by Bebe Wilde
It was no use. He wasn’t going to move. He’d never change. And that meant I was stuck with what I had and what I had seemed to be closing in on me. I suddenly couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to get out of there. So, without a word, I got up and started to get dressed. He watched me and I left the room without speaking to him.
I found a pair of flip-flops as I walked towards the front door and shoved my feet in them. When I reached for the door knob, Bear put his hand over mine, halting me. I glared at him. He held up my keys.
“Got your car fixed,” he said and put the keys in my hand.
“Thank you,” I said. “Now get out of my way.”
He nodded and moved back. He knew when to let me go. He always did and that’s because he knew I’d always come back. But I was sick of it, all of it. Even if we were in love and even if he was the best I’d ever had, something had to change.
As I left, he hollered, “So you did get my lottery ticket, right?”
It took everything I had not to go back in there and let him have it.
* * * * *
I didn’t speak to him for two days after that. I’m not saying we didn’t have sex, because we did. I’m just saying I didn’t speak to him before, during or after.
He spoke to me, of course. And it drove me crazy. He’d say, “Still not speaking?” and “When are you going to talk?” and “I made you some waffles,” And “I love you anyway, even if you’re mad,” and “You’re starting to piss me off!” and “What is this? An anger beyond words?” And on and on and on until I screamed, “Shut the fuck up, Bear!” which he knew I would inevitably do.
Since my vow of silence was broken, things could and would go back to normal now. Well, as normal as they could for a girlfriend of a surfer. But I wasn’t ready for that.
He said, “What’s your problem anyway? I just asked if you had gotten my lottery ticket.”
I just stared at him. He didn’t get it, did he? He just didn’t. He didn’t understand the gravity of what I was dealing with. I suddenly wished I was more like him, laid back, free and easy, doing what came naturally, having the whole world eating out of the palm of my hand. But I was a Southern girl and most of us were just too damned high strung for that.
I sat down on the couch in the living room and patted the seat next to me. He reluctantly took it and studied me. He knew he was in for something. He just didn’t know what. I told him, “I want that house we just staged in Los Feliz.”
“What house?”
“The one I just told you about,” I said and leaned over and took a tear sheet off the coffee table. I handed it to him. “This one.”
He took the paper and glanced over it, then his eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Did you see the price on this thing?”
“I did,” I said and leaned over and took another tear sheet off the coffee table. I handed it to him. “This is our house. The one we’re living in now. It’s worth roughly what that house is.”
“But the house you’re talking about isn’t anywhere near the beach,” he said, getting a panicked look on his face.
“But it’s got a great pool,” I said.
“You can’t surf in a pool, Willa!” he exclaimed and shook his head. “None doing. We’re not moving.”
“Fine,” I said.
“What do you mean fine?” he asked, the same panicked look in his eye.
“I’ll ask your mother for the money,” I said.
“No! Don’t do that!”
“She’s rich!” I said, my voice rising. “Her jewelry line sells in the millions! I have the beads to prove it! And she’s always saying she wants to help us out.”
He shook his head. “Please don’t ask her for any money. Please don’t.”
“Then how else do you propose I get the money for this house?” I said. “I will pay her back. Quinn is making me a partner and we’re going to hire more staff.”
“When did that happen?” he asked, almost flabbergasted.
“The day you pissed me off,” I said.
“It wasn’t my fault that you stubbed your toe, Willa.”
“But it was your fault because you put that surfboard in the bedroom and it fell on my head,” I said. “And then it was like a chain reaction.”
“I didn’t know it fell on your head,” he said, shaking his head.
“Well, it did,” I said. “But whatever. Just listen. Anyway, I am going to be making more money. I can pay her back, plus interest. I can do it myself. And I’m going to.”
“And you’re going to be house poor,” he said. “You won’t have money for anything else. You’ll be miserable. Come on, baby, don’t do this to yourself.”
I felt tears spring up in my eyes. I never got anything I wanted. He always managed to talk me out of everything. “Bear,” I said. “We have to grow up sometime. We’re in our thirties now. We have to start thinking about things.”
