by Deanna Kizis
I could see confusion in his eyes, and, maybe, some slight hurt somewhere deep down. He knows I’m cheating on him, I thought, which made no sense, since we weren’t going out. But I also felt like I was cheating on Max, which also made no sense, because I didn’t even know if I was ever going to see him again. “Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “I just feel off today. Okay?”
“No, I understand.”
Ashton got up and smoothed down his pants. I looked away—his erection was incriminating. “You go snuggle up in bed, get some sleep, and I’ll talk to you soon.” He gave me a kiss on the cheek and rumpled my hair. Then he let himself out.
The second I heard his steps going down the stairs I ran to my answering machine. I’ve acted in good faith, I thought. Surely there will be a call from Max on my voicemail, rewarding me for being such a loyal future girlfriend. But there was no message.
I took off my new shirt, the shirt I despised, and wondered if there was any way to reattach the tag. Well, of course not. I wondered if there was any way to reattach Ashton to my lips, because if I felt lonely before, now I’d fallen into the pit of despair. Maybe I can call Ash on his cell and say I’ve taken an Advil and feel much better, I thought. Or maybe I can tell him the truth and he’ll come over to console me.
Maybe not.
“What am I doing?” I asked Freak. Who opened his eyes drowsily from on top of the television, where he sleeps because it’s always warm. He mewed softly, and fell back into his own dreams.
“Um. What was it like to work with Wes Anderson?”
I was sitting on the stone-walled patio at Orso, a power-lunch location for agents from the William Morris Agency and execs from New Line, trying to conduct a captivating interview of Chandra McInerney, star of Waiting for Godard and Minimall. My tape recorder was whirring on the table between us, my notepad was in my hand, but I was failing miserably. It had been almost a week since the night Max and I had found out our mutual ages and I still hadn’t heard from him. I was distracted to the breaking point. Meanwhile, Chandra McInerney was hardly the kind of person you’d want to look vulnerable in front of. She had a multimovie deal at Miramax, designed a clothing line on the side called Gummy, and graduated from Brown. She talked like Missy Elliott even though she was a freckled blonde with stick-thin arms, a ski-slope nose, and a girlish gap between her two front teeth that sent male film reviewers into paroxysms of ecstasy. I’d see her at parties now and then—usually surrounded by a crowd so hip they looked like they were cast at a model call—and it seemed like she’d be popular and stylish even if she weren’t famous. Of course, in L.A. it’s considered very uncool to slobber over celebrities. When you see them all the time—at the supermarket, hiking in Runyon Canyon, shopping on Sunset Plaza—you cultivate this idea that, deep inside, they’re just like the rest of us. But then you get near someone like Chandra and realize they’re not like us at all. I was completely terrified of her.
Chandra ignored my question. She looked me up and down and said, “Girl, do you know your hands are shaking?”
“They are?”
“You need protein, muthafucka.” She snapped her fingers and a waiter, who’d been ignoring my repeated requests for a glass of water, miraculously appeared. Figuring protein couldn’t hurt, I took Chandra’s advice and ordered the chicken. She asked for a salad and a bottle of mineral water.
“Two glasses?” the waiter said pointedly. I realized he hadn’t brought me any water because I didn’t ask for the bottled kind. I nodded meekly.
“You could be coming down with something.” Chandra narrowed her eyes at me. “Why don’t I just give you the quotes, mkay?”
I was so flattered by her attention, I threw journalistic integrity out the window and actually heard myself saying, “Okay.”
“Okay. Here’s the thing, G. I want to keep doin’ small movies, because that’s the only way to stay on top,” she said. “Like viral marketing. I’m a virus. I have to spread slow. Don’t want to blow up too fast. If I do, the public will reject me the same way they rejected P. Diddy, mkay?” She paused for the waiter, who was back with her salad in record time, and continued. “On my love life? Fuck my love life. My last boyfriend was off the hook—he was an alcoholic and a fuckin’ slob. Homeboy was good in bed, knowwhatlmsayin? But I practically checked myself into a fuckin’ hospital when I found out he was fucking my best friend.” She paused, stabbed at her salad, took a bite, and continued. “On my lawsuits: Yeah, I sue. So sue me. You fuck with me? I got an entire law firm at my disposal, so fuck you.” Paused, stabbed, chewed. “On my fashion line: I don’t talk about that. That has nothing to do with star-power crap and everything to do with keeping it real, mkay?” She sat back. “That enough for five hundred words?”
