The Gift Bag Chronicles (13 page)

“No, no, we’ll take care of it,” I say, trying to avoid the goats while fumbling with Oscar’s jacket. “What am I looking for? A stun gun?”

“My
cigars!”
he says. “I have two in my inside pocket.”

“What? Are you planning on smoking them out?”

“No!” he says, grabbing one of the cigars that I’ve managed to extricate from his pocket. “Goats love tobacco. They’ll follow us back to the pen if we use the cigars as lures.”

I have no idea how Oscar knows this, but given the way the goats are stepping all over us in their eagerness to get to the cigars, he must be right. Instinctively, I hold the cigar over my head. The goats start to leap toward my hand. “Oh no, they’re
climbing
me!” I say, trying to back away.

“Put your hand down!” Oscar says. “Put it down and walk out of the tent and they’ll follow you.”

“But they’ll eat the cigar if I do that!”

“Then we’re going to move fast,” Oscar says, snapping his cigar
in two and holding out the two halves to the goats, who leave off jumping on me. “Come on,” he says, grabbing me by the hand.

“Here, lady,” one of the kitchen guys says, thrusting a pack of Marlboros at me.

“Okay, okay,” I say, grabbing the cigarettes as we fly by, the goats galloping in our wake.

“You know, I once had a goat as a pet.”

“Why am I not surprised?” I say, exhaling a cloud of smoke toward the stars beginning to peek through the evening sky. We’re out by the corral leaning against the fence sharing the last Marlboro after we got the goats stowed away. I haven’t had a cigarette in years, but somehow it seems appropriate after what we’ve just been through.

“My dad gave it to me when we were living on the base in Hawaii, right before he shipped out. I named it Peter.”

“After the disciple?”

“After my dad.”

“Ah,” I say, passing him the cigarette. “And did you love it more than life itself?”

“I did,” he says, taking a long drag. “I used to feed it my mom’s cigarettes, which I realized later only made it more hyper. But I like to think it added a few years to her life.”

“What happened?”

“My dad came home, and we moved back to the States. I had to give the goat away. I sometimes wonder what happened to Peter.”

“What happened to your parents?”

“My mom died five years ago, but my dad is down in Florida. Fishes a bit. Works part-time at a local golf course. He likes it.”

We stand there for a few minutes smoking silently in the dark,
listening to the laughter and the music from the party floating in the night air. If only I could stay out here, away from Jennifer and Patrice and Mickey and just all of it. Suddenly I hear the familiar strains.

“Oh, no. Are they actually playing ‘Rocket Man’?” I say, cocking my head.

“I believe they are,” Oscar says, stubbing the cigarette on the railing. “Can’t let Jennifer be the only one who dances to that,” he says, reaching for my hand.

“We should get back. Before they miss us. Before Jennifer runs out of people to yell at. Before —”

“Yeah, we will,” he says, pulling me into his shoulder, which smells of wool and smoke and tobacco, as he propels me across the grass. “We will in a minute.”

Pushing noon on Sunday, I’m still not dressed. I’m out of bed
, have called Charles (got him on his cell during his run in Central Park, so he has to call me back), am collapsed on the sofa in an old pair of yoga pants and a tank top, with all the papers and coffee, but not officially dressed. And I have no intention of being. Maybe not ever.

God knows, the wedding was exhausting. Between the heat, the goats, Mickey and Patrice, and the endless toasts — who knew being on the wagon meant so much fake drinking? — I didn’t get home until 2:30
A.M.
But then it has to be like this — downtime as house arrest — if you’re going to make it in the event business. Or just make it, period. By my calculations, once you pass thirty-five, your day isn’t twenty-four hours, it’s three time zones — morning, afternoon, and evening. Most women I know can do two out of three. Attempt to do them all, and you become a complete screaming lunatic. Which pretty much explains why everyone
hates publicists and, for that matter, Dr. Freud, most women. You can’t be that outer-directed 24/7 without paying for it.

