by Julia Dumont
Oh, here he comes. Hey, BTW, have you ever made love under the influence of narcotics? I mean I’m not positive we’re headed there, but it’s beginning to seem pretty likely. When it numbs away the pain does it numb all feeling? Everywhere?
Despite the madness, these matches just keep working like magic.
But Cynthia also saw that she had three or four texts from Pete. She couldn’t ignore him forever.
Cynthia: I miss you. I really need to talk. Call me. I’ve cleared my morning. I am waiting.
– Pete
“Ava? Paloma? I really need to find a quiet place to make a call. Would you excuse me for a moment?”
“Of course,” said Ava, still whispering. “I’ll introduce the young Paloma to some of my stuffy old rich birds and bird-ettes. She can see first hand that although money can’t buy happiness, it can certainly buy boredom.”
Ouch. Cynthia had noticed that most of the younger people who had been in Ava’s vicinity when she and Paloma first arrived, had now dispersed throughout the room, leaving mostly old-fogeys and middle-aged-fogeys behind. In any case, it seemed like Ava had said that thing about boredom a little too loudly.
Cynthia headed back out between and under the two titanic boobs. A young artist or artist impersonator was having his picture taken in front of one of the breasts. He was standing on his tiptoes, reaching in vain toward the nipple, still at least fifteen feet out of his reach. He kept trying different poses, arms outstretched, pretending to try to encircle the orb with them. It was like when people have their photos taken attempting to hug a giant redwood tree, their tiny arms absurdly inadequate to take it all in. His cute girlfriend was taking the pictures and giggling at every new antic.
Cynthia headed down the hallway and out into the courtyard, sipping her wine along the way. It was still pretty loud, since there was another bar out there.
She saw someone she knew at the far corner of the plaza: Molly Hannigan, the ex-wife of Steven Sternberg, perhaps the most famous producer-director on this particular planet. Cynthia and Lolita had been there the day they’d broken up. So had Max Ramsey, Jack Stone, and dozens of friends and associates. It all came down on their picture-perfect, ocean-view, Pacific Palisades estate, when an avalanche of dirty, dark revelations rained down upon them for all to see. Many others had a role in the circumstances that eventually led to their horrifically messy divorce, but Jack Stone and Max were by far the most culpable. The number of lies and betrayals involved were nearly incomprehensible. The casualties were numerous. It was an eventful afternoon, marking the end of the world as they knew it…the end of many things: one marriage, at least four affairs, friendships, parent-child relationships, and one of the more successful collaborations in recent Hollywood history. Jack and Sternberg, best friends and colleagues for decades, were still not speaking to each other. Jack’s career had taken a major hit. Three important projects instantly went up in smoke when Sternberg discovered that his best friend Jack was a far, far more intimate friend of his wife, Molly.
Jack had since become a bit of a caricature of himself, his lies and duplicitous shenanigans now so widely reported, so transparent, so public, that for the first time in twenty years he was having trouble convincing young starlets to be as star-struck and stupid as he had come to depend on them to be in order to keep his revolving harem fresh.
Sternberg had announced his retirement from movies. In addition to everything else, he’d been working on a Broadway musical at the time_____Gambling Rose, based on the plight of Pete Rose, the disgraced baseball star_____so he immediately picked up and moved to New York in time for the premiere. The highly anticipated production, starring Matt Damon as Rose, had cost ninety-two million dollars to stage. It closed in three days: “Rose Pops Up, Poops Out”_____Variety. “Rose Blooms, Withers and Dies”_____New York Times. “Rose Inducted into Hall of Theatrical Shame”_____Time Out “Sternberg Gambles, Loses”_____Wall Street Journal.
Molly had gone off the deep end. She’d been cheating on Sternberg with Jack Stone and Max (separately, not together) and, even worse, her daughter Mariana was also screwing Jack Stone and was in fact deeply in love with him. The cherry on top of this disastrously incestuous parfait was that although Molly was shockingly unconcerned about losing Steven and Jack—–other than harboring a certain lingering affection for Steven’s massive fortune and Jack’s similarly oversized instrument of love (one not-small detail that did make one wonder whether Molly were in the vicinity tonight because Jack was)_____she was still deeply, desperately, some say stark-raving-madly in love with Max. It was non-reciprocal. As in restraining-order non-reciprocal.
