Tales of a Drama Queen (21 page)

I cry into his shoulder. The sun sets. Pelicans skim the waves. The scent of seaweed hangs in the salt air.

My tears dry and I pull away from him, embarrassed.

He takes my hand and squeezes. “He didn't even know, did he?”

I look at him, confused.

“You leave D.C., you come here and live in a trailer—”

“Trolley,” I sniffle, but he doesn't hear.

“—because that's all you can afford, and you try the investigation thing, and that doesn't work, and you try the psychic thing, and that
does,
except you're not going to screw people for money, so they fire you. You think you're some kind of pathetic loser, but you get knocked down hard by your fiancé, and you stand up tall. You get knocked by the psychic place, by the lawsuit and the landlords, and the credit cards and whatever, and you're a fucking Weeble—you wobble, but you keep getting up and up.” He takes my face in his hands. “You should be proud, Elle. It doesn't matter, what you've failed at. That's just stuff that happened. What matters is
you
—and
you
are something to be proud of.”

Silence descends. The world consists of him and me—the world is empty and full, overfull, and I feel everything all at once, and I'm not sure if I remember how to breathe. Well. Apparently I'm in love. And I think: how long has
this
been going on?

“Merrick,” I say. “I think I'm falling in love with you.”

The words emerge like the tide, soft and relentless. I hear them as if they were spoken by someone else, and I don't even regret that I said them.

“Louis, honey?” A woman's voice from inside the house.
“Are you here?” She steps onto the deck; petite, neat, contained and pretty. Everything I'm not. And suddenly it's true: I
have
forgotten how to breathe. I am suffocating. This cannot be happening. There must be some explanation.

“Your sister?” I choke.

“No, she's my—”

“Girl Friday,” the woman says, and puts a possessive hand on Merrick's arm.

“Elle,” Merrick says carefully. “This is Betsy.”

I
lock my apartment door behind me and stumble for the phone. Must call Maya. Must call Dr. Kevorkian. Must call
someone.

I pick up the phone, and a male voice says: “Yo.”

“What? Hello? I didn't hear the phone ring. Hello?”

“It rang,” the voice says, “Bitch.”

Dingle. Not the someone I had in mind.

“Now I know where you live,” he says. “I want my suit, bitch. Now.”

“You really gotta work on that
bitch
thing, Dingle. How about you say asshole, instead. As in
you're an asshole.
” I hang up.

I don't feel any better. I call Maya. She's not home. I call Rusty's and order an extra-large pineapple-and-garlic pizza. I eat every piece but one, and continue to not feel better. I spend the rest of the night obsessively conditioning my hair,
cleaning my apartment, and trying to forget what happened after Merrick said
Elle, this is Betsy.

 

The next morning, I wake partially renewed. Screw Merrick and Betsy and Oprah and everyone. Today, I get Miu Miu.

I check the parking lot from the kitchen window. Merrick's car is gone. I grab the last slice of pizza and go.

Twenty minutes later, I'm filling out paperwork in the shelter office. The nice volunteer brings Miu on the leash. When Miu sees me, she hunches her left shoulder and swipes the air with her right paw.

“Ohmigod!” I say. “Did you
see
that? She made a punch at me! Who's my girl? Who's my Miu Miu?” I look at the volunteer. “Did you see that?”

She nods. “Boxers do that, when they're excited and want to play. It's why they're called boxers. But I've never seen Sca—Miu Miu do it before. She likes you.”

Boxers do that? They box? I had no idea. It is
so
neat. And of course she likes me. I love her. She has to at least
like
me. I hug her and she looks into my eyes with her big, brown, pathetic, needy eyes, and…

I panic. I mean, what am I doing? She needs serious help. She needs a real person, a responsible person. Not
me.
Is it fair to her? I didn't even know boxers boxed. What if I can't take care of her right? What if she's unhappy with me? What if she gets sicker? What if she dies?

