Nothing Left To Want (34 page)

People tried to tell me that greed isn’t love, and that gratitude usually gives birth to resentment, but I wasn’t listening.

Milan told me, and so did Aunt Georgia when I called her a week after she sent my presents to announce that I not only adored the horses but that I had fallen in love with the trainer she had hired; not just in love but we were already living together.

Milan hearing my news on her cell from a location in South Carolina said, “Carebears, I really want to be happy for you, but this is fast and you don’t know him, and, Cares, living in your car is not hot, it’s just sad and gross.”

Aunt Georgia, speaking from her penthouse was less harsh. She kind of had to be, seeing as how she had been married like ten times, and all but one of them to the help. Her current fiancé was a Pakistani faith healer, so her advice was more diplomatic. “Well, I couldn’t be happier for you, Carey, and I’m delighted that I was instrumental in helping this come to pass, but do remind your young Horse Whisperer that if you two do decide one day to marry, he will have to meet with Herbert, and I have found personally that can oftentimes be a romance ender, though not always, of course. My current inamorata, Shavir, is so spiritually refined that I’m not even sure he knows I have any money.”

Wanting Aunt Georgia on my side because I did fully expect John to ask me to marry him, I didn’t want to annoy her by pointing out that unless Shavir were deaf, dumb and blind, which given her track record was possible, he might have noticed the twenty thousand square foot deluxe apartment in the sky. Instead, I thanked her again for the horses and told her that I was sure she was right about Shavir, just like I was right about John. We were happy. I know I was and, if he was pretending, he was a lot better actor than he was a band manager, not that that’s saying much.

He wanted to be with me 24/7. He cooked for me and he built little teak ramps for Petal so she wouldn’t have to jump up and down off the furniture and maybe hurt herself. He held me in bed all night after we made love and he taught me how to do cannonballs into the pool. He took me to play miniature golf, and remembered to TiVo my favorite shows if we were going out. My having diabetes didn’t bother him. He kissed the place where the tube was inserted in my back and said that he was glad to know I had one tiny thing wrong with me because otherwise I’d be too perfect.

He never seemed to mind that I was quiet when we were at home or out at clubs. John has one of those big super-friendly personalities, and so instead of feeling awkward and stupid, and having to try to think of things to say, he made me feel tiny and special sitting beside him with his arm wrapped around me while he talked enough for both of us.

Even Milan seemed to be a little less wary of him after Christy suddenly summoned both of us to Las Vegas one weekend. John came with me and ended up being the best man at Christy’s two a.m. wedding ceremony to some random guy she had met on a plane back from Tokyo the week before.

When she filed for an annulment later that week, citing irreconcilable differences, like not knowing each other’s last names, it was John who insisted she come and stay at our house until she felt better, and also until her parents dropped the idea of having her committed to a rehab facility, even though she didn’t drink.

John cooked for her and made funny jokes about practice marriages, cheering Christy up so much that she finally stopped crying and started laughing about even the worst of the tabloid stories, of which there were a billion, because as private a person as Christy was, she was still Milan Marin’s little sister and her dumbass move was entertainment news in a big way.

Milan was over that night and I watched her watch John. I couldn’t read her expression, but when he pulled me to him and said, “Of course, sometimes you don’t have to practise. Sometimes, if you’re really lucky, it’s perfect the first time,” then, looking at Christy, he said, “not that you’re not perfect, it’s just that he wasn’t.”

I stared proudly at Milan, willing her to say something positive, hopefully about how she thought John was perfect for me at least, but she only gave me her mysterious little cat’s smile and said she was starving.

A week later when I called her to triumphantly tell her that John had flatly turned me down when I had tried to buy him a twin to my Mercedes S.U.V. to replace his old truck, all she said was, “Really? So what kind of car did he end up getting?”

“
It wasn’t like that, Mills. I had to practically force him to take anything.”

“
I’m sure, Cares, so what is his new ride?”

Sulkily I answered her. “A Lexus. It’s just big because John thought we could use it if we get a horse trailer. You know, so we could haul it around if we want to go on a trip.”

“
That’s great, Cares, and it’ll probably come in really handy since you are such a trailer, hitch-road-trip kind of girl. So is the new car in your name?”

“
No, it’s in his, but Gawd, it’s not like he cares. The only reason is like he said, I have such a shitty driving record that if it were in my name it would be a ton of money to insure.”

She laughed. “Still parking on sidewalks and rear-ending everyone in town, huh? Okay, listen I have to go. I’m sorry if I sounded bitchy. I just worry about you, you know. Sometimes I think you don’t see where you’re going.”

“
You mean while I’m driving?”

She sighed. “Yeah, Cares, that’s what I meant. So you drive carefully, okay?”

John was so pissed when I told him what Milan said, he stomped around the house yelling, “Fuck this, fuck your rich bitch little do-nothing friends. I never wanted the fucking car. Sell the fucker, I don’t give a shit. Is that what you think too, Carey, that I care about your fucking money, like I’m some kind of asshole gigolo?”

I jumped up and put my arms around him, cutting him off mid-pace. “You know that’s not what I think. You know that. I know none of this,” I gestured around the house, “means anything to you. God, honey, I’m so sorry I told you. Please, please, please don’t be mad at me, okay?”

He exhaled, putting his arms around me. “I know, baby. I know you’re not like the rest of them. You’re my girl, aren’t you?”

I nodded eagerly. “You know I am.”

He grinned. “Okay, good, we’re good then, so let’s go do something stupid and blow off all this bad shit, okay?” Of course I was always up for doing something stupid, which that night turned out to be a trip to Venice Beach, and involved me getting a spontaneous drunken tattoo of his name on my lower back and John getting his ear pierced.

