“I’m okay. Thanks,” said Deb, nodding and taking a sip of her champagne to calm herself a bit. “Have you ever seen the way fire can leap across a fairground? It’s something about all that dry, crunchy grass and oily, sweaty people. It’s like a perfect storm. Excuse me,” she said, lowering the window long enough to let a gnat fly out. “I love gnats. I thought that little guy was going to end up in my champagne. He would have drowned. I had some gnats as pets when I was a kid,” she added, a hazy smile of remembrance on her face.
“I can’t imagine they made good pets,” said Alanna.
“They have personalities like anything,” said Deb. It was right then and there that I decided she should be Bellamy’s wife.
“Then what happened? I mean with the firestorm, not the gnats,” said Vanessa, leaning forward, tucking her hair behind her ears so she wouldn’t miss a word.
“A ball of fire shot from my popcorn stand straight over to the Bulldozers, and started a stuffed purple panda on fire,” said Deb.
“How did you end up working at a carnival?” asked Alanna. “Do you come from one of those carnival families?”
Deb ignored her and continued with her story: “The panda fell on the ground and a line of fire starting burning, heading straight over to the Tilt-a-Whirl. I almost started the Tilt-a-Whirl on fire. With kids on it! Geez, it was really bad.”
“It sounds awful. Super scary,” said Vanessa.
“So, I guess this means I don’t have a passport, since that’s the way things always go for me,” said Deb.
“The producers have it,” I said. “They have all our passports. Don’t you remember them confiscating them? Tonight when we get our plane tickets they’ll give us our passports back.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” said Alanna. “When I was the star of my own show, one of the guys got sent home for some kind of paperwork error, so you never know.”
“You were the star of your own show?” asked Jessica.
“Very funny,” said Alanna.
“I agree with Emma. I think you’ll be fine,” said Vanessa.
“Thanks. I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” said Deb as we turned into our driveway.
Sure enough, passports materialized for all of us, along with airline tickets and Venice travel guides. The best part of Bellamy’s Redemption was about to begin!
Chapter 21
“Hi there, are you Albergo?” asked Deb.
“Excus-a me?” asked the adorable little man who seemed to be running the show at our hotel.
“Are you Albergo Vincenzo?”
“This is Albergo Vincenzo,” he said, pointing to the marble floor.
“I really don’t get what you mean, but could you get us some more peanuts when you get a chance? All this bubbly water is making me want something salty.”
“It’s making me thirsty,” said Alanna, who was jetlagged bordering on hysterical. She had been drinking bubbly water, champagne, and some kind of orange liquor since 5:00 a.m.
“Me too, y’all,” said Vanessa, holding up an empty crystal tumbler.
“It’s so horrid to be trapped here like this, just watching the world go by, not able to get out there,” said Alanna. “And to be so sleep-deprived is criminal. My God, I just can’t handle this.”
We were all stretched out on antique wicker lounge chairs, up on a rooftop terrace, watching gondolas go by on the Grand Canal. Klassie and Tamika were on a two-on-one date, and only one of them was coming back.
“Do you think it’s appropriate for us to be wearing bikinis?” asked Deb. “Everyone else is wearing, you know, clothes.” She waved her empty peanut bowl at the few other tourists nearby. Far to our left were two older Germans wearing slacks and button-down shirts. To our right was a middle-aged woman reading a novel. She had on jeans and a fleece pull-over. She was distancing herself from us since she was Canadian and fancied herself to be superior to us.
“Oh, who cares?” said Jessica. “I’m going to show off all the skin I can until I’m old and saggy.” The middle-aged woman shook her head but didn’t look up from her book.
“There shouldn’t even be other people around,” said Alanna. “I was told we would have a closed set at all times.”
“Is it lunchtime yet?” Deb asked Albergo, when he reappeared with a delightful brass cart holding peanuts, bubbly water, flat water, and a couple of bottles of champagne.
“Our restaurant begins serving in one hour,” said Albergo.
“I guess I can make it a little longer,” said Deb, scooping up a handful of peanuts. “I can’t believe how fat this show is making me.”
“You still look fine,” said Vanessa.
“Nuh-uh. I’m probably a size eight now.”
“Gross,” said Alanna. “You definitely are not.”