Since that fateful day, she had been arrested no less than three times for accosting Max and/or causing a public nuisance wherever he happened to be, which required tenacity, because he had not had a regular address in quite a while, preferring instead to bounce around from nice to nicer hotels. Incident one: she appeared out of nowhere nearly naked in a dressing room in the men’s department of Barneys New York in Beverly Hills. Incident two: on the beach at Hotel del Coronado, wearing only hot pants, an enormous straw hat, and a child’s inflatable plastic tube around her chest like a bikini top. And incident three, weirdest of all: outside Arclight Cinema, greeting him after a Sunday matinee, wearing only a raincoat, a martini, and a small loaded pistol. No shots were fired, but that was the incident that led to the restraining order. Max was with a date at the time, so even though he felt bad about taking legal action, he was more afraid for the safety of the other women in his life than for himself.
Molly spent some time in rehab in Malibu and had just recently rejoined society, but the order was still in effect. She was not to get within two hundred yards of Max.
Mariana, the daughter, had moved to England to write a tell-all book about the family and was not on speaking terms with anyone in the family.
Incredibly, the whole thing was a big positive for Cynthia. She narrowly escaped being but another fly stuck in Jack’s worldwide spider web, and even more importantly, had finally broken free from the disastrously toxic charms of Max Ramsey, who had been a fun but ultimately bad recurring habit of hers for years.
Cynthia squinted in Molly’s direction. She was talking with friends, drinking wine…which was maybe a bad sign. On the other hand, she was wearing designer something or other and not a Hula Hoop, so that was a relatively good sign. She actually looked okay…professionally coifed, put together. Cynthia detected a certain nervous energy, but Molly had always been a bit high strung. Bird-like. Poodle-like. You get the picture.
Cynthia wandered further and finally found a quiet spot on a bench in the Rodin sculpture garden…ironic since it had a similar ambience to the Kyoto garden from which Pete had called her. Except these Rodins had the added component of muscularity and sensuality…titanic figures stretching and straining bigger-than-life angst and passion … raging against the mundane, the routine, the complacent…the distant and removed: in other words, her current so-called relationship with Pete.
She pressed call.
But Pete had gotten up incredibly early, especially for a musician, and when he couldn’t reach Cynthia, he’d retreated to the hotel. Determined to stay awake, he’d made coffee, read the paper, watched TV news, and noodled around on the guitar a bit. But despite his best efforts, he drifted into dreamland, this time with a vengeance. Maybe he was dreaming about having a girlfriend less than ten time zones away, maybe not. In any case, even though he’d held his phone in his hand to make sure that if Cynthia called it would wake him, it didn’t. He responded exactly like a dead man. Or, as it appeared to Cynthia, an uncaring, unavailable, or non-existent boyfriend.
The phone rang ten times and then Cynthia was bounced to voicemail. She could not believe it. This was beyond ridiculous. Pete had been on the road for twelve weeks and although they had at least started off with a fairly hot and heavy long-distance thing, now even that had fallen apart, as if the connection had gotten lost somewhere h
alfway across the Pacific Ocean, en route from a distant satellite, or stranded at a fried cell tower. It wasn’t very long ago that it seemed like all systems were go with Cynthia and Pete and now it felt like all systems were going, going, gone. And there still was no clear end date for the tour. Every time they played a concert, they added another one on at the end. It seemed endless. Even his voicemail message irritated her now. She’d heard it a million times before, but today it got under her skin:
“Hi, you’ve reached Pete. Well, you’ve reached Pete’s phone. Talk to Pete’s phone, Pete’s phone will talk to Pete, and then Pete will talk to your phone. Beep!”
The first time, actually the first ten or so times, she’d heard that message, she’d laughed. But now it wasn’t funny at all…just an accurate description of their life. She left a very short message:
“Hi, Pete’s phone. Say goodbye to Pete for me.”
