Tales of a Drama Queen

by Lee Nichols

“I’d never have guessed,” she says with a straight face. “But what did you pay the kindergartner who drew it?”

  Chapter 25

  On Sunday, I call Joshua twice. Leave one message.

  On Monday, I call Joshua twice. Leave one message.

  Tuesday, for a change, I call five times, and leave no messages.

  I also work. Have not met C. Burke yet, but my log-in times are creeping up nicely. I found a training manual. Read five pages, and threw it away. It was all about keeping people on the phone and squeezing them for as much money as possible. Made me feel almost like Adele; I know it’s not a noble calling, but there’s no reason we can’t be helpful and nice and funny, instead of greedy, grasping frauds.

  Turns out the customer doesn’t have to pay any disputed charges. That’s the other reason they tell us to push the free psychic newsletter—so they can prove people called. So I only ask for addresses when I remember. It’s only a buck extra, anyway. And if you just listen, and ask questions, people like to talk. There’s nothing to it.

  Wednesday, I get another call from a woman complaining about her boyfriend. Her name is Nyla. She’s from Chicago. Her voice is husky and she talks in a flat Midwestern accent.

  “I think he’s sleeping around on me,” she says. “Am I right?”

  Always best to avoid yes and no questions, so I ask if she trusts her intuition, and if her suspicions and hunches usually prove true. We talk for a while about that, then I ask what makes her think he’s sleeping around.

  “He’s been distant. Kind of cold—well, even colder than usual. And not much interested in sex.”

  She doesn’t have the abused-animal feel that Janet conveyed. “How long have you been together?”

  “Four years.”

  “And he’s never been distant before?”

  “Not like this. He’s always been sorta…contained. Well, but now it’s like he doesn’t care about me at all. I mean, like I’m a convenience, a dishwasher, or cup-holder or something.”

  She explains, and he does sound cold. Not cruel—just like he doesn’t care about Nyla either way. “You sure you want to stay together?” I ask.

  “God, yes! I can’t leave him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well. He pays for everything.”

  “But he’s not there for you, emotionally. Right?”

  “He’s a doctor. And he works really hard,” she says. “He’s a, um, a good provider. I mean, I couldn’t leave him. He, you know…”

  “Pays for everything?”

  “Everything. Last week I got a Vivienne Westwood. And a Fendi bag that cost like sixteen hundred. Vogue’s pick of the year.”

  My chair starts to feel a little uncomfortable. “So?”

  “So, if I left him I couldn’t afford an apartment on the lake, or wear Gucci, or shop at Whole Foods, or eat at the Pump Room, or—”

  “The cards say you’re lost,” I tell her.

  “Lost?”

  “You’ve forgotten who you are. The cards say you have to—well, here’s the Juggler.” Adele hisses something to me about there not being a Juggler, but I can’t stop now. “You’ve been juggling your life around him, like moons in an orbit.” What the hell does that mean? I am becoming my mother. “You need to be your own planet.”

  “But…the Pump Room is on his planet. Prada is on his planet. His planet has all the good stuff.”

  “Your planet has plenty of good stuff,” I say. “You just have to look.”

  “I don’t know. This isn’t what I—I just wanted to hear if he’s sleeping around.”

  “You better start looking for a job, Nyla. Because the cards say splitting up is definitely an option.”

  “No,” she says firmly. “Forget it. I’m calling another psychic.”

  “Until you find one who says he’s not sleeping around? The problem isn’t him. It’s you.”

  She says something impolite and gives me a dial tone.

  An older woman calls. Her name is Valentine, which I love. I get her address…and she lives in Montecito! I ask if she lives next to Oprah. She says no. But I still gushingly question her about her house, her garden, her furniture, shopping habits and life. She’s seventy-four, has outlived three husbands, and is on the prowl for the fourth. She was born on a dirt farm in Georgia. She is vibrant and happy and prefers cotton and wool fabrics in bright colors. She doesn’t like antiques much, and I think I break some sort of record, because the call is sixty-two minutes long.

  Darwin is amazed. Adele is jealous—she says, “You didn’t even offer her a reading!” C. Burke will promote me. Sheila will be proud. Monty will be paid. Even Carlos will get his money.

