Baby You Can Drive My Car
installment of the twenty-fifith segment
Well, wasn't this all just fucked, fuckeder and fuckedest too? Lolly and I huddled together on my sofa, passing half a bottleful of méthode champenoise between us, and we finished it in about ten seconds. I got hiccups, and she burped. Fucking charming. Neither of us uttered a word - we were both too glum.
"So, rock and roll, eh?" I said after a while, opening another bottle which the God of Providence, myself acting as his able agent, had made sure it found its way into my bag.
"Huh. I was expecting sex and drugs," Lola commented.
"Jesus, you strumpet. You got the sex," I replied. "What are you whining about?"
"Don't remind me. It was one of the lowest moments of my life."
"One of the highlights, you mean."
"Hmm. You know those guys who are so fucking quiet when they fuck you that you can't even tell if they're really into it, except that they don't stop?"
No. I hadn't actually fucked very many guys. I could count 'em on one hand, and still have a finger and a thumb left over.
"Yep," I said, because she knew my whole history anyway.
"Well, Tyler's not one of those."
"Jesus, you hell bitch. Stop your bragging."
Silence fell, and reigned supreme.
Until I heard the faintest sniffling and most elegant snorting, and glanced sideways to find poor Lolly finally succumbing to tears. She'd held out so long. Before my eyes she cried herself a river, and I gathered her up in my arms.
"That's it, baby, let it all out. You need this," I assured her, and Lolly just wept. She sobbed some words into the torrent, and J-J-Ja-ha-ha-hames made a frequent appearance, but I couldn't make out too much more. We were both inebriated after all, and exhausted, and I fucking love hotel beds, but tonight, after such a long time, my own lovely bed was only a room away.
"Come on sweetie, come on baby," I coaxed, and managed to haul Lauren up with me towards the bathroom. I didn't have a guest room, and the sofa was covered with the detritus of daily life, so while perching there for a short while was one thing - spending an entire night and hoping to sleep well was another. To be honest, both were unlikely. Even as I sat with Lolly something had been sticking into my bum which could have been a pizza box. It could have been various things, although from memory, I don't think it had been my 9-inch mini telescope, since that would have been unmistakeable.
So Lollipop and I both removed our veils and our high heels, and peeled our dresses off. I gave her some sleep shorts and a singlet and from somewhere in the fathomless recesses of my bathroom cabinet dug up a new toothbrush, which was a miracle every bit as incredible as the loaves and fishes curing blind people in the bible. A couple of minutes later she flopped down onto the bed, and was asleep so fast she didn't get under the covers. I arranged her limbs in a way that I hoped was comfortable, and I stroked her hair back from her face and pulled the coverlet up. Dear, sweet, tear-streaked angel - her eyelashes were fluttering straight away as if she already dreamed. Hopefully, she was in a place now that was a bit happier than the suckfest of breaking up with your longterm boyfriend because of the vague but unsettling notion that you're too contented with him.
Sleep didn't come to me quite so easily, because I was all in a whirr. Why the fuck was I such a feck of a moron, wanting a man who was puzzling and contrary and inexplicable? Maybe the discontent with contentment factor was in operation with me, too. It wasn't as if Gog could make me remotely contented, he was far too fucking annoying. But the point was moot anyway, as in not applicable, since Gog was so fucking elusive, he had elused himself right out of my periphery. Hell, my fucking stratosphere. I was drunk, and I was pissed off, and Carlisle had suggested I call Gog tomorrow, or next week - the hell I will! Let him come fucking crawling to me!
I pictured that, but first time round, Gog was wearing too many clothes. I pictured him crawling to me with less clothes on, which was definitely better. Picturing him crawling with no clothes at all was the best of the lot. Where was I, during the crawling? On the bed? On the floor? I needed to set up the scenario, and work out what I was wearing, and what we were saying, and whether we'd just been arguing or not. Arguing with Gog was definitely a winner - and then I looked over to Lolly guiltily. You just absolutely can NOT put yourself into a situation where you might so much as begin to think about thinking about a form of release when your BFF is snuffling cutely a couple of feet away in your queen sized bed, because that makes you a horrific mutant.
