Or Maybe You Can?
“My god, do you drive fast.”
Lala had been trying to send David a message during the 80-kilometer trip from Paris on one of those international-doesn’t-cost-a-cent thingies on her phone, but she couldn’t type coherently because Clive was driving so fast. Plus, the countryside was far too beautiful to ignore. They were headed to Villers-Cotterêts to film on a farm just outside the small town where Alexandre Dumas, père, the author of Lala’s favorite classic novel, had been born and was buried. Lala had reserved a room in a charming small hotel that had once been a monastery so she could spend the next morning touring the town.
She put her phone in her bag and concentrated on the lovely fields and scattered towns that were warming under a strong sun. And she concentrated on not freaking out over Clive’s driving.
“The studio lets you drive this fast?”
“I’m not going much above the speed limit.”
“Is it like it is on the Autobahn here?”
“Not quite.”
Okay, I sound like a grandma, Lala thought. Enough.
When they got to the farmhouse, Lala grabbed a minute before she got out of the car to send David a quick text saying that she had overslept (darn that darn jet lag!), and she was going to be on-set all day (darn that darn movie making magic!), and she couldn’t wait to Skype with him as soon as they could coordinate a time when they would both be awake (darn that darn nine-hour time difference!).
Clive popped his head back in the open driver’s side window.
“Oh, I should mention one thing before you meet the director. He brought his brother here to work with you on adding a new scene. We think it would be a good idea for Terry to have more of an edge.”
What the FUCK? Lala thought.
“Cool!” she said. “Anything for the project!”
Okay, I do actually mean that, because I will do whatever it takes to get this movie made, but fuck you, Clive, you cute, sneaky British bastard.
Lala had a smile plastered on her face as she and Clive walked past the extras and the crew, who were taking a break around the outdoor craft services table. She had to use all her restraint not to trip Clive and send him flying into what she hoped was a mound of natural fertilizer.
I guess it’s not cow poop, she thought. It doesn’t smell like cow poop. In the movie version of our madcap behind-the-scenes adventures, it will be cow poop. And in the movie, I will trip him. And he will land in cow poop.
“Helllloooo, my friends!” Clive trilled. The crowd of actors and tech people applauded. “No! Stop that! Look who I’ve got with me. It’s Lala Pettibone! The screenwriter! She’s the one who deserves your applause!”
The crowd started clapping again, and Lala halted her internal revenge scenario to quite suddenly and quite genuinely feel very touched by their warm welcome.
“Omigosh, thank you so much. Thank you all for being here. I’m so thrilled. Thank you.”
A very compact young man wearing what looked to Lala like a unitard made of camouflage material came striding out of the tall open doors that took up an entire side of the barn next to the craft services area. A slew of assistants followed him, one looking more nervous than the next.
The young man grabbed Clive in a bear hug and they kind of danced around together in a circle of ostentatiously heterosexual embrace. The young man just as abruptly broke it off and barreled toward Lala. She had to stop herself from lunging out of the way in fear of being flattened by him, because she didn’t want to come across as a big baby in front of everyone.
“Hi!” Lala said. “You must be Matthew!”
“Get over here!” Matthew Finch, the director, yelled. He grabbed her hand and pumped it vigorously. “Lala! Lala! LALA! MAY I HUG YOU?”
“Sure!” Lala said.
Why has everything suddenly gotten so loud? she thought.
Matthew wrapped his arms around Lala’s waist and swung her around so that her feet were flying off the ground.
“Lala PETTIBONE!” Matthew yelled. “I love your name, and I love your work!”
Matthew put her back down and kissed her on both cheeks.
“I’m getting to be really French here!” he announced at a reasonable decibel level.
Oh, thank goodness, Lala thought. We’ve stopped shouting.
“I love your work, too,” Lala said. “Tooters was so much fun.”
Another young man exited the barn and made his way over to Lala and Clive and Matthew. His genetic connection to Matthew was unmistakable in terms of his looks, but he moved with all the exuberance of a tree sloth who was looking to conserve his energy.
“ATTICUS, GET OVER HERE AND MEET LALA!” Matthew shrieked.
Is Matthew having difficulty with his ears? Lala thought. Can he not hear his sound levels? Wait a minute, what name did he just say . . .
“Hi,” Matthew’s brother said. He gave Lala a sweet, lazy smile.
“Hello . . . Atticus. Is your last name also . . . Finch?”
“My parents have a really twisted sense of humor,” Matthew said.
Okay, now we’re suddenly back to normal decibels, Lala thought. What the classic fuck?
“Do you have any idea what it’s like for me to try to order a pizza?” Atticus asked glumly. “Let alone subscribe to Hustler?”
“BERNADETTE!” Matthew screamed. A nervous young woman came rushing over. “PLEASE GET MY HEADSET CHECKED! I CAN’T HEAR MYSELF THINK!”
Matthew ripped his headset off and handed it to the young woman, who ran to a tent on the other end of the small field that had technicians and tables of equipment at the ready.
Matthew shook his head and then stuck an index finger in each ear, for some reason choosing to use the finger of the hand opposite each ear and ending up with his arms awkwardly crossed around his neck. He vibrated his fingers in his ears and hummed. For quite some time. Lala stared at the ground, not knowing where to look. Finally, Matthew stopped.
“Okay, that’s better,” he said. “Lala, I have to tell you that my brother is your biggest fan. He loves your script. Would you consider maybe taking him under your wing? I can say with all objectivity that he is an excellent screenwriter, and I’d love to see what you two could come up with for a new scene? Something for right when Terry gets to Paris. To give him a little more of an edge? Maybe?”