“Um, yeah. That should actually do it.” I looked at my notes. “And Wes Anderson?”
“He’s a fuckin’ genius, what do you think? Girl, you’re turning green.” Chandra rummaged in her purse, pulled out an industrial-size bottle of stinking yellow vitamins, and thrust the tablets toward me. “Take these,” she said, lighting a cigarette and inhaling deeply. “They’re organic.”
But before I had a chance to swallow the pills or take a bite of my chicken, which had just arrived, she was standing up. “Franklin, yo girl’s got ADD, knowwhatImsayin? We out.”
Chandra was already saying good-bye to a group of execs two tables over when I realized We out translated to “Interview over.” I paid the check (seventy-five dollars for a lunch I didn’t get to eat) and followed her outside, half convinced I wouldn’t even get to say good-bye. But Chandra was waving at me to get in her customized Range Rover. I slid into the passenger seat, and she said, “Pay the man will you? I’m outta cash.”
Movie stars never carry any money.
I handed the valet a five, and Chandra peeled out and headed up Beverly. In between rolling calls on her cell she told a story about the time she thought she had a life-threatening disease. My ears perked up, because the Whip is always telling us that readers love anecdotes about celebrity illness. But it turned out it was just an ulcer. A very serious ulcer, Chandra emphasized, that, she said, “coulda fuckin’ fucked up my whole digestive system.”
“You have health problems?” I asked.
“Girl,” she said. “You have no idea.”
I didn’t know we were going to Yellow until she pulled into a spot outside.
When Chandra walked through the door of the boutique, everyone stopped for a barely perceptible moment to look. Then they made an obvious attempt not to notice her. Chandra, in turn, arranged her face into an expression of tolerant oblivion. It was like watching two different species interact on Animal Planet. Chandra introduced me to the store’s owner, as her “favorite new fuckin’ person in the whole world,” and I was thrilled.
While ladies-in-waiting picked out different clothes for Chandra to try, she pulled me into the dressing room so we could talk. I couldn’t believe I was standing there looking at Chandra McInerney in her Cosabella underwear! I remembered how Max had said he got a glimpse of Heather Graham’s breasts that time, and I couldn’t wait to tell him about my new best friend. That is, if I ever got the chance.
Chandra tried on various outfits, and I made a conscious effort to maintain eye contact, so it wouldn’t seem like her being almost naked was making me uncomfortable. On the blurry sidelines of my vision, I could see she was as skinny as a model—collarbone jutting out, ribs countable—but she was even shorter than me, like she shrank. Most actresses are shrunken—the mummies you see at the natural history museum. Sometimes they eat so little their heads look too big for their bodies (something that gives Kiki the heebie-jeebies), their forearms get hairy from all the extra testosterone in their system, and their teeth get soft. But clothes look so good on them. While she changed, Chandra crowed to the owner about some “fuckin’ hot” clothing designer they both knew. I wanted to find a way into the conversation, but before I could, she said, “Girl, I gotta split, but y
ou can get a ride back with one of the girls here, mkay? I have a meeting at the Peacock.”
She meant NBC.
With a superfast wave of her arms that made her look like someone out of The Matrix, Chandra was dressed and storming toward the exit before I’d even picked up my purse. Halfway out the door, she shouted back, “Peace, dawg.”
I was assured that one of the buyer’s assistants would drive me back to the restaurant so I could get my car. The girl in question didn’t even try to get a conversation going, obviously thinking I was just some groupie. I guess she didn’t see when Chandra programmed my number into her cell.
I was transcribing the tape from my Chandra interview when the phone rang.
“Hello?” I said.
A voice said, “Hey, wanna go see Jon Brion on Friday?”
