Choices

by Tessa Vidal

  “Shell is from the exact same trailer park I'm from, and it doesn't seem to hurt her publicity,” I said to Heather.

  “Honey. You know the difference.”

  I didn't want to admit I did, so I firmed my mouth and thrust out my chin.

  “She's being groomed for TV. Her image doesn't have to have that...” Heather waved her hand the way she always did to underline her pronouncements. “She doesn't have to be as glamorous as you are, honey. She just doesn't.”

  It sounded right when Heather said it. But Shell sounded right when she said her piece. They couldn't both be right. Maybe we were all of us wrong. All of us except for Dickens.

  Back home, the endless flowers, bottles of wine, boxes of chocolate, this season's designer perfumes and faddish cosmetics had all started to arrive in a steady stream. The housekeeper always hired someone extra to watch the door on August 16.

  Aunt Morgan called. That year living in her little house under what amounted to lockdown had colored our relationship ever since. We were tense and correct around each other, although I knew I owed her a lot.

  “Happy birthday, birthday girl.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Twenty-nine. The clock is ticking.”

  Good thing she couldn't see me roll my eyes.

  “Your mom wouldn't want you to be alone forever.”

  “I know, Aunt Morgan.”

  “Tell me you're happy. That's all I ever wanted. All your mom ever wanted.”

  “I'm happy.”

  There was a little silence. She'd never asked for money, but her house was paid off now, and I'm sure the bank told her so. Once I'd asked her if she wanted me to buy her a new house in another neighborhood, but she'd been shocked. Maybe even offended.

  “I can't leave. My friends are here.”

  And yet she'd expected me to leave my friends behind. A bad lesson to learn. Now I had no friends, only contacts.

  By the time I slipped Dickens into his doggy bed for his afternoon nap, the number of gifts displayed on the front table had doubled. The extra helper, a young guy who looked maybe eighteen or nineteen, was snapping photographs of each card with each gift. It always created a nasty fuss when a star sent a thank you for the wrong gift to the wrong person. What was his name? Tyler, I thought.

  “Looking good, Tyler,” I said.

  When he smiled like that, he looked even younger.

  One of the more striking gift baskets was loaded with an unfamiliar designer chocolate. I squinted at the label. Vegan, handmade, Brooklyn. Was Brooklyn now a place where artists made chocolate by hand?

  “Shell Tate,” Tyler said, even before I picked up the card.

  I read it, but he was right. Shell Tate's assistant must have chosen this gift. Shell would have never sent this herself. She had a thing about chocolate, warned me about it several times even though Dickens never picked up food without permission.

  “Do you think anybody picks out their own gifts anymore?” I asked.

  “What?” He looked up, startled. “I don't think so, Ms. Ballad. I'd be out of work.”

  “So you're a shopper too?”

  “Receiving gifts and sending out thank-you notes isn't a full-time job.”

  I picked up one of the wine bottles, although I wasn't really seeing it.

  “Most of the wine isn't worth adding to the cellar.” He sounded certain for someone too young to drink alcohol. “Ms. Perez said the chef can keep those bottles for cooking if you like.”

  “Sure. That's fine. We don't need to drink everything somebody's assistant ships in our direction.”

  “Some of the perfume is quality. And this scarf...” He carefully fingered a scrap of designer silk from a famous director. Tyler was Los Angeles born and bred, with a keen instinct for what was worth keeping and what should be donated. He was nice, everything was very nice, and everybody was all very thoughtful.

  And yet no one thought to ask me out for my birthday. Everybody thought I was otherwise engaged. I was so aloof, so mysterious, that no one tried to know me at all.

  “You want this chocolate?” I asked. “I'd really be grateful if you could take this temptation away.”

  “Sure, Ms. Ballad.” He flashed me a dimpled smile he must have practiced in the mirror. “You want me to take it all or half of it or...?”

  “Please.” No fucking way I was eating Shell's assistant's carefully chosen handcrafted chocolates. “Take it all. Get it out of my sight.”

