“I need to go try to figure out my life,” I said. “I don’t know anything about it right now.”
“I feel like I had this conversation before,” he said. “With your mother.”
“I’m a little bit her,” I said. “And a little bit you.”
“Yeah, that sounds right.”
There was a knot in my stomach and my heart hung heavy. My father wasn’t a bad guy. He did okay. Maybe I just took it all out on him when my mother left. And it was entirely possible, probable even, that he took her leaving out on himself as well. None of us, not me, not my father, not my mother, were bad people. We were all just trying to do the best we could with what we had.
“Here,” I said, handing my father my envelope. “I want you to have this.”
“What’s this?” he said, accepting the envelope and opening it up. “Wow. There’s a lot of money in here.”
“It’s three thousand,” I said. “It’s to help with bills and such. It should help give you some time to figure things out with me not contributing anymore.”
“I can’t take this,” he said. “You’re going to need it in LA. I imagine it’s expensive out there.”
“I’ll be okay,” I said. “I really want you to take it.”
“Okay,” he said, holding the envelope aloft in a statement of gratitude.
“I’m a bit scared,” I said with a light laugh. “I’ve never been on a plane before.”
“Me neither,” said my father with a soft smile.
“It makes me kinda feel like a child,” I said. “Naive and inexperienced.”
My father just nodded and the two of us shared a heavy silence. I’d never felt closer to him but I’d also never felt further away.
“I’m guessing you’re hooking up with these movie people,” he said finally. “They’re the ones taking you to LA?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s right.”
“So am I going to see you on some TV show sometime?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so. I don’t know.”
“Will you call sometimes?”
“I will,” I said, slowly nodding. “I will.”
“All right,” said my father. He then stood up from his chair and stepped toward me, opening his arms and taking me in. We didn’t hug very frequently but I eagerly embraced him back. Even though he smelled like stale beer, it felt nice to have his love for that fleeting moment. A single tear rolled down my cheek but I chastised myself for doing so. I didn’t want to cry.
“I’ve left the keys to the Jeep on the counter,” I said, pulling back from our hug and wiping at my cheek.
“Thanks.”
“I’ll let you know when I get settled out there,” I said. “Thanks for everything, Dad.”
“Good luck, Audra,” he said. “Send me a postcard with the Hollywood sign on it.” We smiled together.
When I walked around the house, I saw a black livery car in the driveway and knew that Kelsie was inside. It made me happy to see where my new life was going. Scared, as well, but the good kind of scared. Like when you hit the apex of a dune with your Jeep and get a bit of air. Your stomach drops, your heart pounds, you feel alive. I was really starting to feel alive.
“Get in here,” grinned Kelsie once I opened the door to the car. She had such an amazing smile on her face, so bright and affable. Kelsie was a beautiful young woman, both inside and out. She had a light about her, a light she was sharing with me, and I wanted so badly to radiate that same light out of my own heart.
I leapt into the car and collapsed down onto her in a hug. We giggled as we tumbled, exchanging a few light pecks on one another’s faces. Just one more night in Champlain for me, one more night at the hotel with Kelsie, and then we were off to break new ground. I couldn’t believe how thrilled I felt.
“This is what I’d like to happen,” said Kelsie. The two of us sat together on a couch in the lobby of the Hotel Champlain while Jennifer sat across from us with a notebook in her lap listening intently to Kelsie’s words. “When we get in to LAX tomorrow morning, I want a car available for Audra that will take her directly to my house.”
“Okay,” said Jennifer, writing Kelsie’s instructions down. “Because you’re heading immediately to the studio.”
“Right,” said Kelsie. “My cleaning company should be there at that time, so please let them know to expect Audra.”
“Got it,” said Jennifer. “Should we also have them set up your guest bedroom for Audra?”
Kelsie and I looked at one another and grinned, sharing an unspoken secret.
“Sure,” said Kelsie finally. “That would be fine.”
