A camera crew, a photographer, and numerous other strangers were crowded into his house and had been there since he’d been unceremoniously woken at the inhuman hour of ten in the morning. It had been a stroke of luck, an unexpected blessing, that he had managed to sleep through the dawn arrival of a cleaning company, of a florist, of a caterer, and was able to shower in peace while the camera crew set up on the lower level and the cleaning people hustled themselves through the bedroom. It was Sarah in charge of everything today, Sarah in the limelight, Sarah making small talk with the producer, the photographer, their personal assistants and the like. All he had to do was be there, react on cue, and answer the occasional question. He did it, and he did it all from a safe, buffered distance.
Inside his personal safety chamber he sat in relative silence replaying the day before, which had been a much better day than the current one was building up to. He sat inside his head, mentally painted his toenails black and thought about Annie. He thought about the clean taste of her cheek and the astringent flavor of her glaze coated hair. He thought about her being in her shop, imagining her sifting through countless containers of crystals and gems, her small hands sorting through them, a small smile on her lips as she did. He thought even farther back, thought of her in Arizona where it wasn’t so much her silvery, fragile beauty that caught his attention but her kindness and willingness to listen. It was hard for him to understand how the tentative threads of a friendship they had woven together in Arizona had managed to unravel over the short amount of time since they had last seen each other; how did a relationship that seemed so desperately necessary one day fade to nothing more than a memory in a matter of months; a year?
Jay admired his feet within the cushioned confines of his mind and began to work on his fingernails.
He decided that it didn’t really matter. Annie seemed genuinely pleased to have ‘found’ him again, and he felt the same. The past was the past. There was nothing he could do to change any of it, which was a lesson he had learned in rehab and kept close. He could only move forward and try to not repeat his mistakes.
“Jay!” The call of his name along with a sharp pinch to his side pulled him out of the protected confines of his thoughts and brought him into the present. He found himself slouching on a sofa in his living room, a camera pointed at him, a light glaring into his eyes. Grateful for the sunglasses he wore, he turned his attention to Sarah, who was looking at him with a cold smile plastered to her lips.
“What?” he asked, rubbing his ribs where her long nails had dug into him and feigning innocence.
“Did we lose you there, buddy?” the producer asked with a nervous laugh.
“Guess so,” he admitted. “Sorry.”
“No problem, it’s about time for a break,” the man said, and he ordered the crew to halt. Sarah took him by the hand and dragged him up off the sofa, through the house, and out into the yard.
“What’s WRONG with you?” she asked, turning the full force of her anger on him.
“Sorry,” was all Jay could manage. He understood that she was angry and that she had a perfect right to be angry, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care about Sarah’s anger, he didn’t care about the strangers crawling over every inch of his house; he didn’t care if they did this prolonged photo op for VH1. He just didn’t care about any of the bullshit about the wedding at all. The only reason he was going through with this particular escapade was because it was something that Sarah had wanted, deeply wanted, and at the time she began machining it he had wanted to please her and give her what she wanted. It dawned on him that at this very moment he didn’t care about pleasing Sarah, or even placating her, so he shrugged, realizing that it was a mistake midway through the gesture.
“You’re a son-of-a-bitch,” she told him, her generous mouth shrinking by the moment as she pursed her lips in rage.
“Look, honestly, I don’t want to do this,” he said, opting for telling the truth for once.
“Three months ago, Jay. Three months ago you should have said that you didn’t want to do this,” she railed.
“Three months ago I did. Today, I don’t.”
“Well, it’s too late now, so you’d better pull yourself together.”
“When are they gonna wrap on this?” he asked, fishing a cigarette from his pocket and lighting it. He had to cup his hand around the small flame; the wind was brisk where they were today.
“I have no idea, and we’re filming more tomorrow.”
“Fuck me, you have GOT to be kidding,” he groaned.
“I’m not kidding. We’re supposed to be going shopping tomorrow for lingerie for the wedding night...”
“Now I KNOW that you’re kidding me.”
“Don’t be a smart ass,” she told him, underscoring her words with a jab to his chest with her index finger.
“This is bullshit, Sarah.”
“This is promotion that you agreed to.”
Sarah had him there, he certainly had agreed to this in a burst of pride and ego. VH1 had courted him, and he’d taken the bait like the bottom feeder he could be when it came to publicity and promotion. He was a media whore, the biggest media whore of the entire group of people he made his livelihood with. This wasn’t the first time that his whorish ways had gotten him into a situation he couldn’t get out of.
“Whatever,” he said, and he turned away from her to walk to the edge of the yard, feigning interest in the view while feeling himself withdrawing yet again. He was deep inside his head so fast he never heard Sarah approach him, so he was thoroughly surprised when he heard her voice in his ear, violating the sanctity of his inner equilibrium.
“Fuck you, too,” she told him, before turning on her heel and heading back into the house.
Jay watched her go, then sat on the wall that bordered his yard and slipped back inside of himself.
***~~**~~**~~**~~~*~~~**~~**~~**~~***
Before the camera crew had gone, before Sarah had time to further berate him, Jay left the house. The entire day had been too pressurized; he didn’t want to stay in the house any longer, he didn’t want to be trapped within the confines of his own head, and he didn’t want to face Sarah’s imminent harangue. He wanted out. He wanted to go somewhere where no one would be complaining about his being inattentive, where no one would even notice if he was inattentive or not.
