Lala Pettibone's Act Two

by Heidi Mastrogiovanni

  Oh, thank goodness, Lala thought.

  She allowed her shoulders to descend from her ears just a touch.

  “You have to talk to me,” Kim said.

  Lala looked up at her.

  “Sorry?”

  “You’re supposed to talk to me.”

  “I’m . . . what?”

  “You’re supposed to entertain me.”

  Lala looked around the room. No one else seemed to have taken notice of the lunacy that Kim was hurling toward her.

  Am I being punked? Lala thought. Is bantering with Sausage Casing McGillicudy suddenly part of my job description?

  “Uhhhh . . . It’s just that I’m on a rush and the handwriting is . . . I’m not entirely sure it’s in English . . . I wish we could chat, but I’m afraid I need all my focus right now to get this job done.”

  Kim sneered and silently huffed. Lala gave her a big smile and went back to her screen.

  Throughout the rest of the morning, Lala felt Kim’s eyes on her at regular intervals. Lala refused to look up. She refused to get up from her desk to fetch a cup of tea or to go to the ladies’ room. It became a point of pride for her to not give Kim any opening whatsoever for even a syllable of conversation.

  And then it was almost two o’clock, and Lala typed the last period in the god-forsaken document she had created from the god-forsaken scribbles of Anthony Spaulding, partner in the litigation department. And still Kim had not left her desk to go to lunch. Lala’s stomach was starting to growl. Loudly.

  Oh God, Lala thought.

  More on survival instinct than from an actual plan, Lala jumped out of her chair, grabbed her purse, and sprinted to Claire’s office.

  “Hi, I just sent in that job. I think I’ll take lunch now.”

  Claire looked at her watch and frowned.

  What? Lala thought. Is this China? The oppressive regime is not going to allow me a break to eat?

  “Okaaaaay,” Claire sighed. “When will you be back?”

  “In an hour,” Lala said. She tried to unclench her teeth.

  At the doorway to Claire’s office, Lala looked around the hive to see if there was another exit that wouldn’t take her past Kim’s desk. But it was too late. Kim appeared right in front of her, as though conjured by a malevolent wizard.

  “You going to lunch?”

  “I’m . . . it’s . . .”

  “Let’s go together!”

  “Ohhh, I wish we could, but I promised I would take my mother shopping for orthopedic shoes. Rain check?”

  Kim frowned.

  “Okay. Tomorrow.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “Right. Absolutely. Looking forward to it.”

  Lala shot out of the elevator when its doors opened at lobby level. She thrust herself out of the revolving doors and once outside, gasped for air.

  OmigodOmigod, she thought. OmigodOmigod. OmigodOmigod.

  Lala looked skyward.

  I’m sorry I used you to fib, Mom, she thought. But there is only so much I can take. I suspect you understand.

  Lala cut over to Fifth Avenue and started walking uptown. She figured she would find a coffee shop somewhere to get an egg salad on rye.

  The day was cool and comfortable. The sky was once again that clear and brilliant shade of blue that Lala loved so much. Lala noticed all of this intellectually, but she felt no joy on a visceral level.

  Omigod, Omigod, Omigod!

  She kept walking. It felt good to be on the move, and after a few blocks Lala forgot any need or even desire to eat. She reached the southern edge of Central Park and headed west to Broadway. After walking back downtown, she ended up in the lobby of the building housing Crawford Dunlap just a few minutes shy of an hour after she had bolted out of the place.

  “Oh, you’re back,” Claire said. She looked at her watch. Lala fought an overwhelming desire to flip Claire the bird via the intercom screen. “I need to talk to you. Come to my office, please.”

  Jesus, Lala thought.

  Kim looked up eagerly when Lala entered the hive.

  “How was your mom’s—”

  “Sorry. Claire has summoned me.”

  “Ohhhhh,” Kim said.

  Lala stood in the doorway waiting for Claire to get off the phone.