“Perfect,” said Jennifer. “I think I’ve got it all. I have to say, Kelsie, I’m really blown away that you’re helping Audra out like this, flying her out to LA and helping her get established out there. It’s kind of like a fan’s dream.”
“Good thing she’s not a fan,” said Kelsie with a laugh.
“Hey!” I said. “I’m a fan now.”
“She’s never seen a single movie I’ve been in,” said Kelsie to Jennifer, her hand pushing me away as I tried to protest.
“Is that right?” asked Jennifer. “Well, I guess you’ll have to binge watch some of Kelsie’s films at one of her infamous movie nights sometimes.” Jennifer smiled over at us.
“Do you think I’m so full of myself,” Kelsie began. “That I would host a movie night and show only movies I’ve been in?”
Jennifer grinned.
“You don’t have to answer,” I said.
“All right,” said Jennifer, standing up to extract herself from the conversation. “I’m going to make sure this all gets accomplished for you ladies. Remember, we’re heading out tomorrow at 5AM local time so that we can get Kelsie and the rest of the cast to the soundstage by call in the morning LA time.”
“Not even a day off,” Kelsie mused.
“Today was a day off,” said Jennifer. “Get some rest.” Jennifer tapped her pen against her notebook and scurried off, leaving us sitting there on the couch.
“Are you excited or what?” asked Kelsie, her green eyes looking into mine brightly.
“I am,” I said. “And a little sad. Sad to be leaving all this.”
“It’s okay,” said Kelsie. “I think you’re gonna change your tune when you see Los Angeles. And I’ve got a pretty plush house.” She gave me a wink and nudged her elbow into my side.
“This is so crazy,” I whined, letting my head fall onto the couch back, my eyes peering up to the ceiling. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. I’m nervous.”
Slithering up next to me and pushing her mouth to the side of my head, lips near my ears, inspiring a small tickle in me, Kelsie giggled softly and spoke.
“Life is about taking risks,” she whispered. “And we’re gonna take so many risks together.”
This sent shivers up my spine. It was such a simple little statement, seductively suggestive of course, but what really got me was that it was so full of possibility. It was open-ended yet specific. It was all-encompassing but unique. It made me want to just leap on top of Kelsie right there on the couch, in public in the hotel lobby, and shower her face with a thousand kisses.
“That was so sexy,” I admitted, feeling embarrassed for saying it immediately afterward. But I was becoming much more comfortable being embarrassed. It was almost becoming addictive. The more you do and say embarrassing things, the less embarrassment you feel.
“I know,” murmured Kelsie against my ear. “It was meant to be.”
“God!” I intoned. “That was sexy, too!” Kelsie tittered.
“Do you feel sometimes like you’re in a movie?” she asked me. “Like, you’re just the lead actress in this crazy movie that’s happening all around you? You can’t really control it, and if you try to control it the whole thing just gets harder and more unpleasant?”
“I don’t know,” I said, feeling like I was losing my footing a bit in the conversation but eager
to hear what she had to say.
“Yeah,” she went on. “Control. I’ve discovered that when I started just going with the flow, things worked out great all by themselves. Instead of me trying to work against them, I worked with them… and here I am.” Kelsie smiled. She kissed my ear. And I felt really good.
“Are you talking about destiny?” I mewed uncertainly.
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe that’s what I mean. We’re just watching ourselves in the movie of our life. Maybe yours feels like a comedy, maybe it’s a drama, hopefully it’s not a horror flick. But if we get out of the way and let the movie play itself out, there’s usually a happy ending.”
How had I been so blind to it all before. Kelsie was right. I mean, not about the movie thing specifically. I didn’t know much about that. But the control thing. I had been so focused on controlling things that it left me stranded. It sentenced me to an insulated life in Champlain, a life I didn’t truly want but was too scared to leave for fear that I might have to give up some control. But I didn’t have control. I didn’t plan any of this. I didn’t plan for Hollywood to come to my town, I didn’t plan to meet Kelsie Kent at my hotel, this was all just the chaos happening around me.
