Love is Blind… and Pretty Stupid Too
“Wh… no, wait, stop!” shouts Lou as he tries to keep me in the chair, but I can’t keep still. My face is completely covered with make-up, most of my hair is in curlers and he’s right behind me, pulling that damned brush through the rest of it.
“Ow! Er… Hel… hello? Yes, who is it? Da… Dave? Did you… Did you ask me where I was?” I shout into the phone, then I cover the mouthpiece with one hand and angrily whisper at Lou’s reflection in the mirror, “Will you watch what the hell you’re doing!”
“How can you expect me to work under these conditions?” he mutters, in perfect Audrey Hepburn style.
“Ssh!” I hiss, on the verge of a hysterical crisis. If they find out I’m not at the dentist, I’ll be out on my ass. “What did you say? To… tonight? Is that really necessary? Couldn’t we see each other tomorrow like we agreed?” I don’t really know what to think. Until this morning, Dave was the most impetuous and unreachable man on the West coast, and now he suddenly seems to think that he can’t do anything at all without me. I was convinced that I still had some free days before the start of the competition, but for some reason, all my commitments evaporated during the coffee break and the priority now seems to be organising meetings with the Fashion Week sponsors. “No? Err… no, I’m not doing anything.” Sure, apart from trying to catch up on fifteen hours of missing sleep, ironing, eating and letting my mother know I’m still alive before she starts handing out flyers in the neighbourhood with my picture under the word ‘missing’. “Okay, whatever you say,” I reply, as soon as he starts shouting. “Okay, fine. I’ll be there around nine. The documents? No, but I have my laptop with me, and I’ve got pretty much everything on that. Okay. Okay, see you tonight,” I say, then hang up and take a very deep breath.
Lou gives me a severe look. “Why did you tell your boss that you were at the dentist?”
“Because he doesn’t know that I’m taking part in the contest,” I admit.
“So why didn’t you tell him?”
“Err…”
“Your silence speaks volumes, and I’m not totally sure that I want to know,” mutters Lou, raising an eyebrow.
“It’s a long story,” I say, hoping he’ll understand.
“If that’s your excuse, there’s no need to ask what the verdict will be.”
“Why don’t you be a bit more helpful?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know, Lou. I’ve got the rehearsals for the contest, work, Dave demanding I spend the evening of the opening night with him without realising that I’m one of the contestants. What the hell should I do?”
“Tell him! Done. End of problem,” he says without giving me a chance to answer, and then goes back to violently brushing out my hair.
“Thank you very much indeed,” I mutter sulkily and stare at his face in the mirror, hoping that at least he’ll give me some useful advice or, alternatively, tell me that I am the fairest in the land. Unfortunately for me, he doesn’t say anything at all, so I pick up a gossip magazine in the hope of distracting myself from it all.
“Am I wrong or have we got something to celebrate here? I can’t believe you did it!”
At that moment Al enters, waving a bottle of champagne, and when I see him in the doorway, I can’t stay in that damn chair a moment longer. I slip away from Lou’s claws and find myself in Al’s arms, hoping he’ll never stop hugging me. When I’m with him it’s as if everything else disappears for a while: I almost feel normal, almost happy, almost like everyone else.
“What did I tell you? What did I tell you?” he says, squeezing me as tight as he can, without caring about my hair or the inch of make-up on my face. “I knew you’d get through!” he laughs exultantly, unable to let me go.
“Al, I… can’t breathe.” I push him off and try and catch my breath.
“So? Aren’t you going to tell me how it went?” he asks me excitedly. “I couldn’t get here any earlier, but they told me that it had been a success.”
“Yeah, no thanks to her,” mutters Lou resentfully.
“Sam, did you make Lou angry?”
“I’m afraid that I did,” I admit.
“What the heck did you do?”
“It was a disaster!” cuts in Lou, pacing up and down the room. “I told her not to put on black shoes and guess what shoes she puts on?”