“Who do you think is coming back? Tamika or Klassie?” I asked.
“I think both will go home soon. The order doesn’t matter,” said Jessica.
“Tamika is boring, and Klassie is too wild. Like, the roller skates. Is that for real, or is it just a gimmick?” asked Vanessa.
“I think that’s her being her,” I said.
“Oh, Emma, you’re so naive,” said Alanna. “When I was the star of my own show, last season, half of the guys had a gimmick. One showed up wearing a Marshmallow Man costume because he was so sweet. Like, ha ha. Another wore a vintage bomber jacket and sunglasses and tried to pretend to be Tom Cruise. I was like ewww. Who’s grosser than Tom Cruise? Nobody! And how about the guy with the pointy goatee and horn implants who tried to convince me he was a Minotaur?”
“I don’t remember that,” I said.
“You don’t remember that?”
“Sorry. I missed an episode once when I was working late.”
“Working late? Like a… dad? From the 1950’s? I’ve really had it up to here with you,” she said, sawing at the air above her head. “Working late! I’m going to scream.” She turned to a cameraman. “Can I get my own hotel? She just said she was working late. That is the fakest excuse I’ve ever heard. I’m being lied to. Straight to my face. It’s just like Antonio all over again. Ugh!” She shook her head, dismissing me with the wave of her hand as she turned to face the others. “Didn’t any of you even watch me? Apparently you really aren’t fans like I thought you were.”
“We’re your fans! We’re totally your fans,” said Deb.
“Thank you, Debbie. Anyway, Klassie is the same as all those fools from my season. She’s a big faker. She’s trying to be memorable with a gimmick to make up for a lack of real personality.”
“I really don’t think that’s the case with her. I think she likes to roller skate. I don’t believe it’s more complicated than that,” I said.
“Emma, Emma, Emma.” Alanna shook her head. “I thought you were smarter than that. Seriously, I thought aside from Vanessa and myself, you were maybe in third place for smartness. Now I see you’re a naive liar who isn’t smart at all. How about that Eskimo kiss she gave Bellamy the other day? What was that all about? Can’t you recognize a gimmick when you see one?”
“Yeah, that was odd,” I admitted.
“Thanks for agreeing with me when I’m obviously right. I mean, it’s the least you could do. I guess what I am trying to say is, I wish you would go home. I’m sick of seeing your face around here.”
Deb gasped a little over this, but quickly looked down. Before I could come back with any kind of response, Jessica jumped in on my behalf: “Would you listen to yourself, you bloody wombat? Don’t you realize there are cameras all around you? I hope they keep this in and show you like you really are,” she said to Alanna.
“Are you talking back to me?” asked Alanna.
“Yes! Enough already.”
“You can keep your little sayings to yourself. Bellamy would never end up with someone like you. You’re Australian,” said Alanna.
“Goodbye,” said Jessica, getting up and leaving. Vanessa covered her face with her book to kee
p from participating in the conversation. I opened a bubbly water and sipped it, looking out at Venice. The people walking by on the little bridge down below were so much classier looking than Americans. I caught a cute guy looking up at us and I accidentally waved, then yanked my hand back down to my side and pretended I’d been swatting at a fly. I considered going inside and taking a nap to get away from everyone but there was too much to see out here.
“Hey, Alanna,” said Deb, “I’m done looking at this magazine if you want it. It’s all in Italian, but you’d probably like it. Everyone looks really stylish, like you.”
Alanna took it and shoved it under her lounge chair. Then she sighed and her eyes filled up with tears. “Forgive me if I sounded mean a second ago,” she said to everyone and no one in in particular, “but all these people around are getting to me. I’m an introvert and people suck my energy from me. They’re spirit-mosquitoes. I wish this was over. I’m just really exhausted from all this constant pressure and the lack of privacy. I know he’s going to pick me, but I’m sick of waiting and sick of all of you. I hope I’m not upsetting you. I’m just being honest.”
“You’re not upsetting us. Not at all,” said Deb.
