The Actor and the Housewife (40 page)

So she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him, kissed him, and kissed him.

I’M KISSING FELIX, her thoughts seemed to scream. FELIX. NOT MIKE. ACK.

Shut up, she told her thoughts.

Survival instincts flared up, and her mind locked down, pretending she was with Mike, kissing Mike, loving Mike.

No, no, no. Experience this, she ordered herself. Kiss
Felix
.

She tried to keep her heart open, to allow the feeling of this contact to dissolve her walls. She tried. She was floundering. But she was not giving up.

She grabbed his face, put a hand in his hair and pulled him even closer. He responded, a moan escaping his throat. The soft and sweet kiss was gone. They were kissing passionately and feverishly now, roughly and achingly, in as many ways as she could, remembering her long-ago list of how to kiss, sometimes surrendering to Felix’s mouth on her neck, sometimes bringing him back to her lips, always completely in that moment, fully with Felix, feeling Felix, kissing Felix. (And he kissed her back.) Sometimes he kissed her in a way that she felt in her joints, in her bones. Sometimes her body turned to sand. She kept kissing. She kissed him harder, trying to feel the part, acting better than she ever did in their movie.

But . . . (don’t think, keep kissing) . . . but this isn’t right . . . (shh) . . . I don’t feel like I did when I kissed Mike . . . (don’t compare, just kiss) . . . Felix is my friend, not my partner, not my lover . . . (but you want him to be, so kiss him until he is) . . . No, this hasn’t changed anything . . . (stop thinking, I’m asking a question here, I need to know) . . . I think the answer is pretty clear . . .

He still held her. Felix Callahan, her best friend, her champion, her deliverer from the pillar of salt, that handsome, wonderful, blessed beast. He still kissed her, she still kissed him, but her thoughts took her a few steps back.

He’s not Mike. He won’t be quiet like Mike, easy to be around all the time. He’s an effort; he has so many needs. And we’re so different, I’ll have to hide parts of myself from him, we won’t ever be equal partners, not really. I’ll always be comparing him with Mike, everything he does. That’s not fair to Felix. And how will I support his career, his lifestyle, his everything, and still be the kind of mom my kids know and need? How do I become the Becky who marries Felix? So recently I was barely half a person—how do I change yet again?

She’d hoped passion and affectionate love would blaze through her with his lips on hers and silence the doubts and tear away her old feelings, leaving her a new shiny Becky, a Becky ready to love again. But . . . though she kissed him, she felt nothing deeper than her skin. She loved Felix. But not like Mike. She wasn’t that new and shiny Becky. She was still old Becky, still tattered and sore and a little bit salty. Still Mike’s girl.

The kissing slowed. She didn’t want it to stop. She was terrified of anything being decided and discarded. Besides, it had been a long time since she’d been loved physically and felt as if her body were a precious and desirable thing. For the moment inside Felix’s arms, the ache of not being touched and loved subsided some. But it was sand clutched in her fist, slipping away, almost gone . . .

They stared at each other, both their mouths open, taking deep breaths. She felt a hollow place in her chest, a space opened by hope that hadn’t been filled by the kiss. In Felix’s eyes there was a touch of longing, a feverish glint that hinted the kiss hadn’t been enough and he was hoping for more.

That’s what finally did it—that expression, not on a screen but directed at her. She felt that familiar pressure in her throat, rising up from her lungs. She pressed her lips together.

“What?” he asked, blinking the fever out of his eyes.

She pressed her lips harder, her eyes widened with the effort of holding back.

“Becky Jack, you are not—”

She hiccuped a little laugh. He seemed about to scold her, then held his breath. He was turning slightly red. She pressed her lips harder, he winced, then at once, they both laughed.

They laughed so hard they had to sit down to keep from falling down. They laughed so hard tears fell from their eyes. They laughed because their kiss of passion had been a belly fl op, and they laughed to ease the tension that kissing and wondering had strung inside them. And they laughed because that was what they did together. Becky threw herself over Felix’s legs, he leaned over her back, and they shook together with deep-bellied laughs that radiated through their whole bodies. It felt wrong to laugh so crassly in that idyllic setting, and Becky worried that they’d scare off wildlife, but she couldn’t stop.

Becky panted for breath. “I can’t believe . . . I can’t believe . . . we went through all that. If we ever . . . need an idea for . . . for a comedy . . . all we need . . . pitch our story . . .”

The laughing made Felix cough and he tried to say, “Comedic genius,” the words barely audible.

Once she could breathe, Becky rolled over so she lay across his lap and looked up at his face. Postlaugh hiccups tickled her chest. He wiped his face of tears and smiled as though he’d never been so happy in his life.

She sighed wistfully. “We really did our best though, didn’t we?”

“I’d envisaged kissing you many times, Becky Jack . . . and not just kissing, I might add . . .”

“No, please don’t add.”

“But our kiss wasn’t supposed to set you off into a hysterical fit. It was supposed to be . . .”

“Like a movie?” she guessed.

He nodded. “You would think I could arrange that much.”

“Don’t beat yourself up, sweetie. It’s my fault.”

“Yes it is.”

“Hey, no need to be so pointy about it.”

