Author's Note: Sorry it took so ridiculously long for me to get this out…I was in Florida, away from my files, and my computer at home doesn't work too well either…I need the one at school, but I won't be there until the end of January, so don't expect a lot of updates before February at the earliest. I'm also sorry about Home for Christmas…I know I said it'd be out by Christmas, but…well, it wasn't, and I'm sorry. I'm working on it! I'm starting the fourth Angels book, though, so I'm gonna be focusing on that for a while…also getting my website and my fanart up…yeah. Anyway, here's the last two chapters of Crazy For You, including the part where the title makes sense. Enjoy!
[4]
Helga was making distracted small talk with Patty when she saw him coming towards her across the dance floor. No, not Arnold, as she tried to pretend she didn't hope…Sid.
She'd known he was going to be annoying about this. Lord, but the boy had no social skills. And coming from Helga Pataki, that was saying something.
He slicked back his hair as he approached her, grinning lecherously. His eyes were fixed on her chest. "Hey, Helga," he said, looking like he was trying to hit on her cleavage. "You look great."
Helga sighed gustily. "Hello, Sid. What's new?"
He shrugged. "Nothing much. Living in Cubicle Land. Same old." He cleared his throat. Helga was afraid his eyes were about to burn holes in her dress. "Listen, uh…you doing anything after this? 'Cause I was thinkin', you know…you and I might maybe get together, you know?"
"I'm the maid of honor. I probably won't be able to leave here until after midnight."
"So? Late at night's as good a time as any, you know?" He wiggled his eyebrows.
Helga rolled her eyes expressively, noticing idly that Arnold was standing not far away, watching them. "Sid, are you saying you want to have sex with me?"
Sid froze. His eyes didn't move, although she could see his mind working overtime, trying to come up with the right answer to the unexpected question. Out of the corner of her eye, Helga could see Arnold hiding a smile.
Sid apparently decided to keep it simple. "Uh…well, yeah."
Shaking her head, Helga decided to let him down easy. "Well, I have a boyfriend."
"Oh. Well, that's cool. That's cool. So, my place?"
Helga's eyes widened at the audacity of the remark. She would've gladly slapped the weasel into the half-demolished cake at the next table, but she didn't want to ruin Phoebe's wedding. Over the top of Sid's head she caught Arnold's eye.
Save me, she mouthed. His eyebrows shot up, but he came to her rescue.
"Excuse me, Sid," he said politely. "Helga, would you like to dance?"
She smiled a smile of pure relief. "I'd love to, Arnold." As she followed him out to the dance floor, she called over her shoulder, "Oh, and Sid? Not a snowball's chance in Hell."
The song was some oldies number that Helga didn't recognize, midtempo and relaxing. Arnold put a carefully reserved hand on her waist and took the other in his, dwarfing it. They maintained a careful distance, stepping cautiously around the fake wooden planking.
"Thanks," Helga said quietly, not looking into his eyes.
"What was that about?"
She rolled her eyes again. She was good at that. "Ugh. Sid walked in on me changing into my dress and saw me topless. You know how your ears are supposed to ring when someone's talking about you?" Arnold nodded. "Well, my tits've been ringing all night."
Arnold laughed. "I can't believe he'd be that crude."
Helga scowled. "Uh, Arnold? My eyes are up here. Here." She snapped her fingers in front of his face.
He blushed slightly. "Sorry." His face lifted, and their eyes met.
There. There it was, what she wasn't ready to deal with again. That softly gathering dream that she'd wanted for most of her life to be a part of. She tried to look away, but found it impossible.
From the rainy Monday morning twenty-two years earlier, when he'd first seen her standing forlorn and alone, to this moment now, in the center of the crowded dance floor, Arnold had been startled every time she lifted her eyes to meet his—startled by the intensity of their color, the size of them, the morass of emotions he always saw.
Maybe this was the answer, the key. Maybe this was her. The way her thick, pale lashes, dark with mascara, dropped seductive curtains, the way she flirted every time she blinked. The frank, unashamed stare, the openness, the courage in her gaze. The crushed dreams, the colossal hurt he read as plainly as a book. Her carnality, her bravery, her wounds. And it was all wrapped up in this pristine blue package, all hidden in the sweetness of the color.
Helga was never one thing. Hadn't he learned that by now?
She sighed, and moved closer to him, dropping her eyes again. "Where did we go wrong, Arnold?" she asked him softly.
He let his cheek rest against the softness of her hair, smelled the flowers still woven in it. "I don't know," he said. A moment ago he was sure he knew everything. "I…don't know."
* * * * * * *
He'd actually wound up staying in California for two weeks. Two fabulous, glorious, heavenly weeks. Looking back on them, they all blended into a sort of blur, but he kept one image, one clear, beautiful picture of their time together. It was lying on her bed in the late morning, sunlight streaming between the curtains. Her slender, graceful body lay like a rambling and bewildering poem against the cream-colored satin of the bedclothes. Buttery hair tumbled around her neck, framed her bewitching face. She was awake, but only just, and she was smiling at him, and her smile was the greatest gift he'd ever received.
