Fanfare (4 page)

Me (6:35 am): Did u actually wash ur hair this morning?

Blocked ID (6:36 am): what do u mean?

Me (6:36 am): Oh come on. Ur hair is jacked, and u know it.

Blocked ID (6:37 am): my hair is supposed to be my trademark

Me (6:38 am): Bum chic is ur trademark? I can find a bum with ur hair in 5 mins.

Blocked ID (6:38 am): ouch, that hurt

Me (6:39 am): I’d apologize, but u did wake me up at 6:15

Blocked ID (6:39 am): i’m a selfish ass, srry

Me (6:40 am): It’s ok. Why r u in hair and makeup?

Blocked ID (6:40 am): vanity fair shoot in central park

God. Why the hell was he talking to me, again?

Blocked ID (6:43 am): r u still there? should i not have said that?

Me (6:44 am): No. Sometimes I forget what u are.

Blocked ID (6:44 am): i like that about u

Me (6:44 am): It’s just disconcerting.

Blocked ID (6:44 am): how so?

Me (6:45 am): Do u honestly want to know?

Blocked ID (6:45 am): of course

Me (6:45 am): I don’t know why ur talking to me.

Blocked ID (6:46 am): i don’t have anyone else to talk to

Seriously? He was probably surrounded by tons of people fetching him Evian and a whole-wheat bagel while measuring him for his wardrobe and figuring out what poses would work best. He had no one to talk to?

Me (6:47 am): Srsly? Aren’t there tons of ppl around?

Blocked ID (6:47 am): yes, but they don’t want to talk

Me (6:48 am): Were u mean to them? Did u kick their dog?

Blocked ID (6:48 am): lol, most ppl don’t really want to talk to me

Blocked ID (6:48 am): it’s kind of like window-shopping

Me (6:48 am): Why not? U seem ok . . . not too crazy J

Blocked ID (6:49 am): just ok?

Me (6:49 am): I mean, aren’t all actors a little screwed up in the head?

Blocked ID (6:49 am): only the good ones J

Me (6:49 am): R u a good actor?

Blocked ID (6:50 am): not yet, but i’m trying

Me (6:50 am): Well then I don’t get it.

Blocked ID (6:50 am): think a/b it

Blocked ID (6:50 am): these ppl care most that i look sharp in their mag

Blocked ID (6:51 am): not a/b if i’m happy, c what time they woke me up?

I could almost picture him laughing to himself at his own joke.

Me (6:51 am): Yeah, the nerve of those bitches. . . .

Blocked ID (6:51 am): lol

Blocked ID (6:53 am): am i keeping u from something?

I waited a moment more while I stared at the tiny screen of my cell phone. It unnerved me how easy it was to forget my misanthropy whenever I talked to him. I almost felt happy right now. It was the first time I felt happy in the morning in ages. This was not good. It wasn’t going to go anyplace that was healthy for me, and I needed to stop this. Soon.

Me (6:55 am): Actually, I need to go to work.

Blocked ID (6:55 am): oh i’m srry

Me (6:56 am): Plus, I pay per text.

Blocked ID (6:56 am): shit

Blocked ID (6:56 am): at the risk of sounding redundant, srry again

Me (6:57 am): Don’t worry a/b it. Take care.

Blocked ID (6:57 am): what’s ur email?

Ugh. Part of me had already began to type my address in response to the involuntary thrill coursing through me. The more cautious side of my psyche, the side I should have listened to whenever things went downhill with Ryan, told me to stop and think about it instead of just doing what felt right.

I had deduced a few things about Tom in the short set of conversations we had shared so far. He seemed intelligent and witty. As I recalled how he handled my fawning cousins, I also knew that he could be kind even when it was unnecessary. The thing that gave me the greatest pause was the overwhelmingly obvious inference I had made from his words and actions: he was lonely. It shocked me a great deal when I truly realized this. A lonely movie star?

It wasn’t a big deal to give him my email address. Hey, it wasn’t like I had anything exciting going on in my life that would captivate him for any extended length of time. Plus, he had been so sweet to Steph and Maria yesterday. I couldn’t lie to myself either . . . I really enjoyed talking to him. This was something I could manage. If things got out of hand, I knew I would be able to tell him to find some other mundane distraction from his fantastically glamorous existence. Anyway, I was sure his fascination was akin to a runway model observing the common hausfrau grocery shopping for her family.