I felt almost reborn by this realization. To Kelsie, she was just living this philosophy happily and reaping the benefits from it. She was tossing her hands in the air, unperturbed about whatever good thing or bad thing happened because she could rest easy knowing that it was supposed to happen on some cosmic level. Some of us try to exert control over our lives by simply giving up and running away, like my mother. Some of us do it by drinking away our problems, like my father. And some of us are so frozen by life that they’re scared to do anything, like me.
“So you just, like, what?” I asked. “Take your hands off the wheel?”
“Take my hands off the wheel,” smiled Kelsie. “It’s worked for me so far. And hey, if I hadn’t been open to the synchronicity of it all, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you. I probably wouldn’t have become a movie star and I might have even dismissed my initial attraction to you.”
“Isn’t it a little, I don’t know, irresponsible to live like that?”
“Of course not,” Kelsie countered. “I’m not living a dangerous life without meaning or care. I mean, I’m not going to crazy parties and putting drugs up my nose or widening my legs for people I shouldn’t let in. I’m just… open. Open to possibility. Every day, every minute. Trying not to judge, but judging if I have to. You know?” She grinned, squinted her eyes, shrugged.
“I think so,” I said. “But I also think I’ve got a lot to learn.”
“Totally,” she said. It was so hilariously Californian the way she said that. And at the same time, it reaffirmed my decision to go with her. I was totally being called by whatever was out west waiting for me, I could feel it. I could feel it how I imagine my mother felt it. It was nebulous and shapeless but it was there. It was personified in Kelsie, in her loving attitude, but it was something much greater than her, much greater than me, much greater than the two us combined.
I took hold of Kelsie’s hand and gripped onto it tightly, relaxing deep into the couch, feeling a special kind of leisure that I had never felt before. It was freedom. It was relief. Before that moment, I’d never truly realized how wound up a person I was. I thought it was just normal to feel so stifled. But Kelsie showed me a different way and I was indebted to her for that. This felt real. This felt like love. All the movies in the world couldn’t convey love like this. They couldn’t do it justice. When you experience this kind of love for real, in your real life, everything else pales.
“Thank you,” I whispered. Kelsie simply smiled back at me and tightened her hold on my hand.
The movie of my life was finally entering the good part.
I woke up suddenly from a deep slumber and gasped, my body reflexively sitting up in bed and the sheet that had been covering my chest fell down into my lap. It was quiet and dark, though I was panting heavily, my breast heaving in and out as I tried to regain some composure. Was it all some frighteningly real dream? In my dream I had dreamt that it was all just a dream — confusing, I know — that the movie had never actually come to town, that I’d never met Kelsie, that I wasn’t slated to leave with her the next day.
But I turned at my waist and looked next to me, seeing Kelsie sleeping there, eyes closed, a smile on her face. I breathed a sigh of relief. What a nightmare. It was just my mind playing tricks on me, perhaps remnants of some deep-seeded thing that wouldn’t let me believe I was good enough. I needed to rid myself of that and do as Kelsie said, just give in to life and accept what it’s willing to give.
As I returned to consciousness, assured that things were okay, happy to see Kelsie sleeping next to me, my mind drifted to all the positivity that I now had in my life. I looked forward to tomorrow instead of dreading it as more of the same. I smiled happily to myself as I looked down and watched Kelsie doze.
She must have somehow felt me gazing down at her because after a moment, Kelsie’s eyes blinked a few times before they opened and looked groggily up at me.
“Mmm,” she cooed, writhing there under the sheets, her hand reaching out and delicately taking hold of my arm. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I just had a nightmare that, like, none of this was happening. That somehow this whole thing, us, it was just a dream.”
“Well, it is,” Kelsie said sleepily. Her head turned to the other side of the bed as she looked at the clock on the bedside table. “We need to be up in 3 hours for it to really happen.”
“I know,” I said. I slowly laid back down in the bed and as I did this, Kelsie latched onto me, nestling against me, our bodies coalescing, naked and warm. She slung an arm over my stomach and kissed the side of my head.