He remembered long hours spent making love, tangled in a sweaty knot under and out of the sheets, on the floor, the couch, the balcony, the shower—anyplace imaginable, and some that weren't. He'd known, the fourth or fifth day, that the scent of her hair would never leave him. They'd curl together in sleep on the bed, and it felt like a honeymoon.
But it wasn't. In Arnold's idealistic memory he knew that reality had intervened, and often. He followed her to the set, under the guise that he was actually doing a long feature on the movie—which was also what he had proposed to his editor. Who hadn't been very happy about Arnold suddenly going AWOL, until Helga had gotten on the phone and sweet talked him around. Which had made Arnold unbearably jealous, and for no good reason, until Helga turned those baby blues on him with that look that said, "I belong to you," and he melted, like a lovesick sap.
They hadn't really talked, though—not much. Well, they talked, but they didn't talk, if that made any sense. They chatted—about old times, about life, about random little things—but they never talked about…what they were. To each other, to the world. How they felt. Arnold got the feeling Helga didn't talk about that sort of thing easily. She did drop unsettling comments every now and then.
"You know, Arnold," she'd said to him once, as she contemplated the cigarette in her slender fingers, "the most…intriguing part of you, I think, is not how good-looking you are…but how little you're aware of it." Like most of her random comments, it left him, the journalist, searching vainly for words.
She'd taken a drag of her cigarette, let the smoke hiss out of her nose. She looked like a dragon when she did that—a beautiful, powerful serpent wrapped up in the guise of a porcelain doll.
Suddenly she mashed out the cigarette, grabbed her Evian and gulped it, as if to clear her mouth of the taste. She looked at him again.
"But you're beautiful, that's what it is," she said, in such a soft voice he wasn't sure she was actually speaking to him. "Just beautiful in such a real, honest way." Her tone was less dragon-like, too—more human.
"Helga, I…" He wanted to ask her something. What, he wasn't sure, but he'd figure it out when it got to his lips. But she'd seen the question in his eyes and slid over to him, trailed a hand down his chest, and his question was put aside until later.
Or other times, he'd wake to find her sitting up, staring at him, a frown on her face; or on the balcony, curled on a chair, a notebook in her lap. He never saw writing on the page when he came up behind her to ask what was wrong. And when he asked, she'd always shake her head with a falsely light "nothing" and climb back into bed, where both would pretend to sleep until the wee hours.
Then one day—the last day—he pushed it. Maybe he shouldn't have. Maybe everything would have worked out in time. But he pushed it.
They were having a late, lazy breakfast in the living room of her suite. Arnold couldn't taste a thing—he was too upset about the night before, when he thought he'd heard her crying. He pushed the food around on his plate until it was unrecognizable.
I have to say something, he realized. He looked up.
"Helga?"
Her eyes lifted to meet his, and it was then that he realized she hadn't touched a bite of her food either. "Yeah?"
He had to be blunt, even if it killed him. Which it just might. "What are we?"
Helga raised an eyebrow. "Um…bipedal warm-blooded vertebrates, if memory serves. I haven't taken biology in a while."
He looked levelly at her, his eyes brooking no nonsense. "Helga…"
"What?"
"You know what I mean. You and me. Our relationship."
She shrugged. "You're asking me? I don't know. Friends?" She was clearly irritated. "More than friends? Less?" Her tone was sharp, now. She clipped the words short sarcastically. "Fuck buddies?"
He tried to keep the hurt out of his voice. "Is that all I am to you?" She didn't answer. "Is it?" She kept her mouth closed, poking moodily at her breakfast.
"Well," he said after a pause, "in that case…" He stood up and turned to leave.
"No," she said, so softly he thought he might have imagined it.
He stopped. "What?"
Her voice was tense, trembling. "That's not all you are to me."
He turned back to her. "Then what am I?" She didn't answer, didn't look at him. "Goddammit, Helga!"
Now she was on her feet, and her extraordinary eyes were flashing blue lightning. "What? What? What do you want from me, Arnold? Do you want me to say that I worship you? That I can't live without you? That I would crawl halfway across the world if that's where you were?"
"I just…"
"Why don't you tell me what we are, huh, Arnold? Don't lay everything on me."
"Uh…" Now that she was turning the tables on him, he found himself at a loss for words. "Well, obviously I don't know…that's why I asked you."
Her voice dripped with disdain. "Take a wild guess. Go ahead—you might get the answer right. Dare to dream."
He knew what he wanted to say. He also knew he wasn't brave enough to say it, not with Helga standing there spitting fire. "Uh…friends?" he proposed. "Friends…who…who have sex?"
A muscle in her jaw jumped violently. "Wrong answer, buddy," she snarled finally. She stormed past him, into the bedroom.
He followed her, his own, slower temper rising. "Well, what did you want me to say, Helga? That I love you?"