She headed back along the garden path, cursing the fact that the emotions conveyed by the Rodin sculptures were so much more vital than her own frustration, impotence, and numbing dissatisfaction.
She gulped down the last bit of wine and threw it against a rough-hewn marble wall, like throwing a champagne glass into a fireplace. But the plastic “glass” just bounced off. Even her drama had no drama.
As she climbed the steps and entered the courtyard, she decided to head over to the ladies’ room. She ducked into a deserted corridor. These particular restrooms were off the beaten path, not the main ones close to the action where the opening was taking place, which would undoubtedly have long lines.
Her phone buzzed and she looked down to see that it was Darius Carlotta, the documentary filmmaker who was out on a date with Tara Beckwith, the most fascinating woman in the world.
“Hi Cynthia. Listen, I’ve just gotta tell you that you are a genius. A relationship genius. I have never had a date this perfect. Just wanted to say thanks. –Darius
Yeah, I’m a relationship genius all right.
She pushed into the ladies’ room door, but it didn’t move. At first she assumed it was just locked and not available this evening. But then she heard sounds from inside…two people…a man and a woman. She put her ear to the door, but she couldn’t hear much until a female voice said very distinctly, “OH, JACK.”
Good God. Obviously a Jack Stone/Molly Hannigan reunion going on in there.
She thought about banging on the door and breaking it up. But Jack was Ava’s friend. Plus, what could she do, tell them they had to stop? They were consenting adults. Consenting adults with more than a few screws maybe, but still. She worried about Molly, but it was her life. Cynthia used the men’s room instead.
Back in the gallery, Cynthia looked for Paloma and Ava, but ended up talking with Anton somebody, one of the artists. He had created an x-rated totem pole, covered with lip prints, rising twenty feet upward and culminating in a huge, bulging man-penis head. It was even more obscene than one would imagine from that obscene description. Anton was a lovely man and incredibly handsome. Under the circumstances_____the Pete call, the restroom incident_____Cynthia was happy to have someone to flirt with. But unfortunately, just when their repartee was getting good, another ridiculously handsome man approached and said to Anton, “Okay, Sweetie, time to go home.”
Cynthia mingled for a while.
Chapter 24
FRIDAY 10:11 PM
“Jack,” said Paloma, holding her fingers to his lips, “I’m really not up for this. I need to get back out there.”
“Oh, come on.”
“I met someone,” she said.
“What, since yesterday? Since we talked about hooking up here?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact.”
“Really, Paloma? Well, what does that have to do with it? I assume you’re not married or anything. I hope to God you didn’t marry this new someone within minutes of meeting him.”
“No, of course not,” she replied. “Okay, listen, this is the last time for a while. Maybe forever. I’m tired of it.”
“You’re tired of what?”
“This. It’s just not working for me anymore.”
He knew this day would come. He didn’t know that she had wanted to end their affair before she even met Seamus. In fact, much earlier than that…before Jack let her know that he’d heard Cynthia was looking for an assistant. When Cynthia hired Paloma, she and Jack agreed their affair was better kept secret from Cynthia.
“Okay, all right,” he whispered, unbuttoning her white blouse, revealing exquisite mocha skin. He slipped the bra strap from her shoulder, kissed the place where it had been, and left a long row of kisses en route to her breast. He held her in his arms, slid his powerful hands under her perfect bottom, and eased her up onto the counter, her legs encircling him, her skirt hiked up near her waist.
“But if it’s going to be the last time,” he continued, getting closer_____lips gently brushing lips, mouths trading warm breaths_____“let’s make it special.” He hooked an index finger around the elastic waistband of her purple undies and began to ease them off.
“Right,” she said in a devastating deadpan. “Because what’s more special than a public restroom?”
He stopped. It was like she’d pressed a “pause” button. They just looked at each other.
“You know,” she said, placing her hand on the hand that was pulling off her panties, “I changed my mind. I gotta go.” She rearranged her lingerie and closed her blouse.
“Wait, no…Paloma. Why are you doing this? Our last time was our most glorious love-making ever.”
“It was okay,” said Paloma, sounding distant, sliding onto her feet.