Fuck this noise, Lala thought. Though Matthew is considerably more diplomatic than Clive. Whose name is mud right now in my book. Mud mixed with cow poop.
“Clive already told me about the new scene,” Lala said.
“Cool!” Matthew said. “Thanks, Clive! So, Lala, whaddya think, huh?”
“Absolutely!” Lala said. “Anything for the project!”
Lala was given a chair next to Matthew’s when they began shooting again. She was thrilled to be watching the scenes in her script unfold before her, and she loved the actors’ work. Even Clive, whose name continued to be mud in her book, was superb as Terry. She smiled at him and gave him a joyous nod whenever he caught her eye, while, in her mind, slapping him around for springing that shit about the new scene and her new writing partner on her. Lala didn’t move from her seat until the assistant director announced that it was a wrap for the day, because she was too happy to go anywhere.
The next day’s shooting would take place in the same location, starting in the afternoon. Clive bounded over to where Lala was standing at the craft services table eating fistfuls of peanuts because she was so excited about the project. Other than that part where she had to add a new scene and up the conflict. Her Terry character didn’t like conflict. Neither did she.
“You were great!” Lala trilled. Clive grabbed her and hugged her.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah!”
Dickhead, she thought.
“Let’s celebrate! I want to take you to my favorite restaurant, right by the Hôtel de Ville. We better hurry. Traffic might be a bit of a bitch.”
“I’m staying overnight here,” Lala said.
“You are?”
“Dumas, père was born here. He’s buried here. No way I’m not spending all of tomorrow morning reveling in his brilliance.”
Lala said “Dumas, père” with an exaggerated French accent that would have made Maurice Chevalier sound like a hillbilly.
Clive nodded sagely.
“Until the day when god shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words, ‘Wait and hope’.”
Awww, man, Lala thought. Now I have to like you again. Merde.
“Yup,” Lala said. “I like to add, ‘and take action.’ You know, while you’re waiting and hoping.”
“Good point.” Clive agreed. “I don’t have any reason why I have to go back to Paris tonight.”
“You don’t?” Lala said.
“Where are you staying?”
Shoot, Lala thought. He is way too cute. And I am way too only human.
“I’m really sorry,” Clive said. “I’m not good with conflict. In life, I mean. I’m great with it on screen.”
“You are,” Lala admitted. “In Partisans? You were painfully good with conflict. I couldn’t sit still when I was watching that movie. I was so tense during that damn movie, I thought I would lose my mind.”
“Thanks,” Clive said. They were sitting in the small, charming restaurant of the Hôtel de l’Abbaye de Longpont, sharing mushroom crepes and an abundant selection of local cheeses and olives, along with a loaf of crusty bread that Lala had deemed obscene in its gorgeousness. Clive had ordered the entire meal in flawless French. His accent was equally flawless. The hotel’s owner was clearly smitten with the movie star and so was the nervous young waitress, who couldn’t stop giggling at everything Clive said.
“Maybe don’t thank me,” Lala said. “I’m going to have to say that I could never sit through that film again. It made me way too nervous. I much prefer a comedy with a happy and hopeful ending. No offense.”
“None taken,” Clive said. “I’m already thinking about what we should have for dessert.”
“Yes,” Lala said. She smiled at Clive, and then she snuck in another glare at him, one she assumed went unnoticed as had all the others, she assumed, in her passive-aggressive wallowing during that entire dinner.
“I’m really sorry I sprung that new scene stuff on you,” Clive said. “I don’t blame you for glaring at me. All night. All the time.”
“Okay, that’s not strictly true. I have also smiled at you. Damn, I didn’t think you noticed the glaring.”
“I’d have to be wearing an industrial-strength sleep mask not to notice.”
“Shoot,” Lala said. “I was never a very good actress.”
“It’s just that I knew that Matthew was going to talk to you about the scene, because we really do think it would add so much to the film if we up Terry’s edge and enhance the conflict.”
Terry doesn’t like conflict, Lala thought. He’s sensitive and wonderful and perfect.
The character of Terry in Dressed Like a Lady, Drinks Like a Pig was based on Lala’s late husband, Terrence. Who was sensitive and wonderful and perfect in Lala’s mind, and always would be.
“I wanted to say something as soon as I picked you up, you know, to give you some warning so Matthew wasn’t springing it on you as a surprise.”
“Instead you sprung it on me.”
“I’m really sorry about that.”
“It’s okay,” Lala said. “I think I forgive you.”
“Thanks for being so gracious during the shoot today.”
“I was thinking really aggressive thoughts in my mind,” Lala admitted.
As opposed to thinking them in my ass, Lala thought. I hate when my dialogue is sloppy.
“Where else would you be thinking them?” Clive said. “In your ass?”
There was a moment’s worth of a pause while Lala glared at Clive, and Clive looked worried that he had unintentionally been rude by referencing Lala’s bum in this relatively early stage of their artistic collaboration, until Lala started guffawing and after a half beat Clive joined her in guffawing, and the hotel proprietor stared guffawing from this place behind the bar, and the sweet little waitress came over and brought them the dessert menu and giggled.
On the owner’s suggestion, they shared two desserts, crème caramel and mousse au chocolat.
“Sweet Rockin’ Kazoo,” Lala mumbled through the mouthful of beige heaven she had just ladled into her mouth. “If I die tonight, I will die happy.”
Where did I get “Sweet Rockin’ Kazoo” from? Lala thought. And why am I talking about dying tonight?
“Amen,” Clive said. “Not to you dying. To you being happy. Oh, and I like that ‘Sweet Rockin’ Kazoo’ bit. Did you just come up with that?”
They ended up in the hotel bar, where the owner brought out a special bottle of Cognac for them.