Miu leans against me, in what is an obvious plea for support. I can feel her ribs. Her skin is warm leather. A globule of drool bobs below one of her jowls.

“She'll be doing doughnuts in no time,” the volunteer says.

“Doughnuts? Is that a drool thing?” I ask. “Or a poop thing?”

She laughs. “When she greets you, she'll probably curve into a circle, like a doughnut. Or a kidney bean, some people call it the kidney bean. Boxers do that, too—just so you know.”

She's a hairless boxing kidney bean. She's pathetic and overwhelming and hopeless. And once I sign my name and pay the fees, she's mine forever. God. This is scary. My face freezes in a petrified smile. It's so permanent. And I don't know if I can do it. Nurse her and love her and everything, forever. I mean, it's marriage. It's marriage to a bizarre and demanding freak.

“Now you know how Louis felt,” the volunteer says.

“What?”

“Her coat,” the volunteer says. “It'll grow back in no time.”

Oh.

I sign my name. This hopeless and overwhelming dog is now mine.

She likes pineapple-and-garlic pizza. She likes to stick her snout out the window. I glance in the side-view mirror, and she looks like a regular dog, because all that's visible is head. And one flapping jowl. I speed up, and the jowl gets stuck in the “up” position. It's bright pink inside. She doesn't seem to care it's stuck, but I slow down anyway.

We go to the Wilcox Property for a walk. Well, technically, it's the Douglas Family Preserve now, because Michael Douglas donated a lot of money, but it was the Wilcox while I was growing up, so that's what Miu and I call it. I park on the street, refusing to acknowledge how close I am to Merrick's neurotically obsessive-compulsive house, and tie Miu's horse-blanket-type cape around her. Well, she has no fur. She needs
something.
I tell her she's the hardest-working dog in show business as I fiddle with the cape. She drools.

We slowly creep along the trail, sniffing gopher holes and admiring the view of the ocean from the cliffs. Halfway around, a swarm of small yappie dogs encircles us and Miu stands with a sort of noble patience, allowing herself to be sniffed. The yappie dogs' owner tell me what a cute sweater she's wearing. I don't want people thinking I'm the sort who puts sweaters on dogs for no reason, so I pull it back to re
veal her scaly pebbled skin. The woman recoils in horror, and I'm satisfied.

We're almost back to the car when a big male rottweiler bounds over. Miu sits. No aggression. No fighting. No hard-to-get. No growling. But no sniffing allowed. I like this dog.

 

Four days later, Miu and I pick up a sandwich at Tuttis in Montecito and have lunch at Butterfly Beach. Miu sleeps during the car ride home, then hobbles fairly spryly upstairs. She heads straight for her doggie den and settles onto her cashmere.

I curl up in the sitting nook and watch her as she sleeps. It's scary, being responsible for two when I've totally failed to be responsible for one. But I can do this. It's like I told people who called when I was a psychic: Do it, then think about it, not the other way around. So I completed my first task. Now I've got to think about it.

I do my finances. My costs are $600/month for rent. $100 for utilities. $100 for food and gas. Maybe $250. Well, call it $450, including car insurance and magazines and random costs like $20 for a cab ride home from the Mesa. $350 to Carlos and creditors. That's fifteen hundred dollars a month.

I write $1500 in my notebook, and circle it twice. Miu Miu stands and leans against me and presses her dry nose against the circles.

“No problem,” I tell her. “Plus fifty bucks a month for you—but that evens out because I don't have to join a gym for exercise.” Because between walking her and cleaning her ectoplasmic drool from the walls, I'm working both my lower and upper body. Oh, and I love her. She's depressed and needy and pathetic, and pees on the floor every time I come home. And I dote on her. Who'd have guessed?

“But that,” I explain, “is before tax. We need $1500 after tax. So say…$2000 a month? Does that sound fair? They
can't take more than five hundred bucks from a single poor woman with one dependent, can they? So that's $500 a week…” I do the math. “Twelve dollars an hour.”

