Queen of the Oddballs (12 page)

“You what?” I yelped. I couldn’t believe it.

“I mean we decided it’d be okay, didn’t we?”

I caught my breath, which had gone missing when she delivered the blow, then decided to see this as my chance to be with Ann. “Fine. Yeah, we did,” I answered.

DAY 9: Another day off for me. As it was nearing Christmas, days were getting colder, but this day was rain-free. I bundled up in a heavy coat and scarf, packed a picnic, drove to the set at lunchtime, and picked up Ann. Off we went to a nearby park that was full of cholos drinking beer, mothers gossiping, and children screaming as they played, so we couldn’t exactly continue where we’d left off last night. We talked instead.

“This is all pretty intense,” I said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“What are we gonna do about it?”

“I’m not sure.” Ann knitted her brow. “I just wasn’t planning on this….”

Of course she wasn’t. This was all your doing, Livvy!

“And, well, you should know….” Ann picked at a baguette and tossed crumbs to nearby robins. “I have a girlfriend.”

Damn. Now what? Maybe I should just stop while I was ahead? After all, I’d proven I could actually pursue a woman who was seemingly out of my league and succeed. What more did I want?

And then it occurred to me. Maybe the fact that she was with someone made this even easier. I could do what Daisy was encouraging—just have
an affair
. Daisy had managed to do that and remain “hopelessly devoted” (get it?!) to me. Why couldn’t I?

“Perfect,” I told her. “I have a girlfriend, too.”

That night Daisy pushed and prodded. “Details, I want details,” she said. So I gave her
some
details. And what did she do? She freaked out. “Everyone I’ve slept with has been just about sex,” she shouted. “There wasn’t any emotional connection, but I can tell.”

“You can tell what?”

“You’re totally into this girl.”

Then she stormed into the guest bedroom and slept there.

Oh, Livvy, I guess you didn’t address the hard part of “magic” in your song!

DAY 10: We started to shoot the juggling scene—that’s when I had to wear that cheesy white mime makeup. And Livvy, we all know that mimes are anything but sexy. I can vouch for that cuz the first guy I really made out with when I was in junior high school was a professional mime, and kissing him made me gag.

So, understandably, Ann kept her distance. During the lunch break I didn’t see her at all, so I was convinced she had totally withdrawn again. Later in the day shooting began on the roller skating part of the finale, which neither of us were in. I was hanging out, talking to some friends, trying to decide whether or not to approach Ann, when she beat me to it.

“Betty, can you help me with my costume for a minute?”

“Sure.”

She was wearing a slinky black dress that looked more than fine to me.

“I think there’s a safety pin in one of the trailers,” she said, all blasé, acting like we were pals and nothing at all had ever happened between us. She led me through the lot into a trailer that was empty except for a dresser, a mirror, and the late afternoon sun pouring in through a small window, casting a spotlight on…A BED.

Ann pushed me into the sun’s rays and climbed on top of me. Her lips consumed mine. We kissed for what seemed like an eternity but at the same time only a second. When we finally came up for air, we both began to laugh. Her impeccable makeup was blotted with white mime paint; my face was one big smear.

“What if we’re called to shoot?” I asked.

“How can we be called to shoot,” she said devilishly, “when no one knows where we are?”

The responsible, don’t-let-anyone-down, do-the-right-thing girl in me disappeared when Ann grabbed me again, continuing our three-way with the sun.

That weekend Daisy decided to get away to San Francisco. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to see Ann, but despite leaving her two messages, I didn’t hear back from her all weekend. I assumed she was with her girlfriend, and I tried not to let that disturb me.

I began to wonder what would happen when, after the next day, our last day of shooting, Ann and I weren’t around each other every day. Liv, I should have asked you to tell me more about movie-set flings. But I guess whatever you might have said wouldn’t have mattered. I was already hooked.

DAY 11: Ann and I spent most of the day stealing off to our private trailer. When we were shooting the part of the finale that featured you singing “Xanadu,” I couldn’t help but believe you were, once again, my own personal muse, singing right to me.

“
And now, open your eyes and see what we have made is real….”

