Little Blue Lies

by Chris Lynch

  Right now it feels perverse.

  “I know,” I say somberly. “For Christsake.”

  She pauses a couple of seconds.

  “Let’s go see the bathroom,” she says.

  This is when she drowns me, I imagine.

  I wouldn’t even know how to define the opulence of the bathroom. Everything is a kind of pale rose marble. There are four complete neighborhoods in here for various functions. She tugs me over to the enormous tub, with its rack of beauty products. “What does a person even do with six different controls on a bathtub? Does it fly? Can we take it for a spin around the harbor tomorrow?”

  I think that is funny, but I am too apprehensive to laugh.

  Until she does. As she takes a second, then a third lap of the bathroom, Junie begins laughing a most incredulous, disarming, confused, helpless laugh. She makes emphatic, wordless gestures toward this shiny item and that, and finally just holds both hands straight up in the air.

  “You see,” I say, standing my ground at a distance and pointing at her, “that could be seen as either the international gesture of surrender, or touchdown, so I’m not sure . . . Oh, wait. Now that I think of it, those are both good things.”

  She grabs me by both hands, pulls me over to the sink, and then spins me around to look out, through the opening in the sliding windows.

  From this spot you can see everything, the dazzling bathroom, then out over the big bed, to the glass-topped sideboard on the right-hand wall with the massive TV, and straight ahead to the glass wall, out to the harbor and the stars and stars above and beyond the sea.

  I turn my back on all that, to look into the face of Junie Blue. It’s a fine trade.

  “So, now you feel like you belong here?” I ask hopefully, stupidly falling into a hug with her.

  “Oh, absolutely not,” she says, surprisingly chipper. “But I am taking small comfort in the knowledge that nobody belongs here. I’m embracing the absurdity.”

  “Yes,” I say, hugging her tighter. “That really just encapsulates pretty much everything I have ever asked you to do. Yes! Embrace the absurdity, Junie Blue!”

  She puts a finger to my lips. “Shhh. For the moment. I am temporarily prepared to embrace the absurdity. But this is not real.”

  “Great,” I say. “Understood.”

  “So . . . ,” she says, gazing over my shoulder, “how much did this cost?”

  “Shhh,” I say, my finger to her lips. A shock of something nasty bolts through my body as I feel the slight unnatural puffiness there on that lovely Creamsicle lip, and I rush to banish that feeling. “This is not real.”

  She nods. A small pact is made.

  “So, then,” I say cheerily, “where would you like to have me, in the bed or the tub?”

  If I’d figured to startle her, I had once again badly misfigured.

  “Actually, the sink looks big enough,” she chirps.

  Life got so perfect so quickly. I love life for that.

  In my pocket my phone buzzes me. Calls on my phone are so rare that I do reflexively pick up most of them right away.

  “Jesus,” I say, “my mother. I totally forgot. . . .”

  I scurry into the other room, like one does to take a call privately. I come around the corner to find Junie sitting on the bed, giggling madly after having vaulted through the Japanese window.

  “Jeez, Mom, I’m sorry,” I say.

  “That’s it,” Junie yells out. “We’re moving here permanently.”

  I head back to the bathroom, and when I get there, Junie is standing on the bed, framed by the inter-room window, the big vista behind her providing the backdrop of purple sky and stars she should have with her always. She blesses me with a smile that makes me instantly feel like a far better guy than I will ever be able to be, and I feel an involuntary yip of love for her escape my lips.

  “Okay, that was weird,” Mom says as Junie slides the windows together to give us whatever privacy is possible. I hear the TV come on, which helps.

  “So,” I say, “how’s it going?”

  “You mean aside from getting my car stolen?”

  “Come on, Mom. Of course you knew I didn’t steal your car. But, yeah, I did kind of forget to bring it back.”

  “Or to call me.”

