“So, Theo, here’s my thought. It seems to have occurred to me tonight, and I’m not sure when, probably around the time I started imagining you naked, that I may be in danger of veering into toying with out-and-out sluttishness—”
“Oh, do go on,” Theo said. “I’m mesmerized.”
“So I’m thinking maybe we just make out for a few hours tonight, and then I head home to my suite and send you off to Russia with my heartfelt best wishes and more than a little regret that fate has rendered us asunder so soon after rendering us . . . sunder . . . in other words, we don’t full-on bonk tonight?”
“That sounds wonderful,” Theo said. “Not that I wouldn’t cast my vote for full-on bonking given half a chance.”
“Ahhhh!” Lala screamed. Her cell phone, tucked into her fancy evening bag, was emitting a wail that could have woken the dead. “When did the volume on that damn thing get so screwy? Gimme a sec, I just want to make sure it’s not an emergency with my aunt or something.”
Lala grabbed her bag and pulled the offending communication device out of it.
“I kind of hate texting. I can’t manage to text back without the results making me sound meshugganah because of all the damn typos I make and because of what autocorrect goes ahead and turns them into. Don’t text me from Russia, okay? Let’s just write actual letters, and then, years from now, they can be published in a collection that will inspire future generations of lovers. I just said that because I’m kind of hammered. I mean, but, you know, I would love to stay in touch.”
Lala poked at her cell phone and got to the message that had just arrived for her. It was from delicious e-publisher James Lancaster.
I feel sick, Lala thought.
“Why aren’t you checking your e-mail?” the text read.
“Theo, do you have a laptop handy and will you please, please, please excuse me for a few minutes?”
_______________
Lala sat at Theo’s desk in his bedroom trying to will herself not to sweat right through the armpits of her lovely, expensive party dress. Theo had remained in the living room at her request because Lala told him, “I might get crazy depending on what this e-mail I’ve been waiting for says, and I think it’s too early in our relationship for you to see me like that because it might not be pretty.”
There’s no subject line on James’s e-mail, Lala thought. I don’t think I feel well. Oh, fuck it.
She clicked on the link and the contents popped open.
“I swear, I didn’t think it was possible . . .” Lala read.
Uh oh, Lala thought.
. . . but your annotated Say Yes to the Dress had me cracking up the whole time I was reading it. And you have to do more entries for ‘Lala Pettibone, Journalist to the Stars’ because it’s a hoot. I really loved everything you sent me.
I feel dizzy, Lala thought.
Except for . . .
Shit, Lala thought.
. . . ‘These Bloody Awful, Bloody Marvelous, Bloody Bloody Streets’?
True, Lala thought. That one was weird.
Short stories set in a futuristic London where the unifying theme is dismemberment? And you seemed to be trying to be funny about it? What the hell was that?
I have no idea what I was thinking, Lala thought. No clue. I got bupkis in terms of an explanation.
I mean, I can see where you were maybe going for something Poe-esque, but, Jesus. Anyway, I predict we can make ‘Dressed Like a Lady, Drinks Like a Pig’ a big hit. It’s a great piece. Call me.
_______________
Theo looked up from the book he had been reading when Lala reentered the living room, wearing nothing but her stiletto heels and the string of pearls her late husband had given her for their tenth anniversary.
“Lean back,” Lala cooed. “Close your eyes. And then say your prayers. Because I am gonna wear you out.”
The Dawn
There were no meddling moms to make cutting remarks about their daughters’ weight, no clueless fiancés to break one of the most sacred rules of wedding planning by insisting that they be part of the entourage. No self-centered bridesmaids to undermine the process by demanding that the bride “at least try on a mermaid gown, because, I mean, come on, what could it hurt to just try it on, for God’s sake we came all this way so just try the stupid mermaid one on . . . I bet you’ll look great in it, and then you’ll be thanking me for making you try it on, okay?” after the bride repeatedly declared that she had always dreamed since she was a little girl of wearing a ball gown wedding dress on her special day. There were no pouts, no sneers, no tears. Indeed, the only time the shopping experience of finding Geraldine’s wedding dress even came close to the heightened drama on Say Yes to the Dress was when Lala unintentionally hurt Helene’s feelings while Geraldine, Helene, and Lala were combing the racks with the bridal consultant.
