by Rowe, Brian
This can’t be happening. This isn’t happening.
But it was happening. And there was nothing she could do about it.
She felt lightheaded, and she could start to feel the vomit inching its way up her windpipe.
“Fuckin’ fucker,” Vivien said.
The young woman turned toward her and screamed. Patrick jerked his right arm to his left out of surprise and tipped over the bottle of wine. Red bloody liquid started gushing from the bottle toward Vivien’s feet.
“Vivien!” Patrick shouted. “What are you doing home!”
Vivien wasn’t thinking. She tilted her body down and dug her sharp fingernails into his armpits. She got a good grip and, with every ounce of her being, dragged him out of the spa and onto the hot cement.
“Owwww!” he screamed.
She kept pulling him, even when his feet weren’t close to touching water anymore. She scraped his neck, back, and buttocks against the cement. He was in tears. His blood started to mix in with the wine to form a substance that looked like the remnants of a cherry smoothie.
Vivien looked at her husband’s mistress with venomous eyes. “Get the fuck out of my house!”
The girl was already leaping out of the spa and running toward the side gate before Vivien had finished her sentence. She grabbed a small towel along the way and managed to cover her breasts, but her buttocks were still exposed for the world to see.
“Vivien, please,” Patrick started, “I can explain everything. This isn’t what it looks like.”
She stepped away from him and made her way over to the storage shed. She had a scary look in her eye that suggested her madness had only begun.
Patrick was starting to sit up when Vivien returned gripping a baseball bat.
“Liar!” she shouted, and she swung the bat at Patrick’s ribs. He did everything he could to stop the blow, but the whack deeply punctured his skin.
She swung again, but he jumped back, barely managing to evade her second swing. “Stop it! For God’s sake! Put the bat down! Let’s talk about this!”
Vivien had tears in her eyes. “We worked on that Jacuzzi all summer! This is what you wanted it for? You are nothing but… a giant turd!”
The bat dropped almost instantly, and Vivien rushed into the bushes to throw up.
Patrick put one hand on his pained back and another on the top of his head. “You weren’t supposed to be home. You weren’t supposed to see this.”
She moved away from the bush. Yellow vomit, with a tinge of orange, dangled like snot from the bottom of her chin. “That was your new secretary, wasn’t it? Goddammit, Patrick, she looks as young as our child!” She pushed him and started pounding on his chest with her fists. “Why would you do this to me!”
He just kept looking into her eyes, annoyingly confused. “I don’t know, honey. I guess… I needed something.”
Vivien took a breath and became scarily calm. She stared into his eyes with such intensity she looked like she might make his head explode. “What. Did. You. Need.”
He sat down in one of the lawn chairs and put his hands over his face. She waited, but he wasn’t responding.
“Now you listen to me, darling,” Vivien said, crossing her arms and flipping her hair back. “I’m taking your son. I’m taking your money. I’m taking everything. You just made the biggest fucking mistake of your life, pal.”
“Enough!” He stood up and rushed toward Vivien. Before he could put a hand on her, though, she took a step back, made her right hand into a fist, and swung. If this moment had been televised, she would’ve heard the loudest roar of applause in the history of mankind. The fist struck her husband perfectly on his right cheek, stopping his momentum, and causing him to slip and crash against the hard cement ground.
Vivien didn’t let him say another word, and she didn’t care to look back. She ran out of the backyard through the open gate and jumped inside her car. She looked forward, only once, to see that her husband wasn’t coming after her.
Pulling out of the driveway, she looked down to see the secretary’s towel resting in the middle of the road. It was still damp. She ran it over with delight and drove away with the speed of a crazy person who had just escaped from an insane asylum.
-12-
Vivien floored her car through a red light and sped her way into the parking lot of a famous L.A. fast food joint called Valley Burger. Even the jaded Los Angelinos picked up on the frenzied nature of the woman making her way inside the restaurant. Sweat poured down her forehead, and her hair had taken on a frizzy, chaotic quality.
Vivien started tapping her feet. Now was not the time for delays.
“Excuse me,” she said, with an obvious lack of courtesy. She pushed by six people in front of her, who all turned from silent robots to monstrous, man-eating crocodiles in a matter of seconds.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing, lady!” an old woman shouted.
“Get back in line!” could be heard in one way or another from five more individuals.
Vivien just stared forward. “I’m sorry. I just really need a burger.”
The old woman took a giant step forward, raised her cane, and swat at Vivien’s right hip. “As do we all! Now get back in line and wait your turn, bitch!”
Vivien spun around, her eyes almost as big as the head that housed them. “I just found my husband cheating on me! All right! Now will you back off!”
Her screaming didn’t satisfy the anger of the other customers, but they managed to roll their eyes and keep quiet.
Vivien turned to an employee who looked about nine years old. “Excuse me? Does anyone work at this register?”
He stared at her with fear and pointed at another employee who might have been a year younger. He approached the register.
“Welcome to Valley Burger,” the boy said. “How may I help you?”