I had no romantic interest in yet another man with screaming red flags surrounding every aspect of his life. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” were the philosopher George Santayana’s words. I reflected on that quote whenever the desire to give someone a chance would pop into my head. I knew better. I could handle this.

Me (7:00 am):
[email protected]

Blocked ID (7:00 am): thnx

A curious flutter in my heart immediately put to question my rational musings of only a moment ago. I furrowed my brow and gritted my teeth with renewed certainty. Movie Star Tom was a temporary diversion in my unbelievably boring existence—completely meaningless, entirely disposable. Absolutely not a big deal.

During lunch I decided to call Hana to see what she thought of the situation. Since I was pretty sure some semblance of discretion was in order, I made my way back to my car to talk to her. She answered the phone, but I could barely hear her. The music in her car was absolutely deafening with its thumping bass and unintelligible vocals. If classical music stirred the memory of my father, and my mother walked to the beat of Latin drums, then Hana Fateri cruised to life with the most ghetto gangsta rap as a soundtrack. Honestly, it was one of these things I loved to tell people just to shock them.

Picture this: A half-Korean girl who dressed in designer everything, loved to cook and spend time with her family—essentially a homebody whose favorite pastimes included going to the beach and watching movies with her husband. Charlotte York speeding around in a black BMW to the booming sounds of Three 6 Mafia. Oh, and by the way, she knew every single word of whatever song currently polluted the air and could rap word-perfect along with the tune—lots of colorful stuff about bitches and hos. As a result of her musical predilection, Hana also had one of the more colorful vocabularies I had encountered. To me, all of this just added to her charm. Any form of love is blind.

“Hello?” I said even louder.

“Cris? One sec.” She shuffled the phone and turned down the music.

“Dude, how do you even hear the phone ringing with the music that freaking loud?” I asked.

“Save it. What’s up?”

“Are you busy?”

“Nope. I have to show houses around three o’clock, but right now I’m just taking things to the post office.”

“Well, I wanted to talk to you about something, but I don’t want you to overreact or read too deeply into it,” I warned.

“What happened?” Her curiosity piqued.

“So, the other day when I took Steph and Maria to that meet-and-greet thing at the mall, I accidentally left my iPod on the signing table. I went back to the lost and found to get it, and it turned out someone had picked it up and left a cell number for me.”

“Are you wasting my time with a Gita story?” she asked with a hint of irritation in her voice.

I laughed. Gita was notorious for talking up a situation prior to relating its events in such a manner that made the actual story incredibly anticlimactic. Essentially, she was a shiteous storyteller.

“Just give me a second. So I called the number and left a voicemail, and the dude called me back last night. We had a nice conversation, and he text messaged me this morning.”

“Whoa! You have a crazy stalker? Awesome. Are you going to mess with him?” she asked in amusement.

I paused for effect. “See, none of that is what makes the story interesting. What makes it interesting is . . . the dude who took my iPod is that Thomas guy from the movie.”

Dead silence.

“What?” she whispered. Rendering Hana speechless already earned me a pat on the back.

“Thomas, the actor slash ghost, took my iPod. We talked on the phone last night and texted each other this morning.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she shrieked. Her voice had risen with each subsequent word so that, by the time she finished, all I could hear were shrill reverberations in the phone.

“Dude. You don’t need to yell.”

“Tell me everything. Don’t spare a single detail,” she demanded.

Hana and I were wont to psychoanalyze everything about men in the obsessive fashion of women everywhere. Gita gave us much-needed balance because she thought wasting time pondering the words and actions of men was basically the equivalent of learning how to make poop edible. At the end of the day, it didn’t change the fact that it was still poop. Gita was honestly more like a guy than most guys I knew. If I told Gita this story, she would probably say, “That’s nice, C. Now, get back to work.”

I related the events in superfluous detail. She gasped and echoed my statements at all the appropriate intervals.

“I think he likes you,” she stated with certainty.

“Well, it doesn’t really matter now, does it?” I responded testily. I had already known she was going to say that, but for some reason it made me even more uncomfortable to hear the words in actuality.

“Why the hell not?” she insisted.

“In case you’ve forgotten, he’s a movie star. I’m not Cinderella, nor am I Julia Roberts from Pretty Woman. I never wanted to be. Plus, he doesn’t strike me as the type of guy who wants a project,” I stated with complete honesty.

