Animate Me

by Ruth Clampett

  “So how’s it going with Beth?” he asks before taking a handful of fries.

  “Brooke,” I correct him. “It’s going fine, well better than fine, I think.”

  He raises his eyebrows like he can’t believe a dork like me can be doing fine with a girl. “Are you being chill, like I told you to be?”

  It occurs to me that in his eyes my plan may be a good one, so I test the waters.

  “Really chill. As a matter of fact she thinks I like another girl at the studio, and she’s going to help me get her.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about? I told you to be chill, not insane.”

  “Don’t you see, she feels safe now spending time with me. And she’s like my dating coach, she was showing me how to kiss Dani…the other girl.”

  “No shit, that is bizarre. So she is kissing you to show you how to kiss someone else when she doesn’t know that you’re actually really kissing her?”

  “Exactly!” I exclaim.

  “You are one crazy fucker. So tell me Einstein, how do you see this playing out in the end? Or did it occur to you to figure that out first?”

  “No, the whole thing just sort of happened. I’m figuring it out as I go along and it seems to be working just fine.” I am getting irritated with his doom and gloom. It’s a black cloud lingering over our table.

  He shakes his head. “But in the end—no matter what—she will know that you lied. You deceived and manipulated her. And in my vast experience with women, that’s usually a deal breaker.”

  I spend the rest of lunch watching him eat, since I’ve completely lost my appetite. As we go to leave I ask if he minds us swinging by Outer Limits since Billie wants me to pick up my special-ordered vinyl Harley Quinn collectible figurine that goes with my Joker. It’s the last one she has and she’s sick of people eyeballing it despite the fact that my name is on it.

  Billie is standing near the door rearranging a display when we enter the store. She turns towards us, and her eyes widen when she sees Curtis. For almost any girl, you would hardly notice the gesture, but with hard-ass Billie it’s like the earth has tilted off its rotation. He must be wearing that pheromone cologne or something, since I appear to be witnessing textbook instant attraction.

  “Hey, Nathan,” she says, never taking her eyes off him. “Who’s your friend?”

  Curtis steps forward. “Hi, I’m Curtis, Nathan’s brother. And you are?”

  “Wilhelmina.” She smiles. “But you can call me Billie.”

  I move to the back of the store, disgusted that in ten seconds he has scored with Billie-the-ball-buster. Everyone but me has asked her out and she usually just rolls her eyes and punches them on the arm.

  When I finally head back to the front to see what’s going on, Billie has her shirt hiked up and she is showing Curtis the tattoos on her lower back. He is running his fingers over her skin and quietly charming her with his admiration.

  Curtis wins yet again.

  I’m quiet for the first part of the ride back to the studio, but then I can’t help myself. I need my suspicions confirmed. “When?” I ask.

  “Late this afternoon, after work.”

  “Really?” I grumble. I’m not jealous, just frustrated. Everything is always so easy for Curtis.

  “She told me that she wants to know everything about me…if you know what I mean.”

  I take a sharp breath. Damn. We weren’t even in there twenty minutes.

  “I can’t even believe how I feel,” he says. “There’s no bullshit with this girl. She serves everything straight up, and it’s a revelation compared to the other women I’ve known. Our attraction was completely visceral.” He shakes his head in wonder.

  • • •

  Later in her office, Brooke gives me a soft smile as I present the latest Starbucks cup to her. “Do you know how much I look forward to seeing what you’re going to create for me?” She asks.

  “Well, I like drawing them for you,” I reply. “I hope you like this one.”

  She turns the cup and grins when she sees that I’ve rendered one of her collectible lady-head vases on the cup, but this time she’s the lady head with pencils and a pair of scissors coming out of the top of her head.

  “Oh, Nathan…I love it! I’m going to set this cup next to my collection.”

  “I’m glad,” I say. “It was fun to do.” I let out a sigh as I sink down into her guest chair.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Brooke asks as she notices me pull my hand through my hair.

