She plopped her butt even farther down. Her gown ripped and exposed her left breast. She reached and tried to cover it up.
“Yes, yours are lovely, but I’ve seen about eighty thousand. Feet in the comfy stirrups please.”
She complied. Dr. Goldblatt squished and poked her boobs in what seemed like a very professional manner.
“When was your last mammogram?”
“I haven’t had one yet,” she confided.
“That’s irresponsible. You’re …” He referenced her chart. “You’re almost forty! Get a mammogram this week. I see on your chart that you’re a smoker. You have to quit. Smoking decreases your fertility, damages your lungs and heart. Eventually you’ll get those hideous vertical lip line wrinkles from sucking on something you shouldn’t be sucking on.”
Great bedside manner. Was Dr. Goldblatt now going to tell her what she should be sucking on? He picked up a ginormous speculum that looked alarmingly like a .44, and headed toward her hoo-hah.
“This might be a little chilly and you’ll feel a tiny pinch.”
Annie’s eyes widened and she reflexively clamped her legs shut, trapping Dr. Goldblatt’s arms between her inner thighs. “Sorry! Leg cramp.” She pictured one of those lean, mean, James Bond villainesses. Those chicks wouldn’t let the obnoxious Drs. Goldblatt and Putter putz in their privates without at first showing a little respect.
“Yes, mother, I should have become a lawyer,” Dr. Goldblatt sighed. “Open please. I have fifteen more appointments this hour.”
Dr. Putter raced back into the room and handed Annie an 8 X 10 white envelope adorned with a red rose. “Delivery service dropped it off. Came for you addressed to our office. Like, weird? Who knew you were going to be here today?”
She took the envelope. “Like, my husband, Mike. My mom. My friends. My dry cleaner, Mr. Wong. He’s really nice and always gets the worst spots out. The salesgirls at Country March Cafe, The Tea Cup...”
“My arm,” Dr. Goldblatt said.
Annie unclenched her legs. Dr. Goldblatt fell backwards. Dr. Putter thrust a wad of paperwork at him as he struggled to maintain his balance on his rotating stool. “Doctor, I think you need to take a look at these numbers.”
She looked at the envelope and the rose. It was red, in full bloom and beautiful. Mike had totally come through on Valentine’s Day. Annie smelled the rose, savored it. Maybe she didn’t hate this holiday as much as she thought.
She pulled out the contents of the envelope. They were 8 X 10 photo glossies. Ooh, did Mike have new headshots done? No. The first picture was of Mike, shirtless and making out with, well—it had to be her! When was that picture taken? How sweet of him to send it. A reminder of their enduring love. She flipped to the next photo. Oh! This was a naked back and butt shot of Mike in a very compromising sexy position. He was being a Valentine’s Day bad boy! She smiled, held the picture a little closer to her eyes. She couldn’t see her face yet, or remember when these pics were taken. But this was so naughty, fun and very romantic. When Mike got back from his indie shoot she’d surprise him. Substitute smokes for a little something else suck-able. Thank you, Dr. Goldblatt for the pep talk.
“FSH high,” Dr. Goldblatt muttered as he reviewed Annie’s lab results.
“What does that mean?” Annie asked.
Dr. Goldblatt nodded complicitly at Dr. Putter. “It means Dr. Putter has to take your blood pressure again.”
She winced as the cuff expanded and squeezed the shit out of her arm. She flipped to the next picture. In this shot, Mike nibbled on someone’s perfect rippling abs. Annie didn’t have perfect rippling abs. Hers were more gravity-prone, waving-in-the-wind, bouncing-through-earthquakes kind of abs. Which meant that—
Oh jesusmothermaryandjoseph. Her husband was not only cheating on her, but also doing it with some slutty starlet with a rocking body.
She hyperventilated. They moved to L.A. from Wisconsin four years ago to pursue Mike’s acting career. He signed up for very serious, pricey acting classes, went on cattle calls and joined Gold’s Gym to get as buff and cast-able as possible. Let’s face it, not everyone could be the gladiator, but there was always a need for dying Spartans and spear-carriers. Mike encouraged her to pump iron with him. But she was passionate about using her spare time to pursue her own career as a pastry chef. She worked on creating her menu of delectable desserts. Maybe even have her own successful label some day, like Mrs. Field’s. Perhaps based on the photos she was viewing her decision was selfish.
