Rent A Husband (12 page)

“I mean it.”

“Yeah?”

“You can make book on it.”

“Sure. I’ll take that action.”

Forrest laughed too, declined the offer of a Spirulina Surprise, and headed out into the eternal Californian sunshine, off to look at a couple of apartments in the Hollywood area.

He found a furnished studio off Bronson—close enough to the Hills to hear the wail of the coyotes at night—as soulless a place as he’d ever seen, but it was conveniently located.

Lying on his bed, staring up at the ripples made by the communal pool catching the afternoon light—trying desperately (and failing miserably) to find some Hockneyesque glamor in all of this—he wondered what he was going to do with the rest of his life.

Face it, old fellow, you don’t even know what you’re going to do with the rest of your day.

The answer to that, at least, was supplied when his phone rang and a very youthful-sounding girl told him to be at a studio down in the Valley in two hours
for the
casting session of Eric Joyce’s show.

He was to wear a tuxedo.

Forrest muttered something and hung up.

Did he want to host a hidden camera show?

God, no.

Was he going to attend the audition?

Hell, yes.

He showered and shaved and put on the outfit he’d worn to the silly Ball.  

Wearing a tux during the day made him feel like a parking valet.

He sat down on the bed, staring at the blank white wall.

Forrest was mildly surprised that he’d being called in for this audition, he’d been convinced it was merely a ploy to get him call Darcy Pringle.

Which he had no intention of doing.

But since Eric seemed to be making good his promise, wasn’t Forrest obliged to honor his?

He dialed Darcy’s number, sure that the conversation was going to be short and by-no-means sweet.

28

Darcy, driving into the late afternoon sun, tries to hide her shock at hearing Forrest’s  voice.

“Mr. Forbes,” she says, putting some permafrost into her tone.

“I imagine you’re a little surprised to hear from me?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“I guess you want your ring back. How come nothing lasts with you guys?” When she hears only silence she says, “That was a joke, Forrest.”

“Oh, of course. Sure. No, I’m not calling about the ring.”

“Okay.”

“I’m calling to ask you out, actually.”

“Mr. Forbes don’t you think you’ve had enough fun at my expense? How many pranks can a poor girl stand?”

“Darcy, this is no prank. I’m calling to ask you to have dinner with me.”

“Why?”

“Why does a man usually ask a woman out to dinner?”

“In the normal world that would be because he finds her interesting and attractive.”

“That’s it exactly.”

“But since you clearly don’t live in the normal world, I can only imagine that you have some ulterior motive.”

“Such as?”

“I really don’t know. Money perhaps?”

“Money?” The man sounds genuinely offended.

“Well, I did pay you to date me the other night. Perhaps you’re just coming back for seconds?”

“Darcy, I can assure you that’s not why I called. I feel I owe you an apology. I’d like to take you to dinner. My treat.”

“Let’s back up a bit shall we?”

“Okay, backing up.”

“Apology for what?”

“Well, for that whole crazy proposal thing. I can imagine it has been an embarrassment to you.”

“Oh, just toss it on the humiliation pile, Mr. Forbes. Anyway, I enjoyed it at the time, I seem to remember. You don’t owe me an apology and you certainly don’t owe me a dinner.”

“And what if I said I want to take you to dinner because I like you?”

“I’d say you’re lying. To a guy like you I’m just some boring little house mouse.”

“Not at all. I think you have . . . verve.”

“Verve?”

“You know, vivacity, vitality.”

“I know what the word means.”

“Of course you do.”

“But I’m going to have to turn you down, Mr. Forbes.”

“Well, I’m very sorry to hear that.”

But he doesn’t sound sorry, he sounds relieved.

And even in her morose state that pricks Darcy’s interest.

“Eric put you up to this, didn’t he?”

“No, of course not.”

“For a member of the elite you’re a very poor liar, Mr. Forbes. Didn't they teach you to fib through your teeth at Choate or
Groton
, or wherever?”

“I went to Andover.”

