For Chapter 1, CLICK HERE…
Chapter 2
I lit some candles and picked up the bungalow. My phone rang again, and I nearly made the mistake of picking it up without looking first. It was my mother. She wasn’t just calling, she was attempting to FaceTime me. I let it ring until it died.
It immediately rang for FaceTime again. I had been kicking her to voicemail for months, but Linda Wellington was not a woman who took a hint.
Thirty seconds later, she rang a third time. Nikos would arrive shortly. I couldn’t think of a worse aphrodisiac than a conversation with my mother, but I flashed back to the last time she called multiple times without response. She had convinced the WeHo police to come knocking to recover my dismembered corpse. I called her back and she picked up right away.
“What?” I said.
“Hello, Austin. This is your mother.”
“I know, Mother. I just dialed your number, didn’t I?”
“I tried to FaceTime you.”
“What do you want?”
“I haven’t talked to you in five months,” she said.
“That’s right. We’ve been doing this for nearly five years. Don’t you see a pattern emerging here?”
“I don’t know what I ever could have done to deserve—”
I stopped that shit cold. “Don’t. Okay? You know goddamned well what you did. So just don’t.”
She paused for a moment. I drank it in. Shutting her up felt great, and these pauses were rare.
“If you had told me thirty years ago that I’d have a daughter who would treat me like a stranger—”
“Okay. Is that everything? Thanks for calling,” I said.
I went to hang up on her, but heard her blurt out, “Your father passed away, Austin.”
“What did you say?”
“I told you Geoffrey’s been sick. He passed away last night.”
Geoffrey wasn’t my father. He was my mother’s husband of fifteen years. But not the time to argue semantics.
“Ah, Christ, I’m sorry to hear that, Mother.” This was genuine. Geoffrey wasn’t a bad guy, and I was a handful of a stepdaughter. If for nothing else, he had been a fantastic buffer between me and this maniac on the other end of my phone.
I heard her jagged breathing and sighing. It sounded like the kindling for a cry. “Are you all right?” I asked her.
“No, I have a daughter who won’t take my calls,” she said.
“We’re on the phone now.”
“Why didn’t you want to FaceTime with me?”
“Frankly, Mother, I’m not big on the unannounced video chat.”
“You’re afraid of what I’ll see? You think you could possibly shock me any more in this lifetime?”
“I’m sorry about Geoffrey. I gotta go. I have some people coming over, so—”
“Are you coming home?”
“I am home.”
“I meant New England, and you know it. The funeral is on Saturday.”
“I can’t.”
“Money? I’ll pay for the plane ticket, obviously. You’ll stay here at The Bluffs.”
My mother told everyone that her Beacon Hill mansion was named The Bluffs in Boston’s Historic Register. This was absolute bullshit. Its real name was the Simpson Estate. She rechristened it The Bluffs after the O.J. trial and hoped no one noticed.
“Thank you. But really. I can’t get away right now.”
“From what? You don’t do anything, dear.”
“It only looks like that to the untrained eye,” I said.
“You’re really going to take this little tiff of ours and use it as a reason not to go to your father’s funeral?” she said.
“Oh, you’re downgrading it to a tiff? That’s hilarious. Look, I just can’t get out there right now. I’m sorry.”
She sighed deep resignation. “If you can’t, you can’t, I suppose. Do what you think is right, Austin. What should I tell people?”
“Tell them whatever the hell you want.”
“All of Geoffrey’s family will be there. Ghastly people. Remember?”
“I have a friend coming over.”
“You made the Lifestyle section of the Boston Globe last month. One of those paparazzi cockroaches snapped a shot of you and that Greek fellow.”
“He’s Albanian,” I said.
“Honestly, what’s the difference?”
“Geography, for one.”
“And he’s a tree trimmer?”
“Uh huh. He started his own business,” I said. I didn’t tell her his first self-started business had been selling fake I.D.’s to minors. That little LLC had gotten him six months.
I heard a rustling paper on her end. “Nikos Louganis. Says here he’s the ‘Tree Trimmer to the Stars’. Is that so?” she asked.
“You saved the paper?”
“I wanted to show it to Barbara,” she said.
Barbara was her head of household staff. She’d raised me, and didn’t suffer any of my foolishness, so I knew she always welcomed a good old-fashioned Austin trashing. Mother was under the impression they were best friends, but Barbara was simply paid handsomely to listen to my mother’s unending bullshit. If that paycheck ever disappeared, so would Barbara.
“Is this Nikos the friend coming over?” she asked.
“Mother…”
“Seems for the past three months, this Nikos fellow is on your arm,” she said. “Getting serious?”
“None of your business,” I said.
“I take that as a yes. Tree trimming must be good business. Now I know how your bills get paid,” she said.
“I’m self-supporting, Mother.”