And it was at the adorable bar that Clive made what was a big mistake . . . unless he really, really, really desperately wanted to hear a very late-night, very effusive monologue.
“So. Who’s Lala Pettibone? Details, please.”
The bottle of Cognac was half-empty by the time Lala paused for a breath.
“My GOD, this is good Cognac. Where was I? Oh, yeah. So, Clive, the thing is, when my parents died, it wasn’t the same. I miss them, but my day-to-day life didn’t really change. With Terrence, nothing was the same. In everything I did, I felt his absence. Maybe that’s why I haven’t spent every day with anyone until I met David. I thought I was ready. Now, I’m not so sure.”
“England is my primary residence,” Clive said. “And I travel a lot for filming. So we wouldn’t be in the same town most of the time. If that’s an incentive for you to maybe consider . . .? I have to say, I love women of a certain age—”
“Please put air quotation marks around that phrase,” Lala said, even as she was annoyed with herself for blushing and for being delighted that Clive was flirting with her. “And I’m sorry, but David and I are in fact engaged-to-be-engaged.”
Clive didn’t say anything right away. Lala watched him as he lifted his brandy snifter and twirled the liquid inside it before he took a deep and soulful draught.
Poor sweet man, Lala thought. I’ve hurt him. I hope he can deal with the disappointment. I hope this doesn’t interfere with the movie.
At last, Clive spoke.
“What are you, seventeen?” Clive said. “What are you, seventeen and it’s the 1950s and you’re a character in a black-and-white film where you’ve gotten a scholarship to college, but you’ve got this boyfriend who’s a laborer so you’re eventually going to throw it all away and get married?”
Lala took a long look at Clive. She curled her upper lip and wrinkled her nose in an affectionate sneer and winked at him.
“Yeah, yeah, very clever, Mr. Smart Ass Movie Star. You are one blunt British bastard, and I hate to admit that I find that rather adorable.”
Lala stood, a bit woozily for a moment, but she got her sea legs back in a blink. She stepped out from her side of the table and did a full, dramatic curtsy. She then stood erect and gave Clive a full military salute.
“Lala out,” she said. “You stay here and finish the bottle with our charming host. Do NOT follow me upstairs! If you do, and if any”—and at this point she made sweeping air quotation marks that began with her arms stretched overhead as high as she could reach and that ended with her arms spastically pumping out rapid-fire quotation marks around her ankles—“‘funny business’ is attempted, there will be”—air quotation marks again with, if anything, even more intensity—“‘hell to pay.’”
Clive nodded and blew her a kiss as she exited.
“Dors bien, ma chère amie,” he said.
Lala skipped up the stairs off the lobby to the second floor and opened the door to her small, cozy room. She took a quick shower and, after just dabbing her skin with a large, fluffy towel, slathered moisturizer all over every easily-accessible part of her body.
“My sincere and heartfelt apologies to you, oh little area at the middle of my back which I cannot reach coming from the top over my shoulders and not coming from the bottom by wrenching my hands around my waist either, you poor, last-kid-picked-for-the-team-every-time-in-elementary-school of my personal body politic.”
While she was walking around the room naked, waiting for the lotion to dry into her skin, Lala realized that she felt optimistic enough to chat with David, and she seized that momentary pause in her seemingly bottomless fear of death and loss to open her laptop and smack the keys until her Skype operator was trying to contact David’s Skype operator.
How does it work? Lala thought. How? France talking to and seeing Southern California. Effortlessly. Such fascinating and bold times we live in. And yet we cannot conquer death, can we? Sheesh, I’m starting to sound like an overly caffeinated publicist for the Grim Reaper.
She saw a message pop up on her computer, one telling her that Dr. David was not available to Skype.
Merde, Lala thought. And she just as quickly felt an unbidden sense of relief.
Lala wrote a quick e-mail to David to tell him that she had tried to call him and she missed him and she loved him and she was going to sleep now, bisous, bisous, bisous. She slammed her laptop shut, fretted once again that she might, in her exuberance, have broken it, and jumped into the large, soft, billowing bed. She propped the pillows against the headboard, always one of her favorite things to do, and she scooted under the thick comforter.
That should have been her segue into a blissful night of sleep, but an unsettling idea barged in before she could nod off.
I know what I’m doing, she thought. I’m forcing myself to get used to not being with David. Just like I had to get used to being without Terrence. Because David might die before I do. Just like Terrence did. Well, this lovely little moment of self-awareness has shot any chance of sleeping all to crap.
She seized the remote control for the small television that was comfortably encased in an antique bookshelf opposite the foot of the bed.
I swear, there better be Les Feux d’Artifice on some channel in this precious little burg.
Lala flipped channels and frowned.
That’s not what it’s called, she thought. Feux d’Artifice means fireworks. Literally, it’s “fake fire,” and how cool is that? What is it called, The Young and the Restless? Oh, yeah, The Fires of Love, whatever that is in French. I can’t remember right now. I swear, it better be on.
There weren’t many channels to check on the cable service in the small hotel that was once a monastery in the small town where Alexandre Dumas, père, was buried, so it didn’t take long for Lala to realize that she wouldn’t be watching her favorite soap that night. The last channel she checked before she was about to return full circle back to the first channel she had checked was a movie channel. It was playing Matthew Finch’s blockbuster hit, Tooters, dubbed into French. Lala sighed heavily.
Fine, fine. I’ll watch this stupid movie again. Any voices will have to do, so long I don’t have to listen to the voices in my head.
