Love and Loathing

by Gigi Blume

  “Who’s a good girl?” I crooned, getting on my hands and knees to scratch her ears. “Who’s a good girl?”

  She rolled onto her back for a belly rub, and her little tongue hung out of the side of her mouth. The skin on the corners of her snout sagged with gravity, and it appeared like she was smiling. Maybe she was smiling. I believed dogs could do that. Especially a smart, lovely dog like Lady.

  24

  The Woman Who Stole My Heart and My Dog

  Will

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  I sliced my hand through the air between Stella and me, drawing the line on her crazy idea. Her sweet, soft face scrunched into a fierce, wrinkled scowl.

  “Why on earth not?”

  “Because…” I began but turned my head and decided to draw her away from the line of patrons waiting to be served. My sister and I had been pouring libations at the beer garden. Georgia thought it would be fun to get our hands sticky with volunteer hours. The press went wild for it, but that’s not why I did it. The smile it put on my sister’s face to work together for a good cause was all the reason I needed. We had a rhythm going until Stella sprang her news on me. I crouched to meet her ear in the corner of the booth, away from listening ears.

  “Because,” I continued with a whisper, “one, we haven’t rehearsed this. Two, Beth would never agree to it, and three…” I counted on my fingers, the third digit hanging there waiting for an excellent excuse to spring forth from my earnest and level-headed brain. But said brain was inundated with thoughts of Beth. She was somewhere close—on my property. Probably only a few hundred feet away. She’d seen my home in the wild state it was in. I wondered what she thought of it—how much of it reflected me. And I ached for her to see it on a quiet evening when it was just me and Lady by the pool or on the balcony overlooking the hills.

  My thoughts also turned to her every time I looked at that blasted keg. I made a point to serve mostly boutique beers for the event, but Stella’s board of directors insisted on a couple of mainstream brands for those who might want it. And so they added a keg of Bud Lite, and I laughed inwardly whenever it caught my eye. Oh, Beth.

  And now, Stella tried to convince me to sing a duet with Beth for the banquet. Like it was no big deal to pick up Bing’s role at a moment’s notice. She stared at me and my third finger. Waiting. I had nothin’.

  “Well?” she said, raising a brow. “Is that all?”

  “How do you know Beth knows Mabel’s part?” I sputtered. There. My third excuse. Sort of.

  She laughed, waving a hand like she was swatting flies. “My dear boy,” she exclaimed. “Every girl in the cast knows Mabel’s part. Besides, I happen to know Beth played Mabel in college. She’s got the chops for it.”

  Oh, I knew she had the chops for it. That’s what I was afraid of. There was something extremely attractive in a woman who could sing, and to perform a love song with her would be the end of me.

  “I think you should do it,” Georgia piped in, smiling ear to ear. She winked at Stella, sharing a conspiring look. What were these women up to?

  I turned around to face her eye to eye. “Georgia, what if I were to ask you to perform Franz Liszt’s La Campanella with little to no practice time?”

  She crossed her arms and peeked at me under her lashes. “I would give it a try. For love,” she said that last bit under her breath.

  “For what?” I asked. We weren’t having this conversation again. Not here.

  “For love of the theatre,” she said with a smile. “Sheesh!”

  Grrr. These women in my life. I needed to do some guy stuff—like watching football and maybe some masculine grunting while blowing things up.

  “William Martin Darcy.”

  Uh oh. Stella meant business when she used my middle name.

  “I’ve been looking forward to this gala for months, and I will be damned if I don’t get to perform tonight.” Her hands were on her hips. “I need you to sing Frederic’s part in Oh, False One. I know you can do it.”

  “I can do that, Stella,” I conceded, cowering under her glare. How could anyone say no to this lady? She was knighted. It would be like sticking it to the Queen herself.

  “And while you’re at it…” She grinned. “You can do the duet with Beth.”

  She had it all figured out, didn’t she? Duet with Stella followed by a duet with Beth. A duet in which Frederic and Mabel kiss.

  Stella rolled her shoulders back and pulled at the hem of her shirt. “Well,” she said, “I’m off to tell her the news.”

