“Lookin’ like leftovers to me,” Alex agrees.
He’s kept me company in the kitchen the entire time. He’s eaten all of his supper and half of mine. I’ve been too busy, and when I’m busy with something, food doesn’t interest me. Even when I’m preparing it.
“Would you like some coffee? I think I need a cup,” I tell him.
“Sure,” he says.
I have my hands full, I’m loading the fridge, and I mean to pour the coffee myself, but I turn back to the kitchen island and Alex has poured it. Not only has he poured it, but he’s put in sweetener, too.
“You wanna get the milk?” he asks.
I hand it to him, and he puts a splash in my cup, and a double splash in his, before handing the carton back to me. I put it away, take one last look at the mountains of food I’ve made, and close the door. Then I check my watch. It’s after nine. I’m surprised, it’s as if the evening slipped away from me.
“One last cigarette, and I think I’m calling it a night,” I say. Alex bursts out laughing in my face.
“The night is just startin’,” he says. “I’d be leavin’ for somewhere about now.”
“That’s only because you don’t have to get up tomorrow and take care of you,” I tell him with a smile.
“Low blow, babe,” he says.
“Babe?” I cock an eyebrow at him. No one on the face of this earth has ever called me ‘babe’.
“Sorry.” But he’s still laughing. And he’s not really sorry.
“S’okay.” It is, it just struck me as, as ridiculous. “Where does one GO at this hour?” I ask him.
“Hell, anywhere. Everything is doin’ now. Clubs are openin’ up, shit the first acts have already played. Concerts are just gettin’ goin’. Uh, there are probably a hundred parties, at least one movie premiere, or I could just be goin’ to a movie, maybe, it’s kinda early for that, though. There’s all sorts of stuff happ’nin.” He lights himself a cigarette. “It’s Friday night.”
He makes his last statement as if it should explain everything. Only Friday night means nothing to me. It hasn’t meant anything to me since Errol and I got married. After that, every night was just about like every other night, and once Tish came along, the nights and the days began melting into meaningless blocks of time. The only day that stood out for me was pay day.
“Then I’m holding you up,” I say.
“I’m not goin’ out tonight,” he tells me. “Foot.”
“Still bothering you?”
“Not too much. It’s a little sore. All that walkin’ today.”
“You should have said something.”
“Didn’t bother me then.” He rolls the tip of his cigarette in the ashtray we’re sharing. He bends over piles of ashes as if he sees something in them. “It’s okay, not goin’ out every night.”
His voice is so soft I barely hear him, then he looks up.
“Really, it’s okay.”
I have no idea what to say to him. I never think about going out, so it seems perfectly normal to be in. But the look on his face, it’s so odd, almost wistful. Bordering on sad. I don’t know if what he’s saying is to convince me, or convince himself.
“I miss it, sometimes.”
“Your foot will be fine in a few days, then you can come and go as you please again,” I assure him.
“It’s not the same when you don’t drink, ya know?”
“It’s not? I’m not much of a drinker. It was always too expensive, and now I don’t care anymore,” I told him. A look of complete incredulity crosses his face. “Seriously.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Damn.” He looks at the smoke curling from his cigarette.
“I assumed, well, I...” I begin, and then think better of it.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“No, say it. You assumed... what?”
“I assumed that one of the reasons I got this job was because I’m not a drinker.” His eyes go very narrow for a moment, and I think I’ve just said the wrong thing. Then they open up again, but he turns away from me. Now I’m SURE I’ve said the wrong thing.
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“Why do you think that?” I ask her. I’m dyin’. Really, really dyin’ here. Christ. What the hell did Juliette tell HER? Ya know, it’s bad enough when people talk about you to your face. It sucks a hundred times worse when they do it behind your back.
“It came up a couple of times when I was interviewing,” she says.
“What, that you couldn’t drink?”
“No,” she says, “that you don’t drink now.”
“I’m an alcoholic,” I tell her. Might as well, I tell everyone else.
“I gathered that.”
I look at her now, and she looks like she usually looks: calm. I guess I don’t look calm, because her hand reaches out and touches my arm. Just a little squeeze. Like at breakfast this morning.