  I am buzzed, eager for the next call. It’s a woman who wants to go off the pill without telling her boyfriend. Her numerology (she is a 7 or maybe 4—couldn’t quite get the math right) informs us that she should rescue a dog from the pound instead.

  And I’m on a roll. Everyone should rescue a dog. Except the allergic man. He, it turns out, should take up ballroom dancing.

  Thursday is a good day. I have two skeptics, who I’m really starting to like. You can joke with them. They want to believe, but know it’s ridiculous. So my goal is to give them a good reading—well, good advice—despite themselves. And if you sorta halfway admit that no, there’s nothing psychic about it, but you’re happy to listen to them talk, it’s all peachy.

  I have ten or eleven normal calls. Bread-and-butter, Darwin calls them. About love and money and sex. I’ve discovered that women’s magazines are far better fortune-telling devices than tarot cards, though I still read off the names of cards occasionally, for verisimilitude.

  Adele isn’t entirely convinced that this is proper for a psychic reading. I tell her my personal Gift is synched with the contemporary moment, with the cultural mood—not with ancient cards or runes or zodiacal signs. She’s still pondering that, I think—but we get along pretty well, now. Except that I’m a little jealous of her. She, oddly, seems to have a reputation among Texans—a lot of them call and ask for her by name for their bread-and-butter questions. I am eager to develop my own list. I’m getting a few repeat calls already, which Darwin says is unusual. The rumpled and paternal C. Burke will love me.

  I have three crisis calls on Thursday, too. Women in trouble—I am faster with the hot-sheet this time. I give them the crisis numbers, and tell them very sternly that the cards say they should not be calling 900 numbers, but absolutely must call the hotline numbers. I give them the regular number for the office, too, in case they need to talk. That’s sort of against policy, but we’re allowed personal calls, and who’s gonna know if they’re friends or ex-clients?

  And on Friday, I get a paycheck. Superior pays every week, and I’m halfway done with the money I need for first month’s rent. I’m moving in today, and I’ll pay Monty next week.

  I attempted to cry myself to sleep last night because Joshua has not returned my calls, but the truth is I only miss the attention, and the sex, and the contact high from his beauty. Hmm. That’s quite a lot, actually.

  I’m with Perfect Brad, now. I’d stopped by to give Maya get-well cupcakes and borrow PB to help me move. Goodbye, trolley and hello, studio. It’s a converted attic in an old Victorian, located between State Street and, well, the Department of Motor Vehicles. Not the most beautiful neighborhood, but a pretty good one—and I won’t need my car much anymore, because I’ll be able to walk everywhere downtown.

  The building is a project of Monty’s—he bought it last year and is having it restored. It’s almost finished, and it’s lovely. Arched ceilings, painted creamy white. Soft buttery yellow walls, and muted olive carpets. Through the old bay window, I feel like I’m hovering above downtown. It has a kitchen and a bathroom, and they are each in their own place, with absolutely no overlap. I love it.

  “It’s perfect, isn’t it?” I tell PB.

  He grunts under the strain of my bureau and tells me it’s great. “Maya’s dad,” he sa
ys.

  “Huh?”

  He puts the bureau down. “Maya’s dad. He talked to Monty about it.”

  “What it?”

  “You. Needing a place.”

  “Mr. Goldman! I had no idea. What a sweetie.” Perhaps Mr. Goldman needs an orchid. “Oh, would you move that just over here, Brad? Thanks.”

  When we finally get all the furniture upstairs, I walk Brad to his car and head back to the trolley. Mrs. Petrie said that if I get out today, they’ll refund me a hundred dollars of my security.

  Good thing the trolley is so small there aren’t many surfaces to clean. Still, I am a dirty bird—sweaty, malodorous and thoroughly disheveled—when Joshua walks in the door. He is clean, well-dressed and thoroughly gorgeous.

  “Moving out?” he asks.

  “Moving up!”

  “New job and new apartment.” He smiles, and the sun shines a bit brighter. “You’ve got it going on.”

  “New job? How did you hear about that?”

  “Your message. Well, one of your messages.”

