Little Blue Lies (15 page)

There is a knock on the door.

Junie freaks out entirely. She throws open the sliding windows again, and it feels like all the world, from Junie to the giant TV personalities sitting on the network couch, to everybody out there beyond our window, can see my nakedness.

“Somebody's at the door, the door,” she shouts.

“So answer it.”

“Yeah,” she says, because June's antennae will always be more sharply tuned than mine, “what if it's my father? Or worse?”

That never even occurred to me, but at this point everything should occur to me.

“Who is it?” I shout.

“Room service,” the man calls.

For a second it seems like she would have preferred her rampaging father.

“You ordered . . . what?”

I am feeling extremely naked right now, and not in the good way at all.

“Don't leave the man standing out there.”

“Grrrr,” she says at me, slams the sliders, and then goes to let him in.

I hear the rolling feast, the clattering of glasses and dishes, and try to remember the things I ordered. I hear brief polite discussion on both their parts, and eventually the gracious retreat of the room service gent.

The sliders fly open again.

“What is wrong with you?” she says.

I work feverishly to get all the lather off myself. “That's rhetorical, right?”

“Well, if you've got an actual answer, I will be fascinated to hear.”

“Could you just . . . give me a minute here, Junie? I'll be right out.”

“Fine,” she says, slamming the sliders again.

Time passes, but not much of it. The amount of time it would take a person to, say, walk over and examine the
contents of a room service breakfast for two, is what passes. Then the sliders whip open again.

“And for your next trick, apparently you plan to make me obese. What is
wrong
with you?”

“Rhetorical?”

“No. Have an answer for me when you come out.”

She slams the windows again and, whether I should be or not, I am laughing to myself.

I walk cautiously out of the gilded bathroom of Caesar, into the carpeted, sunny main room, to find Junie sitting on the edge of the bed eating out of a basket of huge bursting red strawberries.

“
These
are okay,” she says, sounding like she is needing to put effort into sounding peeved now.

I look over the delivery cart, which itself looks like one of the nicest restaurant tables I have seen, only on wheels.

“Wow” I say.

“ ‘Wow,' is right,” she says. “Madness.”

“I'm kind of surprised myself, here in the bright light of day.”

I scoop up a deep bowl containing three different kinds of fat grapes.

“What were you doing?” she says more calmly.

I pop a black seedless, and shrug. “Impress you?” I offer the bowl, and she peels off a bunch of the reds.

She sighs, but one of those big showy sighs where you make your lips push out and flap like a horse. Then she takes a strawberry and offers it right to my mouth.

If it were a strawberry, gooseberry, a shitberry, or a severed toe, I would still have taken it as she offered it. As it happens, it is the ripest, burstingest, most aromatic strawberry I have ever encountered. I make a groan of approval.

“I know,” she says, on her third or fourth or whatever number it has taken to give her the world's reddest lips.

Partly due to my cajoling, partly due to profound hunger, and partly out of a horror of seeing things wasted, Junie eventually shares the bounty of this breakfast with me. There is far too much food, far too rich food, meats and pastries, eggs benedict with smoked salmon, coffee and Earl Grey tea, and the place smells better than any other place has ever smelled, and we do a heroic job of wasting as little as possible, but we finally surrender.

I wheel the corpse of breakfast out to the corridor, where the medics can collect it. Then I put the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign on the door properly, come back, and fall onto the bed, next to the girl, in front of the TV, immobilized with the effort of digestion. Bliss.

“So,” she says, “how much did
that
cost?”

“Juuuune,” I say sternly. “Remember. This is not real.”

“It sure as hell isn't,” she says.

“And nothing costs anything in this place that is unreal.” My torso is immobilized, but I gesture wildly in all directions with my arms. “Money does not exist here on our planet. It is a planet powered by thought. We think it, it happens. We wish it, it materializes.”

“Yeah? This's quite a planet we have.”