“What things?”
“Things like babies,” I said.
“What about a baby then?” he asked. “You ready for a baby?”
I shrugged.
“Well, we can have it,” he said. “We don’t need no fancy house for a baby. I’ve seen people in Guatemala raise fifteen kids in a two room shack.”
I stared at him. For that, I should have punched him. I just shook my head instead. And he was full of shit. Who had fifteen kids in this day and age? “No,” I said. “We’re not raising a baby here, no matter what your rationale.”
“Why not? Here is perfect.”
“Here? You want me to raise a baby here?”
“Of course I do,” he said. “Me and the little dude—”
“It could be a girl,” I interrupted.
“Oh, our own little Gidget!” he said and smiled. “Oh, yeah. Me and the little dude-ette walking to the beach, dipping our toes in to test the water…then paddling out…duck-diving into the waves …waiting for the perfect wave then popping up onto our boards and taking our rides… She’d be so coordinated, like me, but super pretty like you… How cute would that be? She’d be in her little wetsuit…pink maybe? Nah, she’d be too cool for that. She’d have a rad black one with pink piping.”
“And in this fantasy, does this baby also skateboard to the water?” I asked.
He grinned. “She could if she wanted to.”
“You’ve been thinking about this for a while, haven’t you?” I asked.
“Well, yeah,” he said. “I would teach her well.”
“You couldn’t teach me,” I said.
“Seriously?” he asked, aghast. “You won’t let me! You are the absolute hardest person there is to teach to surf.”
“That’s because I suck at it,” I told him. “I’m afraid I’ll get hurt.”
“Let me teach you then!” he exclaimed, getting slightly frustrated. “Give me a few hours a day and I can have you hanging ten in no time. Or at least five. Possibly only one.”
I just stared at him, then I sighed. “I don’t have a few hours a day, Bear. Unlike you, I have to work.”
“Well, fine, whatever,” he said, as if he’d given up on me. “But let’s have that baby. Let’s do it now! Lie back and let’s get it done!”
He stared at me, nodding his head, like he was ready to get to it. I rolled my eyes. “You’re too immature for a baby.”
“I am not,” he said. “Tell me one instance of my immaturity.”
“How about the time you dyed your hair green.”
“It was St. Patrick’s Day!”
“It was green for a year!” I said, my voice rising.
“I liked it!”
He was serious! I groaned, “Ugh!”
“Listen, I am an individual,” he said, seriously. “I do things differently.”
“What about this?” I asked and grabbed his arm.
He stared down at the big tattoo on his left arm. “So?”
“So?” I said, mimicking his voi
ce. “You never had one tattoo when we met and then suddenly, you wanted to start on a sleeve?”
“It would have looked cool,” he said and studied the tattoo, which was this botanical design that basically covered the entire top portion of his arm. “You had no right to veto that!”
“I have every right because it’s me that’s going to be looking at it!” I said, shaking my head in frustration. “Shall we flashback to that fateful day?”
“Please don’t,” he groaned.
I did anyway. I remembered the day like it was yesterday. After a long, hard day of moving furniture around a house, I came home and he was passed out on the couch, his arm bleeding through a thick bandage which covered most of it. Before I could ask if he’d been in a bar fight with a gladiator or something, someone began angrily punching the doorbell. Bear didn’t wake up, of course, so it was up to me to see who it was. When I opened the door I was confronted by an angry giant covered in tattoos. Well, he wasn’t actually a giant, but he was a very large, tall man.
He pointed his finger in my face. “I want my money!”
“I don’t owe you any money!” I pushed his hand out of my face. “Back off!”
“I came here for my money and I ain’t leaving until I get it. You tell Bear that!”
Then I got it. Bear had gotten a tattoo and not only that, he hadn’t paid his tattoo artist, this angry giant guy.
“I want my money and I want it now,” he said, seething. “If I don’t get it, he can forget about me finishing his sleeve.”
