Chapter Two
Callie
Looking back now, I should’ve known it was too good to be true. The best things in life usually are—long-lasting lipstick, Disneyland, dual action vibrators.
“Okay, let’s check you out,” Cheryl says, bending her knees, so she’s eye level with me. At five-seven, I’m not exactly short, but Cheryl is like a warrior woman of Sparta at over six feet tall with eye-catching dark red hair and a broad, often-laughing, always-louding mouth.
Cheryl works in the back office, here at the Fountain Theater Company. We crashed into each other—literally—on campus when we were both students at the University of San Diego, sending the papers in her hands scattering like leaves on a windy day. It took twenty minutes for us to catch them all—and by the time we did, it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
I open my eyes so wide my eyeballs would fall out if they weren’t attached to my head.
“Corner makeup gunk?”
“You’re good,” Cheryl confirms.
I pull back my lips and grit out, “Teeth?”
“Clean and shiny like a baby’s hiney.”
I tilt my head back. “Nose?”
Real friends make sure there aren’t any bats hanging in the cave.
“All clear.”
“Okay.” I shake out my hands and whistle out a deep breath. “I’m ready.” I close my eyes and whisper the words that, through the years, always helped settle my nerves. Words that aren’t mine.
“Visualize the win. See it happen, then make it happen. You got this.”
“What’s that?” Bruce asks.
I open my eyes at the blond, lanky, impeccably attired man in a gray tweed jacket, camel pants, and red ascot standing behind Cheryl’s right shoulder.
“Just something my high school boyfriend used to say.” I shrug. “He played football.”
Bruce is an actor with the Fountain Theater Company, like I was years ago, before I moved behind the scenes for a steadier paycheck and worked my way up to general manager.
“I don’t know why you’re nervous, Callie. Dorsey is a jackass, but even he has to see you should be executive director. You’ve earned this.”
Theater people are a rare breed. For the truest of us, it’s not about money or fame or getting our picture on the cover of People magazine—it’s about the performance. The show. It’s about Ophelia and Eponine, Hamlet and Romeo, or even chorus girl #12. It’s the magical connection with the audience, the smell of backstage—dust and makeup and costume fabric—the warm heat of the lights, the swoosh of the velvet curtain, the roll of the sets, and the clip-clap echo of shoes across a stage. It’s the piercing thrill of opening night, and the tear-wringing grief that comes with the closing performance. Behind the scenes or in front, cast or crew, stage left or right—there’s nothing I don’t love about it.
But for our newly retired executive director, Madam Lauralei? Not so much.
She was more concerned with her television production work on the side and her recurring voice-over role for a successful string of inflammatory bowel disease medication commercials than growing the company. Than putting in the time and energy to expand our audience and choose innovative projects that could turn us into a cultural fixture in Old Town, San Diego.
But I could change all that. As executive director, I’d be equal to the artistic director, below only the founder, Miller Dorsey, who enjoys the prestige of owning a theater company but tends to take a hands-off approach in the actual running of it. I’d have a say in budgets and schedules, marketing and advertising and how our resources are allotted. I would fight for the Fountain, because it’s a part of me, the only place I’ve ever worked since college. I would throw down like the Jersey girl I am—get in faces, bribe, barter, and blackmail if I had to. I’ve got the experience, the skills, and the determination to make this company the powerhouse I know it can be.
I want this position—I want it bad. And that’s why I’m so nervous. Because the harder you reach for something, the more it hurts when you end up slapping the pavement with your face.
Mrs. Adelstein, Miller Dorsey’s secretary, comes out into the hall. “Miss Carpenter? He’s ready for you now.”
Cheryl gives me the thumbs-up and Bruce smiles. I take another deep breath, then follow Adelstein through the office door, hearing that steady, strong voice in my head.
“You got this, Callie.”
~ ~ ~
“Wooooohooo!” My lips pucker as I down a fourth lemon-drop shot. “I can’t believe I got it!”
“Of course you got it, girlfriend!” Cheryl yells, even though we’re standing right next to each other.
We started out at a hip, too-cool-for-school wine bar—because that’s where thirtysomethings are supposed to go to celebrate. But we end up at a dirty dive bar in the seedy end of town because that’s where the real fun is.
The large, burly bartender with tattooed arms as big as my head gives Cheryl a smile from beneath his bushy blond beard as he pours us another round. Cheryl catches his smile and bats her false eyelashes.
But they get stuck together, so the overall effect is less flirty, more seizure-like.