  “Where is she?” I didn’t want to sound too anxious, but it was killing me to no end.

  “How in heaven should I know?”

  “So, you’re just going to search aimlessly for her in the crowd?” I said. “There must be a few thousand people here.”

  She waved her hand around in a circle like she was conjuring something out of the air. Expecto Elizabethum.

  “Find her on the tweet box.”

  “I don’t have a tweet box.” I sighed. Did she think cell phones were some sort of magical tracking device? “Can’t you call her?”

  She smiled wryly and wagged her brows. “That’s exactly what Beth would say. Fancy that.”

  Uh uh. Fancy that. It’s only common sense.

  “Oh, Stella,” said Georgia. “You left your phone on my bedroom dresser. It was charging when I came down. Do you want me to run up and get it?”

  “Oh, would you, love?” Stella reached out and touched her arm with gratitude. “Too much walking back and forth for these old bones.”

  “I’ll go,” I said. Some breathing room away from these women would do me good. Stella threw me a sweeter-than-honey grin and as I walked away, I could hear her say to my sister, “Pour me a Guinness, poppet.”

  I stormed through the crowd. Sing a duet with Beth! Really! We’d have to spend the afternoon rehearsing, and we all know how that went between Beth and me. Why did I ever agree to this debacle? A flock of screaming children blew past me. A warmth bubbled in my chest at the sound of their flittering giggles. I sighed. That was my answer. It was all for them. Ugh! I was starting to sound like a Whitney Houston song.

  Twelve hours. I just had to last twelve more hours. I could do this. I steeled myself and strode inside the house. I gave a nod to the security detail we’d hired and was about to run up the grand staircase when something disturbing caught my eye.

  “What the…? Who put this here?” Candles and flower arrangements littered the surface of my sister’s brand-new piano. I ran to the instrument and threw off the offending objects, cursing without restraint. I was so angry my words were more like a fierce growl. Maybe my sister was right. I wasn’t the clock. I was the Beast.

  “I’m so, so sorry, sir.” An attendant was at my side in a moment, gingerly removing the items from the piano. “We’ll take care of it right away.”

  I rounded on him, poor guy. He was the closest person in my vicinity and therefore received the brunt of all my rage.

  “This is a two-hundred-thousand-dollar Fazioli Concert Grand,” I spat.

  The man cowered as I pointed menacingly with my index finger.

  “Fix this.” My finger now jabbed at his chest. “There better not be the slightest scratch or water ring.”

  I left him to do his work and stormed up the stairs. My head burned like the Heatmiser from that old animated Christmas movie. I needed to get a grip. Over the course of a week, I’d slept a total of ten or twelve hours. I was delirious and grumpy, the women in my life were driving me over the edge, and now, I was yelling at the vendors. I’m sure the piano was fine. They’d taken the precaution to use felt to protect the surface, but anyone with a brain knows not to put anything on a piano. How would you open the lid to play if it was covered in crap? Music-hating idiots.

  Fury embedded itself in my bones. What had gotten into me? As I ascended to my sister’s room, I marveled at how my life had taken such a wild turn. I wouldn’t say I was happy. Happy w
as an illusion sold to the masses on a thirty-second time slot between pharmaceutical commercials and the Progressive ad. But it was fine. I didn’t need happy. I was content. I made bucket loads of money on the royalties of my movies alone, and a nice sum for each new project. I was set for life if I wanted to call it quits. The house was paid off. My sister was finally in a secure place. What more could I want? Then Beth came along and kicked sand around, messing up my perfectly formed sandcastles. She was the tide eroding at my comfort zone. But what was the shore without water crashing on land? A desert. Ah crap. I could have been fine with a desert. Deserts are awesome. The Space Shuttle used to land in the desert. Vegas is in the desert. Palm Springs!

  Maybe once the run was over, I’d get a room at the Bellagio and sleep away my days by the pool and throw money at the blackjack table at night. I could do the desert fine.

  Stella’s phone was exactly where Georgia said it was, and I was just resolving to mend the head of that vendor I’d bit off downstairs—I’d find that poor guy and give him a nice tip. Maybe even apologize. It could be the new me. A contrite, penitent Will Darcy. I could try it on for size. For Beth.

