An Accidental Affair (3 page)

A pause rested between us, as comfortable as a bed made of rocks and bad memories.

“I need to see you right away, Thicke. Not on the phone. Face-to-face. I had hoped that we could be civilized long enough to sit down for dinner tomorrow night at Crustacean.”

“A bottom-feeder wants to meet at a place named after bottom-feeders.”

“I need investors. I need your money. And I need a hot script. I want your script.”

“Here’s a script that you can write yourself. It’ll be autobiographical.
Down-and-out film director coping with a myriad of crises, personal and professional, from alimony to child support to IRS to being jilted by beautiful women, lies and cheats as he struggles to misdirect another mediocre film as he deals with fights and all the drama associated with the cast and crew.”

He raged, “
Bet you’re glad that you married her now, you prick. How does it feel to see your wife on camera fucking another man? That whore is the new Paris goddamn Hilton.
”

I hung up on him. The sky puked rain from the blackness over my head.

I drove like a man leaving the scene of a deadly crime. Woebegone, I sped toward restless nights. My heart ached. Blood dripped from my right hand. Demons rose around me.

Regina Baptiste had brought humiliation to my gates, had shame at my front door.

In this town, everybody got fucked over.

It just took me a while to make it to the front of the line.

Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, hi5, Orkut, PerfSpot, Zorpia, Netlog, Habbo, LinkedIn, Ning, Tagged, Flixster, Xanga, Badoo, MiGente, StudiVZ, and Twitter were all ablaze.

Less than twenty-four hours later, with eyes sunken and hollow and a body that was sleep deprived, I parked on a side street in Hollywood and stepped away from my car and slid behind the wheel of a U-Haul. Driver had left the U-Haul where I had instructed. I took to the streets and made it to the freeways and exited the 605 at Imperial Highway. Downey, California. Southeast of Los Angeles. An area that, before the arrival of conquering Europeans, was formerly populated by the Native Americans known as the Tongva.

Rambunctious music came from every apartment and every car that passed by, angry, vulgar songs that cycled the same five notes to express about as much emotion and intelligence as a dial tone. The place seemed to prove that the gods ignored the weak and aided the strong. It was a good place for me to get lost until the media found new prey.

I started to unload my furniture and drag boxes to the second floor, only to find the elevator deceased. One of the neighbors saw me struggling with the mattress. He was well-built, a man with pale green eyes, dark brown wavy hair, a cleft in his chin and dimples in his cheeks, a blue-collar man who probably had women galore in these worn out buildings.

He introduced himself and said, “Chet Holder.”

A dozen names went through my head. Curt Cannon, Hunt Collins, Richard Marsten, Richard Bachman. But my mind remained with my wife and one name had stuck.

I bypassed all of those and said, “Varg Veum.”

“Interesting name. Where you from?”

I paused to remember. “Bergen, on the west coast of Norway.”

“You’re a long way from home.”

After the mattress was inside my apartment, I thanked him. I thought that he’d go on about his way, but he followed me back down to the truck and unloaded more furniture. We made it back just in time to watch a Spanish family curse at a Muslim family because they had parked in their assigned parking spot. The Spanish man called the Muslim man a terrorist just as many times as the Muslim man shouted that his neighbor was an illegal wetback. Mr. Holder went over and diffused the verbal war before it became another Sunset and La Brea moment.

I opened and closed my aching hand and said, “They were vicious.”

“Get used to it. Pointless battles are waged at this complex at least once a week.”

“Has anybody been killed down here?”

“Not in a couple of years. Stabbings mostly. Weekends. Alcohol related.”

Mr. Holder scratched his head and looked over what was left, then settled on the dresser. There were blankets and mats inside the truck. He covered the dresser with the blankets. Then we carried it down the ramp and walked it into the stairwell, the turns severe.

He said, “You got a good grip on your end of the dresser?”

“I’ve got a good grip.”