“Good.” Alanna turned to the camera guys. “Hi Luca. Hi Bob. Luca, you look cute today. Bob, I like your t-shirt. It’s so funny! At first I didn’t get it, but now I see that the donkey is really a cat, and it makes sense. You guys are awesome. Don’t make me look mean on TV, okay? Please! Pretty please? You can delete some of this if you want to. You know I’m not actually mean, right? You know I’m just having a bad day. I’m so jetlagged. And I don’t know what’s in this orange stuff, but whew! It’s making me loopy! I’m sorry.” Then she turned back to me. “And you, Emma, wise up!”
I turned away since I didn’t trust the producers to edit my response in a favorable way.
“Don’t sweat it, Alanna,” said Deb. “We’re all still crazy about you.”
“Thanks, Debbie. You’re a sweetie,” said Alanna.
“You can just call me Deb. Only my grandpa ever called me Debbie. He called me Little Debbie. Like the snack girl. It was his special name for me.”
“Cute,” I said.
Alanna glared at Deb, so Deb cleared her throat and continued, “But Alanna, if you want to call me Debbie, that’s fine. You can call me whatever you want. It’s really up to you.”
“Debbie is easier to remember,” said Alanna.
“It is?”
“Sure,” said Alanna.
“Oh. Can I call you Lannie?”
“No way.”
“That’s fine. You can still call me Debbie. Anyhow, these peanuts taste different. I guess ‘cause they’re Italian peanuts. They taste, I don’t know, just different I guess,” said Deb, rubbing her bloated little tummy. She belched quietly and dropped a wadded up tissue into the peanut bowl. “That ought to keep me from eating the rest. Or maybe not. Knowing me, I’ll just keep on eating them anyway. I hope Bellamy likes curvy girls. By curvy, I mean fat. Isn’t he amazing? He’s exactly like I thought he would be, but a million times better. I wish he’d just pick me to be his wife. His wife. That sounds so amazing! No offense, Alanna, or you either Emma; it’s not that I wouldn’t want him to pick one of you, but I really love him. I told him that even. Have either of you told him that yet?”
“What?” we all asked in unison. Vanessa who had been pretending to be asleep was now sitting up, gawking.
“I love him. I am in love with him. And I told him so,” said Deb.
“You did?” asked Vanessa.
“Am I supposed to keep this a secret?” Deb asked, turning to address a cameraman. He just shrugged a little.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“I just knew,” she said. “Have any of you told him yet?”
We all looked at each other. None of us said anything. Then Alanna spoke up: “I did. I had to explain why I was back here, so I told him that I’m in love with him.”
“Are you?” asked Jessica, reappearing on the scene.
“Yes,” said Alanna.
“Are you ever going to tell us what happened with you and Antonio?” asked Vanessa.
“I suppose I might as well. You’ll all just read about it in magazines anyway. This definitely isn’t going on the show though,” she said, raising her eyes at a producer who was sitting off on his own playing with his phone. “Hello, Jules. I know you’re listening. Tell me that I can say something off the record or I’m not going to tell them. Luca, turn your camera off.”
“You’ve got five minutes,” said Jules. “If anything big happens we’re going to film it, so be prepared to shut your mouth or what you say could make it on the show.”
“Thank you,” said Alanna. “Okay, I will make this fast. I really did love Antonio, but I also liked Bellamy. I mean loved Bellamy. I mean, I still love him. But back to Antonio. I felt pressure to pick one, so I did.”
“So you didn’t want to get engaged?” asked Deb.
“That’s not what I said, Debbie. I felt pressure, but I did want to get engaged.”
“Okay. Sorry,” said Deb.
“A week after Antonio and I got engaged he told me that he is a virgin, except for one brief encounter where his older male cousin gave him a hand job at a movie theater. I was devastated, but I told him we could try to work through it with counseling or therapy, or maybe a trip to some place tropical. I really wanted to go to Saint Maarten.”
“Ooh, I love it there,” said Vanessa.
“I’ve never been,” said Alanna.
“Wrap up your story. The girl who didn’t get kicked off is coming back soon and we want to be able to film that,” said a producer.
“Okay, no problem Jules. So, we signed up for some counseling in Santa Monica and it was way too new age for me. The counselors were married. Have you ever heard of that? A married couple doing counseling together?”
“Ick! That sounds like a recipe for disaster,” said Deb.