  I can’t hide anything from her. “Not really.” I admit. After my loser lunch with Curtis I’ve convinced myself to tell Brooke the truth and cut my losses.

  She walks over to her office door and closes it.

  “What’s up?” she asks after sitting on her couch and motioning for me to join her.

  “I just have the worst feeling, like everything’s a mess and I’m not sure how to fix it. Do you ever feel that way?”

  “More often than I’d like,” she says nodding.

  I look over at her and notice that her face looks drawn and pale.

  “What about you? Are you okay?”

  “Not really, no. I had something really disturbing happen earlier.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  She suddenly stands up and goes over to her desk, grabbing her purse. “Come on. Let’s get out of here, I need a drink and it sounds like you do too.”

  Morgan doesn’t say a thing when Brooke tells her that we’re leaving to take care of something. I keep as neutral of a face as I can, despite the fact that I am nervously thrilled to be running off somewhere with her. The excitement distracts me from the feeling of doom that was weighing me down only minutes ago.

  We stand quietly in the elevator, and when we stop on the sixth floor Kevin joins us holding some storyboards.

  “Hey, Nathan,” he says before turning to look forward.

  Something suddenly occurs to me. “Um, Kevin, will you do me a favor? I need to run out and take care of something. Can you let Joel know? Tell him I finished the revisions.”

  “Sure, no problem.” Kevin nods. I don’t think he’s associating me with Brooke who is standing quietly in the corner.

  For a moment I’m grateful he’s the one that I ran into. Andy or Nick would have asked me twenty questions.

  Once in Brooke’s Prius we head out without a word. After a long quiet minute I finally speak up.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Smokehouse, over by Warner Bros.”

  I smile at the odd choice. It’s so old school that it’s cool. Despite the traditional decor, and older clientele, there’s something about the place. I’m sure a million film and cartoon deals have been made there.

  “I saw Frank and Ollie there once eating soup.”

  “Disney’s Frank and Ollie?” I ask with reverence. They were a famed part of what was termed Disney’s Nine Old Men, the brilliant animators who had worked on all his key classic films.

  “Yup, I almost asked if I could join them.”

  “I bet they would have loved that, such a beautiful woman fan-girling all over them.”

  She looks up at me surprised. Is it because I called her beautiful? It can’t be since that fact is irrefutable. Maybe she’s just surprised that someone as dense as me noticed.

  “I wish I had.” She responds after the pause. “Now they’re both gone, and I could have told them what Bambi and Dumbo meant to me as a young girl.”

  After being sat in a deep booth in the corner of the room, we decide to order serious drinks so Brooke gets a martini and I, a double Jameson on the rocks. We start out talking about the cartoons we grew up with. The Smurfs are on both of our lists and I laugh telling Brooke about the twisted caricature I remember seeing of Hefty Smurf doing inappropriate things with Smurfette. Brooke practically spits up her martini.

  “You’re so evil,” she laughs. “I’ll never be able to look at those little creatures again without having that idea i
n my head!”

  “I guess that’s the point, revising animation history, one disturbing caricature at a time.” I can tell as I watch her face warm up that the drink is doing its magic. She looks much happier and relaxed now then when she was in her office.

  “Oh, I’m glad we did this,” she exclaims, stretching her legs out under the table so that they pass in between mine. “I was ready to kill Arnauld, and now I barely give a fuck about him and his agenda.”

  “Agenda?” I ask, too curious to stay quiet.

  She rubs her hands over her face and moans.

  I take a long sip of my drink before setting it back on the table near hers. “What did he do? It must have been bad to get you so upset.”

  She plops a green olive in her mouth and watches me as if she’s trying to decide whether to tell me a secret or not.

  “He tried to whore me out.”

  I grip the edge of the table and my back goes rigid. “What? Did I hear you right? You have to explain what you mean by that.”

  “Okay, I’ve told you that we have an open relationship, right?”

  “Yes.” That’s one bit of information I’ll never forget.

