by Anna Roberts
I sigh. "Hanna, stop it."
"Stop what? Is just us against the world, Kate. Just us ladies. All us single ladies." She hiccups. "Oh my God I love that song - we need music!"
She wrenches free of my grasp and staggers off at an Igorish angle - the loss of a shoe has left her with one leg a full three inches shorter than the other. She hobbles round in circles for a moment before tripping over the end of a rug. I think she's unconscious before she even hits the floor. She lands with her face mashed against the rug and gives way to rich, throaty drunken snores.
"Yeah, you fucking go girl," I say.
"Seriously," says Jesús, furtively picking another wedgie.
We stand there for a moment, staring down at Hanna. "So, you know," I say. "This is just one of the wonderful things I've been doing with my life over the past couple of years."
He's trying hard not to laugh and when he meets my eye there's a moment - like one of our old moments when we used to look at each other and start cracking up at whatever bone-stupid thing Hanna had said or done. The sudden wave of lust that hits me is so unexpected it almost knocks me off my feet. He was always kind of a pretty boy so I guess it's no surprise that 'Jessica' is cute, but I'm surprised to find her nearly as attractive as him.
He feels it too. I know it. I can see it in his eyes. The light of laughter is giving way to something kinda filthy, like the looks he used to give me when he was secretly wearing my underwear.
Only then someone downstairs starts howling - like actually howling, and we stop and stare.
"What the fuck is that?" asks Jesús.
"Sasquatches," I say. "Probably. It's gangbang time, baby."
I glance over the banister rail to the open plan living area below. Casper wanders into view, howling happily at the top of his lungs.
"Cas?"
He stops.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
He grins up at us. "I'm welcoming you to our happy forest home," he says.
"Yeah. Well...don't."
His face falls. "Kate, I always thought you were accepting of my lifestyle..."
"...no. I said I didn't care about your so-called lifestyle. There's a difference."
Casper pouts. "Whatever. Mom called. She wants to speak to you."
"Why?"
"I don't know. She was under the impression that you were going to pick up Celestia this evening."
Chapter Eleven
...Stays In Aspen
I call Claudia back. I don't particularly want to, but the alternative is listening to Casper complain about 'fursecution' and I've had way more of the bitching and whines of the rich and the pointless than anyone with my kind of bank balance should ever have to put up with.
"What the hell are you doing in Aspen?" she yells.
"Lady, I don't fucking know either," I say. "Take it up with the writers. One minute it was a kidnap plot featuring El Fupacabra and the next minute Hanna's like 'Oh, let's go and get really drunk in Aspen'..."
"Kidnap plot?" says Claudia.
"Um...yeah? Wait - did she tell you?" Somewhere in the kitchen Casper is crying loudly because I didn't start screaming with wild delight over his stupid goddamn animal impersonation. I know Phillip Larkin said moms and dads always fuck their kids up, but even by his miserable standards Claudia's some kind of overachiever.
"Tell me what?" she says.
"Great," I say. Casper's howls intensify. I cover the handset and yell at him. "Casper, shut the fuck up. I loved your fox impression, okay? It was the greatest fucking fox impression ever."
He quiets and peers around the side of the fridge, his face streaked with tears. He's stopped crying but his eyes are cold. "I'm a folf," he says. "Actually."
"Okay. Whatever." I uncover the phone and try to tune him out. "There's no easy way to say this..." I begin.
Casper marches over and yells in my other ear. "I'M A FOLF, YOU IGNORANT MUNDANE!"
"Is that Cas?" says Claudia. "What's he doing in Aspen?"
"...THAT'S A CROSS BETWEEN A FOX AND WOLF..."
I swear, I was gonna tell Claudia to sit down or something, but they give me no choice. "ALICIA'S BEEN KIDNAPPED!" I scream at the top of my lungs.
There's a silence on the end of the line. Casper covers his face with his giant cartoon paws. "Oh," says Claudia, eventually. "Well..."
"Your only daughter gets kidnapped and all you can say is 'well'?" I ask.
"I don't know exactly what you think I should be saying," says Claudia. "Besides, what am I going to do with Celestia?"
