Just Pru

by Anne Pfeffer

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  From Pru’s Journal:

  Did you know that Ellen is a master at something called capoeira? It’s a martial art from Brazil, but it has African influences. She knows how to do these awesome kicks and flips. I asked if she would show me how sometime. I have no idea if I could do them, but it would be fun to try.

  ##

  That evening, when I said goodbye to Blake, he ignored me and turned his attention to Becca. Honestly. What a baby.

  I got in the car with Ellen, my mind bouncing from subject to subject: the building fire, tomorrow’s opening, my unfortunate kiss with Blake, my parents’ expected and inevitable reappearance, and most of all Adam.

  I wanted him back. Or maybe it was more correct to say that I wanted him, since I’d never really gotten him in the first place. If I could just get the Adam part of this whole mess right, maybe the rest would fall into place.

  Beside me, Ellen feverishly consulted her checklists while keeping up a running dialogue with me and taking phone calls. “Hello?” Silence. “Yes! Yes, of course we’ll have a seat for him!”

  I glanced over at her, wondering at the sudden excitement in her voice.

  Ellen hung up. “Omigod, Pru. The Times. The freakin’ LA Times is coming to see us tomorrow at the opening!” She sank back against the seat.

  Nerves began to tingle down my back and into my fingers. “The LATimes is reviewing us?” I’d had no idea this play was such a big deal.

  “I’ve been calling them forever,” Ellen said. “I can’t believe this!” She pulled out her master checklist and began ripping through it. “There’s still so much left to do.”

  “How can I help?

  “Just keep on what you’re doing with Blake. You’re my savior, Pru. He’s been brilliant this week. That’s what we need tomorrow—brilliance.”

  A horrible queasiness came over me as I remembered him giving me the cold shoulder just now as I left.

  You’re my muse. I need you.

  “Can one review really make us or break us?”

  “In a word, yes. But it’s more than that. I’ve been inviting key people to this opening for months. You know, friends of friends, anyone I could reach. Do you know who’s going to be there?” Ellen reeled off a list of names that meant nothing to me, but I got the gist. Money people. Film people. Influential people.

  I gripped the steering wheel as I suddenly realized how much faith Ellen had put in me. Everything rode on Blake’s performance.

  And I had kissed him. Then blown him off. At least, that’s how he saw it.

  Take deep breaths. Nausea coiled through me.

  Ellen was on the phone again. “Playbills were supposed to be ready yesterday! I’ll have someone pick them up tomorrow morning.”

  Then back to me. “Blake was okay with the harness today, right? He looked great, but….”

  “He’s fine,” I assured her. I decided not to tell her about the kiss, and in particular about the part where I didn’t want to do it again, but he did. That little complication might constitute too much information for her given the other stresses in her life right now.

  To my huge relief, my parents were nowhere to be seen as I pulled into our parking garage. It made me nervous that they had stayed away so long. Lloyd, in particular, was probably up to something diabolical. But right now, I was even happier than usual not to see them. I had something I needed to do.

  ##

  I knocked on Adam’s door. As it opened, I felt lightheaded. He looked great: unshaven, faded jeans with holes in them, a white tee shirt completing the look.

  Neither of us smiled.

  “May I come in?”

  He stepped backward to let me pass. I perched on an armchair in his living room, while he sat across from me in the sofa.

  “I talked to the fire inspector,” I said. “You told him what happened at Ellen’s?”

  “I had to,” he said.

  Yeah, right.

  “I told you I wouldn’t lie. He specifically asked if I knew of any other fires in the building, so I had to tell him about yours.” He looked down at his hands. “I said I didn’t think there was any connection between the two.”

  He was telling the truth. He’d had no choice. “Thank goodness! I thought you hated me!” I stood up, then sat down again. “Well, you do hate me, I know that. You have a right to. But I thought you were trying to throw me into prison.”

  My mouth had gone into overdrive and taken off, with no one around to stop it. “Now, at least I know you only medium hate me, instead of deeply hating me.”

