Buy Me a Dream, page 7
'You are too late, Mark. They have already locked me out of the computer system. All I have is a desk and a phone... and some magazines to read.'
It would appear that Darcy and Staci suspected I might try something underhand. That's a little untrustworthy. We go back such a long way, too. They can both consider themselves deleted from my Christmas list. 'In that case, you should make your farewells as soon as I hang-up. I'm taking a few days off, you do that too. Get Jobi to forward any calls that come in for me to your cell phone, and take messages. I have a new number which I don't want to give to everyone at this stage.' I gave her my new number, and then added, 'Obviously I don't have an office - or any clients, for that matter, so we will need to work from my home for a while. It is too far for you to drive each day, you should move in to one of my spare bedrooms.'
'I have a pussy, Mark.'
'I always assumed you did. And it will be perfectly safe. Any scurrilous information you've picked up off the internet about me can be ignored.'
'Very funny, you idiot,' she chuckled, 'his name is Gizmo, and we really are attached at the hip. He goes where I go.'
'If Gizmo turns out to only have two legs, you are both checking into the nearest motel.'
'You want me to give that new girl, Sasha, a call?'
'That was the next item on my list. Do that straight away, Bibi, and arrange for her to come up to the house in a few days’ time. You'll most probably need to send a town car for her and suggest she pack enough things for a couple of days stay. By the way, I have had to cancel all my cards and the replacements won't be ready for a day or two, so use the direct banking system to make any payments from my account.' I continued giving Bibi instructions for the next five minutes and we ended our conversation with her agreeing to drive to my place first thing in the morning. With her cat stitched to her hip.
I sat for a moment and contemplated if I really could afford to take the next few days off. I'd given Bibi the time off, but loaded her up with so much work she wasn't going to actually get any time off at all. I realized that talking shop with Bibi had actually forced my mind off the dark things that had consumed me for the recent past and I filed that in my brain in case I needed it. Good to know that work got my juices running if I couldn't get my mind back with the gentle, logical conversations I had planned for the next day or two.
My garden is not a place where I do any work other than thinking, I have a gardener who takes care of everything for me and as I walked around the flower-beds with a pair of scissors in my hand I realized the guy was ripping me off. The beds had not been weeded for some time and the bushes looked untidy; I don't think I am getting my $50 a week worth of "maintenance". I will get Bibi to check if I'm paying too much when I get a moment. I began snipping off of the stems of the nicest flowers I could find and when I had an armful I went inside to look for something to wrap them in. I have not given anyone flowers, in this way, for years: I vaguely remember stealing some from neighboring gardens when I was about fourteen to give to a girl by the name of Jamie, who I had a massive crush on. From memory she wasn't impressed and ended up just as embarrassed as me when her friends made a big deal about our supposed romance. I think the flowers ended up in the trash... along with any plans I had of Jamie and me getting together. I'm hoping for a similar result today, not the flowers in the rubbish bin part, though.
I knocked Betty's brass testicles against her door and waited. She took a little longer to answer so she had not seen me coming, or perhaps she was really pissed at me for the way I talked to her when she came to check on me an hour ago. Eventually the door opened and Betty looked out at me with a scowl, 'Mark...' then her eyes slid down to the now wrapped bunch of flowers I held out to her. 'Whatever are these for?' Her sarcasm was not disguised.
'To say I'm sorry for being a gigantic asshole, earlier.' I raised my eyebrows in an over-the-top way and smiled to try and lighten the moment.
Betty reached out and took them from me and smiled back. 'Come in, I've just made some coffee.' This was said as my arm was being pulled towards her open doorway. I guess I'm forgiven.
I have used the guilt tactic myself to close a deal or two in my time and clearly, so had Betty. I let her lead me through to the kitchen where she pointed me to one of four bar-stools.
She sniffed at the flowers, which I knew smelled quite nice as I had included some roses I had come across. 'They are lovely, Mark, thank you. And so nicely presented.' Sarcasm again, but this time with a smile attached. The reason was the paper I had used to wrap them in. I didn't have any colored tissue-paper, the only choice I had was between newspaper and Christmas paper.