"I dunno," I say, glancing over at the enraged furry lurking next to the refrigerator. "But whatever the fuck it was you did to your kids I’d suggest doing the opposite of that."
I hand the phone over to Casper and go back upstairs. Hanna is still passed out on the landing and Jesús is standing over her, prodding her in the ribs with the toe of his shoe. "So now what?" he says.
"I dunno. Skiing?"
"It's August."
Yep. He's got me there. I almost wish Hanna would wake up. At least when she's conscious we're constantly trying to either avoid her or marvel at whatever dumbass thing she's about to say or do next. The awkwardness is back and neither of us seems to know how to avoid it.
"You wanna go get something to eat?" says Jesús, and I say yes before it occurs to me to say no. On the other hand, what's the fucking alternative? Sitting around listening to Casper whine that I wasn't paying enough attention to his X-rated version of The Wind in the Willows? Watching Hanna blow spit bubbles in her sleep?
It's not like I'm too proud to let a man buy me dinner, even if he is a lady. And especially when he owes me a goddamn sight more than dinner.
In all the years I knew him, I don't think I ever actually had dinner with Jesús. Usually we just ordered pizza whenever the munchies took us, which was pretty often. When Hanna broke up with Crispian we used to prop the box open in her lap and tell her not to cry on it, which - to her credit - she didn't. Only there was that time she had a pregnancy scare, before Celestia, and then she did cry - a lot. So we had to stop using her as a pizza holder; nobody wants their quattro stagioni watered with tears of self-pity and narcissistic rage.
So it's weird to sit down in an actual restaurant, like we were adults or something. But we are, aren't we? I mean, Hanna has a fucking kid. Hanna - the girl who used to refer to her cunt as 'down there'. Actually she probably still does. No wonder the obstetricians decided to whip the kid out through the sunroof - if she'd realised her entrance was also an exit it might have just blown her tiny mind.
Jesús - looking lovely in a white silk blouse and high-waisted plum pencil skirt - glances at the wine list. "Barolo?" he says, as if we're proper people, like we didn't used to use old pizza boxes as bathmats.
"Sure," I say. "Whatever. You know me - I'll drink pretty much anything I can gag down."
There's a flash of maybe embarrassment in his eyes and I get the unsettling feeling I've been standing still all this time. Hanna's a mom, Crispian's dead and Jesús is a bestselling romance novelist; what the fuck have I been doing with my life? "It'll be great," I say, quickly. "I like wine. I drink it now. Sometimes. Not as much as Hanna, obviously..."
He laughs. "She could always pound 'em back, couldn't she?"
"Oh yeah. I'll never forget that first night she got wasted and you tried to eat her pussy in the parking lot."
He gives me a half shocked, half amused look and I make a mental note to lower my voice. We're in a nice Italian restaurant, not at Casa Del Neigh where most of the time you have to scream to make yourself heard over whoever is having a meltdown at the time. Hanna's inlaws are some of the most needlessly dramatic people I've ever met - it figures that she actually fits in kind of well.
I pick up the menu and try to pretend to not be a freak. The words make no sense at all. A silence settles and stretches between us. This was always going to be weird, but it's weirder than either of us could ever have expected. A waitress comes over t
o take our wine order. She glances shyly at Jesús for a moment and then says, "Excuse me for bothering you, but I saw you on Oprah..."
"Oh," says Jesús. "Right."
"I just wanted to say I'm such a big fan. I've read Moondance so many times - sometimes I fantasise about what it would be like to be Blair and to have her life..."
She's dark-haired and kind of pretty. I wonder what she'd think if she knew Jessica was really a guy. Jesús writes her an autograph and she skips off on clouds to get our wine order.
"Moondance?" I say. Fucking seriously - what a title. "Blair?"
He pulls a face. "Actually I thought the heroine of that one was named Lauren. But still - she probably knows better than me."
"You don't know? You wrote it."
He shrugs. "I write a lot of books. I can usually turn out one every six weeks - I don't spend a great deal of time with my characters. It's pretty much wham, bam, thank you ma'am." I think he realises what he's said because he turns pink under his foundation.