  Adam gave me a puzzled look. “So you thought I was retaliating against you?”

  I nodded.

  “I wouldn’t do that. And I don’t hate you, either.” Adam had dark circles under his eyes, and his mouth turned down at the corners. “I’m sorry for the way I acted yesterday. I was… mad.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  “Your parents are insane.”

  “I know,” I said miserably.

  “But I don’t hate you.” His eyes bored into me. “At all.”

  That was all it took. Any pretense of coolness or self-restraint flew out the window. Overjoyed to maybe, possibly, have another chance with him, I launched myself toward him and the sofa. I slid my arms around his neck.

  “Hello.” A smile played on his lips. He made no move to pull back from me, hovering one inch away from his face.

  “Kiss me,” I said. Make the badness go away. No more Blake, no more fire. No parents chasing after me. Just me and you, together.

  A flash of warmth in his eyes, and then he did. Our lips met, gently at first, as if he were being extra careful with me, then not so gently. We shared a series of deep, dreamy kisses that whipped my insides into butter cream. He was so delicious.

  I’d always liked his lips. Now, I sighed against them, unable to get enough. I pressed my chest against his and ran my hands through his hair.

  “God, Pru.” He touched my face and kissed his way down my neck, then back up again, while my body hummed a merry tune. I wanted to crawl inside him and live next to his heart.

  His breath was on my ear. “I’m honored to be your first kiss.”

  My eyes popped open. Oh no… Once again, I had completely, monumentally screwed up. Why did I have to go and kiss Blake? After twenty-five years of arid, kiss-free existence, I couldn’t have waited just one more little day?

  Adam never needed to know. It wasn’t even a lie, really. It was an omission.

  Oh, who was I kidding—it was a lie.

  If I lied, my nose would shrivel and drop off. My tongue would fall out of my head. Lying wasn’t me. Even if I tried to hide the truth, it would leak out

  I struggled out of his arms and sat up. “About that, you know, being my first kiss….” I stopped, unable to go on.

  “Don’t feel strange about it. I thought it was … like you, I guess. Unique. And innocent.”

  “I need to go over stuff with Ellen.” I gave him my best attempt at a smile and jumped up. “I should do it before it gets too late.” It was already eight o’clock.

  “Alright.” Still seated, Adam held onto my hand. “Come back later if you want to.”

  Predictably, guilt was eating away at the edges of my mind. Liar, liar, pants on fire. I had to tell him, but I couldn’t bear the thought of him hating me again.

  “If I can,” I said. “Tomorrow’s the opening,” I added, as if we all didn’t have the date tattooed on our brains.

  “Yeah, I know.” He drew me down toward him. “One for the road.” He pulled me into his lap and kissed me, reducing me to butter cream again. His hand stroked the back of my head. My mouth opened against his. He tasted like mint, except ten times better.

  I didn’t deserve him. I’d kissed two different guys on the same day and was keeping secrets about it, no less. I’d gone from total kiss-virgin to lying slut in less than twelve hours.

  I broke away from him. “I sh
ould go.” I escaped, hardly able to believe that I felt worse now than I did before.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  From Pru’s Journal:

  I want to ask Storm to show me how she paints those little pictures on her fingernails. Maybe I could learn, even though I’m not a clothing and grooming professional, like she is. I don’t think I want skulls, but maybe the moons and stars that Ellen has on her bedroom ceiling. Then, when I looked at my hands, I could see the night sky.

  ##

  A simple black curtain, hung from the ceiling, divided Ellen’s theater space in half. On one side, fifty chairs stood on risers to accommodate our first audience. It was to be an odd gathering of our friends and family, together with a few of the neighbors and the elite group of fancy, important people that Ellen had persuaded to attend.

  A table on the back wall held a few trays of fancy appetizers and a vast supply of wines, liquor, and mixers for drinks. In addition to a couple of servers, Krista, from our building, had come to help out. Wearing a low-necked black velvet mini-dress, her entire job was to circulate with alcoholic beverages for the guests, topping off people’s wine glasses and bringing them cocktails.