“Yes indeed,” I say leaning closer into her, even though I was already leaning right up against her. “Guess what I am wishing now?”

“Oh. Jeez, well, so much for the planet, huh, because that won't be materializing.”

Wow. That was thorough.

“Are you trying to tell me I just destroyed an entire planet with my . . . quest?”

“Sure, but don't sweat it. Why should you be the one to break the unbroken chain of men throughout human history?”

We both lie there in silence, the TV nattering away while we give that statement the fear and respect it deserves.

“That was pretty scathing,” I venture.

“Good, you got it, then. I was afraid, being a guy and all . . .”

“Wait,” I say brightly. “Silver lining. Glass half-full. What I get from that is, if somehow I
am
the man to break that chain, then I'm sure to get some.”

“Yes,” she says, matching my brightness, “but then you'll
be thinking that way, you will reveal yourself as such, and it's
back
on the chain gang for you, mister.”

“Argghh,” is my final word on the subject.

She laughs full-throatedly at me.

In frustration and fun I fling myself sideways off the bed and bounce up again in what is becoming my default position, pleading—okay, begging—praying, folded hands and everything.

“Not sure I'm liking this new move of yours as much as maybe I should. Did you retreat to your old altar boy gig when I dumped you or something? Because I don't think I could live with that.”

“I miss this
so much
, Junie. I miss it
so much
.”

“So do I, O.”

“Then let's just stop missing it. Look.” I grab the lapels of my bathrobe, and it's like grabbing a whipped cream jacket. “Look, look at our robes. Look at our big window. Look!”

“What? I mean, what?”

“I don't know. I have no idea what I mean by that, but I'm just spotting the nicest things in the room and roping them in to help me.”

I am making her laugh, which has to be a good thing, always was a good thing when there were good things. She leans over and takes my altar boy hands, and pulls me up onto the bed like she has landed a big tuna and is hauling it into her boat.

“You, are the nicest thing in the room, Oliver,” she says, and pulls me into her bed.

•  •  •

When we wake up—well, when Junie wakes up, since I never fully fell back to sleep but lay there smelling her hair—she speaks first.

“I'll getcha back,” she says quietly.

When I remain speechless, she rolls over to regard me up close. If my face is not lying, it speaks of puzzlement.

“Okay,” I say. “It seems to me there are a number of ways to take that statement. Could be ‘I'll get you back,' like when one person pays for lunch or something and the other one pledges to return the favor. Or there's the more intense ‘I'll get you back,' like when one person does something foul and reprehensible to another and then there is the possibility that it's more along the lines of, ‘I'll get your back,' like, ‘If you're ever in need, I'll be there.'

“Anyhow you look at it, that's a hell of a thing to wake up to, Ms. Blue.”

She slap-claps a hand over my mouth, kisses my nose, and says, “It was absolutely not the second one.” Then she climbs over me on her way to the bathroom. I hear the magnificent shower get its third outing of the day.

My phone rings, and I cross the room all spritely to answer it. I answer with a very silly, “Yell-o.”

“Well, that's my
first
question answered. Congratulations, boy.”

“Maxine, what are you doing on my mother's phone?”

“It was the first one I saw when I woke up.”

“And where did you wake up?”

“Your living room.”

“You guys slept over at my house?”

“I did. I don't know if the other two have gone down at all yet. Lots of art going on in this house, and lots of chatter. Ronny even made a raucous appearance on your front lawn, until your father made a phone call that made Ronny disappear. That was cool. Wish I had that number.”

“My dad called the police?”

“Didn't look like police to me.”

“Is my dad there now?”

“Come and gone again. Awfully businesslike, that man.”

“That would be him, yes. Are you calling me for any special reason?”

There is an uncharacteristic Maxie silence on the line.

“Max?”