Indeed, Livvy. We did it. You and Matt; me and Ann. And, for me, in only eleven days, right on schedule! That night I convinced Ann to join me at Fiorucci, where my old friend Greg, now an established clothing designer, was having a fashion show. Our first date in public. Dozens of stars, models, and paparazzi swarmed under the hot lights as a live DJ played pounding music. Ann ran into someone she knew and hugged the attractive girl whose green eyes were even more intense than hers, if that’s possible. Then Ann said to me, “This is Danielle, she manages Fiorucci. Danielle, this is Betty…well, Hillary.”

“Don’t ask,” I smiled.

“Don’t need to,” Danielle joked. “She’s always up to something. I know that.”

Then I remembered. Danielle was the one who had left my juggler friend Nick to be with Ann a couple of years ago. Sure Ann had a girlfriend now, but because I’d never met the “other woman,” she didn’t seem real. Danielle was there in the flesh, and it was hard not to feel jealous seeing Ann with an ex, especially one so charming.

At midnight when I dropped Ann off and we kissed good-bye in my car, I was busy wondering if and when we would kiss again. And if we’d ever get a chance to do more than just that.

The next evening Daisy returned from San Francisco, and I decided to cook dinner for her, which I never did because my cooking sucks. When she walked through the door, smelled curry and saffron, and saw the candlelit table, she burst into tears. This was something Daisy did about as often as I cooked.

“What’s going on, Honey?” I asked. “Talk to me.”

Between sobs she pushed out short sentences. “So much easier up there.” “Too hard here.” “Not good for us.” “I’m moving back.”

I started crying, too.

What had we done? This was two weeks before Christmas, the end of a decade, and change was slapping us both in the face.

Luckily Christmastime was one of the busiest times of the year for me since I also had a job delivering singing telegrams. Day and night I was racing around town as a singing, tap-dancing fruitcake with little time to think about Daisy, who was leaving after New Year’s, or about Ann, who I hadn’t seen nor heard a peep from since that night at Fiorucci, a whole week earlier. I’d lie awake late at night and wonder. If this thing with Ann was really “magic,” why’d I feel so damn shitty?

Then one ominously cloudy Thursday morning a letter arrived in the mail. On a sixties greeting card it read: “We must meet for cocktails soon to discuss these anxieties I have. Somewhere discreet. The press is on to us.” The card was signed “Ann,” and was covered with lipstick kisses. At the bottom, in tiny print, she’d written: “It’s better with Betty.”

I was a goner.

“Is the enclosed discreet enough?” I wrote back, including an ad for a restaurant on a quiet Malibu beach. “No one will ever find us there. Be on the southeast corner at 4:00 p.m. Monday. Wear dark glasses and carry a white object.”

That Monday in Malibu, Ann and I sipped fruity cocktails decorated with parasols and maraschino cherries and watched the cloud-obscured sun set over the ocean. We held hands under the table and said very little.

We drove to her house and it began to pour. We listened to Brian Eno’s
Music for Airports
and couldn’t keep our hands off each other. It’s just so different with women rather than men, Livvy. Curves instead of angles, flesh instead of muscle, excitement building into a soft won’t-you-come-in rather than a hard how-do-you-do.

Ann asked me to stay that night. I had never wanted anything so badly, but I didn’t want to throw it all in Daisy’s face, so at 2:00 a.m. I drove home. By the time I arrived Daisy was so angry anyway, she chased me around the house with a hammer. I survived, unbludgeoned, but needless to say, we slept in separate beds.

The next day, for the first time ever in a relationship, I lied. I know, I know. I hated doing it, Livvy. But how many times had Daisy lied to me? I’d lost count.

We were in the kitchen, the hammer safely in the toolbox. We both had dark circles under our eyes. “I’m working late tonight—and I have an early telegram tomorrow all the way on the West Side,” I told her. “So I’m gonna stay at my parents’ house.”

“Fine,” she said. She seemed to believe me.

“Besides,” I added, “we obviously need some space.” At least that part was true.

I drove to Ann’s. At long last we climbed into her bed together. Our touch was electrical, alchemical. I lost all sense of time and place, aware only of skin on skin, moving and melding into one body awash in the currents of espionage.