Bean-flicking was never whatsoever on the agenda, and naked Gog on his hands and knees before me was banished.
Not long enough later, at some time on Sunday afternoon, I stirred groggily and evaluated the severity of my headache. Not too bad. My mouth felt like a cave in the desert that had been parched for centuries, and my tongue was stuck to my teeth, but I wasn't nauseous. I'd been dreaming of opening my fridge and finding juices and sodas in there, succulent fruits, and light airy confections with liquid centers. Reality was not going to live up to that though, because I knew my fridge contained pretty much nothing. Rolling out of bed I padded to the kitchen and filled up two glasses with tapwater, then padded back.
"Eeuurrgghh?" Lolly's voice croaked and I handed her the water.
"Uuunnggg?" she mumbled. Lord knew what that meant, but I didn't. Probably something like, "Clear a path to the toilet, I'm going to barf."
Well, you're a lightweight if you can't take a late night or two now and again, and a few mouthfuls of golden fermented elixir. Lolly and I are not lightweights in any way, so once we'd both cleared our throats and coughed seventeen times, and thrown back another half a quart of water each, we were ready for the next party.
"You look gorgeous," she commented to me, and it was true, I guess. So did she. There's a certain je ne sais quoi about tangled hair, pale faces that never see the sun, and soot-rimmed eyes. Models spend hours getting their hair and makeup to look just like this, and Lolly and I spent hours getting to look like this, too. But I bet we had more fun doing it.
"Any plans for today?" I asked her.
"Hang around the mall and frighten people?" she suggested.
"Sounds like fun, but I don't really want to go anywhere. I feel like being a blob. Let's just blow some jays and watch movies."
"You have jays? And movies?"
"I got it all, babe."
"Food?"
"All except food."
"We're going to want to eat."
"Maybe. Have you got any money?"
"I don't think so. Have you?"
"Probably not. I've been dumping it in readiness for the cashless society."
While I scrabbled around drawers and shelves looking for coins and notes, Lolly went through our bags and between us we scraped together enough to order some Chinese takeout.
Over fried rice with prawns and pineapple, I waved my chopsticks at her and said, "You know, I kind of didn't catch some of what you said last night about James. Or any of it. You ready to go there again?"
"I liked your other idea. About the stoned. That's what I'm ready for, once we're done eating."
So we threw the stuff on the couch onto the floor, grabbed pillows and arranged them to look like we were in a harem, and lit up. We laughed our faces off all the way through DieHard. Then we watched DieHard2 and got stoneder and ate more rice. What a fucking great way to spend the day. Lolly wandered away and had a shower for about three years at some point in the early evening, using all the hot water, but this was very funny. My next ablutions were going to have to wait hours due to her selfishness, which was funny too. What really cracked me up though, was when I was rummaging through my tour bag, which of course I hadn't unpacked yet, and found my phone in the pocket of the jacket I'd worn yesterday. Deadwood had left a thousand voicemails.
"Jesus - Lolly - would you look at this?" I giggled, and we listened together.
The first one was midday. "Hi Bella - maybe you're not up yet. You wanted to speak to me about something? Give me a call when you wake up."
"Still fucking ordering me around," I nodded to Lolly.
Number two, two o'clock. "Bella - whatever you wanted to talk to me about - was it urgent? I'm at the venue seeing that the hired recording gear is all returned, but I'll be home soon. Call me in an hour or so."
Two-oh-five. "Bella, it's just occurred to me you probably wanted to know when you can hear the recording from last night. Carlisle's going to have a meeting with you all next week and we'll have cd's ready for you then, or we can email tracks through separately. Let me know what you'd prefer."
Four o'clock. "Bella, I haven't heard from you yet. I hope everything's all right. I know Sam dropped Lauren off with you instead of taking her home. Please get in touch and let me know things are okay with you both."
