P.J. Morse - Clancy Parker 02 - Exile on Slain Street (13 page)

I went toward the bathrooms by myself while Kevin gave Lorelai some direction. He put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a pep talk, as if he were a coach and she were on a basketball team: “You’re a pretty girl, so you should be aggressive. You are a competitor! A warrior!”

“A warrior!” she cried out.

Tortoise and Hare left me alone, following basic bathroom protocol. Right as I was about to open the door to the women’s room, I felt two arms lock around me in a bear hug. My instincts told me to scream and drive my elbow into the offender’s side, but I heard Patrick whisper, “How about a detour?” just in time.

Once Patrick pulled me into the men’s bathroom, he leaned in to kiss me, like he meant it. With the Major Rager, the Manhattan, the champagne and the Gretsch Duo Jet, I had no problems kissing him back this time. The bathroom attendant ho-hummed discreetly and ducked out.

Outside the door, I heard Hare ask, “He go in there by himself?”

The attendant replied, “Yes. I’m just getting some air. It’s a toilet, you know.”

I murmured against Patrick’s lips, “I think the attendant needs a good tip.” I was wrapping my right leg around his left, nestling in closer. My body remembered it had been a long time since I had a boyfriend before my head did.

“A crisp hundred,” he said back, in between kisses and tongue.

I let my hand rise to his cheek, but I started to remember that he had twisted his tongue with nearly every woman in the house. And it was my job to watch him, not make out with him. He moved slowly, which gave me just enough time to draw back.

“Hey, why so cold all of a sudden?”

Although I didn’t particularly want to push him away, I tried to think of excuses. Most of them involved STDs, but we had all been tested before the show, and he knew it, so that wasn’t going to fly. All I could think of to say was, “I don’t like it when you kiss all those other girls. It’s gross.”

“Aw, c’mon. It’s just for television. Kevin shoves all this down my throat, all business, all the time. Look, half of them, I don’t even like.” He seemed sincere, and his voice was different. He was looking me in the eye.

“You say that to all the girls.” I told him, laughing. Kevin and I were going to have a long talk about how to cope with this situation. I expected Patrick to make passes at me, but I did not expect it to happen when the cameras weren’t rolling. I thought the whole thing would be like a play, with no real feelings involved. Nor could I have predicted how I would respond to his advances.

He sat beside me on the countertop and leaned his head on my shoulder. Usually on the show, he was real handsy and never asked if he could feel a girl up first. This version of Patrick was respectful. He didn’t say anything or try to fast-talk.

“That feels nice,” I said. It wasn’t a lie.

“You know what?” he started to giggle.

“What?”

“I think the boobs are getting too big.” He began to comb my hair with his fingers.

“You really think so? I was afraid the trend was to keep making them bigger.”

“If they make ‘em any bigger, then you wouldn’t be able to see Andi’s face. That might not be a bad thing.”

I tried so hard not to laugh, but I betrayed myself. He added, “You know she’s cross-eyed, right? You don’t notice because of her tits, but her left eye turns inward and it drives me nuts.”

I hadn’t noticed. It was hard to notice anything beyond boobs and hair. But I was impressed that Patrick noticed details. I thought he was too drunk to even care half the time. Then I looked at the bottle of whiskey he had perched on the sink’s countertop, next to the bathroom attendant’s economy-sized mouthwash and plastic cups. He had brought it onstage with him and took a gulp of it, one of his stage habits. “Can I have a sip of that?” I asked.

He pushed it away. “Gee, I thought you were worried about germs.” He wagged his finger toward my nose.

“It’s watered down, isn’t it?” I asked.

He took his head off my shoulder and looked at me, shocked. “How’d you know?”

“You don’t share it with the other girls.” I started moving in closer.

“They’d think I was a pussy. You don’t mind? I’m not, like, ruining your rock-star ideal or anything?”

I shook my head and leaned in to kiss him. When we separated, he said, “God, you’re young.”

“I don’t think you’re a pussy. I think you’re smart,” I replied.

“I always did love Gardenia girls,” Patrick said. “I don’t say that just to make ‘em happy in that town.”

I had to ask. Muriel would kill me if I didn’t. “Did you ever hear of Muriel Kovacs? She’s a friend of mine.”

He howled. “Oh no way! Kovacs? They own that crazy place…”

I filled in with “Kovacs Tanning Salon and Video Rental.”