"You're a one night stand man these days," I say, teasing. "Woman, even."
"I'm a lonely workaholic lesbian," he says, with a smile that's so Jesús that I can't see him as Jessica in that moment. He always had a slight overlap between his front teeth, and while there's no doubt he's been getting whitening treatments the little snaggle is still there.
"Nobody?"
He shakes his head. "Too busy. There was a Russian billionaire who was interested in me, but I'm not sure if he was after my body or my bank balance."
I laugh. "You're shitting me?"
"Nope. He was chasing me around the South of France. It was all very Some Like It Hot."
"Oh, don't say that. You're way prettier than Jack Lemmon." I nibble on a breadstick. "Wait - were you in the South of France as the same time as Hanna? She was throwing a total shitfit because your 'Eurotrash' ass was haunting the hotel where she wanted to stay."
He tries to look innocent, but he's so bad at it that I have to stifle a scream. "Oh my fucking God," I say. "It was you, wasn't it? Did you draw smiley sunblock faces on Hanna's ridiculous tits?"
"No," he says, hiding his mouth behind a clenched fist. But he's laughing. Not so grown up after all.
"You're a shitlord," I say, admiringly.
"I guess."
"You guess? You're a dick, Jessica. A big, swinging, floppy donkey dick."
"Well, you'd know all about that, wouldn't you?" he says, flirtatiously. And I shouldn't buy it because he's a thieving little asshole, but whenever I think about what he's got tucked up tight in his pretty pink panties it's like no time has passed at all. His accent is almost totally West Coast, except for when he's had a couple of drinks and something sexy and south of the Border slips into his consonants.
"Stop it," I say. "I'm still mad at you."
"Why?"
"You know why, Jesús. Sasquatch Gangbang."
He sits back, all business once again. "So what? You were gonna write Sasquatch Gangbang?"
"Well...yeah. No. Maybe. I don't know. Fiction's not really my style. I'm a journalist."
He raises an eyebrow - a masterpiece of waxing - and I feel my cheeks burn again. Fortunately I don’t say what I’m thinking - that I’m freelance, that I’m between jobs. The words sit sourly on my tongue instead, unspoken and embarrassing.
The waitress comes back with the wine and I'm grateful again for her timing. I take a big gulp from my glass.
"Good?" asks Jesús.
"It's great," I say, but the moment has passed. We're weird and stiff again.
"Kate," he says. "You have to understand - you had great ideas. You did. But you never seemed to get off the couch long enough to follow up on them. And if I left you behind...well...you didn't really leave me any choice. I don't want to spend the rest of my life paying off my student loans and retire maybe two years before I finally drop dead from exhaustion. I wanted Jessica Waters to be both of us..."
I take another drink. My eyes sting. The worst part is he's kind of right. I've always been kind of lazy but smoking assloads of weed every day just made me pretty much useless.
"I know," I say.
Jesús looks surprised. "You do?"
I nod. "Yeah. I do. I know...we knew...I knew. I knew we were going to have to do something once school was over. But, I don't know...I guess I resisted it. I just wanted it to carry on. Like it always was - just us smoking up and playing Left 4 Dead."
He sighs. "Kate, I..."
"Nah. It's fine. I was a deadweight. You got rid of me."
I can see his eyes glitter. "I didn't want to. I wanted you with me."
Oh God, this is hard. "Then why didn't you tell me?"
He reaches over the table and grabs my hand. His eyes are shining bright now. "I did," he says, in a half-breaking voice. "But you weren't listening."
It's on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I'm listening right now, and that I'll listen in future, if only things can go back to the way they were. But my phone rings, spoiling the moment.
It's Hanna, natch. "Sorry," I say. "I should have ignored it."
"Go ahead," he says, taking out a Chanel mirror and performing running repairs to his mascara.
"Kate, you have to help me," Hanna half-slurs down the phone. "I think I've been kidnapped."
"How do you mean?" I ask. Jesús holds up the wine bottle and I hold out my glass for more.
"I have no idea where I am," she wails. "I'm so confused."