“That must have been nice. What’s Eric offering you?”

“Nothing. You’ve got this all wrong.”

“No I haven’t. Oh, okay, I think I understand what’s going on here. He’s promising you a shot at that dumb hidden camera thing in exchange for wining and dining me, isn’t he?”

“Darcy, please . . .”

“God, he’s a manipulative little creature. I almost have to admire him. Can I ask you to be completely honest with me, Mr. Forbes?”

“Of course.”

“You really don’t want to take me to dinner do you?’

“Well . . .”

“Come on, Forrest, give it to me straight.”

“No, I don’t want to take you to dinner.”

“It’s pretty much the last way you’d want to spend a night, isn’t it, short of emergency root canal?”

“Well, yes.”

Darcy laughs. “Okay, then I accept. Let’s do it.”

She hears him strangling. “I’m sorry, I’m a little bamboozled.”

“That’s okay, you’ll catch up. I’ll come down to LA tomorrow. Text me the venue and the time.”

She ends the call and Santa Sofia comes into view.

For reasons Darcy can’t begin to explain, the conversation leaves her cheered as she drives down toward the ocean.

29

Forrest Forbes sits at the bar at the Chateau Marmont in a state of confusion that has nothing to do with the four Maker’s Marks he’s downed in quick succession.

His head is still spinning from the conversation he had with Darcy Pringle hours earlier.

Forrest had once claimed he could write the book on female perversity.

He’d been a connoisseur of the subject since his French tutor had let him pay to see her in her underwear—disappointingly staid underwear for a woman who spoke in with such a seductive accent—when he was in the third grade.

But he’d never before encountered a woman who would agree to a date only when she’d established that he really didn’t want to go out with her.

Bizarre.

It had left him perplexed during the taxi ride down to the casting session where he found himself being asked to leap out from behind a light stand (pretend it’s a wall, the bored video cameraman had said) and shout, “Bam, bam, bam! You’re on SpyCam!”

Eric, of course, was nowhere in evidence, the casting run by a couple of girls who looked like they were still in school.

One of them had muttered something about getting back to him, and Forrest spent another hour in a cab inching its way through the traffic, still trying to solve the enigma of Darcy Pringle.

When the tower of the Chateau Marmont appeared against the night sky, Forrest stopped the cab and decided he owed himself the drink he’d skipped the other day.

So, here he sits in his tuxedo, a sophisticate, a man of the world, contemplating the actions of a small town house mouse.

He won’t text her, of course.

No way is he going to get caught up in her game.

As he signals for another drink, a hand with long pearl talons lands softly on his shoulder and a Russian-accented voice purrs his name.

He turns to look up at the magnificent Tatar cheekbones of Tatiana Volkova, a much-photographed member of the tribe of jet-age Bedouins that Forrest had once belonged to.

“You have been vere, darlink?” she says.

“Oh, here and there, Tat. Here and there.”

“You are lookink very handsome, Forrest. Buy me please a drink. You still remember?”

“Of course,” Forrest says beckoning the bartender. “A Rusty Nail for the lady. What the hell, I’ll join her.”

And that Rusty Nail is the first of many that get driven into Forrest’s coffin, and a  while later he and Tatiana are up in her room on the fifth floor, drinking champagne and catching up on old times.

The room is being paid for by some Middle Eastern princeling who is off getting his polo ponies shod and will only be back tomorrow or maybe next week.

“I am hearink you are now poor, Forrest?” Tatiana says from the coffee table, busy vacuuming up some designer drug so new it hasn’t yet been named.

“Yeah, Tat. I’m a pauper.”

“Is okay, you are still very much pretty.”

Forrest passes on the drug, but gets steadily hammered on the endless supply of booze.

The conversation slides into a twilight zone of name brands and celebrity hang-outs in New York and LA and Paris—Nobu, Henri Bendel, 40/ 40 Club, Toast, Hotel Meurice—and as they talk Tatiana sheds her clothes with as much eroticism as if she were in a doctor’s surgery, and, weirdly, Forrest finds himself thinking of Darcy Pringle in her underthings on the stairs of that awful house, like a scene from some old sitcom.