Lala had slept fitfully, if much at all, that night, and she woke up determined to remind herself that the Count of Monte Cristo had way more to worry about on a good day than she had ever had in her remarkably lucky life, early widowhood notwithstanding. So she showered and got dressed quickly and ran downstairs to convey to the lovely proprietor of their hotel in carefully considered French that Monsieur Clive would be having breakfast in his room, and could she please bring a tray with pain au chocolat and coffee for two upstairs with her. Balancing the bountiful and lovingly-provided tray, Lala carefully walked up the small staircase and banged on Clive’s door with her foot.
“Up and at ’em, mon cher ami,” she yelled. “We have got some Dumasing to do!”
They started out at the Fifteenth Century church of St. Nicholas, where Dumas was baptized. Their next stop was the Alexandre Dumas Museum, where Lala proceeded to have a shimmying meltdown on her happy tippy toes over “all this stuff from his actual life that he actually read and used and looked at ‘n’ stuff!” They visited the house where Dumas was born, and after that they stood in front of the bronze statue of Dumas. Clive read from his tattered copy of The Count of Monte Cristo, which he took with him whenever he traveled anywhere.
“Clive, you would be perfect but for the fact that you take the abridged version with you,” Lala said. She had been savoring his reading of the section of the novel in which Edmond Dantès meets the man who will help him escape his imprisonment on the Château d’If and will lead him to the fortune which will transform him into the Count of Monte Cristo, so that he can enact his terrible revenge against those who have betrayed him.
“Calm it down, buttercup,” Clive said rather adorably. “I have my unabridged version at home. God, you can be so damn smug sometimes, Ms. Thing.”
“I would like to go on record,” Lala said as they had walked to the cemetery where Dumas had been buried until his ashes were reinterred in the Pantheon in Paris for the bicentennial of his birth in 2002, “as saying that I love flirting in general. I am not flirting with you specifically, Mr. Adorable Movie Star. And I guess my penchant . . .” Lala pronounced the word with an exaggerated French accent—pohshoh—that made her giggle and made Clive wince, “. . . for flirting in general is something that my fiancé-to-be-my-fiancé—”
“Which remains an entirely ridiculous concept,” Clive said.
“Kindly do not interrupt. It is something to which he will have to get used. My dear late husband wasn’t happy that I am quite such a flirt, but he ultimately accepted it as being an integral part of that which makes me who I am. Or something like that.”
They walked around the cemetery and saw the resting places of Dumas’ parents and several other members of his family.
“We are steeped in Alexandre Dumas, père, on this fine day in the lovely town of Villers-Cotterêts” Lala said. “And I am loving that.”
“Moi aussi,” Clive agreed.
They returned to the hotel and checked out. A short drive to the set, and they were there in plenty of time for Clive to get into make-up.
Lala said hello to Matthew and looked around for his brother.
Where is the little pisher? Lala thought.
“Where’s Atticus?”
“He stayed in Paris. He said he wanted to get ready for your first writing session together. Lala, I am so excited about this, and I’m really appreciative of your enthusiasm and flexibility.”
Is the blank stare on my face conveying enthusiasm and flexibility? Lala silently asked herself. Because that is definitely not my intention.
“You bet!” Lala said. “Anything to elevate the project!”
Which is actually true, Lala thought. Oy. Ambivalence! Oy vey!
“I’ll e-mail Atticus as soon as I get back to Paris tonight so we can set up a time to start working.”
It was a short shoot for that afternoon, and they wrapped in time for Lala to insist to Clive that she would catch a fast train back to Paris rather than ride back with him because she needed “to be alone with my obsessive thoughts.”
Kenny was washing the outside of the windows of the apartment building when Lala entered the courtyard.
“Salut, mon ami!” Lala called out to him.
“Hey! Welcome back! How was the shoot?”
“Really something else. Details over a bottle of wine as soon as possible. You need help?”
“No, mon Dieu, no, my grandfather would kill me if I let you help me with the windows. Or anything. You coming to the restaurant for dinner?”
“I’d love to, mon trésor, but I am exhausted. I think I might go out and get a little something and then curl up with a book.”
“How about I bring you a brie sandwich on our signature crusty French bread and a salad with my own special mustard dressing?”
“How about I faint from joy and gratitude?”
By the time Lala had changed into her comfortable flannel pajamas, Kenny was at the door to her apartment with a box filled with food and wine.
“Sweet Sassy McGillicudy,” Lala said. “This is paradise in a box, Kenny. I don’t know where I’m getting these exclamations from. The other day I said ‘Sweet Rockin’ Kazoo,’ if you can believe that.”
She was going through the treasures and finding, in addition to a gorgeous cheese and bread creation and a huge salad, a Tarte Tatin that definitely did not look like an individual serving, and a box of madeleines and a jar of homemade strawberry jam for breakfast tomorrow.
“Kenny, you and your grandfather are now officially family to me, and I should warn you that that probably entails more obligation than it does advantage.”
Lala sat at the small dining table in her living room and ate the entire sandwich and all the salad.
Merde, she thought. This is the best food I have ever had. I’m going to convince Kenny to go into business with me to sell this mustard dressing. Seriously.
While she was eating, she was audibly expressing her utter delight in increasingly louder outbursts of ecstasy, none of them actual words and all of them accompanied with the impassioned slapping of palms against her chest or the raising of her open hands to the heavens in a universal gesture of “How the fuck is something so delicious even possible?”
The lovely food gave Lala a fresh wave of energy and inspiration, so she spent the next two hours on her brand new novel, which she had given the working title, A Woman of a Certain Age. It was almost eleven o’clock when she signed off on the manuscript efforts for that day, and she did a quick calculation to determine that it was afternoon in California.
“You free?” she texted David.
Her phone dinged to announce a response in a heartbeat.
“Yes, but I’m not cheap.”