  “Oh! I…well, I was calling because I thought you, um, left your wallet here, but it turns out it wasn’t your wallet. Not that it was anyone else’s wallet. It was mine. An old one. Maya’s, actually. A friend. She—”

  He stops the babble with a kiss. When I regain my breath, he asks about work like a real boyfriend would. “Work is amazing!” I say. “Mostly I just talk on the phone, which is a personal strength of mine and—”

  “You work the phones, not the office?”

  I tell all, and he listens with attentive gorgeousness and says: “Are you free for dinner tonight?”

  “I’m a bit of a mess,” I say, so he’ll tell me how beautiful I am.

  “You look okay.”

  “Um, but I can clean up. Where shall we go?”

  “My house. In Montecito.”

  “You have a house in Montecito?” Notice how often Montecito is coming up, recently? Oprah, then Valentine and now Joshua. And it’s not just because it’s the next town over. It’s fate. It’s in the cards.

  “I’ll make dinner,” he says. Then asks, a little doubtfully, if I can be there by seven.

  I wipe cobwebs from my forehead. “No problem.”

  Chapter 26

  Montecito makes me feel like Lisa Simpson at a runway show. Glamour everywhere, perfect clothing on perfect bodies with perfect hair, and I clomp around cowlike with my Velcro hair and Target clothing. It doesn’t matter that I’m wearing Celine over Calvin Klein heels—I am a bovine clumping intruder, and Montecito knows it.

  At night, Montecito is in permanent blackout mode. Mansions, estates, chateaux and modest little seventeen-room haciendas are shrouded by foreboding, custom-wrought gates and impenetrable, perfectly-manicured hedges. There are no streetlamps or road signs. It is impossible to arrive in Montecito unless you’re intimately familiar with your destination.

  It takes me forty-five minutes to find Joshua’s house. It’s a mansion. I cannot be this lucky. Despite the presence of Joshua’s car, I’m sure I have the wrong place. I ring the bell anyway. At least I can get directions, and possibly I’ll meet Oprah, Jeff Bridges or Rob Lowe.

  The door opens and, in a glow of honey-colored light, Joshua appears. He’s wearing a black ribbed sweater and jeans, and his feet are bare. Even his toes are sexy.

  “You look gorgeous,” he says. “Prada?”

  “What?” Is Prada his standard greeting? Because there’s no way this dress can be mistaken for Prada. I almost correct him with a stern “Celine,” but kiss him instead; I had a caller yesterday whose husband thinks she’s a nag, and I told her, would you rather be right, or happy? So I figure I should take my own advice.

  The kiss is nice, but not hot. He leads me into the house, and I follow, worried about the absence of heat. Does he need time in his cave? Maybe I should have worn something sexier, like Saran Wrap or Jenna’s body.

  “Did you have any trouble finding the place?” he asks.

  I am almost too stunned by the immensity of the living room to respond. It must be two thousand square feet. A half-dozen logs are burning in the fireplace, with enough room left to roast a mastodon. Around the hearth, and it’s definitely a hearth, is a phalanx of couches, a battalion of tables, a regiment of chairs. With, um, assorted other military-metaphors of carpets, lamps, bookshelves, artwork. It’s a showroom. I have to restrain myself from looking for price tags.

  He asks if I’ll have some wine, and I nod, afraid to ruin the moment by speaking. I follow him into an Architectural Digest kitchen and perch at one of the stools around the center island. But it’s bigger than an island. It’s a continent. Joshua pulls the cork from a bottle of Pinot Grigio and pours two glasses.

  “To us,” he says.

  There is an us! He thinks we’re an us!

  I beam and clink glasses—nothing breaks, nothing sloshes out of my glass. He tells me he’s making salmon, and starts chopping an onion on the butcher block. He is a gorgeous chopper.

  “Can I help?” I ask.

  “No, thanks. Joshua likes to cook.”

  Elle doesn’t know what that’s about. Elle thinks referring to yourself in the third person is bizarre. But if that’s the price Elle has to pay for gorgeous man in gorgeous Montecito mansion who cooks salmon and gives Elle envelopes full of cash, Elle will think it is the cutest thing ever.

