by Deanna Roy
I nodded, but I felt doubtful. My life was already derailed. My old best friend had gone and gotten married and was mired in family and change.
Then my new best friend had fallen in love with someone else. I was still feeling the loss of Frankie. And not just his money. I didn’t realize how much he kept me feeling good about myself. Appearing to be in a fun, stable relationship had made it seem real.
And as much as I didn’t want to admit it, I liked it.
I sat on a bench a couple buildings away from the campus clinic. I didn’t have another class for an hour. I watched people walking by, and just like Corabelle said, it cleared out not too long after. Everyone was either in class or heading home.
I adjusted my sunglasses and checked my bandana. I couldn’t hide the entire bushel of dreadlocks, but it was pretty good. I should have worn a hoodie. The day had a bit of a chill, which was why I’d pulled out the Uggs and the skirt. Navy and purple were my thing, a perfect foil for my pink hair. Pretty soon it would be summer and my amazing wardrobe would be the wrong season.
Back to old Jenny clothes.
Back to old Jenny.
Just to be sure no one was following me, I walked quickly between a couple buildings and circled back.
Nobody was around.
Okay. I could do this.
I rushed up to the small glass door of the clinic and hurried inside.
A woman sat behind a desk, friendly and easygoing with short gray hair in a girlish bob. Two girls waited in chairs. They glanced up at me, then returned to their cell phones.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked.
“I wondered if I could make an appointment,” I said.
“What did you want to be seen for?” she asked.
I squeezed my hands in fists. I really didn’t want to say this out loud. I leaned forward. “A VD screening,” I whispered.
“Are you showing symptoms?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe?”
“Let’s see when I can fit you in.” She tapped on her screen. “Can you come back Wednesday?”
“I’m in class until 2.”
“That’s fine, just come after,” she said.
I’d have to return to the building, but I guessed I was committed now.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
I was grateful for Frankie one more time as I pulled out my custom business cards, designed by his assistant and paid for by him. Now I didn’t have to say it out loud.
The woman tapped in my information and passed back the card. “Pretty,” she said.
“Thanks.” I held it in my palm like a relic from better days. It was soft pink, almost white, and had an intricate swirl in one corner. It read “Jenny Gillespie. Assistant and Social Media Management for Public Figures.”
I shoved it in my backpack as I left. I couldn’t manage my own social media at the moment. I had no business acting like I could help somebody else with theirs.
One life problem at a time. Now I had to go to class and act like I wasn’t yet again having to deal with my impulsive stupidity.
Chapter 22: Chance
The vegan cafe in downtown Portland was quiet and small. The tables were full, though, and the little stage in the corner was just right for a single musician.
I kept everything light and soft, easygoing music for the dinner crowd. The owner of the place, a tall spindly woman with frizzy gray hair tied a wide scarf, stood by the swinging doors to the kitchen and watched. She seemed pleased with my choices. I figured if I did all right, she’d let me come back again tomorrow night. One less thing to worry about as I settled in the new city.
The people here were older, looked to be well off, and had an appreciation for things money couldn’t buy. They were polite and tipped well. This was my second set, and my first one had gotten a bigger take than my past three gigs combined, for just two hours.
I was feeling fine.
A woman in a long blue dress that kissed the floor came up and dropped money in the silver bucket the owner had provided me. Then she leaned in close. “It’s my anniversary,” she said, pointing to a friendly-looking guy at a table by the wall. “Do you know ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’?”
I tensed up at the words, but I nodded. She beamed at me, so excited that I would sing her request.
I played back through the chorus on the song I was finishing up. The conversations were hushed, and fabric on the walls kept the noise levels low. I diddled through a bridge to shift me from one key to the next. Then I strummed the opening chords of her request.
I almost couldn’t do it. When I got to the opening line, the world burst wide, the cafe disappeared and instead, the crowd at the base of the stage from the movie party filled my vision. Jenny looked up at me, her pink dreadlocks on her bare shoulders.
This time, I didn’t see just the green dress, but the way it peeled off her against the rock. The madness of that one night washed over me. I had trouble focusing on the song.
I shook my head and forced myself to make eye contact with the woman who’d asked for it. She and her man were cuddled close together, watching me. I had to make this good for them. I tried to picture their wedding day, probably a couple decades ago, judging by their age. This got me through.
When the song finally ended, the crowd really clapped. Quite a lot of people got up to put money in the bucket. A couple more requests came in. The night became a lovefest of romantic songs.
As the evening wound down, the owner came over. “You were a real hit,” she said. “I’ve been over there thinking, would you like to do this regularly? We could call it ‘Romance Night’ and they could make requests. I’m happy to pay you a regular wage on top of tips.” She glanced into the bucket. “Though it looks like you did all right. What do you think? Once a week?”
I packed my guitar in the case. I knew damn well I couldn’t sit there and sing love songs to happy couples all the time. And even the promise of regular money felt like a trap.
“I’m mighty flattered,” I told the woman. “But I’m only in Portland a couple more days. I won’t be around for anything regular. But it’s a mighty fine idea.”
