Backstage Romance: An Austen-Inspired Romantic Comedy Box Set

by Gigi Blume

  8

  How Pitiful His Tale (How Rare His Beauty)

  Beth

  “Jonny without an H car!” I screamed, kicking the tire. It wasn’t the fault of my poor old Volvo but taking out my frustrations on an inanimate object was more palatable than taking the blame for running it on fumes.

  “Zombie Prom?” Lydia appeared behind me, laden with her dance bag, worn out from Colin’s endless whims. I’d never seen her so spent. It was rather refreshing.

  “Yeah.”

  She guessed right. It was my Zombie Prom day for curse word substitutes because at this point, I felt like a zombie. It wasn’t just the grueling dance rehearsal, however. Meeting Jorge had me tingling with anticipation for our date, if you could call it that. We were taking separate cars, after all. But it was the odd encounter with Will that was the turning point of the day, and it all went downhill from there. Now my car decided it wasn’t worth starting for me with only a tablespoon of gas in the tank. Maybe if we gave it a push?

  “What’s wrong with ol’ Betty?”

  Oh, Lydia. She had a name for everything.

  “Ol’ Betty is hungry,” I replied. “Do you think you could give me a ride to the Arco? I have a gas can in the trunk. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

  She smirked at me, shaking her head in resignation. “You’re hopeless. Come on.”

  Her car wasn’t much better than mine. A Honda Civic hatchback. It was newer than my car, but just as neglected. Well, at least it had gas.

  “Let me just clear a space for you,” she said, throwing items from the passenger seat to the rear. Every nook of her little car was occupied with stuff. Clothes, boxes, blankets, and pillows filled the backseat to the brim.

  “Lydia,” I said, “are you living in your car?”

  “Oh, it’s just temporary.” She waved her hand dismissively. “And my name is Lettuce.”

  “Fine. Lettuce,” I said. “How long? How long is temporary?”

  She released a long sigh, slouching her usually proud shoulders. I imagined the exhaustion from the long day coupled with whatever was weighing her down finally caught up with her, and she was remarkably easy in the recitation of her plight. She’d been evicted. Not entirely her fault. I’d met her roommates and let’s just say they were avid greenery aficionados. Among other things. As a result, she’d been living in her car for about a month.

  “That’s not very temporary,” I said. “Some people have held public office for less time than that.”

  “Who?” she challenged.

  “I don’t know. But that’s not the point. You’re coming to my place. You can have the couch until you get on your feet. And you’re going out with me tonight.”

  She protested, insisting she’d be in the way (regarding the couch, not the bar). Surely, Jane wouldn’t approve. But in the end, she agreed, promising to be out as soon as possible.

  The truth was, I hardly ever saw Jane anymore. She spent all her free hours with Bing, and while I was happy for her, I missed our movie nights and ice cream binges. Lydia would return some life to the apartment. Hopefully not too much life.

  Jorge was waiting for us, with a shirt on, already on his second beer. To my surprise, our director Cole sat at the table. Sitting very cozily next to him was Lydia’s new friend Holly. With the way she was giggling at Lydia’s jokes the other day, I wouldn’t have matched her with someone like Cole. It didn’t seem to faze Lydia at all, however, and she greeted Cole and Holly in a cheery and familiar fashion. Then she took one appraisal at Jorge and offered him the back of her hand. “Well, hello there. I’m Lettuce.”

  Jorge took her hand and kissed it. “Yes, I know. Your reputation precedes you.”

  She giggled coyly, and I resisted an urge to gag myself with my index finger. Jorge then winked and said, “Buttercup was telling me all about you.”

  “Buttercup?” I questioned although I knew what the answer would be.

  Lydia shrugged out of her faux pink fur coat, revealing a terribly skimpy spaghetti-strap dress.

  “Don’t be silly, Edith,” she said to me. “Buttercup is our sister.”

  Right—her zany method acting, if you could call it that. So Holly was now Buttercup, and I wondered, by the way she was nuzzled close to Cole, if he was her Wesley.