'Merry Christmas,' I smiled. 'The paper was just to stop any sap getting on to you.'
'It's been a while since that has happened.' She smiled a Betty smile at her double meaning and began to arrange the flowers in a vase. After she was satisfied with her efforts she turned back to me, and said, 'Coffee?'
'Thanks. Just a small one though, I'm heading up the coast to spend a few days with my father after I leave here. I don't want to have to stop for any pit-stops along the way.'
'That's nice,' she offered, then added to qualify her meaning. 'That you have a good relationship with your father, not that your prostate is a problem.'
I know Betty well enough to understand why she keeps trying to turn the subject around to anything of a sexual nature, so I chose not to comment on either of the two suspect statements she had already made. Realizing that she was fishing in a pond without fish she moved on. 'Is your mother still alive, Mark?'
'Yes, she is. She and dad divorced some time ago, Mom remarried and moved to the other side of the country so I don't see her very often. But Dad stuck around. After the divorce he bought a few acres of land.'
'Oh, lovely! You'll be able to help him with the farm.'
'It's not really a farm, but don't try and tell him that. He's set it up to try and be self-sufficient with all the food he needs. He grows vegetables and fruit trees, some nut trees, he has some hens plus a few pigs and he shares a cow with three neighbors. They take turns milking her by hand and share the milk.'
'He sounds like quite a catch, if you're into an Amish sort of thing.' She mocked. 'I'll check and see if he is listed on my eHarmony site. Can't be too many men with a profile that reads like that.. And he's willing to share a cow.' She chuckled to herself as she tipped a packet of biscuits onto a plate.
My coffee was carefully pushed across the island bar and Betty took the stool next to me. I was about to defend dad against her description of his lifestyle when I thought better of it. I softened what I was thinking of saying. 'Hardly Amish. Dad's into V8's and he even has a small tractor.'
I know - I still defended him.
She smiled. 'That's even better.'
I was coming to the conclusion that Betty's taste in men was not limited to those of us who were less than half her age. I was definitely sitting next to a man-eater with ambitions; we need a new title for this woman, Cougar didn't seem to cover it.
'So, was it the knock on the head?' she asked as a biscuit disappeared into her mouth.
I looked at her questioningly.
She hurriedly finished chomping on the biscuit and swallowed, thankfully not choking and requiring some sort of resuscitation. '...that caused you to snap at me this morning?'
The last thing I wanted was to get into a detailed explanation of my black mood. 'I'm sorry I was so rude Betty, I was in a state of shock - I'd just heard that someone I knew had died last night.'
She looked at me and somberly shook her head. 'I understand. It's quite daunting when you get a call telling you that.' She paused and took a sip of coffee and used her man-eating teeth to bite off a tiny piece of biscuit, then continued as she ate. 'Mind you, at my age nearly every second call is about another friend dying. The scary part is that many of them are younger than me. Makes you realize you have to live every minute of your life; it’s pointless thinking, "Gee, I wished I'd done this, or that," when they're nailing that lid down on you.'
'I was hoping you'd cheer me up, Betty,' I gave her a wry smile, 'Now I'm going to be sizing up every large redwood I see lining the road to see if it's a suitable place to end it all.'
'Oh don't be so silly, Mark. My message was the exact opposite. Death should remind you that you were not the one who was tapped on the shoulder. If you are feeling that down I can guarantee to change your mood right now... if you'll let me.'
She had finally done it, come right out and propositioned me. Awkward? Absolutely! Having sex with a woman her age had not been on my to-do list, but something told me that Betty knew her way around a bedroom. For a split-second I considered it.
'You're a good neighbor, Betty... and a good friend.' I laughed and used my big lips to smile sweetly. I hope I got the tone of the laugh right, I was aiming for her to think I believed she was joking to cheer me up. But, if it was too boisterous she could be offended, or too light she might think I was laughing at her for suggesting such a ridiculous idea. The look on her face suggested the latter.
I panicked, pursed my big male-attracting lips to the point where they resembled a baboon's bum, and said, 'Betty... I'm gay!'
