Ginny Blue's Boyfriends Page 15

  “I have to. I’m getting married.”

  “Why, Kristl?”

  I hadn’t meant to sound so imploring, but my words had the effect of straightening her spine once more. “Because I love him,” she said.

  I turned toward my bedroom.

  Yeah. Sure.

  I was a lot more clear-headed with the dawn. I got up, did a quick jog up to Bundy and around, showered, and was actually taking the time to blow my hair dry rather than let it dry naturally when I heard a light tapping on my bedroom door. I opened it cautiously, afraid of confronting either Charlie or Hog, though it was probably way too early in the morning for either of them.

  It was Kristl. “I packed my stuff last night,” she said. “I’ll probably be out of here by this afternoon.”

  “Okay.”

  She seemed to want me to say something more. I couldn’t think of what that might be, so I simply folded her into my arms for a quick good-bye hug. When I released her, she stepped back quickly. I could swear she had tears in her eyes, but truthfully, I wasn’t feeling the same sentiment. Though I wanted her to know there were no hard feelings, I definitely felt impatient with her and her need—compulsion, really—to be married. Everybody has a certain amount of weirdness, and I guess this is hers.

  I realized I was going to be living totally alone very soon, which momentarily made me feel sad ... and worried. Rent was going to be a factor. I needed a roommate to help with the bills.

  I reached the lower floor and smelled the beery, stale scent of Charlie and Hog’s “good time.” Hog was asleep on the couch; a beached whale in a white T-shirt and red boxers. Charlie was snoozing on the carpet, lying on his back, mouth open, face clear of worry and concern. I flashed back to the 50-yard line and involuntarily shuddered.

  “So, what do you guys do for a living?” I asked as an opening salvo into their alcohol-fueled, coma-like slumber.

  Hog, who’d been softly snoring, jerked awake. “Huh?”

  “When you’re not on vacation?” I asked. I, myself, was mentally preparing for my upcoming conversation with Liam Engleston. Now that my ire had cooled somewhat, I was even beginning to think the telephone might be a better instrument than a face-to-face encounter.

  “We’re going to Tijuana,” Hog said, herding his bulk into a sitting position. He pronounced Tijuana in a “tee-yuh-wahn-ah” drawl.

  That information I already possessed. “But what do you do for a living?”

  “Oh.” He rubbed the half-inch stubble on his head. “Yeah. We do computers.”

  Charlie lifted his head at this last and said, “Fix hardware.”

  I was pleased and a little surprised that they were actually employed. “You always were a fat brain,” I told Charlie.

  He grinned. “Yeah?”

  “Got bad grades on purpose.”

  “Just didn’t give a shit, Ginny.”

  “I know.” We smiled at each other. Feeling a bit more comradery than I’d expected, I asked, “What would you like for breakfast? I could whip up some scrambled eggs. I think I have some bread that hasn’t turned to penicillin yet.” I turned to Charlie’s heavyset friend and delicately asked, “Hog?” as he didn’t appear to be paying attention to me.

  Hog said, “Fuck, I think I left my wallet at Sav-On.”

  Immediately they both scrambled into their pants and shoes before I could even turn toward the refrigerator and crack an egg. The front door slammed behind them. I was still frozen in space, undecided, when the door reopened.

  “Blue?”

  It was Jill’s voice. “Come on in,” I called.

  She appeared, still looking back over her shoulder as if viewing a tag-along ghost. “Who were those guys?”

  “Ex-File Number One and his sidekick, Hog.”

  “Oh,” she said, seating herself at one of the bar stools. Then, “Oh, God,” more sympathetically, as I guess she realized I’d lost my virginity to the leaner of the scruffy twosome. I started cooking eggs, figuring we would eat them if Charlie and Hog failed to return in a timely fashion. While I cooked, I told her about Liam Engleston.

  “I’m going with you,” she declared. “The rat bastard! You didn’t book him. He can’t charge you!”

  “I was thinking of phoning him. I made a trip out there last night.”

  “No way.” She shook her head determinedly. “We’re going to make him face us. I’m a caterer. I’ve been shut out by the best of them. Until you get the contract signed, it’s not a done deal. I want to tell him so myself!”

