Author's Note: Since people were so mad at me about only posting the first chapter of this, I give you two chapters tonight! Also, this one ends in a better place than the last. Enjoy!
Warning: This chapter contains a sex scene. It is hardly graphic (unless you're a nun) but it's there. You have been warned.
[3]
Arnold clinked his fork on the side of his glass for attention as he stood up.
"Okay, okay, time for the best man to speak," he announced. The noise in the room dwindled as heads turned to face him. He looked at Gerald and Phoebe, who couldn't seem to stop gazing at each other with silly besotted smiles on their faces.
"I remember when Gerald first told me that he liked Phoebe. In those days people occasionally came to me for advice." The room chuckled softly. "He looked me in the eye, and he said—and he was nervous, which was weird, because Gerald was one cool dude in those days, and don't ask me what's happened since—he said, 'Arnold, I think I like Phoebe.'
"And I said, 'I like Phoebe, too. She's smart and nice and funny…' And Gerald said, 'No man, I mean, I like her like her.' And I said, 'Gerald, you're twenty-three. You need a more mature way to express your feelings.'"
Now the crowd laughed outright, especially those who had been at P.S. 118 together. Arnold grinned.
"Actually, we were ten. We were ten years old, and Gerald already knew his heart. And I remember being jealous—jealous that at such a young age, Gerald already knew who he wanted. Because I knew him, and I knew this was not your everyday crush.
"And to tell the truth, I'm still jealous. Because when you look at Gerald and Phoebe, you see two amazing people who are so crazy in love they can't see straight. And that's a wonderful thing. And it's a wonderful thing to see something so right, something that is so clearly meant to be. And to know that you had a part in it. And so to this day I remain proud of the fact that when Gerald told me he like-liked Phoebe, I looked him straight in the eye, and I said, 'Maybe you should wait to tell her when Helga's not around.' To Gerald and Phoebe!"
The room erupted with applause and laughter as Helga rose, glaring at Arnold. She waited until the noise died down before speaking.
"Thanks bundles, Arnold," she said, directing an icy stare at him that only he knew was not a joke. "Anyway, my story's really for you, Tall Hair Boy," she said, looking at Gerald. "See, I knew that Phoebe liked you, and—I'll admit it—I discouraged it. I mean, you know we didn't get along—you were there. But I remember the day we officially 'Saved the Neighborhood', and you pulled me out of that bus, and I remember wondering why you would do that for a girl you didn't even like.
"Well, I thought about it for a while, and the next morning when Phoebe came over to see if I was okay, I told her…well, I told her a few things. Rules broken, lies revealed…" Arnold felt a pang of guilt for teasing her. "But I told her what you had done. And I told her that if she really liked you, she should let you know, because sooner or later, some girl was going to snap you up."
She raised her glass. "Now, I've no doubt I'm going to go down in history as a cold-hearted bitch who made lives miserable around me, but there's one good thing I've done in my life, for a guy who helped me out of a bus. So I drink this toast to you, Geraldo—and to the girl who did snap you up, the new Mrs. Phoebe Johansen."
Gerald looked surprised and pleased; Phoebe beamed. It was a more serious, more sentimental toast than Arnold's, and he knew she'd put him to shame—as she intended to. Well, Helga'd accepted an Oscar or two before this; she knew how to make speeches. Still, he felt cheapened.
Several more speeches followed, after which the party moved out onto the dance floor, Johansens and Hyerdahls mixing with the P.S. 118 gang and Phoebe and Gerald's coworkers and friends from adulthood. Helga avoided the dance floor—dancing wasn't exactly her "thing"—and settled down next to Rhonda and Nadine.
She let their gossip buzz in her ear as she surveyed Arnold, dancing with Jamie-O's daughter standing on his feet. Damn him! It wasn't fair of him to look so good!
She'd been so nervous she could hardly stand it, going into the anteroom before the ceremony. Sure, she'd known, somewhere, in the back of her mind, that he was going to be here. After all, he was Gerald's best friend—why wouldn't he make an appearance? But she'd hoped, when she formed a concrete enough thought to hope, that maybe Jamie-O would be best man, or some random cousin she'd never met, that she didn't have to walk the Aisle of Irony with Arnold—for the second time, she reminded herself. But this time there wasn't any idle fantasizing about married bliss with her golden boy. This time there was a man, and a woman, and they were both used goods. And they hated each other. Hardly a match made in heaven.