Dr. Goldblatt stared at Annie’s lab results. “Your LH levels are high. Not good,” he muttered and shook his head. “Are you sure you're not 'actress age' thirty-eight? That would mean you’re actually fifty.”
“I’m really thirty-eight. Who delivered this package?” she asked.
Her inquiry seemed to make Putter more nervous. He pumped the blood pressure cuff higher. It swelled to near popping levels and for the life of her, Annie couldn’t contain. “Putter, I swear if my arm doesn’t explode first I’ll personally chew it off and hand it to you. Take it home as a ‘First Day on the Job’ trophy,” she said.
Dr. Putter pouted as he let the cuff deflate.
She turned away, gathered her courage and stuck out her stiff upper lip. Yes, in Wisconsin, there really was such a thing, usually due to a few too many brewskies before snowmobiling in below freezing weather. Her free hand shook as she flipped to the last picture in the Valentine’s Day batch. That photo was of a person who had chin stubble, developed arms, chest hair, and was passionately kissing Mike. It wasn’t a starlet with a hot bod. Mike was making out with a man.
She screamed and dropped the pictures. She clutched her chest and wheezed. “I can’t breathe!” She fanned her face, gulped and tried to force air into her nose and mouth.
Dr. Goldblatt tossed her chart onto the countertop and sighed, “Mrs. Piccolino. You’re most likely experiencing what is commonly called a hot flash. I am sorry to inform you that you’re not prime to get pregnant. Lab results conclude you’re in Peri-Menopause.”
She felt her face flush with blood. “Shit. No. I. Can’t. Breathe.” She pinched Dr. Putter’s arm and pointed to the glossies lying on the floor.
He picked them up, blanched and showed them to Dr. Goldblatt who replied, “Do an HIV, an HPV, a Hep-C and a standard STD panel.” Dr. Goldblatt glanced at his watch. “Mrs. Piccolino, the chances of you conceiving without fertility measures are about one in a thousand. Fertility is still very expensive and your insurance won’t cover it. And you still need viable sperm. The odds don’t seem to be in your favor.”
“I can’t bre…” Annie rasped. “I ca…” She collapsed back on the table as one of her legs fell out of the comfy stirrups. She had one eye half open and watched the room spin around.
A discrete knock on the door and Nurse Jennifer popped her head inside. “Dr. Goldblatt your next five patients…” she began. “Good lord. She looks like a completely trashed Girls Gone Wild chick.”
Drs. Goldblatt and Putter regarded Nurse Jennifer, a little surprised.
“Oh, please. Do you really think I only watch Lifetime?” Nurse Jennifer said. “I’m calling 911.”
Dr. Goldblatt said, “Good. She’s not dying on my table.”
Magic Muffins
Description: Pureed carrots and apples in a healthy, trans-fat free muffin batter baked to moist perfection and plump proportions.
Appropriate Occasions: An entrepreneurial way to introduce yourself and/or promote your fine line of baked goods. Offer as an apology gift after offending people, or injuring them. Buy time while you intuitively dive into another person’s body and search for emotional illness or disease.
Best Served With: An Entrepreneurial Spirit. Remorse. Curiosity. Empathic Ability.
Two
The Bombshell
Grady Swenson, a handsome guy in his late twenties dressed in a J. Crew T-shirt and fabulous jeans, sat on the living room floor next to a box and packed knickknacks. He fli
pped through the photo glossies. “Who in the hell sent you these pictures? Have you gotten any empathic hits? Possible clues?” he asked.
Annie stood behind a granite island that separated the kitchen from the small living room. She chopped Oreo cookies and threw them into a blender. “I was on my back sunnyside up with my privates exposed for the medical world to peruse. I wasn’t expecting paranormal ability. I don’t have a friggin’ clue who sent the photos,” she said as she turned on the blender.
Her living room was being dismantled and packed. It had tall metal bookshelves, a big plasma TV, leather chairs, and a shabby chic-style couch. One wall was sliding glass doors that led to a balcony. Framed photos of Mike filled the rest of the wall space. Whether he posed as a Sears repairman in his snappy uniform, or a drug spokesman with a concerned look in his eyes, or as a father taking his beautiful children to school, there was no questioning Mike was handsome in an All-American-Guy kind of way.
