The Dimple Strikes Back (13 page)

“There is no kind of magic beaver I don’t like,” Ellen agreed.

“Seriously, though…” I grabbed the nearest hand of each of them and said, “Thank you for helping me rescue him. You put yourselves in danger to save someone you don’t even like.” I swiped a tear away and turned to Nicolette. “And you compromised your morals to assist and let him escape, although he says he’s been pardoned by the US.” I’d told them everything, of course.

“We didn’t do it for him.” Ellen handed me a napkin for my mess of a face. I’d given up and offered myself over to the rain of sorrows turning me into a puffy depression monster.

Nicolette said, “That’s what friends do.”

“Are we friends?” I ended the question in a squeak, so overjoyed I was to hear her say it.

“Ugh, not if you’re going to keep crying on my hand. Stop that!” She snatched her arm away, but came right back again to pat mine. “I guess you’re okay. But no more of this putting her in danger.” Inclining her head towards Ellen, she continued, “I do like roller skating with y’all. You nerds know how to party, in kind of a sad way.”

They managed to put a smile on my face, one I bravely tried to keep up as we walked around the pretty brick and stone town. The most photographed place in Europe contained a bridge, a canal and a beautiful tree gently bowing to the sparkling water. They called it the Quay of the Rosary. It was the sort of place a couple ought to take their picture to frame. I couldn’t even act myself into a decent photograph, so Ellen kicked me out of the shot and I acted as photographer for my friends.

Bruges held a preponderance of chocolate and lingerie shops. Not together, although we did purchase the chocolate boobs we found, because, like, duh. Both the candy and the underwear made me think of Sam—licking dribbled chocolate off my boobs was an activity that happened shockingly often, as he had a love for licking and boobs, and I had a love for inhaling yummies sloppily. Soon my moping got the better of my fellow tourists—we gave up and took a cab to the train station.

I stayed quiet on the return trip to London, knowing that my mouth couldn’t help but ruin everyone’s good time. Ellen even offered to find us a roller rink in London to cheer me, but I declined and sent them on their way to have fun. I was a soul-sucking vortex of ickiness, bound and determined to find the worst in everything. Everything but food. Me and my two dinners had a lovely night—and by lovely, I mean lugubrious.

Chapter Seven

So Many Men, So Few Brains

Ext. Hollywood Boulevard—day

The year is 2017, and the earth has been conquered by the zombiefied undead, woken from their slumber because they drank too many diet drinks. Yes, that fake sugar was as bad as your annoying health-nut friends thought. Even so, no one who’s left really wants to hear their yapping on about freaking kale or whatever.

Angle On:
Samantha Lytton
is one of the few left after the apocalypse. She stands on the wall the survivors have built around the city of Los Angeles. The divide is made of old set pieces from zombie movies, although the irony is lost on almost everyone because this is LA.

Angle On: Samantha lifts binoculars to her face and peers across the desolate landscape of a broken city. Dating in this place was a disaster even before all the cute boys wanted to dine on your brains. As always, she is on the lookout for a male survivor who enjoys long walks on the radioactive beach and talking about feelings until one or the other of you dies from malnutrition, only to return and slaughter the other one. You know, kinda like relationships in the old days.

Cut To:
A Studly Stranger
stumbles across the desert that used to be Hollywood Boulevard. He is stopped by a zombie wearing a dirty Spiderman costume, but the lone wanderer doesn’t have a buck to pay Spidey for a picture, so the zombie gets pissy and huffs away.

Cut To: Samantha, hopeful that this stranger isn’t a zombie, and that he might enjoy her rom-com antics. Her brow creases in worry, for her constant tripping, adorkableness and hilarious bad hair days have not been appreciated in all this time. Plus, damn, sometimes a girl just needs the D!

Samantha Lytton: Will my loneliness last forever? Shall I just accept my hapless fate and become a zombie? Maybe they have sex before they eat each other, like praying mantises…

The newcomer approaches the wall, but keeps his distance.

Studly Stranger: Are you a zombie? Blink once for yes, and twice for no!