  “Get ‘em pleasantly drunk,” Ellen had told her. “And keep ‘em that way.” The food was in moderate supply, the alcohol abundant.

  Ellen had warned us that she’d be in front of the curtain tonight, rubbing shoulders with the people who had the power to make her dream happen—to fund it and champion it. She had coached us on our roles behind the curtain. “You all know exactly what to do,” she had told us yesterday. “You guys are the best. We’re the best. So go out there and make yourselves—and me—proud!”

  Right now, she was doing her part out front, stunning in a simple red floor-length dress and rhinestone-trimmed eyeglasses. The dress had a slit going high up the right side, from which protruded her cast, decorated with red silk bow ties.

  I heard her speaking to the first few early arrivals. Her inflections went up and down as if she were telling a story. Afterward came peals of laughter from all the big shots.

  Meanwhile, back in the trenches, Ellen’s dream, the production she cherished and had sacrificed for, was doing a quick slide into oblivion. Why? Because she had made the mistake of trusting me, and I never did anything right. I had kissed Blake Williams and now Ellen would pay the price.

  It made me think maybe my folks should come get me and put me away somewhere, in a place where I couldn’t do any damage. Maybe the far reaches of Siberia or an undiscovered planet.

  I hadn’t been backstage long before I knew we were in trouble. This was because Storm rushed up to me and said, “Pru, we’re in trouble.”

  Slowly, not wanting to hear, I asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Blake picked this huge fight with Becca. I heard her screaming that she was going to rip off his balls and stuff them down his throat.”

  I suddenly felt very tired. I wanted to go home and sleep for a hundred years. “What do you think we should do?”

  “You tell me. You’re the Blake-Whisperer.” For the big day, Storm had redone her nails along a general prison theme, each one sporting a little gun, knife or other instrument of mayhem. She waggled them in the air, admiring them.

  Ellen and I had always unofficially divided the work. I handled Blake; she handled Becca. Today I would do double duty.

  You will fix this. There were no other options. I would start with Becca.

  She wasn’t hard to find. As I walked, people pointed in the direction of the bathroom, from which sobs could be heard. I knocked. “Becca.”

  “Leave me alone!”

  I considered her request. I was definitely not her favorite person. On the other hand, she was an actor, and if I’d learned one thing during my brief time in show business, it was that actors didn’t want to be left alone. They wanted attention. I checked the clock on the wall. An hour until curtain.

  Since only fabric separated us from Ellen and her fancy guests, we all knew to keep our voices low. Becca and I spoke barely above a whisper.

  “Becca. You’re needed for hair and makeup.”

  One of Becca’s violet eyes, red-rimmed from crying, appeared through a crack in the door. “Don’t you dare talk to me! You told me you would stay away from Blake!”

  I did? I didn’t remember it that way, but no matter. “I’m not interested in him.”

  “Then why did you sleep with him?”

  Shocked, I stammered, “I didn’t! Did he say that?”

  “He said the two of you had hooked up!” Becca’s voice was heavy with reproach.

  “He kissed me, and then I told him to stop!”

  The door opened wider. Her pouty lips pursed up. “That’s all?”

  Didn’t she understand that the minutes were passing? I pictured the hour glass in The Wizard of Oz, the grains of sand draining, draining away just like our precious time.

  I thought of Ellen, how much this meant to her and how good she’d been to me. She’d given me my first and only job. For her and for myself, I had to get this done.

  “Yes, Becca, that’s all, and moreover, Ellen wants Storm to glam you up today. It turns out Cody Westfall’s here,” I said, referring to someone I thought Ellen had said was a film director. I hoped so anyway.

  “Corey Westvale? He came for the show?” Her hands shot up to pat her hair.

  “That’s right. Corey Westvale.” I nodded wisely.

  “Why didn’t Ellen tell us?”

  I had no idea. “She wanted to keep the work as pure as possible. To keep your minds on the story and not the audience.” Knowing Ellen, it was probably true.