“Go back to sleep,” she cooed. “That ‘it was all just a dream’ thing doesn’t actually happen in real life.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said.
“I am,” she stated curtly, eyes closed again, lips in a content smile.
“Okay,” I said aloud, working through my anxiety. It was still there, something still niggling at me. I couldn’t help it. These things take time.
“Remember just a few hours ago,” Kelsie said, her eyes still shut, her body cuddled up next to me. “When I had my head between your legs and you were bucking forward, squealing, giddy with joy?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly.
“Did that seem real?”
“Yeah.”
“Then go back to sleep,” Kelsie said through a yawn, her legs stretching out under the sheets.
Snuggling up with Kelsie, I tried to think of happier things. I imagined what life might be like for me out in Los Angeles with her. I didn’t want to take advantage of her generosity and I knew that I should try to get a job as soon as I could. But I was determined to commit myself to writing. It was something I’d always wanted to do, something I had done a lot of when I was younger but I let the hobby slip away from me. Sometimes, when I thought about it, I got down on myself and asserted that it was just too late for me, too late to become a writer. But I was realizing now that I was still so young and there was so much opportunity in front of me. It was achievable. Kelsie had taught me that.
At 27 I could change gears and do my thing. Heck, even if I was 57 I knew I could change gears and do my thing. There’s no rule out there saying you can’t. You just have to make choices, sometimes the decisions are hard, but they’re necessary. My mother wouldn’t have been a good mother or a happy person if she’d stuck around. And even though it was so incredibly painful for her to leave, it was something she had to do. I could see that now. It hurt. But I could forgive her. Maybe I would try to see her when I was out west. Maybe I could forgive her in person. But maybe she didn’t want that.
Building the courage and making the decision to do the thing you know you need to do is probably the hardest part. Your brain likes to waver, it likes to
mull over possibilities, dwell on stuff, make excuses. But once you’re firm in your choice, everything gets a lot easier. I quit my job, I told my father I was leaving, I was laying in bed with the love of my life, leaving on a jet in the morning for a new adventure. It was like a snowball rolling down a hill, collecting even more snow, growing larger, gaining speed. My charge was to let it roll. I couldn’t stop it. I could only watch as I straddled atop it, enjoying the ride.
I know what you’re probably thinking. Audra just got lucky. Women like Kelsie — you know, rich movie starlets who also happen to be really pretty and a lot of fun — they don’t just fall out of the sky. Good for Audra that she got the girl, she got the chance to give her world a makeover, but that doesn’t happen. Just as we don’t wake up from a dream to realize all the good in our life has evaporated, nor does random goodness just easily fall into our lap.
But damn it, it does. That’s what this whole story is about, that’s what Kelsie represents. If you make a go at things with the attitude that random good just simply can’t happen, you’re never going to see that one hundred dollar bill on the ground, you’re never going to see the magical woman right in front of you who has all the love in the world to give. Yeah, I got lucky. Not dumb luck, though. Not like I scratched a lottery ticket and hit the jackpot. No, I’m lucky — I’m grateful — that for whatever reason, on that day I met Kelsie, something inside of me that normally wasn’t so open actually opened up. And I’m lucky that Kelsie was open to it too.
A couple of times Kelsie mentioned the idea of synchronicity to me. I had to go look it up and read about it, and I suggest you do the same if you’re unfamiliar. It’s not just pure luck. It’s more than that. It goes beyond pure coincidence to the point where it’s destiny. But it’s also different than just destiny. It’s destiny only if you’re open to seeing it. It’s like, I’m this woman who feels trapped in her life and I happen to have a negative bias of movie people. And here comes Kelsie, a woman living in a wonderful freedom of self, and she’s a famous actress who I judge in some superficial way. Yet, we come together. It works. It can’t be coincidence. It just can’t.
Hotel Hollywood: A Lesbian Romance Page 14
