Little Blue Lies (14 page)

I step up behind her and take in what she's taking in. The room.

“Oh,” I say. “Oh. Well, um. Oh.”

“For Christsake,” she says.

“Listen, just don't look at it. You're very tired, so maybe you should just, maybe, just go straight to bed. . . .”

She turns, toward the bed.

“Oh, for Christsake.”

It's a pretty nice bed. The duvet is as thick as my mattress at home. I estimate it's a king-and-a-half size. The layout of the
room
they have given us is quite something. That huge bed is the centerpiece, with the footboard facing the massive curtained window on one side. Above and beyond the headboard are what look like a pair of Japanese-style sliding windows with semi-opaque greenish sea-glass-looking panels in them. The windows reach from the top of the headboard almost up to the ceiling. Soft light glows from the other side of the panels, a light that is clearly telling Junie Blue to come to it. She drops her bag, jumps up, and walks across the bed to those sliders like an old movie detective who says,
All right. I know you're in there.

“Oh, for—”

That would be the bathroom. She stands there up on the bed, the bedroom now open to the gleaming huge bathroom,
the whole place open, really from the shower stall right on through to the window wall. If one sat on that Japanese windowsill—and one has every intention of doing just that before we leave here—you could look down on one side right onto the bed, and down on the other side, right onto the bathtub. You could also see just about every other corner of the place from that perch, not to mention the views out across the harbor beyond, but probably that bed-bath axis would be enough to keep me occupied.

She stares at me, all bug-eyed and accusatory.

“The room has nice flow, huh?” is my surrender line.

But she's not through. She marches the quarter mile from the pillows to the foot of the bed, hops right down, and makes a dash for the curtains before I can even slow her down. She whips the curtain back—runs it all the way, actually, from left to right until all is revealed.

And all is quite something. My parents gave me a helicopter trip over the city as part of my thirteenth birthday, and I don't recall the view of the harbor being as good as this one. And the night is clear and perfect, illuminating all the boats. It's almost making me mad, now, how relentless this fabulosity is.

“What did they do, bring in extra friggin' sparkly boats and stars just for us?” I say.

She is staring now, speechless. I stand right behind her,
with about six inches of buffer air between us, as I do not dare to make contact.

I know that at any other time, under any other circumstances, I would see the same magnificence here that most people see.

Right now it feels perverse.

“I know,” I say somberly. “For Christsake.”

She pauses a couple of seconds.

“Let's go see the bathroom,” she says.

This is when she drowns me, I imagine.

I wouldn't even know how to define the opulence of the bathroom. Everything is a kind of pale rose marble. There are four complete neighborhoods in here for various functions. She tugs me over to the enormous tub, with its rack of beauty products. “What does a person even
do
with six different controls on a bathtub? Does it fly? Can we take it for a spin around the harbor tomorrow?”

I think that is funny, but I am too apprehensive to laugh.

Until she does. As she takes a second, then a third lap of the bathroom, Junie begins laughing a most incredulous, disarming, confused, helpless laugh. She makes emphatic, wordless gestures toward this shiny item and that, and finally just holds both hands straight up in the air.

“You see,” I say, standing my ground at a distance and pointing at her, “that could be seen as either the international
gesture of surrender, or touchdown, so I'm not sure . . . Oh, wait. Now that I think of it, those are both good things.”

She grabs me by both hands, pulls me over to the sink, and then spins me around to look out, through the opening in the sliding windows.

From this spot you can see everything, the dazzling bathroom, then out over the big bed, to the glass-topped sideboard on the right-hand wall with the massive TV, and straight ahead to the glass wall, out to the harbor and the stars and stars above and beyond the sea.

I turn my back on all that, to look into the face of Junie Blue. It's a fine trade.

“So, now you feel like you belong here?” I ask hopefully, stupidly falling into a hug with her.

“Oh, absolutely not,” she says, surprisingly chipper. “But I am taking small comfort in the knowledge that
nobody
belongs here. I'm embracing the absurdity.”

“Yes,” I say, hugging her tighter. “That really just encapsulates pretty much everything I have ever asked you to do. Yes! Embrace the absurdity, Junie Blue!”

She puts a finger to my lips. “Shhh. For the moment. I am
temporarily
prepared to embrace the absurdity. But this is not real.”

“Great,” I say. “Understood.”

“So . . . ,” she says, gazing over my shoulder, “how much did this cost?”

“Shhh,” I say, my finger to her lips. A shock of something nasty bolts through my body as I feel the slight unnatural puffiness there on that lovely Creamsicle lip, and I rush to banish that feeling. “This is not real.”

She nods. A small pact is made.

“So, then,” I say cheerily, “where would you like to have me, in the bed or the tub?”

If I'd figured to startle her, I had once again badly misfigured.

“Actually, the sink looks big enough,” she chirps.

Life got so perfect so quickly. I love life for that.

In my pocket my phone buzzes me. Calls on my phone are so rare that I do reflexively pick up most of them right away.

“Jesus,” I say, “my mother. I totally forgot. . . .”

I scurry into the other room, like one does to take a call privately. I come around the corner to find Junie sitting on the bed, giggling madly after having vaulted through the Japanese window.

“Jeez, Mom, I'm sorry,” I say.

“That's it,” Junie yells out. “We're moving here permanently.”

I head back to the bathroom, and when I get there, Junie is standing on the bed, framed by the inter-room window, the big vista behind her providing the backdrop of purple sky and stars she should have with her always. She blesses me
with a smile that makes me instantly feel like a far better guy than I will ever be able to be, and I feel an involuntary yip of love for her escape my lips.

“Okay, that was weird,” Mom says as Junie slides the windows together to give us whatever privacy is possible. I hear the TV come on, which helps.

“So,” I say, “how's it going?”