Oh, God. I can't make twelve dollars an hour. I was making ten at Psychic Connexion, and that was stretching it. I'm going to have to get two jobs, and I can't even get one. I lay on my back and stare at the ceiling. I don't know what to do. Miu stands over me, the bottom of her chest three inches from my nose. Her skin is gross. I rub it.

Earning twelve dollars an hour for eight hours a day for five days a week is the minimum necessary to put dog food on the table. Maybe I can work weekends. Seven days a week. I can do this, because I have to.

So I throw on my best leftover clothes and tell Miu I'll be back in an hour. There are a dozen stores in Santa Barbara I love. I'll hit each one, and ask for a job. Start with Honeysuckle, the little garden shop. Then I'll start again, with restaurants. Always wanted to be a waitress.

I do a Merrick-check as I head downstairs. I know he's gone, because his car's not here, but I peek outside from habit, and my stalker is standing on the steps. Wearing what has to be a mink coat—a sort of old-fashioned brown chubbie. It's sixty-eight degrees out, and she wearing a chubbie? Up close, I see her hair is the unlikely shade of cherry cola, teased beyond endurance, and her fuchsia lipstick bleeds into the lines around her lips.

I try to slink back inside, but she spots me.

“Elle? Elle Medina?”

I want to say,
who's asking?
I say: “Yes, I'm Elle.”

“Oh, thank goodness! I'm Valentine. I called you at the Psychic Network?”

Oh, no.
Very
bad. This is the Montecito woman with the broken dog—and I recommended doggie acupuncture. Probably the dog died, and she's suing me. “Valentine—of course I remember. What a lovely coat!”

“This old thing? A present from my second husband.
After he died, I mean—he was too cheap while alive to buy me more than a new apron every anniversary.”

I laugh, mostly to cover my discomfort. “Well, you must have quite a collection of aprons.”

“Not at all. We were only married sixteen months.”

“Oh. Yes. I see. Well…this is a surprise. Um, how did you find me?”

“I called to speak with you, and they told me you were
fired!
Well, I gave the woman a talking-to.
Fired,
I said. How could you fire the best psychic you've ever had? And the woman—Adelaide?—she agreed, and gave me your address.”

“Ah.” Not a lawsuit, then. “Well, here I am.”

“I am so
very
glad I found you. You saved Rowdy's life. He lives for romping, you know. Without use of his legs…
quelle rapprochement!
That means, ‘what good is life?' Two visits to the acupuncturist, and he is quite almost back to his old self. I so deeply appreciate it. I wanted to thank you in person.”

“Thank
you,
” I say. “I'm glad to hear Rowdy is feeling, um, rowdier.”

We stand silently for a moment.

“Anyway,” I gesture toward the front door. “I've gotta—you know.”

“Oh, you can't! Not yet. I need a reading. I'm desperate.”

A
reading?
It's one thing pretending to be psychic on the phone, under the aegis of an organization which encourages that sort of playacting. But face-to-face? Out of the question. “Well, you see, Valentine. The trouble is that I'm not really a, I mean…of course with Rowdy I did get something of an intuitive, uh, message, but in fact I'm not—”

“I'll pay, of course. One hundred an hour. Does that sound fair?”

—
psychic.
Dollar signs explode before my eyes and keep me from saying the word aloud. I hear Carlos whispering into my ear with his Latino accent:
Take the money, Elle. Take it and run.

I'm a fraud. What will I say to her—for an hour? What if it's all wrong and she sues me? What if
60 Minutes
does a feature on psychic scams, and features me? What if…what if I'm forced to move to Sedona and live with my mother because I can't afford rent? What if I can't take care of Miu Miu because I don't have any money?

I smile. “One hundred is fine. Why don't you come upstairs?”

Into my parlor.

A
hundred dollars.
Cash.
For telling Valentine what she should wear to the Art Museum Gala Ball: “I'm seeing a long, flowing dress of white silk.”

“I don't own a white silk dress.”

“Yes, I know. You're going to buy one for the ball.”

