Are You Going to Kiss Me Now? (16 page)

What the hell?” Cisco stopped short, wiping his eyes as if to wake himself out of a dream. We were standing in front of a house. Well, more of a large box or a lean-to, really, but it might as well have been the Taj Mahal.

We all stopped to absorb the vision before us. Maybe it was a mirage? Maybe we were losing our minds? After all, we’d been looking for Eve for over seven hours. It was early in the morning now. None of us had had a proper night’s sleep in four days. And aside from the chicken and some coconuts, we hadn’t eaten much either. Maybe we were going collectively nuts.

The little house had a simple wooden fence, a crude vegetable garden, and a chicken coop about a hundred yards from the porch. There were a few random chickens wandering about. The paint was a bright and cheerful blue, and the path leading to the front door was dressed with spiffy white stones. It looked like one of those model houses you see on toy railway layouts…only with the face torn off. Since the front of the house was glass, we could all see inside as if it were a dollhouse. And there was somebody asleep, in a bed, under a blanket!

“You guys are seeing this, too, right?” Joe asked.

Joe was happy to be back with the group. He seemed really freaked out that Eve was missing. I could tell he cared about her. He was still heavy into blaming himself for her downward spiral even though Milan had clarified that he was, in fact, only responsible for getting us here and failing to get us rescued, not for Eve’s rash and subsequent disappearance. That was my fault.

“Yeah,” we said in unison. We were all seeing the same thing. A house, a bed, bookshelves, a table, a sleeping body, and what looked like a real bathroom and a kitchen.

“Should we go in?” Chaz asked. “There’s probably food.”

“Hell, yeah,” Milan answered, hoisting her tattered Balenciaga over her shoulder and heading toward the house.

“Wait!” Joe ordered. “What if it’s not safe?”

“This isn’t an episode of
Lost
. There are no hostiles, for Christ’s sake.”

“Joe could be right, Milan,” Cisco said. “How do you know?”

“Look, Yogi and Boo Boo,” Milan started, “you do what you want, but I see a shower stall, and I suspect that means there’s soap and a razor in there. I’d rather get eaten by the natives than start braiding the hair under my arms.”

I had to agree with Milan, but instinctively I waited for Jonah.

“What do you think?” I asked him. He always seemed to know what to do.

“I think I’ll go check it out. You guys stay here until I call you.”

Nobody objected.

We heard a girl screaming a few minutes later. We all ran into the house.

“Calm down, Eve, it’s me, Jonah. It’s us. Cisco and Jonah.”

She was disoriented and ranting. What was Eve doing there?

“Cisco?” she whinnied, catching her breath and grabbing for his hand.

“What are you doing here? How did you find this place?” he asked, stroking her forehead with his free hand.

Eve turned swiftly when she saw the rest of us. I could almost see her mind go blank as she decided what position she should assume. As we stood there staring at her, her expression suddenly changed from darkness to innocent joviality.

She popped out of the bed, knocking over a half-empty bottle of tequila and grasping for the sheets to cover her naked body. The rash looked much, much better. Thank you, tapioca. Her clean hair was tied back with a rubber band, and all traces of the smeared eye makeup were gone. She looked pale but quite well rested. Almost recognizable, in fact.

“Thank God you guys found me!” she cried. “I was so scared.” She stumbled a little.

“You were?” Chaz asked. “You didn’t look scared. You looked pretty comfortable sleeping there.”

“I found this place yesterday. Isn’t it weird? And look,” she said, tying a knot in the sheet and stepping into the kitchenette. “There’s lots of canned food and bottled water.”

“And laundry detergent,” I said, pointing to her clothes, which were hang drying on a line out the back door. “And shampoo.”

Eve reached up self-consciously to touch her clean hair. Her armpits were hairless.

“And a razor,” Milan yelled. “You bitch! We’ve been trekking our tired, hungry asses around thinking you were dead in a ditch somewhere, and you’ve been washing your clothes and exfoliating? You really suck, you know that?” Milan sounded hurt.

“I’m sorry,” Eve said. “Let me explain.”

We waited.

