Been There, Married That (ARC)

by Gigi Levangie

  “Yes. George Treadwell. The actor dude.”

  “Come on.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “Crazy.”

  “Should we ask him?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “let’s call him right now.”

  “’kay.” Fin scrolled numbers on the console.

  “What . . . what are you doing?”

  “Calling George—you want me to call him,” she said. “He gave me his number. Y’know, I’ve been thinking about it, discussed it with Sami. We think he’d be pretty good as the lead, the magic man.”

  I went mute; I felt my mouth drop open.

  “Of course, I’d have to see tape,” Fin said.

  She’d scrolled down to: George Actor.

  “Stop!” I jabbed the console, ending the call.

  * * *

  This whole thing was ludicrous, but it made sense if you knew Fin. Men were drawn to her like flies, this mermaid to Hugo Boss pirates with a bad-girl fetish.

  I called Trevor because I couldn’t get through on Pep’s phone. He grunted, more distracted than usual, and handed the phone over to Pep, who seemed fine and not at all down with salamander flu. Which minced the remainder of my heart.

  My phone buzzed.

  “I’m home,” Gio said. “I just landed. Can I come see you?”

  “Now’s not a good time,” I said.

  “What’re you doing?”

  Well. I was sprawled on the floor of Pep’s bedroom, a pile of her clothes on my lap. I’d told myself I was “sorting,” but what I was really doing was crying into her old onesies.

  “It’s important that I not tell you,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “I’ll just start crying again,” I said as I started to cry. And here, I was so sure I’d met my tear ration.

  “Hey, hey,” he said. “I’ll be right over. Is it so sad?”

  “I’m that saddest thing of all,” I said. “A childless mother.”

  “Oh no. I’m functioning on three hours’ sleep, but nothing would make me happier than to put a smile on your face,” he said.

  “You’d have to draw it on,” I said, “with permanent marker.”

  “I’ll bring a Comté and a good Bordeaux,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said, sniffing, then hung up.

  “Fin!” I yelled.

  Fin appeared in the doorway. “You okay?”

  “Yes. No,” I said. “Fin, I’m about to have grief sex, and I haven’t even grief-waxed.”

  “Get it!” she said, high-fiving me.

  * * *

  Gio arrived, as promised, bearing gifts of a twelve-year-old Comté and an Alsatian goat cheese and several bottles of a velvety Bordeaux. He brought crackers and fig jam and those teeny, tiny gherkins that are so cute you don’t want to eat them (but you do), and he set everything up, humming Italian opera as he moved along. All of this was done without a cape.

  Fin and I watched, sipping from our wineglasses. She leaned over to me. “He has kind eyes.”

  “You said that about Trevor.”

  “I never said that about Trevor,” she said.

  “You absolutely did,” I said as Gio belted out an aria.

  “No,” she said. “You don’t listen to me. I said Trevor had vulnerable eyes. That’s different. That’s dangerous.”

  “Thanks for the years-after-the-fact heads-up,” I said.

  “Kinda think you should’ve known who you were marrying. But that’s just me.”

  I glared at her over my wineglass.

  Gio finished the aria and brought the cheese plate over, setting it between me and my sister. I watched as he ate con gusto. I wondered if he fucked con gusto.

  I drank down the rest of my wine.

  Fin went to bed after a phone call from her parole officer asking her what happened to her ankle monitor. She’d told her she’d clipped it and gave her the complicated but truthful reason that her sister lost her mind in divorce court, and after some swearing, the parole officer said okay, come in tomorrow. And then Fin said something that made her laugh, and the parole officer said come in when you can and have a good night.

  Gio had listened and clapped at the end.

  “I wish you were my agent,” he told her. “You’d negotiate rings around these idiots.”

  “Who’s your agent?” Fin asked.

  “Fin,” I said. “C’mon.”

  “I need one for Sami,” she said.

  “Who’s Sami?”

  “My writer,” Fin said. She was already talking like a Hollywood producer; writers were considered property.