  “No . . . No, it’s not acceptable . . . Jerry, I’m a businesswoman . . . That’s right . . . Well, you better.”

  Claire put the receiver down and motioned for Lala to enter the sanctum.

  “Why don’t you shut the door?” she said.

  Lala did, and then sat down in one of the two very uncomfortable chairs across from Claire’s desk. Claire sighed.

  “There were several issues with the document you created.”

  “Oh?” Lala said.

  “In the future, if you have a problem reading anything, please send an instant message to me, and I will contact the attorney. Please do not contact the attorney directly.”

  “I’ll be sure to do that,” Lala said.

  “Anthony was not pleased. Apparently he wrote ‘felt badly,’ and you typed ‘felt bad.’ If you couldn’t read what he wrote, you should have contacted me.”

  Lala stared at Claire.

  Seriously, I’m being punked, right? she thought.

  “Okay, in that specific case, as opposed to all the other arrogantly illegible writing, I was in fact able to read what he wrote. ‘Felt badly’ is incorrect.”

  Claire raised an eyebrow.

  “No, it’s not,” she said.

  Oh, honey, seriously? Lala thought. That much snotty superiority when you are in fact a moron? Seriously?

  “Well, if he meant that he was touching something, and he was doing a substandard job of it, then, yes, ‘felt badly’ was correct. But I really don’t think that’s what he was intending to convey. ‘Bad’ is an adjective. ‘Badly’ is an adverb.”

  “Anthony is a partner. He knows what words are. And there was another issue. Anthony had written ‘my partners’ and I’s’ and you typed ‘my partners’ and my.’”

  Lala felt a sudden and very welcome sense of calm wash over her.

  Wow, she thought. Where’d that come from?

  Lala enjoyed spending the next few moments weighing her next line.

  Claire, go fuck yourself?

  Claire, you’re a moron?

  Claire, Anthony is a moron?

  Claire, please get in touch with Anthony, and tell him I said he should go fuck himself?

  Lala looked back at Claire to find that Claire was surveying her with a tight smile of triumph.

  That’s it, Lala thought. I’m done.

  She stood.

  “Claire, I think I have food poisoning. I must have eaten something bad at lunch. So rather than puke all over your desk, I’m going to head home, ‘kay?”

  Lala didn’t wait for an answer. She was halfway to freedom when Kim appeared before her like a cloud of smoke.

  “Jeez, it is unnerving how you do that,” Lala said.

  “Are you in trouble?” Kim whispered.

  “Well, unless you can write me a check for forty thousand dollars right now, technically, yeah, I am way up shit creek without any paddles in sight. But I kinda feel good right now, so I’m goin’ with that. Adios.”

  Lala waved a cheerful goodbye to the guards sitting behind the reception desk in the lobby. She skipped out of the revolving doors and looked around at her beautiful city.

  What a gorgeous day, she thought. Wow. You know, sometimes you really do just have to say, who gives a fuck.

  Lala fished her cell phone out of her purse and dialed the number for the temp agency. She was connected to Rick’s line, and she got his voicemail.

  “Rick, I love you, and I’m really sorry about what I just did. I swear,
I’ll make it up to you someday, somehow. I know I have to make money, and I know I don’t know how I’m going to do that, but I am certain of one thing. If I go back to Crawford Shithole, I will do something crazy. I’m not sure what. But it will be very crazy. So in the long run, Rick, I think I’m doing you a big favor by not putting you and your agency in danger of being on the receiving end of all kinds of lawsuits for negligence.”

  Lala stopped to pick up an egg salad sandwich on the way home. The dogs were snoring on the bed together and didn’t get up when Lala opened the front door.

  Lala stood in the doorway of her bedroom and smiled.

  I am so lucky to have those three precious ones, Lala thought.

  She put the food in the refrigerator for later and went back into the bedroom to check her e-mail. One of the subject lines immediately grabbed her attention.

  Omigod Omigod, Lala thought.