  But irritability rose anew at the sight of my bedroom doors ajar. A fresh bout of anger boiled through my veins as I pounded my feet on the floor to cross over and lock the door. I shouldn’t have to lock a bedroom door in my own house. The workers were explicitly instructed that access to the upper floors was strictly prohibited. I hoped the intruder was still in there, so I could make a proper complaint. But no event staff worker was to be found. That would have been infinitely more desirable. Unless my eyes deceived me. Which admittedly wasn’t a far-flung possibility because they took in the sight of Beth in my bedroom, on the floor, with my dog in her arms. I had to be dreaming. She was a vision of artless beauty—blithe and joyful under the onslaught of doggie kisses. Her hair cascaded in a tousled wave on the rug and her dress, a flouncy white number with a flowered print, gathered adrift along her thigh, revealing just a pittance more leg than was appropriate. It was a hallucination. Definitely a mirage brought on by immense stress and lack of sleep.

  I blinked three times. One. Two. Three. Nope. Still there. Moments ticked by, suspended in a bubble. I was either in a demented manifestation of purgatory or the heavens had opened up and bestowed my deepest desires upon me. I looked back on my life. Had I done anything good to deserve this? Nada. Zip. Zilch. This was definitely purgatory.

  I cleared my throat—not to startle her or anything—but because a solid lump was lodged in it. She shot up to her feet, adjusting her dress, and ran a hand over her hair.

  “I uh… I was just…” she stuttered. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

  I hooked my thumbs in my pockets to try to retain some semblance of control. My lips curled at the corners, and I gave her an unveiled once-over from her toes to the top of her head.

  “What do you suppose it looks like?” I teased, my voice thick and velvety all the while my pre-prepubescent self cracked his vowels underneath the veneer. Only one girl had ever made me nervous. Jennifer Greene in sixth grade. It took all the courage I could muster to ask her if she planned to go to the middle school dance, but her face turned white, and she ran away to her huddle of friends. I was so humiliated, I decided to skip the dance altogether. For the next few weeks, I was the subject of pointed stares and giggles from a clique of eleven-year-old mean girls. I swore I’d never let a girl get to me that way again. But here was this pixie in a white flowered dress in my bedroom, and I was once again that twelve-year-old boy drawing pencil portraits of my crush.

  I was toast.

  She hesitated before answering, eyes wide like a kid caught with a chin full of cookie crumbles.

  “It looks like I’m stealing your dog?” she said.

  Interesting.

  “Are you?”

  “No!” she cried. “I swear.”

  I took a step towards her. “Cross your heart?”

  “Yes.”

  I took another step.

  “Hope to die?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  One more large stride, and I’d be right up against her.

  “Stick a needle in your eye?”

  An obstinate huff stuck in her throat, and she grunted. She was a spitfire, this one. She was determined to confuse the heck out of me and then clobber me with a blunt object, or so I presumed.

  “Lady has to pee,” she said, crossing her arms. “I was just looking for a leash to take her out, but if you’d rather, I could go—”

  “No.” I wouldn't let her walk away. Not now. Not ever. She couldn’t just waltz into my life, into my dreams and into my home just to run away. There was still so much to resolve between us. So many things I still wanted to say that I refrained myself from doing so in the letter. How I felt about her, how she drove me to the brink of madness, distracting me, turning my world inside out. How I… loved her. A warmth spread over my chest with this sudden awareness. I loved her. Every infuriating inch of her. I wanted to act upon it. To kiss her, to gather her in my arms and tell her the truth of it. To make retribution for the pain I caused her. But not now. Now, we’d walk the dog.

  “The leash is downstairs,” I said softly. “I’ll show you her favorite places to go.”

  She nodded, acknowledging the heady trepidation that still lingered between us. It was raw and tender but on the mend. She wanted a truce as much as I did. But it would take time. Anything that was worth it took time.

  Lady wagged her little nub of a tail and scurried under our feet as we descended the grand staircase. Beth paused at the top and blinked.

