The Numbers Game (34 page)

            “It
is….but don’t worry about it.  I’m getting Michael to tape it.”

            “Absolutely
not!” Serena scolded. “You will watch it live, we will watch it live. Let me
just go upstairs and get ready while you call Pay-Per-View.”

            “If you
insist.” The smile coming her way was warm and grateful. Serena reached over to
kiss it one more time before running up flight of steps.

            Really, it
was no surprise she was this much in love with Jasper.

            As one may
have guessed, Jasper did forgive Serena for the Black Bear Incident. Or maybe
forgive wasn’t quite the right word. More like he completely banished the
incident from his mind. It turned out in the end Jasper wasn’t even angry with
Serena at all. To the contrary, he had called her a paranoid fruit-loop for
letting thoughts like that get into her head.

            His aloof
behavior, which she had so hastily interpreted as fuming rage, was actually
contributed to some pre-exhibition awards nerves. A piece had come out in the
national paper on the day they returned to San Francisco stating that his work
“Return to The Sea” was contrived and lacking originality. That criticism had
shot Jasper straight through the heart.

            He was
over it though. Taking Serena’s advice, Jasper had decided to just let fate do
its duty. If he was meant to win the competition in a few weeks time in Vienna, he would win it. If he was not meant to, he wouldn’t. No amount of stressing or
worrying about the damn thing would make any difference.

            It helped
Serena having Jasper around. She was proving to be his little inspiration, his
creative sounding board or so he said. Serena figured this notion would quickly
be popped if she told him about sleeping with Enrique though, which was why she
didn’t say a thing. And rightly so; it wasn’t like they had expressions like
‘what they don’t know won’t hurt them’ unless they were tried and true. Always
learn from the mistakes of others, her mom used to say and for a change Serena
was heeding her advice.

            Her mom
used to also say something along the lines of:
if they betray you once,
shame on them; if they betray you twice shame on you.
It had to do with
treachery and disloyal backstabbing friends, of which there were quite a few
back in school. Mom said as a rule of thumb you could forgive someone once but
if they did it again to drop them without further ado. For some reason that
counsel kept flashing in Serena’s mind like a neon sign, as did the score 1:1
in sparkling lights – much like in a grand football game.

            1:1; what
on earth did it mean? A moment later, Serena felt her heart fill with dread
when the name Tabitha blazed into her mind.

            “Tabitha”,
she muttered under her breath, voice full of contempt. “That’s a name I was
hoping I’d never have to hear again.

            Ever since
the infamous party, Serena had avoided Tabitha successfully like the plague. It
had taken lots of hard work; it meant never answering the phone or opening the
front door without looking in the peep hole. It also entailed shopping ten
miles away to avoid the local grocery store and wearing shades with a white head
scarf Jackie-O style whenever venturing outside. Secretly Serena feared it made
her even more conspicuous.

            So far it
was going well. The chunk in her heart, which had been severed the day Serena
lost her best friend, was starting to heal slightly…when she didn’t pick at the
scab that is. She’d been lucky enough to fill the big empty void with lots of
work and Jasper. Even if she missed Tabitha, it was more the idea of her, the
idea of being able to just say stupid things, borrow someone else’s funky
clothes and have an good excuse to eat lots of chocolate that she missed.
Serena certainly didn’t miss Tabitha the person, the girl who paid an ex-lover
to sleep with her for a measly couple of hundred bucks. No way.

            1:1.The
numbers flashed again and this time Serena saw the face of Fernando.  Oh so
that’s what her dim-witted conscience was getting at.
I screwed up once so
that meant Tabitha was allowed to screw up once too.
Except Tabitha wasn’t
a youngling anymore; she couldn’t use that plea. Serena was still a teenager
when she allowed myself to steer off the straight and narrow whereas Tabitha
was almost thirty now and definitely an adult - if not in her head then
certainly chronologically.

            “So what?”
Fernando’s face was defying. “A deed is a deed is a deed.”

           
Yes,
well I definitely won’t be listening to your advice prick.

            Making up
with Tabitha was simply not on her agenda yet, even if the separation was
killing her inside. Serena had others things to worry about, like Markie for
instance. Her boyfriend of five years who was maybe expecting to get back
together in four weeks, the man who her other love Jasper knew nothing about.

            Yep at the
moment she had bigger problems on her mind.

For the fiftieth time
in the past fortnight, Tabitha stared at the computer screen and let out a long
desperate grief-stricken scream.

            “Argh!”
Tabitha kept it going as long as she could and then paused for a breath.
“Argh!” she started once again.

            Frankly
there was nothing else she could do but scream, bar ripping out all her hair
clump by clump. But she tried that last week and to be honest bald spots
weren’t a good look. Staring back at Tabitha in her email inbox was yet another
returned message with: “Do not send anything to this address” flashing in the
subject line from “Subject unknown.”

            Except if
it was subject unknown my ass, why would it be coming up as Serena Morrow
sender. Bitch! Tabitha muttered to herself. She had really thought this would
work. That Serena would cave in to the subtle approach, given that all else
(home and work visits and countless calls) had failed miserably. Tabitha had
thought via email it would be a piece of cake. After all, the perfect apology
was already devised in succinct and sincere form (no fluffing it up due to
on-the-spot nerves); all it required was the click of a mouse to send.

           
Damn,
well then I’ll just have to go with Plan M,
Tabitha resolved.
Or come up
with one first. Find some other way of cracking across the Great Wall of
Serena’s Stubbornness to make her see that I’m not a fault. Or if I am at fault
then at least I am very, very sorry for it.