What followed was a Skype sex session between Lala and her intended-to-be-her-intended that, as Lala subsequently described to Geraldine in an e-mail she composed right after logging off with David, was basically a walking letter to Penthouse.
“Well, thank goodness you’ve surfaced again,” Auntie Geraldine wrote back. “David and I were wondering what the heck was going on with you and your sudden radio silence. He called me, and I assured him that I hadn’t heard from you either.”
Yikes, Lala thought. My “head-in-the-sand” approach to the rest of my life is becoming noticeable. Yikes.
Despite her concern about that, Lala somehow managed to focus on the matters at hand long enough to get an e-mail off to Atticus that suggested they meet at either her place or his place to work, whichever location suited him best, and would tomorrow, late morning-ish, be a good time for him? Atticus joined the ranks of the distressingly prompt men in her life whose seeming self-assurance acted as a stinging rebuke to how vermischt she was currently feeling when he wrote back immediately to say that that would be “swell, and why not meet at your place since I think that might be more convenient for you, plus, I’m kind of an instant pack rat wherever I go, so there’s not much open space here in my hotel room.”
And despite her concern that people, specifically David and Geraldine, were noticing that she was, subconsciously or not, trying to fade away from any kind of life that had the possibility of the death of loved ones in it, Lala slept surprisingly well that night. She had the Madeleines and the jam Kenny brought her for breakfast, and they surpassed her high bar of expectation. It was early enough that she thought she might have plenty of time for a long and invigorating walk along the Seine before she got together with Atticus. She put on a pair of yoga pants and a sweatshirt, and as she was zipping up the front, she looked at herself in the mirror and froze.
No, she thought. Please. No.
Kenny was in the restaurant stocking the shelves in the kitchen when Lala found him. She tried to be nonchalant as she asked him if he had a doctor he knew and trusted that preferably was female, and if his doctor wasn’t female, could he maybe get a referral from one of his friends for a female doctor? Like, right away? Like, now? She had already sent Atticus an e-mail to ask if they could please postpone their writing session to sometime in the afternoon because something urgent had come up.
Kenny’s family doctor was a woman. He called her office, and her nurse said he should bring Lala over right away.
“Mon cher ami, you don’t have to come with me. Just give me the address. I’ll be fine by myself,” Lala told Kenny without any conviction whatsoever.
“Yeah, no,” Kenny said. He was walking down the street with her to the nearest Metro stop. “If anyone else saw your face right now, I mean, like, in the movie version of the Lala Pettibone saga, and then in the next scene they find out that I let you go to the doctor alone, they’d be, like, what a dickhead that guy is.”
It was a short subway ride to Dr. Sandrine Barraya’s office. The receptionist got up from behind the desk and kissed Kenny on both cheeks. She extended her hand to Lala and smiled.
“We will take good care of you,” the young woman said. “Doctor will be with you in just moments.”
Lala and Kenny sat in the very comfortable chairs in the small waiting area. Lala put her head on Kenny’s shoulder.
“Does everyone in Paris speak English? Dr. Barraya speaks English, yes?”
“Better than I do,” Kenny said. “Better than you and I do, put together.”
In just a few minutes, the nurse opened the door and motioned for Lala to come inside. She was led to a small exam room and was given a gown to change into. There were a few magazines on the counter next to the exam table, and Lala did her best to distract herself by trying to read an article in Paris Match. As best she could figure out, there was a lesser royal in Belgium who had eaten an entire wheel of premium cheddar at a country fair in Wisconsin while representing his country’s trade delegation there.
That can’t possibly be right, Lala thought. I think I’m translating that verb wrong. And that noun. And just about all of those adjectives.
The door to the exam room opened, and a woman who looked like she couldn’t have been more than a month out of medical school came in. Lala put the magazine back on the counter and started sobbing.
“My . . . I . . . my . . . my husband . . .”
There was only a momentary pause in Dr. Barraya’s reaction, perhaps long enough for her to wonder if Lala’s first language also wasn’t English. Dr. Barraya walked the two steps toward Lala and held both Lala’s hands in her own.
“Let’s just breathe. Let’s just focus. You’re safe here. I’m here to help.”
Wow, Lala thought, even as she was trying to concentrate on not hyperventilating, her English probably is better than mine.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” Dr. Barraya said. “Long, deep breaths, okay? Let’s figure out what’s going on.”
Lala inhaled and exhaled and got her heart to stop racing to some reasonable extent, and when she finally found herself able to put sentences together, she couldn’t stop.
“My husband had stomach cancer. He died in less than six months. I don’t want to enter the world of cancer again. If I have to die, I just want to be up and then I want to be down. I want an aneurysm or something. I don’t want to know that I’m sick. And I don’t want my boyfriend to die before I do. I can’t go through that again. And I feel like an idiot wanting all these things. Like any positive force in the universe, whatever that might be, is going to listen to me? Little kids in Syria are dying, but I want a better exit from the world than cancer? Their pleas go unheard, but mine should be acknowledged for some reason? I’m sorry, I think I’m going to barf.”
Dr. Barraya had let go of Lala’s hands only long enough to pass her a box of tissues. As Lala was speaking, the doctor nodded and focused all her attention on what Lala was saying.
“Why don’t you lie back,” Dr. Barraya said. She helped Lala swing her feet up and she propped a pillow under Lala’s head. She then put a pillow under Lala’s knees. “How’s that?”
“Better,” Lala whispered.
“Can you tell me why you wanted to see a doctor today?”
“I think I have breast cancer,” Lala said.
“Okay,” Dr. Barraya said. She patted Lala’s shoulder. “Can you tell me why you think that?”
Lala had to take many deep breaths again before she could speak.