“OK, this is really embarrassing, but it’s the truth.”

She started crying before continuing. I remembered our berry hunt and her showing me how she could cry on cue, so I wasn’t totally feeling it.

“I was so hurt that Cisco chose
her
over me,” she cried, her gaze sharpening in my direction, “that I just needed to find some still water so I could see what I looked like. How bad it really was. I knew nobody was telling me the truth. I had to know.”

She burst into choking tears.

“That is like the rudest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said.

“I know,” she cried, “but it’s true.”

“I didn’t choose anybody,” Cisco said, obviously flattered. He smiled at Eve. I still hadn’t recovered from the episode with Cisco, but his hypocrisy was facilitating the healing process.

“So you let us all worry ourselves sick over you while you went off to find your reflection? That is just tragic,” Chaz said. “Tragic.”

Eve nodded.

“Anyway, I never found water, but by the time I tried to turn around I was so tired I just fell asleep under a tree. And when I woke up, it was getting light out and I was in front of this, this house. I was sure I’d died and found heaven. I mean, I literally thought I had died. I just crawled into the bed and fell asleep.”

“After you showered, did laundry, and made dinner and cocktails?” Chaz shrieked, pointing to the seven empty soup cans and the spilled bottle of tequila. The tequila and soup labels were written in English, but the brand names were foreign to me. “I’m not buying your sob story, Eve. You should have come for us.” Chaz picked up a worn copy of
Pride and Prejudice
that Eve had obviously been reading and threw it across the floor. “You’re disgusting.”

“I can understand,” Cisco said.

“You stop defending her already!” Milan yelled.

“I’m just saying,” he stammered, diminishing under Milan’s gaze.

“How do you live with yourself, Eve?” Milan asked. “You’re so selfish. It’s all about you, isn’t it? Do you ever stop to think about other people?”

It was obvious Eve wasn’t going to get away with her crap excuse and needed to switch gears. We were pissed. I’d grown accustomed to her oily maneuvers, but what followed next even surprised me. I realized in that moment that Eve was truly deceptive. People didn’t matter to her. Whatever partnerships she formed were premeditated. It was all about gaining an advantage.

“Me?” Eve shrieked, eyes bugging out of her head. “It’s never about me!” Eve shot me a withering look. Was this all about my hooking up with Cisco? It couldn’t be.

She turned bright purple before she continued.

“You think Peter ever made it about me? Even once? It was never about me. I was always an afterthought,” she said, as if discussing a familiar situation with a close group of friends such as she had never had.

“Who’s Peter?” Cisco asked, looking confused and a little annoyed at the mention of another guy’s name. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact that he never thought about the way that I felt. I’m always the demanding one, but it’s funny how I
never
get what I want. Maybe I didn’t want to wait until his withered old wife died. Maybe I didn’t want to be somebody’s filthy secret for four years. I didn’t do it on purpose. I was just so pissed off. I didn’t know the whole flat would burn down. I was just trying to punish him. I, I…” She was ranting.

“What the eff is she talking about?” Milan asked. “Are you on something?”

Eve nodded dramatically, pointing to a little baggie with a bunch of blue pills inside. Jonah scrambled to pick it up.

“How many of these did you take?” he asked in a panic. “Where did you find them?”

“Two,” she sobbed, going with whatever angle she could find. “They were in the bathroom.”

“Two?” What a drama queen. We all breathed a sigh of relief as Eve continued to cry.

“What are they? Milan asked.

“H-a-l-c-i-o-n?” Jonah squinted, trying to read the tiny writing.

“Oooooh.” Milan reached for the bag, but Jonah snatched it away.

“Dick,” she mumbled under her breath.

“Calm down, Eve,” Joe said, ignoring Milan and rubbing Eve’s back as she heaved on the floor. “Just calmly tell me what you are talking about. Who is Peter? Is this Peter’s house?”

“Peter’s house?” she asked, wiping her tears and bursting into peals of laughter. “Is this Peter’s house? What do you think, Joe? Does this look like Peter McArthy’s house?”

I was beginning to think she’d taken more than two pills.