  “The Uber driver,” I said. “Fin, you have to be realistic about the way Hollywood works.”

  Fin looked at me. “Why?”

  “Yeah, why?” Gio asked as well, then turned to Fin. “Are you developing a script?”

  “Is that what it’s called? Developing? Why do they have to make everything sound so important and complicated? It ain’t science,” Fin said. “I just want to edge it up before I show it to George.”

  “Fin, come on,” I said.

  “George who?” Gio asked.

  “That guy who was here, funny accent, he looks like this,” Fin said and grinned like a maniac.

  “Treadwell?” Gio asked. “I did a movie with him.”

  “Is he any good?” Fin asked.

  “I like him,” Gio said. “For a star, he’s not a total waste of oxygen.”

  “I want your notes before I give it to George,” Fin said. “If we get George, we get China. If we get China, we shoot in Mexico in two months.”

  My head was spinning. “Impossible! George Treadwell is doing the movie with Trevor, Fin,” I said.

  “George told me it didn’t work out,” Fin said. “Creative differences with the director.”

  “Neither of them was creative,” Gio said.

  “You made a deal with George Treadwell,” I said.

  “Sounds like she did,” Gio said.

  “He likes the idea,” Fin said. “He wants to read the script. He’s got an opening in his schedule. I told him, ‘Don’t get your hopes up, dude; I have to see tape.’”

  “George Treadwell agreed to do tape?” Gio asked.

  “Yeah,” Fin said.

  “You’re a witch,” he said.

  “Nah, dude,” Fin said. “I’m a producer.”

  “I’ll give it a read,” Gio said. “Why not?”

  “Tonight?”

  “I’ll be busy tonight,” Gio said, eyeing me.

  “Priorities,” Fin said.

  Gio laughed, and his laugh filled the kitchen and made me think of all the laughter that hadn’t existed there before.

  I walked Fin out to the guesthouse, holding her hand. She hated walking alone in the dark, even when she was little.

  “He’s like Santa,” Fin said.

  “I don’t want to fuck Santa.”

  “I always had a crush on Santa,” Fin said. “Who better to take care of you? You don’t even have to cook, and he brings you presents. Like cheese and wine.”

  I kissed her cheek, and as I walked back to the main house, I wondered if Gio would be okay that I hadn’t shaved my pussy in a year.

  I bet he would.

  23: Decent Proposal

  Gio was splayed out on one of the deck chairs, staring at the sky. He brought out a pack of Marlboro Lights, lit one, and handed it to me.

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “They used to think smoking was good for you,” Gio said. “Smoking makes you breathe deeply. Calms you. Helps you think.”

  “Think of it as nicotine meditation,” I said.

  I hadn’t taken a puff on a cigarette since I was eight years old, in the garage with Fin, who’d stolen one of my mother’s. I coughed and threw up and got us both grounded.

  I took the cigarette and sat on the edge of the chaise, and Gio pulled me in next to him. We snuggled and smoked and looked out at the night sky. A coyote howled, and a Ferrari driver in the canyon below
gunned his engine.

  “How many women have you fucked?” I asked.

  He jolted and looked at me. “Which decade?”

  “Start with the ’80s.”

  “Why not start with the ’70s?” he said. “I’ve never really counted.”

  “If it goes into triple digits, I’m outta here.”

  “It’s just a number, like age.” He laughed.

  We took a hit off our cigarettes. I felt incredibly sophisticated and drunk and out of my realm.

  “That’s why I became a director. Pussy. I should’ve been a doctor like my father. Not some piece-of-shit director.”

  “You’re not a piece-of-shit director. You’re an icon.”

  “Have you seen my last couple of movies?” he asked. “There are scenes I love, perfect moments; they emerged straight from my big head,” he said, tapping his big head. “I’m a cog in the system now. I have to listen to notes. Notes from the d-girls, notes from the studio, notes from whoever owns the studio, the Germans, the Chinese, the Japanese, the French. And they’re all scared of their own shadows. There’s no joy left.”