  I’d never been inside Phillip’s Gastro Pub before. The location was a former Blockbuster Video and had been vacant for some time before some developers tore the building down to the foundation. I remember watching the progress each time I passed that way, and once it was finally finished, I figured it was far too hipster for me and my pocketbook. One look at the trendy hemp menu and my suspicions were confirmed. A hamburger with a side of slaw was twenty-eight dollars, and that was the cheapest entree they had. My reaction must have played plainly on my features because Cole leaned across the table and placed his warm, heavy hand on mine.

  “It’s my treat tonight.”

  “Oh no, I couldn’t accept—”

  “Just order something,” Jorge interjected. “You’ll make all the rest of us look like jerks if you don’t.”

  I looked around the table to find the nodding faces of Lydia and Holly in agreement with Jorge.

  “You can repay me with a song,” Cole bade to me. “It’s karaoke night.”

  Great! Karaoke. I considered myself an open-minded person, but there were a select few things I disliked on this great earth of ours: war, poverty, global warming, Will Darcy, and karaoke.

  This evening was turning out to be far from what I expected. I wasn’t prepared to make a fool out of myself by singing I Got You Babe in front of my director, much less the humiliation of conceding to the offer of a free dinner. To compound the whole armpit of a night, Lydia took the seat closest to Jorge, placing me far from his side. Even though we had hit it off earlier, I didn’t have a claim on him, nor was I sure I wanted to just yet, but for the hours that led up to meeting up with him, all I wanted was to do was ask about his acquaintance with Will. There was a juicy story in there somewhere, and I was too curious for my own good. As it stood, we were in a bar too noisy for conversation, a night of drunk karaoke revelry was on the horizon, and our party was getting bigger by the minute by the addition of the lip-syncing pirate.

  “Sorry I’m late.”

  Denny took the empty chair between me and Cole, rounding out our party of six. Presently, Denny the lip-syncing pirate, with whom I’d never spoken two words in succession, gave me an artless grin and claimed my water for himself.

  “You’re not drinking this, are you?” he asked. “I’m parched.”

  I just shook my head because, frankly, I’d never given it more of a passing thought that he could have any word in his vocabulary other than watermelon.

  “You all know my nephew Denny, of course,” said Cole.

  We all nodded and smiled, but Lydia twirled her hair and winked.

  “Hi Danny.”

  “It’s Denny. With an ‘e,’” he said nonplussed. “Like the restaurant.”

  “Oh,” she purred, casting her eyeballs all over him in open assessment. “Are you open all night?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” he said without a pause. “And I’ve got hot cakes.”

  “I like to call them flapjacks,” she cooed.

  Jorge laughed lightly—that beautiful, unaffected laugh—and he caught my stare. His eyes flickered over me with awareness, sharing a moment—the sort of telepathic moment that suggests Let’s blow this taco stand. Or maybe I was imagining things.

  All I knew was that this conversation was getting weird and oddly enough, making me hungry for pancakes. Denny’s (the restaurant, not the pirate) would have been much cheaper, less hipster, and best of all, have no karaoke.

  I had to admit, however, as the evening progressed and after a few margaritas, we all relaxed into comfortable intimacy like good friends. Cole surprised me the most with his easy humor. I suppose I never thought of him more than the stern director he wore as a facade
at the theatre. He wore many hats as any professional would. It was a pleasant discovery on my part. It was also alarmingly plain there was a lot more going on between him and Holly than innocent flirting. I found myself watching them every so often through the night—the touches, the stolen whispers. What was the age difference between them? It had to be close to thirty years. And yet they were so beautifully matched and so incandescently in love, it hardly mattered.

  Lydia, never one to turn down a free drink, made good use of Cole’s generosity. He’d left an open tab for our table, ordering pitcher after pitcher of margaritas. And Phillip’s Gastro Pub, being overly trendy and hipster, had delicious and expensive artisan-crafted margaritas. We were all a little buzzed and so cozily paired, we danced all night. And when a patron on the karaoke mic would sing painfully off key, we’d cheer them on with raucous encouragement. To Cole’s amusement, and my astonishment, Denny and Lydia sang Don’t Go Breaking My Heart as a duet. Denny actually had a great voice as he channeled his inner Elton John. No lip-syncing at all. It was so contagious, I dragged Jorge on stage to join as back-up singers. He was reluctant at first, and I found the timid reaction an endearing, awkward garment he clearly didn’t frequently wear.