"Yeah. That's kind of your default state. Don't sweat it. Where are you?"
"I think I'm in Aspen...?"
I start to laugh and hold out the phone so Jesús can hear her too. Her querulous little sing-song voice comes floating out above the table. "I remember there was a kidnapper on the phone and then that's all I remember. And this was in Seattle...and I don't think I'm in Seattle anymore..."
"You're not in Seattle," I explain. "You're in Aspen. You probably don't remember flying to Colorado because you drank over a bottle of champagne on the flight."
"And then you ralphed all over the tarmac and my shoes," adds Jesús, leaning into the phone. "It was just like old times."
There's a pause over the phone. I swear I can hear cogs grinding. "Are you sure I haven't been kidnapped?" says Hanna.
"No, honey," says Jesús. "You were just really, really drunk."
"Oh. Okay."
Hanna makes a sort of glugging noise. I hope she's drinking water but knowing Hanna she's probably not. It's weird how she doesn't get on with Claudia. I know they're at opposite ends of the I.Q. scale but in all other respects they have a lot in common - they like drama, booze and bullshit and don't particularly have any strong feelings towards their children.
"Where's Celestia?" says Hanna.
I groan. "You see what I have to put up with?" I say to Jesús. "She's worse. This is why people like Hanna should never marry rich - having to perform basic tasks like work and wiping their own asses are the only things that prevent their tiny, strange little brains from atrophying completely."
Hanna is away with the fairies, apparently talking to herself. "...it's so weird that the seagull tasted like off-brand Cheetos...m' sure it's probably significant...kind of like that part of Tess of the D'Urbervilles where the seagull flew into her mouth and...OH MY GOD WHERE THE FUCK AM I?"
“You’re in Aspen, you moron. Goddamn it, Hanna – have you been eating lead paint chips or something?”
“I vote we haul her off to the Betty Ford Center,” says Jesús. “Then we ditch the furry and book into a hotel.”
It’s a tempting prospect, but Hanna doesn’t make it easy. “I love you, Kate,” she burbles. “You’re my best friend. I like your hair and your shoes and you look after my poor little orphan baby...”
Jesús rolls his eyes, but in her own quiet, incredibly stupid way, Hanna’s kind of an evil genius. And in her own noisy way, Celestia’s a chip off the old, devious block.
“Drink some water,” I say. “I’ll be ove
r in a minute.”
I make a big fuss of messing with my phone and deleting my messages, but I can feel Jesús’ gaze burning into the top of my head. And I know what he’s thinking. He’s wondering why the hell I put up with it, why I’m apparently so goddamn lazy that I prefer the Neighs and their endless bullshit to getting a real job. It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him to bite me – cleaning up baby puke, fetching juiceboxes, finding the Gangnam Style parrot on YouTube – it’s a full-time, thankless job. All he has to do is sit on his ass, write a bunch of softcore pornography and strap his nads down with toupee tape.
“What about dinner?” he says.
“Gonna have to take a rain check on that. Sorry.”
He sighs. “Kate...”
“I know,” I say, getting up from the table. “And I wish things could be different, but you don’t know what it’s like.”
“So stay,” he says. “Tell me. Hanna’s an adult. You said yourself that she’s only got dumber since she acquired staff.”
I shake my head. “You don’t understand,” I say. “When Celestia was six months old Hanna left her in the changing room of a Versace boutique.”
Jesús stares at me. “She abandoned her baby?”
“No, I think she just forgot she had one. You know what Hanna’s like.”
He stands up and takes my hand. “Kate – she’s not your responsibility.”
“I know that,” I say, my eyes starting to smart again. “And she’s a brat. And kind of evil. And she’ll probably grow up to start World War III, but you know...she’s still just a baby. I don’t know if I can leave her to the mercy of that family.”
“I was talking about Hanna,” he says.
“Oh.”
The phone rings again. “What is it this time, Hanna?”
She hiccups down the phone at me. “Kate,” she says. “Do I know anyone named Bob?”
“Um...yes. Yes you do. Your Uncle Bob, who’s been pretty much a father to you ever since your biological father died in a bizarre balloon huffing accident.”