Hungry for Love

by Nancy Frederick

  And find out he did. Once he was seated in the passenger seat being driven along by this sweet little cupcake, Kevin finally started to calm down—he refused to give in to the paranoia and looked out the window only intermittently. His voice sounded calm, he was pretty sure it did.

  “Of course you’re not going to a hotel,” Angie said, “I have plenty of room.”

  “What a night,” said Kevin. Look at that. She was patting his hand. What a little sweetheart. Kevin grasped her hand and held it tightly, feeling the strains of the worst day ever melt away. And as long as he didn’t think too much, he almost felt good.

  At least they weren’t on Sunset. That phrase echoed through Kevin’s mind now and then and each time it did, he squeezed Angie’s hand. She’d driven through the shopping area of Beverly Hills and had turned south of Wilshire. It didn’t take long. And they didn’t take Sunset.

  At the same moment Angie’s dad was returning home from a political fund raiser. He’d treated himself to a brand new car and was proud he hadn’t fallen into the Mercedes trap of virtually all his colleagues. He wanted something simple. A small SUV was the way to drive, not too much gas, nobody to impress.

  “Oh my God,” shrieked Kevin, his voice at about the octave range usually reserved for pre-pubescent boys or those deliberately sheared of their genitalia in order to maintain those high notes. “Quick, turn around. Go around the block.” Frantically he reached for the wheel, but Angie shrugged, asked no questions, and just did as he asked.

  Angie’s dad had driven into his garage and lowered the door. Should he have gotten red or a jazzier color? Of course not. He wasn’t having a mid-life crisis. He’d just bought a car. A nice, neat little black Honda CR-V. Like a Jeep but better. Fantastic ratings and resale value. A sane person’s car. And you could easily put your dog in the back. If you had a dog. Maybe he would get a dog—Angie had said she wanted one.

  It took about two minutes for Angie and Kevin to circle the block and all the while Kevin’s head spun frantically around, looking in vain for the Honda. “We outwitted them,” he said jovially, “They’re gone,” and then instantly terrified, “Do you really think they’re gone?”

  “Who?”

  Kevin attempted to appear sociable and even nonchalant as they entered the guesthouse when what he wanted to do was dim all the lights and stand guard at the window. It took full concentration for him to speak casually, to look around socially and comment on his surroundings, “Nice place. And you rent this guest house? I might be in the market for something like it soon.” Self control could be maintained only so long, as Kevin knew only too well, and so he skulked to the window and standing covertly to the side, peered out.

  “It’s my dad’s. He has the main house.”

  “Well it’s got everything you need, doesn’t it.” There was a kitchen on one wall at the rear, a big brass bed on another and a little sitting area with a love seat and a television. Maybe he could fix up the guest house at his place like this in case Laura insisted he leave for a few days.

  “I’m going to change,” whispered Angie.

  “Oh don’t change,” said Kevin absently, “You’re so nice the way you are.”

  “I meant my clothes.”

  Kevin barely noticed as she walked down a small hallway into a dressing room, giving him a chance to focus his full energy on what potentially lurked outside the window. A car drove down the street and he jumped, but he could see it wasn’t the car. Just a car.

  In a blur Kevin found himself naked, in bed, being kissed and touched by a girl who had hands, hands that could knead bread. But what? He was thinking about bread? And he couldn’t see out the window, but he could see lights passing now and then and he jumped each time a car passed. He knew he had to get a grip. They surely would not mow through the side walls of this guesthouse and run him down. Would they? They surely would not be waiting in the bushes to jump him when he walked out the door in the morning? Would they? Without his car around him, Kevin felt naked. And he actually was naked. With a sandwich girl. Come to think of it—he hadn’t had anything to eat in hours. She opened a drawer and he wondered if there was a sandwich in there and then he was pretty sure his blood sugar had plummeted to some never before experienced low. Not a sandwich. A condom. And then something else plummeted. This was a day of firsts. Everything you never wanted to have happen and less. Or more. Or was it less?

  He sat up in the bed, the covers pulled up to his chin for the second time in hours, and beside him the girl did the same. If he’d been this miserable before, he couldn’t remember when. Wait? Was that a car? He shook his head, trying to regain his sanity.

  “I should leave,” he said.

  “Don’t be silly. You’re just stressed.” Angie sighed. “You are stressed, right? I mean, um, it’s not cause, um, you remember how I looked before, it’s not is it?”

  “Oh, baby.” Kevin hugged the sandwich girl and tried to sound rational. “It’s hard to be, um hard, with assassins chasing you.”

  Angie shrugged. It happened. Well, she knew it happened. She’d heard it happened. “Let’s just get some sleep.”

  “Perfect,” said Kevin. “You’ve been a real sport tonight. I really do thank you. And tomorrow I will thank you properly. Or improperly.” He thought about offering to order a pizza but somehow that just seemed rude. He had to maintain some level of decorum, didn’t he? If you allow a girl to drag you to her apartment instead of checking into a hotel, you forfeit the right to call room service, don’t you?