I became infuriated. “His sleeve!” I yelled and stomped back into the living room and ripped the bandage off his arm. There was a huge, massive tattoo on his arm now. Oh, God, it was horrible! Maybe it looked so bad because of all the blood. I didn’t know. I was just pissed. “You’ve ruined yourself!”
Bear jerked awake and howled, grabbing his arm. “Why did you do that?”
“I am about to go full hillbilly on your ass!” I yelled and pointed my finger in his face. “What have you done?”
“I got started on that tattoo sleeve I’ve been wanting,” he said and grimaced in pain. “You know, the one I told you about?”
“You never told me about a tattoo sleeve,” I hissed and pointed my finger in his face. “And you never told me because you knew I wouldn’t want you to do it.”
He sighed and nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” he shook his head groggily, then stared over at the angry giant. “Hey, man, what’s up?”
“You left without paying!” he roared, then turned to me, as if I were the mediator. “I had to go into the back for more ink and when I came back out, he’s drinking my whiskey, from my secret stash, I might add.”
“It hurt,” Bear said. “I thought the whiskey would dull the pain!”
I glared at him. I was going to dull something on him!
“You can’t drink when you’re getting a tattoo, dumbass,” the angry giant said, then turned back to me. “It’ll make you bleed like a motherfucker!”
We both turned to Bear who was, indeed, bleeding like a motherfucker.
“See?” he hissed, shaking his head angrily. “So, I had to bandage him up and then I had to go into the back for more bandages because of his overgrown fucking arms and when I came back out, he was gone! And he didn’t pay me!”
“Oh, shit, I forgot,” Bear said and scratched his head. “Sorry about that. I got really sleepy.”
“That’s because you’re losing all this blood, dumbass!” the angry giant yelled, then turned back to me. “Get him a steak, medium rare. A big one. Maybe some Kool-Aid.”
“I’m not getting him a steak,” I snapped. “He can get his own steak.”
“He going to need some meat,” he said.
He’s going to need a new girlfriend, I thought but didn’t say anything.
Bear said, “Babe, can you pay the gentleman and let him be on his way?”
Was he serious? He was. Of course! We were broke, as usual, and he had gone out and got some crappy tattoo. Well, it wasn’t exactly crappy. It did look pretty good. But now it was going to cost us. “Fine,” I muttered and dug the checkbook out of my purse. As I wrote the angry giant his check, I asked him, “How did you know where to find Bear?”
“Oh, everyone knows Bear,” he said, nodding, then glanced at Bear and jerked his head at me “You got real firecracker there.”
“More like a stick of dynamite,” he muttered and winced in pain.
I chose to ignore their exchange and ripped the check out and handed it to him. “Well, thanks for nothing.”
“You’re welcome,” he said and took it, then pointed at Bear. “You owe me a bottle of Dickel!”
He slammed the door on his way out of the house, shaking the windows as he exited. When he was gone, I turned to Bear, who gave me a weak smile. He looked so cute like that and was always so charming and handsome I almost forgot why I was angry with him. Almost. But that’s why he got away with everything. He used this, he really did. I shook myself and tried to hold back my anger.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to drink when you got a tattoo.”
Worst. Boyfriend. Ever.
“I really could use a steak,” he said and lay back on the couch with his eyes closed.
I glared at him and without a word, I grabbed a magazine off the coffee table, rolled it up and started hitting him with it. “You asshole! I am going to kill you!”
He fended me off, then pinned me underneath him. “What the fuck is your problem?!”
“If I have to explain why I am angry at you right now, then you need to go get your head examined.”
“Oh, come on,” he said.
“Next thing I know, you’ll have one of those mud flap girls on your arm!”
He considered this then nodded. “That would be cool. Why didn’t I think of that?”
And that’s the story of how Bear got this big-assed tattoo on his arm. He had to go back several times for the angry giant to work on it to fill it in, which cost a fortune as Bear had picked out one of the best tattoo artists in the state. It looked good though, I’d give it to him. The angry giant was a true artist. And, I had to admit that it was actually quite sexy, but I hadn’t let him complete the whole thing; there was no way in hell he was getting a whole sleeve.