I stopped laughing. "Why's he fucking calling every ten seconds like this? What's his issue?"
Lauren shrugged. We were too fucking stoned to worry about it, quite frankly. I was way more worried that we didn't have any chocolate.
"You know what I think?" Lauren asked. "He's trying to be nice."
"Nice! Deadwood wouldn't know 'nice' if it bit him on the ass."
"You'd like to bite him on the ass."
"As if."
But, really, or should I say butt really, this was worth some mental picturing, and I lost track of talking to Lauren momentarily, and then I guess the long day of inactivity and idleness took its toll. One minute I could just see Gog standing in front of me facing the other way, with me watching the breadth of his shoulders, the inward slope down to his waist and hips, the stupid, ill-fitting jeans he wore that simply weren't tight enough... and next thing I knew it was pitch black and the middle of the night and I was lying close to a warm, soft and fragrant body, with arms wrapped around me and a nose pressed lightly against my throat.
"Lauren Mallory - Jesus! Stop making fucking moves on me!" I yelped, which was enough to rouse her to a sleepy, "Huh?" and I managed to haul her up and get the two of us to my room. By the time we'd gotten in there, after banging ourselves on the door frame hard enough to bruise, and falling on to the bed nearly knocking our heads together, she'd woken up a bit more.
It was 2am, and I reckoned I'd already had about six hours' sleep. Deadwood had distinctly told me to call him when I woke up, and he didn't like to be disobeyed. It made him go all flinty-eyed with annoyance. Oh gosh. Better not disobey the Fuhrer.
"I have to call Gog," I told her.
"Of course you do," she answered. "And it's about fucking time, if you don't mind my saying so."
I hit his number. Half-a-ring, and holy shit, he answered.
"Bella?"
"Oh, yes, Edward, it's Bella. Me. I thought I should call you. I hope you weren't asleep."
He fucking can't have been, because he couldn't have answered that fast.
"No, actually I wasn't. What is it? Is everything okay?"
"Well, you left a message for me to call."
"I meant at a sociable hour. It's the middle of the night. Why are you ringing me now? Is anything wrong? Do you want me to come over?"
Lolly could hear him because she had her head next to mine. "There were two implied words you may have missed in that sentence," she muttered to me. "All and you. The hidden subtext was Do you want me to come all over you."
"Oh, yes, of course. Thank you," I said drily to her. "Uh - Edward?" but he didn't reply. The line had gone dead.
"Oh, crap Lola, fucking unreliable fucking network. The signal cut out," I said, and then froze. When I'd said "Oh, yes," I'd been replying to Lauren. What if Edweird thought I'd been replying to him? What if he was actually on his way to my apartment?
I dialed him back.
"I'm in the car - I'll be about twenty minutes," he said.
"No, Edward, really, I'm sorry, that was a misunderstanding. Everything's fine - Lauren and I are perfectly okay. We just walked into a wall and hit our heads but we don't need any help. You don't need to come here, honestly. Sorry."
He was silent, and I knew he was clenching one hand on the wheel, gritting his teeth slightly, and worrying at his hair with the other hand. I knew he was taking a deep breath and holding it for a moment, then letting it out in an almost inaudible sigh. I knew because I'd seen him do those things when I said something that bothered him.
"I've already left, Bella. I might as well come and check on you."
Jesus - check on me for what? Unpaid parking fines? Headlice?
"How is Lauren doing?"
"She's not saying much so I'm just giving her space. We hung out today and watched movies."
"How are you doing?"
"Oh, you know me. I'm just the cat's whiskers."
"Keep talking to me, please, or I'll fall asleep at the wheel," he said then.
"What do you mean? Didn't you go to bed well before sunup and not get up until after sundown?" No, if I thought about it, I knew perfectly well that he didn't because he spent all fucking day on his phone trying to get hold of me.