I know. I tried. The first year I got promoted to president at the agency and was heading up the event division — which meant I had to create it, staff it, and rustle up nearly a dozen new corporate clients — my day was wall-to-wall. Up at 5:30, scan the Web and TV news; 7:00
A.M.
yoga class. In the office from 9:00
A.M.
to 7:00
P.M.
Meetings, conference calls, lunch with a client. Then a business dinner, drinks, a screening or an event every night.

By the end of the year, the division was up and rolling, but I’d gained ten pounds — those yoga classes were the first to go; like I had time to listen to someone tell me to breathe — and lost nearly every friend I had. Frankly, I couldn’t remember the last time I saw anybody that didn’t have something to do with work. I certainly never saw Rachel, my old publicist pal who had bolted her job at Fox to become a unit publicist and was now always on the road babysitting movie sets. Maude, a hypnotherapist I’d met at the Iyengar Institute, was a victim of those canceled yoga classes. Evelyn, a freelance journalist and my moviegoing pal, had lasted the longest. Actually, she stopped seeing me when she became so freaked out about turning forty that she spent all her time dating plastic surgeons, the idea being if she didn’t wind up marrying one of them, she could still get a good deal on the surgery. Now we just stay in touch via e-mail. Actually, it’s better this way, because you don’t waste all that time trying to schedule time together — which you only wind up canceling and rescheduling anyway.

I check my watch. Heading toward 1:00
P.M.
, which means one more cup of coffee, then check out the afternoon movies on cable, followed by a nap. Doing nothing has to be planned out, because God knows, if you don’t plan to do nothing, you’ll always find something to do. I grab the TV section and my coffee mug and head into the kitchen. Don’t want to get too caffeinated. Might make the nap tough. Might be time to switch to water.
Might be time to realize I have a college degree and stop thinking in incomplete sentences. Like my brain has become one big BlackBerry incapable of complex communiqués. Resolve to read the Opinion section of both
L.A
. and
New York Times
, form some, and then watch movie. Preferably foreign with subtitles.

Of course, none of this planning-to-do-nothing plan would be necessary if I actually had a boyfriend who lived here. With me. In this house. As in the same place. But after three years of officially being with Charles but still waking up most Sundays alone, I know this kind of thinking only leads to self-pity followed by another argument on the phone. So, in the interest of world peace starting with my own tiny corner of it, I am now officially treating Sunday like my own private spa day. Minus any actual spa treatments, of course, unless I get an overwhelming urge to feel a man’s hands on me — an urge that overrides my resistance to drive anywhere on a Sunday — and I drop in at Ole Henriksen’s for a massage.

Heading into the kitchen, I wince at the glare from the windows. I vaguely recall the weatherman saying that if yesterday was hot, today would be even worse. As if that’s even possible. I’m just trying to focus on the thermometer outside the kitchen window, which I can’t quite make out because of the way the sun is hitting it — could it really be 120 degrees? — when I hear singing and piano playing.

Oh, good, Christy’s up. My out-of-work, former sitcom star of a neighbor, whose deck — aka the piano studio — looks right onto my front yard. It’s 100 degrees outside, but Christy, bless her little unemployed soul, is out there in some sort of kimono, her hair knotted wildly on her head, singing away like a contestant on
American Idol
. Given the kind of time Christy has hanging on her hands since her series was canceled last season, this alfresco concert could go on for a while, a serious blow to my plans for a quiet Sunday at home.

I’m just reviewing my options for the day — earplugs? headphones? — when the phone rings.
Finally
, I say, lunging for the phone.

“So, did you survive last night?” Charles says, still sounding out of breath from his run.

“Oh, God, barely,” I say, reaching for the coffee mug. “You should have been there. Actually, given how hot it was, be glad you weren’t. I mean, Oscar had to send for cooling units at the last minute, just to try and get the temperature in the tents down, and then Jennifer had a fit when she realized —”

“Yeah, I checked the wires this morning. I didn’t see anything except your press statement,” he says. “So I assumed it went off okay.”