  In the evening, it was just me and Dickens in a dark room screening an old movie. Something light, something meant to make me laugh. Not one of mine. I can't bear to watch my own movies. The housekeeper had opened a bottle of champagne and advised me to call the driver when I was ready to go out.

  Don't worry, Maru. I'm not going to be part of young Hollywood's DUI statistics. I'm not going to drive, I'm probably not even going to go out.

  I didn't remember this movie right. It wasn't light and funny. Maybe I'd remembered the name wrong, although it wasn't like me. Movies were my business, after all. Dickens snuggled his head against my hand.

  “It's all right, boy. You're a good dog. Any day is a good day if you're with me.”

  Eventually, he drifted off to his doggy bed near the front entrance. Nobody was getting past my home security system with its multiple alarms and my protective chow. I was all alone here, and that's the way I wanted it. A million women wished they were me, safe and fizzy from champagne in a big house like this. I poured a second glass.

  People kept calling, saying nothing but saying it at length, and eventually I turned the phone off. I wasn't in the mood to be wished happy birthday by people making duty calls to a famous actor.

  I couldn't stop thinking about Rayna's eighteenth birthday. That was an unlucky night, although it felt so magical at the time when we had no idea what was waiting in the wings. When Rayna covered me with her strong but limber body, when she curled the assertive fingers of her right hand to probe flirtatiously into the folds of my shiny-pink pussy, it felt as if we were only at the beginning of what we were going to learn about each other.

  How I loved being rubbed, fondled, caressed, licked. How I loved the slow slide of a soft easy touch getting more and more assertive. It was all so new and fresh and real...

  “You can touch it,” I'd said. “It's all for you.” I felt so grown-up at the salon when I asked for a wax down there for the very first time. It cost more than I thought it would, but I'd saved up extra from my secret job buying and selling used clothes. And it was worth every penny to see the delight in Rayna's face. She'd never imagined real girls got wax jobs. That was actresses and models, not girls like us.

  “It's so soft. It's amazing.”

  Some girls shaved. I knew that just like I knew all the jokes about scratchy stubble. I didn't want anything scratchy for Rayna's birthday. I wanted it to be all slippery and magical, not just for fingers but for faces too. She seemed to sense my desire. She dug her whole head into my thighs and rolled it around. Her tongue flicked everywhere.

  I shouldn't be thinking about Rayna. There's no Rayna.

  It was hot in the house. How did it get so hot? I pulled off my top and walked in leggings and bra back toward the table groaning under the day's multiple deliveries. Why do the same people who grumble about giving a kid who wipes their windshields a dollar lavish all these packages on a movie star? The chocolates were gone, the bottles distributed to the cellar or the kitchen depending on their quality, but some of the gifts were still on display.

  I froze. A last-minute addition caught my eye. A Judith Leiber rhinestone-encrusted clutch in the shape of an ice cream cone that sold for around five thousand dollars. More, after sales tax. It wasn't a gift you sent. It was a gift you delivered in person to a special somebody because you wanted to see her eyes light up.

  What the hell?

  I picked up the card carefully taped not to the precious clutch but to the box it came in. Of course, as I already suspected, it wasn
't a card that came with the box. Instead, it was a business card for Tyler Dundee Gift Management Services. On the back, Tyler had scrawled a message to himself in an awkward handwriting that looked more like hooked up printed letters than actual cursive.

  “Sender unknown.”

  Last year, I got a Judith Leiber clutch in the shape of a penguin. Also almost five thousand dollars, although I hadn't known her prices at the time, I'd had to look it up. Also from my adoring fan Sender Unknown. Had we ever figured out where it came from?

  Givers of gifts like this weren't content to go unthanked forever. That much I knew. Somebody wanted something. My attention, if nothing else.

  Dickens seemed to know without waking that it was only me walking around. He stirred in his sleep, snuffled, and then relaxed again. I turned out the light and padded back to the movie room where the closing credits were rolling― those tiny white letters on black screen that nobody ever reads.