Samantha Lytton: I could just say, “Hello,” since zombies can’t offer much beyond a grunt.

Studly Stranger: I’ve been searching for the living for months now! How strange to find them in Los Angeles.

Samantha Lytton: Our gym-going prepped us for the endless days of running in terror.

Samantha whips out a clipboard and pen.

Samantha Lytton: I’m just going to have to ask you a few questions before we let you in the great wall here… Okay, how old are you?

Studly Stranger: Thirty-eight.

Samantha Lytton: Ooh, that’s good! There are way too many teenagers in here. And are you straight, gay, queer, pansexual, bi, trans, asexual, poly-amorous or prefer not to say?

Studly Stranger: Why…why does that matter? I haven’t eaten in three days! Please help me.

Samantha Lytton: Question three. Have you ever been convicted of a crime? This one is super important.

Studly Stranger: No! I’m no danger to your town. I’m a refugee from Vegas—that city has been completely destroyed by the zombies. It’s hard to tell, though, because they just sit at the gambling tables all day.

Samantha Lytton: Yay! No criminal record. Do you prefer short women, tall or in-between? FYI, the answer I’m looking for is ‘short’.

The stranger falls to his knees, barely able to continue on.

Studly Stranger: Short, yes—I prefer whatever you want me to prefer. Why won’t you help me?

Samantha Lytton: I’m sorry, but I’m a crazed heroine in a romantic comedy. All I care about is dating—no matter what! Now, on to question five…although I have taken off points because you haven’t answered some of my other ones. You’re not helping your situation. I mean, you seem to be straight, because gay men in rom-coms are always snapping and giving fashion advice, but you could be pansexual, or—

Samantha refers to her clipboard.

Samantha Lytton: Oh, wait, no you can’t be—that sort of multifaceted characterization isn’t allowed in LA. Question five. How do you feel about Valentine’s Day, the most important holiday of the year?

Studly Stranger: My vision is fading. I’m so…so cold.

Angle On: The studly stranger falls over sideways into the dust. A zombie limps across the landscape and preys upon him.

Angle On: Samantha sighs and rips the sheet off her clipboard.

Samantha Lytton: Why is it so hard to find a decent man?

I spent the day following our return from Bruges in bed, inhaling macaroni and cheese, staring into space, feeling too zombiefied to even be comforted by Colin Firth.

Plus, I started my period, because God is a
hilarious
dude. While my uterus tried to claw her way through my belly button, I pressed my heating pad on my abdomen and gave myself over to the Break-Up Wallows. Every hour or so, the BUWs would be accompanied by the FASs, a.k.a. the Forever Alone Sobs. To round out the day, I experienced the I Hate My Fucking Ovaries Stabs of Pain.

But for the first time in my life, even though my romantic outlook was as desolate as a post-apocalyptic landscape, my professional life was still the stuff of dreams. Tomorrow, I’d go back into a couple of days of rehearsals, followed by the switch to nights for the actual shoot. My job still filled me with joy, and what a balm it was. My heart had been kicked around my rib cage by steel-toed boots, but I yet possessed a reason to get up in the morning.

I’d never experienced both the unbelievable grief of losing the love of my life and the unsurpassed joy of my ultimate career. Maybe you can’t have it all, but having something was better than nothing. I was still an insanely lucky woman, and, in my better moments, I held onto that. In my worse moments, I screamed, cried and wrote embarrassing poetry.

I gave myself the day—one day to be greasy and so pathetic that even my cat pitied me enough to stick close by for pettings and desperate hugs—and the following morning I showered, put on makeup and blow-dried my hair like an actual adult. I slipped on some stretchy jeans and a long, loose T, for while I was a fabulous actress ready to do fabulous acting, I still suffered from the IHMFOSoP.

Often I’d entertained the notion that God or the Being or whomever was a woman, but in times of excruciating period pain, I figured that no female deity would have designed so faulty a plumbing system.

Yet another reason to shake my fist at males.

Although bleeding for seven days and emerging victorious was a badass thing to do.