  “We were talking about all your hoochies,” I said.

  “Right,” he said.

  “How many did you propose to?”

  “Every single one,” he said and kissed me.

  * * *

  Fin wasn’t awake when Gio and I wandered into the kitchen for coffee in the morning. We were all alone. No housekeepers, no gardeners, no orchid replacement assistants.

  I made coffee, and Gio took a seat at the kitchen table and opened The New York Times. Everything felt calm. Normal. The flickering of a happy new routine, full of promise. I’d write all day, cook dinner, put Pep to bed; Gio and I would have a drink on the deck in his backyard and stare out at the stars and trace patterns on the leaves in the pool. Then we’d fuck until we slept.

  “How do you like it?”

  “Black,” he said. “Like my soul.”

  We’d broken the antique Indian headboard above the bed. I’d always dated men who had athletic bodies, skinny bodies, bodies with no excess. I figured that was my type. I figured wrong. Sleeping with Gio was like diving into a warm pool. If that pool were a cunnilingus master.

  “They’ll find another headboard,” he said. “Marry me.”

  “You’ve been married.”

  “Only four times,” he said. “Fifth time’s the charm.”

  “Fifth’s the time when you know it’s you and not marriage.”

  “I take umbrage to that remark.”

  “Please don’t take my umbrage,” I said. “You’ve already taken a piece of my heart.”

  “Only a piece?”

  “A sliver,” I said. “Small enough that I can still function once you leave.”

  “I’m never leaving. I’m never leaving your side. I’m the opposite of ‘You’re rubber and I’m glue.’”

  “Gio, you left your third wife by sticking a Post-it note on the refrigerator.”

  “That’s unfair. You’ve never met her. I’m lucky I left with my balls intact. By the way, I have a great relationship with all my ex-wives, even Post-it.”

  I sat next to him and rubbed his warm head for good luck. Fin was right. He had kind eyes. If eyes were the window to the soul, his soul was a clear blue love bucket.

  “You’re bad at marrying,” I said.

  “No, not true, I’m very, very good at marrying,” he said. “I’m bad at marriage. But I can change. I want to change.”

  “One broken headboard does not a relationship make,” I said.

  “You have to admit, Agnes,” he said, squeezing my knee, which sent a lightning bolt up my pussy, and I wanted him between my legs again. Did I want to be on top? Bottom? Sideways? Reverse cowgirl? “It’s not a terrible place to start,” he said, smiling.

  We were back in our broken bed, breathless and spent. My head rested on Gio’s chest, my legs wrapped around his body. I loved his smell, and I’d forgotten how important a lover’s scent can be. A man can smell like coconuts and vanilla and cinnamon, and if you don’t like any of those smells, you can’t live with that man, no matter how kind he is or how smart he is or how much he makes you laugh.

  Gio smelled like home. If you lived in a pine forest with a babbling brook in the backyard and wild violets springing up in the grassy yard. So that kind of home.

  I breathed in his scent and ran my fingers through his chest hair, untouched and unbothered by the manscaping craze. The world of men as hairless Chihuahuas had passed him by. Gio was a human time warp.

  “Come with me to Giorgio’s tonight. I’m meeting with an actor, some kid from a vampire show. Kid thinks he’s a movie star, everyone’s telling me he’s a movie star. They’re fucking crazy.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “His agent will be there,” Gio said. “The kid wants to work with me. I don’t know.”

  “Sure, I’ll go,” I said, feeling a wave of dizziness, hearing a familiar echo.

  “Wear that dress you wore when I first met you,” Gio said, “the one with the fringe. So sexy.”

  A stone dropped in the pond of my stomach, circular ripples of dread growing inside me. Shit. I blinked. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” he said. “You look great in anything. I just really like that dress.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m sorry. I can’t go.”

  “Oh?” he asked, looking at me with those clear blue eyes. “Do you have other plans?”

