by Dermot Davis
“All of the above, yes!”
“Then let’s do it,” declares Frances. “Let’s fall in love!”
“Just like that?” I ask.
“Just like that!”
“I’m excited but to be honest, I didn’t know that falling in love was a decision we need to make.”
“To adopt the Zen mind is to be conscious of everything you do. That includes falling in love,” she responds, now sounding like she’s back to her reasonable, Zen self persona.
“In every room and every nook and cranny, I like it!”
“I’ve got a few days before I start my next project. Let’s spend some serious time together, just you and me. Let’s be carefree and silly, what do you say?” she asks cheerfully.
“Okay!”
“And next weekend we’ll do the relationship seminar. Deal?”
“Deal.” Had she asked for all my pay for the coming year and the pink slip to my car, I would have given it to her. Anything to end this conversation and get back to being happy with each other.
The next few days are the most incredible, wondrous and magical days I’ve ever spent in a romantic relationship in my life. If some wizard had given me a magic wand and said, ‘Here, go ahead and wish for whatever it is you want to wish for,’ spending these amazing days and nights with Frances would have been my wish.
I remember when I was a kid, in order to feel close to my parents, I’d watch grown-up movies on TV with them. For the most part they were boring, but they would always have these glorious montages of love scenes where the guy and the gal would run through tall grass and wild flowers in the sun or they would run on the beach together and splash each other in the surf.
The couple in love, in the movie, would picnic together on a grass knoll by the river’s edge and they would playfully feed each other grapes or strawberries or, I guess, whatever love berry was in season.
Frances and I do them all.
We have dinner on a rooftop with twinkle lights and champagne in a bucket. We lie in the sand in each other’s embrace at moonlight just as the surf came crashing into us, just like Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity.
We ride the Ferris wheel at night on Santa Monica pier and I shoot three ducks with an air gun and win her a fuzzy, cute teddy bear. We walk hand in hand and share a soft ice cream cone. It melts in the sun and runs down my fingers but Frances quickly licks them and then she laughs. I tickle her and she laughs some more and then she runs and I chase her and I catch her and we both laugh and then we kiss deeply.
And, true to her word, we have lots of sex. We have sex in the shower and sex on the stairs and sex on the sofa and on the kitchen table and her writing desk and in the hallway and out back in the bushes when it is dark and we have to be so quiet but it is hard to have sex outside, half-standing up and we giggle because it is just so darn daring and outrageous.
And then I tell her that I love her.
I massage her foot and surrounded by pillows, candles, soft lighting, romantic music and lying post coital on the sheepskin rug in front of a smoldering fire, I can feel her instantly tense up. Which probably should be an indication for me not to say anything more, but I really feel full of love right now and I want to share my feelings.
“All I’ve ever imagined that I could have from a girlfriend is to be understood. That she’d know me. Not the little things like my favorite color or something but that she could really see me for who I am. I feel like I have all that with you.”
Frances pulls her foot away and embraces her knees to her chest, which I take not to be a great sign. “I bumped into an old friend of mine on the street the other day, some guy I used to work with,” she says in a kind of neutral tone. “He asked me how I was. ‘Great,’ I said, ‘just great.’ Then he asked me if I had broken up with my boyfriend, which I thought was a weird question to ask, so I asked him, why ask that question? And he says, oh, it was always the boyfriend with you. If he’s happy, you’re happy and when he’s sad, you’re sad…”
Frances looks at me with what looks like deep sadness in her eyes. “I don’t want to be that person anymore,” she says.
“What person? I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”
Before Frances gets a chance to answer, there’s a knock at the front door.
“Are you expecting someone?” I ask.
Taking a look through the peephole, “It’s Ronald,” she says and just as I’m saying, “You’re letting him in?” she opens the door to let him in. As she does so, sharp sunlight comes blasting through, as, even though it’s almost a hundred degrees Fahrenheit outside, in order to have the coziness of the fire, we cranked up the air conditioner.
“Wow, it’s dark in here,” Ronald says as he kisses Frances on the cheek. “You’ve got a fire going? It’s nearly triple digits out there.”
Amazingly, not once does he look at me or acknowledge my presence. In fact, the whole time, he acts like I’m not even here.
“Sorry for showing up like this,” he says, not sounding one bit sorry. “But I’ve left you like six messages on your voicemail and the client’s seriously freaking about the changes.”
“What changes?” asks Frances.
“Yeah, that was voicemail message number one. They want some major changes to your design. I brought over the blueprints.” As Frances takes the blueprints to her desk and turns on the bright lights, I’m wondering just what has happened. One minute we’re talking love and exchanging sweet nothings and the next it’s Grand Central Station in here?
“I’ll put on some coffee,” Frances says. “Want some coffee?” she asks Ronald, the puppy dog from the party.
“Absolument,” he says with a phony French accent. Really pissed that I’m being totally ignored, not just by Ronald Reinhold, a complete dick, which I can take, but particularly by Frances, especially as I had just a second ago bared my soul to her and put my feelings about her out there...I decide to go.
I want to get the heck out of here and not come back. In fact, my absence obviously won’t even be missed. So I go to the bedroom and quickly dress. Just as I’m putting my shoes on, Frances comes in.
