Let's Stay Together

by J. J. Murray

  “Right,” Lauren said. “But it’s not right, Patrick. This is so crazy.”

  “I know it is,” Patrick said. “But it will at least be different, something to remember, right?”

  “I’ll say,” Lauren said. She smiled. “I can’t wait to see you, Patrick.” Lauren tilted the camera. “Are you looking at me now?”

  He watched her hands moving up and down her body. “I can’t take my eyes off you,” he whispered. “You know that.”

  “I wish I could kiss you right now,” Lauren whispered.

  “I’d like that,” Patrick whispered. “I like what you’re doing with your hands, too.”

  “I want your hands on me,” Lauren whispered. “I’d crawl into your lap and probably get very busy while I kissed your lips off. I better stop.” The view shifted to her face. “I need to get packed.”

  “It’s two days away,” Patrick said. And I have to leave in less than thirty hours. I need to pack, too. He looked into his closet. Why should I worry? It will only take me five minutes.

  “I have to do some laundry first,” Lauren said. “I’ve been so lazy. How many days should I pack for?”

  One. “Travel light, okay?”

  “Right,” Lauren said. “We won’t need many clothes after dinner.”

  She’s like a runaway train, and I don’t want to stop her!

  “Oh, this is already driving me crazy,” Lauren said. “I hate to wait.”

  “I’m sorry I’m being so difficult about this.”

  “It’s okay,” Lauren said. “It’s actually romantic. I’ve never been on a date like this before. We’re going on a secret rendezvous to a place I’ve never been. Very mysterious and sexy. That’s what you’re trying for, right?”

  “Right.” He shook his head. “No, not really, but I’m glad it seems that way to you.”

  “You weren’t going for mysterious and sexy,” Lauren said.

  “No,” Patrick said. “I was going for ordinary and anywhere but here.”

  “You think riding on a bus for twenty-eight hours to have a date in St. Louis is ordinary?” Lauren said.

  “That’s the ‘anywhere but here’ part,” Patrick said.

  “And meeting someone for the very first time, and at an Italian restaurant two thousand miles from her home . . . You think this is ordinary?”

  “When you put it that way . . .” Patrick laughed. “It does sound extraordinary, but that’s not what I had in mind. I just want to meet you someplace where no one knows either of us.”

  “I could wear a disguise,” Lauren said. “I’m good at being incognito. I did it for seven years, remember.”

  “It won’t matter what you wear,” Patrick said. “Someone will recognize you, but maybe for a few moments in a dark restaurant, it will only be the two of us. That’s what I’m hoping for.”

  “I hope so, Patrick,” Lauren said. “What are you going to wear?”

  “Most likely what I wear on the bus.” For twenty-eight hours! “Jeans and my only button-down shirt.”

  “I’ll try to dress incognito, too,” Lauren said.

  “I’m not trying to be incognito,” Patrick said. “I’ll be almost as dressed up as I get.”

  “Not for long,” she whispered.

  I have to do some laundry, too. “I don’t want to say good night, but . . .”

  “It’s only . . . ten o’clock there,” Lauren said. “The night is young.”

  “I’ll have two really busy days in a row.” I have to inform all the tenants that I won’t be around for a few days and that they’ll just have to survive without me. Oh, and please, Mrs. Moczydlowska, don’t call my boss.

  “Well, I suppose I can let you get some sleep,” Lauren said. “I really love what you’re doing for me.”

  “What am I doing?” Besides complicating things!

  “You’re trying to make our first date perfect,” Lauren said. “So many men don’t try to make any dates perfect, as if it’s our privilege just to be seen with them. I have never had a man take care of me like this before. I don’t want to let you, you know, so expect me to resist your efforts.”

  “And I’ll resist back,” Patrick said.

  “And that’s actually comforting to know,” Lauren said. “You know what you want, and nothing is going to stop you.”

  Just my bank account. “I want you.”

  “You got me,” Lauren said with a smile. “I won’t be able to Skype you on the bus, so have your cell phone charged. I may send you a picture or two. Just keep the picture to yourself, okay?”