  I shook my head, trying to keep my tears inside.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “What do you mean? It’s okay; we’ll go another time.”

  “Gio, I don’t care about a kid who thinks he’s a movie star. I don’t care about having dinner with his agent,” I said. “Maybe I will again someday. Maybe I’ll regret all of this. But I find it impossible to care less at this moment.”

  “I’m the same as you,” he says. “I don’t give a shit.”

  But he did.

  “No,” I said. “You do. You should and you do. And you deserve someone who cares, as well. Who can be by your side at dinners, at meetings, on the set. Who can give you total attention and support. That ain’t me. I can’t do it. I just can’t.”

  Gio shook his head and folded up the paper. I’d never look at The New York Times again without thinking of his sad face. He stared at his hands.

  “So that’s it?” he asked, finally looking up at me.

  “I know I’ll always love you,” I said.

  “Thank you?”

  “You helped me when I needed it most,” I said.

  “My tongue helped you, you mean,” he said.

  “Right. Can you leave your tongue?”

  Gio touched his tongue. “Just the tip.”

  “And three fingers,” I said. “I’ll keep three fingers. You don’t need all your fingers to direct.”

  “Now, you’re just being greedy,” he said.

  I leaned forward and put my forehead on his.

  “I’m sad,” he said.

  “Me, too,” I said. “I’m sad and happy and clear and mixed up.”

  “Agnes. Are you sure you want me to go?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not sure. I’m really afraid, to be honest. But I need to be on my own. That’s the only thing I know for sure.”

  A big, fat tear rolled down his cheek. I caught it with my lips.

  “Now, who’m I going to marry?” he asked. “I had the tux ready and the flowers all picked out and the ring and everything.”

  “You didn’t have the ring.”

  “I actually do have a ring, but it’s used,” he said. “Wife number four threw it at my head.” He looked at me with big, sad eyes. “Are we still going to be friends?”

  “Always and forever,” I said.

  “What about sex?”

  “Check in with me in a few months,” I said, then paused. “One month.”

 
He laughed, filling the house again with his happy noise. I already missed him.

  * * *

  Fin shuffled into the kitchen. I didn’t want to look her in the eye.

  “You got rid of him, didn’t you?” she said.

  “Yep.”

  “Idiot.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I liked him,” Fin said. “I really liked him. And I don’t like anybody.”

  “Me, too,” I said, and then before I knew what was happening, I started sobbing into my sister’s shoulder.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Fin said, holding on to me. “We’ll get through this. We’re survivors.”

  “I don’t know, Fin,” I said. “Maybe I just didn’t want him to stick around to watch me sink.”

  “No, no,” Fin said. “Remember what Mom sang to us before she took off and we never saw her again?”

  “‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’?”

  “After that.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Fin smiled and sang, “I’m goan’ to learn to read and write, I’m goan’ to see what there is to see . . .”

  “Unsinkable Molly Brown,” I said. “Mom turned out to be the Sinkable Molly Brown, but that’s not so catchy.”

  “They can’t kill us, Aggie,” Fin said. “They can try, but they can’t kill us. Hey, you’re going to see Gio before you know it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I left the script in his car,” she said. “And yes, before you ask, his car was locked. It’s fine.” She checked her watch. “Oh, we’re supposed to meet Dad at his house.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It sounded mysterious.”

  “Oh God, he’s got cancer, right? He’s dying,” I said. “He’s dying, I know it.”

  “What is wrong with you?” Fin asked. “Not everything is a tragedy.”

  Beat.

  “But yeah, that’s what I assumed,” Fin said.

  “That would be just like Dad to steal my divorce thunder,” I said, grabbing my keys and walking out the door.

  Dad was seated next to Shu on the couch in his living room; I was in his favorite chair, the one he sat in to watch the Bloomberg report. Fin was sitting cross-legged on the floor.

  “Shu and I are getting married,” he said.

  I shook my head. What.

  “That’s fucking great!” Fin jumped up and embraced them both. Shu gazed up at Dad with adoring eyes.