“Cristina, don’t be too judgmental.”

“That’s funny coming from you. If I told you he was a recovering heroin addict, you’d be urging me to call 911 so the police could be dispatched for the dual purpose of retrieving my iPod and making sure he wasn’t using again.”

“Now, that’s not fair. Honestly, if he works in Hollywood, he could be a recovering heroin addict, too. Thomas, the actor slash ghost slash possible heroin addict,” she deadpanned.

We both laughed.

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

“I don’t know. I was thinking . . . is it outrageous for me to think we could be friends?” As I said the words, I realized how much I wanted them to be plausible. I had no desire to tell the actor slash possible heroin addict that I never wanted to talk to him again. The truth was I definitely wanted to continue our conversation. I hoped that didn’t mean anything ominous.

“I don’t know, Cris. Hollywood-types may not be good friends for us groundlings,” she said unabashedly. “Why don’t you Google him? I know a little bit about him from the random gossip blogs I read everyday, and he doesn’t seem like he would be too big of a toolbag. I can’t remember anything terribly deleterious. Actually, I always thought he seemed kind of awkward . . . like I wanted to take him home, fix him a bowl of soup, and demand that he tell me what’s wrong.”

“Then why does everyone think he’s so amazing?” I asked.

“Well, he’s freaking adorable, first of all. Secondly, he’s a decent actor. He’s also got this tortured artist vibe to him that intrigues the minds of angst-ridden teenage girls.”

“Yuck. I’m done with tortured anything. All he has to do is tell me he reads Nietzsche, and he’s earned an express ticket to Who-the-Hell-Cares.”

My ex had loved to read morbid philosophy about existentialism, Marxism, nihilism, and any other bleak-ism out there. I pseudo-blamed his penchant for reading this sort of “life has no meaning” crap for why he decided it was okay to ruin mine.

“Google him. See what you find out there and use your best judgment. If he likes talking to you, he can’t be all that bad. I just hope he’s not one of those twisted fucks who likes to study the insects in their natural environment. Maybe he’s in info-gathering mode. Like a Strasberg method-acting weirdo . . . maybe his next role is a Puerto Rican tranny.” She laughed uproariously at her own joke. Hana didn’t care at all if you failed to find her funny . . . she oftentimes found herself funny enough for several people. Luckily, her dark humor was usually right in sync with mine.

I chuckled with her. “I need to go, but I’ll call you after work. If you talk to Gita, tell her what’s going on so I don’t have to tell the story again. I never called her back last night . . . damn, maybe I’ll send her an email.”

“Okay. Love you. If you get invited to the Oscars, lose the bastard and take me.”

“Haha. Dream on. Love you, too,” I said with a smile.

I went back into the office, sat down in my cubicle, and took a deep breath. I opened up a browser window and typed in
www.google.com
. I can’t believe I’m doing this crap. I always mocked Hana endlessly whenever she told me she wasted hours Googling random people on the net. She spent a great deal of time amassing large quantities of useless information, and the “Google Technique,” as she called it, was Phase One of any sleuthing enterprise. I never thought I would stoop to her level.

I typed in his name and hit Search. Approximately 10,400,000 results. Suddenly I felt like I was the size of the parasite that causes amoebic dysentery. I didn’t even want to know how many results would come up if I typed in “Cristina Aleida Pereira.” Maybe ten? At the top of the endless list of hyperlinks were several articles insinuating that Tom was unhappy in Hollywood. I glossed over those. I’d lost my faith in responsible journalism back in the election cycle of 2004.

I spent a few nanoseconds on a couple of fansites and quickly decided that estrogen-fueled shrines were not the best place for me to figure out whether or not someone had a normal personality. I did see a couple of pictures of him in a tux that made me smile. He cleaned up nicely. Finally, I clicked on a few links that sent me to
www.youtube.com
to watch some of Tom’s interviews with various media outlets. Jackpot.

I spent the next hour at work obsessively watching clip after clip of him promoting movies and oftentimes being asked the same series of predictable questions. Hana was right. He did seem awkward . . . not necessarily like he lacked confidence, but more like he wanted to be somewhere else. I desperately wanted to know where else he wanted to be. This was bad. Stop it, Cris. That’s enough. Damn Hana for suggesting answers and promoting chaos at the same time. I X-ed out of all the browser windows with frustration. If anything, my sleuthing had only exacerbated my curiosity. Shit.