Brenda, who had flown home to New York directly from Las Vegas, would be joining in to offer her thoughts on the dresses via webcam once the top three contenders had been selected.
“How about this one?” Helene said, holding up a tiered lace gown in pale pink.
“You’re kidding, right?” Lala brayed. “It’s got a rose on it the size of an Aztec sundial, for chrissake! Oh no, Helene, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it that way . . . I’m sure roses the size of Aztec sundials look great on certain brides . . . Seriously, please don’t be hurt, I thought you were kidding . . . I’m a total idiot.”
It turned out that there would not be three dresses vying for the honor of being chosen. And so Brenda’s only function would be to confirm what the three women standing in the dressing room already knew.
“This is the one,” Geraldine said. She had discovered the off-white silk organza gown in one of the most distant racks in the shop, on which this treasure was surrounded by a sad collection of fashion misfires.
Geraldine turned around slowly so that they could all see the dress in the three-paneled mirror. It had a slight train and three-quarter length sleeves and the fabric draped itself exquisitely over Geraldine’s tall, trim body.
“You look gorgeous,” Lala gasped.
“Gorgeous,” Helene whispered.
Lala grabbed the price tag.
“How much . . . OMIGOD!”
Helene grabbed the price tag from Lala.
“That must be misprint—”
“What?” Geraldine demanded. “What? Where are my glasses? I can’t tell if that’s a seven or a—”
“It was originally seven thousand, and it is now marked down to a hundred bucks!” Lala crowed.
Afterward, cozily ensconced in a booth in one of their favorite restaurants, the four women—Brenda was with them via Helene’s iPhone, which was propped up against the wall next to their table so that a picture of Brenda in her study in New York with a glass of white wine in her hand could be seen—agreed that the money Geraldine was saving on her wedding dress would be divided among four new charities.
“The ACLU is my choice,” Brenda said.
“And I’ll be donating to the Democratic National Committee,” Geraldine said.
“It’s Greenpeace for me,” Helene said.
“I love that we’re a girl group of clichéd liberals,” Lala said. “It’s like we’re the Go-Gos of progressivism. It’s like if the Bangles were made up of four Joan Baezes. And is anyone surprised that I will be donating to the Humane Society of the United States? Okay, wait, before anyone says another word, can we just go ahead and pretend that we traveled to Brooklyn to go to Kleinfeld’s to get a wedding dress, and we’re being filmed for Say Yes to the Dress, and I’m playing Geraldine’s part right now, and I’m saying something I actually heard a bride say on the show when she was torn between two wedding dresses.”
Lala pulled herself up in her seat on the bench of the booth and put on her best imitation of Geraldine’s elegant voice with an adde
d frantic edge.
“I have literally never been so confused in my entire life.”
Lala bobbed her head and grinned.
“That’s a quotation! About choosing a wedding dress! No decision in that dame’s life had been as challenging as which wedding dress to pick. Which college to attend? Nuh uh! What career? Piece of cake. Which groom to marry? Could decide that in her sleep. But the dress! No, don’t make me decide between two dresses. She actually said that.”
Geraldine would never have said anything like that because Geraldine was the very antithesis of a high-maintenance bride. Geraldine and Monty’s ceremony and reception would be in the courtyard of Geraldine’s fourplex. The food would be catered by a friend of Geraldine’s, whose area of expertise was creating sumptuous, yet low-calorie, vegetarian buffets. The caterer was also taking care of the open bar and would be serving Helene’s favorite cocktail that Helene had reworked in honor of the bride and groom; this time it would be a blend of champagne, an infusion of peach, or pêche, as Lala insisted on calling it, and those delightful edible gold flakes—or flecks, as Lala had taken to calling them.