“Who is this?”
I knew who it was. But I was being passive aggressive because there really isn’t anything else to be after a week’s gone by and you haven’t heard from the guy you’d spend every minute of every day with if it were up to you.
“It’s Max.”
“Oh. Hey.” I said it like I’d been doing so much more than calling Kiki up every morning, noon, and night and saying things like, “Just in case you were wondering, day five, hour one hundred and twenty. No call.” (She’d say, “Repeat this to yourself five times: ‘I am an attractive woman who’s friends with celebrities and has much better things to do,’ and call me later.”)
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I said, just to be disagreeable.
He said, “Hey.”
The pause started to stretch itself out. Then it made itself comfortable and took a seat. Then it started browsing through a magazine. I waited for him to fill the silence with an apology for not calling, or, perhaps, the requisite excuse about being really busy. But Max said nothing. For a moment I thought I could hear him typing something in the background. Is this guy actually dicking around with his computer while he’s on the phone with me? I thought, suddenly so irritated I wanted to chuck the phone at the wall. But then a little voice in my head whispered, Don’t blow this. You’re not prepared to blow this.
“You know how I feel about Jon Brion …” I began, trying to shift my tone.
“Oh …” The typing sounds stopped. “You like him?”
“Well, yeah. How he plays piano? And the guitar? And the drums? All at once? His version of ‘99 Luftballons’? So good?” (Why? Am I talking? Like this?)
We arranged the particulars. What time he was getting out of work, what time I should get to his house. I tried to think of something charming to chat about and …
“Listen, I gotta try to get out of here,” Max interrupted, just as I was beginning what I thought was an impressive riff about why Brion’s lo-fi rock is really the most po-mo thing an artist can do.
“Oh! Me, too! Busy, busy!” Painful.
The first thing Max said when he opened the door was, “I don’t think that jacket will look good on you, man. It came out really huge and only fits big dudes.”
“Wha—?” I started to say. Max held up his index finger. Oh. He was on the phone. He waved me into the house and continued his conversation.
“Yeah? You gonna check that party out? Nah. Think I’m gonna go to this show …”
Max ignored me while I wandered around his bedroom, looking for someplace to sit where I’d seem like I belonged. The bed, which I noticed he made perfectly—no creases in his duvet, thank you very much—seemed too flirtatious, so I perched myself on the stool next to the drum set in the corner. I ran my finger over a cymbal, checking for dust. Nope. He practiced.
“Yeah?” Max said. “Well that makes sense because she’s, like, a complete nut job. She used to go out with that guy who works in reception, Eddie. Ummm-hmmmm. Ummmm-hmmmm.”
I watched him pace around the room. He checked his pockets for his cigarettes, found them on top of his dresser, got his lighter from the bedside table, lit the cigarette, all with the phone tucked in the nook between his shoulder and his ear. His hair was mussed, like he just woke up. His clothes were all Super Very Good. They hung on him like he was a hanger. I kept expecting him to end the conversation, to tell his friend I was there. But he kept introducing one new topic after another. I had received no kiss.
“Hey, whatever happened with those vinyls you were ordering for me?” he said. “No that’s cool. Thanks man. Not too much. Work’s been killing me. Well, it doesn’t matter if I run the company. Heh, heh. Seriously. Hey, guess who I ran into the other day?” He was now flipping through his records, maybe looking for something to put on the turntable. Yes, that’s what it was. He put on a record. Badly Drawn Boy. Good choice. But he had to be kidding. Whenever I tried to talk to Max on the phone, he acted like he hated it, like he had a million other things he needed to do. Now he was just chatting away.
“She’s good.”
I perked up.
“My mother loves you. You know it. Heh, heh …”
IS IT A LOVE CONNECTION?
A budding romance can be bliss, or it can make you want to sharpen your nails into fine points and claw out your own eyes. Here, plot the course of your new romance.—B.F.
False alarm.
Finally, I heard signs of the end of the conversation: “Okay. Well then, I’ll catch you Thursday. Right, at Fred Sixty-Two. Good French toast. Cool.”