  “I’m a backstage guy,” he said later on. “I’ll leave the performing to you.”

  “You did great.” I laughed. “With the exception of all the ho-ho-hos.”

  “It’s not ho-ho?”

  “No, Santa Claus, it’s ooo-ooo.”

  The corners of his lips curled and leaned into me, brushing his stubble against my ear. “I’m really good at coming down chimneys.”

  His breath was hot on the delicate skin of my collarbone, and he wore the lingering scent of tequila like a fine cologne. It suited him very well. All at once, I didn’t care about any of those other things I was preoccupied with. Not Cole and Holly, not Lydia’s homelessness, not that Darcy guy. In a haze of onion rings and tequila, I wondered why any of those things mattered at all. I was having fun.

  The small escape from my cares was too short lived, and I crashed into sober awareness with the abrupt appearance of Denny. He flew to me with a whoosh so swift, he didn’t pause or halt his steps as he pulled me by the arm towards the back of the restaurant.

  “Lydia threw up all over the stage,” he said with a determined gait. “I was able to get her to the restroom, but you’d better check on her.”

  Wonderful!

  “Where’s Holly?” I questioned.

  He chuckled. “Are you kidding? She left with my uncle about an hour ago.”

  “Oh.”

  I was in Latin dreamland longer than I’d realized.

  “He left me his credit card,” said Denny. “He’s gonna be livid when he gets the cleaning bill.”

  I found Lydia in the first stall, huddled over the toilet. She was a shade of pale puce and strands of her hair were plastered against her face. One of her spaghetti straps hung off her shoulder, causing her dress to sag low on her tiny boobs.

  “You okay, hon?” I asked, stroking the hair from her neck.

  “You’re holding my hair as I hurl into the toilet,” she managed to say with some humor.

  “That’s what friends do.” I smiled.

  She looked like she was going to say something else endearingly sappy but gagged again and let more party evidence spill into the toilet.

  “How much did you have to drink?” I asked but thought better of it a moment later. “Never mind.”

  It didn’t matter at this point. I needed to get her home—hopefully without damage to the interior of my Volvo. I stayed with her until I deemed it safe to move her. Jorge and Denny met us at the door, carrying both our purses. I would have made a cheeky joke had I not been determined to get Lydia the Eddie Flagrante out of there.

  Denny was a little more anxious than I was. “Let’s go before there’s more damage,” he cried. “The busboy is giving us the stink eye.”

  “I don’t blame him,” I said with sympathy. I’d never had to deal with drunk customers at the lodge, but I’d cleaned my share of messes. Mostly idiots playing with the ketchup or Tabasco. It gave me an unhealthy aversion to condiments.

  Jorge gathered Lydia in his arms and carried her out of the pub. We made it to my car without incident, and he gently lowered her into the backseat. “I better ride with you,” he said. “To make sure she’s okay.”

  “I can handle it, really,” I protested.

  “Are you going to carry her into the house?” he argued. “Besides, I’m a little too tipsy to drive.”

  He climbed into the seat beside Lydia without another word and cradled her head on his lap.

  “I feel like a dip-head,” said Denny. “I didn’t even realize she had that much to drink.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  I would have hugged him, but I suspected traces of Lydia’s vomit got on my clothing. “Are you okay to drive?”

  “I am now,” he blurted. “Nothing like a little drama to kill the buzz.”

  We parted with a nod and an awareness of the new friendship an experience like that produced. I drove home with these thoughts in the forefront of my mind. New friends already forming a tender attachment to my heart just because we spent an evening laughing over margaritas and bad karaoke. I wondered if Jane was having as much fun with her new acquaintances. I imagined her meeting Bing at a bar, maybe one of those posh martini bars. And wouldn’t it be a riot to be joined by Will and Caroline?

  Gag me.

  I wished her well, but as long as Bing relied on such meddling friends, she’d always be under their scrutiny. There was no sign of her when we arrived at the apartment.

