked.
“Did he cheat on you?” Lydia growled. Clearly, she was hungry for blood. But Jane shook her beautiful, blonde head with a sniffle. Bing wasn’t the cheating type.
“Did he break up with you?” I gently bid. She just shrugged.
“Does he have herpes?” chirped Lydia. I furrowed my brow at her incredulously, but Jane released a minuscule laugh through the tears, a small breakthrough in her woe.
“No,” she said softly.
“Tell us what happened,” I said, still stroking her back. My other hand labored to shove the remote in my back pocket undetected. We didn’t want any relapses here.
“I’ll break his pate across,” warned Lydia. Ah, how comforting a Shakespearean threat is when one is brokenhearted.
“I don’t know what happened,” Jane feebly admitted. “He won’t talk to me.”
“The fiend!”
“Thank you, Lydia,” I said, slicing her a pointed stare. “You can sheath your rapier.”
And turning back to Jane, I whispered, “Tell it to us from the beginning.”
Bing had gone with Will to New York for Thanksgiving. When his phone went straight to voicemail, Jane assumed he’d run out of battery or forgot to turn it back on after his flight. But the next day, it rang and rang before her call was redirected to a new, more formal greeting for his outgoing message. She knew he had heard her messages if not seen her texts. She didn’t hear from him all weekend. No calls, no texts. Nothing.
“I tried to ignore my suspicions,” she said quietly. “He was in New York, having fun. He didn’t need to check in with me.”
I wanted to tell her that a man in love like Bing was with her wouldn’t let a day go by without calling. It didn’t make sense. Bing couldn’t keep his hands off her before he left California. But I kept my mouth shut and let her finish her story.
Then she told us that his social media was filled with photos of him all over New York with a beautiful girl I could only assume was Georgia Darcy. She was fresh faced with a brilliant smile—her shoulder-length, chestnut hair blowing in the wind in front of Rockefeller Center, on the Empire State Building, in Central Park—and Bing posed with her like a silly tourist with rosy cheeks and bundled in scarves against the autumn chill.
But
he wasn’t a cheater. Jane was sure of that. Still…
“I wasn’t jealous,” she assured us. I believed her. She wasn’t the jealous type. “But on Monday, Caroline took me aside and told me Bing was going out with Will’s sister.”
Why that little busybody.
“I don’t buy that for one second,” I exclaimed. “Caroline just likes to stick her fake nose where it doesn’t belong.”
“I’ll steal his phone,” offered Lydia. “I can check his call history to see if he’s been calling her since he got back.”
“No,” said Jane. “I asked him if there was someone else. I wanted to give him my blessing if there was. To give me closure. But all he said was, ‘There’s no one.’ Those are the only words he’s spoken to me since he returned.”
Jane fell into a wash of fresh tears and covered her face with two full sheets of Costco-brand paper towels. The stiff material stuck out like angel wings on either side of her face, and all I could see was the nest of golden locks from behind the white barricade and her thin hands scrunching the towels in the middle.
I was determined to find out the truth somehow. I regretted not befriending Bing earlier, so I could hear his thoughts on the subject. I couldn’t exactly approach him in rehearsal and casually ask why he was acting like a dirtbag. I refused to believe Bing would let himself become influenced by the stellar way Will treated women.
14
What Is This Feeling?
Will
Bing was pissing me off. The only reason I agreed to do this ridiculous production was to help him in his career. He had the ‘It’ factor. I could spot it the first time I saw him rehearse. He’d been an emergency replacement the last month of the tour for a swing who took the old saying ‘break a leg’ a little too seriously. Bing auditioned and took his place immediately. One would say he lucked out. But there was something special about Bing. He was a talent you don’t see very often. He had all the requirements for a successful Broadway career, but I knew, with the right connections, he could make it in Hollywood. He was green and needed some leading roles on his resume. The acting experience would be helpful for when he auditioned for films. I could help him with that. And now I regretted this whole stupid business. He was incredibly sulky all the time and that affected his performance. I hoped his poor attitude didn’t reflect on me. The musical director Fitz Hanlon and I were old friends. We’d known each other forever. We were cool. Cole Forster was another story. I suppose I only cared what he thought of me for Stella’s sake. Besides, Cole knew everybody in the theatre world. He could make or break Bing’s Broadway ambitions.
But Stella—she was special to me. She’d known me since I was a child, having starred in a heist film with my father and later cast him as her first guest star in the premiere of The Gardiner. She was more than a colleague. She was almost family. So when she’d called me asking for help with her charity event, I couldn’t refuse her. But I did have one condition. “Come see this guy perform,” I’d said, “and if you like what you see, maybe you’ll have a role for him in one of your plays.”
She agreed to fly out to Atlanta to watch the show, saying she wanted to see it anyway, but I knew she was there to reciprocate my favor. Turned out she did in fact have a part for Bing. In Pirates of Penzance. There was one more caveat to the deal. I had to play The Pirate King. I protested at first, arguing that I couldn’t possibly fit it in my schedule. My agent Tobias had been badgering me to sign on to do another Fast and Dangerous film. It was a twenty-million-dollar contract and rumor had it, Rick “The Brick” Savage was attached to the project.
Tobias got in the habit of sending me texts twice a day. Didn’t that guy have any other clients? I knew I was putting him and the studio off.