  “Well, we had our network meeting today and they’ve been working us over hard, both with content and budgets. It’s so aggravating to always feel like you’re on your knees for them…at their mercy in every way.”

  This is a side of the business I never hear about, and from the sounds of it I’m lucky to be shielded from it.

  “So the key decision maker, Stephen, is this prick with a bad comb-over. And lucky girl that I am, Stephen seems to have a thing for me. The looks he gives me during meetings are so inappropriate. He’s even suggested that we go out a few times to ‘go over business’ but I always turn him down.” Her hands curl into fists and press into the table. “Arnauld knows all this; he knows how I feel about him.”

  My stomach’s churning, and our waitress brings over our second round. I take another long sip, as does Brooke.

  “So the meeting ends, and as I’m packing up, Stephen slithers over to me and asks me to lunch. I lie and tell him that I have a lunch meeting with Arnauld and our directors. The words have just left my mouth when Arnauld jumps in and assures me, in front of Stephen, that they will be fine without me and to go ahead and have a nice time with Stephen.”

  “He threw you under the bus,” I say quietly, anger in my voice.

  “And removed my panties before he did,” she agrees, disgustedly.

  “So Stephen says he will meet me in the hallway after a pit stop, and Arnauld pulls me aside and encourages me to charm him into getting the deal through.”

  “Hell no, what did you say?”

  She leans forward into her drink and sighs. “I was so stunned, so completely stunned and furious that I couldn’t say anything. I just turned and walked away from him. Besides, I couldn’t exactly start screaming at him since we were till in the building.”

  “I understand,” I say sympathetically. “When I’m surprised I’m dumbstruck, that is my reaction more times than not.”

  “And I got to spend the next two hours listening to Stephen talk about himself and avoiding his slimy advances.”

  “Are you okay?” I ask, worry etched across my face.

  “Yeah, but it was nasty. I had to abandon polite Brooke early on, but of course he liked that challenge. I did everything to dissuade him but kick him in the balls. That ass is persistent. And it’s beyond me how any of that could have helped Sketch Republic’s cause. The whole thing made me sick to my stomach. I will never be put in that position again.”

  “I’m so sorry.” I look down and feel so frustrated that I can’t do anything to take that memory away. “So what are you going to do now to Arnauld? Let’s think of something deserving of the offense,” I say determinedly.

  “Something really evil,” she agrees. But just then her phone vibrates telling her that she has a new text and I can see on the screen that it’s Arnauld trying to reach her.

  “Where are you?” she reads off the screen. She laughs and then slowly types the answer. “Exactly where I want to be.” After hitting send, she looks at the phone and curses, “Fuck you, Arnauld.”

  I smile, hoping she really means that. She turns and looks at me. “Have I ever told you that his real name isn’t Arnauld…it’s Arnold?”

  “Arnold?” I choke out, almost spitting up my drink.

  “Yeah, isn’t that rich? I discovered his high school yearbook once and found his picture. I called him Arnold once when we were having a fight and he stormed off like a big baby.” She grins.

  A second later her phone prompts again.

  She reads his response aloud. “What are you doing?” Her fingers fly over the text keys to respond. I imagine I can see the steam rising out of her ears like what happens to Yosemite Sam when Bugs Bunny really pisses him off.

  “I thought you knew. I’m bending over. If he fucks me again I really think I’ll be able to close this deal.”

  Why did she have to read that to me? It makes me sick and yet arouses me at the same time. I’m in pain, and I down the rest of my drink. The room tilts as a result.

  She reads his response with a mock angry face. “That isn’t funny, Brooke. Oh, hairy back is getting angry,” she slurs.

  “No, it really isn’t,” she types while reading aloud, then shuts off her phone. She waves for the waitress, who comes over warily. “Another round, please.”

  You go, Buttercup!

  I sit quietly wondering what to say. Finally I offer my best idea. “You want me to beat him up? My brother, who’s looks like the Incredible Hulk, would help and it wouldn’t be pretty.”