From that night on, every journal entry I wrote began with “OH MY.”

The week between Christmas and New Year’s was confusing. I slept at Ann’s a few more times. Daisy and I spent New Year’s Eve together, mostly crying and saying good-bye to the decade, and to all we had gone through together in it.

Three days later I drove Daisy to the Burbank Airport, where, under the late afternoon shade of palm trees, warmed by a balmy winter wind, we said our last good-byes.

I drove home, climbed into bed, and cried myself to sleep. I awoke the next morning with my heart still aching, but also with a tinge of excitement over the newness that was about to unfold. But I had to be patient. Ann was about to leave for a two-week trip
with her girlfriend
.

That night I drove to her place and handed her a going-away package. It included a bottle of invisible ink for her to write me secret letters with—“I’ll keep the activator pen”; several love notes written on magician’s flash paper—“They go up in smoke after you read them”; and a stamped metal token I’d made for her at the Santa Monica Pier. It read “Ann + Betty.”

She then, totally unexpectedly, surprised me with a package of her own.

My hands were shaking as I opened it. Inside I found pink stationery embossed in gold lettering that read: “Better Believe It from Betty,” a red fur pen with raspberry-scented ink, and—most exciting—a toothbrush, which I was instructed to leave at her house. We shared another passionate night and in the morning, neither of us wanted to let go.

The next week with Ann gone, I felt lost. I’d been working fourteen-hour days on the
Xanadu
shoot, delivering singing telegrams day and night, and spending time with two lovers. Now I was suddenly faced with little work, no lover near, and for the first time in my life, I was living alone. I eagerly waited for the mailman, who arrived every day empty-handed. Everything I read made me think of Ann—like
The Diary of Anaïs Nin
: “All unfulfilled desires are imprisoned children.” Every song I heard reminded me of her—especially Rickie Lee Jones singing, “I will miss your company.”

The following week the mailman finally appeared—an oasis in my Hollywood Hills desert—with letters. Every day. Ann wrote on stationery that was the same style of the “Better Believe It from Betty” paper, but embossed in gold on the top of hers was “Ann’s-xieties.” I was deliriously happy reading of her cabin fever and of how much she missed me. And even though she said she was confused and worried, she still signed all her letters with lines like, “I can’t wait to see you,” “Your Ann,” and “Freezing in snow and burning for you.”

I was at the top of the roller coaster, feeling exhilarated, but still prepared for the free fall that comes after those highs—so far they’d been a feature of life with Ann. But the fall would have to wait. Ann returned home with great news. She had told her girlfriend about me, and they’d finally broken up.

We spent the next two glorious weeks together. Even when we were out and she drank enough to let loose that nasty, bitter side, she was still the most exciting person I had ever been with. One night we decided to meet at a club, both in complete disguise, and “pick each other up.” Another night we went to the Queen Mary—not the boat, but the female impersonator club. And each night we ended up in my bed or hers.

Then came the
Xanadu
wrap party at Flippers Roller Rink (where you looked fabulous, per usual, Livvy!). Ann said she’d meet me there. I nearly choked on a “disco cheese ball” when she walked in…
with her supposed ex-girlfriend
!

I’ll tell you, Livvy, meeting the “other woman” face-to-face did me in. I wasn’t messing with a concept—I saw a human being. One that I’m sure I’d been hurting. It totally freaked me out.

The next morning I called Ann and told her that if she was still seeing her girlfriend, we were through. By nighttime she showed up at my door, swearing she and the girl had broken up, for real. She had just taken her to the wrap party, she explained, because she felt guilty. Ann whisked me away to the Pickwick Drive-In movie theater. I have no idea what film was playing. Let’s just say we didn’t watch much.

Later that week I picked up a
Hollywood Reporter
and read that a major network was looking to cast regulars for a variety show: “Dancers who can swim needed to perform synchronized swimming routines.”

I dared Ann to audition. She did. And she landed the job. Little did I know her rehearsal schedule would require her to wake up at 3:30 every morning, which took away a few more hours of our coveted time together.