She nodded, her lips pursed together. The fringed end of her scarf brushed against her shoulder. “You look like a boy who’s running from something.”
Did everybody have me pegged?
“No, ma’am,” I said. “I just figured it was best to hit the road before life tied me down.”
She settled back on her heels, arms crossed in front of her crinkly cotton dress. “Come over here,” she said, and sat at an empty table.
I latched my case and followed, sitting opposite her in a hard-backed chair.
“Give me your hand,” she said.
“You a fortune-teller?” I asked.
“Just give it to me,” she insisted.
I stretched my arm across the table. She flipped my hand over, opening my fingers.
“You aren’t just a guitar player,” she said. “You used to do manual labor.”
“Poured concrete,” I said. “Had to set a lot of forms.”
She nodded. “But you don’t have a lot of highfalutin aspirations.”
“I prefer to just get by.”
She stared a while, then let go of my hand. I wasn’t sure if she was a palm reader after all, or if she didn’t want to relay what she saw there. “You’ve been on the road a while,” she said. “And it’s about time for you to go home.”
I sat back in my chair. I guessed I was about to get a lecture. “Don’t reckon I really have one of those.”
I was ready to get out of there now. I’d found a $25 a night hotel earlier that day and was looking forward to sleeping in an actual bed. Today’s take was good enough that I didn’t have to feel guilty about it.
“Oh, but you do. You just don’t want to admit it,” she said. “Let me pack you a meal before you go. Collect your money. And the offer’s good if you want to come back. You were real popul
ar with my customers. Several of them stopped me just to comment on it.”
“Thank you,” I said, and pushed away from the table.
She headed to the back and I returned to the little stage. I sorted through the night’s take, stacking the bills. I’d done all right by a long shot. Maybe I’d buy a bus ticket, go all the way across the country and start on the other side.
The more I thought about it, the more that sounded like a good idea. New York. The East Coast. Virginia. All places I’d never been.
I was a fool to think the journey was supposed to end in LA. Nothing had changed back home. I had made it this long. Maybe this was the life I was supposed to lead.
I picked up my case and my backpack, feeling real good about the decision. The owner came out with a box of food. I took it from her and thanked her one more time.
I headed out into the cool night air, ready to hoof it to the Greyhound station. There was no reason to change a thing. My luck was holding out, and a life on the road was turning out to be just about perfect.
No commitments. No obligations. No expectations.
All fine by me.
Chapter 23: Jenny
Wednesday and the doctor visit came around a little too fast for my taste.
But Corabelle had been right. Things were blowing over. I was just the flavor of the weekend, and thankfully, another actress had a meltdown and shaved not her head, but her boyfriend’s, in his sleep. And HE was a very prominent actor scheduled to host an award show this weekend.
Way more interesting stuff.
I had a love-hate relationship with celebrity gossip. I found it fascinating and endlessly entertaining as long as it was about somebody else.
I decided to look sweet and innocent for my appointment, hopefully to offset the fact that I was coming in for a VD screening. After class, I planned to head to Cool Beans, a coffee shop where I allegedly had a job with Corabelle, and see if our boss had canned me completely or if he could be swayed into giving me hours.
I’d only been to work one day in the past month, and not much more in the previous ones. Frankie had needed me as he geared up for his premiere. I couldn’t be expected to stay out half the night and then get up and grind beans at some ungodly hour.
It had made sense at the time. If I was fired, I’d have to find something. My dad paid my tuition and my mom paid my rent. But anything else I needed in life, I had to pay for myself.
I knew I had it lucky. And I’d do the right thing. The whole Hollywood experience had definitely gone to my head. But it was over. I hadn’t heard from anybody about a job, and the more days that passed, the less likely it was that I would. LA had a short attention span. Graduation was just a couple months away.
I straightened my navy blue beret. It gave my dreadlocks a bohemian effect rather than alternative-edgy. I pulled on a simple hunter green sweater and a soft blue and green plaid skirt. I looked positively schoolgirlish as I finished the look with suede flats.
The hair was still a little wild, so I tamed the dreads into a loose low ponytail that fell over one shoulder. Perfect. That small change aged me up to a model from a college Benetton ad rather than prep school.
I was probably overthinking this.
I drove over to campus. I headed to World Lit in a fog and probably didn’t pay any more attention to the lecture today than I had on Monday. Corabelle would help me when it came time for finals. She was ace at this stuff. As long as I had the reading list, I would be fine.
When the class finally ended, I was the last to leave my seat. I felt sure the doc was going to tell me I had sixteen diseases, half of them incurable.
The walk along the paths felt long. It seemed happy couples were everywhere, all twitterpated or whatever with spring. The thought of the movie Bambi and the love-struck animals made me miss my mom. I hadn’t called her or told her anything. It seemed weird to involve her in my grown-up problems. But maybe I needed a mom right now.
Just not to talk about the VD screening.
I slowed down as I approached the glass door of the health center. Even if nobody cared anymore, and surely no one was stalking me by now, I looked around to see who might be watching.