He gets as far as untying his bowtie, then he finds himself sitting on the bed staring at the wall of the hotel room.

What’s with all the wall-staring?

“So, Forrest, you are losing your horny appetite also with your money?”

“Yeah, Tat, that must be it,” he says as he walks out on one of the most beautiful and debauched women he has ever known, gets the elevator down to the lobby and strolls the few blocks to his apartment.

When he gets home he clicks on a lamp and lies on the bed and listens to traffic and that peculiarly LA soundtrack of police helicopters and distant gunfire.

At last he digs his phone from his tuxedo pocket and spends a long time composing a text message to Darcy Pringle.

30

Brontë Baines, long a sufferer of insomnia, opens the window of the little room to allow in the ocean breeze, moves the standing lamp in closer and lines up her Moleskin journal precisely parallel with the edge of the small wooden desk.

She likes to keep everything ship-shape and Bristol fashion.

Her fondness for outdated British expressions often leaves her misunderstood in crass, straight-ahead 21st Century America.

But, as Brontë knows only too well, even if she spoke everyday American she would still be misunderstood.

She is an anachronism.

She always has been.

And loneliness and a desire for romantic love fostered by the tormented prose of the sisters who gave Brontë her name, have caused her to make errors of judgment.

To allow herself to imagine that traveling salesmen, bus drivers and pasty-faced clerks were romantic figures from the pages of old novels.

To imagine that these inferior specimens were gentlemen, when all they wanted was a grope and a fumble in the back of a car, on a park bench, or in a smelly motel room, before they went home to their wives or onto their next sad and sordid conquest.

Yes, Brontë Baines has been the victim of her own silly fantasies.

So she decided to move warily with William Bigelow.

Initially, she thought he was just another lecher when he proposed that she move in next door to him.

She waited for the furtive knock on the door that first night, but it had not come.

A very good sign.

And then there had been that heartbreakingly wonderful tableaux at the senior center.

However, there was, of course, a dark cloud on the horizon: the Darcy Pringle woman.

But Brontë has decided to take even this as a positive.

It means that a warm heart beats within William Bigelow’s chest.

All she has to do is engineer a little heart transplant—
oh, she likes that!
—and make sure that she becomes the object of William’s affections.

Darcy Pringle may be boringly regular in her looks and hair color, but, despite her name, she wouldn’t know Jane Austen from Jane Russell.

So, Brontë has to play to her strengths.

Earlier today, during a lull in business in the coffee shop, she helped William stack the bookshelves.

“Who is your favorite author?” she asked.

He pondered this long and hard.

“Well, I have to admit to a fondness for the Russians.”

“Oh, of course. Who in particular?”

“So difficult to narrow it down. How do you chose between, say,
War and Peace
and
Crime and Punishment
?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, if you have a table with one short leg, you would, of course, choose
War And Peace
.”

Brontë stared at him, bewildered.

“Forgive me for being frivolous,” he said. “Just a little joke.”

Brontë had little understanding of humor, but since she’d been told that he’d made a quip, she felt she had to laugh and released a strange, warbling titter.

When she saw his expression she hastily covered her mouth.

William scratched his head.

“I would say Tolstoy. Yes, Tolstoy. And not for his massive tomes, but for his novellas.
The Death of Ivan Ilych
is incredibly moving.”

Brontë stared at him and he colored.

“I’m sorry, I’m jawing on here.”

“Oh, not at all, William. It’s such a pleasure to talk to a man who is so well read.”

He blushed even more deeply and hurried off, leaving a few chairs scattered in his wake.

How adorable he is!
Brontë thinks as she sits at her little desk.

She lifts her Montblanc—the only thing of her mother’s that she has kept—and writes in her journal:
I love William Bigelow and I shall not rest until he loves me in return.