“Yeah, it did,” I say, feeling my cheeks flush, trying not to think he’s checking up on me. Like some junior publicist having her homework checked by the boss. Like how I felt during his speakerphone call to me about
C
magazine. “Where are you?” I say. “Still in the park?”

“Walking home, trying to cool off. Why?”

I close my eyes. Don’t do it. Don’t pick a fight for no reason. Except I actually do have a reason. One hundred and fifty-six of them to be exact — one for each Sunday of the past three years that we did not spend together. “Well, I was just wondering if this was Charles my boyfriend calling or Charles my fellow publicist, that’s all.”

“Hey, don’t be like that,” he says, dropping his voice. “You know I care about you.”

“I know,” I say, dropping my voice too. “I just—”

“I also care how the wedding went.”

I sigh. Fine, you want to talk about work, let’s talk about work. “It went really, really well,” I say briskly. “Considering it was one of the hottest days of the year and the ranch leaves a lot to be desired in a heat wave. But Oscar was brilliant and the ceremony
was actually very touching and Jennifer and Jeffrey left for Hawaii, two happy customers. As soon as I get the airdate from
InStyle
for their wedding special, I’ll let you and Suzanne know.”

“Hey, I was just asking,” he says. “Take it easy.”

I close my eyes again. Why is it that the last thing you feel like doing is taking it easy when someone tells you to take it easy?

“Oh, I
am
taking it easy,” I say, reaching for the pot and pouring the last of the coffee into my mug. Coffee sludge is more like it. “Or I was until my boyfriend called asking about the wedding before he asked about me.”

I hear him sigh. “You really want to do this? Want to have another argument on the phone?”

“No, I don’t. I don’t even want to be on the
phone
with you. I want to be in the same
room
with you. Why is that so hard for us? To be in the same place? Why are we always apart? We’ve been together for three years, and of that time I think we’ve actually spent less than three months physically together.”

“Alex, come on,” he says, and I can hear the annoyance in his voice. “We’ve been over this and over this. There are a lot of career couples who do this kind of arrangement. Besides, you know it’s just not a good time to make any big changes in the agency management structure.”

“Says who?” I say, scrunching the phone against my neck to reach in the refrigerator for the half-and-half. “I know
you’ve
been saying that ever since we started going out, but I don’t recall my ever agreeing with it.”

“You honestly think you can run our event division out of New York when what, ninety percent of our events are in L.A.?”

“When did this become about my moving to New York? It’s far more feasible that you could spend half of each week in L.A.”

“When I oversee the New York office, including
all
ten of our publicists and their clients?”

“Fuck,” I say. “Then how are we ever going to move things forward?
I mean, after three years, I still feel like we’re just getting started.”

“You keep acting like things are broken between us. Like something needs to be fixed.”

I stop midsip. He honestly thinks this arrangement is working. “You honestly think this arrangement is working?”

“I think it’s working fine,” he says. “For now.”

“And when is ‘now’ over? I mean, when will this never-being-in-the-same-city thing not be fine?”

“Look, I don’t know,” he says, sounding rushed again, or maybe it’s just the sound of traffic in the background. “I just know that things change. They do. Things never stay the same. Even when you want them to.”

Change. There’s a concept. In my experience, change mostly happens involuntarily and usually for the worse. Your cat dies, your parents get older, your sister gets married and has a baby. Changing things for the better takes a lot of work. Usually too much. And even then it’s fraught with peril. What if you change something — break up with your boyfriend, get a new job, stop going home every Christmas — and it turns out to be worse than before? It’s why most people never change anything.
Oh, people change
. No, they don’t. They sit around and complain about the status quo. It’s why I have my endless to-do list. All the things I want to change. One of these days. When I make up my mind to do it. It’s like saving money or losing weight. Charles and I spending more time together is never going to just
happen
. We’d have to decide to change things.