  “How long have you lived here?” I ask. What I mean is, how do you afford this place?

  “About a month, now.”

  “You rent?”

  He laughs, gorgeously. “Not quite.”

  “You don’t own it?”

  “Not quite that, either.”

  He lives with his parents. His wife owns it. “Well, um…it must cost a fortune,” I say.

  “Oh, no. It’s free.”

  I almost spill my wine. “What? How?”

  “The owners are only here a couple months a year, so when they’re not using it, I do.”

  “Oh! A house-sitter. You really scored.”

  He looks up from the cutting board, slightly perplexed. “Yeah, I guess you could call me a house-sitter. Anyway, I wanted to ask your advice.”

  “Me?” There is an us, and he wants my advice! A good thing I do this professionally. “Well, um…have you ever considered adopting a dog from the shelter?”

  “No. Anyway, how does the phone gig work?”

  “Oh. The phone gig? Um…” I watch him pull fresh salmon steaks from the fridge and put them under the broiler. “It’s actually pretty good. I’m really able to help people. Like, two days ago this woman called who hasn’t spoken to her mom in a year. And they live in the same house. So I told her—”

  “No, I mean—how does it work? Is it an 800 number and you take credit cards, or a 900 number and they get charged by the minute?”

  “900.” Why doesn’t he want to hear my estranged-daughter story?

  But then he asks a bunch of questions about behind-the-scenes Psychic Connexion, and it’s like we’re having a real conversation about my career. I’m quite proud.

  “Three ninety-nine a minute,” he laughs. “And they get you on the other end?”

  “Why is that funny?”

  “Oh, Elle.” He reaches across the island and cups my cheek in his hand. “You’re adorable.”

  I press my face against his hand, like a dog begging for treats. I want so much for him to like me.

  Over a candlelit dinner, I tell him about the parent company, and the divisions and laws and equipment and all that. He’s so attentive and absorbed in me and my life that when he asks if I can get him some paperwork from C. Burke’s office, so he can really understand how the business operates, I agree. I guess it is pretty interesting.

  Dessert is raspberry tarts he picked up at a bakery in the village. I am afraid of mine; it will inevitably become an unsightly and embarrassing stain on my Celine. So I regale him with work-related stories, and ignore the luscious tart. I mean the pastry.<
br />
  “Straight Sex is one of the categories?” he says. He feeds me a bite of raspberry tart. “Tell me more.”

  I do better. I show him.

  The king-size bed has real linen sheets. They need ironing, but still, real linen! The good-morning squeak is delightful. A little difficult to truly relax while terrified he’ll spot cellulite, but still pretty delightful. Am so blissed out during the drive home, that I almost forget I’ve moved, and have to cut off a trucker to get to my exit.

  It’s drizzling rain, and my new house is slightly spooky, with its Victorian turrets in the gray light. I don’t even know who else lives here. It’s mixed residential/commercial, but I didn’t have time yesterday to pry into the question of fellow tenants. Haven’t been in the front door yet—used the back all day yesterday, for moving. I’m glad it’s morning. The house must appear sinister, at night.

  I step inside the front door and a man looms over me. I yelp.

  “Elle?” It’s Merrick. In the foyer of my building. “What are you doing here?”

  “You scared me,” I say.

  “That was not my intent.”

  “That was not my intent? Who talks like that? You sound like Spock.” There’s a plaque on the open door behind Merrick. It reads: Louis Merrick, Architect. “You work here? You don’t work here. You work here?”

  He gestures inside. The room is dominated by a large drafting table, beyond which are a couch and two antique Chinese wooden chairs. “Front room’s my office. There’s a bedroom in back.”

  “You live here? You don’t live here.”

  “Would you stop that? I do work here, and I do live here. At least I sleep here. I’m building a house, and I’m running into problems. I’m staying here until I get it sorted out.” He looks fresh and showered and coffeed, and smells of lavender bath gel. I am stale and rumpled, with a raspberry stain on my left tit. My hair is in knots, and I smell of Joshua. “Were you looking for me?” he asks.

  “I live here.”

  He frowns. “Monty rented you one of the spaces?”

  “Why shouldn’t he?”