“Oh, of course,” she smiles. “Why didn't I think of that?”

“Not all of us have the Gift.” I don't know where to look. In her eyes? Out the window? Really I'm just imagining what she'd look good in, but it's hard not to be too obvious that I'm only doing her colors. This is why crystal balls must be so helpful.

She was impressed with my apartment. “So clean,” she said.

“Good Feng Shui. It helps me concentrate during readings. I find that clutter and distraction leads to—”

“Oh, my goodness! Is that a
dog?
”

Then we had fifteen minutes of dog stories. She recommended her veterinary acupuncturist, then looked abashed and said, “But of course you already know that.”

So I was twenty-five bucks ahead of the game before we even started the reading. I think I should charge for an hour, no matter what we talk about. It's like a lawyer. Besides, I could be reading her aura or something the whole time, couldn't I?

We discuss possible designers for the dress, then she wants to know if Mr. Tupner will ask her to dance.

“Hmm. I definitely see you dancing together…”

She brightens.

“…but the decision is yours. He's worrying that you're not going to ask him to dance.”

“He
is
shy,” she admits.

I close my eyes—much better. “Well, dancing is quite likely—a waltz?” I open my eyes and pierce her with a serious gaze. “But Valentine, it's up to you. You must ask him to dance.”

“Oh, I couldn't do that,” she titters.

“You
can,
Valentine. You
do.
I've seen it.”

“Well, I suppose…you've seen it?”

I offer a silent prayer to the saint of fake psychics that Mr. Tupner not be in a wheelchair, married or utterly boorish, and nod. “I see you, Valentine, asking a handsome man for a dance, and I see him accepting—and I see your smile.”

She smiles wistfully, and looks almost girlish. “Why not? If it doesn't hurt, and it makes us happy?”

Moments later, I smile too, putting her cash in my wallet. “I couldn't have said it better myself.”

 

Miu Miu's not officially allowed inside Shika, so I sit at the end of the bar, with her around back. Before settling onto her blanket, an old beach towel of Maya's, she shakes thoroughly—and is so well-behaved that she doesn't even spray gobs of spittle in every direction. The front of her body fin
ishes shaking about three seconds before the back, so her bony hairless butt shakes alone for a moment, sufficiently energetically that it almost knocks her spindly back legs from under her.

I call Maya and Monty's attention to this cute attribute of boxer engineering, but they ignore me.

“Lizard,” Maya says. “Though it does look like ostrich skin.”

“Rat. Looks more mammal than reptile,” Monty says.

“As long as her landlord doesn't find out she's a closet herpetologist,” Maya says.

Monty looks confused. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Because the dog has scales, Monty.”

“So that means Elle is a man-woman?”

They become increasingly baffled until I step in: “That's a hermaphrodite, Monty. A herpetologist is someone who studies snakes. And she does
not
look like a snake.” I call to her, in a singsong voice: “Miu-Miu. Miu.”

She looks up, her wrinkled brow quizzical, her eyes alert, and her string of drool bobbing. “See?” I say triumphantly.

“You're right,” Maya says, cocking her head. “She looks like Winston Churchill.”

“Put that in your cigar and smoke it,” Monty says, before excusing himself for a meeting of some sort.

When he's gone I say: “You know my
Charlie's Angels
fantasy?”

“Not entirely.” She fills a bowl with water and puts it in front of Miu.

“Well, I'm thinking Monty can be Boz.”

I want to have a heart-to-heart type girly chat with Maya, but I'm afraid to tell her what happened with Merrick. “So one of my clients from Psychic Connexion tracked me down.”

“Oh,
no,
” Maya says. “Another lawsuit?”

“It was only small claims. And I won.”

“So another small claims suit?” She giggles. “I just realized that you were involved in a suit suit.”

“Very funny. Anyway, I just earned a hundred bucks. Cash.” I show her the money. “For fifty minutes of my time. I'm getting paid a hundred bucks an hour, and it's not even a whole hour!”