“You mean aside from getting my car stolen?”

“Come on, Mom. Of course you knew I didn't steal your car. But, yeah, I did kind of forget to bring it back.”

“Or to call me.”

“Sorry, sorry. I just got kind of preoccupied, when things got . . . hectic. Anyway, you knew I was over at Junie's”

I hear sounds in the background. Voices. Not my dad's. Female voices.

“Well, I
did
know that,” she says.

“What's going on there?” I ask.

“Um, Son, do you really think this is a situation where you should be asking the questions?”

“Well, ah . . . Okay, good point.”

“Oh, and what is this?” she says in that stage-whispery voice that signals to the person on the other end of the phone connection that she's not talking to them. “An appletini? Oh . . . Oh, oh my, that's luscious.”

“Mom?” I say. “Right, I know I'm not supposed to be posing the questions, but what's going on there?”

“The girls are over,” she says matter-of-factly.

“What girls?”

“The Blue girls. Leona and Maxine.”

“You're kidding me?”

I hear her sipping. Slurping, actually.

“And you, young man, are at a
hotel
! With your princess bride.” She goes into a small fit of giggles. “Whoops,” she says.

“Whoops, what?”

“Maxine just spilled while topping up my 'tini.”

“Tell Maxie to stop topping the 'tini,” I demand. Demanding, I realize, is a trifle presumptuous.

“Oliver,” Mom says in her very rare, very effective slap-the-young-man-down tone. She lets it hang for a moment while I achieve something resembling perspective.

“Okay, we're good,” I say. “Nice party?”

“That would be far too strong a word, but under the circumstances, yes.”

There is some instrumental jazz filling the air in the background as one of the ladies appears to have discovered the all-over-the-house audio system. Mom moves to another room, where the music still wafts but the guests do not.

“Leona wanted to come and thank me personally for her portrait,” Mom says.

“Uh-huh. And Maxine had to accompany her.”

“I think that was for the best.”

“Leona drunk?”

“Not as drunk as I would be if I were her, but yes.”

“Maxine chatty?”

“Oh, yes.”

“That explains your hotel knowledge. What else do you know?”

“Nowhere near as much as I expect to know once I get back to the conversation. But that's another story. What more am I going to know once I finish with this conversation?”

“Um,” I say tentatively, “not a whole lot?”

“Nnnn,” she says. “I kind of figured as much. You realize, don't you, that I have every right to be furious and insulted and possibly panicked right now.”

“Every right,” I agree. “But don't panic.”

She sighs. I hear distant voices seeking her out at my house.

“Will we pretend we have a normal relationship, and we just had a scalding argument, yelling and screaming about your thoughtlessness and selfishness and my controlling, misunderstanding, blah, blah, blah . . . without having to go through all that?”

“Perfect,” I say. And she pretty much is.

“Whew, that was rough,” she goofs. “I'm exhausted.”

“Me too,” I say. “You should probably get back to your party anyway, before Dad charms everybody right off their feet.”

“Oh, he's not here. He's got one of those
things
tonight where he's boozing and charming people right off their wallets.”

“He's a force,” I say, suddenly worried that he might be doing all that right in this very building.

“Okay, but yes, I probably should get back to them,” she says. Pause. Followed by pause. “Should I worry about you?”

“Under no circumstances.”

“Okay. I will. For now, though, I will occupy myself with worrying about these two.”

“They're good people, Mom.”

“I know they are,” she says.

“And so are you,” I say.

“Well, duh,” she says, laughs, and hangs up.

It is a source of great comfort that my mother says “duh” to me.

When I return to the bed, Junie is making that deep, full, pre-sleep breathing from somewhere deep within the fine sheets and comforter. The only part of her that is visible is her hand, which protrudes from the top, between the pillows. She has located the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign that you're supposed to hang on the doorknob, and she has secured it on the first two fingers of her hand. Clever girl.

I remove the sign, then notice on the reverse side a menu.

If you wish to preorder breakfast in your room, please fill
out and hang on the outside of your door before three a.m.

This sends me into something of a trance of preordered gluttony and thrill at the excitement of making this happen. By the time I hang the thing outside, it's as if somebody else has done it for me. I barely remember making the choices, and I don't recall what any of them are.

I just now realize how exhausted I am myself. I go around turning everything off, leave the curtains open to the stars and the waterfront, then crawl in under there with her. I am not bothered that I did not bring a toothbrush. Or anything else.

Who could be bothered by anything, here and now?

“You lied,” she says, ever, ever so lightly, barely audibly.

I don't even want to know.

I awake to a dream.

That is, I believe I am awake, because I have never dreamed this well before, and even if it is a dream, then, well done, subconscious.

The sun is singing through the big window over the ocean, and Junie Blue is staring out at it, her back to me. I can smell the shower she has had, see her wet hair, see the white bathrobe she has on.

“Hey,” I say.

She turns to face me. “Hey.” She is smiling, shaking her head again.

“That's a nice robe,” I say. It looks really thick and soft, like they took some extra duvet material and stuffed it inside a fluffy robe.

She walks to the side of the bed. “Feel it. This is the softest thing I have ever felt, including kittens.”

I touch the sleeve of her garment, and it is indeed made of something like cloud.

“There's one for you, too, hanging on the back of the
bathroom door. They had notes attached, telling us to please enjoy them while we're here.”

“Damn nice of them,” I say.

“Damn nice. The shower is amazing.”

“That, is good news,” I say, hopping out of bed and trying to take advantage of momentum to kiss her. I don't get within five inches before she's onto me.

“You can use my toothbrush,” she says from behind her hand. “It's in there.”

I hop around to the shower and get right in. In the other room I hear the TV come on, and as I lather up with all the rich products on offer, things feel pretty serene. For a few minutes.