You see, there's this stain on my wall. I'm not sure where it came from, but I can't get it to go away. I can spend hours scrubbing at it with all the abrasive materials I can buy but it just won't come off. Every night, when I sit down with my TV dinner to watch some mindless garbage I can feel it. Watching me, trying it's worst to get my attention and always winning in the end. Because, the thing is, no matter what I do, I can't ignore it, I can't pretend it isn't there, and most of all I can't get it out of my head. I've nicknamed it Arnold.
It's harsh, as I understand it, to compare a living breathing human to a stubborn stain on my living room wall, I know. But that's not what I'm doing, not really. I'm comparing Arnold to the basic general stubbornness of the damn thing. It knows I don't want it there, and yet it continues to hang around, putting a dark spin on my otherwise respectable life. And that's what Arnold does too. It's crazy, to be so obsessed with someone I've never met, but then I never claimed to be sane. There's just something about him, something that tells me that in another life we could have been happy. One where he wasn't a famous television actor, and I wasn't working for minimum wage at the arcade.
The stain and I, I think we're in competition. We're always squaring up to each other, trying to gain just a little bit more of that sacred moral high ground. So the stain has stability; I have ambition. So the stain is consistent; I'm spontaneous. So the stain is adored by fans all over the country; at least I'm not a stuck-up, football-headed jerk. Or something like that. Me and the stain, we go back a long way.
It doesn't feel right, the world being like this. It feels as though one day I was turning a corner, and so was Arnold. We should have run head first into each other, (a familiar feeling, I shouldn't doubt), but instead fate chose to place us at corners on the opposite ends of Hillwood. And that's another thing! Same town, same schools, nearly the same damn street! How come we never ran into each other, not even once? How come I never realised I loved him until he was on TV?
Hey! You take that back! I am not shallow!
I'm not, in the strictest sense of the word, beautiful. My figures a little straight down, I get split ends faster than I can cut them off and my eyebrows just can't seem to bear being apart. But, I have pretty eyes and a good sense of humour. That should be good enough for any man who, on any other day, could buy passage to a supermodel's bed. Ah, self delusion, where would I be without it? But seriously, I just know. Arnold and I were meant to be together. And tonight I'm going to set that little bit of fate into action.
I'll tell you one thing, no one ever said that obtaining true love would make me so damn cold. How long have I been waiting in this alley now? Three, four hours? It doesn't matter. All that matters is that Arnold may or may not be in that club right now and I have my hand curled around a thing scrap of paper, lest it blow away. I stare at the door, and continue to mutter my mantra of 'Open, open, open...' It doesn't seem to be working. It's one of those doors without a handle on the outside. You know, the type that are usually concealed down dark alleyways and usually hold a place ten times more fabulous and twenty times more illegal on the inside. I can hear the muffled thud of the music; it's like a barrier telling me I'm not famous enough to come in. That doesn't matter. I am at least famous enough to stand around in this alley, wearing nothing but a tight red dress despite the elements. I have to impress the boy somehow, and I'm not going to do that bundled up in a coat. I check my watch. It's only twelve thirty. No self respecting playboy would be seen dead stumbling out of a club as early as this. I could try telling myself that Arnold is not a playboy; it might help me get the image of him drooling while some bimbo with flowing red hair thrusts her bosom in his face out of my head.
It's a complicated thing, love. Too complicated really, when you think about it. If the creator had merely wanted us to fall in love to make babies, he wouldn't have made it so damn difficult to see each other naked. So maybe love isn't just about lust and sex and lies and hiding in alleyways. Or maybe I'm just lost, like a little girl, wishing there were happy endings and kisses under star-speckled skies. Where the gentleman is always a gentleman, and where your home is always spotless. No stains on the walls there, the servants would see to that. The idea of sex never comes into it, funnily enough. It sort of taints the romance to think of Cinderella casting off her corset and getting jiggy with Prince Charming.
Not that I'm adverse to a little after-hours fun, mind you. Many a sleepless night have I spent wondering what Arnold looks like under all that Armani. My fingers tighten on the paper. If all goes to plan tonight, it won't be long before I'm finding out. I let out a little involuntary tremble, and turn my mind to more innocent things.
I'm bored. God, no company except my, lets be honest, slightly damaged mind. How long is it going to take before he gets fed up of his headache and the ringing in his ears before he steps outside with... Oh God, what if he's not alone? What if there's some drunken floozy hanging off his arm and drooling down his chest where his buttons have come undone? And he'll leer straight down her dress, (strapless, of course, but tight enough to fuse her breasts into the kind of cleavage that could kill a man), with a bottle of whiskey hanging loosely in his other hand. He'll walk straight past me, while I hold my paper out pathetically, too love-struck to talk. Dammit. Tonight is doomed.
