Girl Act (16 page)

“I’m ready to die and you’ll need to take care of my affairs.” The lump in my throat was turning into a gnarly knot.

“You mean sleep with men your age?” I asked. Okay, I’m lame at telling jokes, but I try anyway. I mean, one day I just might tell a funny one. Maybe!

“I think a nice man around your age, give or take a year or two, is best for you,” she said, and meant it.

Aunt Helen had loved only one man, who sadly died of cancer when they were in their mid-twenties, and never found anyone to feel serious about after that during her eighty-plus years. No one even bothered to fix her up—not one of her siblings. Didn’t they care about her? Didn’t they think she’d want to marry?

Which reminded me of the time Laurel had arranged for me, her, and a girl named Kathy to screw the same guy, a few minutes after each other. The stud was Nick, a 5’9”, 198-lb football jock who was rumored to be a ‘G-spot’ wrangler in bed, which meant he made you cum at the same time. I was nineteen then, and believed that love mattered. But Laurel persuaded me by saying, “If our friendship matters, you’ll do it!”

“But you don’t even like American boys.” I said.

“This one I chose. Be my friend.”

“But I don’t even like jocks.”

“Vivien, you don’t know him. He’s really nice, he’s not dumb. Are you this judgmental?”

“I’m not judgmental. He’s probably okay,” I said. I was nineteen, remember.

“I’ll go first; if he’s awful, you and Kathy don’t have to do it.”

So Kathy and I waited in the living room. Laurel’s parents were in Harvard Square at the time, dancing at a church that hosted a ‘Dance Free’ event every Wednesday night. They were rich hippies, which is the only way to be a hippie; at least, that’s what Laurel told me. Kathy and I waited while Laurel was upstairs doing ‘it’ with Nick. All of sudden Kathy started to hyperventilate, which was so odd because she had been badgering me when I had tried to back out.

“Why are you always so scared, Vivien?” Kathy had asked and I didn’t bother responding. Now she was bright red and her forehead was sweating.

“I think I’m having an asthma attack; I need to go home and get my inhaler,” she said.

I was about to stop her, when we heard Laurel shouting from upstairs

“Vivien, YOUR TURN!”

I looked at Kathy who was putting on her windbreaker, when we both saw Laurel, dressed in her mother’s bathrobe, staring down at us. We were by now both inches from the front door.

“Come on up!” she shouted like she was the announcer on a ‘porn’ game show.

Eek. So I had to climb up the stairs and head into her bedroom. I heard the front door slam shut and I knew Kathy had left, and probably wasn’t coming back. I walked in and Laurel closed the door behind me.

I had to stand in Laurel’s light blue bedroom and wait until Nick was done showering. Yup! I just stood there, listening to him talking out loud while he showered; he was talking about something stupid like how good he was at long distance running. Then he walked out with just a blue towel around his waist. He was super fit in that jock way—and I was too tense to say a word.

“You’re not my type. You’re one of those arty-farty girls,” he said, as he combed his hair.

Phew, I felt relief, I didn’t have to go to bed with him; I mean, I wasn’t his type, right?

“That’s me and I’m planning on becoming an actress,” I said.

“I saw you in a play last year. You’re right for it,” he said. “Laurel’s a crazy girl,” he added.

“Yeah, ah, well, she’s afraid of dying,” I said, trying to sound profound.

“Is she ill?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

He walked over to Laurel’s bed, and tossed off the light blue top sheet he had used with her, and then threw her cloud-print comforter on the bed and hopped on it. I stood there, frozen. Then he patted the spot next to him, and for some stupid reason, I walked over to him.

“Take your shoes off,” he said, and I did.

“Come over here,” he said. And I got on Laurel’s cloud-print comforter.

“Lay back,” he said and I did, and he did, and we just lay like that.

“You’re not a virgin, are you?” he asked, ever hopeful.

“No. I’ve slept with two guys already, one in a closet, don’t ask, and the other on a bed,” I said.

He brushed my hair off my face and sort of played with it for a bit.

“I’ll make you feel good,” he said, and then he started sucking on my neck. He was a hicky-type guy and it relaxed me, because I had always wanted a ‘hicky’. I think they’re so cool. Hickies, in my opinion, say, “I’ve had pleasure! What about you?” Okay, so I have an ego, a ‘competitive’ edge; I’m not enlightened. Oh well!