There would be no arguing over which style of dress would suit all three of Geraldine’s attendants because the only guidelines Lala, the matron of honor, and Brenda and Helene, the bridesmaids, could get out of the bride were, “No, no, don’t bother finding the same outfit, just wear whatever you want, maybe something with a little . . . I don’t know . . . a little purple in it somewhere for a unifying theme. Just be comfortable. It’s a party.”
There would be no scanning of items into a bridal registry, in person or online, because Monty and Geraldine had everything they needed to be happy for the rest of their lives, and if any of the guests were to insist on giving them a gift, a donation to “a cause that promoted kindness and caring” would be all they needed to be even happier for the rest of their lives.
“Suck on that, you social and political conservatives who hide your selfishness beneath a veneer of trumpeting classic American individuality, as though it is somehow anti-American to consider oneself one’s brothers’ and sisters’ and other sentient beings’ keeper!” Lala crowed at their favorite restaurant after her second vodka gimlet. The three other women nodded their approval.
“Even when she slurs,” Brenda said with smiling admiration, “she makes her point.”
“Especially when she slurs,” Geraldine added.
Geraldine’s attitude toward her big day was so profoundly leisurely and easygoing, it left very little, if indeed anything, for her matron of honor to worry about once the bachelorette celebration had become a treasured memory—other than, perhaps, whether she was in fact a matron or a maid of honor, given how long she had been widowed.
And so Lala found herself in the midst of a longish block of free time. She had decided to take a brief hiatus from her creative writing. She had an idea for her next project, which was to be a treatment and full episodes for the first season of a cable sitcom about Mata Hari’s new career as an agent for Britain’s MI-5 in the afterlife that she had given the working title “Double-Oh-Heaven,” but she wanted to take some time to recharge her batteries before she began the foray into a “hopefully hilarious and mesmerizing journey through time, space, and the outermost boundaries of our preconceived ideas of Heaven and Hell, good taste, and narrative storytelling.”
“I’m hoping this saga will lure Sean Connery out of retirement so he can play the lead role in drag because I think having Mata Hari as an older and more masculine angel could definitely work,” Lala shared with her precious dogs during their many relaxing and restoring hours on the couch together watching the most deliciously over-the-top television known to man or beast.
From the tone of the silent glares with which Petunia, Yootza, Chester, and Eunice were accosting Lala, the dogs were united in wishing that their mama would shut her pie-hole so their eighteenth hour of that day’s napping could proceed undisturbed.
Though Lala was on vacation, she still had her laptop with her on the couch. Because Lala was maintaining a fevered, virtual ménage à quatre with three very desirable men, two of whom were at a distance and one of whom was not.
Lala was in frequent e-mail contact with Theo and James. And she continued to write daily messages to David, though she anticipated that they would never be seen by eyes other than her own, nor heard by ears other than her dogs’ until her death and David’s, and that they would then create a media sensation in the sphere of romance that would dwarf any renown Abelard and Heloise had managed to achieve over the centuries with quill and parchment.
“It’s a blogary,” Lala explained to her uninterested dogs. “Or a diablog, if you prefer. It’s a diary, but it’s not written by hand on lovely paper, get it?”
When you think about it, Lala thought, I’m getting to be quite a hussy in my prime.
“David, I am apparently quite a hussy,” Lala typed. “I think about you all the time, and I relive our epic porn fest together, and I also have a huge crush on Theo, and then there’s a guy in town who is adorable and loves animals and is my new publisher, and I get very stupidly shy and awkward when I think about him. Jesus, I feel like I’m back in high school, and I’ve got a crush on three guys in the theater department and maybe only two of them are gay.”
_______________
“Theo has an ear for schmutz,” Lala coyly confessed to Geraldine. “His e-mails are smokin’, lemme tell you.”