“I’m not sure that I’m ready to find out…”
“The black ones! Black shoes with the green dress, I mean, can you imagine?”
“Sam…” Al throws out his arms in desperation. “How will you survive the disgrace?”
“Yeah, laugh it off, but you wouldn’t have laughed like that if you’d seen what she did with the pashmina,” replies Lou, rummaging through his make-up bag.
“No, you’re right. If there is one thing that I cannot tolerate it’s the improper use of a pashmina,” he answers, before whispering to me, “What the hell is a pashmina?”
Needless to say, Lou hears everything and immediately starts venting his spleen. “You deserve to be allowed to dress that badly! My talent is being wasted here!”
Poor thing. He’s been working very hard, we shouldn’t treat him like this.
“No, come on, Lou, don’t abandon me now. You know that without you, my wardrobe is a disaster,” Al cries out in a last desperate attempt to appease him, but it’s too late. Lou has had enough of us and our stupid sense of humour, and, ignoring our desperate appeals, storms out.
“He’s gone,” I say guiltily, looking at the empty room. “We’ve lost him.”
“Finally!” cries Al, who doesn’t seem to share my apprehension. “I missed you,” he whispers, closing his eyes for a moment. He rubs the tip of his nose against mine and holds me tight.
“Oh…” I say, blushing.
“What do you mean ‘oh’?” He backs away for a moment and looks at me with a frown. “Just ‘oh’?”
“Ah…”
“Oh, now we’re really making progress,” he jokes.
“Well if you’d just give me a second…”
“‘I missed you too, Al’,” he says, in a ridiculous attempt to mimic my voice.
“I do not talk like that!” I shriek defensively, still laughing.
“Yes, yes, please, tear off all my clothes and let’s roll around in the wigs!” he continues, getting a bit carried away and dragging me off towards the couch.
“Al, no, wait… wait, what are you doing?”
“‘Yes, yes, again,’” he continues in that silly voice. “‘Spank me. I love it when you spank me!’”
“Al, will you please cut it out?” I beg, before we fall onto the cushions, only narrowly missing the table.
“Can you stop killing my buzz?” he says, putting one hand into my hair and pointing to the couch with the other. “Look, it’s calling out to us – resistance is futile!” He kisses my shoulder.
“Al, listen, I…” I begin, but he is deaf to my protests and his lips go from my neck to behind my ear. “Al…” I gradually start to lose touch with reality, while his lips cover every single part of my face. My eyes. My cheeks.
“You smell delicious,” he murmurs breathlessly, taking me gently by the waist.
“Al…”
“Shhh,” he whispers, and presses his mouth against mine, closing his eyes. I close mine too for a moment, and then I remember everything: the phone call, The Chronicle, Curvy, Dave and…
“Al, hang on. No, I’m serious.” I push him off with both hands.
“What’s the matter?” he asks, not releasing me.
“We can’t.”
“Why not? There’s no one around? Do you want me to close the door?”
“No, it’s not that.”
“What is it then?”
“I have to go.”
“What do you mean? Come on, you can’t go. We have to celebrate, you promised me,” he reminds me, a disappointed look on his face.
The champagne, his suite… why am I so stupid? Why?
“I know, you’re right,” I admit with a sigh, groping for the right words. “But I didn’t imagine…”
“You didn’t imagine what?”
And now comes the difficult part. “They called me from work.”
“From work? Have you seen what time it is?”
“Yeah, but there was something that… something I said that I’d handle. I can’t back out now.”
Al puts his hands in his pockets. He looks really miserable.
“I’m sorry, Al, I really am.”
“No, don’t worry about it. If you have to work…”
“I promise you, another time…”
“Sure, another time…”
He goes over to the door and glances back at me. “Okay, listen, you get changed and I’ll go and get the car.”
“Why? You just got here.”
“I haven’t got anything else to do, I’ll give you a lift.”
“Al, you don’t need to do that.”
“I’d like to,” he says, and he sounds sincere. “And anyway, I don’t want you wandering around on your own at this time of night.”