  I smiled. This was her way of apologizing, of letting me know all was forgiven between us. I love it when she gets all bossy. Well, sometimes ...

  Charlie and Hog returned with, lo and behold, Hog’s wallet. Someone had turned it in, and wonder of all wonders, had not taken the thirty-three dollars inside. Also, they hadn’t touched Hog’s ten percent discount coupon at the Sex-It-Up, an erotic specialty store where Charlie and Hog swore they only bought gag gifts for friends. Like, oh sure. But if they wanted me to believe, no problem. What I did care about was that they were going to be on their way, and, after scarfing down my scrambled eggs and politely leaving a small amount for me and Jill—well, okay, for me; Jill wouldn’t have touched it on a dare—they climbed into Charlie’s SUV, a newer model than my own by a long shot, and charged off on their adventure. Silly me. Once they were gone I almost mourned their departure. It’s not that I wanted them back ... just that I wanted company.

  But Jill was with me and we took off in my Explorer. When we arrived at Liam’s restaurant we were approached by the man himself, and I was struck by the same quasi-Asian hit. That mustache ... But then he spoke in his clipped-off British-way. “Ms. Bluebell.” He flicked a disinterested glance to Jill, who was looking him up and down.

  “You remember me.” I said. “Do you remember how I didn’t give you a contract to sign?”

  He inhaled through pinched nostrils, as if I were a particularly noxious smell. Pissed me off to no end. I was going to say as much, but Jill broke in tensely, “I have a catering business, Mr. Engleston. Wyatt Productions doesn’t owe you anything. What were you trying to do?”

  “Am I to understand you have some stake in my dealings with Wyatt Productions?” he flared back.

  Again I attempted to interject, but Jill held up her hand. “No, I want to hear this. Really. Did you think you were going to get paid? Did you think you’d weasel a few bucks out of them? That no one would notice?”

  “We had a gentlemen’s agreement,” Liam stated, rubbing his Fu Manchu with his thumb and forefinger.

  “What the fuck is that?” Jill asked, to which I quickly intervened.

  “Your price was too high, Mr. Engleston. My producer told you as much. There was no gentlemen’s agreement.”

  “No shit,” said Jill.

  Liam breathed noisily. “I was led to believe in good faith that I had the job. I made the menu and sent it to you. I asked you to sign and return it. If you did not want my services, you were requested to let me know, otherwise I would go ahead as planned. Your negligence cost me money. I went to the job site with my food and was turned away.”

  I said carefully, holding my temper in check, “You sent a menu to my producer that made her laugh. Sandwiches, Mr. Engleston. That’s all we needed. And I was at that job site. No one showed up with food.”

  “My assistant did.”

  “Who the fuck’s your assistant?” Jill demanded.

  “Her name’s Bettina.”

  My head swam. Bettina? Sean’s friend? “Bettina was not on the call list,” I said, crossing my fingers and hoping it was true. Everyone involved with a commercial shoot is on the call list, from the director and executive producer down to the production assistants. But if there’d been some error ... ? “If she showed up, she had no right to be there.”

  Liam’s mustache quivered. “If you do not pay the bill, I have no choice but to sue you and report you to the Better Business Bureau.”

&nb
sp; Jill snorted. “They’ll laugh you out of court. What part of NO SIGNED CONTRACT are you missing?”

  “I would prefer to speak to your superior,” he said to me. “Certainly not to people who swear.”

  “Are you fuckin’ talking about me?” Jill demanded.

  “Just a second,” I said, holding up my hands.

  “Well, FUCK YOU!”

  Liam snarled, “This meeting has ended.”

  He turned on his heel and glided away. I swear, there’s something not quite real about that guy.

  Jill watched him go. “Is he like—the living dead, or something? He’s a fucking weirdo.”

  “Since when is the ‘F’ word all you say?”

  She gave me a look. “Like you never say it.”

  “I always say it. But this was supposed to be a business meeting.”

  We headed out to my car and climbed inside. Jill had somehow transferred all the turmoil and unrest in her life to Liam Engleston.

