Bruce Wagner - I Met Someone

“I know, I know, I know!” she said. “And I do feel really horrible …”

She covered her face with her hands while rocking on the bed like a penitent in petit mal .

It was time to get firm. “Now you have to listen to me, okay? Okay? Are you listening, Allegra?” She nodded, still shielding her eyes, ready to take her punishment. “You have got to stop seeing Larissa. Okay? Call her and tell her that you’re just not comfortable anymore. Or you can fucking text her… and then hope to God she doesn’t tell Dusty , which I strongly doubt she will , but you never know, that train may have already left the station. Just call her, Allegra — or don’t ! You could just cut it off and ghost her… though maybe that’s not such a great an idea.” He was thinking out loud. “Just email her, okay? And find your friggin’ jollies elsewhere . All right? Okay? Leggy? Are you taking this in?” She nodded in anguish. “Look: all couples go through this, right? But the general rule of thumb is, don’t shit where the other person is temporarily eating ! So you just have to stop because, aside from anything else, it’s totally self-destructive! Ultimately, right? Because you’re not just hurting Dusty , you’re hurting you . I mean, look how fucked up you are, girl! And I know the whole deal was fucked up to begin with — or has been — and I understand how it happened with Larissa— kind of — but Jesus, Leggy! Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into…”

She threw her arms around him and held on for dear life. He melted.

“Come on now, it’s gonna be all right. We’ve all been through a lot, puppybunbear. But it’s gonna be okay.”

“Is it? Is it, Jeremy?”

“Yes.”

“And you won’t tell anyone?”

“ Of course I won’t.”

“I’m sorry, Jeremy! I’m so, so sorry … I know it was stupid. I knew it was stupid when I was doing it. I so hate myself for letting it happen .”

“Well, don’t . Because hating yourself’s only going to make it worse. You’re human , okay? And people do stupid things — that’s pretty much all they do. Now, freshen up and come back downstairs.”

“I just want to sleep!”

“You’ll sleep when you’re dead,” he chided, leading her from the bed. “Go splash water on your face, you need to make an appearance —come one, it’s just a bunch of Buddhists and celebrities, it’s perfect . That’s about as good as it gets, ever! And stop being such a drama queen or she will get tired of you.” That set her off and he had to majorly backpedal. “I’m kidding . She won’t — she isn’t . She loves you, girl. For- evah .” Though he wasn’t so sure about that anymore. “But you know what? You need to let her go through whatever she’s going through. And you need to let you go through whatever you’re going through. It’s a moment , Allegra, a moment in time . And whatever happens, you guys’ll be totally stronger.”

“What do you mean, ‘whatever happens’?”

He hushed her again, steering her to the bathroom sink.

—

Waiting for Allegra to emerge, Jeremy stood in the hall doing mental gymnastics. Life was growing stranger by the hour.

Poor Allegra!

And Jeremy knew more about Larissa Dunnick then he’d let on…

After their encounter with her at Soho, he went home and took one of the most satisfying bubble baths in the history of mankind. Emerging from those healing waters with a powerful sense of gratitude for the unexpected gifts this short life bestows, he was encouraged to plumb Tristen’s depths in more ways than one. That was when the boy recklessly opened up (in so many words) about his mum, unpacking the darker intimacies of her CV: the youthful arrests for check-kiting, the more recent for doctor shopping, and even more recent for shoplifting, from Kitson on Robertson. Since the divorce, she’d stayed afloat as a Jill-of-all-trades — yoga teacher, masseuse at Equinox, Neptune Society sales rep, and occasional “featured movie extra.” When Tristen almost pridefully informed that on her latest studio gig his mother got an out of left field “bump” (production asked her to sub for Dusty Wilding’s ailing camera double), a gob-smacked Jeremy managed to hold his mud, and refrained from disclosing his ties to the actress and even the film itself. He wasn’t sure why ; true, he’d been way circumspect with the boy about all things showbiz, though not because he was paranoid… it was more an experiment in taking the focus off himself .

Some sort of instinct bade him hold back.

But still, shit, Jesus —

— Dusty’s stand-in was his boyfriend’s mom !

The whole freakish Welcome to L.A. synchrony of it was one of those too perfect cosmic nuggets he’d normally have shared with the actress via email or text, ASAP . For some reason it became yet another instance in which he failed to disclose. Hmmm… Clueing her in about Tristen and Larissa would have been irresistible ( normally , that is), and clueing Allegra as well — though naturally, he’d have told Mama first , because Dusty liked to think she owned the worldwide serial rights to exclusives on Jeremy’s X-rated bromances, not to mention his everything else. He still wasn’t sure what made him clam up. Anyway, he was glad to have kept his piehole shut because some weeks ago he’d made the resolution to turn a new leaf with his new love and rein in his sloppy, tell-all ways. Which meant generally gossiping less and especially not gossiping about the heartbreak kid and whatever it was they had or he thought they had, not if he could help it. This latest self-improvement regime employed what 12-Steppers called “contrary action,” and Jeremy struggled to keep the fledgling relationship close to the vest. He was tired of putting his business on the street, of killing his darlings by letting the world pick the lock of the diary of his careless heart.

Was there any upside in revealing Tristen’s provenance? He couldn’t see any. The situation was already too sticky by half. On the Night of the Living Tuesday Weld, Jeremy had sensed something afoot and abreast and a-everything else (that hint of Sapphic appetizer he called amuse-bush ), not just between Dusty and her double, but all three mouseketeers, a suspicion duly confirmed when Larissa slid into their booth for her sleazy sohello. Breezily letting Dusty in on the fact that he happened to be dating her stand-in’s son would start a “conversation” about the players, at minimum, and who knew where that would lead. If Dusty was having an affair with Larissa (sure sounded like it), she probably knew everything anyway — and whether she did or not, Dusty might interpret Jeremy’s reveal as icky or grandstandy, some kind of faggoty brinkmanship. It definitely would look like he was fishing.

Thank you, no, he’d sit out the incestuous quadrille for now. His dance card was full.

Contrary action…

In light-speed lucubration (still in the hall, while Allegra washed and dried, douched and cried), it hit him like a stun grenade: though he’d taken pains never to mention Dusty Wilding to his boyfriend, or anything else about his career — an absurd game he found dumbly refreshing — what sort of madness had allowed him to pretend Tristen didn’t already know everything about his life ? As if an atom of his world could be hidden, and from Tristen , no less — the Kill Bill bride, the Crazy 88 of Internet trap queens! Jeremy was continually surprised, galled, and shamed by his unrepairable naïveté; the generational blind spot that made him oblivious to the avalanche of files and thumbnails that rendered a jittery, fossilized portrait of him as exacting as a Chuck Close for anyone who cared to look. Of course Tristen knew about his decades-old alliance with the film star! Of course he did — and of ten thousand other dark and minuscule things about himself that Jeremy’d long forgotten…