He took my clothes off, felt me up and down, spread my legs, and wrangled for my G spot, which he found (I mean there really is a spot that, when touched properly, releases everything; it’s so fantastic).

“I’m DYING,” Aunt Helen said loudly, snapping me back into the reality of the current situation.

“I don’t want you to,” I said, and she reached out and we held hands.

“Twenty-seven, three years before you turn thirty; this is a very important time in your life,” she cautioned.

“Yeah, if I don’t mess it up,” I said, suddenly feeling extra sorry for myself.

“You’ll hold out for love, and you’ll go from being an ‘I’ to being a ‘we’. And you’ll like it very much,” she proclaimed, like a fortune teller.

“You didn’t become a ‘we’,” I said, not trying to hurt her feelings.

“My biggest mistake,” she said, and that sentence hung in the room over us, like the start of a rainstorm that doesn’t happen, but you can feel it wanting to pour down.

“Not true,” I said, wanting her to agree.

“Very true,” she replied.

And that’s when Gabriel got up and stood in front of her door with his 6’1” back to us. He was like a human door.

“We’ll talk it about it another time; you have to hit the road for Connecticut before it gets too late,” she said. I got up and folded the road map. I asked with fear, “You’ll be here?”

“I’ll be here, but be back by tomorrow morning,” she said. I agreed.

All at once I understand the expression ‘to walk with lead in your feet’. It was so hard for me to walk out of her room. Gabriel followed me.

“Can I go with you?” he asked. I looked at him. “I’m fond of long drives,” he added. Twenty and wearing grudge clothes that looked as if he slept in them, but he didn’t; it was just his style.

“Sure,” I said, because I didn’t know how to say no, and maybe I would get to pop his zits for fun.

“Let me get my knapsack,” he said.

“Look, we’re not staying overnight. We’ll hop on a train back to South Station,” I said, not wanting to spend too much time with him.

“Yeah, I know,” he said, as he entered a room four doors down. I waited in front of it. The truth was, I had glanced in during one of the days I was visiting and I had seen the woman in it. She was dying, like everyone else in the care center, otherwise known as a hospice. My father had said care center, because even he couldn’t say hospice. Hospice!

The art of movie making is about creating illusions, and then selling them to the audience. I’ll buy illusions over reality any day.
Terms of Endearment
is way up there on my ‘dying’ movie list. Not that I would have ever told Gabriel to watch it, but I knew when he walked into the room why he was hanging out in the place. There’s a line that Shirley MacLaine’s character, Aurora Greenway, says in the movie when her daughter’s dying, “
Come close…come close…come closer.
” And suddenly I understood it, and I wanted to share it with Gabriel so badly.

I drove as Gabriel took over the road map. I had left Shadow at Laurel’s with a promise from my father to walk him twice and feed him, so I was free to just enjoy the mini trip. Unfortunately Gabriel made wise cracks about the fashion designer’s red BMW—for its over-the-top wealthy look; he hated everything that was flashy or trendy.

“What would you buy if you had to get a car?” I asked, not really caring.

“A Volvo,” he said, and went onto explain the reasons why he thought it was a well made automobile.

If any driver tailgated us or nearly cut us off, he’d yell, “You jerk!” I tried to explain that the word jerk was dated, and that it was best left to comedian Steve Martin to re-use, but he didn’t listen. He had theories about everything, and he went on and on about eating organic food, the cost of shipping tomatoes, and the antibiotics fed to chickens and cattle.

When we stopped at our second gas station, I said, “Gabriel, I get it, you’re a college kid, but just shut up for some of the ride.” His face got red, his whiteheads looked terrible, and his eyes watered; I swear he was about to cry.

“I have to wash my face,” he said, and off he went with his knapsack.

I stood there at the Rhode Island rest stop and felt like screaming, “So this is what failing feels like? This is what not being a working film actress feels like? This is what having almost no family feels like? This is what single feels like?” I would have continued, but the car behind me, honked. So I got back in and parked, and went through the convenience store to the bathrooms and then waited for Gabriel. He came out with a pinkish complexion. He had attacked his acne and shoved the Proactiv bottle back into his knapsack.

“You look better,” I said, trying to sound supportive.

“I’m not used to being with girls,” he said. “Girls that I don’t know,” he corrected himself.

“No worries,” I said. It was a gamble, but I wanted to try and connect if we could; I mean we were both about to lose people we loved. I bought us bottled water, oranges, and trail mix.