There was also no room on the walls for anybody other than Mike. A few family photos were shoved next to the books on the shelves. A pic of Mike and Annie smiling, cheek-to-cheek, in a wedding chapel with a sign hanging from the ceiling that read Church of Perpetual Marital Bliss. An older photo of a stern but beautiful silver-haired woman: Annie’s grandmother, Nonna Maria. A family photo of Annie’s mom, Nancy, as a pretty, petite, blonde with her dad, Joe, a handsome young man in an army uniform.
Lined up on the granite kitchen island like a firing squad on high alert were prescription drug containers: Xanax, Wellbutrin, Ambien, oh my! Squared off against the western drugs were the old fashioned medicinals: bottles of alcohol, pints of ice cream and bags of cookies. New tech and old tech glared at each other over a chopping board and a chef’s collection of knives, all safely tucked in their little slots in a block of wood. The upscale kitchen that adjoined the island featured more granite, stainless steel sinks and Viking appliances.
Packing boxes, tape, and bales of bubble wrap threatened to swallow the premises. Annie’s twenty-pound cat, Theodore Von Pumpernickel, resembled a flying Persian carpet as he jumped in and out of boxes convinced this was the most fun game in the world. In the living room, the 42” plasma TV, sound muted, played in the background. Meanwhile Sheryl Crow rocked out from a large boom box.
Grady shouted over Ms. Crow and the loud whirring of the blender. “I swear to you, Annie. I’ve been out forever and I have decent gaydar. If I was more than thirty percent suspicious I would have said something.”
Meanwhile, Julia, thirty-eight, naturally voluptuous with coiffed short blondish hair was dressed in grubby clothes with a deep V-neck tight shirt that gave more than a peek of her push-up bra. She smacked tape on top of a box and sassed back. “Honey, in the South, if you're even four percent suspicious you are required by friendship law to say something.”
Annie shut off the blender, turned and stared bleary-eyed at her two friends. Her red hair was tied on top of head with garbage bag twisties. She wore a wife-beater, sans bra, sported a nicotine patch on her arm and resembled Linda Blair in The Exorcist. That would be right before poor Linda’s head rotated 360 and she vomited pea soup. In one hand, Annie held a half empty bottle of vodka. In the other, Kahlua. She gestured with both bottles. “Let’s get one thing straight right now,” she said.
Julia and Grady stared at their feet.
“Hah hah. You both know what I mean.” She put down the bottles, grabbed a knife from the chef’s collection and furiously chopped Oreo cookies on the butcher block. “I’m not mad at Mike for being with another man. I believe that sex is sex. Unless it’s with a minor, or against someone’s will, or with my cat.”
She put down the knife and poured thick dark chocolate ice cream drinks from the blender into three California Disney plastic mugs. She sprinkled the Oreo bits on top. “What I’m not fine with is that Mike broke our marriage vows. I am furious that he lied and deceived me.” She picked up the knife and gestured at Grady and Julia who backed away. “Don’t fucking promise me a lifetime commitment with children and grandchildren when you’re dicking around with anyone other than me. And if you’ve changed your mind? And this is more than sex and you’ve fallen in love with someone else? Then have the friggin’ decency to tell me first.”
Annie set down the knife and impaled straws in the drinks. “That’s why I filed for separation from Mike today. Have a Bombshell. They’re my recipe and quite delicious.” She stabbed the knife into the butcher block. She leaned her elbows on the counter and collapsed her forehead into her hands.
Grady and Julia regarded each other. Grady ventured first, “Okay. We’re here to pack. What’s next? Pictures, books?”
Julia said, “I’ll handle the pictures. Why don’t you pack the knives?”
Backstage from the ballroom at the LAX Hotel & Suites, Barry Cooperman, late fifties, pudgy but wearing a finely cut suit, peeked from behind the stage curtain. The room was set up for a Learning Annex seminar. A large stage loomed in front of a thousand folding chairs. Wannabees, hopefuls and down-on-their-lucks filed in, clutching their I Promise promo packets. The crowd of approximately three hundred people gabbed among themselves, eagerly anticipating tonight’s A-list motivational speaker, Dr. Derrick Fuller. Aka Dr. Dare!
Unfortunately that left the ballroom about seven hundred bodies light, which translated to more than two thirds empty. That barely covered tonight’s nut.
