Chapter Fourteen
Jaimie
Hoping to beat the crowd out of the auditorium, I left shortly after the fight ended. I couldn’t believe Braxton had winked at me as he stood onstage in front of the TV cameras. It was such a dorky thing to do, the sort of thing you might do on impulse and then regret as soon as it happened. He looked so smug about it, though. What a dope.
Leaving the building, I emerged into an Italian-style courtyard with marble statues and white fountains. It was a joy to be outside again for a few minutes breathing in the night air. After about an hour in a crowded room, I began feeling anxious and tired and instinctively looked for the exits. The fight had gone on for too long, and now I was in desperate need of a drink.
As soon as I reached my room, I called Ren.
“Do you ever just feel like you’re cursed?” I asked her.
“Nope.” I could hear the insistent meowing of a cat in the background. “Why, do you?”
“I think I might be, because I would love nothing more than to be sitting at home writing, and that’s the one thing I can never do.”
“Perhaps Randy is a minor demon, and he’s torturing you by constantly making you travel places.” She stifled a yawn. “I suppose there’s only one real way to find out.”
“What’s that?”
“The next time he invites you to Chattanooga or wherever, tell him you can’t go. Then if he turns into a flaming six-eyed monstrosity with wings before and behind, you’ll know.”
“Perfect. Hey, you’ll never guess what happened tonight.” I told her about how Braxton had winked at me in front of everyone at the end of the fight.
“You’re excited about a wink?” asked Ren, a note of concern in her voice. “Is that the only interaction you’ve had with him this weekend?”
“Yeah, this is the first I’ve seen of him. I didn’t even know he was here until he showed up on the big TV.”
“So he still hasn’t given you the D?” Ren clucked her tongue. “Shame.”
I stifled a laugh. “You know, I might think you were serious if you had ever gotten the D in your life.”
“Well, I’m a writer. I demand solitude and seclusion like a witch in the forest, and having a boy in my life could make that more difficult.”
“Or, it could inspire your writing to new heights!” I said with perhaps too much enthusiasm.
“Yeah, maybe, but I think mostly it would just be a distraction,” said Ren. “That’s why I have to live vicariously through you, and I insist that you bone him posthaste.”
“I don’t know if I should be insulted that you apparently think so little of me.”
“Is he not worth boning?” Ren replied.
“I couldn’t honestly tell you.”
“Well, you must have an opinion.”
I picked up one of those miniature bottles of shampoo off the rim of the sink and turned it over absently. “First of all, he’s like nineteen. So, literally a teenager.”
“Still legal,” Ren pointed out.
“I know, but still… ick.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-three, as you know very well.”
“That’s only a four-year age difference.”
“Literally a teenager,” I said again, clapping between each word for emphasis. “Not only that, but he’s an MMA guy. I know better than to date MMA guys.”
“Jaimie, my doll, boon companion of my heart, there is a world of difference between dating and boning.”
“I’m listening.”
“You don’t have to date someone to bone them,” she explained. “Even I know this.”
“True, but doesn’t it usually mean more if you actually know the person and have a loving and intimate relationship? I seem to recall you telling me this when I asked why you had never slept with anyone.”
“We’re not talking about me, dear.”
“Oh, right.” I stared blankly out the window at the green neon lights. “I had forgotten.”
“Anyway, I can’t sleep around because I can’t risk having a baby and jeopardizing my career as a writer. But you can sleep with as many boys as you want. The world is your oyster.”
“Hey! What about my career as a writer?”
Ren laughed. “When you actually start writing, we’ll talk.”
Feeling insulted but knowing she had a point, I told her I had to go and hung up. For a long moment, I continued to stare out the window onto the green-tinted courtyard, torn between climbing into bed and sleeping for the rest of the weekend and heading downstairs to the bar.
I knew Ren was only kidding about wanting me to sleep with a near-total stranger, but still—it was a little weird that she had been so adamant about it. On the other hand, maybe I was quick to find fault because she had never taken my aspirations seriously. I wasn’t a real author, I was just pretending, like a child playing with crayons who thinks she’s Michelangelo. Sometimes her condescension was a little exasperating.
My eyes strayed to the pile of paperwork waiting for me at the foot of my bed. Randy had asked me to go over the revenue from the fight and find out how much we had brought in that night before I headed downstairs. I knew he probably wouldn’t care if I put it off for a bit, but I would care. Climbing into my cat pajamas, I grabbed my reading glasses off the night stand and reached for the stack.
I hadn’t been reading for more than a minute when my phone dinged. It was Randy.
Hey! Are you coming?
Feeling annoyed, I texted back, Yeah, I’ll be down in a bit. Just gotta do this work you asked me to do.
Oh, how’s it coming?
I’ll know in a sec.
He didn’t respond, so I chucked the phone to the end of the bed and went on reading. It didn’t take more than a few minutes to confirm my initial suspicions: we hadn’t made nearly as much money that night as we had expected to.
“Crap!” I said aloud. One way or another, I’d have to tell him, and I wasn’t looking forward to that.
With a feeling of agitation, I got up and paced the room. Outside the window the neon light was flickering as though about to go out. The pool was empty but for a twenty-something woman in a one-piece who was making out with a man roughly twice her age. The flickering light cast odd shadows on their faces and the water.
Realizing I wasn’t going to get anything else accomplished tonight, I changed into a pair of high-waisted jean shorts, a long blue cardigan and a white blouse and went downstairs to the bar.