“Peter McArthy?” Joe asked, as his brows knit together in confusion. “What does Peter McArthy have to do with anything?”

You know Peter McArthy from the famous 1970s boy band the Penguins. He’s Britain’s national treasure. He must be like 108 years old by now. He’s got lots of grown children with a famous model he’s been married to since forever. They’re cool, but they’re old people. I didn’t understand what they had to do with Eve Larkin.

“I did it on purpose. I burned it down because I couldn’t stand the thought of him bringing somebody else there.”

“Who?”

“Peter!”

“You were having an affair with Peter McArthy?” Jonah asked.

Eve nodded. We all did a silent but collective “Ewwwwwww.” I mean, she could easily be his great-granddaughter.

“I loved him. I still love him.”

“You know,” Chaz said, interrupting her performance, “while this is most definitely blogworthy, I’m still not really sure what your torching McFarty’s house has to do with the fact that you screwed us out of a night of food and shelter. I mean, you obviously know your way around a match. How ’bout lighting a signal fire for us?” he asked, holding up one of three lighters that were resting on the kitchen sink. “We could have been here in a half hour. Sorry old money bags dumped your tired ass, but that doesn’t give you an excuse to throw us under a bus, does it, Eve? I mean, if the trail of shit I left behind me in L.A. earned me some kind of honorary victims award, I’d have a purple fuckin’ heart.”

Eve looked humiliated and ashamed. Chaz was right. Not only had she blown her little secret, it wasn’t buying her a get-out-of-jail pass.

Milan farted.

“Dude,” Cisco said, recoiling a little.

“Sorry,” she said, waving her hand in front of her nose and smiling coyly. Cisco and Milan started laughing hard, which made Eve start crying all over again. Their easy friendliness upset her. It was something she could never understand.

“He took advantage of you, Eve,” Joe said tenderly, ignoring Milan’s flatulence and wiping away Eve’s tears. “That’s all there is to it.”

She nodded, catching her breath and sobbing into Joe’s chest. He stroked her head lovingly. He was relieved that she was better, and she was using his relief to gain some sort of benefit.

I noticed that Eve kept scratching her head. She obviously had lice too. She deserved worse, but it was something.

***

We spent the next few hours trying to ignore Eve’s sniveling as we got ourselves cleaned up and traded theories that might explain the existence of this miracle cabin. Joe thought it was a vestige of the Second World War, when American armies had had an interest in French North Africa. Jonah thought it was a pirate hut. Cisco’s theory was based on a script he’d once read about three guys who escaped a POW camp to climb Mount Kenya. I raised the possibility that it could have been Jimmy Hoffa’s home away from home. Of course nobody laughed.

Anyway, none of our theories explained the clear signs of semi-recent habitation, the fresh-ish paint job, the chickens, or the fact that among the copious reading material was a
Time
magazine from 1998 and a
Bitch Girl
novel that I was thrilled and surprised to discover I’d never read. I grabbed that and a dusty copy of
Anna Karenina
off a large wooden bookshelf. Honestly, I was almost as happy to find books as I was to find food and water.

Drunk. Eve and I were drunk. We sat on one side of the campfire watching Cisco massage Milan’s long, tan feet. Now that we had all eaten, showered, and washed our clothes, there was really nothing left to do but wait for our stuff to dry and get plastered. So we did. We probably started drinking at around two in the afternoon, so we were well juiced by the time the sun was setting. Even Jonah was shellacked. I’d never seen him so jovial. As soon as it started getting dark, he and Chaz went looking for extra blankets and pillows, giggling like two old women. We were all exhausted, but none of us were going to bed yet. We were wrapped in nothing but towels, as all of our clean clothes were drying out on the line behind the house. I felt ridiculous and giddy. I felt hopeful.

“Sorry, Fran,” Eve mumbled under her breath as we watched Cisco work his way up Milan’s leg. Milan was giggling obnoxiously. Eve downed another shot before refilling her glass.

“For what?” I asked, passing my glass under the bottle for a top-off. As I saw it, she had a lot of things to be sorry about. I just wanted to be clear on what she felt warranted an apology.