  “Sorry, sorry. I just got kind of preoccupied, when things got . . . hectic. Anyway, you knew I was over at Junie’s”

  I hear sounds in the background. Voices. Not my dad’s. Female voices.

  “Well, I did know that,” she says.

  “What’s going on there?” I ask.

  “Um, Son, do you really think this is a situation where you should be asking the questions?”

  “Well, ah . . . Okay, good point.”

  “Oh, and what is this?” she says in that stage-whispery voice that signals to the person on the other end of the phone connection that she’s not talking to them. “An appletini? Oh . . . Oh, oh my, that’s luscious.”

  “Mom?” I say. “Right, I know I’m not supposed to be posing the questions, but what’s going on there?”

  “The girls are over,” she says matter-of-factly.

  “What girls?”

  “The Blue girls. Leona and Maxine.”

  “You’re kidding me?”

  I hear her sipping. Slurping, actually.

  “And you, young man, are at a hotel! With your princess bride.” She goes into a small fit of giggles. “Whoops,” she says.

  “Whoops, what?”

  “Maxine just spilled while topping up my ’tini.”

  “Tell Maxie to stop topping the ’tini,” I demand. Demanding, I realize, is a trifle presumptuous.

  “Oliver,” Mom says in her very rare, very effective slap-the-young-man-down tone. She lets it hang for a moment while I achieve something resembling perspective.

  “Okay, we’re good,” I say. “Nice party?”

  “That would be far too strong a word, but under the circumstances, yes.”

  There is some instrumental jazz filling the air in the background as one of the ladies appears to have discovered the all-over-the-house audio system. Mom moves to another room, where the music still wafts but the guests do not.

  “Leona wanted to come and thank me personally for her portrait,” Mom says.

  “Uh-huh. And Maxine had to accompany her.”

  “I think that was for the best.”

  “Leona drunk?”

  “Not as drunk as I would be if I were her, but yes.”

  “Maxine chatty?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “That explains your hotel knowledge. What else do you know?”

  “Nowhere near as much as I expect to know once I get back to the conversation. But that’s another story. What more am I going to know once I finish with this conversation?”

  “Um,” I say tentatively, “not a whole lot?”

  “Nnnn,” she says. “I kind of figured as much. You realize, don’t you, that I have every right to be furious and insulted and possibly panicked right now.”

  “Every right,” I agree. “But don’t panic.”

  She sighs. I hear distant voices seeking her out at my house.

  “Will we pretend we have a normal relationship, and we just had a scalding argument, yelling and screaming about your thoughtlessness and selfishness and my controlling, misunderstanding, blah, blah, blah . . . without having to go through all that?”

  “Perfect,” I say. And she pretty much is.

  “Whew, that was rough,” she goofs. “I’m exhausted.”

  “Me too,” I say. “You should probably get back to your party anyway, before Dad charms everybody right off their feet.”

  “Oh, he’s not here. He’s got one of those things tonight where he’s boozing and charming people right off their wallets.”

  “He’s a force,” I say, suddenly worried that he might be doing all that right in this very building.

  “Okay, but yes, I probably should get back to them,” she says. Pau
se. Followed by pause. “Should I worry about you?”

  “Under no circumstances.”

  “Okay. I will. For now, though, I will occupy myself with worrying about these two.”

  “They’re good people, Mom.”

  “I know they are,” she says.

  “And so are you,” I say.

  “Well, duh,” she says, laughs, and hangs up.

  It is a source of great comfort that my mother says “duh” to me.

  When I return to the bed, Junie is making that deep, full, pre-sleep breathing from somewhere deep within the fine sheets and comforter. The only part of her that is visible is her hand, which protrudes from the top, between the pillows. She has located the DO NOT DISTURB sign that you’re supposed to hang on the doorknob, and she has secured it on the first two fingers of her hand. Clever girl.

  I remove the sign, then notice on the reverse side a menu.

  If you wish to preorder breakfast in your room, please fill out and hang on the outside of your door before three a.m.