  I wouldn't read them either.

  At the back of my closet lived a pair of tight jeans, a shiny pink satin blouse, and a curly red wig with natural hair that fell to the small of my back. A pair of cheap cowboy boots finished the look. I was no longer Caro Ballad. I was a party girl from Mississippi ready for a night in the big city.

  Chapter Twenty

  Shell

  I needed to focus on work, not play. Even if it was Caro's birthday.

  Work is what matters. Work is everything.

  Weeks in August were good ones for the doggy vacation industry. Since I restricted each week's intake to a total of four, I had more applicants than I could accept. If you wanted to guarantee your dog's place in my hiking school, you'd better apply early. There were only so many slots. When they were gone, they were gone. After all, my pampered pooches deserved my personal attention.

  As the waiting list swelled, I doubled my prices, then doubled them again. Celebrities felt more comfortable with a high-priced service. The more I charged, the more carefully they listened to my theories of animal behavior.

  My dogs loved me. My clients loved me. And this week's group of four was one of my favorites, a group who had vacationed together before. They were a fun pack who loved going off-trail and off-leash. Dressed in their tiny backpacks and bandannas, they were always a hit on Instagram and Twitter.

  That was the kind of publicity I needed. Cheerful Instagrams of my graduates hiking happily on a mountain trail. Not me and some ice princess strolling on the pier.

  I'd come a long way. We both had. But maybe we'd gone too far down completely separate paths.

  An image flashed into mind― Caro sprawled naked and open on a pink floatie in her swimming pool. The blue sky above, the hedges and fences around us. The clean smell of chlorine. The taste of her damp skin.

  My tongue curled. I swallowed.

  Stop it.

  I shouldn't think about Caro. I should think about the trail in front of me. One foot in front of another. Step by step. What was the point of a temporary separation to get our heads clear if all I did was daydream about the sex? The sex wasn't the issue. We'd always known our bodies fitted together.

  It was everything else in our lives that didn't quite seem to work out.

  New Mexico in the mountains was a world away from the Mississippi Delta's idea of August. Green and fresh, instead of humid and oppressive. The dogs and I enjoyed long hikes up to overlooks and across the saddles of green mountains. Trained not to chase small pets or wildlife, this week's pack could be trusted off-leash in those areas where they were allowed to be. It was a delight to see the pleasure they took in their ability to roam more freely than they ever could back home.

  We were a world away from Los Angeles too. Some days, we met only one or two other humans, and every day we saw more wild animals than people. Migration started early in the west, especially among those species trying to escape the coming fire season. Whatever was happening on the western coast, there were no fires here, no smoke as far as the eye could see. From certain peaks, I had good views of rising funnels of hawks lifting higher and higher before they spun out in the direction of old Mexico.

  The dogs panted happily but not heavily. I dressed them all in color-coordinated designer bandannas and backpacks, the better to pretty up their owner's Instagram accounts.

  Everything was beautiful. Picture perfect.

  And everything was all shit. My whole body ached from the chest out. I ran and hiked and jogged as long as the dogs wanted to keep up with me, but I couldn't out-run the ache of missing Caroline.

  She was better off arms-length from me. Even better off if I was in another state working for other clients. A part of me whispered she really was a princess, a princess born out of place. Too good for me. I'd been kidding myself when I thought I could have a girl like that.

  We came from the same place. That was the truth.

  Well, it was the literal truth. We'd grown up together. Yet, even then, I thought she was magic. What right did little Rayna Taylor have to put a claim on magic?

  She was always out of your league. And that's the truest part of the truth.

  Why did it have to hurt so much? Maybe I couldn't expect to hold her forever, but we could have had more time. Hell, we could be together now. We could be celebrating her birthday in each other's arms. I was the one who called timeout. The one who demanded this so-called temporary separation.

  The one who shouted.