“Okay?” asked Jack.
“Yeah, whatever, it was great,” she said, re-buttoning, no longer making eye contact. “But that first time in Mexico will always stand out for me.”
“Oh, well, yeah,” he said, gazing into the bathroom mirror, wishing he could see into the past. “You’d just turned twenty-one. You came along with your mother. I was on that war movie.”
“Right, The Final Battle,” she said, staring at him like he was mentally deficient. “I know. I was there.”
Despite Paloma’s maturity and intelligence, today, with Jack, she sounded like a teenager. Then again, so did he.
“Listen, Paloma, are you sure about this?” He used the movie-star tone and megawatt smile that always made her melt.
Except today. She didn’t even seem to notice. She checked the mirror, combed her bangs with her fingers, applied a quick lip-gloss touch-up, and finally looked at him.
“Speaking of ‘sure,’ Jack, are you sure that on that fateful day in Mexico I had really turned twenty-one?”
Jack stopped smiling. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but nothing came out.
“I’m kidding,” giggled Paloma, rolling her eyes.
Chapter 25
FRIDAY 10:32 PM
Lolita returned home from an evening of shopping. Max had some kind of major meeting on the phone with his Dublin associates, so he’d disappeared, which was fine because she decided she needed some new things for the party. She was standing in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom, but she wasn’t the only one checking out the skintight mini-dress she was modeling. Her three dogs were lined up like patient boyfriends watching a personal fashion show outside a department store dressing room. The dress’s blue and white stripes gave it a certain conservative yacht-clubby feeling, but the stripes also accentuated her topography to such a degree that it conveyed a powerful come-hither-in-a-hurry signal that ninety-nine percent of all sailors everywhere would likely respond to with big, hard salutes. All hands on deck! Hoist the mainsail! Come about! Ahoy, matey!
To tell you the truth, Lolita was getting hot just looking at herself.
And that was the most conservative article of clothing she was bringing along. She was looking forward to it. Max would not be there, which was good. Or maybe not.
Could Max be changing? That moment on the
Vespa. The way he’s acting. But, come on, Lolita…be serious. This is Max we’re talking about.
She called Tanya.
“Hi, Lo,” answered her employee, who happened to be reclining on her couch, with her boyfriend, rapper and chess enthusiast Dr. T-bone, at that very moment. Ever since Lolita lured Tanya back to Dog Groomer to the Stars after firing her for having sex with T-Bone at work, their relationship had been much more respectful. Tanya had gotten a big raise and they had both been very accommodating of each other’s needs and schedules. This weekend was a good example. In the early days of the shop, Lolita wouldn’t even think of going away for a weekend. Now, Tanya covered for her and, this weekend, even Dr. T-Bone was coming in to help out.
“Hi, Tanya. Sorry to call so late, but I know you’re a night owl, right?”
Dr. T-Bone’s tongue flicked across Tanya’s ear and she let out a strange little squeal, the result of trying to contain a much larger squeal. She slapped T-Bone on the top of his head.
“Tanya?” asked Lolita, concerned. “Are you all right? You’re not crying are you?”
T-Bone flicked and fluttered, double-time.
“No!” she said in an octave that she was pretty sure she had never hit, ever. “Not crying. I’m fine. What’s up?”
Another head slap.
“Oh, nothing much. Just checking in, making sure you’re all set for tomorrow. It should be kind of busy…lots of pick-ups. Did you ever put that order in for shampoos and stuff?”
Flick, flick, flutter, flutter. Double head slap.
“YES!” shrieked Tanya, losing control and sliding off the couch, onto her shoulders on the floor, her legs up high, and now locked around T-Bone’s neck. He looked down at her, smiling.
“Okay, okay!” said Lolita, “I’m not accusing you of forgetting or anything, I just want to make sure.”
“I know, Lolita,” said Tanya, holding T-Bone’s face at bay with an outstretched palm. “Sorry I over-reacted. I ordered from just about everyone on Wednesday. Grooming stuff, food, toys, dog beds…I did an inventory on Monday, so we’ll be in good shape. Are you looking forward to the whole yacht thing?”