Chapter 44 – Brent
“I can’t believe you drank a whole bottle of that rasb- rabrust- raspberry wine!” I’m having trouble climbing the stairs to our room and speaking at the same time, but so is Amelia, who I’ve taken to calling “Amil” more and more now, as a pet nickname I bequeathed on her - I think. I’m pretty drunk, and the back of my mind knows this. The rest of it doesn’t care.
The wine-tasting event had been a lavish, fancy affair with tons of vintages to sample. Some of the other guests had swirled each wine in their glasses, sniffed, and pronounced their thoughts in loud voices to their partners. Amil and I had skipped right past the formalities to the drinking part.
Amil laughs at me, loud and long. God, she’s pretty when she laughs. “You’re the one who stole the second bottle, so really this is all your fault, Mr. Thief!”
“ I prefer the term ‘smuggler’.” We get to our floor, and only then does it occur to me: “We forgot about the elevator!”
“You mean I carried these two super-heavy bottles of wine up four flights of stairs for nothing?!” Amil brandishes the bottles (which we may have stolen when the hosts’ backs were turned), and I raise my hands in a plea of innocence.
“Not for nothing! We still get to drink them! And the trip will make them even taste more good!”
“More good isn’t the right word, silly!”
“It is too! Stair wine is more good than elevator wine! See, I used it in a sentence!”
“Okay, using it in a sentence only matters in a middle school spelling bee!”
“Fine, then, what’s the right word, smarty-pants?”
Amil opens her mouth to speak, but before she can, I start laughing uncontrollably. “What?! What’s so funny?!”
By now I’m leaning against the wall, wheezing. “Your teeth…they’re all purple! It looks like you took a bite out of Barney the Dinosaur!”
Amil pauses, then starts to laugh too. “Your mouth doesn’t look much better! Better! That’s the word I was looking for!”
We’re both in gales of laughter now. The hotel room door next to us opens, and a prim-looking man in a suit (I think I recognize him from downstairs, but who knows), peers out with a look on his face like we’d deeply offended whatever sensibilities he had. “Excuse me. Could you please keep it down out here? If you want to shout and be gregarious, do it in your own rooms. This is a public hallway.” With that, he slams the door.
Amelia looks at me, and then, in a mocking interpretation of the man’s tone, says “Excuse me could you please keep it down out here meh I need my beauty sleep blah blah blah.”
I imagine that my laugh is much too loud for the man behind the door, but I don’t care. This is the most fun I’ve had in months.
We keep walking down the hallway, heading to our room. “Do you think the person who played Barney did it drunk?” Amelia asks reflectively.
“I mean, I feel like he must have. How else would he be able to make it through a day without drop-kicking one of those little annoying snot monsters through a window?”
“Exactly! That guy from the Brady Bunch TV show was on coke the whole time too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah! I’m telling you, if they’d had camera crews filming the behind-the-scenes stuff on 80’s TV series instead of the scripted parts, reality TV would’ve been way more popular way sooner.”
We make it to our room, and I fumble with the key card. The lock buzzes and flashes red. “Come onnnnn!” Amelia opines. “I have to pee!”
“Whose fault is that?” I laugh, swiping the card again. Still nothing.
“Yours!” she insists. “You brought me here!”
“Okay, that’s fair.” That’s when I notice I’m swiping my credit card in the door. “Whoops.” I fumble for the right card in my wallet, and finally get the door open. Amelia beelines for the bathroom, and I flop down onto the bed.
Staring at the ceiling fan, I call out, “I don’t think I could ever be on a reality show.”
“What?” Amil shouts back from behind the slightly-ajar bathroom door.
“I couldn’t do it. All those cameras and people watching and voting online about you? I’ve had my fill of that already.”
The toilet flushes, the sink runs, and Amelia reappears in the doorway. “Wait, what do you mean, you’ve had your fill of it? You’re not rich and famous.” She frowns. “Right? I feel like that’s something worth mentioning and you haven’t, so.”
My head clears just a bit, adrenaline hitting me as I realize what I’ve just said. “Nah, I’m not. I meant, like, I’ve had my fill of watching reality TV. I can only do the fun baking competition shows, you know?”
Amil slides down onto the bed with me. “Is that why those girls wanted your autograph the other day? Because you’re super popular on the fanboy forums?”
I laugh, but Amil doesn’t break her gaze. Shit, she really wants to know. Somewhere in the back of my head, I’d known it was going to happen eventually if we’d kept things up, but the rest of me had been in denial. I especially hadn’t figured on the question being popped while we were drunk on a weekend away.
“Okay.” I roll over and face her, propped up on an elbow. “I’m not famous. But my family is. We’re bankers, entrepreneurs, really well-known in certain social circles. It’s how I had the money to fund the venture capitalist opportunities. And now, it’s how I made enough to retire and make art. So, it was worth it, but, it came with a price. Those women…I’ve seen them around at family functions before. My last…breakup was quite a scandal around those circles, so they all know that I’m supposedly up for grabs.”
“Smelling blood in the water.” Amil giggles, but her expression quickly turns serious again as she looks up at me from her pillow. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
“I don’t tell anyone.”I examine the ceiling fan again, then take a deep breath and open my mouth to tell her the rest…only to see that she’s fallen asleep.
“Huh.” I expect to feel relieved…but instead, I’m almost disappointed. It’s a strange feeling, and it’s the last thing I remember before I fall asleep too.