by Rowe, Brian
“These sheets are smooth,” he said, making himself more comfortable on the bed.
What a disappointment.
Vivien walked up to Jonathan and punched him in the face.
-35-
As Vivien tiptoed toward her bedroom a little after 2:00 A.M., about an hour after the last of the party guests had departed, a loud knock at the front door startled her.
Who the hell could that be?
She meant to just keep walking but noticed that neither Lila nor Walter was answering the door. As she walked down the long hallway, she imagined herself a victim of a slasher movie. There were no lights on, and it was so quiet that she could hear the scuffling of footsteps outside.
As she reached the front door, she heard the ignition of a car turning on in the driveway. Opening the door didn’t help matters visually, as she didn’t get a good look at the car driving off. She peered to her left and right and breathed a sigh of relief that no knife, claw, or sharp toothpick was headed her way.
She started to close the door when something on the ground caught her attention. She leaned down and grabbed hold of a simple white card. Her first initial—V—was the only letter written on the front.
Vivien put her back to the front door and looked around one last time to make sure nobody was watching her. She ripped the envelope open to see a birthday card, colorful balloons lining the sides. She opened the card to see only five little words on the inside written in black marker.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY. I MISS YOU.
She turned back to the street, knowing full well who left it.
Fucking coward.
She closed the door behind her and ran like a drunken peacock into her bedroom. She picked up her phone and dialed.
She waited through five agonizing rings before she could leave a voice-mail. “Hi Patrick. It’s your wife. I’m a little bit fucking upset right now. You never called me. You couldn’t even text me. But you leave this cheap, stupid birthday card on the front porch and don’t even bother to stay and chat with me for a minute? You are a fucking coward, you hear me? I hope you die.”
She threw the phone across the room. She buried her head in one of her pillows and didn’t surface for air until Saturday afternoon.
---
The weekend ended before it began, and Vivien never heard from Patrick.
Pulling up to her work building, she checked her phone to see she had a text message. It wasn’t from Patrick. No messages that day would come from Patrick. The text was from Alyson, asking Vivien what time she wanted to start the next session.
She made sure Alyson and Brandon set up as many actors as possible for Tuesday’s session for The Men. This would mark session number four.
Two more to go. I better find someone.
Tuesday’s session was going to feature actors playing the thirty-four-year-old, so naturally, considering his disinterest in men over the age of six, Brandon was setting up this session slower than ever.
“How many do we have set up so far?” Vivien asked after taking a quick lunch.
“Ten,” Brandon said.
“TEN?” The shrillness in her voice echoed through the entire building.
Brandon was unfazed. He pouted and turned back to his laptop.
“I’ve set up close to fifty,” Alyson said, but Vivien didn’t bother responding to her.
“Brandon? Are you OK?”
He didn’t answer. He kept staring forward.
“Brandon?”
She could see tears forming in his eyes. “I have to use the restroom,” he said before excusing himself from the office. Vivien didn’t want to follow him, but the kid had been really good to her lately. She knew he needed a friend right now.
She stood outside the men’s bathroom, where she could hear Brandon sobbing inside. She knocked on the door. “Brandon?”
“Who’s there?” he asked, as if he didn’t recognize her voice.
“Brandon, if you need to talk, trust me, I know what you’re going through.”
Brandon kicked the door open, nearly slamming it in Vivien’s face. He paced the hallway for a minute, and then slumped down to the ground. His hands were shaking. “Oh my God,” he said. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
Vivien followed his lead and sat down on the gross marble hardwood floor. “Talk to me.”
“This sucks! This sucks so much!” His eyes were bright red.
“I know, honey. Break-ups are awful. They rip you apart from the inside-out.”
He turned to Vivien. “What’s wrong with me? What’s so wrong with me that I can’t keep a boyfriend for more than a few months? I’m not a horrible person, am I?”
“Of course not,” she said. “Brandon, you are one of the handsomest, sweetest, most caring people I’ve ever met. Before you, I couldn’t keep an assistant or associate for more than a few weeks. You wanna know why? Because they all gave me fifty percent.”
Brandon put his hands over his face and continued to cry.
“You, on the other hand, always give me a hundred and fifty percent,” she continued. “You’re a great man. I know it’s difficult to think right now, but you will find the right guy soon enough, and you will be happy.”
“Derek was perfect, V. He was so perfect.”
“He was nineteen! He was a child!”
Vivien stood up and put her back to the wall. She glared down at him. “Brandon, I’m sorry to break it to you. But you really should be with someone your own age. Going after the young ones will leave you forever heartbroken, it will.”
“Oh yeah? You’re one to talk, Miss Cougar.”
“Hey, that’s not fair. What I’m doing is different.”
“Different in what way?” Brandon asked. “We all want someone younger, someone cuter, someone more exciting. It’s human nature. We don’t want to get older. Getting older sucks!”
“Yeah, says the twenty-seven-year-old. Try turning forty-five. Half my life is over!”