  “So, you’re blaming me now?” she asked.

  “You don’t think we could have handled it better?”

  “Would the results have been any different?”

  “Probably not,” I conceded. “But that’s not the point. This was my battle, and I would have rather done it without saying fuck a dozen times.”

  “Sorry.” She lapsed into silence as I concentrated on the traffic zooming past us on the 10.

  “As much as I appreciate your support,” I said with what I felt was incredible patience. “This is my job, not yours. You catered the shoot. That’s all. It’s my ass in a wringer if things get ugly. Uglier.”

  We hurtled down the road in further silence. I suspected she was thinking about Ian and her penchant for following his movements. She might not like the term ‘stalker,’ but I couldn’t think of a better word to describe her behavior.

  “Who’s this Bettina?” she asked, blowing my theory about her thoughts.

  “A friend of Sean’s,” I said.

  “Oh, God.”

  “She wasn’t hired by me, so therefore she wasn’t hired. But she was around.”

  “Liam Engleston’s an ass.”

  “Ya got that right.”

  “I’ll talk to Holly ... make sure she knows it was me with the potty mouth.”

  I shrugged. “It all just pisses me off.”

  “So, what are you going to do?” Jill asked seriously.

  “I’m going to tell Engleston to fuck himself and the horse he came in on.”

  Jill said, “If you’d just given me time, I could have probably handled that one for you, too.”

  As it turned out, it was all a tempest in a teapot. Engleston called Holly and actually caught her at work during wrap. He threatened her with the same action, and also complained about my professionalism and language. Holly, who has no serious love for me but can’t handle being told what to do by anyone—especially anyone male—blistered his ears with her own language, making it clear she was going to broadcast to anyone and everyone she knew that he was a “chiseling, slimy, small, little man.” Not an “F” word in sight, but enough to have him slamming down the phone on one of those “or else” threats. You’d better do a, b, or c, OR ELSE!

  Nothing infuriates Holly faster than a superior attitude—which is the only area my producer and I could be said to be truly sympatico. Doesn’t matter. It’s a big common denominator. When I heard her short, bitten fury blasting into the receiver I grinned in delight. Tom popped a Jolly Rancher and gave me puzzled eyebrows. I waved him aside. We could do the postmortem later, when Holly was out of the room. For the moment I wanted to just savor the win.

  With Charlie and Hog off in Tee-yuh-wahn-ah I was all alone, Kristl having packed up the rest of her belongings and shifting them to Brandon’s. But she realized she’d forgotten her cell phone charger—doesn’t everybody?—and she and Brandon stopped by on their way out of town to retrieve it.

  I got my first look at Brandon on my doorstep. Attractive, pleasant, kind of nondescript in a really nice way. Kristl seemed lit up around him, so I tried to discard my cynicism and hope for the best. Maybe he was the one. Why shouldn’t he be? She’d failed three times. Fourth time’s the charm ... right?

  Then I remembered her reaction to Jackson Wright. She could be a four-time loser, I thought, annoyed with myself for letting the traitorous thought creep in.

  “You’ll come to the wedding, I hope,” Brandon said as I handed Kristl her charger.

  “Will it be in Seattle?”

  Kristl and Brandan looked at each other, neither one of them sure how to answer.

  “Why don’t you get back to me on that,” I suggested magnanimously.

  “Thanks, Blue.” Kristl half-hugged me.

  Brandon shook my hand. “Nice meeting you.”

  “You, too,” I said and watched them walk away from my front door.

  It was depressing seeing other couples when I wasn’t half of one myself. I was going to have to work on it.

  Chapter 10

  On Saturday morning I showed up at Sammy’s and was pleased and a little surprised to see Jill, CeeCee, and Daphne already seated. “You all made it,” I said.

  “It’s been weeks since we got together.” Daphne glanced around as if expecting someone else.

  I looked around too and CeeCee drawled, “Cheese-Dick may have quit Sammy’s, but Daphne’s expecting Leo.”

  “I invited him,” Daphne quickly inserted.

  Leo? Heretofore Ian had been the only male who ever was allowed and then only because none of us knew how to tell Jill no. I gazed at Jill accusingly, making my feelings clear about who was really to blame.