When I pulled out one of my canary studs and handed it to him, he took it, smiled at me, and said jokingly, “Is this a proposal?”

I laughed. “No, you have to do that.”

He winked at me and the piercing guy while he put in one of my three carat studs. “You know I will, baby. Meantime, I’ll wear this like a promise earring, okay?”

What could I say? He kept the earring and he looked damn sexy wearing it driving around town, his long hair blowing out the open windows of his black Lexus. He was my pirate.

* * *

John still hadn’t proposed by November when Aunt Georgia called and invited us to join her on her long-delayed trip to visit her Indonesian orphanage. John wanted to experience it, so I said yes, and two days after Christmas John and I boarded the Kelleher corporate jet that Aunt Georgia had requisitioned for the trip.

Two weeks later I flew back on a commercial flight to California, alone, and John accompanied Aunt Georgia and the plane to New York.

Chapter 36

Aunt Georgia’s orphanage changed my life forever, and in surprising ways. The orphanage itself is a sweet, safe little place set in the middle of the dark green jungles, near a place called Makassar. Aunt Georgia may have set up Pak Lyn as a tax shelter, as my mother had told me, but no matter the reason, the result is a pretty miraculous home for kids.

The whole beautiful country which could be an amazing resort area is instead a place of such unreal poverty that being there was for me like turning into an extra in 'Slum Dog Millionaire'. Aunt Georgia’s Pak Lyn orphanage is one of the very few orphanages in the country that isn’t being run by some seriously over-the-top right wing Christian group, latter day missionaries like the kind who 'saved' our own Indians. These people give the deserted starving little kids food and shelter, and in return teach them enough English to say 'Praise Jesus'.

I made John and Aunt Georgia crack up when I said that it was the equivalent of giving needy American kids a Jeep Wrangler each if only they would say they had found God. I mean, who wouldn’t? I never have liked quid pro quo deals. I think they’re shifty, so I have to give Aunt Georgia props for running a good place for those so needy little kids and not asking for something in return.

The orphanage has two main houses inside a log-walled enclosure, one for the girls and one for the boys. Then there are some staff houses, or more like staff shacks, set around. John and I stayed in one and Aunt Georgia in another, forcing the staff to bunk on floors inside the children’s areas.

Aunt Georgia’s long-suffering assistant, Dennis, had been charged with flying out a month previously, responding to Aunty G’s vague instructions to “do something with those huts to make them liveable”.

Dennis knew my aunt well enough to catch her meaning, so the former huts were almost bearable when we arrived. Dennis had installed window air conditioning units and even found a generator to power them, after his trial run had knocked out Pak Lyn’s electricity supply for a week. We had these pretty cool oversized hammocks outfitted with gel cushions, he had covered the floors with woven mats, and had installed two Indonesians whose full time work it was to keep our dwellings bug and rat free, Indonesia having no Home Depots and therefore no access to modern pest killers.

John was happy from the day we got there, and since he had formerly lived in his car and had come from some craphole like Bakersfield, Indonesia’s poverty and smells and heat didn’t bother him at all. Because he had arrived at Pak Lyn as part of Aunt Georgia’s entourage, he was treated by the staff like a god and by the two hundred kids there like a magic man, just for smiling at them.

Aunt Georgia didn’t seem bothered by the heat either and spent all day every day striding around the place followed by a sweating miserable Dennis whose sole purpose it was to jot down her brilliant ideas as they came to her.

Example:

“
Dennis, when we get home I want you to order thousands of lavender bushes. It will be perfect. The children here can have their own little farms and sell the lavender later on. Besides, it will help cover up the smell from the pigsty.”

Dennis dutifully wrote it down and didn’t point out that lavender would never grow in that climate.

I humorously suggested she plant a weed crop instead, saying that something like that might really give the kids a leg up financially. Aunt Georgia, queen of all she surveyed, was not amused. As near as I could tell, to her Pak Lyn and the children were some kind of living version of Farmville, and if she wanted lavender on her farm, by God it had better grow there.

The other not-so-funny thing was that day by day I noticed John was starting to act like a sycophantic asshole around her, like Dennis, who, I pointed out to him angrily, was at least paid to kiss Aunt Georgia’s liposuctioned ass, so what was his excuse?

The new self-important version of John answered me in such a pompous voice that he reminded me of Herbert. “You see, Carey, that’s perfect, that’s so you. You’re here in this amazing place seeing first hand the incredible, life saving, life giving work that Georgia is ... ”

“
Georgia?”

John shrugged defensively. “She asked me to call her that. We’re friends now, Carey. She knows I really get who she is and what she’s trying to say.”

“
Oh, for fuck’s sake, John, she’s my aunt and I love her, but Mother Theresa she ain’t. This place is great but a) it’s a tax write off, and b) it’s a way to justify her day-to-day existence as one of the richest women in the world.” Seeing his look of skepticism enraged me. I continued, my voice becoming shrill. “That’s right, John, think I’m rich, think my friends are a bunch of do-nothing rich bitches like you call us. Hell, John, we are poverty-stricken compared to my aunt, the great do-gooder, my aunt who spends millions a year on lawyers so she can argue with Donald Trump about having a private fucking Olympic-sized pool in her stadium-sized apartment so that she doesn’t have to take the elevator down thirty stories and swim in the Olympic-sized pool that’s already in her building. Because, God forbid, if she did that, she might actually end up sharing the same water as some filthy ordinary millionaire and who the fuck knows what kind of diseases people like that have.” Exhausted from my diatribe I collapsed into the hammock. I hadn’t felt good since we had arrived. The heat and humidity wiped me out. The lack of electricity meant that I had to monitor my own insulin levels and use needles, and I always hated dealing with that.