Green Tea Won't Help You Now! (6 page)

"Did you tell him you wanted to sleep with him?"

"Not in so many words, but it was quite obvious and we were already making out in front of my door."

"Well, maybe he's just a decent chap."

"That has never happened to me, I always—what did you say?"

"I said: Maybe he's just a decent chap."

"Do you think so?"

"Could be an option. Maybe he really likes you, though heaven forbid I should understand why, and wants to take things slowly."

"Huh." I was dumbfounded. Nobody had ever taken things slowly with me. Could my brother be right?

"Maybe you should wait and see if he calls you within the next few days."

"Really?"

"I only say you might wish to give it some time."

I heard the door slam again. "Who is it?" asked my sister-in-law.

"It's Tish," Ryan explained, his voice suddenly that of a normal human being. "Man trouble, but I solved it. Are you alright, Buttercup? Did you eat?"

"Yes," Jude replied.
 

"Hey, Tish, listen. The Grouch has fed and it wants its shoulders massaged. I have to go. If the guy has not made himself heard within the next three days, just forget about him. Take care."

"Tell Lilly to—"

But he had already hung up.
 

I fell back onto the mat.
 

Was my brother right? He was a man, after all and a man of some experience in this field too.
 

Was this the way the good guys behaved? Certainly they would not just leave without an explanation, or would they? Maybe he had thought
he
had been the one to go too far?
 

I gazed out of the large window into the night sky, but the answer was not written in the stars, either. I would have to wait for him to call.
 

"Oh no," I moaned. He did not have my number, remember? How could he possibly call me?
 

Well, he could drop by, he knew where I lived and I was in the studio most of the time. But maybe coming here was too personal?
 

Maybe, I mused, he would look me up on the internet? Maybe he would try to find me on Facebook... that is what I would do anyhow. I am a stalker by nature. But what if he really did try? I had deleted my old Facebook account and he would not find me by looking for my fake identity, either. Not even the studio was in there. Would he think it weird if he did not find me on the internet? Once upon a time, people who were online all the time were the weirdos, but nowadays, people were highly suspicious of anybody who was
not
on the internet. I rolled about for a few more minutes, but I grew more and more impatient as time went by.

I clambered up and staggered to the reception area where I booted the computer.
 

"Hurry up, you stupid machine!"
 

Finally, the browser was up and the wireless connection was made. The entire process had taken under a minute, but to me it felt like an eternity. I registered with Facebook and made a profile for myself using a picture in which I could not be recognised. When I was done with my own friendless Trixie Beaumont profile, I set up a page for the studio, nearly uploading the old logo in the process and only remembering in the last minute I was not allowed to use it anymore, thanks to Alex Silverston.

"Asshole," I fumed but continued to work. After about half an hour I felt sure enough: if he looked me up on Facebook, he would find me.

"Do I have to do Twitter too?" I asked of the empty room. "Now, stop it, you are completely losing it. Turn the stupid thing off, idiot."

But what if he had already written?

I checked one more time before I actually pressed the button. Of course he had not written within the first five minutes of me having a Facebook account.
 

Should I download the app to monitor my messages? I better...

I downloaded the app and went to bed, where I spent the rest of the night gazing at my fake profile.
 

Nothing happened.
 

Seven

Since I did not sleep, I could not wake. I could simply drag myself out of bed at sunrise and put on a kettle for my early morning tea. My "Start The Day" class would begin at 7:30 am and I needed to put up a show of being an energetic happy person instead of an obsessing, hysterical love-struck idiot.

Blurry eyed I walked into the bathroom, brushed my teeth and threw some water onto my face. I would shower after class. Maybe I could get one or two hours of sleep afterwards as well. I went back to my bedroom, aka living room, aka dressing room, aka kitchen and saw the display of my telephone was gleaming. I pounced on it.

1 friend request.

My heart raced and I was almost too scared to touch the screen. I closed my eyes and opened them again after two seconds.