  Jill snorted. Her arms were crossed over her chest in classic, “so sue me” style, but her brown eyes were filled with pain. Uh-oh. More trouble there.

  Daphne began waving frantically and Leo, who’d just sauntered through the door, stopped short, finger-combed his tousled tresses, then strolled to our table, sucking up as much attention from the other diners as possible. He grabbed a chair and reversed it, straddling it.

  CeeCee watched his approach with a stern face. Her pink-tipped hair had grown longer over the last few weeks and her roots were dark. I thought she might remark on Leo’s backwards chair choice as he gave her a somewhat challenging look. Apart from a faint smile, she kept her own counsel.

  Daphne said brightly, “Leo’s got a callback for a recurring guest spot on Losers, Inc., that new comedy on the WB.”

  “It’s not on the WB,” said Leo.

  I looked away, certain my face was going to give me away. But catching sight of CeeCee’s expression, then Jill’s, a shit-eating grin spread across my mouth. Even CeeCee’s cool started to desert her.

  “Well, that about sums it up,” Jill said and we all broke out laughing.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s just real funny,” muttered Leo, truly smarting. He nearly knocked the chair over, jumping from the seat. I thought he might stride off in a huff, but he caught himself up and managed to saunter out as he’d sauntered in.

  “Thanks a lot, you guys!” Daphne cried, scraping her own chair back. “I knew it was a bad idea to bring him. It’s okay for Ian, but nobody else, right?”

  “Daphne, wait ...” I protested between fits of laughter, but she was already at the door, scurrying after him.

  “Losers, Inc.?” CeeCee repeated in a tone of wonder.

  “Oh. My. God.” Jill shook her head.

  “Incorporated, no less,” I pointed out, which sent us into new heights of hilarity. Daphne’s sudden return bumped us back to earth and with an effort our amusement finally wore down. She sat in her chair, clearly unamused.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Really. I didn’t mean to crack up. It was just so damn funny.”

  “Come on, Daphne,” said Jill. “It is funny.”

  “It is not,” she said.

  “He’ll get the part,” CeeCee assured. “He’s perfect for it.” This time we were able to keep our amusement rei
gned in. Barely.

  Daphne said, “I think I might love him.”

  We sobered up instantly. I wanted to say, “Really? Really?” but just managed to keep my mouth shut.

  “You’re in love with Leo?” CeeCee clarified, sounding as full of disbelief as the rest of us felt.

  “We’ve been having such a great time. He told me he was only pretending to be interested in Heather to make me a little jealous. He wasn’t sure how I felt, so he played a little game.”

  I could have pointed out his kind of game playing wasn’t exactly a sign of maturity. I could have also told her how I felt about said game playing, but I sensed she wasn’t asking for that. In fact, she seemed to be going somewhere with this.

  “You’re not going to tell me you’re getting married, are you?” I burst out, struck by the brain-freezing thought.

  “No. Oh, no. No, it’s too soon.” She chewed on her thumbnail. “It’s that ...”

  We all waited. When she didn’t continue, CeeCee made motioning signals for her to get on with it.

  “It’s that he went to see his old girlfriend.” She sat back.

  “Heather?” I asked.

  “No! His first real girlfriend. The one that mattered.”

  “What do you mean?” Jill demanded.

  “Yeah, I’m not following,” said CeeCee.

  “Ditto,” I put in.

  “You know, your first real love. Not the first one you did it with, necessarily, or even got involved with. Your first love,” she stressed.

  “And so he went to see her? Why?” Jill asked.

  “Because ...” She shrugged. “Because we’re getting closer. And it’s important to clear things up.”

  “Did he have feelings for her still?” I asked.

  “No, it was just to put it behind him.” Her lips tightened and she glared at us all. “You’re trying not to understand.”

  “No,” I burst in and Jill and CeeCee made similar denials. “So, how did it work out for him?”

  “Okay ... .”

  “Did he get things settled with her?” I asked, feeling my way. I wasn’t sure what she wanted from us.

  “You don’t think he should have seen her.” Daphne sounded mad at me.