“But it’s cool, right?” he said, grinning.
“Sure,” I said.
“Come on, you can admit you like it,” he said.
“Bear, I am not in the mood,” I said. “And I am not going to keep nagging you right now. I am sick of doing this!”
“Why are you doing this? Did you have a bad day?”
I just stared at him.
“PMS?”
“Did I mention the part where I nut you?” I seethed.
“You didn’t, I don’t think,” he said. “Listen, I know we bicker because we’re both very strong individuals and because we love each other so much.”
There he went again, being so charming I’d forget what I wanted. But he wasn’t getting out of this so quickly. I wanted that house! “Bear,” I said. “Get me that house.”
“No,” he said. “If we ever move, we’re going to Hawaii. I told you that.”
I stood and held out my arms. “So, that’s it? Huh? You have the final say-so in what happens in our future? Or in my future, I mean.”
“It would be a dumb move,” he said. “We have everything we need right here, right next to the beach.”
“You have everything you need,” I said.
“You used to love it here,” he said. “Before you went to work for Quinn.”
He was right. I did. I loved it so much I painstakingly redid every single room in the house on a shoestring budget. It had basically been a dump when I moved in but I had made it cute and beachy. I had been so proud of what I had done. However, now all I saw were my mistakes—the wrong shade of white on the kitche
n cabinets, the chrome faucet when I should have gotten brushed nickel. Had I only picked a slightly darker stain when we refinished the old wood floors, things would have been perfect. So, yeah, he was kind of right about one thing. I wasn’t appreciating what I had. But then again, I was getting sick of it. I needed something new, something to renew me, something else to look forward to. I had been here so long I was beginning to feel trapped. I stared at Bear. Maybe I was just sick of him, too. I hated to even entertain the thought, but maybe that was it.
I stepped over his legs and went outside and sat on the patio by myself. I could hear the waves crashing on the surf not too far away and shouts of happy people having some fun in the sun. I felt so disjointed, so out of whack. I just couldn’t get over the idea of that house and how much I wanted it. Maybe I just saw it as a fresh start or something. If only I had the money.
But then something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. Oh, it was Cupcake. He waddled over and sat beside me. “Sorry, boy,” I said. “I’m in a bad mood.”
I leaned down and scratched his ears, then patted his head. He yawned, plopped back on his back and closed his eyes. What a life.
I sighed heavily, then almost laughed out loud when I remembered something my mother had always told me. She always said, “It’s just as easy to love a rich man as it is a poor one.” I was beginning to think she had been right. Of course, after my father left, or rather, when she kicked him out, she didn’t want anything to do with another man. She said men were about as useful as “tits on a boar hog.” Her words, not mine. She also told me, “Give them an inch and they will take a mile, Willa. I don’t have any use for any one of ’em.” I didn’t know what that any of that meant but when she got fed up with my dad, he was gone. My mom was one tough bitch.
I rarely saw my father growing up but that was okay because I had plenty of family around me, lots of aunts and uncles and cousins. My dad dropped by occasionally to give me a quick hug and some money for “school,” but was always busy with his favorite thing—hunting and fishing—to stay around for long. That’s why he and my mom broke up. He was always skipping work—he worked, on and off, in the coal mines of Kentucky—to go fishing or out with his hunting buddies every weekend for a deep walk into the woods to tree a coon of some sort or to shoot a squirrel or a rabbit or a deer or a turkey or a fox or whatever was in season. I remembered he used to have this big brown hunting jacket that had these deep pockets sewn all around the inside hem of it. After he had been hunting, he’d come into the house and throw that thing down on the kitchen floor and it would always have some sort of dead animal in it—squirrel, rabbit, quail, whatever. These animals always had such a funk to them, this wild, outdoorsy smell. But neither my mother nor I ever blinked an eye at it. That was what men did in the country—they went out and hunted and brought dead animals back to the house. He’d skin and gut them and, grossly enough, my mother would cook them and he’d eat them. I refused because I hated the wild, gamey taste those animals had.