  “Of course. She did it for the play.” Becca stepped out of the bathroom. “Corey Westvale’s casting right now for Earthquake: The Last Survivors, Part 5.” She spoke with the reverence of someone praying at an altar.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?”

  Becca got this mulish expression on her face. “I won’t work with Blake. He’s so disrespectful.”

  Of course he was. She was a doormat.

  I tried to think of the exact right thing to say, even though that never really worked for me. In the end, I always just said what I thought and hoped for the best.

  I spoke to her from the heart. “Becca, you’re just about the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. And you’re talented, too. You can do so much better than Blake.”

  Becca’s mouth opened in a perfect round “O” of astonishment. Although I’d never said anything mean to her, I hadn’t exactly lavished her with compliments, either. This time, I’d gotten her attention.

  “You go out there, ignore Blake, and show Cody—Corey—how terrific you are. And get that movie role!”

  She took in my words, nodding her head. “That’s good advice.” A storm cloud passed over her face. “I’m so tired of Blake.” She sniffled.

  “Next time he comes around, tell him to go … fudge himself!”

  Becca burst out laughing while I looked at the clock again. It was fifty minutes to curtain, and I still had to find Blake.

  “You know, Blake was right. You are funny and smart.”

  “He said that?” I asked, startled.

  “Yes. And I’m going to go give him a run for his money!” Boxer-style, she balled her fists up in front of her face.

  Relieved, I bustled Becca off to Storm, thinking One down. I had to find Blake, and fast.

  Fortunately, there weren’t too many places to hide in Ellen’s theater. Blake was hunched out on the back step, a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth.

  I sat down next to him.

  He gave me a dour look. “There she is, my little cock-tease.”

  For Pete’s sake, who did he think he was? I flipped my hair at him. “I don’t belong to you.”

  “So you’ll kiss me once in a while, when you feel like it?”

  “No, I don’t plan to kiss you anymore at all. Yesterday was a mistake.”

  He feigned a
knife to his chest. “You wound me.”

  “Why do I not believe you?”

  He smirked. “I don’t know. Why don’t you?”

  “Blake,” I said, “curtain’s in forty-five minutes. You wanna fight with me about kissing or go out on that stage and become a major star? Take your pick.”

  He allowed himself a moment to sulk. “Both.”

  “Fine. Which do you want to do first?”

  An unwilling smile came to his lips. “Okay, Pru, you got me.” He followed me into the theater, but I could feel his steps slowing behind me until he stopped completely.

  What now?

  “My stomach,” he said. He clutched his abdomen.

  I’d barely gotten him to the toilet before he was on his knees, head in the bowl. “Nerves,” he groaned.

  I wiped off his face with a wet paper towel. Kneeling behind him, I massaged his shoulders, thinking, He’s in every single scene. This play was Duncan’s story. It would live or die based on the performance that I coaxed out of Blake.

  In a minute, my head would be in the bowl alongside his.

  “You’ll feel better now that your stomach’s empty,” I told him as the clock ticked away. Ellen had said Start at 8:05 sharp. We would show this audience just how professional we were, giving them five courtesy minutes to find their seats, then starting promptly.

  I knelt on the floor with Blake and rubbed his hands.

  Panic rose in his eyes. “Fuck, Pru, what’s my first line? I can’t remember my first line!”

  “Sure you can. The police officer comes to your door and says Are you Duncan Martin, and you say….”

  “Is there news of my wife?” Relief bloomed on his features. He rolled his head around and cracked his knuckles, the sound making me wince.

  I helped him to his feet. Half an hour to curtain. “You gotta get dressed now.”

  He let me lead him to Storm in the changing area. Outside it, the other actors were already in their costumes, a mixture of prison orange, olive green guard duds, and a handful of police uniforms in navy blue. In the middle of this scene stood Becca, looking polished and beautiful as Duncan’s lawyer in a shell pink suit with a white blouse and shiny high heels. I waved to her and she smiled.