  “I will.” He looked into her eyes. “Thank you for . . . meeting me in St. Louis.”

  “I am certain it will be my pleasure,” Lauren said. “Thank you for asking me. Good night, Patrick.”

  “Good night, Lauren.”

  He shut down Skype and immediately called the Millennium Hotel’s toll-free number. “Hi. I’d like to make a reservation for Thursday in St. Louis, Missouri.”

  “Number of rooms?” a woman asked.

  “One.”

  “How many adults?”

  “Two.”

  “How many children?”

  “None.”

  “Your name and address, sir?”

  Patrick supplied the information.

  “All the way from Brooklyn,” she said. “How will you be paying?”

  “With cash,” Patrick said.

  Silence on the other end.

  “Hello?” Patrick said.

  “Sir, we require a credit card to hold the room for you,” she said.

  “I don’t have a credit card,” Patrick said, “or I would have made my reservation through your website.”

  “Sir, we cannot reserve your room without a credit card.”

  “Why?”

  “We just can’t, sir,” she said. “The system won’t let us.”

  Patrick sighed. “Could you connect me directly to the hotel in St. Louis?”

  “They’ll tell you the same thing,” she said.

  “Hey, it’s worth a shot,” Patrick said.

  “I’ll connect you. Hold, please.”

  After some static, Patrick heard, “Millennium Hotel, St. Louis. This is Penny. How may I help you?”

  “Penny, I’d like to make a reservation,” Patrick said.

  “Oh, we don’t take reservations here, sir,” Penny said. “Let me give you the toll-free number for reservations.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Patrick said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t believe that you don’t take reservations there,” Patrick said.

  “We don’t,” Penny said. “Reservations are made through our national reservations center.”

  “So if someone walks in off the street and asks for a room, what do you do?” Patrick asked.

  “Oh, that’s different,” Penny said.

  “How is it different?” Patrick asked.

  “I don’t understand you, sir,” Penny said.

  Isn’t that obvious? “You don’t make someone who walks in call a toll-free number while they’re standing there in front of you, do you?”

  “Oh, of course not,” Penny said. “I first see if we have a room available, and if we do, I ask for a credit card.”

  “Why?” Patrick asked.

  “So we are assured of payment, sir,” Penny said.

  “Isn’t cash a form of payment?” Patrick asked.

  “Well, of course it is,” Penny said.

  “So if I showed up and gave you a cash payment in full for one night,” Patrick said, “wouldn’t that be the same as handing you a credit card?”

  “Oh, I see what you’re saying. Sure.”

  “All right,” Patrick said. “I am arriving in the afternoon this Thursday, and I will need a room for one night.”

  “A standard room?” Penny asked.

  “Yes,” Patrick said.

  “Let me see if we have any vacancies,” Penny said. “You’re in luck. We have several. How
about a king bed?”

  “Fine,” Patrick said.

  “I’ll need your name, address, and telephone number,” Penny said.

  He gave her the information.

  “And now I’ll need a credit card,” Penny said.

  Penny isn’t quite playing with a full deck. “I will be paying in cash.”

  “Um, Mr. Esposito . . .”

  This is ridiculous. “Yes?”

  “The system won’t let me complete your reservation without a credit card,” Penny said.

  “Can you hold a room without a credit card?” Patrick asked. “This is really important.”

  “Let me speak to a manager,” Penny said. “Hold on.”

  While he waited, Patrick checked his bank balance online. He tried to make an extra zero appear before the decimal point, but no zero materialized. He mentally added up the cost of the date and arrived at $2,640: $300 for the bus ticket, $240 for the meal, $100 or so for the hotel, and $2,000 for Lauren’s plane ticket. She’ll want to eat breakfast, so an even twenty-seven hundred dollars. I had better take out twenty-eight hundred dollars to be sure.

  He sighed.

  And that only leaves me four hundred dollars for the ring—

  “Mr. Esposito,” a man said. “This is Frank Gill. Penny has explained your predicament to me, and I’m afraid we really can’t help you.”