  “You’re so thoughtful, and for the record that’s really hot.”

  “I mean it,” I say. I want her to understand I mean business.

  “I know you do and that means a lot to me. Still I have to say no, but thanks. Look, I’m a little loaded and enjoying venting, but for all my bitching I know he didn’t really want me to sleep with him. Charm him, yes, but not fuck him.”

  “It’s still disgusting,” I insist.

  “Yes, it is.” Her head drops and we sit silently for a minute before she looks back up. “Look, enough about me. What happened to you today?”

  I realize that I shouldn’t tell this story drunk, but I’m overwhelmed with the urge to let out this gnawing frustration.

  “Oh, I’m having envy issues. I’m so pathetic.”

  “What happened?” she asks sympathetically.

  “I had lunch with my brother today. After lunch we stopped at the comic book store, and I introduced him to my friend, Billie. She runs the place and is exceptionally good looking. And of course they had an instant love connection.”

  “But I thought you liked Dani, why does him liking Billie, and her liking him, bother you?”

  “I don’t know, probably because they’re most likely in bed right now. Women always fall all over Curtis and drag him to bed. He has amazing sex all the time, and I don’t. Things never work out that way for me.”

  “Really?” she asks, looking disappointed for me.

  “Sorry,” I groan, letting my face falls into my open hands.

  “You don’t? What do you mean you don’t? You make it sound like you’ve never had great sex or something.”

  I look up at her and blanch as I watch the blood also drain from her face.

  “Oh my God,” she chants. “You’re not a virgin, please tell me that you’re not a virgin.”

  I’m already the worst kind of loser and I don’t even care how it looks anymore. Defeated I lean into my drink and take another long sip. “Well, technically I may as well be for the lack of fun I’ve had.”

  “I don’t understand. Is something wrong with you physically? I would imagine not since you felt more than healthy when you were holding me last night.”

  I’m horrified and dumbstruck. I can’t even look her in the eye. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable talk
ing to you about sex, or I mean my lack of hot sex, Brooke. It’s so humiliating.”

  “First of all Nathan, I love to talk about sex. It’s my favorite subject. So please don’t be shy.”

  She scoots over closer to me and reaches over, putting her hand on my knee. “You have to understand, I was raised by free-love hippy parents who were very open. By the time I was in high school, my mom left a candy jar full of condoms by the front door and tried, to my horror, to show me the best way to perform fellatio on a banana. Hell, all she ever talked about was sex. So there’s nothing you could say that would change what I think of you. This is a subject I’m very comfortable with. Besides, I bet I can help you.”

  I look down into my drink and nod. “Okay.”

  “Let’s take a step back for a moment. I knew about the awkward kissing issue, so is it similar with sex? Did you try, but not like it?”

  “I don’t know where to start.” I pull on my hair in frustration.

  “How about at the beginning?” she suggests gently.

  “Well, I think I already told you that I was really shy in high school with the girls. My senior year I ended up going out with my friend’s sister for a while. We fumbled around and did stuff a few times but she was even more uncomfortable than I was about it and it wasn’t very satisfying. We really didn’t have any common interests, nor did we have good chemistry together so that didn’t help. We finally just gave up. Later when I got to CalArts I met Rachel, another animation student and within weeks we were involved.”

  “She’s the one that didn’t like to kiss.”

  I nod. “Yeah, but she’s so great in so many ways. We felt the same about animation and we talked about it non-stop. Before you knew it we were glued at the hip, together all the time. I was so happy to finally have that with someone.”

  “That sounds great.”

  “It was. Plus she was my biggest support, always telling me that I was the most talented in our year…that I was going to have a great career.”

  “How sweet.” Brooke nods, encouragingly.

  “It was so confusing though when it came to sex. She was very physical with me, always touching me, holding my hand, sitting on my lap but whenever I would try to initiate anything more she would just freeze. It started with the kissing. She hated the kissing. So finally I gave up with that.”