“I was getting dressed, and I saw a red lump. Red’s not good, is it? It must mean it’s really advanced. I don’t know how I didn’t notice it before. I have to admit that I don’t do monthly breast exams. I figure I’ll just make myself crazy thinking I have cancer all the time. But I do get a mammogram whenever my gynecologist says I should.”
“May I take a look?” Dr. Barraya asked.
“Of course,” Lala said.
Lala opened the top right side of her robe and looked down to find the exact location of the horrible sight she remembered with so much terror so she could show it to Dr. Barraya. Lala pointed at the noticeable spot on her breast.
God, it’s even bigger than I thought it was, Lala silently gasped.
Dr. Barraya leaned in to take a closer look. She paused for several long moments as she studied the spot. She turned to the cabinet next to her, took a pair of latex gloves out of a dispenser, and put them on.
“I’m going to touch it,” Dr. Barraya said. “Let me know if this hurts.”
Oh, god, Lala thought. Please, just let me die now.
Dr. Barraya gently ran her index finger on the lump. She picked something up off of Lala’s skin and rubbed it between her index finger and her thumb.
“I think that’s jam,” she finally said. “I would say, strawberry.”
“Jam?” Kenny said. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, the delicious stuff you gave me last night, so thanks fer nuthin’, pal.”
“Seriously? Jam?”
“Okay, in my defense, I found out in one hellish week that my husband had stage four stomach cancer that had spread to his bones and lungs. I’m a little skittish vis-à-vis that particular disease.”
They were walking back along the Seine to the apartment building because it was a beautiful day and, as Lala kept repeating, “I’m alive! You’re alive! We’re alive! Marchons!”
And then she began singing La Marseillaise, all the lyrics of which she had memorized once upon a time, in her less-than-stellar French accent and less-than-stellar singing voice. But what Lala lacked in authentic Gallic enunciation and pleasing tonal delivery, she more than made up for in pure joie de vivre.
“Allons, enfants de la patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé! Come on, bubbeleh, sing it with me! You know the words, right?”
“Of course I do,” Kenny grunted, nodding at the staring passersby with an apologetic expression.
“Contre nous, de la tyrannie! Can you sing? You have to sing with me! Apparently I do something that’s called ‘singing in perfect thirds.’ I have no idea what that means. I think I’m singing the right notes. Apparently I’m harmonizing. Who knew? Which, I’ve been told, doesn’t sound all that great on its own.”
“It really doesn’t.” Kenny pulled her into their courtyard. “Come on, let’s get you upstairs. Don’t you have a meeting to write or something? A meeting that doesn’t involve singing?”
Lala kissed Kenny on both cheeks and skipped across the courtyard. She took the stairs by twos and made a tempting platter of cheeses and breads for the new writing partner who had been imposed on her. Which, at the moment, wasn’t bothering her at all.
Lala had her front door open before Atticus could deliver a second knock.
“Hi, there, mon cher colleague! Come on in! We are writing together because we’re both alive! YES! Let’s do this, huh!”
Lala smiled warmly at Atticus. Her voice was like ice. The really deep kind in Antarctica.
“Terry wouldn’t do that.” You smug little pisher, she silently added.
If Atticus noticed that Lala was hoping her words might magically form into tiny little daggers that would keep flying and swooping to torment Atticus like villains in a twisted Disney movie, his convivial enthusiasm was working as a very effective diversion.
“Okay. Sure. I understand that. But, you know, just for the heck of it, what if he did? Because he and Frances get back together, right?”
“Yes, of course they do,” Lala huffed. “They’re in love. They’ll always be in love.”
“Right, which is so wonderful. I love that. What I’m thinking is maybe we try a scene in the beginning, right when Terry gets to Paris, after he’s broken up with Frances? And she’s desperately trying to get in touch with him, and he’s ignoring her. And we see how hurt she is. Wow, this brie is really good.”
“This film is a comedy, Atticus,” Lala said, trying very hard not to sneer quite as much as she wanted to.
“Right, and I love that. It’s hilarious in such a smart way.”
Oh, jeez, Lala thought. Don’t even try to make me like you, because I swear I will get really pissed if it starts working.
“I mean, I don’t even miss having any fart jokes. I love it, and it’s great, and I’m kinda just wondering if maybe Terry were kind of a shithead in the beginning—”
Terry would never be a shithead, Lala thought.
“Terry would never be a shithead,” Lala said. “Never.”
“Okay, but if he maybe were, maybe there could be a great payoff because maybe that could set us up to love him even more at the end, when he does get back together with Frances. I know we’d have to adjust part of Act Three, because he’d have a lot to make up to Frances, but maybe it could be really sweet?”
I do like really sweet . . . Wait a minute!
“No bathos!” Lala yelled. “Maybe a little pathos! But absolutely no bathos!”
“Right! No, I agree! Bathos! Yuck! Where did you get this crusty French bread? This is especially wonderful crusty French bread.”
Man, is this kid playing me, or what? Lala thought. And is it working? Should I give this little pisher’s idea a try?
“What’s next? You tell me that, in addition to being very talented and smart, I’m also very attractive and I look much younger than I am?”
Atticus peered at Lala, looking confused.
“I kinda figured that wouldn’t work with you. You seem way too smart for that. Sincerely, you do. And I also figured you’d clean my clock if I went for superficial instead of substantial.”
Oh. Okay. Good point.
“Would that have worked? Because you really are very pretty and—”
Lala, before she could stop herself, guffawed.
“Oh, knock it off, you little pisher! And I am so annoyed at myself for laughing at the ridiculously charming way you delivered that comment. Fine, fine, fine! Let’s give it a try. But I am not, je répète, I am NOT committing Terry to anything. Got it?”
Barf, Lala thought. Damn it, this scene is looking really good. Merde.