"I was just about to go to bed, Bella. I'd been finishing up a few things with the accounts."
"At this hour? You've been so tired, Edward. What the fuck are you doing driving around the city? You're a fucking danger to yourself. I'm going to tell Esme to take your car keys away. I'm going to tell her to send you to your room without any supper. I'm going to tell her to give you a glass of warm milk and put Brahms lullaby on repeat and tuck you in with a teddy bear and a fluffy bunny rabbit."
"It's a bit late for all that now."
And a minute or two later, he was at the door. Fuck, he was tall. Fuck, he was handsome. Fuck, what was he doing at my place in the wee small hours?
"Really, you didn't need to come here. Everything's fine. Lauren and I are perfectly okay - " I started, but he brushed past me, and glanced around.
"A rare glimpse of the wild Swan in her natural surroundings," he observed.
Oh yes, my decor. I subscribe to a style known as Interior Chaos. Or Outright Mess, to be more descriptive.
"It calms the mind," I explained.
"I've noticed what a calm mind you have."
Then Lolly popped her head around the door of the living room, followed by her body, and she looked just a Lolita - all little girl pale limbs and slumbrous eyes and unbrushed hair. She looked pretty damn seductive, actually. Edweird was being very occupied carrying out a visual inventory of the apartment while he greeted her, and he wouldn't look at me at all. Too absorbed by the Urban Decay, and no doubt composing a judgement which he would deliver in due course.
"Would you like anything to eat or drink?" I asked politely, hoping like fuck he'd say no, because we had nothing but some leftover vegetable chowmein, and a bottle of unchilled Pinot Noir. He declined, and still kept looking about the room.
"As you can see - " I said.
"Hmm? Pardon?"
He finally turned to me, frowning of course, in typical Edweirdian fashion. He fucking always frowned when I was in front of his eyeballs.
"I suppose you do seem to be all right here, apart from the damage caused by the tornado," he said.
"Oh, there'll be a relief team around soon."
"Good." God, he was tired, because he was barely able to muster a response.
"Oh, Gog, sit down."
"Where?"
Lolly and I bustled and cleared a bit of space, and I pushed him onto the couch. He didn't resist at all.
"I am tired. I'll just rest for ten minutes, and then I'll go home," he mumbled, but his eyes were almost rolling back.
"You can't drive anywhere in the state you're in. You'll have to stay here," I said firmly. Behind him, Lolly was pointing meaningfully towards my bedroom, apparently keen on the idea that I should take him in there. Was she fucking kidding? Take him in there and do what? The man was a wreck. I got both his shoes off, and shoved at his legs to get them up onto the cushions, incorporating a surreptitious thigh grope that he couldn't possibly have noticed. Lean and very firm. I should make a note of that somewhere.
"Bella, I'm sorry to intrude on you like this - " he was saying quietly, but the weariness was overtaking him now. Appearing beside us Lolly handed me a cotton blanket which I drew lightly over him.
"You said something about a lullaby?" he murmured as I lifted his head gently, easing a pillow in underneath.
"Brahms. I don't have a cd."
"Sing for me, then. Not Brahms. Something else."
I whispered, "Sshh," and moved behind him, kneeling at the arm of the couch, from where I could give him one of my head massages, but even more softly than I'd done it last time. In the quietest voice I have ever used I sang Mazzy Star songs to him, and kept singing even though I knew he was asleep almost immediately. It's the most soporific music I know. It's also fucking crazy music to have sex to, if anyone can go that slow. He was asleep and I was aching, and Lauren had stayed away for a while, but she came back.
"You. Me. My office. Now."
Turned out her office was the 24-hour laundromat half a block away, and we had loads of laundry. Leaving Gog to dreams what may, she and I went out into the night.
"Well?" she demanded, while I was scrabbling around for quarters.
"Well, yourself."
"Well, I'm at the end of something - you're at the start of something. You have to go first."
"What the fuck am I at the start of? The delicate cycle?" I was sorting my underwear.