  Angie smiled sweetly at him. It happened, so wasn’t it better just to be understanding?

  Kevin lay there all night, intermittently looking out the window and toward the fridge. By the morning he was doubly frazzled, exhausted, and starving. At least that’s what he told himself when something that had never happened before happened again. Had that cop somehow put a curse on him? No, he didn’t believe that. He hunkered down into the softness of the bed, pulling the covers over his head morosely, even when the nice girl tried to snuggle him. He had a curse on his head, so what good did that do. No, a curse on his dick. The worst curse of all. A wurst curse, he thought sardonically and then that he really needed to eat something.

  “You must still be upset. It’s okay, really it is.”

  “So it’s come to this. Torture and humiliation. I’ve gotta get out of here.”

  “I’ll drive you.”

  It took just moments for Angie and Kevin to be ready to leave, but in those very same moments, Angie’s dad had pulled out of his garage and began backing down the driveway. Seeing the car, Kevin leapt into the air, and in a particularly intense display of the fight or flight phenomenon, he dashed forward and began banging on the car in a rage, causing Antimangia to stop and exit the vehicle. Expecting the respect and reticence he was always granted, he was astonished when Kevin grabbed him by the lapel and started screaming.

  “Who the fuck are you and what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Kevin held Antimangia in a tight grip, and shook him repeatedly. “Answer me, dammit.”

  “Let go of me, you lunatic.”

  Angie ran up to Kevin and pushed against him but his adrenalin rush was too strong. She shouted, “Stop it Kevin, he’s my dad. Stop it. Stop it. He’s my dad.”

  Kevin snorted with disbelief. Was she in on it? It wasn’t a dick curse, it was a conspiracy. “He’s an assassin. Who’s behind this? My wife? Come clean, right now or this is going to get ugly.”

  Angie grew frantic, pushing against Kevin to no effect. Being fat would have come in handy now, but she wasn’t heavy enough to knock a man his size off balance and her dad, smaller than Kevin, might end up crushed on the ground. Luckily Ben drove up and dashed out of his car and ran up, grabbed the hose and doused Kevin with it, who registered shock, then let go of Angie’s dad long enough for him to step back out of reach.

  Ben stared at everyone. He spotted Kevin, the quack. And he looked at Angie who seemed to be both guilty when looking
at him and triumphant when gazing toward her dad.

  “Angie, call the cops,” said her dad.

  Her voice sounded worried but inside Angie secretly felt a little thrilled. But why? Were they fighting over her? It didn’t seem like that. “Everyone calm down. It’s just a mistake.”

  Chrissy was thankful for two things. First of all, her membership at the gym was paid up for many months to come. Secondly, she still had one of Bill’s credit cards and the money she’d saved during the year she’d lived with him—it was at least a thousand dollars and that was a pretty good chunk of change. She wondered what the rents were now and remembered how difficult it had been to make the rent before he’d come along. Roommates, she’d had three. Chrissy shuddered. But she knew it might come to her knocking on their door—if any of them still lived there—and begging to stay on the couch for a while. What a horrific possibility. She’d managed to pack most of her clothing and personal items into the trunk of her old VW bug, a car she hadn’t driven in the year she’d been with Bill, preferring instead to drive his wife’s little Mercedes convertible. She wondered if she could get that car in the divorce. He’d been unfaithful. If only she had proof. And if only they were actually married.

  Her stress level was monumental and she couldn’t think clearly. No matter how many additional diet pills she swallowed, she didn’t feel in charge. In fact she felt decidedly out of whack. Her inner hum was off. Her heart felt different. Was this a broken heart? Chrissy didn’t know. The thing she had feared most had happened but although stressed, she didn’t feel that sad. Did she miss Bill and the vipers? Not really. Did she miss her at-home gym and walk-in closet? Most definitely.

  The real question was what was her next move. What did she want, and the one thing she wanted unquestionably was to be thin, to be as thin as she knew she should, could, and deserved to be. And there was only one way to do that. But how. How could she go to India to seek the one aid that would guarantee her permanent thinness? She didn’t speak Indian and what if nobody there spoke English? How would she make herself clear? She needed some sort of group tour, perhaps one she could organize of people like herself who needed that drug and weren’t willing to wait for the American health machine to grind forward. But how?

  Pondering these weighty issues, she thundered along on the treadmill at a swift pace when Butch and Wimp entered Zero Tolerance. There was something different about them and it took a moment for Chrissy to discern what it was—their usual leather garb was gone. They were wearing normal street attire—Butch was even in a dress. Wow, she looked very non-butch. They seemed to spot her, glance toward each other nervously and try subtly to move in another direction. Was Chrissy crazy? But she waved and of course they came over to say hello, so perhaps her mind was playing tricks on her. It had happened before.

  Chrissy told them the whole sad story about Bill kicking her out—completely without provocation on the eve of that stupid smoking fund raiser, though why Bill and Laura were so determined to fund the tobacco companies Chrissy had no idea—weren’t they very rich businesses? Who knew what wealthy people dabbled in, not her but she wished she were still in a position to dabble.