“For what?” Maya asks, her voice nervous.

“To be a psychic. Face-to-face. In living color. She tracked me down for a reading.”

She looks me straight in the eyes, attempts solemnity and bubbles over with laughter. “A reading?”

“It's not funny! I'm good at it.”

“B-being a psychic!”

“Not really a
psychic.
An intuitive counselor. That way people won't ask about palms and horoscopes and stuff.”

“With a shawl and a crystal ball…” She finds this far funnier than it is.

“A pashmina,” I say, and don't tell her I'm actually considering the crystal ball.

When she settles down, she says, “Oh, Elle. Thank you. I needed that.”

“I live to be the subject of your scornful amusement,” I say.

“I didn't mean it,” she says. “Well, only a little. It's just that I've been kinda depressed.”

I make sympathetic noises as she comes around the bar and sits next to me. I feel bad. When I have a crisis, I immediately turn to her, but when she has hers, I'm off in my own world.

“It's not the miscarriage, really,” she continues. “But it got me thinking. I want to take a break from the bar. Figure out what I'm doing with myself. But we can't afford someone full-time, and my dad isn't feeling well—I'm worried about his health. And I don't know, do I want to be bartending the rest of my life?”

I am about to offer her some pearl of wisdom, when I
think it might be best to keep my mouth shut. Every now and then, when I worked at Psychic Connection, I'd get a caller who just wanted to talk. Just wanted me to listen. I have a feeling that's what Maya wants, so I shut up and wait.

She talks. For half an hour, about Brad and her father, about the bar and going back to school. About her mother, and falling into a rut—even if it was a rut she was pretty happy with. I continue to keep my mouth shut, until she finishes. She wipes her eyes and says, “You know, maybe you're right. You're not so bad at this. Now if only you could read my palm.”

I take her hand and squeeze it, and smile at her; she has to know that whatever she does and whatever she wants, I'm there for her. “That'll be a hundred dollars,” I say.

She swats me, then asks about my client, the one who tracked me down.

“I saved her dog's life,” I say. “With long-distance veterinary acupuncture.” I tell her about Valentine and Rowdy.

“So now you're taking money from old ladies?”

“She can afford it,” I say. “Montecito money. Anyway, I told her to tell her friends. It's gonna be like that old Fabergé commercial. She'll tell two friends, and they'll tell two friends, and so on, and so on.” I try to make my voice sound stereophonic at the
so on
part.

“I loved that shampoo,” Maya says, nostalgically.

“Do they still make it?”

She shakes her head. “Wouldn't be the same, anyway. But aren't you worried it's illegal? Like practicing therapy without a license?”

I give her an incredulous look. “You're telling me that? A
bartender?
”

She grins. “Good point.”

“And I have a hot-sheet of crisis lines, just in case.” But I don't want to talk about this, because I'm afraid Maya will convince me not to daydream about it. And it's all I have, in terms of employment possibilities: a daydream about Valen
tine in a shampoo commercial. So, I say: “I went to Merrick's house.”

Ten minutes later, Maya is staring at me in disbelief. “She called him
honey?
” she asks in stunned horror.

I nod. “And I ask if she's his sister. Grasping at straws. She says she's his girl Friday and slithers up against him, and I flip.”

“You flip? Like a…an Elle Medina special?”

“The special-est. A shrieking fishwife, hair-pulling hysteric, eye-gouging special.”

“Eye-gouging? You didn't—”

“No-no. No ambulance was called. Strictly verbal abuse, until Merrick made it clear that she was his new assistant, they were not sleeping together and he was not, in fact, a scumbag bigamist Chernobyl-headed fucktoad.”

She looks at me with something approaching awe. “You called him that?”

“And worse.”

“And…and, what did you say after?”

“After it became clear
I
was the fucktoad? What could I do? I fled. Raced up the street to 7-Eleven and called a cab.”

She considers. “Wow. Classy.”