  “Mr. Gill, I believe that if you wanted to help me, you would,” Patrick said. He looked down at Lauren’s face on his screen. “What if a movie star or musician wants to stay with you? Do you have to have credit card information every time?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Even in unusual circumstances?”

  “I don’t follow you,” Mr. Gill said.

  I can’t believe I have to lie to this man to get a room! “Do you know actress Lauren Short?”

  “Oh yes,” Mr. Gill said. “I love her movies.”

  “Lauren Short is coming to your hotel this Thursday,” Patrick said, “but she doesn’t want to reserve the room in her name or use any kind of credit card information to keep the media from knowing where she is. The media is good at finding people who don’t want to be found. Do you understand?”

  “She’s traveling incognito, is that it?” Mr. Gill asked.

  “Something like that,” Patrick said. “I need to reserve a room in my name and without a credit card so the media can’t find her.”

  “Consider it done,” Mr. Gill said.

  Thank you!

  “Your reservation will be under your name, Mr. Esposito,” Mr. Gill said. “We look forward to having Miss Short as our guest.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Gill,” Patrick said. “And please keep it quiet.”

  “We will, Mr. Esposito,” Mr. Gill said. “We will be discreet.”

  I hope. “We will see you Thursday.”

  Patrick then called Tony’s. “I’d like a reservation for two for Thursday at seven p.m.”

  “We are booked solid on Thursday,” a man said.

  “Really?” Patrick said. “On a Thursday?”

  “We are a culinary institution,” the man said. “The earliest I can get you a table is . . . December sixth.”

  What? “December sixth?”

  “Correct,” the man said. “Shall I book your reservation for that day, sir?”

  Wow. We may be eating at McDonald’s, after all. “I must have a reservation for Thursday at seven.”

  “It is impossible, sir,” the man said.

  Nothing is impossible. “Even if it’s for Lauren Short, the actress?”

  “Lauren Short . . . is coming here to eat on Thursday?” the man asked.

  It must be so nice to be a celebrity. “Yes. At seven. She will be traveling incognito, so we’ll need to put the reservation under a different name.”

  “I see,” the man said. “One moment.”

  Patrick waited for longer than “one moment” was supposed to last.

  “What name should I put the reservation under, sir?” the man asked suddenly.

  “Esposito,” Patrick said.

  “Miss Short has a reservation for seven on Thursday,” the man said. “Will she be dining alone?”

  “No,” Patrick said. “She will be dining with Patrick Esposito.”

  “Splendid,” the man said.

  “Can I trust you to keep this information confidential?” Patrick asked. “Miss Short wants a quiet evening with no fanfare.”

  “We pride ourselves on our discretion, sir,” the man said.

  “Thank you,” Patrick said. “Miss Short and Mr. Esposito will see you at seven on Thursday. Good-bye.”

  Now where was I?

  Oh yeah. The ring.

  You can’t have a perfect first date without a ring, right? I wonder if they sell starter rings....

  37

  I can’t believe I told him I loved him, Lauren thought. Wait. I only said that I may love him and that I probably love him, and I explained why . . . or tried to. The man tied up my tongue. It’s his fault that I didn’t make any sense.

  But how did he react when I told him that I probably love him? He didn’t! He didn’t even blink! I didn’t expect him to return the favor, but I expected more than what I got. Maybe I’m expecting too much too soon. I wish I wasn’t so impatient!

  But why St. Louis? Of all the cities he could have chosen, he chose St. Louis. Why not Chicago or Pittsburgh or Atlanta? I really should just get on a plane and go see him anyway. What’s he going to do? Turn me away? He couldn’t refuse to see me, could he?

  Her apartment phone rang. She threw on her robe and walked into the kitchen. “Hello?”

  “Lauren, Todd. You have a minute?”

  “Did SNL call?” Lauren asked.

  “No, but you have to hear—”

  Lauren hung up. She counted to ten. The phone rang again. She answered. “What?”