At any rate, when Phoebe'd said his name she'd torpedoed Helga's slim grasp on illusion. So she'd nerved herself and built up all the acting chops that she had inside of her—which was plenty, after all those years in the movie business—and played Ice Princess. Like she simply couldn't care less whether she walked down the aisle with Arnold or Harold or the lunatic Jolly Olly Man from Brooklyn. It was just another stroll in pink for her.
Except that it wasn't, and never could be.
He looked even better now, dancing out there with that little girl. Arnold had always made her knees weak as a child when he'd put on a suit, even more with a tuxedo, but it wasn't really him. Now, his jacket had disappeared, and his vest hung unbuttoned over a loosened tie and a half-tucked-in dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the collar undone. He'd obviously attempted to tame his fantastically golden hair earlier, but it was slowly but surely returning to its normal, unruly state, which was how she liked it. Now that he was no longer looking at her, his face was open and honest, his dreamer's eyes as wide and frank as they had been when he was three.
Jamie-O's daughter looked up at him adoringly as they danced, and Helga smiled ruefully. Naturally she would fall in love with him. Helga was far more surprised at the number of people who hadn't fallen for Arnold over the years. And Arnold's charm worked particularly well on little girls.
She wondered whether Arnold would have a daughter, what that daughter would be like.
Quickly as possible, she gunned down that train of thought. Thinking like that could never lead to anything good. They'd definitely hammered in the final nail in the coffin of their relationship a year ago…there was no point in putting herself through this hell again.
Still, she couldn't deny that he still had beautiful eyes…and a mighty fine ass.
As if he'd heard her less-than-demure thoughts, Arnold suddenly turned his head and looked directly at her. Shit. Okay, be discreet, be discreet…
Helga looked deliberately to the left and stared blankly at the wall. Oh, very cool, Pataki. No way he'd think anything weird about that.
Arnold's brow furrowed as he gazed at Helga, who was staring at the wall as if it were the most fascinating thing she'd ever seen. Had she been staring at him? And if she had, why?
He'd looked back at the little girl in front of him, trying to dispel thoughts of Helga. God, she was confusing. He'd never understood her…and he'd never known if the little things he saw were deliberate or not. Maybe she wanted him to know she'd been staring at him. If she'd been staring at him. Which she might not have been. But then why would she be staring at the wall, unless she'd suddenly averted her eyes? Oh, crimeney!
Arnold froze at the last thought. Okay, now that was a little disturbing. Get a grip, buddy. And yet he let himself wander back into memory again…
* * * * * * *
It was, by far, the strangest interview Arnold had ever had. Also the most pleasant.
They'd lingered over their food for three hours in Helga's Thai place, talking. At first it was on the record, and mostly about Helga and her career, and Arnold recorded it dutifully into his tape recorder, jotting down the odd note to himself as he watched her talk. But then the subject drifted onto their childhood, and Arnold's life, and he turned the tape recorder off. He told Helga all about Elizabeth, and Lars, which she agreed was the dumbest name on the planet, hands down. And he told her about how frustrating it got at the paper, and how lonely he got sometimes, when he rolled over in bed and Elizabeth wasn't there beside him.
She told him about the cutthroat Hollywood community, and the secrets that even the tabloids didn't suspect—the lies, the backstabbing, her own highly-publicized affairs. He noticed, though, that she didn't ever talk of something he couldn't have guessed or found out somewhere else—nothing truly personal, nothing that was really her. Was it a fluke? Was it just that everything in her life was so publicized there was nothing private left to tell? He doubted it. There had always been more to Helga Pataki than met the eye, and he had a feeling there still was. But he knew there was no chance of weaseling it out of her. She'd tell him what she wanted to tell him, in due time.
And right now he was concerned with other things. Like how extraordinarily blue her eyes were. He hadn't really gotten a good look at them before, but here, squeezed into a corner at a tiny table, he was getting a nice close-up view of several things, like her perfect skin, and the few light freckles on the bridge of her nose, and the fullness of her mouth. And those eyes—those bluer-than-the-label-on-an-Aquafina-bottle eyes, as big as a doll's, or a Disney princess'. He couldn't rip his own away.
And there were other things. Like how her hand would brush his oh-so-gently, or her eyes would twinkle with something he couldn't name. Like the way she leaned forward in a way Elizabeth had told him no girl ever leaned forward unless she was intending to reveal something. The way she caught her lip between her perfect teeth and gave him that seductive half smile that stopped his heart for a breathless moment. Little things that made him wonder if she knew what she was doing to him—if she was doing it on purpose.