He stood up and leaned against her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Who am I to sit here and complain about my relationship problems, anyway? Your marriage is coming to an end. I should be the one comforting you.”
“I’m OK. I’ve got a lot of years on you. I can be really strong when I need to be.”
Brandon nodded. “You amaze me, V. I think any woman in your situation would just lock herself in a room and cry for weeks on end. The fact that you’re still able to go to work and take care of your kid and function, well, it’s remarkable.”
She grabbed him by both shoulders. They locked eyes, and she realized for the first time something she had never thought to herself before.
I love this kid as if he were my own.
She tried to shake the thought, but it wouldn’t leave her head the rest of the day. Brandon had worked for her for two years, and whether she wanted to admit or not, the stubborn faggot was part of her family.
“You forget, Brandon,” she said. “You forget about The Men. You forget about your amazing script, this great project of ours that’s letting me forget all about Patrick and instead search for the new guy that’s going to change my life forever.”
“Yeah,” he said with a frown. “I’m sorry, V. I’m sorry it hasn’t worked out so far.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t really expect it to yet. Could you really see me with a guy in his twenties?” She started rubbing his hair. It was the longest she’d ever seen it since Brandon started working for her. “Like I said, the younger the guys, the less stable, the more stupid. I’m excited for the thirty-year-olds. Who knows? I might get lucky.”
“Thirty year olds? Ugh. Have fun.”
“Are you serious?” she asked. “You’re twenty-seven. The thought of guys in their thirties grosses you out?”
“I might as well date my grandfather,” he said, proudly.
Vivien shook her head. “Fine. Whatever. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I should get back,” he said. “Make sure Alyson isn’
t accidentally bringing nineteen-year-olds to the session tomorrow.”
“Tell me she isn’t.” A look of panic hit Vivien’s face.
“Only kidding,” he said. “Don’t worry, V. I’m making it my goal to get you some action this week.”
“And if you don’t?”
“If I don’t?” He pondered the thought. “How about, if I don’t, I’ll swear off young guys forever.”
“Oh yeah? How young is young?”
“Fifteen and under.”
She gave him a death glare.
“All right, fine,” he said. “I won’t date younger than twenty-one. OK? Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take it,” she said, grasping the boy’s left arm with all her might. “I think we’ve made some progress.”
---
On Tuesday morning Vivien looked outside her bathroom window to see that for the first time in months, clouds were descending upon the typically sunny Los Angeles.
She had just checked in with Brandon, who promised that seventy actors were coming in today to read for the role of Atticus, the thirty-four-year-old character in his script who, oddly enough, cheats on his wife. Brandon picked a monologue for the actor to read that thankfully had nothing to do with marital problems, so she wouldn’t have to sit in her chair miserable all day unable to keep Patrick off her mind.
She looked inside Gavin’s bedroom to see that it was a mess. Lila had been kind enough to give him a car ride earlier in the morning so that she could have more time to get ready for the session. Lila had been really good to Vivien these last few weeks. She owed her a lot.
She grabbed her bag and her session book from the kitchen table. She surveyed the room one last time to make sure she had everything. She looked down to see Buster walk into the room. He seemed to be smiling at her.
She kneeled down and rubbed his belly for a short minute. “You be a good boy, now.”
She grabbed her keys and made her way out the door.
The walk to her car seemed normal at first. The air was cold, and the wind was starting to pick up. She saw a man jogging in the distance with a sweatshirt and baggy sweats on.
It’s not that cold, idiot.
“Hi Vivien.”
She dropped her session book on the ground and barely caught hold of her bag. She grabbed her can of mace and turned to her right.
Patrick stood in front of her with a coat on, as if he, like the jogger in the distance, would suffer from hypothermia if the temperature dropped below sixty.
Vivien didn’t know what to say at first. She stood still, shaking, like she’d just been tasered.
“I want a divorce,” he said.
He took a step back and looked like he was already finished with the conversation, even though Vivien hadn’t yet said a word.
Finally, she opened her mouth. “What did you just say to me?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t call me. You don’t text me. You don’t even try to get a hold of your son. And you show up after what you’ve put me through and tell me this?”
“I’m sorry. You and I both know this was a long time coming.”
“What are you talking about?”
He looked at the ground, and then back up at her. She could tell it was hard for him to look her in the eyes.
“Wendy and I. Well, there’s no easy way to say this. We’re in love.”
Vivien thought she was going to faint. She grabbed hold of her driver’s side mirror and made sure not to break it off.
“You’re in love?”
“Yes.”
“And her name’s fucking Wendy?”
“I think I secretly hoped you would find us together that day. Who was I kidding? Of course you would. I think I did it on purpose, you know, so I could finally move on with my life.” He looked at his car, briefly, and then turned back to Vivien. “I’m getting the papers together. I’ll have them ready by the end of the weekend.”
“You love her?”
Vivien couldn’t stop the tears from welling up in her eyes.