“I was told about the problems you’ve had in the past,” she says. “They’re serious problems and I would imagine that they would tell anyone who was coming to work for you like this. In your house.”
I just nod. Of course Juliette would tell Siobhan about me, and the drinking, and the drugs. I don’t know why I feel so surprised about it. Or so creepy about it, either. Everyone knows about me. EVERYONE.
“I have a child,” Siobhan says. “I suppose that Juliette and Marilyn thought that I would need to know some background, in case I had a problem about it.”
“Do you?” I ask, and realize, immediately, that I’ve just asked a really, REALLY dumb question.
“Apparently not,” Shi says, and I hear a hint of laughter in her voice.
The laughter is in her eyes, too, it’s all over her face. That makes me feel a little better. What a fucked up day. From good to bad, to great, to okay, to crap, to this. Makes my head spin, days like this. I smile back at Shi and she just shakes her head.
“I ought to go now,” she says.
“Do you haveta?”
“No, do you need something?”
God. I need for her to stay. Just for a coupla more hours. I’m not real tired, and when she’s gone and I’m here alone, I’m here ALONE. Not even the dogs to keep me company. Just the TV. I don’t want to do that tonight, sit there and get bored in front of the TV and wonder about, about anything.
“No, I just thought, you know, you don’t HAVE to go, and maybe, I don’t know, you wanna just hang here for a while?”
“Hang? Does this require some type of physical skill, because if it does, I don’t think I’m in any kind of shape for that.” She delivers the line deadpan, and next thing I’m laughin’ at her.
“Nah, nothin’ physical. Just, you know, just this. Sittin’, and shit.”
“Sitting’s not a problem, but don’t count on any ‘and shit’.” And I’m laughing at her again, she’s such a smartass when she wants to be. “I have an idea,” she says.
“Shoot.”
“Well, I bought these CD’s a while ago. And I listened to them, but I can’t make heads or tails out of them. But,” and she holds her finger up, “I have been told, by reliable sources, that there is video out there of some of the aforementioned music.”
“Oh, no.......” I’m groaning.
“Oh. Yes. Now, I’m not saying that you HAVE any of this video in your own personal possession, although I HAVE gone through your entire collection of DVD’s and such and think that I DO recall, perhaps, seeing something of that nature piled in with some of those so called ‘films’ you’ve accumulated.”
“Tell me you don’t want to do this.”
“But I do,” she says. “Alex, I can’t tell who’s singing what on those CD’s of yours. Tish and Kim tell me that I can if I, and I quote, ‘watch the videos’. And seeing as you’re not doing anything exciting this evening, and you’ve sat around here watching me work, well....”
“Everyone told me you were nice,” I say, whining for effect.
“I’m very nice, I think you know that by now,” she says. “C’mon, be a sport. How bad could they be? Besides, I’ve never even had cable TV, so I haven’t seen anything I could compare them to. How bad could they be?”
“Bad beyond belief,” I tell her, but I’m sorta jazzed about this. I mean, she’s never mentioned a thing about who I am, and what I do. Not really. And that day, with the CD’s in her bag, I forgot all about that. ‘Cause if I’da remembered, I’da asked her how she liked them. But this is sorta, I dunno, cool, that she really doesn’t seem to ‘care’, like fans ‘care’, but that she’s, you know, curious.
“Come on, I thought your little group was hot stuff,” she says.
And that makes me laugh, too. Hot stuff. At one time, we about walked on water, as far as popularity and shit goes. We’re still the best selling group of our ‘kind’. Residuals roll in on a regular basis. Keeps us all better than well off. In fact, we’re releasing some greatest hits pile of garbage in Europe later this year. Gotta keep things goin’, even when we’re not doin’ anything.
“Hot stuff, hunh?”
“That’s what I hear,” she says. Then she laughs and gets up. “Ah, I’m just teasing you. You don’t have to show me anything. Besides, it’s late for us civilians. I need to get some....”
“Ya wore me down. C’mon, I’ll show ya some of them.”
“No, rea...”
“It’s okay. It’s comedy. You’ll laugh. A lot,” I tell her. Only I hope she doesn’t laugh. Well, at least not too much.
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© 2003 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2003 (*> Baby Bird Productions, Inc.