She had been standing behind Matthew for most of the day while he directed Clive and Rebecca, the superb New York-based actress who was playing Frances, a character that was a very thinly-disguised version of Lala’s younger self. They were in an apartment that the production had rented to serve as the place where Terry crashes with an old college friend when he first gets to Paris.
And jeez, can that woman act. Her talent is a justified slap in the face to my own lack of thespianic ability. That’s not a word. Thespianic. It’s not, but it should be.
Rebecca went in to give Clive’s character a desperate kiss, and Clive put his outstretched arm up to stop her from coming any closer. Matthew slapped his hand on his thigh.
“Cut!” he said. “Excellent work, you two! Okay, let’s take a break.”
The crew applauded with spontaneous enthusiasm.
Okay, okay, Lala thought. No particular need to rub my nose in it. I generally have a fairly acute sense of when I’m entirely wrong.
Rebecca and Clive hugged each other, and then turned to Lala and Matthew, and Atticus, who was standing behind them at the craft services table shoving one granola bar after another into his mouth virtually whole, and blew them all a kiss.
Matthew turned around to look at Lala with the nervous questioning of a beagle who had eaten her usual breakfast and lunch and who feared, as the sun set, that perhaps this might be the day that her devoted mama decided to not provide her with her usual dinner.
“Is it okay?” he asked her.
“Oy vey. It’s great, and you know it.”
Matthew jumped out of his director’s chair and grabbed Lala and danced her around in a hug that grew into a trio when Atticus ran over, spewing bits of unchewed oat and nut as he moved, and tried to circle Matthew and Lala with his arms.
“I just really love working with you two,” Atticus said through far too many organic snack items.
It came out as, “Rm mss lff wrrrr” followed by a series of unnerving coughs that made Lala wonder if she still knew how to properly execute a Heimlich.
“I can’t take credit for this,” Lala said. “It was Atticus’s idea.”
“So?” Atticus sputtered. He seemed to have cleared his mouth of food, if the copious crumbs that covered his jacket were reliable evidence. Lala and Matthew watched with a lingering bit of concern as Atticus swallowed loudly and dramatically several times. “You wrote just about all the dialogue.” He frantically swept his hands on his jacket to get the chomping debris off. “I eat when I’m nervous.”
“Right there with ya, pumpkin,” Lala said. “And, P.S., dialogue is bupkes without a great idea. Ideas? Not always my strongest suit. I appreciate you, Atticus. I really do.”
They finished shooting just a little more than an hour after they took that last break, and it was early enough in the day for Lala to be able to call David in California, no matter how much she stalled.
“Merde,” she said, glancing at her watch. She was sitting on a bench with Clive facing the Seine and the back of Notre Dame at the end of the street from her apartment. They had walked from the day’s location. Clive had invited Lala to dinner, but she asked for a rain check so she could get some work done tonight. Her new novel was turning out to be a lot of fun, and she looked forward to spending a few hours on it before she went to sleep. As a compromise, because they both had to eat, Lala had taken Clive to a little sandwich shop she had found on one of her walks, and they had gotten brie sandwiches and Diet Cokes, because, as Lala announced, “sometimes you just need a fizzy low-cal drink, y’know?”
“Too late to call David?” Clive asked.
“No, plenty of time,” Lala admitted. “Okay, let’s change the subject.”
“I had no idea I loved Diet Coke so much,” Clive said.
“You know, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Your manager?”
“Yup,” Clive said. He nodded vigorously, smiled, and took a big bite of his sandwich.
“Was he in prison?”
“No,” Clive said. “Why do you ask?”
“He made a reference to a grand jury at our first meeting.”
“Oh, no. He’s a bit melodramatic. He had to go to traffic school once when we were in LA”
“Oh. Okay. Well, I was also wondering . . . Is he just grumpy round me?”
“Oh, goodness, no. He’s that way with everyone,” Clive assured her.
“Well, what is he, in the Witness Relocation Program? Or he’s a spy or something? And that grumpy persona is just a character he’s using to be undercover?”
“No,” Clive said. He chuckled and took a big swig of Diet Coke.
“I . . . Well, maybe you can guess what my next question is?”
“Why do I keep such an unpleasant person around?”
“Umm,” Lala began. She paused. “In a nutshell, yeah.”
Clive took apart what was left of his sandwich and studied it as though the bread and cheese and lettuce and tomatoes and Dijon mustard offered the key to all the riddles of the ages. He spoke to Lala without looking at her.
“I don’t want to tell you about my manager.”
“Why not?” Lala asked.
“I’m afraid it’s going to hit way too close to home.”
Oy, Lala thought. And I had to ask.
There was a pause in their conversation, and then Clive looked at Lala again. Lala studied his expression.
“Are you looking at me like you’re the Ghost of Christmas Future and I’m Ebenezer Scrooge?”
“Yes, that’s actually exactly what I’m doing.”
“Damn it. You’re literate. And you’re a movie star. Damn. And you’re adorable. Damn, damn, damn.”
“And I love women of a certain age.” Clive leaned over and gave Lala a relatively chaste peck on the cheek.
“That’s the title of my next novel,” Lala told him. “And the character based on you is being skewered in the manuscript, trust me.”
“Ohh, I love being skewered. Can I play him in the movie version?”
Lala laughed. “What am I gonna say? No?” She put her head on his shoulder for a moment, and just as quickly lifted it again. “Fuck it. I can’t let it go. Tell me about your manager.”
Clive sighed.
“If you insist. Garrett is my aunt’s widower. She died just a few years after they were married. He never got over it. That was decades ago. He completely changed. He was a sweet guy before he lost her. I let him think he’s my manager. I don’t really need a manager at this point, but I take him most everywhere with me when I’m conducting business. It gives him something to do. He’s so alone.”