“Right.”
“Okay. I’m going now.”
“In such a rush. You’re still going to your A.A.?” she asked.
“Also none of your business,” I said.
“So, no,” she said.
“As a matter of fact, yeah, I’m still going, Mrs. Know Everything,” I said. This was a lie, but I wasn’t giving her the satisfaction. Years ago, one of my drunk drivings came with a mandatory Alcoholics Anonymous sentence. My mother was under wishful thinking that I’d been sober ever since.
Thinking of A.A. made me want a drink. I went to the freezer to grab the bottle of vodka.
“I’m hanging up now, Mother. Sorry again about Geoffrey,” I said.
“Listen, the funeral’s Saturday. And really, if you change your mind… I know you’re trying to prove to me that you can live in squalor. Bravo, Austin, you won. So if this is really just about money, I’m happy to pay for the flight. You can even fly coach if you need to test your grit further. You’ll be glad to be there. You’ll thank me later. ”
I'll thank her later… I fucking hated when she said I’d thank her later. She’d said it to me since the dawn of time. I’d yet to thank her.
“You offered already. I heard you,” I said.
“All right then. Call you soon. This has been so wonderful to chat—”
I clicked her away. This is how it always worked. Towards the end of our conversations, she’d try to act normal like nothing had ever happened. Never a mention of the past, or her part in it. My mother had a deadly allergy to apologizing.
Every light in the bungalow snapped off and the air conditioner rattled and wheezed to a halt. Power outage. I made for the window to see if the whole block was out. Lights shimmered up and down the street. So it was just me and my unpaid electric bill. I’d been keeping my life vague, so I had no idea how much it would cost to turn the power back on, but I was sure it was more than the three dollars and change in my checking account. I pictured my mother up on Beacon Hill. I knew the moment she hung up the phone, she’d run her mouth off about me to old lemon-faced Barbara. I thought of the two of them, shaking their heads at sad, little me struggling to pay the bills. Poor deluded Austin. If only she’d come to her senses.
Fuck those two old crows.
I picked up my cell and called Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica. The front desk picked up.
I said, “Hi, I want to book a reservation for the week. What’s your best room?”
***
The ocean’s night breeze ran through my hair and across my face. I stood on the patio in my Hotel Casa Del Mar robe and leaned out over the stone railing. It had rained a few days before, which meant a clear view all the way up the coast. The artificial honeysuckle fragrance wafted from my suite, inviting me back into its tastefully decorated confines. The water rolled onto the Santa Monica shore with a peaceful rhythm. I closed my eyes and felt a moment of true peace and tranquility.
“There’s no TV in here,” Nikos said from the California King bed. His muscular body stretched across the landscape of crisp, white sheets.
“I think they assume you’d be enjoying the ocean view. Look at this.”
“What if you wanted to watch a game or something?”
“Is there a game on tonight?”
“I don't know. I'm just saying,” he said.
“I’m sure the valet would bring one up. Come on out here,” I said.
Nikos dragged himself out of the bed and lumbered out onto the patio, stark naked. He took a mandatory glance out across the night air.
“Amazing, right?” I said.
“It’s all right,” he said. “You know it took me an hour to get over here?”
“Well, now you’re here, and you can relax.”
“Ten miles in an hour, Austin.”
“Then maybe we should call down and get in-room massages?” I said. “Or, we could get back in that bed.”
I put my hand where it counted. He peeled away.
“How much is this room a night?” Nikos asked.
“What does it matter? You know I’ll work it out,” I said.
“How? You’re going to create a scene at the front desk or something?” he asked.
“I haven’t decided yet. I’ll figure it out.”
“So you’re never going to turn your power back on?”
“Of course. But I’ll worry about that later. Let’s just enjoy the room.”
“It seems like a lot of work. All that hustling,” Nikos said.
“Not for you. You get to enjoy the fruits of my labors.”
“Yeah, but when we’re at your place, it’s five minutes from the gym.”
“We just had sex. Shouldn’t you be napping?” I asked.
“You don’t want to turn the power back on?”
“Sure, but it can wait. I’ve got exactly three dollars and eighty five cents in the bank. In the meantime, we staycation here.”
Nikos walked away from me and took his jeans from the floor where he’d ripped them off and had wrestled me to the bed. He pulled out a hamburger-thick wad of bills. He stripped off three hundred dollar bills and handed them to me.
“Here. Pay your electric,” he said.
“Did a rich aunt die?” I asked.
“Nope. I’m working for a new client. And I got an idea—plenty more scratch where this came from.”
I wish I’d taken the three hundred, no questions asked. But…
“How so?” I asked.
It happens that fast. Your whole life can turn around on its axis in a split second like that. My comfortable, scamming-around little world was about to spin like a bottle cap in the garbage disposal.