  I cursed my foolish pride and even more foolish display of temper. Were separations ever really temporary? Not in Hollywood, they weren't.

  Shit. This wasn't putting my focus on the work. This wasn't step by step, one foot in front of another. This was aching, hurting, longing.

  Think about something else, anything else.

  But what I thought about was Caro's big day. The almost-thirty birthday, as she called it. She was nesting. Buying a house, a dog, being more selective in what movie roles she accepted.

  Maybe being more selective about her girlfriends too. I was hookup quality, but was I girlfriend of a Hollywood star quality?

  My agent liked the two of us together. Heather Heath claimed she did too. The delay was the fault of the production company. Or so said Heather Heath, and Caro agreed. It wasn't that I didn't believe her. I did believe her. I did trust her. Except when I didn't. A secret relationship was fun for a week or two, but then a woman needed to be acknowledged.

  Hell. My head felt like a groove was worn into my scalp from overthinking the same questions. Caro and I worked together so well on a physical level. Why did everything else between us seem to be such a struggle?

  Late at night, after the dogs were tucked in, I went out to hike under the trees and stars. I should have been hiked out, but I couldn't seem to fall asleep. Those images of Caro on the floatie swam back to mind, and my fingers drifted between my legs. Touching myself was sometimes a sedative, but tonight it only seemed to make me more restless. Maybe a night hike would help. It sure couldn't hurt.

  Although I wore a small flashlight strapped to my forehead, I left it turned off so my eyes could adjust to the faint light of the distant stars. I liked studying the Milky Way in all its glory. Even though I was a country girl, it was hard to see it well where I grew up, thanks to the relentless glare of the casinos that never closed.

  It wouldn't be easy to see in Los Angeles either. Maybe Caro had forgotten about the Milky Way. Maybe the last time she saw it was years ago when the two of us took a teenage camping trip to Lake Arkabutla. Had she forgotten that trip? Had she forgotten the stars overhead?

  How I yearned to be the one to show her the Milky Way once again. How I longed to snuggle with her high on a mountain in a sleeping bag meant for two.

  Did we have a future, or had it always been too late for us?

  As I studied the sky, first one, then two, and then more shooting stars began to flicker across the star-spangled velvet of the night. August was a good month for meteor showers.

  Stars shine, and then they fal
l. Caro was afraid of falling. She had more to lose than I did. Or at least she thought she did.

  She'd changed her name. She'd changed from high school girl buying and selling used clothes to an Oscar-nominated actress. But had she changed enough? I closed my eyes and saw eighteen-year-old Caro in her pink blouse. Saw twenty-eight-year-old Caro in cateye sunglasses she wore indoors. So much of Caro's life was a carefully constructed image.

  She thought she could surrender that image for me, but maybe she couldn't.

  Maybe Caro Ballad couldn't take the final step to claim me.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Caro

  I tossed back the second glass of champagne. Called the driver. Told her to drop me off at a popular club. She had no comment on my wig or the cheap rhinestone shades that were a world away from my signature Céline cateye. Drivers are used to seeing celebs in disguise.

  There was a long line outside, but I pretended to go around to the VIP entrance. Once out of sight of the driver, I went wobbly on my knees and began to sing something off-tune about not letting your kiddies grow up into cowgirls. If anyone had been looking at me before, they were all looking away now. Everybody except the club bouncers pretended not to see the obvious drunks.

  Singing and shambling on my way, never once breaking role, I went around another corner and on my way. There. That easily, I'd slipped free of my reins.

  It was my birthday, and I was alone. Maybe I'd be alone for my entire life. Maybe I'd always been alone.

  We'd broken up, Shell and I. That was the reality. It was a soft breakup, a Hollywood breakup, all polite and nothing quite said out loud, nothing like the shouting you'd see between couples who were breaking up in Mississippi. A subtle breakup, so subtle you hardly knew it happened. Oh, she'd shouted some, but I knew better than to take it seriously. Women from the south were champion shouters if they wanted to shout.