The next few days were fun as the cast began to gel and riff off one another during rehearsal. I allotted myself time to grieve Sam and worry about him, out there, hounded by the Ghosts of Criminality Past, but I kept my emotions separated from Competent Samantha, who kicked butt at acting.

On the warmish evening before the shoot would start, Danny came over to my rental apartment to chat through our characters, and to rehearse our scenes in a relaxed way. This was a professional meeting, so I wore a dress that revealed only half my cleavage.

The premise of the film was that a group of poor, down-on-their-luck work colleagues from a failing company decided to commit a robbery. They had pretty much nothing to lose—Danny and I played a divorced couple drowning in debt, and the others in the den of unprofessional bandits included a father who needed money to put his four kids through college, a computer geek—a
lady
computer geek, thank you—who wanted a challenge and a woman who must pay for senior care for her mother and father, as well as keep a roof over everyone’s heads.

Feelings came to me easily while we rehearsed, but fear gnawed at me that I wasn’t being terribly funny. I took a deep breath and dived into the scene we’d got to, in which the repressed lust between the ex-spouses came to a boil. The plan was for the thieves to wait in a closet tucked away in the public part of the museum, a place they’d observed to be unused most of the time. Then, once the place closed, everyone would emerge from hiding and rob the joint. I’d wanted to ask Sam about the feasibility of this plan, but I’d forgotten in our most recent kidnapping. Oh, well. Nothing in the media was realistic, just made up by a bunch of dorks in sweatpants pounding on computers, and thank goodness for it.

“You’re far away tonight,” Daniel said, whipping my brain back to the present.

I tried to laugh it off, but my smile was as tired as a mother taking six kids to Disney. “Sorry. I—” While I struggled to concoct a feasible lie, the truth spilled from my mouth like a too-big pile of spaghetti. “I broke up with my boyfriend and everything sucks!”

Oh, good. I was now crying in front of him. The lump in my chest tightened and squeezed. It took me a moment to control my halted breathing and to stop the faucet raining on my face. I needed to take Successful Human Being classes, because everything I did was the opposite of whatever they’d teach.

He scooched closer on the couch and put a warm arm around my shoulders. “I’m sorry. That’s the worst.” Rubbing my arm in a manner that made me think ungentlewomanly thoughts, he continued, “This man clearly doesn’t deserve you.”

“Nope, I’m perfect and amazing.” I blew my nose and tossed the tissue in the waste basket I’d moved into the living room for this express purpose. I had emptied it of four hundred snotty tissues and three empty Cheez-It boxes before he came over because I’m not a sad person.

The concern creasing his handsome face touched me emotionally, and also dirtily. “Would you like to talk about it?” he asked.

I did actually crack up at that. Oh, yeah—I’m sure a mega-movie star wanted to hear about my feeeeeeeeelings. “No, that’s okay. Thanks for the offer, but I’m doing you a favour by declining. I have a bottle of vodka that’s serving as my therapist.”

He blinked his brown eyes at that one. Guess he was too together to ever consult with Doctors Grey and Goose.

I blurted, “Let’s rehearse. Work is a fantastic remedy for all ills.”

He gave me one more arm squeeze and turned to his script. Oh, but I was a nasty whorish slut lady, ready to jump guy number two’s bones immediately after guy number one had dumped me.

Hold up, though…

I’d
been dumped.

Me equals dumpee.

Moi
was the wronged party in the first degree.

That
surely negated the Rule of Respectable Waiting Time Before Banging a New Dude, right? And what of my Overwhelming Urge to Screw Now That I Don’t Have a Designated Penis Handy? It was like drooling over a potato on the first day of a low-carb diet. These urges could not be ignored—I might rupture my clit or something. I had my health to think of!

My real smile shone through the confusion in my psyche. I too grabbed my script, even though I’d memorised the dialogue. My hands needed something to occupy them, as adorable Danny did not yet realise that he was going to be my super-hot rebound lovah. I would boink him on behalf of dumpees everywhere, and they’d probably erect a sculpture in my honour.