I considered limping or coughing so that my visit would clearly have some other cause. Then I realized I was being ridiculous and just walked in.
The waiting room was busy, almost every seat full. Great, I would probably have to sit there forever. I checked in and plopped into a seat that was uncomfortably close to a boyishly cute basketball player holding a ball in his lap.
Normally I would have come to attention and tried to chat him up, but my heart wasn’t in it anymore. Besides, I’d probably no more strike up a conversation than they’d open the door and ask Jenny Gillespie to come back for her VD test.
He must have given off some manly testosterone vibe, though, because sitting by him made me think of Chance again. Probably the only reason I was so hung up on him, well, other than his outrageous hot factor and the way he sang “When a Man Loves a Woman,” was because he hadn’t been hung up on me.
He ditched me like I was nothing. I could still see Vanessa Price’s greedy paws on his arm.
But if I thought about what I’d do if Brad Pitt propositioned me, I got it. How often does stuff like that happen to us plebes?
Still, it smarted. And now I was here, checking for God-knows-what on my privates.
I pulled out my phone, catching up on everything I’d avoided while my butt was viral. Instagram. Snapchat. Two new sites nobody seemed to really be using. I was tempted to check the gossip rags online, but decided not to get my heart rate up before they checked my blood pressure. Still, I typed in Frankie’s name to see if he had gone public with his new boy.
Most of the hits were still about his broken heart, but one made me click. A small sidebar mention showed Frankie laughing with another man. The text said he was “sealing a new deal” with a screenwriter, but I knew better. His face was radiant. This was the guy.
Frankie had never looked at me like that. In fact, I wasn’t sure anybody ever had.
I sank a little lower in the chair. Where had my moxie gone? I was usually impervious to self-doubt. The one-two punch of ending things with Frankie and this singer knocking me off-center was having its effect.
Basketball Boy got up when his name was called. I stared at his butt as he walked away, but I wasn’t feeling it. Instead, I pictured Chance, running after me in the waves, thinking I was so crazy for dashing out into the freezing water naked.
“Jenny?”
My head popped up with cold fear when I heard my name, certain some reporter had discovered me getting VD screened at the health center.
But it was just the nurse, kind and broad-faced, braids encircling her head. “You ready?” she asked.
I followed her pink scrubs through the maze of hallways. I began to wonder if I shouldn’t have gone to my regular ob-gyn for this, but then my mother would have gotten the insurance statement. At least here, all the documentation came straight to me.
The nurse led me into an exam room. “So you want a screening?” she asked.
I stepped up on the ledge to the exam table and sat on the paper runner. “Yeah. I guess whatever the standard workup is.”
“What symptoms are you having?” she asked, pen poised over her clipboard. She said this like it was perfectly natural to have this horrible conversation. I guess on a college campus, she saw this a lot.
“Mainly, paranoia,” I said.
She laughed. “No itching or burning or pain with urination or intercourse?”
“No. I just had an encounter with a man whore and the condom got lost in the sand.”
“Ouch,” she said. She came forward and wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my arm. “How long ago?”
“Friday,” I said.
She nodded as she pumped air into the cuff. “We’ll swab you, but we might not detect anything that new. If you have any problems in the next couple of week
s, you might want to return for a repeat.”
Great, I’d have to do this again. I hadn’t even thought there might be an incubation period.
“Okay,” I said, but she wasn’t listening, intent on the blood pressure dial.
She released the air. “All looks good here. I’ll send Dr. Alpern in. Undress waist down and cover with the sheet.”
I nodded.
I kicked off my shoes and piled my clothes on a chair in the corner. Then I waited, deciding to skip looking at my phone. Just be.
But as soon as my mind had nothing to occupy it, Chance came right back. Singing. Looking at me from the stage. Hopping down next to me despite all those hot actresses swarming around him.
He’d chosen me. My body warmed over. Why had he done that, only to switch to the A-list after? Maybe he had mistaken me for somebody else.
Or hadn’t gotten what he really wanted. I had to bite my cheek to banish that depressing thought.
Two swift knocks on the door startled me. “Everyone indecent?” a voice asked.
“All good,” I said.
The doctor entered, older, gray-haired, in a traditional lab coat, something I didn’t see much anymore. He extended a hand. “I’m Dr. Alpern,” he said.
“I’m Jenny.”
“Well, Jenny, let’s take a look.” He flipped through a chart. “We’re going to do a quick panel. It also looks like you need a new script for your birth control. So we should do the full annual so I can sign off on that.”
I remembered seeing at least one full pack plus a partial when I took my pill that morning. “I don’t think so. I can do that next month when I run out.”
He frowned. “You should be out now. In fact, what are you using for birth control?”
My head spun. “The pill,” I said.
He nodded and smiled. “Okay. Maybe you overlapped last time and had some extra. You come back when it’s time.” He sat on a stool. “Go ahead and lie back and scoot to the edge.”
I fell back on the paper pillow, but my head was spinning. I didn’t remember having extra, but that had been a year ago. I knew I had gotten a little sloppy here and there with taking the pill, but I was with Frankie and it didn’t matter.