“Martin, I’m so sorry, I have to deal with this. It’s work, okay?”
“You didn’t even introduce us,” I say angrily. “This is the guy that was stalking you all night at your mom’s birthday party. That’s how badly he wants to get into your pants.”
“Ronald’s an old friend. He got me this job.”
“Whatever.”
“Martin, the past few days have been real fun but we can’t cocoon ourselves away from the world and live in some little love bubble forever. I have to deal with this, okay?”
“Yeah, well, guess what? I think our little love bubble just burst,” and with these parting words, I grab my overnight bag and I’m out of here.
13. Hello, Mom
When I get to my car, I’m not too surprised to find a parking ticket on the windshield. The car’s been sitting here for days and who pays attention to a sign that says street cleaning on Friday, when you’re parking there on Tuesday? Besides, this is Santa Monica, pretty much famous for issuing parking tickets on the slightest pretense, like maybe if your car is green, they are allowed to ticket it on whatever day they pick up the recyclables and double the fee on International Earth Day.
I open the door and angrily fling my bag across the passenger seat. Something plastic comes flying out of the bag and when I pick it up, I recognize it as Janice’s DVD, which I forgot to return to her the night of the lousy French dinner. It has a label with her address on it, somewhere in Venice, which isn’t very far away but is not exactly on my route home, either. But what the hey, maybe she really needs it and I should swing by and drop it off. If she’s not around, I can take some photos of the beach freaks.
The address is right on the beach, so after having to park friggin’ miles away, I do get a chance to take photos of all the crazy and colorful street performers,
hippie venders, half-naked roller bladders, crazy-ass jugglers and awe-struck tourists. As I’m clicking away I suddenly ask myself, why I’m even taking these photos in the first place? It’s all very aimless and what exactly separates me from every other tourist who’s doing the exact same thing? I guess I just don’t know what I’m doing anymore, professionally or personally. I haven’t even been calling around looking for work for like, two weeks now.
When I get to the address on the DVD, there’s a group of some cool college kids hanging out on the patio. “I’m looking for Janice,” I say to one of the kids.
“You wanna buy?” he asks.
“Buy what?” I ask in response. Are these kids selling drugs?
“Never mind,” the kid says, losing immediate interest in me. “Janice is upstairs.”
I take that as an invitation to enter the house and climb the badly in need of cleaning, stairs. When I get to the top of the stairs, through an open door, I can see Janice hanging out with a female friend. They’re both drinking beers and dressed in skimpy beach clothes.
“Martin?” Janice says with obvious surprise.
“Hi,” I say as coolly as I think Philip Marlowe would say it, climbing up the stairs of a broad’s house as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
“This is, like, so weird. We were just talking about you. Come on in.”
“You were just talking about me now? That is weird.”
“No, not just now, now. A couple of days ago.”
When I enter her room, she greets me with a light kiss on the lips which I think is very weird except that maybe that’s the way they do things around here with all the cool, hip, free love aura that they’ve got going on in the place. The house is probably a free wheelin’, free lovin’ commune, like they had in the sixties. I have been noticing that this generation coming up is like a reincarnation of the sixties groovers, complete with their tie-dyed shirts and the long flowing floral dresses and the whole, ‘I love you, man, it’s all good,’ hippie thing going on.
“What are you doing here? How did you get my…” I hold up her DVD and that answers all her questions. “Oh, my short. You’re so sweet to bring it over. This is Jane, one of my roommates.” I shake Jane’s hand and now recognize her as the other woman of the threesome in the short. I’m half expecting the husband character to show up but, knowing how sensitive she is about her movie, I don’t dare say anything.
“You look, like, so overdressed. Want something to drink?” asks Janice.
“Sure,” I say, unbuttoning some shirt buttons. “Whatever you girls are having is fine.”
Jane excuses herself and says that she’s going to see what the guys are up to. “Keep them down there for about an hour, okay?” says Janice. “Tell them I have a client.”
“A client?” I ask, when Jane leaves.
“I make jewelry. Want to see?”
“Sure,” I say and just like before, she takes my hand in hers and leads me into what looks like her bedroom. Around the walls are display cases filled with handmade jewelry, earrings and bracelets mostly. “These are great,” I say, even though I have no idea if they are or not, I have no eye for women’s jewelry at all. “Is this, like, a tattoo portfolio?” I ask.
“Yeah, I do hemp tattoos.”
“These are cool,” I say and this time I mean it. The designs are really intricate and artistic.
“Do you want one?”
“How do you mean?”
“They’re temporary, they come off in about a week or ten days. Let me give you one, it would look so good on you.”
“Really?”
“Totally. You would look so cool with a tattoo. Pick one out and I’ll go get us some beers.” I’ve always like the Celtic knots with the interlacing of lines and spirals that look so delicate and yet strong, at the same time.
“What about this one?” I say, when she returns.
“That’s one of my favorites,” she says, almost with glee. “You need to take off your shirt.” When I hesitate, she adds, “that’s a Celtic breastplate, it goes on the chest. It’s going to look so awesome on you, so...masculine. You’re going to love it, you’ll see.”