  Jorge helped me get Lydia situated on the couch. She was totally passed out, but I put a barf bucket next to her just in case. I wasn’t interested in losing my security deposit. Before I even noticed what he was doing, Jorge had disrobed down to his boxers. I almost leapt into the barf bucket.

  “It’s not a good party unless you’re covered in vomit.” He shrugged, holding his soiled clothes. “Do you mind if I wash these in your bathtub?”

  “Oh! Of course.”

  I looked down at my own clothing and noticed patches of caked-on residue. “I’ll get you some detergent. And a robe.”

  The evening had played out just a little differently in my imagination when I was preparing to go out. Jorge was in my living room, exposing more skin than should be legal, but my fantasies never included a barf fest. I consoled myself with a quick shower and fresh pajamas while Jorge washed his clothes in the guest bathroom, and when he met me in the kitchen with the Hello Kitty robe I lent him, I had a pot of boiling water on the stove.

  “You look dashing as ever,” I teased.

  “It suits me,” he said, modeling the robe. “I think I’ll keep it.”

  “Sorry, the laundry room is locked at this hour,” I apologized. “Tea or hot cocoa?”

  “Cocoa, if you have milk. My mom used to make it with milk.”

  Used to. That didn’t escape my notice, but I didn’t want to ask after the night we’d had. Instead, I continued to tease him, offering him my fluffy slippers to match the robe and suggesting we give each other manicures while watching chick flicks. We joked over cocoa and laughed louder than we ought to with a sleeping reprobate just a few feet away on my couch. She was so barbecue, she never stirred an inch. After some time, he thanked me for a lovely evening and prepared to gather his clothes to leave.

  “But they’re still soaking wet,” I protested. “Are you going out like that?”

  He shrugged. “This is L.A. I’m sure the Uber driver has seen weirder stuff than a guy in a Hello Kitty robe.”

  “What if I don’t let you take the robe?”

  He shrugged it off his shoulders and held it out to me in one fluid motion. “Like I said, this is L.A.”

  He was a sight to behold—pure, chiseled man flesh, the defined features and golden brown of his skin more pronounced in the low light of my apartm
ent. I swallowed hard and squeezed my eyelids tight. “Put that back on before I—”

  I choked on my words, not entirely sure what I planned to say.

  “Before you what?”

  Gah! I lost all sense of sentence structure around this guy!

  “Just put it on and stay.” I sighed. “You can’t go out like that. Just crash here.”

  My eyes were still shut. I heard him chuckle under his breath as the swoosh of the cloth brushed against his body, and I rendered it safe to open my eyes again.

  “You are something else, Beth short for Elizabeth and sometimes Lizzie.”

  He drew near to me, invading my space. Even with a silly bathrobe barely covering his tall frame, he was still way too gorgeous. I began to regret this whole evening. The temperature in my apartment was always a slight chill in November, but the heat from his presence was downright tropical. He locked his eyes with mine as his arm wrapped behind me, barely grazing my side, and I heard a screech.

  “Shall we sit and talk then?”

  The screech was a chair he pulled out behind me at the breakfast nook. What a ridiculous tweenager I’d become. My innards crumpled into a heap of nerves whenever he was near. Get it together, Beth. I reminded myself he was a player. He had to be. The question was, did I care?

  “Some people call me Eliza,” I blurted. “But I don’t like it. Too much like Eliza Doolittle.”

  He smiled at my admission. “Okay, Beth short for Elizabeth sometimes Lizzie but never Eliza. Got it.”

  An awkward silence fell over the room as if after a full day of easy banter, we’d finally run out of words to say to one another. I went over the inventory in my head. Yep. Tank was empty. But what I really wanted to talk about, what I was burning to know, was something I didn’t feel the confidence to ask. The showdown in the scene shop earlier in the day seemed like so long ago, but the feelings it stirred were still fresh on my mind. It turned out the same thoughts weighed on Jorge’s mind as well, and his countenance shifted to somber reflection.

  “I want to apologize about this afternoon,” he began. I didn’t interrupt him. I let him speak without reservations lest he change his mind. “You probably noticed the… less than cordial greeting I exchanged with a certain person today.”