“I believe her, O. In fact, everybody in this house right now believes her. But nobody gives a shit what we believe. And perceptions, some places more than others—perceptions matter. People think she's hiding something, and with certain people there is nothing, like nothing, that sets them off more than
that feeling. And she's too tough for her own good, uncompromising, pig— Well, you know.”

“Oh, do I know.”

“Right. So . . . best keep her away just yet. Keep her away. At least another day.”

“Done.” I say, bravely accepting the happiest assignment of my life. “What then, though?”

“I don't know,” she says. “Another day? Then another day after that? I don't know. All I know is today. All I know is I love the crazy little freakin' bat, and you need to keep her today. You can do that.”

“I can.”

“All right. I'm gonna go check on the other bats and see what's goin' on here. Don't be surprised at all the batshit you find when you come home.”

“Charming,” I say, and she hangs up on a laugh.

“Who you braggin' to?” Junie says as she comes out of the bathroom. “Guys. Don't even wait for the testicles to cool down before they're waving them around town for all the other rutting pigs to see.”

I know how she can be, but still.

“That was appalling,” I say.

“You're damn cute when you're appalled,” she says, “but I have to go.”

“What?” I jump up when she drops her bathrobe, revealing
herself fully clothed in shorts and a button-down short-sleeved shirt. “We're just getting started.”

“I have things to do, O. I have to work. Real world returns, guy.”

“Well, just make it go away.”

“Careful,” she says in a voice and with a pointedly pointed finger that suggests I'd really better be. “You're highlighting our, ahem,
situational
differences again. I gotta
work
, I told you. I can't just
make it go away
. And you know what else? I
want
to work.”

“The shop? Christ, you can't go into the shop, not today.”

“I got no idea what you have against the shop all of a sudden, but it ain't the shop today. It's the dogs. I got four different houses that are going to be craptastic by the time their owners get home if I do not fulfill my obligations. And I, junior, am a woman who takes her obligations seriously.”

I had not planned for this. I had not, actually, planned for any bumps in my glowing yellow-brick road.

“But we're booked for two nights,” I say.

“So, unbook one.”

Rats.

“Ah, we'll lose that second night's money.”

She sly-smiles me. “I thought money didn't exist here, in our world, on our planet?”

Mopping the floor with me, she is.

I walk to the big window and watch the boats in the harbor. I do not doubt for a second that, like the fancy boats under the stars last night, the dashing vessels under the glorious sunshine today are all just part of what a place like this can arrange for aesthetic purposes. It's
all
about money. Of course it is. Everything is.

Suddenly her arms are around my waist, and she's looking at the same all-that-glitters as I am.

“I can't let you lose what you paid,” she says. “I just can't do that. One more night.”

O-kay. Lyin' O'Brien pulls it off. Just.

I turn around and hug her.

“Can I say something?” I ask.

“Oh, God,” she says, and squinches her eyes tight shut.

“I'll drive you,” I say.

After a brief hesitation she opens her eyes and lets out an awkward laugh of relief.

“What?” I say. “What? What were you afraid I was going to say?”

“Huh? What? I don't know. Nothing. I don't even remember. Let's just get going.”

“Right,” I say, heading to the bathroom with my clothes to pull myself together. “I'll drop you out there and then pick you up again later.”

“Great,” she says as I close the bathroom door.

I burst like Bugs Bunny through the sliders. “I do love you, though,” I say, and then slam them again quickly and cowardly.

“Dammit, dammit,” I hear her say, and for whatever reason this gives me wonderful satisfaction.

•  •  •

When I drop her off at her first assignment, she hands me a folded sheet of eight-by-ten paper, on which she has drawn a fairly convincing map of the neighborhood. On it she has highlighted all the addresses where she has dog contracts, and circled the one where she will be finishing the day.

“I basically have to do two loops. Each stop, I check on 'em, make sure they are fed and watered, walk them, then move on to the next place. Then I do it the same for all the others, double back around, and walk them all once more. It's more than it sounds, actually. Takes a few hours.”