“I’m here because we need to talk about our son,” he said. “He’s just as much my kid as he is yours. We need to figure out my visitation rights.”
Vivien took a step forward, not to address his concern about Gavin, but to swing at Patrick with her heavy bag as hard as she possibly could. She slammed it against his left shoulder with as much force as that baseball bat from their first violent encounter.
“OWWW!” He grabbed his pained shoulder as she tackled him to the ground like an enraged football player.
Vivien would’ve swung her bag at him for the rest of the day if she could. “You fucking coward! You bastard! I hope you die in Hell!”
“Get off me! Get the hell off me!”
Patrick shoved his wife to the side and jumped up to his feet, brushing the grass off his jeans. “You have gone off the deep end, Vivien. I’m not showing my face in front of you from now on without my lawyer.”
She wanted to spit in his face, but he was too far away. “I hope you and that little bitch Wendy have a happy life together.”
“We will.”
“I just have one question,” Vivien asked, as he started walking away from her.
“Yeah?” he asked, turning around. “What’s that?”
“Why did you leave me that birthday card if you felt this way?”
He laughed. He finally looked at her in the eyes, even though he seemed to be looking right through them. “Vivien, I never left you any birthday card.”
The statement felt like truth. “That wasn’t you?”
“No,” he confirmed. “No, I didn’t leave you any card congratulating you on turning forty-five. There shouldn’t be anything happy about you turning forty-five. Face it, Vivien. You are stressed and volatile, and you look old, really fucking old. No man is ever gonna want you, and you are going to die alone.”
By the time she was unleashing a second round of “bastard,” “shithead,” and “vindictive motherfucker,” Patrick was already on the other side of the front yard sliding into his Toyota Subaru. She couldn’t be sure, but she swore she could see a young woman sitting in the passenger seat as he drove off.
She threw her bag into the air and fell to the lawn with the dramatics of someone having a heart attack. When the sprinklers started up a minute later, Vivien imagined that no image could have been more fitting. She also couldn’t decide what was letting out more water—the sprinklers or her tear ducts.
She threw her bag, binder, and phone in her car and jetted back into the house, where she crashed against her bed, buried her head under a pillow, and cried herself to sleep.
It wasn’t until late afternoon when she wandered to her car like a zombie and started checking messages on her phone that the thought of her absence in the office even entered her mind. There were nearly twenty missed calls from Brandon, and almost as many from Alyson.
She had completely forgotten about the day’s casting session.
-36-
“You got the audition.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
Vivien sat down on Gavin’s bed late Tuesday evening. She was wearing an over-sized white t-shirt, with sagging pink sweats that looked like something from the 1980’s. She started reading through the scenes for Gavin’s audition, hoping he would join her. He didn’t.
“What are you working on?”
“Just some homework,” he said. “We have to write another story for my creative writing class.”
“Oh. That sounds fun. You like that class, don’t you?”
“Yeah, it’s my favorite one this year.”
“Remember, next year, you’ll finally get to take Beginning Acting as a freshman. I don’t know why your middle school doesn’t offer any theatre classes. It’s really stupid, I think, especially given the city we live in.”
Gavin turned around in his chair. He didn’t appear to have listened to a single word she said.
<
br /> “Are those the scenes?” he asked.
“Yes.” She gave him a copy. “So here’s the deal. It’s four scenes total. You are required to do scenes two and three, but they suggest that you become familiar with all of them, just in case.”
“Mom, we’ve been through this before. I only have to learn the scenes they require. They never ever ask for the other ones.”
“Gavin.”
“What?”
She stayed firm with him, as if she were the boy’s agent. “You’re gonna learn all four scenes. This isn’t a commercial or made-for-TV movie. This is a real-deal feature, a really good supporting role, with Garry Marshall directing.”
“I don’t even know who that is.”
“He’s a director. He’s made big movies.”
“What did he direct?”
“Ever seen Pretty Woman?” she asked, knowing full well he probably hadn’t seen it unless Kendyll had forced him to watch it.
“No.”
“Well, anyway,” she said, standing up from the bed and walking over to him, “this is big. I need you to really try on this one. I mean, really try.”
“I will, Mom. I promise.”
She gave him the best smile she could and kissed him on top of his head.
“All right, you should get some sleep.”
“When’s the audition?”
“Friday,” she said. “Late afternoon.”
“Oh good, so I have some time?”
“Yes, but don’t you dare put off your memorizing to the last minute.”
“I won’t, Mom. Don’t worry. I won’t let you down.”
That’s my boy.
“Hey Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Is everything OK?”
“It’s fine,” she said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“You seem sad.”
“What?”
“Mom, I can tell. Did Dad call you? Did he say something to you?”
She didn’t answer him. She couldn’t. “Goodnight. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Vivien didn’t sleep a wink that night, tossing in her bed like a schizophrenic. She eventually started counting to 1,000, but instead of counting sheep, she counted large kitchen knives that she would be throwing at Patrick the next time she saw him.