He glanced at Vivien and didn’t blink an eye. She was just like any other customer.
“I want a Double,” she said. “I want the curly fries with ranch dressing. I want a large chocolate shake. And I had a question.”
“Yes?”
“Can you do a mix of your chocolate shake and your peanut butter shake in one?”
Now he stared at her strangely. “How do you mean?”
“Well I see on the menu that you have a chocolate milkshake. And then your special of the month is a peanut butter milkshake. And I was wondering if you can mix the two flavors together?”
“Uhh, no.”
She wanted to strangle him. “You’re kidding, right?”
“We don’t mix milkshake flavors, ma’am. I’m sorry.”
“How much do I have to pay you to mix the flavors? I’ve been craving a mix of chocolate and peanut butter for, like, decades. Today is my day.”
“I don’t think it works that way,” the freckled boy said, and as he wiped his snot-ridden nose, he looked to his left to see a giant line of customers behind her. “Ma’am, please. There are people waiting.”
“All right, fine,” she said. “I’ll buy the large chocolate. And the large peanut butter. And I’ll mix the fuckers myself.”
She handed him a twenty-dollar bill and took a number.
---
Vivien’s car was baking in the hot August sun, and by the time she got inside, the black leather seats were starting to feel like lava. She blasted the AC and took a bite of her giant double burger.
The first bite went down too fast, and she started to cough. She thought she was choking at first, but when she sipped a little bit of her chocolate shake, the food managed to go down, heading toward a petite body that hadn’t seen meat this greasy in years. She burped and took another bite.
She stuffed the curly fries into her face as if she were competing in a speed-eating contest. Some of the fries dangled off her cheek onto the car floor.
She was halfway through the burger when she started to cry. Her stomach hurt now, more so than it had in months, and she gulped down much of the peanut butt
er shake in the hopes that the pain would go away. It didn’t.
Vivien rested her head on the steering wheel. The tears flowed furiously, as if her tear ducts had been building up for years and had just now been given the green light for release.
She slumped even further down in the driver’s seat. Surprising to Vivien, she wasn’t feeling anger. And she wasn’t feeling hate, either.
She felt disappointment.
Vivien had known for years that her marriage wasn’t everything that it could have been. She and Patrick had been growing distant from each other for a while, to a much greater extent in the last year or so, but she never thought their problems would resort to the embarrassing crisis she currently found herself in.
Vivien threw the burger to the floor and looked at herself in the rearview mirror.
Holy Hell, I’m theBride of Frankenstein.
She took a deep breath and started backing out of the parking lot.
She knew what she needed to do. She needed to go to work. She needed to plant herself in mindless chores for the rest of the day to try to take her mind off the afternoon’s setback.
Vivien pulled up to the Valley Burger exit and turned left onto a residential road. She rolled through a stop sign and turned right onto another road that would lead her to the freeway and toward the glories of Chatsworth.
Her car was nearing the oncoming intersection when she heard the siren. She thought it was an ambulance at first, but she looked in her rearview mirror to see a police car riding her tail. She couldn’t imagine that the obnoxious siren blasting could possibly be meant for her. But it was. She started laughing and pulled over.
The officer, who was portly and sported a pockmarked face, stepped out from his car and walked so slowly up to Vivien’s driver side window that she wondered if she were living in a world of slow motion.
He tapped her window. She rolled it down.
“Hello,” she said.
“Good afternoon, ma’am. Did you see that stop sign back there?”
“No. No, I didn’t.”
“You just rolled right through it.”
She tried to smile. He immediately noticed her running mascara.
“Is everything all right, ma’am?”
“No, it’s not.” Vivien started crying again. This time, she wondered if she’d be able to stop. “I’m sorry, Officer. Today hasn’t really been my day.”
He crossed his arms and laughed. “Ya know, you’re pretty good at that. You’re convincing! You an actress or something?”
“Excuse me?”
“You in the movies? Cuz you’ve really sold me.”
She didn’t know what to say. “I’m telling… I’m telling the truth…”
“License and registration, please.”
Vivien panicked. She hadn’t been pulled over in a decade, if not longer. She didn’t even know where she kept her registration. She sighed and reached for her purse in the back seat. After a minute of searching, she dumped all the contents on the passenger seat and grabbed her wallet.
“I don’t have all day, ma’am,” the officer said.
Ma’am. What’s with this, ma’am. Makes me sound like I’m sixty. I’d rather be called a cunt.
She handed him her license.
“Registration?” he asked.
Vivien tried to stifle her crying as she fumbled through her glove compartment. After what felt like an eternity, she found her registration. It expired a year ago. She hoped he wouldn’t notice. He didn’t.
“I’ll be right back. Please stay here.”
She wanted to just floor the car, through the red light, onto the freeway, at ninety miles an hour. She bet this guy wouldn’t be able to keep up with her.
Then she remembered he had her license, and the idea evaporated.