“It was! They were super old. Like fifty probably. They used crystals and made us soak our feet in olive oil baths. There was so much incense burning that I could barely breathe. I had to pretty much burn my clothes after a session, because of the god-awful stench.”
“Terrible,” said Vanessa.
“Tell me about it! They played bongo drums and they liked not having the lights on very bright. They seemed to think light was disruptive or bad, and they told us to ‘talk things out’ by candlelight. How dumb! And they tried to make us plant a garden in paper cups because they thought we needed something to nurture together. One whole session was about dirt and seeds and Dixie cups. Can you imagine? Can you even imagine? Worst of all, I could tell from all their shenanigans that they didn’t comprehend that we had real problems! Like Antonio’s compulsive lying! He told me that he never eats junk food, and I built my perceptions of him on statements like that. I was building feelings based on lies.”
“What do you mean?” asked Vanessa.
“It turns out, he does eat junk food! What did I find in his car when he came back from visiting his brother at college? A Mulliver’s hamburger wrapper! A gross, greasy, skanky, unhealthy hamburger wrapper! Actually, actually, hang on. I think it might have been a cheeseburger wrapper.”
“A cheeseburger wrapper? Even worse,” said Vanessa. “This reminds me, as a pediatrician, that childhood obesity is a national epidemic. In the States, anyhow. I’m trying to come up with ways to singlehandedly solve this problem, like maybe a line of pre-packaged healthy kids’ snacks and microwavable meals. What do y’all think?”
“Yeah, a cheeseburger wrapper is totally worse,” Alanna continued, ignoring Vanessa. “He said it was his brother’s, but I know he was lying because it was crumpled into a ball, and he likes to crumple everything up into a ball.”
“I love Mulliver’s. Do you really consider them to be junk food?” asked Deb. She looked seriously concerned. “I think maybe they’re kind of healthy, right? Mmm, I’m
getting hungry just thinking about that place. Mmm, Mulliver’s Milky Malt! Lemon Snow Shavers! Pot Roast Lunch Bucket! Mmmm.”
“What’s a Lemon Snow Shaver? It sounds delicious,” said Vanessa. “Do you think it would fit into my childhood obesity food plan? I mean, kids gotta go out to eat still, right?”
“Debbie, where’s your loyalty?” asked Alanna. “I thought you always had my back.”
“You’re right. What a creep that Antonio turned out to be,” said Deb. “I can’t believe he left you to be with his brother, when you two were just starting out.”
“Exactly. We were only together maybe a month total, but the lies and deceptions he packed into that month are more than I may ever recover from. And how were we supposed to heal from everything he did to me? With talking and drumming and chanting! No wonder we were doomed! Those froo-froo counselors didn’t understand or appreciate that I am a traditional girl. Worldly and sophisticated, yet basic. I’m Prada, not Juicy Couture, ya know? I’m simple. I mean, for God’s sake, I’m Canadian. That’s right, I’m a Canadian too,” she said, interrupting her story for the benefit of the middle aged woman in fleece.
“Get me oat of here,” muttered the Canadian to her book.
“The final straw was at our second therapy session when one of the counselors suggested that we not be engaged yet. Can you imagine? I had a gorg ring that I was supposed to give back? It was platinum! Ugh. Such a bad day. Antonio agreed with the counselor. We had a big fight and broke up. And now I’m here. Oh, and to top it all off, now I have loyalty and trust issues. Thanks, Antonio.”
“That’s a sad story, but we’re glad you’re here,” said Deb.
“Okay, your time is up,” said a producer. The camera guys stretched and got ready. The door burst open. It was Klassie, on her roller skates, a topaz and diamond brooch shaped like a gigantic spider pinned at her hip. She clomped in and then skated around us in circles, smiling, waiting for one of us to comment on her winnings.
“My floor, my floor,” said Albergo, who had returned with his cart of goodies.
“Yes, I’ve heard that before. Why is everyone so hung up on material stuff? You can always get a new floor. Look at my prize,” she said, showing us the brooch. “It’s vintage Deluxe from the Deluxe vault. Each girl is going to get one that is unique this time. Just like all of us.” She flung her leg out and spun down into a spiral, collapsing dramatically in a heap.
Bellamy's Redemption Page 21