  Lala had spent the past winter writing a new screenplay. It was a character-driven drama that took place one summer in Cape Cod. The protagonist was a widow in her forties who had a mad crush on a celebrated author, and, by magical twists of fate, the author was also spending the summer in Cape Cod, where the protagonist had retreated after the breakup of a masochistic love affair.

  Anyone who knew Lala knew that the character of the author in her screenplay was a thinly-disguised version of Lala’s favorite contemporary novelist, Jackson Platt.

  “If Alexandre Dumas père were still alive, I would have a crush on him for writing The Count of Monte Cristo. But he’s not, so I have a crush on Jackson Platt for writing A Map Without Latitude,” Lala often commented to Brenda.

  Lala had grown to love the characters in her screenplay as old friends. Lala had titled her work Dressed Like a Lady, Drinks Like a Pig.

  “No, no, it’s not a film version of any of my short stories,” Lala explained to Brenda. “I just really like that title, so I figured I might as well get some use out of it.”

  Dressed Like a Lady, Drinks Like a Pig was the subject line of the e-mail that grabbed Lala’s attention that day in the week following the Ides of March. The e-mail was from a fellow Wesleyan graduate who was a literary manager in Los Angeles. Lala hadn’t known Kelly Franklin Adams at school because she was several years younger than Lala. She’d found Kelly’s name and contact information on the alumni page of Wesleyan’s website. After contacting Kelly with a query letter, Kelly had responded with several questions about Lala’s background.

  “The subtext of which,” Lala told Brenda, “is you graduated when? Why don’t you already have representation? Why haven’t you had representation for decades already?”

  Lala answered as best she could, trying to convey that she was a late bloomer with, she hoped, lots of potential, without actually writing those words. She had gone for a warm and positive tone in her second e-mail, and Kelly responded in kind. Their subsequent e-mails were increasingly cordial, especially when Lala slipped in mention of her rescued dogs, and Kelly wrote back that she had a rescued fourteen-year-old Pomeranian she absolutely adored.

  Which is why Lala was so surprised when, during their one phone conversation, she had found Kelly to be surpassingly strident. But, as much as that had dampened Lala’s sense that this was a match made in heaven, she had eagerly e-mailed Kelly a PDF of Dressed Like a Lady, Drinks Like a Pig as a preliminary step in seeing if they could build a professional relationship.

  And now Lala was looking at the name of her screenplay in the subject line of an e-mail from a literary manager in Los Angeles.

  Omigod, Lala thought. Could my luck really be changing?

  Lala looked up at the ceiling of her bedroom.

  For the better, I mean.

  As Lala prepared to open the e-mail, she pantingly imagined a life of making a living as a writer. A life that might be close to being hers.

  Maybe Kelly can sell my screenplay, Lala thought. For forty thousand dollars or something. Over this weekend. That would be amazing. It’ll be the first of many sales. And I’ll take Rick out to dinner when I’m not writing very successful screenplays or going to premieres or dating fabulous men, and thank him for everything, and tell him I won’t need to word process again, ever. God, I hate that I just used “word process” as a verb.

  “I’m two-thirds of the way through your screenplay, and I’m sorry to say it’s just not working for me . . .” Lala read.

  Lala’s eyes began to dart all over the words of the long e-mail. She tried to control their movements, but she couldn’t.

  “. . . one-dimensional characters . . .”

  “. . . unbelievable events and coincidences leading to a cheesy ending . . .”

  “. . . I really wanted to like this, but I’m afraid it’s not something that I can be excited about. Please understand that this is a completely subjective response. Writing isn’t calculus. There are no right or wrong answers, and someone else may love this script.”

  _______________

  “I’m not kidding, Lala,” Brenda screamed. “I will kick this goddamn door down if you don’t open it right now! Do you hear me?”

  Everyone on this floor can hear you, Lala thought. People on the floor above us can probably hear you.

  “Right now, Lala! Right this second, you understand me?”

  Lala opened the door and Brenda stormed in.