"Hello, Trixie, Drake Siriakis wants to be your friend on Facebook."

I howled in desperation and went downstairs to prepare the studio, feeling more and more like a Zombie.

Thankfully, Drake Siriakis never came for the morning class. I would not have survived discussing my new online presence with him. But Latoya was there and she was downright shocked when she entered and saw me. "Why Trixie! You look terrible! I didn't realise the story with Hard Pack hit you so bad. I'm so sorry, is there anything I can do for you?"

Had she but known I had felt the actual
hard pack
through my flimsy cotton gown last night, she would know how badly it had hit me... but I could not tell her I had gone to bed with the enemy, or rather,
not
gone to bed.
 

"No, no, nothing. I only fought with my brother. He can be such an arse."

"The carpenter?"

"Yes."

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing really, he accused me I would never call our father."

As if it had heard its cue, my phone rang loudly, but unfortunately I knew right away it could not be Alex, because the telephone was playing Tango music which indicated it was my father on the line.

"
Hola Papa..."
 

His rapid Spanish hit my ear way too loudly. "I have tried to call you for the past days, did you not hear my messages, Laetizia?"

"Papa, I'm working."

"Working, working, you are working, it's ridiculous. Did you hear what I said on your mailbox? About Sunday?"

"I really can't talk right now, I have a class starting in two minutes."

"You listened to it!?"

"Yes, yes, I have to go."

"Good, good, ignore your old Papa. Until next Sunday! Eight pm!"

"Yes, yes."

I had no idea what next Sunday was and I honestly did not care much.

During class I was suffering from a mixture of panic, exhaustion and amnesia. I do not know how many times I mixed up left and right or how many times I nearly lost consciousness in the child position.
 

Is not it unfair? One tries to sleep all night and cannot close even one eye but when it comes to actual activities, one unwillingly dozes off at every opportunity.

Two hours later I crawled back into bed and slept. It was an uneasy sleep with one of those dreams where you constantly believe to be waking up, but never really do. I went through an endless cycle, waking up over and over again, finding something else on my telephone every time I woke. Once it was a text message from Alex, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not command my fingers to open it, they would not obey me. Once my brother called to tell me his baby would be born next Sunday and I tried to figure out how he could know about it, if they could actually tell nowadays when the babies were born. In the final episode of maybe fifty, I threw the phone against the wall, only to wake up for real and realise that nothing had happened at all. I had received no messages. Nobody had called me. I had not even moved. What had appeared to be an eternity had not even been an hour.
 

"Oh please," I rasped. "Please, please."

But nobody heard my appeal for... whatever. I did not really know myself.

I lay there for another hour in which I did nothing, but work myself into a frenzy.

"That's enough." I staggered out of bed. I changed into a bikini, put on a lose dress, waddled downstairs and out of the studio, and on towards the beach.

In the Kundalini yoga tradition, which my friend Nicky teaches, cold showers are an essential part of the every day routine. They can break streaks of bad thought. Well, they can break any kind of thought, when it comes to it.

Anyway. If anybody needed a cold shower to interrupt their unproductive thoughts, it was I. But, come on peeps, seriously, who wants a cold shower when there is the friggin' Pacific Ocean to get you sorted? Now,
that
is a cold body of water! September may be the hottest month in LA, but the water hardly ever makes it above 20° Celsius (Google the darn Fahrenheit yourselves, I think it's something like 70°).
 

I purposefully marched across the sand, dropped my dress and, without hesitation, immersed myself into the rushing sea.
 

Of course, the Pacific is not without its dangers: there are riptides and surfers and animals and whatnots, but I always swim right in front of the Lifeguard tower and from the way the sea looked that day, there was not much to fear. And if there was, Pamela Anderson would rescue me with the aid of her buoys...

The sea took me into its cool womb and surrounded me with freshness. I closed my eyes and dove down as far as I could, then I pushed myself up with my feet and shot out, arms first. I paddled about and chanted, "Wahe Guru Sat Nam", and felt much better already. What did I care whether some tall, blond, blue-eyed, gorgeous hunk would ever try to contact me again? I was happy—I was blessed.