“Aw, they had the
best
selection of horror flicks. Anywhere. And then these hot chicks would be in and out of the tanning bed. Best place in Gardenia, hands down. My parents told me about her — she does music now. I loved that place! They had a popcorn machine!”

I went along with it, but I took a mental note to ask Muriel how she made sure the suntan lotion didn’t mix in with the popcorn butter.

Then we heard Kevin yelling outside the men’s room. “Where the hell is Patrick? We gotta shoot the scenes with Lorelai! Lorelai, honey, you stay right there.”

Patrick pulled out his wallet, and he really did put that $100 in the attendant’s basket. “Showtime,” he said. Then he gave me a long kiss.

“You gonna kiss Lorelai as long as you kissed me?” I asked, holding on to him.

“I’ll kiss her as long as I gotta. Would it be so bad to say that she might be competition? She’s an actress and all, but she’s a sweetie.”

To take his mind off Lorelai, I kissed Patrick before he went out the door, and the bathroom attendant took his place.

Once the bathroom attendant saw the bill in the basket, he gave me time to touch up my lipstick and acted as a lookout for me to leave the bathroom when the cameras were gone.

When it was my turn to shoot a scene with Patrick, he sat down at my table. The electrical charge that had been in the bathroom was gone with the presence of the cameras. Nothing killed romance like having a producer, a camera guy and a sound guy heavily breathing over your every move. Patrick asked me about myself, and we talked about Gardenia. He complimented me on my guitar playing, and I riffed on how the Nuclear Kings inspired me.

Then Kevin jumped in. “Are there any women in the house you want to warn him about?”

“You looking for a catfight?” I asked.

“Of course,” he replied.

When I turned to Patrick, he rolled his eyes. He was happiest playing his guitar or mixing his drinks. The rest of it seemed to be a way to make some money. But I did what Kevin told me and recited the standard lines from the reality shows: “Well, Patrick, I don’t think some of the women in the house are here for you.”

“Who?” He did a good job of looking hurt.

“Tina and Topaz, for starters. They’re mean to the other girls.”

He shrugged. “Well, it is a competition.”

“They look at the camera before they look at you,” I said.

“I have to see all of this myself before I make a call,” he replied, dutifully. Then he looked at Kevin. “Was that good enough, dude?”

Kevin ignored Patrick and turned to me. “Wanna say anything about Lorelai?”

“Of course not,” I said. “I don’t have a problem with Lorelai.” I looked at her in the corner, sitting by Fred and looking over his shoulder at his magazine.

“What if I said she said something bad about you?” Kevin asked, rubbing his hands together.

I shrugged. Kevin’s interrogation style would have done a waterboarder proud. Most anyone would say what he wanted, but I wasn’t going to give him everything. “I’ll just stick with Tina and Topaz, thank you very much.”

“Friends turned enemies arc,” Hare chattered, smiling. “We can make them hate each other later.” He may have been new to this, but he was already finding ways to manipulate the contestants.

“Not a bad idea,” Kevin said, taking notes on a sheet. “OK, can we reshoot that again?” He laughed. “Once more, you two! With feeling!”

Chapter Fourteen:
Stretch Hummer on the Loose

O
nce Kevin was satisfied with the reshooting, we climbed back into the Hummer. My fingers were still tingling after Patrick let me play the guitar, and I couldn’t stop thinking about our little interlude in the bathroom. His resting his head on my shoulder seemed more intimate than all of his on-camera kisses.

But I couldn’t forget that Patrick was swapping spit with Lorelai only a few feet away from me. At least he started kissing her only because she was going on and on about how she couldn’t wait to bake him a batch of her famous good-luck brownies, the same brownies that got her old West Hollywood roommate a guest spot as a victim on
Law & Order: SVU
. It looked like he stuck his tongue in her mouth to keep her quiet.

So I decided to make myself a drink. Just as with the bar at the mansion, all the labels on the liquor bottles were covered up with duct tape. Only the label for Major Rager was displayed freely. I started fishing for some whiskey.

Kevin asked, “Hey, can you turn that can of Major Rager toward the camera, maybe take a sip?”

“Can I pretend to take a sip?” I asked. There was only so much energy drink a woman could take in one day. I was still feeling the caffeine shakes, and it was getting dark.