There was a round arched mirror hanging up in the hall by the stairs. I paused and examined myself to make sure I didn’t look completely repulsive. My bangs were getting too long: I had cancelled an appointment to cut them the weekend before when I found out we would be going to Florida. My hair had a reddish tinge and fell just a few inches past my shoulders, where it became increasingly wavy. The dark color formed a striking contrast with the rest of my face, which was ghostly pale.
I found Randy seated at the bar drinking a rum and coke. He motioned for me to sit down in the empty seat next to him.
“Does it ever bother you,” I asked, “how women in books are always portrayed as being sticks?”
“I don’t read many novels,” said Randy. “I find real life so much more fascinating.”
“Really? That surprises me. I’d think you would be a big reader.”
“Oh, I read. I just don’t read a lot of fiction.”
I shook my head and scoffed in feigned exasperation. “Honestly, how are we even friends? But you’ve seen movies, no?”
“I have. I’ve seen one hundred and eighty-three movies.”
“Okay, well you’ve noticed how the heroines are always morbidly thin? You’ve never seen a heroine of a movie who was chubby, or chunky, or above average weight.”
Randy clinked the ice in his glass, thinking. “No, I don’t guess I have.”
“But there are so many more types of beauty in the world than just tall, skinny white girls. But you don’t see them on TV or in movies or on magazine covers because we want to pretend they don’t exist. Those who wield the power make sure they stay invisible.”
I let out a huff and raised one hand into the air, feeling suddenly energized. “Bartender, I’d like a Long Island iced tea. Please.”
The bartender, who had been eyeing me warily ever since I sat down, slunk off and returned a minute later with the iced tea.
Randy, meanwhile, continued to stare soberly down at the polished countertop.
“You know, I never thought of that. I guess being a woman would make you more aware of such things.”
“It does! There are so many things I would like to change about the way our society is run. Men have been in charge for so long that it never occurs to them that things could be different.”
After I finished my tea, I ordered a lemon drop martini. I continued to rant while Randy listened, nodding placidly, and heads turned throughout the bar.
“Look at me, for example. I’m not what you’d call skinny, exactly—I believe ‘thick’ is the word the kids use—but I’m not hideous.”
“No, not at all,” said Randy quietly.
“Maybe one day Greta Gerwig will play me in a movie.”
“Mmmm. How old is she, thirty-two?”
“Thirty-four, I think, but she looks younger.” I drained my glass and motioned for the bartender to bring me a refill. “She’s much prettier than me, but she’s got those thick thighs and sad eyes.”
“Didn’t you once tell me you wanted to be a writer? Maybe you could go to Hollywood.”
“Maybe.” I clutched the base of my glass tightly. “God, there’s so many things I want to do with my life.”
“I read about this actress,” said Randy, “I forget her name, who taught herself to write screenplays by going to the library and reading books on writing. And she wrote and produced her own film and then became a famous actress. She just went for it. Sometimes that’s all it takes.”
“Initiative,” I said miserably. “That’s the one thing I don’t have.”
“Well, if I knew how to get it,” Randy said with a shrug, “I’d tell you. Motivation is a bit like wisdom. You can’t just impart it to someone. They either have it, or they don’t have it.”
He stretched, and when he turned back around his eyes were wide. “Don’t look now but it’s the guy, the one who’s playing next week.”
“Braxton?” I nearly shouted. It was all I could do not to turn around.
“Is that his name? My memory is foggy tonight. But yes, I’m really looking forward to seeing him play. By all accounts he’s an even better fighter than Bruce.”
For a brief, anxious moment I thought maybe he had been mistaken. But then I saw him out of the corner of my eye sidling up to the end of the bar.
The moment he saw me, Braxton came over and sat down beside me.
“Well, of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world…” he said quietly.
“Hello, Braxton.” I was already slightly tipsy and didn’t much feel like talking.
“You must be worn out after that fight.” He appeared to have just gotten out of the shower and smelled strongly of Axe body spray.
“I wasn’t the one fighting.”
But he remained undeterred by my terse answers. “I don’t feel tired at all. I feel like when you’re a kid on Halloween, and your parents let you stay up late and eat candy. And then all the sugar rushes to your head, and you can’t get to sleep.”
“Yeah, but eventually you crashed and ended up crying into your mom’s lap because you were so tired and grumpy.”
Braxton smiled as though savoring a particular memory. “Sometimes I wish I was a kid and it was still Halloween.”
He said it with such understated melancholy that for a moment I forgot to be annoyed and was genuinely moved. It was the first really interesting and sincere thing he had said in the brief time we had known each other. “I never pegged you as the sentimental type.”
“Some things you can’t help but be sentimental about.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
Braxton shrugged. “The way a newborn cries when his mother holds him for the first time. The taste of the first fish you ever caught with your own hands. The smell of wood smoke and incense in autumn.”
Randy, who had been sitting there quietly listening all this while, let out a loud sniff. I turned to look over at him and found that he was crying.
“You gonna be okay?” I handed him a coarse napkin.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine in a bit. I think I need to be heading to bed. Breakfast again in the morning?”
“Yeah, I’d love that.”
He turned to leave, then turned back around. “By the way, how did we do tonight earnings-wise? How much did we bring in?”
My insides twisted miserably. I hadn’t been planning on having this conversation tonight. “We did just fine,” I lied. “We made so much money.”
“Good,” said Randy, looking relieved. “See you.” He turned and left.
I don’t know what had possessed me to lie like that. He was going to find out eventually, and when he did, I would be in trouble for misleading him. Guilt weighed on me. And the worst of it was that there wasn’t anyone else here I could talk to—not about this.
“Bartender?” I said loudly, shoving my glass back across the counter. “I’m going to need another drink.”