  This sends me into something of a trance of preordered gluttony and thrill at the excitement of making this happen. By the time I hang the thing outside, it’s as if somebody else has done it for me. I barely remember making the choices, and I don’t recall what any of them are.

  I just now realize how exhausted I am myself. I go around turning everything off, leave the curtains open to the stars and the waterfront, then crawl in under there with her. I am not bothered that I did not bring a toothbrush. Or anything else.

  Who could be bothered by anything, here and now?

  “You lied,” she says, ever, ever so lightly, barely audibly.

  I don’t even want to know.

  Eight

  I awake to a dream.

  That is, I believe I am awake, because I have never dreamed this well before, and even if it is a dream, then, well done, subconscious.

  The sun is singing through the big window over the ocean, and Junie Blue is staring out at it, her back to me. I can smell the shower she has had, see her wet hair, see the white bathrobe she has on.

  “Hey,” I say.

  She turns to face me. “Hey.” She is smiling, shaking her head again.

  “That’s a nice robe,” I say. It looks really thick and soft, like they took some extra duvet material and stuffed it inside a fluffy robe.

  She walks to the side of the bed. “Feel it. This is the softest thing I have ever felt, including kittens.”

  I touch the sleeve of her garment, and it is indeed made of something like cloud.

  “There’s one for you, too, hanging on the back of the bathroom door. They had notes attached, telling us to please enjoy them while we’re here.”

  “Damn nice of them,” I say.

  “Damn nice. The shower is amazing.”

  “That, is good news,” I say, hopping out of bed and trying to take advantage of momentum to kiss her. I don’t get within five inches before she’s onto me.

  “You can use my toothbrush,” she says from behind her hand. “It’s in there.”

  I hop around to the shower and get right in. In the other room I hear the TV come on, and as I lather up with all the rich products on offer, things feel pretty serene. For a few minutes.

  There is a knock on the door.

  Junie freaks out entirely. She throws open the sliding windows again, and it feels like all the world, from Junie to the giant TV personalities sitting on the network couch, to everybody out there beyond our window, can see my nakedness.

  “Somebody’s at the door, the door,” she shouts.

  “So answer it.”

  “Yeah,” she says, because June’s antennae will always be more sharply tuned than mine, “what if it’s my father? Or worse?”

  That never even occurred to me, but at this point everything should occur to me.

  “Who is it?” I shout.

  “Room service,” the man calls.

  For a second it seems like she would have preferred her rampaging father.

  “You ordered . . . what?”

  I am feeling extremely naked right now, and not in the good way at all.

  “Don’t leave the man standing out there.”

  “Grrrr,” she says at me, slams the sliders, and then goes to let him in.

  I hear the rolling feast, the clattering of glasses and dishes, and try to remember the things I ordered. I hear brief polite discussion on both their parts, and eventually the gracious retreat of the room service gent.

  The sliders fly open again.

  “What is wrong with you?” she says.

  I work feverishly to get all the lather off myself. “That’s rhetorical, right?”

  “Well, if you’ve got an actual answer, I will be fascinated to hear.”

  “Could you just . . . give me a minute here, Junie? I’ll be right out.”

  “Fine,” she says, slamming the sliders again.

  Time passes, but not much of it. The amount of time it would take a person to, say, walk over and examine the contents of a room service breakfast for two, is what passes. Then the sliders whip open again.

  “And for your next trick, apparently you plan to make me obese. What is wrong with you?”

  “Rhetorical?”

  “No. Have an answer for me when you come out.”

  She slams the windows again and, whether I should be or not, I am laughing to myself.

  I walk cautiously out of the gilded bathroom of Caesar, into the carpeted, sunny main room, to find Junie sitting on the edge of the bed eating out of a basket of huge bursting red strawberries.

  “These are okay,” she says, sounding like she is needing to put effort into sounding peeved now.

  I look over the delivery cart, which itself looks like one of the nicest restaurant tables I have seen, only on wheels.