“Sure. Just get that label in there,” he said. “And, Lorelai, I know you’re having fun, but you know better. Keep your body turned toward the camera. We need your profile. Patrick, don’t turn your back… argh… are you two listening to me? Do you have to get that close? Really?”

Patrick took enough of a breath to inform Kevin, “We’re kissing — isn’t that what you want?”

Kevin complained, “Why do you have to be so difficult today?”

Patrick kept kissing Lorelai, and he waved his hand behind him, as if he were trying to swat away a fly.

I shook my head at this little power struggle between star and producer and looked out the Hummer windows. As Fred maneuvered the Hummer onto Columbus, I saw tourists and homeless people pointing at the vehicle in shock. One guy pushing a shopping cart with a toilet tank inside yelled, “Who the fuck do you think you are? Oprah?”

I put down the can of Major Rager. Then I realized we ran a red light and almost swerved into a bicyclist who was riding alongside us. He raised his left hand to offer a one-finger salute. No one else noticed. Lorelai was nattering again about her brownies and how they got her a spot in a video by some rap group called the Big Ballers.

“Fred? Hey, Fred?” I asked. I punched the intercom button just as he almost hit a jaywalker. “Fred? You’re going kinda fast there.”

Kevin began tapping on the window between us and Fred, but there was no response. Then he rolled down the window and stuck his head and arm in. Then he stopped moving suddenly. “Holy shit! Fred! Wake up!” He tried to pull himself out of the window. And then we heard, “I’m stuck!”

Patrick disentangled himself from Lorelai and asked, “Something wrong?”

Of course Kevin managed to wedge his girth in the limo driver’s window, right as we were gaining speed and the driver was somehow out of commission. Whatever happened to Fred, it was obvious that his foot was on the accelerator, not on the brake. A Saab in front of us quickly swerved out of the way as the limo overtook it. We weren’t going fast, but definitely fast enough to cause a problem in a dense neighborhood like North Beach.

I had an idea. I yelled at Kevin, “Can you stretch over to roll down the passenger window?” In the meantime, I started hitting all the buttons that rolled down windows and moved forward to the passenger-side window directly behind the cab’s passenger window.

“My arm’s not that long!” Kevin responded, his butt moving side to side.

“Stretch!” I leapt over Tortoise and shoved Hare out of the way. They both kept filming.

I pulled my torso out of my passenger window and saw that Kevin managed to roll down the window of Fred’s cab. Unfortunately, the Hummer was listing toward cars parked along Columbus, and I saw a police car coming up behind us, sirens blasting. I ducked back inside.

“Kevin! Turn the wheel left, or I can’t get in! We’re too close to the cars!”

I heard a terrible groan as Kevin twisted his large body so he could reach the steering wheel. But he gave me a little breathing room to shift from one window to another. Now the Hummer was straddling two lanes and blocking traffic completely. The noise of the honking was almost unbearable.

I went back through the window, pulling out my whole upper body this time. I struggled to grip the roof, but I felt a hand on my left leg. I could see enough through the window — it was Patrick, steadying me.

“Move the right leg out!” he yelled. “You have room! Kevin, turn left a little more!”

I pulled myself out more so that my butt rested on the top of the limo door. Then I stuck out my leg and inserted it into the cab’s passenger window. We were still moving too fast, and I saw the cyclist Fred almost hit catch up to us.

“Road hog!” he yelled. He was a typical daredevil San Francisco bike messenger, thinking he could outpace a stretch Hummer.

I tried to be optimistic. If he could catch up to us, things couldn’t be so bad. But then I saw the stoplight coming up, plus cars waiting at the intersection. The light turned from green to yellow.

“Kevin! Push his leg down! Push it! Beat the light!” If we didn’t beat that light, I’d either be smashed up against the Hummer’s side or flipped over the roof of a Prius.

Using his beefy arm, Kevin pushed Fred’s leg down, and we flew through the intersection just as the light turned from yellow to red. Although we put some space between the Hummer and the unfortunate cars stuck behind us, there were still plenty of stoplights ahead.

“Now lift his foot! Ease up!” I screamed. I could feel Patrick’s hand steadying my torso, holding me against the steel that divided the front and the back of the car.

The speed decreased steadily. I shifted my weight right and slowly slid my lower body into the passenger window. I felt Patrick’s hand move my left leg. I tried to get that leg in quickly, worried I’d hang it up on something. I had a vision of my left leg soaring in the air and kicking the bike messenger in the face.