But something deep down inside had me dragging my feet. Something about the theatre, I suppose—the immediate gratification of the audience’s laughter and applause, the quickening in the stomach when the overture began. Something Rotten was the only show I’d heard of to get a standing ovation in the middle of the first act. Granted, I wasn’t in that particular number, but it was a great feeling all the same. Just to be part of a production like that—I’d have been happy just sweeping the floor. Nah, who am I kidding? I loved being rock star Shakespeare.
Now I was playing a similar role. I’d traded in my codpiece for a pirate hat. The quill for a sword. And leather-clad backup dancers were exchanged for a rag-tag band of orphaned pirates. And maidens? There were always maidens. But one in particular was a distraction I had to do something about. I needed to get a grip—or a drink. Every few minutes, I felt my eyes drawn to her like a five-car pile-up on the 405. I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t help it. And as much as I hated to admit it, she was funny. The part of Edith was generally not a very prominent role. She had a couple of solo lines and that’s it. But what Beth did with those few lines and limited blocking was brilliant. She had a talent for filling every pause with natural, physical comedy.
I told myself I only watched her for the entertainment factor. After all, millions of people subscribed to the foolish artistry of entertainers such as Miranda Sings and Carrot Head because they were funny. I fixed my eyes on Beth because she was likewise funny—and not necessarily because I ogled her curves in those tight leggings or admired how adorable she looked in that vintage Star Wars t-shirt.
But the way she glared at me when she caught me watching her—the admiration wasn’t mutual. What was it instead? Fear? Trepidation?
“Loathing.”
I was startled back into the present. She speaks!
“I’m sorry, what?”
Beth crossed her arms and glowered at me, raising her chin to level her eyes on me the best she could from nearly a foot below in height.
“I’m sure you have better things to do, Your Majesty, but we have to run this scene, so let’s just get this over with.”
What was wrong with me? We were in the middle of a song, and I had been just going through the motions. And here she was, ready to go into the lift.
“Oh, sorry, let’s try that again.”
“Fine. But I was thinking my character should display a little more loathing towards you. You’re a mongrel and a scurvy pirate, after all.”
“Duly noted.”
“You’re also a self-absorbed, arrogant, haughty, conceited, proud, spoiled, overbearing Judge Thurpin.
So today was her Sweeney Todd day.
“For the record,” I remarked, “the Pirate King may be a scallywag, but he’s no Judge Thurpin.”
“And I don’t care if you’re a movie star. I don’t need to get to know you before I form an opinion.” She used air quotes to punctuate the last three words.
“Are we still talking about the dance lift?”
Her posture straightened, and she lifted one brow, inching toward me with purpose. My mouth went as dry as the Atacama Desert.
“What do you think, Mr. Darcy?”
She was doing that thing that boxers do on pay-per-view ads when they engage in an intense faceoff. I’d heard it described as the art of defying your enemy with your eyes. It was supposed to be intimidating. But Beth, staring me down from mere inches away was having an altogether different effect on me.
I was Judge Thurpin. Hopefully, she didn’t have a straight razor tucked in those yoga pants.
“Hold please.”
I was never so relieved to hear Cole’s voice. All action ceased on stage, the entire cast directing their attention on him. But he stared straight at me.
“Is there a problem, Will?” he said with a bored expression.
Oh yes. Several problems.
“We missed our lift, that’s all,” I replied.
“Well, if you miss it next time,” he remarked with a scowl, “just mark it and fix it later.”
By fix it later, he meant more alone time with Beth. No, thank you. I was already toast. I made sure I didn’t miss the lift again.
All I wanted to do after rehearsal was blow off s
ome steam. There’d be a party somewhere in Hollywood. I’d just have to make a few texts, and I’d be in the midst of loose women and free-flowing booze by prime time. But Stella had other plans for me. She’d scheduled the caterer to meet us at my house to consult about the charity event. The last thing I wanted to do was sample duck confit and essence of deconstructed foam. Couldn’t we just order steak and call it a day?
To my surprise, Stella was waiting for me when I arrived home. I may have taken the long way there to clear my head, so who knew how long she’d been sitting in my vestibule. Los Angeles rush hour traffic wasn’t the forest of zen one would hope for in seeking relaxation. However, I was pleased to find Stella with a shopping bag filled with Chateau Mouton. I considered it a peace offering.
“That nice man let me in,” she said without preamble. “Ephraim.” She sat on my rustic entry bench, perched upright with a paper grocery bag at her side. The bench had a couple of decorative throw pillows, but it wasn’t a comfortable place to sit.
Next to her on the bench with her furry head in her lap, was Lady. My English Cocker Spaniel. When she saw me, she jumped down, wagging the little nub where her tail should be. I gave her a scratch behind her long ears before inquiring after Stella with interest.
“Why are you sitting in here?” I asked, taking her bag. “You could have made yourself at home.”
“I did,” she said. “But your dog insists on waiting at the door for you.”
I laughed, kicking off my shoes. “Follow me to the den. My couch misses me.”
I led her to the den where I invited her to sit. She chose my father’s armchair. It was old and looked out of place, but I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it. Besides, Georgia would kill me.
“Are these for the tasting?” I asked, holding up the bag of wine.