Bruce is in the back corner, chatting up a friendly, middle-aged blonde in a tank-top and leather pants. He’s charming, suave with the ladies . . . but he also has the “nice guy” curse. It’s awful and stereotypical—but true. Bruce is too polite—there’s no edge to him, no excitement. I should know. He and I tried dating when we first met, years ago, but it was quickly apparent that the only spark for either of us was a friendship ember.
With one eye open, Cher turns to me, lifting her shot glass. “I just thought of something! This means you can finally move out of that rinky-dink building that’s teeming with piss-poor graduate students and move into that place you’ve been creaming over for years—the one with the seals!”
I still live in the same apartment I lived in my senior year of college. But I’ve been saving up, year by year, little by little, for a down payment on a beautiful two-bedroom, ocean-front condo in La Jolla.
There’s one unit in particular, with a balcony and perfect view of the rocks where seals come to sun every afternoon. It’s peaceful and magical—my dream home.
Excitement buzzes up from my toes, spreading through my body, and I feel just like Kate Hudson in Almost Famous.
“It’s all happening!” I pick up my glass, sloshing a bit of cloudy liquid because I’m literally bouncing.
And scary-bartender-man raises a glass for himself, toasting with us. “To the seals. Love those fuzzy little fuckers.”
~ ~ ~
As the night winds on, me, Cheryl and Bruce get the kind of drunk they make montages out of in the movies. Life is reduced to snapshots of moments—moments like Bruce swinging his ascot over his head like a helicopter blade, like Cheryl dancing on a chair . . . right before she falls off of it, like the three of us forming a personal conga-line and choo-chooing around the bar as “C’Mon Ride the Train” plays from the speakers.
Eventually, we make it back to my tiny one-bedroom apartment. I kick off my shoes in the corner and Cheryl does a trust-fall onto the couch.
Bruce spreads out his sports coat on the beige carpeted floor, then lies on top of it, sighing.
“Oh! Oh,” Cheryl yells, reaching into her blouse to pull a balled-up napkin out of her bra, “Look what I got! Mountain Man’s number!”
“Mountain Man?” Bruce asks.
“The bartender.” She breathes out, then mumbles, “Gonna climb him like a mountain.” Cher’s an avid climber in her spare time. “He can sink his crampon into me anytime . . .”
Her voice drifts off and I think she’s fallen asleep. Until Bruce rips the beige throw pillow out from under her head.
“Hey! What the hell, dude? I need that pillow.”
“You have the couch, Cheryl. If you get the couch, I get the pillow,” Bruce grumbles.
“I can’t lie flat after drinking. My acid reflux will burn a hole in my chest.”
And this is how you know you’re old.
“You have selective acid reflux,” Bruce argues. “You only bring it up when you want something.”
“Screw you, Brucey.”
Cheryl and Bruce are like a cat and a dog that have been raised in the same house.
“Settle down, children. I have extra pillows and blankets in the closet.”
When things are good, it’s easy to forget Murphy’s Law—anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. But that’s when you need to remember it most. Because Murphy’s Law is like a quiet snake in the grass at a picnic. When your back is turned, when you’re not expecting it . . . that’s when it reaches up and sinks its fangs into your left ass cheek.
As I step towards the hall, my phone rings. I try to fish it out of my messy purse, but the little bastard’s hiding, so I end up having to dump my whole bag out, pelting Bruce with rogue Tic Tacs as they bounce off the coffee table.
I peer at the screen and see the smiling face of my big sister staring back at me, with my adorable nieces surrounding her, sticking their tongues out. I took the picture last Thanksgiving at Lake Tahoe—where my parents, my sister, and I rented a cabin for the holiday.
It doesn’t occur to me that she’s calling me at two in the morning. I just answer.
“Hey, Colleen! What’s—”
Her words come out in a rush. And I think . . . I think she’s crying. Which is weird, because—there’s no crying in Colleen. My big sister is rock solid. Badass. She gave birth to three children au natural . . . nothing rattles her.
Only, right now, something definitely has.
“Col, slow down, I can’t understand you . . .”
Between my drunkeness and her hiccups—I can barely make out her words.
“Mom . . . Dad . . . car a-acc-accident.”
Ohmygod. Oh. My. God.
I turn to Bruce and Cher, instantly stone-cold sober—any thought of my promotion dissipating from my mind like mist in the morning light. There’s only one thought, one focus.
“I have to go home.”