He hung up, and I looked at him like, Are you aware that I’ve been sitting here for four thousand years?
He said, “Don’t you look pretty.”
I couldn’t help but smile.
Later that night, I was back in Max’s arms. The show was amazing—turned out he knew the singer so we got to go backstage. And then, after we got back to Max’s house, and after I put on his boxers (again), and after he took them off (again), I said yes.
I just couldn’t wait anymore. And I was fairly certain the timing was right. We’d had a lovely evening—no awkward pauses, no weird jokes about the other night. And being with him felt so good. He was tender, but not in a cheesy way. And passionate, but not in a forced way. When he held me, I felt like I could stay there forever. Like I could lie there, starve to death, have the ravens come and pick my bones clean, and I’d be completely fine with it.
After, Max said, “So I was thinking, B.” His breath near my ear gave me the shivers.
“Hit me.” I tried to nuzzle even closer.
“I was thinking …”
I held my breath. He’s going to tell me it’s all going to be okay, I thought. That he’s not freaked out by the age difference. Max rubbed his hand up and down my arm, fingers trailing …
“You were thinking,” I said.
“Yeah, I was thinking that maybe since that party on Friday won’t really get going till eleven we should stop in Koreatown and play some video games.”
“What?”
“It’s on the way.” He paused and craned his neck to look at me. “You don’t like video games?”
I’ve owned every home system known to humanity, from Atari to Sega to PlayStation 2. But this was supposed to be the moment when he told me how things were going to be. When our relationship would come into focus. When I’d get some sense of what I could expect. Maybe I should just bring it up myself? I thought. Point out that, since he was just inside me, maybe this isn’t the best time to talk about the arcade? But then, Don’t blow this. You’re not prepared to blow this.
I smiled into the dark.
“I’ll tell you what, Max,” I said. “I particularly love House of the Dead, not to mention Time Crisis Two, but I’m also fond of the old school. I can Tron, I can Mario. And if you really want to see something, then get me to an air hockey table.”
“Then I’ll tell you what, B.” Max sat up and reached over me for a glass of water. The little hairs on his chest tickled my arm. “I’ve got five dollars that says I could kick your ass in air hockey.”
I scoffed. “You may as well give it to me now.”<
br />
“And why is that?”
“I was the air hockey interstate trimural champion for fifteen years in a row.”
“Pac Ten, huh?” he said, and he laughed.
For some reason, I wanted to hear him sleep. I lay perfectly still and waited for his breathing to get slow, low, and deep, and when it did, it made me happy to the point of giddiness. Something about how he seemed so relaxed. So mine. So right there. There’s so much there, there, I thought. And this made sense to me. It really did.
CHAPTER
5
I love Duran Duran. They’re so eighties and weird and if Max knew I’d die. But I couldn’t help driving in my car, thinking about Max, and blasting that song “Save a Prayer” over and over. I mentioned this to Kiki, and she said, “Some people call it a one-night stand, but we can call it paradise.”
Once I’d resigned myself to how old he was—make that, how old he wasn’t—I consoled myself with the fact that at least I had all the hand in the relationship. I’d tell the Story of Max in the coming years, and it would be like he was my last hurrah. I’d talk about how I was getting up there and guys my age and up were starting to get paunches and taking “recreational” Viagra. Or, even worse, they’d go buy a BMW, get a hip haircut, and start going obsessively to the gym. Kiki once dated a twenty-nine-year-old television executive who would only eat boiled chicken for breakfast (with a well-packed bowl of marijuana on the side) because he was on the high-protein diet. And what, this was acceptable just because he was so rich he kept his chicken and his chronic stashed in his stainless-steel Sub-Zero fridge? So Max was going to be my nonchicken guy. My fabulous young boyfriend who could have sex for hours and who wouldn’t get fat. There were other forecasted benefits as well …
“He’s younger than you, so naturally, he’ll worship you,” Kiki said over beers at The Shortstop, sneaking a cigarette and trying to keep the smoke away from Nina, who’d quit and was being very holier-than-thou about it.