            Let me
see…Tabitha leaned back into her comfy swing chair, taking the pen to her mouth
and scanned her immediate surroundings for clues. Maybe there was someone here
at the real estate office whose brain she could pick at for a moment.
Except…wouldn’t that entail explaining to them the whole story from scratch -
Markie’s two lays versus Serena’s twelve and so on? Maybe that wasn’t such a
good idea. People already thought Tabitha was loopy enough without having them
know her friends were ten times worse.

            I know…
Tabitha sat up straight in her chair. All she needed was someone who was quite
disconnected from their social circle, someone whose wisdom and
outsider-looking-in perspective might shed some light on this dilemma. Like her
mom for example; she was always very creative when it came to twisting
someone’s ear around when they didn’t want to listen. And if a girl couldn’t
turn to their mother in times of need who could she turn to?

            “Hey Mom,”
Tabitha said, when the receiver got picked up on the other end.

            “Tabitha?”
The woman was clearly shocked. “Tabitha, is that really you?”

            “Yes,” Tabitha
swallowed hard.

            “Gosh what
a surprise! How long has it been since we last spoke? Months or perhaps it’s
almost a year even.”

            “Maybe,
whatever.” Tabitha didn’t see the point in getting into the finer details of
phone log management. “Look I thought I’d call to just to see how you are.”

            “You could
have stopped by, honey,” her mother huffed, “I saw you driving your fancy car
past our house the other day.”

            “I know, I
know but I was rushed then. And this is important; I need to ask you for some
advice, about a hypothetical problem.”

            “Does it
involve a hypothetical pregnancy?” Her mom asked suspiciously.

            “No,” Tabitha
groaned, suddenly remembering why she didn’t visit that often anymore. Did all
moms make you raise your voice when you were speaking to them? “It’s about a
friend.”

            “Do I know
this friend?”

            “It
doesn’t matter if you know her,” Tabitha cried, her tone escalating by the
second. “Just be quiet and listen for one bloody second!”

            “Okay.”
Her mom murmured, and it came out sounding more like a Mickey Mouse peep. “Go
on then.”

            So Tabitha
went on. She explained about this stubborn ‘friend’ who wouldn’t forgive her
pal for a silly big mistake she made. The pal had tried and exhausted all
standard avenues of approach– calling, stalking, sending gifts and leaving
messages begging for forgiveness but nothing worked. Now he/she was desperate;
could she think of some other suggestions?

            “Without
bordering on harassment please.”

            “Well,”
her mother cleared her throat. “Let me just put on my thinking cap.”

            Oh gosh,
it sounded as if her mother was really reaching for a magical cap and slipping
it on top of her curly, befuddled head. Tabitha reached for another Tim Tam,
given that she might be here for a while.

            “I know,”
her mother snapped. “December 24, 1974. The day your father threw a psycho
because I used his Penthouse Pets issues to line the kitty litter and birdcage.
He swore it was instant divorce and that he’d never speak to me again, until I
pulled out the secret weapon.”

            “What was
your secret weapon?” Tabitha exclaimed, loving how every bloody story mom had
about her dad revolved around big-breasted women and temper tantrums. But one
had to give it to her: Tabitha’s dad was stubborn; the guy would have happily
starved to death and slept on the streets if it proved a point.

            “I took
the roundabout approach. Decided if I couldn’t talk him round then someone with
a bit more sensibility and tact could. Remember Lorna the Mourner, the lady
down the street?”     

            “Mmm...”
Tabitha acknowledged the hazy memory of an always-in-white-robes woman.

            “Well
she’s the one I sat down with dad and made him see the futility of fighting.”

            “Wasn’t
she a nun though?”

            “Yes…but
that’s beside the point. You, I mean, your desperate pal, have to find a
neutral contact of this friend, someone, like her boyfriend perhaps, if she has
one, or one of her male friends.” Her mom paused for a moment, like a self-help
counselor on air waiting for this all to sink into the caller.

            “If truth
were known,” she continued, “no one can ever resist simple persuasion coming
from the opposite sex. Give this ‘friend’ of yours an honest talking to from a down-to-earth
guy and she will melt, no matter how stubborn she is.”

Tabitha
nodded her head in recognition of this astuteness.

            “Yes, yes,
I think you’re right!” she said. For a change. “I have to go mom but thanks,
thanks a lot.”

            “Will you
come over and visit with Serena when things are all right again?” a proud voice
tinkered on the other end.

            “Yes, yes,
I will,” Tabitha had already pulled out her wooden-covered address book and was
flicking through it. “Huh, what do you mean Serena? Everything is okay between
us,” Tabitha insisted.

            “Right,”
her mom chuckled to herself. “Say hello to her either way.”

            Damn, some
mothers were honestly too smart for their own good.

Tabitha had been
looking, searching, and waiting for this moment her entire life.

            She could
hardly believe it; a real live chance to call Rick! For the first time ever she
held a legitimate, sane reason to call her crush out of the blue and say hi.
Hi,
this is Tabitha and I am just phoning to…
Tabitha frowned as she walked her
through this imaginary conversation.  Surely something rather spectacular had
to come after this. Not simply ‘my best friend hates me because I paid a guy to
sleep with her and now I need you to talk her round.’ No, that would definitely
not do. Why go into too much information anyway, when a simple request would
suffice.

            “Could you
please contact Serena and let her know it is absolutely paramount that she
calls me immediately.”