“Accusing you of trying to be with Cisco. Obviously he never liked me…or you. He’s just a pig.”

“Yeah,” I blithely agreed, “though seeing him with Milan somehow seems just right. Like why wouldn’t the two beautiful people be together, right? I’m just surprised it’s taken this long.”

“I suppose,” Eve huffed bitterly, clearly irritated that I was no longer invested in her or Cisco Parker. She continued staring at them as I stretched out beside her to look at the flamingo pink sky. It was really beautiful.

“Friends?” Eve asked, laying down next to me and smiling.

“Friends,” I said, lying down by my dead Droid. Not on your life, I thought.

“He is cute, though, isn’t he?” she asked, looking back over at Cisco and Milan.

“He is.”

“Was he a good kisser?” She turned her head to me, relaxing her tight mouth.

“God, Eve!”

“Well, was he?”

I didn’t say anything for a minute. “Crazy good.”

“What’s crazy good?” Joe asked, walking over and sitting down next to Eve and me. “This?” he asked, picking up the copy of
Bitch Girl
and reading aloud in an actorish voice.

“‘Simone always noticed how the energy in a room changed the moment she entered. Women absorbed her perfection in an instant and waited and watched as she glided past their respective dates with a careless breeziness. She enjoyed being admired. She loved being envied.’”

“High literature, Fran,” Joe laughed, tossing the book down.

“Here’s Tolstoy,” I said, anxiously defending my superficial choice with a more substantial one.

“You’re funny, Fran,” Joe laughed. “Full of contradictions.”

I wasn’t exactly sure to what Joe was referring, but I laughed anyway. I was starting to think maybe Jonah was right about me. Maybe I was obsessed with proving I was smart. That said, Tolstoy really is my favorite writer, but after four days in hell, Kirsten Von Wohdke’s
Bitch Girl
series was about all I could absorb.

“What are these doing here anyway?” Joe said absently as he flipped through
Anna Karenina
. “It’s all so odd.”

“Read some
Anna Karenina
to us, Joe,” Eve said, as she made herself comfortable.

He stretched out next to Eve and started to read.

“‘All happy families are alike,’” Joe began reading. “‘Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’”

It was fun listening to Joe’s expert narration of
Anna Karenina
. His voice was commanding, full of rhythm and power. I could see where Jonah inherited his talent. I thought of suggesting a career in voice-overs if
Hoggalicious Two
was as bad as it promised to be, but decided to keep it to myself. As I sat there, listening to Joe and staring at the emerging Milky Way overhead, I made a mental note to never, ever forget this moment. I knew it would never come again.

After a half hour or so, I left Joe reading to Eve while I went out back with Jonah to take the clean clothes off the line. It was probably only seven o’clock or so, but I was starting to feel like a kid high on NyQuil: hyper and exhausted. I wanted to get dressed and go to sleep. That said, trying to unclip the clothes with one hand, while holding my phone with the other, all without having my towel fall off, wasn’t easy.

“Why don’t you do the reaching part and I’ll fold,” I finally suggested.

“But it’s so much more interesting this way,” Jonah laughed.

I blushed. He was much friendlier with a little tequila flowing through his holy temple.

“Look how well we get along when you’re not trying to upstage me,” he smiled as we traded positions.

“Ahhh, I didn’t realize the great Jonah Baron wasn’t to be upstaged,” I snorted. “By a girl no less, eh?”

He shrugged.

“You had us in the wrong
hemisphere
,” I joked. “I mean, sometimes you gotta step aside, guy.”

“OK, that was bad,” he laughed.

“Polaris!” I mocked, enjoying the rare opportunity which he was amenable to being teased.

“Fair enough,” he smiled, pulling his shirt off the line. “Fair enough.”

“Do you think we’ll get out of here soon?” I asked, feeling less tired all of a sudden.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled, poking his head through the neck of his T-shirt. “But I’m sort of liking it.” He stumbled a little before regaining his balance.

“Me too!” I admitted, relieved that I wasn’t alone. “We must be crazy, right?”