Lala put her sandwich down on her lap and put her head in her hands.
Don’t cry, she thought. Your face gets so red and puffy when you cry. Really, much more than might be considered normal.
“God, you are a sweet man,” she said through her fingers. She lowered her hands. “But . . . but . . . doesn’t his . . . well, you know . . . his remarkably unpleasant attitude cost you work?”
Now it was Clive’s turn to guffaw.
“Oh, you darling, naïve woman-of-a-certain-age. Of course it doesn’t. I’m a fucking movie star.”
They both chuckled and smiled and didn’t feel the need to say much else as they sat for a few more minutes to finish their sandwiches. Lala insisted that Clive leave her at the end of her street and not walk her all the way to her door.
“I can’t flirt with you anymore today, Clive. I just can’t. I feel like I’m back in college. And I’m liking that feeling. I have to call time-out on this. At least for today. Okay?”
Lala kissed him on both cheeks, lingering a moment too long on each, and sauntered up her street, turning once to see if he was watching her walk away, seeing that he was, and waving and smiling with an insouciant wink.
He probably can’t see my fetching little wink anyway, Lala thought by way of an excuse for continuing to flirt with the sexy movie star.
She pivoted back toward her building and managed to resist a churning urge to turn around yet another time.
Okay, so, when I get home, I’ll . . . I wonder if Clive’s still watching me . . . Stop that! Okay, let’s change the subject. David. Mon cher David, David, David. I have got to think of something more creative than “Busy on set, bisous, bisous, bisous.” I’m suddenly inspired by my new novel? That’s actually true. File that for future use. I’m walking around Paris every moment I’m not on set or not writing or not sleeping and I wish you were here to enjoy this beautiful city with me? Also true on all counts. Filed. I’ve hit my head and lost my memory, who are you and why do you want to Skype with me?
While Lala was still musing, she walked into the courtyard and saw Kenny being berated by a young woman. As she got closer, she saw that he had a small bowl clutched in his left hand, which was bent behind his back to hide what he was holding. The young woman was dressed immaculately if in a somewhat clichéd fashion in a suit that was most probably an actual vintage Chanel. Her jet-black hair was closely cropped and her pale, pinched face was surrounded by tight curls. But for the huffing tirade that was spewing from her bright red lips, she might have been very attractive. She was yelling in rapid French, and Lala couldn’t make out many of the individual words.
Did she just say . . . yeah, no, other than the ones that are also words in English that she’s just saying in French with her prissy little French accent, I’m getting nothing here, Lala thought.
She didn’t pause to debate her options. Largely because she couldn’t think of more than one. She quickly crossed the courtyard and got right in front of Kenny, positioning herself between him and his tormentor. She stuck out her hand.
“Lala Pettibone. Nous sommes nous rencontrés?”
Okay, not the most innovative dialogue, but I’m working on the fly here. And I’m working on the fly in French. So I think I deserve to be cut rather a large swath of slack.
The young woman visibly softened in response to Lala’s words. Which meant she had gone from looking like a prison warden dealing with a jailbreak to a prison librarian dealing with a severely overdue book.
“Ohhh,” the young woman oozed. “Madame Pettibone! Our American. How lovely to meet you.”
And we immediately switch to English because my French accent is obviously so entirely for shit. And how is it that she’s hitting every consonant in my name with quite so much aggression? That’s not what the French do. It’s Puh-teee-boh, babe.
Lala turned and opened the circle to include Kenny. She immediately saw that he had both his hands back in front of him, and she was relieved that he had grabbed the opportunity of her intended distraction to stash a bowl that was, for some reason, strictly forbidden.
“I am Celestine Barrault. My father and I are honored to be your hosts.”
“Then you are exactly the person I wanted to speak with,” Lala said with forced conviviality. “Please convey to your father, as well, that I couldn’t be happier with my accommodations. And Kenny and his grandfather have been absolutely wonderful to me. I appreciate them tremendously.”
Celestine wrinkled her nose and pursed her lips. She gave Kenny a curt little nod, and then, while still wrinkling her nose in a royally disdainful fashion, spoke to Lala with unctuousness that could rival Uriah Heep’s.
“How nice. Well, Madame . . .”
And here she paused.
“. . . Pettt-eeeettttt-BOWWWNNN. I won’t keep you.”
Celestine turned on her white and black patent leather kitten heels and clip-clapped out over the cobblestones. Lala and Kenny were silent as they diligently listened to the sound of her footsteps continue down the sidewalk and disappear into the ether. And then they burst out laughing.
“What the fuck was that, Kenny? And where’s the bowl? In your butt crack?”
“Yeah, more or less,” Kenny wheezed through short, rapid bursts of cackles.
Lala stopped chortling. She saw a quick, sudden movement in the doorway leading to the small garden directly behind the building.
“Is that cat feral?” she whispered.
Kenny was immediately silent and unmoving. His response was barely audible.
“She was. She’s been letting me pet her.”
“I need to think. Let’s go to my apartment.”
As calmly and quietly as possible, they made their way out of the courtyard to the staircase leading to Lala’s apartment. Once inside, Lala turned to Kenny and spoke with urgency.
“Have you seen other cats in that garden?”
“Yup,” Kenny said. “I leave food out for them. Madame Defarge suspects something, I’m sure.”
“We need humane traps. And we need to see if any are tame and if they are, we need to find homes for them. And we need to get them all spayed and neutered. And we need to get the feral ones into a safe situation so we can maintain a managed colony for them.”
And I think I just found another supremely sympathetic reason why I’ll be much too busy to Skype with David very often.