  “Are you going to hang up on me?” Todd asked.

  “It depends on what you tell me,” Lauren said.

  “Well, listen, I’ve just got off the phone with a screenwriter who wants to do your biopic,” Todd said. “He wants to do your autobiography.”

  “My what? Is he crazy? I’m only thirty-eight!”

  “Come on, Lauren. Listen to the angle he’s dangling,” Todd said. “Young black girl, wrong side of the tracks—”

  “I didn’t live near any railroad tracks, Todd,” Lauren interrupted.

  “It’s a figure of speech,” Todd said. “Young black girl from the hood rises out of the ashes of D.C., sets LA on fire, and then flames out because of her bisexual fiancé.”

  “You make me sound like a pyromaniac,” Lauren said.

  “It sounds depressing and stupid.”

  “You’ll get to play yourself, Lauren,” Todd said. “From your early movie days to the present. You’ll get to be twenty again.”

  “I don’t want to be twenty again,” Lauren said. I just want to be in Brooklyn with Patrick! “Tell the writer no.”

  “I just don’t understand you!” Todd shouted. “I’m working my ass off, trying to get you back in the game.”

  “It’s SNL or nothing,” Lauren said. “I want to work in New York.”

  “But I’ve already told you that Erika James—”

  Lauren hung up again. She poured a glass of water and drank it in two gulps. Why am I so dehydrated? Oh yeah. Patrick set me on fire. She drank another glass.

  The phone rang.

  I wish he’d give up. “You were saying, Todd?”

  “What is your sudden fascination with New York?” Todd asked. “You told me that once you left New York, you never wanted to work in New York again. You said it wasn’t laid-back enough, and like you said, I don’t have the connections there that I have here.”

  “It’s not a fascination,” Lauren said. “It’s a need. Make that need come true.”

  “How about this?” Todd asked. “We’ll see if we can get Saturday Night Live interested in you guest hosting the show. W
ill that satisfy you?”

  “Why would they want me to guest host?” Lauren asked. “I haven’t done anything in years.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Todd said.

  Lauren sighed. “Have you even talked to anyone at NBC?”

  “I have,” Todd said. “And they’re flattered that you want to be a part of the show. They have great respect for you, but they’re trying to appeal to a new generation of viewers, and Lauren, baby, you’re from a different generation.”

  “You’re right, Todd,” Lauren said. “I’m from a generation of actresses who actually learned how to act, who didn’t cut their teeth making rap videos, who didn’t capitalize solely on their looks or their ability to sing to break into this business. I can perform my lines with more skill and conviction in my sleep than Miss Erika can in her best moments, if she ever has any. If Saturday Night Live doesn’t want that, then I guess I’m through. Good-bye, Todd.”

  She hung up.

  The phone rang.

  Lauren let it ring.

  When it stopped ringing, she dialed her mama.

  “Mama, I’m thinking seriously about giving up acting and settling down with a good man,” she said quickly. “In fact, I’m going on a date with a very—”

  Click.

  Lauren laid the phone in its cradle. “A very good man,” she whispered. “A man you and Daddy would be proud of. He’s a handyman, like Daddy, and we’re meeting in St. Louis.”

  She sat on her bed.

  That was longer than she usually lets me talk. We might be making progress.

  She spent the rest of the evening doing laundry and packing three suitcases. One suitcase held all her important papers, including her tax returns and her birth certificate. Because I am never coming back to this dump. She had to sit on the last suitcase to get it to close. I am bringing enough clothing for at least a week, because when St. Louis works out—and it will—I will be going to Brooklyn.

  She looked around her little apartment.

  I will never be coming back here. There’s no reason to come back here.

  She fell back on her bed.

  St. Louis—and Patrick—here I come.

  Good-bye, Hollywood. It was somewhat fun while it lasted, but now you’ve become toxic.

  I have to go to St. Louis now to find love.

  She fanned her face.

  I’m still hot and bothered and feeling goofy. True love must be intoxicating.