"No!" she cried immediately. She threw off her robe, her nightgown, started rooting through a drawer for underwear. He noticed that her hands were trembling. "No," she said again, more quietly. "I don't want you to say that. I don't want either of us to say that."
He paused. Then—"You did…once."
She froze, in the process of pulling on a shirt. "That was a long time ago, Arnold. I was nine years old, I was talking out of my head." She finished pulling the shirt on. "Besides, you were the one who said it never happened."
"You didn't have to go along with it!"
"Yes I did!" She stopped, breathing hard. "What could I have said? No, honestly, Arnold, I do love you, let's run away and get married before we're ten? Besides, you hated me."
"I didn't hate you…"
"Well, you should have!"
If his anger was slower to react than hers was, it was also slower to fade, and he was still angry. "Maybe you're right!" he thundered back at her. "Maybe I should have hated you! Then I wouldn't be standing here arguing with some emotionally-constipated drama queen who jumps into bed with me after not seeing me since she graduated from high school, and then won't even tell me that she loves me!" He was beet red, he knew, and his fists were clenching involuntarily. He knew that he was being irrational and cruel, but something about Helga always brought out the worst in him…and the best. Right now, though, it was the worst.
"And what makes you so sure that I'm in love with you, Arnold?" she screamed back, matching him both for volume and irrationality. "Maybe I just thought you'd be a good fuck! Guess I was wrong there too!"
That was harsh. "What else could I have expected from Helga G. Pataki?" he demanded. "You never had a heart! All you ever were was fists and a unibrow. I guess somewhere along the line you got a sex drive, too, but hormones alone don't make a human being."
She reared back as if she'd been slapped. "And what are you? Mr. Make-Everything-Better-But-Never-Get-Emotionally-Involved? Have you ever really felt anything in your entire life? I can't believe I have to stand here and get told that I don't have a heart from a guy who pretends to be heartbroken over the girl he drove away with his own apathy, just so that he doesn't have to admit that he's never really loved anyone in his life!"
"I have too loved people!" Arnold shouted indignantly.
"Dead parents don't count!" she snapped back.
Now it was his turn to feel like he'd been slapped. "Well, they're more deserving of it than you, you frigid, mindfucking bitch!"
But she wasn't done. "Don't you get it, asswipe? I did worship you! I couldn't live without you! And I would crawl further than just halfway around to world to get to your stupid football-shaped head and your moronic notions! But I wasn't good enough for you. I was never good enough for you, 'cause I didn't have all these idealistic theories and a cute, bubbly laugh. But then all of a sudden, you come out here, looking at me like I'm the best thing since sliced bread, and what am I supposed to do? Chat for an hour and send you on your merry way? You were my obsession for fifteen fucking years!"
She advanced on him, a finger waving in his face. He backed away warily, but she came closer. "But I'll tell you a secret, buddy boy: You missed out. You lost your chance. This ship has fucking sailed. You want my love? You want my undying devotion? You should have grabbed for it years ago." She paused. "Maybe I still love you. Maybe I always will. And maybe I'll lay awake at night crying for the rest of my life because of you.
"But we'll never work, Arnold. It's too late. You're too late. And you lost your last chance just now."
She stopped, and he could see the tears bright on her cheeks. "So go ahead and tell me that I don't have a heart, Arnold. You should know where it is—you've had it for twenty-one years. And I don't think I want it back."
Before he could say anything, she stormed away, grabbing her cell phone off the night stand and a pair of jeans, and slamming into the bathroom. Arnold stood there, frozen, trying to sort out the anger, the hurt…and the truth. And he couldn't.
He wasn't sure how long he stood there before the bathroom door opened and she handed him a slip of paper with something scrawled on it.
"Here's your flight information," she told him. She stepped into flip-flops and picked up her keys. "I'm going to the set. I want you and your stuff out of here by the time I get back." She didn't look at him. "And don't come back. Ever."
"Helga, I…"
She cut him off with a raised hand. "I'd really rather not hear you right now. Good-bye."
It was only when the door of the suite slammed that he realized what a colossal imbecile he was.
"Good-bye," he repeated, staring at the door.
extreemrandomness: It was more of a metaphor/joke/figure of speech than anything literal, you know what I mean? I sort of left it a little open for interpretation.
January Marlinquin: Helga…well, usually I write her a little differently, but here I wanted her to sort of be Hollywood Helga, you know? Like, with social skills? She's got a very complicated mask on in this story, and that's part of what is throwing Arnold so far out of whack. It's also sort of a role reversal…Helga's the one who's in control and Arnold is inexplicably pissed off. I do love it when they bait each other…anyway, there was a nice big fight for you in this chapter, lol.
WAYAMY27NARF: Me like your reviews. Reviews make me chuckle. Me love Harrison Ford too. Me would die of happiness if me saw Helga movie. Helga movie make me chuckle. Me definitely an idiot.
And everyone else: thanks for reviewing! I'm glad you like it!
-PI