Barry sighed, shook his head and checked his watch. Eight p.m. sharp. He slumped. Three years ago that ballroom would be packed by now.
He turned and walked from the curtain through a harshly lit narrow hallway and pondered his dilemma. Back in the good old days, there was no end of low lives willing to shell out big bucks for a shot at the dream. Whatever that dream was. The Annex seminars were traditionally two-hour fishing trips. Drop a little bait, reel ’em in, throw back the small ones and keep the few willing to plunk down bigger money for the pricier day and weekend seminars.
Barry was in debt up to his triple chin and he had worried enough for each one. Why now was Dr. Fuller’s career sagging? Darn. But Barry had a couple of other fish on the back burner. He remembered one of his most cherished manager beliefs and smiled. There would always be low lives. Therefore there would always be dreams. He was happy he’d taken action.
He knocked on a door, opened it and stuck his head in. “Derrick, we need to talk.”
“Later.” Derrick paced his small but comfy dressing room while he self-pep talked. “I promise—you’ll lose weight, blah blah. I promise you’ll find true love, yadda yadda. I promise you’ll beat your disease du jour and be healthy again. I did.”
Derrick paused in front of the full-length mirror and admired himself. At fifty years old he was still pleasing on the eyes. No receding hairline. His hair was longish, wavy and silver streaked. Dedication to the gym and his personal trainer earned him a more than decent bod. He leaned in to examine his face. Handsome. He wasn’t the only one who thought so. His cheeks were definitely chipmunky, but he was okay with that. His dermatologist assured him that high chubby cheeks in combination with Botox and restylane would help him age well. He smiled. His dermatologist was right.
He walked down the hallway and paused behind the ballroom’s auditorium stage curtain to perform one last check with a hand mirror. Hair coiffed, skin flawless, shirt perfect, pants divine, zipper up, stomach sucked in, chest puffed out and spine straight. Dr. Phil must be so jealous. He probably stuck little pins into a picture of Derrick every night, and then hid it under his bed. Oh well. Not everyone could be as blessed as Derrick.
Barry started in, “Look Derrick. I’ve got it figured out—”
Derrick shushed him. “You know this is when I warm my vocal cords,” he said, then chanted, “Ominidominifromini. Perry pilfered potted potatoes but preferred port. Sally sucked sailors silly since Saturday.”
In the background a Learning Annex Announcer proclaimed, “And now, the renowned author of the best selling I Promise b
ook series, the man who’s changed so many lives, the man you’ve all been waiting for, Dr. Derrick Fuller!” The audience applauded. Several people whistled.
Show time! Derrick smiled into the mirror. His teeth almost blinded him. “Tomorrow, Barry.” He handed him the mirror and walked to the curtain’s edge that led to the stage. “I promise you we’ll figure this out tomorrow.”
In the corner of Annie and Mike’s fifteenth floor balcony a small but carefully tended herb garden sat on a little table, fought the smog, and still managed to grow. The balcony overlooked the Sunset Strip. Grady squatted, leaned back against the sliding glass doors, and took a long toke on his joint. He stared at the whole hot scene beneath him. The HOLLYWOOD sign on the hill in the distance presided like a cheesy cable TV judge over the twinkling lights, nightclubs, trendy restaurants, sex stores and lit billboards that flashed nearly every bare asset imaginable.
He framed the scene with his hands like an imaginary lens and pretended to shoot footage of the twenty-somethings cruising on foot and in cars. The girls a little cookie-cutter hoochy. The boys a grab bag of quarterback handsome, garage band cool and the occasional rocket scientist who couldn’t fit in let alone get laid until he made his first ten mil. The older sleazy dude with no hair, or slicked hair in a shiny suit, armed with empty promises who tried to score one of the girls or boys. “Sign with me baby. I’ll make you a star…”
Hollywood was where everyone who wasn’t from L.A. thought dreams were made. In actuality, Hollywood was just a seductive pseudo-reality. For whoever longed to be beautiful, with someone beautiful, or was simply pervy, this was practically a documentary on how to do it.
Julia cracked open the door, poked her head out and glared at Grady and his joint.
“Busted, I know.” He waited for his reprimand.
Julia yelled back to Annie, “I’m taking a breather.” She stepped outside onto the balcony, closed the door and sat down. “I thought you had a fear of heights.” She pointed at the joint. “Share, please.”
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