“Don’t be silly. I’m not that fun. My roommate is the fun one.” I yawned again. “See?” I pointed to my mouth. “It’s not even that late, and I’m ready for my tuck-in.”
He started toward the path leading to the van, his elbow out again like a gentleman. “Come on, then. I’ll fold down the blankets and give you your tuck-in.”
As we drove to Keith’s apartment, I savored the sensation of stepping into someone else’s life, like a tourist.
Something occurred to me.
As I smelled the soil bags in the van and looked around at Keith’s neighborhood, I realized this was how Dalton must have felt when he saw me working in the bookstore, and then tagged along to my cousin Marita’s wedding. Like a tourist. There to take some photos and make some memories. But wasn’t that also the whole point of life?
My thoughts circled and bit their own tails.
I don’t know about you, but I get terribly philosophical when I’m overly tired to the point of hallucinating.
The underwear model driving the van turned to smile at me. Maybe I was hallucinating? That would certainly explain a few things.
We pulled up to Keith’s apartment building, which was the color of my terra cotta pots back home, and cheerily accented by landscape lighting. Great curb appeal.
The building had a central courtyard, with a shimmering pool, and not another soul in sight. Everything looked about sixty years old and worn from use, but taken care of.
Keith was all apologies as he opened the door of his apartment, explaining that he’d been meaning to clean and decorate, but wasn’t sure how long he’d be staying.
Besides a few dirty dishes in the kitchen, the place looked fine to me.
I stumbled around, feeling clumsy and bleary-eyed.
Keith loaned me a shirt to sleep in, I used the toiletries I’d taken with me to the shoot in my purse, and I crashed hard on the comfortable spare room bed, face down. I jerked awake five seconds after falling asleep—one of those feeling-like-you’re-falling sensations—and opened my eyes to see a photograph on the nightstand of two beautiful, dark-haired girls staring down at me.
“Never you mind,” I muttered, flipping the photo over and then myself. Sleep came to me, as welcome as buttered muffins, hot from the oven, only to be interrupted by…
The sound of my telephone ringing.
Brightness. Morning already?
“Hi Dad,” I grumbled sleepily, because I knew his ring—or at least I thought I did.
The room was bright, but if there was an alarm clock, it was hiding from me.
“That’s kinky,” came the voice on the other line.
“Who’s this?”
“Your pony, Lionheart.”
Shit. Not my father. Dalton Deangelo, that lying devil.
“You remember Lionheart,” he said.
I grunted, unsure of how to inform him I wasn’t speaking to him, now that he had me on the phone.
He continued, “You didn’t sleep at my house last night, and I got worried. Did you go to a hotel close to the photographer’s studio?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Where are you?” he replied.
“Wait. How do you know I’m not at your house? Do you have creepy spy cams all over that place?”
“Not spy cams, but I can log in remotely to the security system. I can tell that everything’s armed now and the house has been empty all night.”
“You’re not wrong.”
A pause. “Something’s wrong with you, though.”
“I’ll say.”
“What did you hear?” he asked, sounding less than innocent.
“I didn’t hear anything, unless you count the stuff I heard in my head—the stuff I can’t get out of my head. I read your script, Dalton. Your little game is up, because I know all about you now. I know what a lying, deceiving twatweasel you are.”
“Did you just call me a twatweasel?”
“Don’t change the subject. Just level with me, one adult to another. Admit you were stringing me along using lines from the script for your movie with the dumb name, We’re all Stardust or whatever.”
“We are Made of Stardust. That’s the title.”
“Is that all you have to say? No explanation? Well, I hope you got in a lot of awesome research about what it’s like to nail a chubbo, because the next one you get won’t be me.”
“Peaches.”
“Furthermore, I hope the next chubbo you bang for sport is really big and smothers you past the point of enjoyment, until you’re gasping for breath and afraid for your life.”
“What are you talking about?” Heavy sigh. “Okay, I’m remembering some lines that may have bothered you. You do realize that was a movie script you read? It’s not exactly a true account of how I feel. Plus whatever copy was lying around my house is an older one. It’s not even the current version.”
“Oh, really? So when you said that line to me, Join me in the darkness, walk through my dreams, and hold my hand in the morning light, did you mean that?”
“Sure. Who wouldn’t? It’s a great line.”
I held the phone away from my head and shook it. The door to the bedroom was closed, but I had no sense of where in the apartment Keith was at the moment, or how thin the walls were.
Slowly and calmly, so I wasn’t yelling, I asked Dalton what I really wanted to know: “When you ran into me at the bookstore and asked me out on a date, was that research for your role?”
I heard a smacking sound in the silence, like the sound of someone’s mouth opening and closing because they’re nervous.
Finally, he said, “I really like you. Everything I said to you, I meant.”
“That doesn’t sound like an apology, or the answer I wanted to hear.”
“I’ll be in LA in two days. Let’s talk then, and I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
“There were some very hurtful things in that script.”
Sounding annoyed now, he said, “Don’t be ridiculous. A script is just words on a page. There’s no nuance. It’s bare bones without the actor giving it life.”
“I don’t want anything to do with actors, and I don’t want anything to do with you, Dalton Deangelo. We are over.”
“I don’t get any say in the matter?”
“Sure. Let’s take a vote. I vote we’re broken up. What’s your opinion?”
And then I ended the call before he started talking. That wasn’t quite enough, though, so I threw the phone on the bed a couple of times, just to really show him.