  “Wow” I say.

  “ ‘Wow,’ is right,” she says. “Madness.”

  “I’m kind of surprised myself, here in the bright light of day.”

  I scoop up a deep bowl containing three different kinds of fat grapes.

  “What were you doing?” she says more calmly.

  I pop a black seedless, and shrug. “Impress you?” I offer the bowl, and she peels off a bunch of the reds.

  She sighs, but one of those big showy sighs where you make your lips push out and flap like a horse. Then she takes a strawberry and offers it right to my mouth.

  If it were a strawberry, gooseberry, a shitberry, or a severed toe, I would still have taken it as she offered it. As it happens, it is the ripest, burstingest, most aromatic strawberry I have ever encountered. I make a groan of approval.

  “I know,” she says, on her third or fourth or whatever number it has taken to give her the world’s reddest lips.

  Partly due to my cajoling, partly due to profound hunger, and partly out of a horror of seeing things wasted, Junie eventually shares the bounty of this breakfast with me. There is far too much food, far too rich food, meats and pastries, eggs benedict with smoked salmon, coffee and Earl Grey tea, and the place smells better than any other place has ever smelled, and we do a heroic job of wasting as little as possible, but we finally surrender.

  I wheel the corpse of breakfast out to the corridor, where the medics can collect it. Then I put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door properly, come back, and fall onto the bed, next to the girl, in front of the TV, immobilized with the effort of digestion. Bliss.

  “So,” she says, “how much did that cost?”

  “Juuuune,” I say sternly. “Remember. This is not real.”

  “It sure as hell isn’t,” she says.

  “And nothing costs anything in this place that is unreal.” My torso is immobilized, but I gesture wildly in all directions with my arms. “Money does not exist here on our planet. It is a planet powered by thought. We think it, it happens. We wish it, it materializes.”

  “Yeah? This’s quite a planet we have.”

  “Yes indeed,” I say leaning
closer into her, even though I was already leaning right up against her. “Guess what I am wishing now?”

  “Oh. Jeez, well, so much for the planet, huh, because that won’t be materializing.”

  Wow. That was thorough.

  “Are you trying to tell me I just destroyed an entire planet with my . . . quest?”

  “Sure, but don’t sweat it. Why should you be the one to break the unbroken chain of men throughout human history?”

  We both lie there in silence, the TV nattering away while we give that statement the fear and respect it deserves.

  “That was pretty scathing,” I venture.

  “Good, you got it, then. I was afraid, being a guy and all . . .”

  “Wait,” I say brightly. “Silver lining. Glass half-full. What I get from that is, if somehow I am the man to break that chain, then I’m sure to get some.”

  “Yes,” she says, matching my brightness, “but then you’ll be thinking that way, you will reveal yourself as such, and it’s back on the chain gang for you, mister.”

  “Argghh,” is my final word on the subject.

  She laughs full-throatedly at me.

  In frustration and fun I fling myself sideways off the bed and bounce up again in what is becoming my default position, pleading—okay, begging—praying, folded hands and everything.

  “Not sure I’m liking this new move of yours as much as maybe I should. Did you retreat to your old altar boy gig when I dumped you or something? Because I don’t think I could live with that.”

  “I miss this so much, Junie. I miss it so much.”

  “So do I, O.”

  “Then let’s just stop missing it. Look.” I grab the lapels of my bathrobe, and it’s like grabbing a whipped cream jacket. “Look, look at our robes. Look at our big window. Look!”

  “What? I mean, what?”

  “I don’t know. I have no idea what I mean by that, but I’m just spotting the nicest things in the room and roping them in to help me.”

  I am making her laugh, which has to be a good thing, always was a good thing when there were good things. She leans over and takes my altar boy hands, and pulls me up onto the bed like she has landed a big tuna and is hauling it into her boat.

  “You, are the nicest thing in the room, Oliver,” she says, and pulls me into her bed.