His car took him downtown to the small shopping plaza he liked to frequent for feeding his usual coffee habit. It was quiet there at that time of day, most of the shops having closed at that hour, but the cafe was opened and he ordered a large, caramel flavored coffee. Upon leaving the shop he let his eyes stray across the plaza to “The Rising Phoenix”. It was closed along with the boutiques that lined that particular portion of the shopping center. Jay sat in the courtyard to sip and smoke, and was struck with a wave of disappointment.
He hadn’t actually come there for coffee, he had come there in hopes of seeing Annie again. The disappointment didn’t last very long, though. There was always the meeting that evening. Still, it was one thing to sit in an overcrowded room trying to have an intimate conversation while shouting above the din of about a hundred and quite another to be in the hushed atmosphere of the shop. In the shop, Annie was one hundred percent his.
The thought shocked him, and he wasn’t easily shocked. It startled him as though he had said it out loud, sending an actual shiver up his spine. Less than forty-eight hours had passed since meeting Annie and he was already feeling territorial about her; thinking in terms of ‘mine’. He did that with people. There were some people that he regarded as ‘his’: his mother, and other family members, Sarah, his sponsor, his doctors, his personal assistant. Annie had quickly joined the ranks of his chosen. It wasn’t even the speed with which he had marked her out as his very own, he was historically like that, it was more that it hadn’t happened in a while, and that he had taken her on quite unintentionally.
Maybe.
He looked out across the open courtyard to blind himself with the sunset. It was muted behind his dark glasses, but that was a familiar sensation, to have muted sight. He stared until his eyes began to hurt, even with the protection of the dark lenses. His phone vibrated from deep inside his pocket. He fished it out and looked at the number. Sarah. Sarah and several messages that he’d ignored because he’d spent the day inside himself. He thumbed through the numbers, ticking them off mentally and prioritizing them as he did. A prick of disappointment struck his chest when he saw that there was no call from Annie, followed by a flush of embarrassment. Of course there was no call. He hadn’t given her his number. He had meant to last night, but her leave taking had been abrupt.
Jay sighed and thumbed through the roster of numbers once more. Most of the calls could wait, in fact all of them could, even the one from Sarah. She would call again. And again. She would ring the phone until he decided to take the call, or she decided that yelling at him wasn’t going to help or alter the events of the day. It was unlikely that she would give up, though, she was a tenacious woman. There was a time when he admired that about her, admired the way that she would go after something with urgency and purpose. Since he’d known her he’d never know her to give up on anything or give in to anything. There was comfort in it, in knowing that no matter what, Sarah wasn’t going to give up. She hadn’t given up on him, not even when he had hit rock bottom. Not when he’d been abusive and neglectful. Sometimes she would alter her methods, sometimes she would even alter her objective, but she always managed to get what she wanted in some way, shape, or form. So Jay wasn’t expecting this one call to be the only call. He wasn’t expecting to get away with much as far as his behavior had been today, because they’d be doing it again tomorrow, and possibly a third day. The only thing he was expecting was to prolong the inevitable.
Jay looked at the phone and sighed once more. Prolong the inevitable. He was a past master at it, had mastered the fine art. His thumb hovered for a moment, then came down on the tiny, recessed button on the edge of the wafer thin phone.
Let it ring.
***~~**~~**~~**~~~*~~~**~~**~~**~~***
Annie sat in the back room of her shop and stared at the cell phone that was dancing across the top of a small table. It had been ringing off and on all day, buzzing or shivering within the depths of her purse. For the better part of an hour, now, while she had been doing a quick inventory in this small room that was reserved for private readings, be it Tarot cards, astrology, or even the crystal ball, the small, thin phone had jigged and danced on the velvet draped surface of the table and she had simply watched it. For a brief time she had managed to ignore it, but it had become too compelling, and she knew that she was only staving off what had to be.
“Hello?” she said into the invisible receiver.
“There’s no point in playing games with me,” the voice on the other end of the line told her. The voice was neither angry, nor cold; it simply was. “Did you make contact last night?”
“Yes. He came to the meeting.”
“Good. Is he going to be there tonight?”
“I don’t know. Maybe,” Annie said.
“I want you to call me, either way. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” There was silence then, blessed silence that Annie hoped heralded the end of the call.
“How are things at the shop?”
“Fine. A little slow.”
“I can assure you, business will pick up,” the voice told her. “You just take care of your end of the bargain, and I’ll handle mine. Don’t forget to call me. Don’t NOT call me; there’s no forgetting, is there?”
“No,” Annie agreed, her own voice sounding very small and distant to her own ears.
“As long as we understand each other. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” The call ended and Annie shut off the phone, held it to her mouth for a brief moment, then returned it to her purse. She closed her eyes and envisioned the face that went with the voice. It had been a friendly face once, a face that she had trusted.
Annie lit a small cone of incense and bent her head over the smoke that curled from its tip, inhaling deeply the heady, lavender scent. She breathed and tired to clear her mind and assure herself that all was well, and right, and for the best. For everyone.
***~~**~~**~~**~~~*~~~**~~**~~**~~***
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© 2004 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2004 (*> Baby Bird Productions, Inc.