After maybe fifteen minutes, I fought my way out through the surf, pulled my dress back over my head and set out for home, mind and body cleansed. "Ha!"

It lasted until I crossed the first street coming my way when a black Jaguar drove by at the next crossroads.

My heart stopped a beat and I gasped.

Shit, was that him? Had he been to the studio? Had I missed him?
 

I started to run. The car would have to turn right at the next block, because all the other streets were cul-de-sacs. If I was fast enough, I could get a better look at it.

I thundered down the sidewalk like a Jamaican sprinter. When I reached the street, the Jaguar was just coming around the corner.
 

It was blue. It was not a convertible. It was not a Jaguar at all but a Bentley.

"Ragadabagadabooh!" I shrieked and catapulted my bunch of keys against the nearest lamp post.

Ragadabagadabooh is no yogic mantra in case you were wondering, it was only me being too angry for words.

"Namaste, Trixie," sang a female voice behind me. "Are you alright?"

I turned and found a doe-eyed pregnant woman there, carrying a basket full of wholesome fruit and vegetables. Linda Bloomberg, the owner of Calm Yoga Venice and my worst rival.

"Oh, hi, Linda. Yes, I'm fine, I...er...I only realised I forgot something rather important."

She smiled benevolently. "In case of too much anger, I tell my students to sit and breathe calmly, let it go past like the clouds in the sky."

"How helpful..."
You annoying, clueless, new-age dilettante.

"You should come to my deep relaxation class one day..."

"Thank you, Linda, I wish I could, but I just don't find the time, I get more and more students every week."

"How wonderful for you...," she replied and oozed poison like a cobra, "you must excuse me but I have to go, the kids will be home soon. Namaste..."

"Sat Nam...," I bowed my head, "
bitch
." I whispered the last word to myself, of course.
 

Then it struck me. What if Alex was married? What if he had a family? Maybe he had a pregnant wife at home?

I was shaking by the time I unlocked my door.

The prig!
He most likely had a cute all-American spouse up there in his mansion on Hollywood Hills, who regularly popped out wonderful children, who in turn were singing pious songs by the campfire and holding hands on the pastures.
 

I had to find out.

The computer was still on. I opened Alex's Wikipedia page. So far, I had only read the general information about him. Now I scrolled further down towards a section called "Private Life". It informed me that Alex had been with female US downhill ski pro, Lucy Callahan, since the year 2000. The nickname the press had given him was—the rather uninventive—"Alexander the Great". He had been the only skier to ever... what did I care?

I clicked on Lucy Callahan's entry. She was a pretty, but unassuming blonde, like there are so many out there. She had never been an Olympic champion, she was rather the typical midfielder. I googled her name to find more pictures and I found one of her and a much younger Alex, hand in hand, on the red carpet at the Monaco Sports Award.
 

My Latin blood was boiling hot with jealousy by then and I am sorry to admit it, but I spat at the screen.
 

Then I took hold of my phone. Why had Lilly not called me back? Had my impossible brother forgotten to tell her about my earlier attempts to reach her? I tried her number but it was still on mailbox only.

"Waaaaah!" I dropped my head onto the desk. And fell asleep.

Eight

I woke up because somebody was stroking my hair.
 

"Did somebody have a short night, harr, harr, harr? Hello,
Friend.
"

It was Drake.

With his yoga mat on his shoulder, he had prowled behind the reception area.

"Bugger off!" I hissed, but I came to my senses fast and apologised. "Sorry, Drake. I don't wake well."

His greasy smile went even wider. I actually thought I saw one of his teeth twinkle. "I didn't have the pleasure to be there when you wake up... yet."

"Right... are you the first? What time is it?"

"It's almost four thirty and yes, I am the first to come. It's not something I usually do, harr, harr, harr..."