"Things probably are a bit delicate. But Bella - there is a fucking beautiful man back at your apartment right now, who was suffering such withdrawals after not seeing you for twenty-four hours that he drove to your apartment in the middle of the fucking night - and you want him, too. You took your time deciding, and he probably doesn't even know what you decided because you're so retarded that way - but he still turned up. Fuck - if anyone was that romantic to me! I'd go him so hard I'd leave scars. What are you going to do, Bells, when he wakes up? I can clear out, you know, quite happily, and leave the two of you alone."
It wasn't that simple, I just knew it. It couldn't be. Deadwood had charged through the night to my place because he was still on the payroll, and Lauren and I were still his responsibility, and he had to make sure he hadn't let Carlisle down by not watching us like a hawk.
Change the subject.
"What about James? Tyler?" I said.
"Oh. James is upset and hurt and - God, I never meant to hurt him. Fuck. I should have broken it off months ago, but everyone knows relationships are cyclic - I was just on a down and it would pick up again. Then Tyler - I thought he was a distraction, but no more than a blip. I mean - we all think rockstars are attractive, right? But then I talked to him, and it was more than just his appearance. But I don't know whether he happened to turn up at just the time I was feeling I had to finish with James - or whether it's deeper than that. I do know that I can't go from one relationship straight into another one. I need to be on my own. I need to be over James before I can be with anyone else. If Tyler's still around, and free, and interested by the time that I'm ready - I don't know. I'm not thinking beyond every tomorrow, really."
"Okay. Tomorrow. Jesus - what's going to happen tomorrow? With Edweird?"
Lolly took my chin in her hand and stared at me hard. "Why are you so reticent about this, Bells?"
"Because..."
"Because it matters?"
"Yes."
"I knew it. You're in love with him. And he practically dragged himself from the jaws of death to be with you tonight."
"Death? That's so exaggerative. And speculative. And fantastical. You really think so?"
"Well, shit, Bells, he's tired to death, isn't he?"
Our laundry took a while, especially since we were so careful about separating darks and lights, and the day was creeping up on us by the time we left. Gossip magazines had filled in the time nicely between Lola's ridiculous assertions and our inevitable sock fight. You can't go to a laundromat and not have a sock fight. Lolly was trying to claim my beige and camel-striped knee-highs as her own - the bitch! - but meanwhile her zebra socks were in my basket. The management asked us to leave even though we were the only customers, because he thought the way we were yelling at each other and swearing was for real. It was actually, and if Lauren Mallory ever tried to steal my fucking favorite items of hosiery ever again I'd have to fucking kill her.
It wasn't even the crack of dawn yet, and we had to decide what to do. Dear Fuckward needed to sleep for at least a week, and while I could go back and gaze at him, and his sleep-boner would probably keep me entranced for hours on end, I'd get a cramp if I just sat around watching him, and if Lolly perved on him in the slightest I'd have to slap her.
"Let's go busking," I suggested, and it was the best idea I'd had in years. We crept back into my apartment, dropped off our bagfuls of clean clothes, grabbed my guitar, and slipped out again, heading for the train station. In a few hours we'd made over sixty bucks, from singing, telling jokes, and having a go at the occasional tapdance. My flamenco dancing was quite a moneyspinner.
Counting the change, Lolita announced, "Bells, let's go the casino, and triple our money!" but I knew for a fact that her card-playing skills amounted to zilch, because the boys sometimes liked to play poker when we had a couple of hours free. Lolly and I always lost.
"Or we could gamble it on the stock exchange," I offered instead, but we went and bought juice and bagels and ground coffee and milk, and then wended our weary way home to check on last night's uninvited guest.
There he lay, and even Lolly sighed at his beauty.
"Oh, Lord," she said. "Name your first child after me?"
"Lorenzo? I'll think about it. Name your first child after me."
"Bill. Yeah, right."