“Maybe,” he sighed, tugging Chaz and Milan’s clothes off the line and tossing them to me to fold. We worked together quietly for a few minutes.

“The sky here is just so incredible. It’s a whole other sky. It’s like the
real
sky,” he breathed, slowly sliding down and motioning for me to sit next to him and have a look. “Sometimes, when I look at it, I wonder what the point of my life is. All those stars and planets up there. They make me feel insignificant. In a good way, like we’re all just here for a minute and we better make the most of it. It’s like when you see the Colosseum or the Pyramids for the first time, you know what I mean?”

I’d obviously never seen the Colosseum or the Pyramids, but I did know what he meant. I liked Jonah’s take on the world, and he always presented his thoughts in an interesting way. He was good company when he wasn’t being an asshole.

“It’s like,” Jonah frowned slightly, “back home everything is always so urgent all the time. As if any of our shit matters. We’re just another band, man. Who cares?” he said in an angry, loud voice. “But between my mom and my manager and the guys in the band and the photographers and all the crazy girls…there’s just so much noise. Everyone is always on my case about something. I can’t even think straight.” He looked at me and checked his anger with an embarrassed smile. “It’s just that it’s like impossible not to lose perspective. I look up at this sky and I know none of that matters. This is what’s real,” he said, pointing at the stars. “I feel alive and inspired. Less artifice, more beauty.”

I nodded but didn’t say anything for fear that my voice would crack. I really did know what Jonah meant.

“Are you OK?” he asked, suddenly turning toward me.

“Just tired,” I said rubbing my eyes in an attempt to hide the tears his little speech inspired. I was obviously an emotional basket case.

Jonah reached for my hand and squeezed it. Neither one of us said anything for a few minutes.

“I’m grateful to have met you, Fran. You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met,” he said. “You’re cool. You’re smart. You’re pretty amazing.”

“You’re drunk,” I said, pulling my hand away.

“A little,” he laughed, bowing his head coyly from under his long eyelashes. There were these little expression lines on both sides of his smile that I’d never noticed before. They were like parentheses on both sides of his playful grin.

“Fran?” he said, recomposing his face into a mask of seriousness.

“What?”

“Your towel is falling off.”

“Oh shi…” I started, before realizing he was joking.

“Jerk,” I laughed, pushing him a little.

“I wish I knew girls like you,” he said. “I hope we always stay friends.”

“Me too,” I said, feeling oddly touched. I started to stand up to get my clothes. He grabbed my hand back and pulled me down again. I thought my heart would blow through my chest it was beating so fast. He leaned in. I clutched the towel and held my breath.

“Do you still like Cisco?” he whispered.

I shook my head no because I wasn’t sure what else to do.

Was it really possible that Jonah Baron (homophobic, born again, Republican) was about to kiss
me?
And was it possible that I was feeling a little tingle at the notion? It was weird. And while I knew it was insanely fickle to be even considering kissing Jonah after my devotion to Cisco, my lack of sobriety was helping facilitate my mounting crush without too much trouble. And besides, I was completely flattered. I mean, who wouldn’t be?

“Are you going to kiss me now or what?” I finally blurted out.

“No,” he said.

“Then why is your face like two inches away from mine?” I asked.

“I just like to look at you,” he said seriously. “I want to look at you.” His expression was almost pained.

“Come off it, Jonah,” I giggled nervously.

Jonah let go of my hand and started rambling again. He was definitely tipsy too.

“Everyone asks me why I haven’t had a girlfriend in so long,” he sighed, leaning back and relieving the tension. “The truth is I haven’t found anyone good enough.”

“Good enough?” I laughed.

“I don’t mean it like that. I mean, you know, anybody who held my interest. All these beautiful girls I meet are so nuts. You’re different.”

“Because I’m not beautiful?” I asked, hating myself for sounding like Eve but unable to resist.

“No, not that,” he said, staring at me. “You look great. I mean, those chicks are like sex-starved psychopaths. They totally freak me out. I can’t even tell you how many pairs of underwear I get in the mail every day.”