Lala and her aunt were sitting in the courtyard with the dogs enjoying a big pitcher of lemonade. With vodka.
“My philosophy on booze,” Geraldine said, “is that I had an aunt who, starting at her eighty-fifth birthday, was potted from morning ‘til night, and she looked great, and she felt great, and she was very active and very involved in life until she went to sleep one night shortly after her one-hundred-and-second birthday and didn’t wake up the next morning. So I’m getting a head start.”
Geraldine cradled Yootza on her lap and planted a big smacker of a kiss on his forehead. Lala refilled each of their glasses.
“I think Theo and I might be soul mates,” she mused.
“That guy in Vegas? You’re talking about that guy in Vegas?”
“Yeah,” Lala said. “Theo.”
“Are you moving to Vegas?”
“Actually, he’s in Moscow for the next two years, but we write each other such lovely e-mails all the time, and I feel like we’re getting to really know each other on a very deep soul level, and that he might be the one who can—”
“So you’re moving to Moscow?”
“God, no,” Lala said. “It’s freezing in Moscow. It’s worse than New York. My blood has thinned since I moved here. I’m starting to really like this weather. Jesus, I hope New York didn’t hear me say that.”
“What do you hear from James?”
“He’s such a sweetheart,” Lala said.
“I’d love to meet him sometime,” Geraldine said.
“His e-mails crack me up.”
“Remember the days when people who lived in the same town would actually see each other? And actually speak to each other? In the same room? In person? Remember that?”
“Vaguely,” Lala said.
A few days later Geraldine was over at Lala’s place, and they were watching Casablanca, which put their combined total of watching that film well into the three digits.
“James got me an online interview with one of the most trafficked international e-book web forums,” Lala gushed.
Lala and Geraldine had been talking through much of Casablanca, as they always did, when they weren’t saying the lines along with Humphrey and Ingrid and Paul and Claude.
“James timed it to appear just before the first installment of Dressed Like a Lady goes up on his website. Did I tell you James is planning to present my novel as a serialization, the same way Dickens’s w
orks came out? Isn’t that cool?”
“You did tell me that, and it is very cool,” Geraldine said. “I couldn’t be more thrilled for you.”
“James is such a nice man. We were instant messaging each other for hours last night, and he writes the goofiest things, and I was laughing and laughing and laughing—”
“Why didn’t you just call him and talk to him? Or invite him over or something?”
“Umm . . . Well, he didn’t bring up getting together, and I was feeling kind of shy, so I didn’t say anything.”
“You were what?” Geraldine said. “When do you ever feel shy?”
“Lots of times,” Lala said. “I just don’t act on it. Or mention it. Or consciously reflect on it. Most of the time.”
Over the weekend, Lala and Geraldine had gone to the gym together to give “that maddening area under our arms and that infuriating tire around our waists a run for their money.” Lala had adjusted her workout to avoid even the whisper of a hint of a chance of injuring herself again and was now an acolyte of the stationary bike and the elliptical machine, both of which she embraced with the obnoxious vigilance of a former cigarette addict enforcing a No Smoking sign.
“Non-impact,” Lala droned to Geraldine as they worked their abs on neighboring inclined benches. “It’s the only way to go. Hey, want to hear something funny? Did I tell you James volunteers at Dogs of Love?”
“Yes, you did,” Geraldine said.
“Seriously, how sweet and adorable is that? So I was at Dogs of Love at noon, and then I heard from one of the other volunteers that James showed up at three o’clock right after I left, and so the next time I got there at three, and, apparently, he had been there at noon that day, and I thought that was the funniest—”
“Why don’t you just suggest that you both meet there one day and volunteer together and then maybe go out and have dinner and—”
“Well, he didn’t mention that, and I didn’t want to sound—”
“Sound what?” Geraldine said. “Interested?”
“I don’t know; I guess I’m just going through a shy phase or something.”
Lala Pettibone's Act Two Page 25