It was only when the busboys began to put up chairs at the other tables that Helga and Arnold made their exit, Helga leaving an exorbitant tip which exceeded what Arnold usually paid for the whole meal. He'd tried to pay, or at least go Dutch, but she'd graciously refused, telling him that the restaurant was her idea, so she had to pay. He didn't quite follow the logic, but agreed once he took a good look at the bill.
"So where are you staying?" Helga asked as they got back into the car.
"Actually, I'm not, I'm…" Arnold glanced at his watch. "Shit! I totally forgot about my flight!"
Helga turned on the car. "I can get you to the airport in three minutes in this puppy. When's your flight?"
Arnold looked at her sheepishly. "An hour and a half ago."
Helga rolled her eyes. "You doofus." She backed out of the parking lot and headed down the brightly-lit street. "Okay, so you'll stay at the hotel with the rest of the cast and crew."
"What?" Arnold said, startled. "Oh, no…I couldn't impose…"
Helga silenced him with a wave of her hand. "Really, it's no trouble. I always just rent out a couple of floors for everyone—or rather, the studio does. I like to foster togetherness between the people making a movie. We've got a couple of extra rooms signed up that no one's using. You can just stay there, and fly back tomorrow."
Arnold sighed, giving up. "All right. My editor's gonna kill me, though."
"Not if I have anything to say about it." For a moment Arnold caught a fleeting glimpse of Old Betsey on the steering wheel. He smiled, but didn't say anything.
They didn't even have to check Arnold in. Helga just asked at the desk for the key to an unoccupied room, which turned out to be a floor below Helga's suite. Arnold insisted on walking her to her room, and so quite suddenly, they found that an awkwardness had descended between them.
"So…" Helga said, not meeting his eyes.
"Yeah…" Suddenly Arnold laughed. "I feel like a kid on my first date," he joked.
Helga chuckled too, relieving the tension. "I had a really nice time tonight," she said in a simpering falsetto.
Arnold dropped his voice an octave. "Yeah, me too, babe."
She unlocked her door and opened it. Something about her goofiness made her unbearably fetching in that instant. "See you in class on Monday."
He pouted. "What, no good-night kiss?"
Helga hesitated. "Well…"
Suddenly the game was deadly serious. Helga took at step towards him, letting the door close behind her. He'd never imagined eyes could be that big…
He reached for her hands, not knowing why he did. They were warm and firm, with callused palms. Something about the calluses gave him comfort. This was the Helga he knew, with tree-climbing hands. Bat-wielding hands.
Her face tilted up towards him, and he had the pleasant sensation of seeing a face turned towards him like the sun, and he smiled. Her eyes were closing now; blond lashes lay soft against her porcelain cheeks. He bent his neck, closed his eyes, and leaned in.
A breath of silence, a frozen moment, and then their lips met, and oh God, I've just found heaven.
They stayed like that for a moment, in the pure virgin stillness of their childhood kisses, nerving themselves for the leap. And then—he didn't know who closed the gap, but his hands were on the small of her back and hers were clinging to his shoulder blades and her breasts were pressed against him and his pulse started to race.
They drew apart, and her eyes fluttered open, and Arnold read in them the headiest drink he'd ever tasted. She was breathing hard, too—he could hear it in her voice.
"Do you want to come inside?" she asked softly.
Inside her room they didn't bother with a grand tour, though the suite had several rooms, or any other unnecessary preliminaries. As the door closed behind them they were in each others' arms again, kissing with a greater sense of urgency than before.
And now she was taking his hand and leading him through the semi-dark rooms to the bed, the biggest bed he had ever seen, and now he was helping her out of her shirt, stepping out of his pants and kicking them out of the way, and the softness of her porcelain skin was all around him.
They tumbled onto the bed, a jumble of arms and legs and tousled hair in two different kinds of gold. Arnold lost himself in the buckwheat honey-and-hay scent of her hair as his lips roamed along her milky throat. Her hands ran along his back, and then lower… She moaned his name, and he was sure he would die. Later, he'd swear he saw the face of God.
Afterwards, they slid under the covers, and Helga rolled herself into the crook of Arnold's arm. She kissed his chest gently, where her lips rested, then stretched that long, luxurious body against him like a cat.
Arnold's mind was somewhere very far away and pleasantly numb. He wasn't worried about what their relationship meant now, or what they would say to each other in the morning. He simply let his hand roam idly up and down her arm, now playing with a lock of hair, now stroking her back, not really thinking about anything as his body drifted closer and closer to sleep.
As darkness claimed him, he heard Helga's voice murmuring low, the sound vibrating pleasantly against his chest, a gentle tickle.
"That was off the record, right?"
His only reply was a low, tired chuckle as sleep carried him away.