“Looks like the furniture at Italy 2000. I go down to the store in Hawthorne from time to time and walk around and dream about being able to sit and sleep on furniture as nice as this.”

I said, “Don’t hit the wall. It’s padded, but the pad might be too thin.”

“I can handle the weight on my end.”

I said, “I’ll pay you for helping me move this heavy stuff.”

“I’m not doing this for money. When a man sees another man who needs help, he should help that man. That would make the world a much better place. A man never knows when the tides will turn and he’ll be the one who will need help.”

My arms and legs ached. My right hand was still swollen, weak from the attack. Mr. Holder helped me unload one of the bookcases. Moving up the concrete stairs made enough noise to cause insults to fly out of the windows at the midnight hour. We were being rained on by profanity from men, women, and children, yells that sounded like the outcries from a many-headed beast, roars and bellows and rudeness and ignorance that Mr. Holder told me to ignore.

I said, “I have a mattress that I can sleep on.”

“That’s a nice mattress too. I bet it cost a mint.”

“
Overstock.com
had a sale.”

“Must’ve been some sale.”

“The people upstairs are still screaming at us.”

“Ignore them.”

“You sure about that?”

He said, “The wolf attacks with its fang, the bull with its horn, the asshole with curses.”

When we made it back down to the truck, a woman with a very nice figure was standing in the darkness, stationed at the rear of the rental, peeping inside at my belongings, her back to us. She had on a light blue Nike tracksuit. Her hair was long, hung to the middle of her back and was colored as bright as the noonday sun.

Mr. Holder said, “Sweet Isabel, you looking for something to steal?”

“This is lovely furniture. I should steal the entire lorry and make a mint.”

Her accent told me that she was British. She turned and faced us,
her smile broad and welcoming, her physical build as delicious as her mild California tan. She was a mature, beautiful woman. Just like a woman I had dated and fallen in love with before I married.

Isabel said, “You have all of this nice stuff and you’re going to just leave it unguarded while you march up and down the stairs in this crummy place? What kind of berk are you?”

Mr. Holder said, “Isabel, this is Varg Veum. Varg, that is the lovely Isabel Beaupierre.”

I said, “Nice to meet you, Isabel Beaupierre. I’m the berk in question.”

She possessed cobalt eyes and a face that reminded me of blue-blooded Helena Bonham Carter. Isabel made strong eye contact and gave me a firm handshake.

She said, “Varg Veum?”

I nodded and felt a combination of guilt and frustration taking control of my expression. She looked me up and down, as if she had come from a long line of barons and baronesses, diplomats and people in power. She, like me, didn’t fit in with the surroundings.

She hesitated. “Varg Veum, where are you moving all of this lovely furniture?”

“E-213.”

“Well, Varg, if you and Chet don’t mind, I’m going to keep my eyes on the lorry. There are a lot of sticky fingers around here and they’ll burgle you without a moment’s notice. I’ve lost more things than I care to remember here, my sweet virginity not being one of them.”

She was curious about my furniture and regarded me with undisguised suspicion.

Cars passed. Neighbors walked by speaking in vulgar slang.

From the third floor, a television screamed loud and clear. I heard Regina Baptiste’s name and I looked up, my heart beating fast, and was bombarded by what I was avoiding. A neighbor was in her window, entertaining a man in an intimate way, her radio obnoxious.

Sex tapes are important these days, and she has one. Thirty years ago they shut down an actor’s career and they’d be lucky to get a job working at a Dairy Queen along a barren stretch of I-10 in the middle of Texas. Now they are goldmines. Sex tapes are profitable for those who want exposure but have no real talent, other than spitting or swallowing. But Baptiste has talent and now we will see that in more ways than one. Make that money and congrats to Baptiste. And in the meantime, will somebody please find us a Scarlett Johansson or Halle Berry sex tape? Beckinsale, Alba, Lopez, Natalie Portman, Keira Knightley, Camilla Belle, time to up your games.