  “Goddamn it,” Lala said lifelessly. “How did you get up here without someone buzzing me? Because I would have told them to send you home if they had buzzed me.”

  “Think about it, genius. Victor has seen you leave the building to walk the dogs, right?” Brenda demanded. “So, he’s seen how shitty you look, right? Seriously, you look like shit. I don’t mean that as a criticism. So, of course Victor let me up because everyone’s worried about you, goddamn it!”

  “Goddamn it, you’re all overreacting. I’m fine,” Lala muttered. She sat back down on the couch with her dogs. “I think the tea on the stove is still hot. Help yourself.”

  Brenda returned to the living room with two full mugs. She handed one to Lala.

  “Thanks,” Lala said, not taking her eyes off the TV screen. “Can I tell you something? This show is amazing. And I frankly rue all the years I haven’t been watching it. If Netflix has the entire The Young and the Restless oeuvre on DVD, I know what I’ll be doing for the rest of the month. Look at this guy. Is he chewing gum? He’s trying to look like a badass. What is he doing with his mouth? Is he chewing gum, or is it just that actor trying to look like a badass by doing that weird thing with his mouth?”

  Brenda wasn’t going to look at the TV, but out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of the screen.

  “Wow, that is weird,” Brenda said. “Never mind him! I refuse to let you distract me from what I came to say. You are clearly not capable of taking care of yourself right now and—”

  “What makes you say that?” Lala said, still staring at the bizarre actor.

  “You haven’t returned any of my phone calls—”

  “I e-mailed you. What’s the big deal?”

  “You look like shit and—”

  “Jesus. Enough with that already. I’ve looked better before, I’ll admit that. Hopefully I’ll look better again one day. What’s the big deal?”

  “Lala!” Brenda screamed. “You told me in your last e-mail that the idea of never, ever, ever, ever leaving your apartment again held a certain hermit-esque appeal for you.”

  Barf, Lala thought. I hate it when those subconscious cries for help sneak out.

  “Yeah, okay. So?” she said.

  “So I’ve discussed all of this with Aunt Geraldine and—”

  “What? Why did you worry her?”

  “Because she loves you, and she would want to know what’s going on with you!” Brenda screamed.

  Lala sucked her lips inward until it hurt. She glared
at Brenda and made a silent pledge to the death not to cry.

  “I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

  She could barely get the words out without sobbing.

  “Lala, I know you’ll be fine. But why can’t you let us help you be fine sooner?”

  Lala knew if she said anything else, it would be impossible not to cry. Brenda seemed to know it too.

  “Don’t get upset, okay?” Brenda said. “I paid the assessment to the co-op board.”

  “Jesus,” Lala whispered.

  “Don’t get upset.”

  “I’ll pay you back.”

  “Why can’t you just let me pay for it? I have the money, and you’re my best friend. I know you would do the same for me.”

  “I’ll pay you back. I’ll do it as soon as I possibly can. I’ll work night and day until I pay you back.”

  “I knew you were going to say that.”

  Chester the greyhound grunted and let out a very noisy burp. Lala patted his tummy.

  “Do your dogs sleep through every major trauma in your life?”

  “Pretty much, yeah,” Lala said.

  “Okay, so listen. I knew you were going to insist on paying me back, so Aunt Geraldine and I figured out a way that you could maybe do that and not go off the deep end word processing all the time.”

  Lala’s raised one eyebrow. The lump in her throat, for the moment, lost its bullying hold over her.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. There’s one catch though.”

  “It involves high class prostitution? I don’t think I have a problem with that. There is very little that I’m above at this stage of my life. I can’t think of anything offhand.”

  “No. No blowing old men for money. Aunt Geraldine and I think it might be refreshing for you to get of town for a bit. And you know how much she would love to enjoy your company for an extended stay, so we were thinking that it might be a great idea all around if you—”

  Lala leapt to her feet.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” she shrieked.

  Brenda ignored her and gazed admiringly at the still-sleeping dogs.

  “Wow. That’s going to come in really handy for them in earthquake country.”