“Ewww. Who would do that?”

He shook his head, looking disturbed. “You’re just cool. You don’t act like a dumb-ass. I’m just so impressed with you.”

Impressed? He was impressed with me. Such a weird thing to say.

“It’s like every day you’ve surprised me in some small way. All the little things you know how to do.”

“Well, I do watch a lot of educational TV,” I laughed.

“Stop diminishing yourself. You’re really an incredible person, Francesca.”

I didn’t say anything because I thought my voice might come out all wonky and emotional again. I was beginning to think I didn’t hold my liquor so well.

“And it’s not just what you know but how you think and what you say.” He paused. “You make me want to be better. I like myself better around you. I don’t know if that makes sense.”

“You said I was useless,” I said, laughing to clear the sob stuck in my throat.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean it.”

“I know.”

“Woman,” he started singing with a sly smile, “I can hardly express my mixed emotions at my thoughtlessness…”

“Oh, I love that song,” I cooed, overwhelmed at how moved I was by the sexiness of his voice. Those “crazy girls” suddenly seemed a little less crazy.

He reached for a piece of my hair and spun it around his forefinger.

“I’m a Jewish virgin,” I blurted out in a ludicrous, tequila-driven non sequitur.

“I know,” he said excitedly, letting go of my hair and looking up at the sky smiling.

“That doesn’t bother you?”

“On the contrary.”

I couldn’t help picturing Jonah and me having sex together for the first time. I decided not to share with him the fact that my virginity wasn’t like some great gift I was protecting but rather more like a pimple that I couldn’t get rid of.

I turned my head toward him. Short of a soundtrack and a light dimmer, it was make-out time. Jonah looked at me with a rapt determination and then kissed me. If you could call it a kiss. It was more like a peck really. The sort of peck you’d give a puppy. On the head.

“Good then,” he said, standing up and stumbling a little. I was stunned. Maybe that’s how Christians kissed? It seemed my virginity was in no immediate danger of getting lost.

“Get dressed, Fran,” he ordered, pulling my clothes off the line and turning his head to give me privacy. I was a little confused as I slipped out of the towel and put my clothes back on. I slipped my phone in my pocket. Bad kiss aside, this was gonna blow Jordan’s mind.

“Are you all right?” I asked him. “You seem kind of bummed. Do you feel dirty and used? Like we sinned?” I joked, hoping to get a smile out of him.

“Nah, I’m good,” he laughed, reaching for my hand.

“I should help Chaz with the food,” I said trying to play it cool.

“I’ll do it,” he said, squeezing my hand again and looking directly into my eyes. I melted a little.

“Are you and Chaz friends now?”

“I’m trying,” he said. “I’ve been an ass. I want to make amends.”

“Is that what you’re doing with me? Making amends?” I was suddenly paranoid that maybe he didn’t really like me that much after all.

“No,” he laughed, wrapping his arm around my waist and pulling me close. His breath smelled like the bottom of my mom’s wine glass.

“I feel stupid about treating Chaz badly, that’s all. You were right. My behavior’s been anything but Christian.”

“I can’t believe you actually care what I think.”

Jonah looked at me in surprise.

“Of course I care what you think.”

“I’ll help him,” I said, wiping my hair out of my face and thrilling at the idea that Jonah might not be as narrow-minded as he initially seemed.

“I’ll help Chaz,” he insisted. “You go lay out some blankets for us to sleep on. I’ll be there in a minute.”

When I stumbled out front, Cisco and Milan were gone. All but one of the blankets were gone too. They left the big, itchy one behind. Obviously, things were working out with them. God bless. I had a Christian rocker in my pocket. I really wanted to talk to Jordan. I didn’t ever want to forget how good I felt at that moment. And it would be interesting to compare it to how badly I felt two days ago after the Cisco episode. It wasn’t so much that I was mad for Jonah, per se, but I really liked the feeling of being chosen. It was amazing. And while I knew Cisco wouldn’t care, I liked the idea of showing him that I’d moved on. I hated the idea of him thinking I was some doofus, freckled fan with an undying crush on him.