  Butch and Wimp looked properly aghast but somehow a bit distant from the whole story when before they were always so invested. Why was that, Chrissy wondered.

  “And all my gym equipment is still there at his place and of course I have nowhere to take it. No idea about how to handle that.”

  “Maybe you could sell it,” said Wimp, unusually assertive Chrissy thought, and she waited for the crop to come down on him, but for some reason Butch had forgotten it. It was frustrating that you could never count on people to be as you’d come to expect them to behave. “I know a guy,” Wimp said, reaching into his gym bag and writing down an address on a piece of paper. “Maybe you could swing by there and discuss it with him after your workout here. Sorry I don’t have the number.”

  “Well, thanks so much,” said Chrissy, thinking she’d rather blow her brains out than lose her gym, but at least she had this place. “I’m just sort of worried about going back to Bill’s—he seemed pretty enraged last time we were together. I’m a little afraid and wish I had someone to come along with me.”

  “We gotta run,” said Butch improbably, and off they went, not even stopping to work out. Who does that, thought Chrissy, come to the gym and not work out. Were they just coming to see her?

  It was like one of those aha moments. Chrissy decided why sell her equipment. She could rent a storage unit, so after the workout she drove toward a place that she’d often passed and went inside. It was perfect. There was even electricity inside some of the units and that way if she needed to plug in, she could. Handing Bill’s credit card to the guy, she said, “I’ll take it for a year.” Then she watched as he ran the card four times until he looked at her and said, “Sorry, Miss, this card has been cancelled.”

  That rat! That skunk! That Malomar eating, cheating cheapskate. No wonder she’d cheated on him, no wait, he’d cheated on her. Who was that palimony lawyer? If only she could remember the name. For now though Chrissy knew what she had to do and glumly she drove toward the address Wimp had given her. She pulled into the parking lot and walked inside, quickly making an arrangement to sell her equipment in a few hours to a congenial guy. It had been easy and since the guy would be meeting her at Bill’s, she would be safe.

  Chrissy walked back to her car, knowing she couldn’t remain at the hotel. Even though they’d run Bill’s card successfully when she checked in, surely they would reject it when it was time to leave. As Chrissy didn’t want to waste her little bit of money on a pricey hotel, she was about to dial the number of her old roommate when her attention was drawn to something next door.

  Hypnotic music played softly and there were people entering in brightly colored robes. They looked so happy and serene. In front of the building was an easel holding a framed poster proclaiming, Meet Guru Majee Today. And there in the picture was a knowing Indian woman with one of those dots on her forehead. How interesting. Chrissy looked at the sign above door and it said Temple of the Slender Thread. How phenomenal, she thought, and in the door she went.

  Ben and Clint walked along the sidewalk toward Angie’s deli, Colette between them for what was supposed to be a get acquainted lunch. “Gosh I hope you and Angie like each other,” said Ben to Colette, who had instantly become one of his best friends.

  “No, no, no,” she said rather adorably, “That would be a huge mistake. Huge. She has to hate me. I’m the enemy.”

  “I know. I get it. I understand your plan, but I’m just not sure it makes any sense. It just seems too duplicitous.”

  “Dude,” said Clint, “This is shock therapy. Colette is right. Sometimes girls have to see a guy with another girl, realize they could lose him.”

  “But does it really make sense to trick her into falling for me? Not like she hasn’t had plenty of time to do it on her own.”

  Colette put her hand gently on Ben’s arm. “We’re not tricking her. We’re helping her snap out of her psychosis and wake up to the reality she really wants but doesn’t know it, the guy she was meant to be with but never realized. It’s not a trick, it’s a kick in the pants.”

  Ben smiled at Colette then looked toward Clint. It was rather odd that he was tagging along, wasn’t it? Maybe their other plan was working too. “What if I act like I’m head over heels for you then Clint steals you away from me? Then Angie would feel sorry for me. Maybe that’s a better script.”

  “Dude! Do you really want to be the runt puppy that nobody wants except some old lady with one bad eye?” Clint scowled at Ben as though he were pathetic. “For a smart guy it’s like you’re too clueless to be real.”

  “Forget about scripts,” said Colette. “Just go with it. Just react to what I do.”

  “And I’m just there cause we’re friends. I’m not some girl stealer. What kind of a rat do you think I am?” asked Clint.

  “Okay, o
kay,” said Ben. “Once more unto the breach…imitate the action of the tiger.”

  Clint looked perplexed for a moment then seemed to relate and said, “Exactly, dude, eye of the tiger.”

  “Men!” said Colette, hoisting her heavy tote from Clint’s arm and onto her shoulder as they entered the deli, which was quite full with a happily dining lunchtime crowd. There was just one empty table, designed for only two, which Colette pointed toward as Angie emerged from the kitchen to greet them.

  Ben examined her carefully. Had the embarrassment of the morning registered on her? She seemed rather subdued and he wondered did she wish they didn’t already have these plans.

  “Hey guys,” said Angie, seemingly nonchalantly, “And you must be Colette, nice to meet you.” She smiled and even hugged Colette who hugged her back.