It was only about six in the morning and barely light. We'd built up such a sleep debt over the last couple of weeks that we were ready for bed again. I glanced over at Deadweird and thought - well, I didn't think. I wasn't capable of thinking anything, other than that climbing on top of him was probably inappropriate. I zoned out, trailing along behind Lola to my bed.
And hours later Lorenzo and I woke up and found Deadwood still asleep. She and I sat on the living room floor, backs against the couch, and put on a dvd. A silent movie. Nosferatu. We suppressed squeals and giggles, out of courtesy to our guest who was out for the fucking count. We paused it at one point because Lolly wanted the bathroom and I wanted a glass of water. Standing at the sink with the faucet on, I could have jumped out of my fucking skin when she crept up from behind with her hands on my shoulders and her teeth at my neck. Shrieking, I leapt backwards, registering an instant later that she had let out a very unladylike grunt at the same time as demonstrating previously unknown ventriloquist skills by yelling from the bathroom. She also felt very broad and firm, unlike this morning in bed, and she had - stubble? Oh fuck.
"You think you're funny?" I asked furiously, turning on Gog, who of course, was standing behind me.
"Yep," he said, straight-faced.
"You fucking deviant. You scared the shit out of me!"
He wasn't repentant in the least.
"I'm hungry," he shrugged. "I got inspired by the movie."
"You're batshit."
"Probably. Anyway, thank you for your sparkling hospitality. I'll mosey on along, now."
"Oh, we went out and got food, since there was a hog in the house. You might as well stay for breakfast - brunch, lunch - whatever it is." Please. You look so tousled and rumpled - and one of your shirt buttons has come undone. Don't notice. Don't do it back up! Holy fucking shit.
His chest hair was reddish. Like, reddish enough for me to want to get my mouth onto it. Fuck, I wanted to get my mouth on it even if it was fucking purple.
"So - brunch, lunch - guess I was out to it for quite a while, was I?" he asked me as I pushed him back towards the sofa, while Lolly fired up the toaster for the bagels.
"Two whole decades, Rip van Winkle. It's the year 2031 and mankind has colonized Mars."
"Funny - you don't look any older."
"Oh, I became scientifically immortal one September, a few years ago."
"I don't feel any older."
"Oh, you're immortal too. Cryogenics."
Lolly and I plied him with juice and coffee and bagels, and fuck, I loved to watch him eat. He wolfed down four of them. I loved watching the movement of his mouth and jaw, his lips and tongue, his fingers and hands and arms. Fucking pure porn. I will never be allowed into heaven because I'm such a perv, but I will take my fantasies to hell with me.
"Okay, Bella and Lauren, I'm sorry I came around and just collapsed. Thanks for letting me sleep here. Thanks for the food. I should get going now, but I'll be in touch," he said. "As I said, Carlisle's calling a meeting sometime during the week. He wants to make it a dinner, as a celebration that the tour went so well."
Did he look at me a bit longer than he looked at Lola?
"Don't forget to keep blogging, Bella so your profile stays active," he said.
He definitely looked at me longer than he looked at Lola.
I walked him out to his car.
"Will you need a lift to the meeting? I can come and get you."
Oh, like it was all so casual - just him and me, standing there, curbside - him in shadow and mysterious, me in the light. Oh, Gog, Gog, Gog. Could I do it right here, right now - ask you what the feck is going on in that clever, maddening, opaque, beautiful mind of yours? "Ripeness is all" according to Shakespeare, and soon I was going to pin Edweird down like a bug on a sheet, but I needed a bit of a breather after the tour. Sometime during the week would be just fine, since he was apparently going to be around after all, and I'd see him.
"Text me with the time. I'll be there," I told him.
"Sure."
Oh, sure...you just wait, Deadwood, Edweird, Edward, Gog, and whoever the fuck else you manifest as at any given time - in fact, every single fucking one of you, all together. Just wait.
There will be a reckoning.
.
.
.
Yes, I am working on the Six Weeks update, but you can blame-thank Dihenydd for this.