“With a capital
K.
”

 

So, Miu Miu and I were talking, and it's not like I'm stupid. I can see now that maybe I had too much invested in Louis and expected him to rescue me from my life. I wanted my parents to rescue me, my job to rescue me, my fantasies about Joshua and
L
and everything to rescue me.

I've got no money and no skills and no magic wand. The phone has not rung with referrals from Valentine. I suspect that if she told two friends, who told two friends…that someone along the line was not wearing her hearing aid. My run as a $100/hour psychic included precisely one client.

Manpower had a one-day job for me, answering phones
for a real-estate broker. I answered the phones. Then I went home, $52 richer after taxes. Coincidentally enough, I calculated that I need $52 after taxes, seven days a week, to support my little family. Manpower had no more work.

I get a call from one of my applications. It looks like I have a fifty-percent chance of being hired to deliver newspapers. It's early,
early
morning, but that means I can work afternoons, too. And I do own a car, might as well exploit what resources I have.

I finally crush my fantasy about IKEA; the one where a gorgeous Swede, possibly Sven Ikea himself, knocks on my door with a large check. They were so impressed with my honesty they think I deserve a reward.

So yes, I'm still falling apart. But no, nobody is going to rescue me. Nobody can. All they can do is postpone the inevitable. And even if they postpone it six years—I'm still me. This rescue, I have to pull off myself.

Miu Miu thinks I've taken the first steps. With Carlos and IKEA and with her. She thinks I ought to stop avoiding all the unpleasant realities. She thinks I ought to come clean.

About Merrick, for example. Am I falling in love with him? Have I fallen in love? Well, maybe. Maybe I have. And do I
still
want him to rescue me? Sure I do. But I know that's not how it works. So maybe I'll knock on his door. Maybe I'll apologize and—if he doesn't laugh me out of his office, if he doesn't tell me I was right about being a pathetic loser—maybe we'll talk. But I know he can't rescue me. Not really. Nobody can, except me.

 

I ask for only one thing: When I knock on his door, please God, do not have cool, collected, itsy-bitsy Betsy answer.

I knock on his door.

“Oh, hi,” Betsy says. “Elle. Are you…okay?”

I attempt not to die. “I'm fine, thanks. Is Merrick in?”

“Louis? Yes, but Neil's picking him up in a few… Well,
let me get him.” She retrieves Merrick from his den and discreetly disappears, and Merrick and I are left alone staring at each other. Eventually, I figure I have to say something.

“I—I wanted to apologize. For…the condoms and the doggie bags and your
newspapers
and…everything. I'm sorry. And I wanted to thank you. And…and…”

He inspects me steadily. His eyes crinkle, but his eyebrows don't move either direction. His hair catches the light, and glows a hideous orange.

“…and I haven't been myself, much—I mean, maybe I have, but I'm just getting to know me, really, and—” shut up, Elle “—that sounds stupid, I know. I mean, this whole thing—” I gesture, indicating my entire life “—has been new to me, and I'm still figuring it out. And you've been good to me, for no good reason, and I wanted to thank you and…I mean…”

He runs a hand through his hair and I see it:
his roots aren't red.
Oh, my God. His roots are definitely brown.

“I mean, I wanted to say, to say…your roots are not red.” I freeze in a stunned silence at the fact that I've said this aloud.

“Forget my roots.” His lips quirk. “I want to hear more about my newspapers.”

He doesn't hate me. Must not weep in relief. Instead, must focus inappropriately on his hair: “Your roots are brown! Is this…vanity? But red, to cover the gray?”

“I am not going gray, Elle.”

“Of course you aren't.” I nod solemnly. “But still…you dye your hair. You
dye
your
hair.
” I sound like him, talking about a
lawsuit.

“It's not like that,” he says. “I didn't do it because I wanted to.”

“Oh, no. I've heard about that. Mysterious abductions, people forced to dye their hair. The only thing they remember is the smell of Clairol number thirty-six.”

He laughs, and my heart expands.