***
I cruised along the coast road with the top down, hoping the fresh air would blow some common sense into my brain. "Betty... I'm gay!" How the hell do I deal with that? If I hope to have a civilized relationship with Betty from now on I can never bring a woman back to my house. If I do, I need to hide her from sight or convince my neighbor she is a cousin or sister-in-law, or a... Oh shit! I've created one hell of a mess. Thankfully there were no redwoods lining this part of the trip.
I bought myself this black, convertible BMW 435i six months ago to celebrate a big deal I had just put together for one of my star clients. I love this vehicle, it just feels right, sporty and classy without going all Vegas like the ultra-expensive top of the range M series Beamers, or retro, like my old man prefers. He has driven this a few times and I can tell he loves it, but getting him to say those words would require the work of the CIA's top torture team, rubber hoses and chemicals. It gets two strikes against it, apparently; it's not American, but then not an awful lot is anymore, and it is a straight 6 which makes it 2 cylinders short of great. Dad has always owned the likes of Trans-Ams and Mustangs and I learned to drive in vehicles like that. V8 gas guzzlers all the way, which ironically puts them at direct odds with Dad's recently acquired Greenie philosophies. The old vehicles are great fun, but try taking a corner a little too fast and you are going to be wishing you spent the extra bucks and were in this thing. I only ever use it on the weekend or holidays - at least I did; now I'll be using it every day.
Weekdays, B&M's top-level executives have use of a limo service that provides town cars. Ironic, when I remember the last time I could have used that service and charged it to the business was the afternoon I decided to have a drink, incognito, in the bar of the Okay Corral. I intended to get plastered and didn't want to use that service to get home, because my now ex-bosses would have had a detailed report on my movements. Ironically, it wouldn't have really mattered thanks to the internet having already turned me into a fifteen minute sensation. But in a small, perverse way I'm glad they will never know about my latest big error of judgment.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I began to run over the hints and suspicions I might have ignored about the change to Darcy and Staci's opinion of me over recent times. I couldn't think of many, which means I'm either a lousy judge of these things or they kept any resentment to themselves. I believe that Staci would have been the one pushing for my removal as Darcy is pretty much a guy who goes with the flow. I can't imagine what she managed to use to finally get him to agree to kick me in the balls, so to speak. She has always wanted the company to concentrate on her type of customer - the type that daddy or granddaddy left the odd hundred million to and a set of silver spoons firmly jammed up their collective asses. My clients were pretty much wealthy by their own efforts, but because they were mostly well known they were considered loud and unacceptable by old money standards, which is another way of saying they scared the crap out of Staci's people because they actually knew how to make money, not just add to an already existing fortune by accepting advice from someone like Staci. But it didn't make much sense to get me out the door when Darcy's sporting clients were the most likely to cause embarrassment though scandal, drug usage or punching someone who looked at them the wrong way. Actors and singers who have violent tendencies like that never got near being included on my client list. I concentrated on more established people with long careers and large families. A good business plan, I had believed, never expecting I would be the one causing the trouble. Of the two clients I lost one is an actor who is a household name, he is a religious man, known all over the world as a dependable fatherly type and I can understand his need to not be associated with me at this point in time. The other client is a network news anchor and his reasons would be much the same. The irony is that away from a camera both guys are a lot like the rest of us. They tell dirty jokes, get drunk occasionally and talk disparagingly about their peers. Okay, so that's not a definition of everyone, but it is of me. Besides, the three of us have drunkenly all pissed together on the same tree at a Spielberg party, which I thought made us like blood-brothers. Apparently, being piss-brothers doesn't carry the same weight.
I remember when Mel landed in the dumpster with his anti-Semitic rants his PR people had him disappear for a long time to let the memory fade, and be replaced with a fresh list of "things" to occupy the fickle minds of the public. Thankfully, my public persona is small so my time in the shadows shouldn't need to be very long - a point I would have argued to Staci and Darcy had I been given the chance. No, my dismissal must have been personal. I can only conclude that Darcy might want to watch his back from now on.