She started tapping her fingers on the dashboard. Everything about the car felt dirty today. She hadn’t had it washed in months. There were ketchup, mustard, and peanut butter globs staining the carpet. Her tears had mixed in with the dirt on her steering wheel like rain smashing against a sad, lonely desert.
Vivien looked in her rearview mirror. The cop wasn’t budging. He, obviously, had all the time in the world.
She dialed the office and lifted her cell phone to her ear. She wondered if the cop would cite her for doing that, too.
“Hey, it’s me,” she said. “Anything going on?”
“No,” Brandon said, with a soft tone that made Vivien think she had just woken him up from a deep sleep.
“Any messages?”
“Your insurance guy called again.”
“How exciting. Did Gavin call to ask what I was making for dinner again, too?”
Brandon chuckled. “No, not today.”
“Good.”
She liked Brandon. As much as she hated admitting it, there wasn’t any bullshit about him.
More silence. “Anything else?” Vivien asked.
“Uhh, one of your interns is here already.”
“Who?”
“Her name’s Alyson. She’s early.”
“Oh, right. Yes. Well, tell her I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Will do.”
She hung up the phone just as the officer started walking back toward her. He handed her the license and registration. “Be more careful next time.”
“OK, Officer,” she said, not masking her hate.
“And next time,” he said, “don’t pull that crying trick. I’ve seen it for the last thirty years. You can’t fool me. I know all the good actors from the bad ones.”
“You and me both,” she muddled under her breath.
He overheard. “What was that?”
“Oh, it’s just that I know actors, too. I’m a casting director.”
He looked at her with bewilderment. “What the hell’s a casting director?”
She started to form a fist with her right hand, but she felt it was more worth her while to just roll up the window, forget the arrogant cop, and push forward with this day from hell.
-13-
Vivien stormed into her casting office so fast, Brandon didn’t notice her at first. He was in the middle of chatting up a couple of girls.
“Hey,” he said, finally turning to Vivien. “You need any help with your bag?” Questions like these always scored Brandon bonus points.
“No, I’m fine,” Vivien said, turning to her potential slaves.
An obnoxiously gorgeous blonde girl sat forward. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Slate.”
“It’s Ms.”
“Pardon me?”
“It’s Ms. Slate, thank you.”
“Oh,” the girl said. “Your Wikipedia says you’re married.”
Vivien needed to get this over with. “All right, so who’s my first victim?”
The blonde girl with large breasts and a tight skirt raised her hand high up in the air. “Oh! Me! I’d like to go first!”
Vivien didn’t really care. She just needed this day to be over. But the idea of getting two new fresh faces around the office to assist her for free did warm her heart just a little.
She sat down in her office and checked her phone messages. She took her laptop out of her bag and powered it up.
The blonde girl took a seat and stared forward with a smile.
“All right,” Vivien said. “What’s your name?”
“Sherry.”
“Sherry what?’
“Meschery.”
Vivien readied herself to ask the next question but stopped. “I’m sorry. Your name’s Sherry Meschery?”
“Yeah. It’s rough, I know.”
“Rough? My God, it’s awful!”
“Yeah,” the girl said. “I’m tired of it. And it’s why I’m here.”
Vivien sat forward, prepared to ask her about her previous casting experience. But she rewound her mind for the second time in this brief conversation. “Say again?”
“Yeah, I’m looking for a husband.”
Vivien started thinking
about different ways she could kill herself. She looked through her office window to see Brandon slapping his ass, trying to make the other potential intern laugh. His ploy didn’t seem to be working.
“You want to marry Brandon?” Vivien asked.
The girl turned and looked out the window. “Sure, he’s cute enough.”
“I don’t think he’d be into you.”
She turned around. “I’ll have you know, Ms. Slate, that every guy is into me.”
There was a moment of silence. Vivien noticed the jewelry on the pampered girl’s wrist looked more expensive than her own wedding ring.
My wedding ring.
She pulled it off her finger when the girl wasn’t looking.
“So let me get this straight,” Vivien continued. “You want to intern in my office so you can find a husband.”
“Mmm hmm,” she said. “You have casting sessions, right?”
“Uhh, yeah.”
“And you see a lot of younger male actors, correct?”
“Sometimes.”
“Yep, that’s all I needed to know. I’m in.”
“So, what, you want to flirt with the actors that audition for me and find one to marry so that you can change that god-awful last name of yours?”
The girl’s eyes lit up. “You’re really smart. Did anyone ever tell you that?”
“GET OUT.”
“What?”
Vivien jumped up out of her chair and grabbed the girl’s hair. “You’re a fucking disgrace! Do you hear me!”
“Owwww!”
She pulled the girl up out of the chair, opened her office door, and threw her down onto the carpet. “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out! Who’s next!”
Vivien slammed the door and sat back down. She turned to the wall and started typing on her laptop, calmly, like nothing out of the ordinary had just taken place.
Brandon’s jaw dropped. The brunette managed to keep her eyes looking down at her feet.
The blondie stood up, crying, flailing her arms around. She rushed out of the office building without uttering another inane word.