  “Holy William. How did I not see these before?”

  What was that? Now, she was using my name as a curse word? When did this new development arise? What happened to musical theatre Tourette’s?

  “What do you mean, not see these before?” I asked. “How did you get upstairs?”

  A soft pink blush overspread her features. “Never mind.”

  I chuckled knowingly. She must have gone up the service stairwell. Only Beth. My thoughts drifted to the narrow stairway in the bowels of the theatre. It seemed so long ago that we were locked in the costume shop. So much had changed since then. Namely, me.

  We took a side exit into a small garden Lady particularly liked. I frowned at the stacks of boxes and miscellaneous decor. They were using it as a staging area for the party prep. I decided to be peeved for Lady’s sake. A big, plastic bin sat right on the patch of grass she used as a bathroom. She sniffed the intruding object and did her business as close as she could get to her usual spot.

  Beth laughed. I loved her laugh, the way her voice lightly bubbled over our heads, the curve of her lips as the sound came out, the dots of pink on her cheeks. Lady was unabashedly smitten with her. To be honest, Lady was friendly with everyone, but there was a weird cosmic connection she found in Beth. It was as if everyone else was hamburger and Beth was filet mignon. Hamburgers are awesome, but filet was the best ever. Or maybe I was just projecting my own feelings on my dog. Hard to tell. Beth was good with her.

  “Have you had her since she was a puppy?” she asked.

  “Yes. Got her from the breeder.” I wiped sweat off my brow in anticipation to her censure. I was so used to getting slack for not adopting. Adopt, don’t shop people would say. But I wanted an English Cocker. They’re not easy to find in California. I gauged Beth’s reaction. There was no judgment whatsoever in her features. Still, I felt the need to tell her my story.

  “I was in Spain,” I explained. “I’d met some cool guys the production company hired while we were on location. They do that to save money—take on local talent for gaffer jobs and stuff.”

  She nodded, showing she understood and maybe that I was boring her. But she listened intently so I went on.

  “We’d go out a couple of nights a week for tapas and the best wine I’d ever had. Sometimes, one of the guys would host a casual cena at their house.”

  She
grinned. “Cena? You speak Spanish?”

  “Muy mal,” I said. “Very badly.”

  We laughed. I could have added that I learned quite a few Spanish curse words from Jorge, but I didn’t want to ruin the moment.

  “So anyway,” I continued, “one party we went to ended up being a birthday celebration for one of the guy’s nephews. The kid was like six or something. But somebody got him a puppy. A cocker with the most perfect coils of fur on his long, floppy ears. I lost it. It was like everything I’d ever wanted was summed up in that little dog.”

  Kind of the way I felt about Beth.

  She gasped. “You didn’t take the puppy, did you?”

  “No. Sheesh, you think I’m that horrible?”

  She batted her lashes once and regarded me innocently with those wide, coffee eyes.

  “I don’t think you’re horrible at all,” she said simply.

  I was dead. A spark lit the air between us and killed me on the spot. It was the Fourth of July, the Super Bowl, and the World Series all at once, and I’d stumbled upon the secret stash of fireworks. I couldn’t breathe. All the woman said was that she didn’t think I was horrible, not that she’d have my children. I was pathetic.

  I shook it off and let go of the air held captive in my lungs.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked, my voice two octaves too high.

  “Was my growling stomach upstaging your monologue?” she said with a grin.

  “Stella keeps going on about the artichoke hearts,” I said. “You think we should trust her?”

  She smiled and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “It could taste like cardboard for all I care. I’m starved.”

  I liked that. It was so refreshing to spend time with a woman who actually ate. Unlike the slew of body-shaming phonies Hollywood had to offer.

  The line for the artichoke hearts was ridiculously long. I offered to use my clout to cut the wait and grab an order from behind the booth. But she insisted we stand in line like everyone else. I didn't mind at all. Her captivating company made the time pass by in a heartbeat. It was also adorable how much she was determined to pay. I think it was just the novelty of scanning her VIP card. She let out a squeak when it made the bleeping sound. The modern equivalent of cha-ching.