My trip to see my father was not really about my career issues it is more about getting my head around Kira's death. Dad might have some perspective about that, not only because he has lived a lot longer than me, but because he was a cop for forty-three years and saw death on a daily basis. Kira's death shouldn't be affecting me as badly as this. Sure, it is horribly shocking, so wrong and tragic, but I only knew the woman for about an hour and I'm reacting like I knew her for most of my life. Ironically, that is the essence of the problem, I felt like I had. It's rare to get an instant bond with someone but I did with her. I have no idea if she had a similar feeling and I never will - and that is eating me up. I'm also pissed at her, why in the hell was she walking home? She must have known the area was a dangerous place to be, late at night. I might have to re-visit my original opinion that she wasn't the brightest bulb in the light shop. I'm being stupid and unkind and I realize it is my pain that is making me lash out, Kira was an intelligent woman, she would have had a good reason to put herself in that situation. Maybe her bus stopped near there and she did the trip every night and just got terribly unlucky.
If I kept thinking like this I really would be looking for a tree to crash into so I forced my thoughts towards a more pleasant subject: Sasha Perez.
But just as I started I was distracted by my road-trip. I had just left the more populated part of the coastline road behind me and was currently climbing through a series of rolling hills that sat inland, but still offered the occasional glimpse of distant ocean. I was alone on the bitumen and hopefully cop-less joy lay ahead of me. The road entered a section of twists and turns and the BM began to come alive at my urging. This is what a genuine sports-tourer was made for and I flipped though the gears with my fingers and listened to the roar of the engine as I accelerated and threw it smoothly in and out of the bends. To my ears that roar was comparable to the finest piece of music and I wondered why so many women don't get it; it is a definition of perfection. But then I didn't get diamonds or flowers - pretty things that cost way too much and do nothing. At least my car brings a smile to my face while it takes me somewhere. It isn't just the bits between our legs that are different - some of the female internal wiring is connected in ways that make little sense to me, but I still wouldn't change any part of it, life would be boring if we all thought the same, and wanted the same.
The road straightened out and my playtime ended, I returned my mind to the subject of Sasha. She has just turned eighteen, I discovered her a few days ago when she was street-performing late at night on a busy sidewalk in town. She had attracted a crowd of about fifty, or maybe a hundred people, none of whom seemed to be in any hurry to move on. I was on a date with a beautiful British Airways flight attendant I had just met on a trip back from the UK and I was pretty sure I was going to be upgraded to a guaranteed first-class ride tonight. By that I meant we had already connected and had a great meal and lots of terrific wine, and the next stop was to be her hotel room and it wasn't just her mini-bar that I was intending to explore. But Sasha killed that part of the plan - no mean feat when most guys would have crawled over broken glass to share that hotel room with... I don't even remember her name now. But I do remember Sasha's.
We had heard her music as we neared the crowd and had tried to make our way through to continue to the hotel, but the sidewalk and most of the road was blocked. Every person we tried to negotiate past was concentrating so hard on the female performer and keen to hold their place that they were oblivious of us. We eventually gave-up trying to squeeze by and joined them, watching the young girl, standing all alone, who had mesmerized this random group of passers-by and turned them into immovable road blocks. Within a few seconds, I too, was spellbound. Within a minute my business brain kicked in and I realized I was witnessing a eureka moment.
Her music was unbelievable, intoxicating; an original sound that I am sure I have never heard before. Her songs were a mix of So-Cal rock with Coldplay like musical harmonies involving waves of complex rhythms. They were accompanied with intelligent and occasionally funny lyrics that someone like Dylan would have been proud to write. She was playing an amplified acoustic guitar which was feeding through a laptop and some other electrical gear I couldn't identify. The computer obviously contained prerecorded parts of her act as the music was a lot more than just a single guitar. The equipment was set up on top of a plastic milk crate that sat beside her; I gathered the crate doubled as a carry case. A bank of peddles lay beneath her feet which she periodically depressed causing her music to alter in unusual and surprising ways. Her voice was quirky enough to be instantly recognizable and, under the grungy mismatched outfit, her body and face looked nice too. Not as nice as the nameless girl beside me, and the busker wasn't offering me sex either, but I still stood there transfixed along with everyone else, captivated by her performance and ignoring the demanding tugs at my arm from my horny Brit.