“Can we go to Foxwoods?” he asked, as we crossed the Connecticut state line. He took out a Wikipedia computer printout about the largest gambling casino on the East Coast. He talked with accelerated speed about why he wanted to go there and try out the
Wheel of Fortune
slot machine. We were only a few miles away, so I said, “Okay, why not!”

I mean, I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to drop the BMW off at the fashion designer’s parent’s house in New Haven; I also wasn’t in a hurry for anything, because the clock was ticking for my aunt and I wanted to delay it. I know you’d think I’d be in a mad rush to return, but in the movies you get to re-watch the ending. In real life you don’t. It just ends.

So off we went to Foxwoods, and that’s when Gabriel informed me that he had dropped out of Harvard, like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Only he wasn’t dropping out to invent something, he was just saying a long goodbye to his mother.

“Academia isn’t going to be my life,” he said, like he had figured it all out. Meanwhile I tried to explain to him how great college is, not only for the education, but for the experience of learning with peers and professors. He started laughing. Yup, I sounded like my father. Gee, how did that happen? I mean, you plan on not being like your parent or parents, and then suddenly you say or do something they would do. Go figure.

“Do whatever you want,” I said, as we pulled into the level one parking area of the Great Cedar at Foxwoods. A very shiny, gigantic MGM Grand building that stood out like the Empire State Building. The elevator by the outdoor parking lot was surrounded by handicap parking spaces, the most I’ve ever seen any where. Either the architect had handicapped family members, or just knew that if you add enough spaces, they will come.

I pulled out my camera and took a shot of us for my Facebook page that I had been neglecting. Gabriel didn’t have a Facebook page, or a blog, and wasn’t on social networks—just an email account.

“Do you have any friends?” I asked, after his long-winded rant about the invasion of privacy via the internet and how information is tracked and gathered and can be used for defacement scams or worse. He didn’t elaborate on what ‘worse’ meant and I didn’t ask.

Oh well. Foxwoods. Wow, what a mammoth place. When we got into the Great Cedar Casino, we were like kids at a candy store. FYI, there are two other casinos in the same building and the place looks like a massive indoor mall, with a movie theater and shopping and exotic food. It’s amazing!

Gabriel wanted to be in the smoking section, because he had brought along a Cuban cigar and wanted to smoke it.

“You’re a bit young to smoke a cigar,” I said. Shit, a second comment that sounded like my father. Help me!

“I’m twenty-one as of this morning,” he said. He then went on to tell me how marvelous it felt to be in the casino. I was going to sing him happy birthday, but I didn’t want to sound like my father once again, so I just said, “H.B.” And he said, “Thanks,” and then pulled out four hundred dollars in twenties. His mother had sold her house and given him his inheritance, which he was keeping in a safety deposit box at a local bank; he didn’t believe in checking accounts or ATMs. Go figure!

“Where are the
Wheel of Fortune
machines?” he asked a guy, who looked like he had just lost his shirt gambling, but seemed eager to show us the slot machines. He was in his seventies, with hair and eyebrows dyed brownish red, and wearing a suit jacket with slacks. He limped a bit, just enough to give him character. I would have cast him as a co-star in a gambling movie. Maybe an indie ‘gambling-shake-down’ film set at Foxwoods. Maybe filmmaking will be my next career.

The old guy told us which machines he had won on and lost on. Gabriel was grinning, and I realized it was the first time I had seen this college-dropout smile.

Still, the poker tables seemed more exciting, and I wished Gabriel knew how to play or at least wanted to try them. But he had read about a man winning on the
Wheel of Fortune
machines two months ago, and he had a theory it was time for another big win. We stood in front of the
Wheel of Fortune
machines and Gabriel said he needed time to study them. So I wandered off.

In the movie
Casino
, Sharon Stone’s character is dressed sexy and I looked at myself, blue jeans with the word ‘HOPEFUL’ on them didn’t cut it, nor did my black wrinkled blouse. Fortunately, I had my Chanel purse and so I went to the bathroom to re-vamp my makeup and hair. Not that I thought I would meet Mr. Darcy/AKA Romeo, but I would at least appear not so loser-ish. I applied cover-up, cheek powder, and eyebrow pencil, made my eyelashes extra thick, and put on brown lipstick, which made my lips look dramatic. Paloma had given me a travel pack of mini hair products, because she knows how to keep it styled even on weird or sad days. So I poured gel goop into my messy hair and made it seem like I was a rocker wanna-be, a better role than an actress-going-nowhere.