“But it’s a long way and you must be exhausted,” I insist. I insist a bit too much, maybe, because he seems to smell a rat. He walks back over to me and gives me a preoccupied look. I know what he’s thinking and I know it’ll only take him a moment to work out what’s really going on.
“Where do you have to go?”
“I told you, I have to work.”
“Yes, but where?”
“I…”
“I get it,” he murmurs laconically.
“Al…” I say, stopping him before he goes back to the door.
“So is that how it works? He ignores you, hardly remembers your name, and then when he needs something he picks up the phone in the knowledge that whatever time of day or night it is, whatever you’re doing, you’ll drop it all and run to him. Is that right? Is that what you want? Is that how you want to be treated?” he asks me angrily, looking disappointed. And I don’t know how to answer, because I know that he’s totally right.
“Look, it’s not what you think.” I’m on the verge of crying and I can feel a knot in my throat, and I don’t know if it’s because I’ve hurt him without meaning to or that he’s reminded me that Dave will never want me. “Believe me, it’s not… it’s not like that.”
“No? Then call him,” he challenges me. “Pick up the phone and tell him: I’m sorry, tonight I’m busy.”
“You know I can’t.”
“Tell him: tonight I have to go out because I have just got through the first round of one of the most important beauty competitions in the country thanks to my abilities and I want to celebrate with Al, the guy you saw me with the other day.” He’s angry now. “The idiot who just travelled two hundred and fifty miles to see me. Who spent all day thinking about the mole on my neck and who just wanted to hold me tight for a few minutes on that horrible red couch,” he confesses, almost shouting.
“Al…” I say his name in a whisper, my eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t mean to, really…”
When he notices the state I’m in, he calms down right away. His anger vanishes and all that is left is an infinite sadness. “No, you don’t have to justify yourself. You warned me about all this,” he says, putting his hands back in his pockets. “I’m the stupid one for hoping things would go differently.” And we stand there next to each other without knowing where to look, without knowing what else to say. “What a disaster,” I hear him murmur, as he raises a hand and dries my face with his fingers. “Come on, get yourself ready. I’ll wait for you in the car.”
“You don’t have to take me there, I can take a taxi, really.”
“Hurry up, Sam, or you’ll be late,” he says, and walks out of the room, leaving me alone with an unopened bottle of champagne.
At the end of the day, it’s what I deserve. Loneliness and alcohol.
*
“Is it here?”
I stick my head out of the window but I can’t see anything I recognise except a small newspaper kiosk – the same small newspaper kiosk we drove past not even two minutes ago.
“We have already been here, where are we going wrong?” I groan. “He said to take the third street.”
“It must be this one. There’s the florist there, at the corner of the bank,” says Al as he looks around.
“So where’s number twenty-two? This is sixty-four,” I say, pointing to a nearby front door.
“On the other side. You just have to cross the road.”
It takes me a while but in the end I find it. It’s a very smart, well looked after two storey townhouse, just like all the other buildings in Nob Hill. I look up at it and I wonder what Dave is doing right now.
“Okay, I’ll be going, then,” I say, summoning up my courage. “Thanks for the lift, Al.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“What are you going to do now? Are you going back to the Ritz?”
“Nah…” he answers indifferently. “The night is young. I might call a couple of friends and go and get a few drinks. Hook up with a stripper in a club…” But he doesn’t seem to believe it himself, so I certainly don’t – I don’t need any more encouragement to feel like the horrible person I actually am.
“Okay, well, have fun.” I get out of the car.
“Sam…” he says, grabbing my arm.
“What?”
“Don’t go.”
“I…”
He lets go. “Okay, forget it. Pretend I never said anything.”
And our paths split: he returns to his world and I to mine. The one where I’m nobody and chase unrealisable dreams whilst standing outside a building I’ve never seen before. Those classic moments when you think that, in the unlikely event of a piano falling on your head, at the end of the day you probably deserve it.