“Okay.”
“Take off your shirt and lie on the bed. I’ll get the brushes.”
So I take off my shirt and lie on her bed and although part of me is thinking that this is a bit weird, another part of me is telling me to relax, that this is where she does business with her clients and I shouldn’t be so uptight and should instead consider it as getting to know my girlfriend’s daughter, if she still is my girlfriend and to play by her rules, even if they are a little loosey-goosey for my liking. Maybe I am too controlled and conservative, just like the man.
“I’ve had people’s personalities change after getting one of these,” Janice says as she starts painting on my chest. I was not prepared for how intimate and sensual this whole tattoo thing was to become. It’s hot in here and now that she’s so close, I can feel her breath on my chest and, please god, stop my eyes from gravitating to her half-naked chest, even if she does have perfectly shaped breasts that are so pert and firm, they almost point upward. The soft and delicate brush strokes on my chest are so sensually arousing, I’m starting to get a hard on.
“The feel of the paint on the skin can be very erotic,” Janice says, as if she’s reading my mind. “Happens all the time, don’t worry about it.”
I’m not sure what exactly she’s referring to but there’s no way that I’m asking her to clarify. Can she tell I’m getting a boner? “How long does this usually take?” I ask, forcing my gaze onto some minor discoloration on the ceiling.
“I bet your fantasy is to have me and my mom at the same time.”
“Excuse me?” I ask, as shocked, insulted and as astounded as I can possibly make myself sound without making it appear like I am faking it.
“Oh, come on. Sex is all you guys think about, admit it.”
“I’m not…”
“A guy thinks about sex every seven seconds. That’s a proven fact.”
“Not this guy, trust me.”
“You haven’t once considered a threesome with you, me and my mom?”
“No. That’s disgusting.”
“How about with just you and me, then? You haven’t considered that, either?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why are you getting a boner?”
“Guys get boners all the time. It’s out of our control. I hitched a ride from an old bearded trucker once and after a few miles of driving I got a boner. The guy looked like he escaped from ZZ Top and, no, I didn’t want to sleep with him, either.”
“What’s ZZ Top?” Janice asks and casually takes off her shirt, exposing her very insufficient, delicately embroidered, lacy bra. I have a hard time telling the puzzle center of my brain to shift its focus away from trying to figure out if we can really see her nipples through the embroidery or if indeed, those darker areas are extra lace or simply the design of the bra itself.
“I should get going,” I say and expect her to clear a way for me.
“If you didn’t come here to have sex with me, then why did you come?”
“I came to return the DVD.”
“Why didn’t you mail it? Or give it to my mom? You didn’t even call first. Afraid I would have turned you down?”
“I was in the neighborhood.”
“You’re such a guy, Martin. You’re all a bunch of phonies.”
Janice finally gets up and puts back on her shirt. I jump up off the bed and wrestle with my shirt to get the sleeves both going the right way.
“You know how many guys have fucked over my mom? I’ve lost count and you know what? She deserves better.” As Janice slams the door on her way out, I take a look at the tattoo on my chest. Turns out that it’s not a Celtic knot, after all, and it certainly doesn’t look cool or masculine. In very crude calligraphy it says but two words: Hello mom.
“Oh, shit,” I say out loud.
14. What Infinity Feels Like
As I take a slow meandering stroll on the beach, I have this nagging feeling that something isn’t quite right with me. I don’t know what it is but there’s something inside me that’s not very healthy, almost as if there’s some part of me that doesn’t want me to be happy and when I get even a sniff of possible happiness, whatever it is wants no part of it and does its best to sabotage the whole deal.
Why did I drive down here to visit Frances’ daughter? Janice is right, it wasn’t about the DVD, I could have mailed it or given it to her mom. What was I thinking? Thinking back to that moment in the car, when I made the decision, I guess I was in kind of a weird place. I was feeling angry and maybe a bit rejected: did I want to strike back at Frances or get even with her in some way? If Janice wasn’t so amazingly hot, would I have even wanted to drive down here? Did I want Janice to like me or think me cute? If so, would I have ditched Frances for her daughter?
Sometimes I hate being a guy and I hate to admit it but a lot of times guys do think with their penises and not with their heads. Jeez, would I have slept with Janice if she came on to me and seduced me? As nasty as it sounds, I wouldn’t rule it out as a possibility. I would have been sorry afterwards, maybe even devastated and it would probably be something that I would never be able to forgive myself for, but I could see myself doing it, if the circumstances went that way, which thankfully, they did not.
I think that maybe, Janice is my fantasy woman that I’ve always wanted to date. She’s young, gorgeous, a perfect 10 body and her intelligence level is not too dull to be a bore and not so bright that I can’t easily handle her. She might have that angry feminist thing going on, but most likely that’s a phase she’s going through and I could just agree with everything she says until she left college and grew up a little.
Frances is so friggin’ complicated and unpredictable that I really don’t know if I’m up to the task. She talks and acts like she’s wise and in control but then she does or says something that’s utterly ridiculous and she comes across as some immature, wounded scaredy cat. I don’t get her at all. I mean if she really has all her shit together, why is she alone at her age, married twice and her whole past such a screw up?