I shake myself, just a little. I'm being silly now, letting my paranoia get the best of me. I have waited here for too long and frozen my butt off too much to give up now. It's just a matter of swallowing my doubt and just knowing that he'll emerge from that club alone. And he'll see me. And it will be magical. So help me God, it will be magical.
Goose-pimpled skin is sexy, right? My strappy shoes are cutting into my feet like they have a personal vendetta. So this is the comfort that two hundred bucks will buy you? Next time I'm turning up in sneakers and a trench coat, holding a large placard declaring 'Love is Blind!' Ha, what am I saying, next time? There isn't going to be a next time, because tonight is my night. I, Helga G. Pataki, am finally getting what I'm owed. My happy ending, in it's beautiful, football-headed package.
A lightning bolt shoots through me as the door rattles. Someone is coming out! I check my watch. Two-thirty, it could be him! I straighten my skirt frantically, and smooth down my hair. God knows what an evening of standing about in the cold has done to my appearance, the one I worked so hard on. The door swings open, and some short girl with big hair steps out. She looks at me strangely, as though I were nothing more than dirt under her shoe. I give her a dangerous look back, the kind that tells her that the only time I will ever be under her shoe is if I'm a six inch rusty nail. She scurries off, and so she should. How dare she not be Arnold!
He's coming, I just know it. I look down to my once perfectly manicured fingernails. I've been so nervous I chewed them right down. I just hope Arnold just doesn't have a hand fetish or anything like that. It's not like he'll seem them anyway, it's too dark down here. Dark, and oddly comfortable. I'd make an excellent spy or assassin, I'm strangely at home in the shadows. I'm a watcher, but never the watched. I suppose I'll have to get used to stepping into the light though. I imagine Arnold's going to take me wherever he goes once we're married, and he can't get a coffee without a flash bulb in his face.
He's just so worth it, you know? I'd go through hell for the boy so standing about waiting for him for a few hours is no hardship. I know he'd do the same for me.
It's amazing, falling in love. Everything I live and breath is about him, I need him. He is my soul mate, my one true love, my everything. He's a walking Hallmark card. And though he might not realise it yet, he needs me too. I'll be there when a bad picture of him appears in the magazines, as if there were such a thing. (A bad picture I mean, I know magazines exist). I'll hold his hand when he's reading his reviews in the paper, or waiting for a call from his agent about some part he really wants. But most of all I'll be there to love him, because everyone needs that.
We'll wake up each day, in each other's arms, thanking whoever's up there that we found each other. We'll do everything together, maybe have a couple of kids and move to a nice house in suburbs. And then, one day, we'll find that we're old and yet our fingers are still entwined because our love will last forever. And at last, at long last, I will be at peace. I won't have to wake up each day with the heaviest heart because I know something is missing, and that something is him.
The door rattles again. I take a deep breathe and try to smile at the same time. It's not easy, I don't recommend it. It opens.
It's Arnold.
At once I thrust the paper out in front of me, before he's even seen me. Thank God he's alone. He doesn't even seem to be drunk. My smile stretches wider as he approaches and, oh my God, notices me. Our eyes meet, and then I can feel it. He can feel it. I knew I was right! I knew it! He smiles, a genuine smile that tells me he's glad I waited. He takes the paper gently from between my fingertips, never dropping his gaze. I could get lost in those beautiful green eyes forever.
"You're beautiful," he whispers softly. My mouth has gone dry, I can't talk. This is my dream coming true!
"Autograph?" I finally manage. He lets a small laugh, but continues to stare into my eyes. This is it, love at first sight! Sadly, he has to look down at the paper. I continue to smile at him, letting my eyes wander over every inch of his body so that I can never forget this moment.
"Have you got a pen?" he asks in a sweet voice. My hands perform a pat-down all over my body, but my skimpy red dress has nowhere to hold a pen. It sounds stupid, but I felt it. A turning point. Everything was over now. Everything. Tears flood to my eyes, how could I have been so stupid? Why would I do this to myself? All that time, wasted.
"No," I whisper apologetically, looking at my feet.
"Oh," he replies, and then a silence passes between us. He doesn't know what to say. My plan, it's all gone wrong, for the want of a pen. He hands the paper back to me. It seems so bright and so blank and so utterly wrong.
"No," I say again. There are no other words.
"Well, bye then," he says, setting off towards the end of the alley and out of my life. I watch him go, knowing that that was my only chance. Tears come, they always do, and I know that I will always see this moment in my head for the rest of my life. I can't go after him, that's not fate. That's not right. And I can't run that fast in these strappy shoes.