“And why not? You are the most impossible woman on this earth.”

“And you are more caricature than man, thirty percent gay, and way overrated.”

“Bloody hell, I really thought we had it that time. I thought—I was so sure . . .”

“I know! I’d had myself pretty near convinced too. I’d pictured us married, honeymooning, waking up next to each other in bed, and actually . . . actually . . .” She shivered with the thought.

He smoothed her hair from her forehead. “I was going to buy a house in Salt Lake City. I was going to
live
in it.”

“And I was going to spend all that time in L.A. and go to movie premieres and shop—yes, I would have made a stab at fashion for you. I’d actually thought that through.”

She reached her hands to his face, placing them on his cheeks, feeling the wonderful, rough skin of his jaw.

“I’m sorry. I . . . I’d hoped that kissing you would change me, allow the rest of me to heal over, but . . .” She sighed. “I do love you an awful lot.”

“You’re just not
in
love with me.”

“But you still want to be friends.”

“Exactly.”

“You can’t possibly love me as much as I love you, because my love for you is as big as this mountain and bigger even.” She felt a pricking of tears in the corners of her eyes. “See? I’m almost crying I love you so much.”

“Becky, we’ve discussed this. That can never be a compliment since you also weep for animated scraps of felt.”

They lay there for a time, reminiscing about their years. Felix fed Becky bits of blueberry muffin whenever she spoke, making her spray crumbs into the air and over her own face.

“When did you first think you were in love with me?” she asked.

“I suppose it was gradual, but the first serious spark was during the
Blind Love
shoot. You said in order to kiss me, you had to pretend I was Mike. Those words ripped out my heart—or my ego, I’m not sure—”

“In your case, heart and ego are interchangeable.”

“Exactly, and you took them both and mashed them and stepped on them and—”

“Dang, if only I’d known at the time—”

“You would have played it up, yes, I am aware of that. It bothered me that you had to pretend I was someone else. But I was still with Celeste, of course, and after Celeste, I was confused. Then in Mexico, I began to think, why not?”

“Before you go dating some young starlet again, just you make sure she understands the complex relationship you already have with another woman.”

“That’s all fine. I already explained it to her.”

Becky elbowed him.

“Ow, I’m kidding. There’s no one but you, darling. Yet. I haven’t been with anyone since . . . well, since before our trip to Mexico.”

That put a stitch in her heart. “Really?”

“Mmhmm. Well, except that one time, and really, no one on earth could blame me. I mean she—”

“For the love of all that is holy, no details please.”

“If you insist.”

“Listen . . .” She sat up, holding his face in her hands again before dropping them. “You’re really great with my kids—really great. You have this weird idea that you’re not a father type, but if you meet someone who has a kid or wants to, don’t nix her for that reason alone, okay?”

He nodded.

“You’re nodding,” she said.

He nodded again.

“You’re nodding, not arguing. Are you okay?” She felt his forehead. “You’re a little warm. I’ve got some aspirin in my bag . . .”

“I may be changing my mind about the father thing. I had to in order to pursue you, didn’t I?”

“Yeah . . .” She grinned. “That’s cool. I’m glad something cool came out of this fiasco.”

She ate another muffin and as the sugar hit her bloodstream, she realized she’d been trying to fit her life into a romantic comedy—it had seemed the only way to escape from the horror movie plot, the family tragedy drama. But maybe she’d been in the wrong genre all along.

She wasn’t in a Hollywood movie; she wasn’t the heroine of a romantic comedy. She was Becky Jack—mother, wife, widow. Lately, she’d mostly been a hatful of heartache, but sometimes she laughed too. So what that her story wasn’t a tidy comedy or tragedy or romance or drama, or any one thing, but a big stew pot of stuff ? At least she
was
. Tomorrow would happen, and the next day, and the next. Three years ago, that thought would have made her weep with weariness—but now, it was a relief. She’d healed that much at least, to be glad to keep going on. It helped to feel so certain she’d have Felix with her till death do us part, in one form or another.

“It’s a shame we couldn’t make this happen, because I think our craziness made a pretty good story. I wrote it into a screenplay and Karen made an offer.”

“Have you signed anything?”

“Not yet.”

“And the script is good?”

“Yeah, but to tell the truth, my first script—
Arm Candy
? It was better.”

“Excellent. Two projects. We’ll coproduce.”

“Get off , I don’t know how to produce a movie.”

“You’re bossy, and that helps.”

“I’m not bossy—I just happen to be more capable than most everyone else.”

“The salary is very good. Do this as a favor. It will save my inventing a secret trust fund and pretending it came from a long forgotten great-uncle so you’d accept the cash. You’re terrible at selling real estate.”

“I’m deplorable at selling real estate.”

“Then it’s settled. Have another muffin.”

“What’ll we call our production company?” she asked before taking a bite.

“Liverwurst Productions.”

“Goose Liver Pate.”

“To Liver Die in L.A.”

“The Spleen’s the Thing.”

“Kissing Cousins. No, Kissing Friends.”

Becky shivered. “I can’t believe I kissed you like that. My tongue touched yours, and it wasn’t even on a dare.”

“To think I was prepared to . . .” He pulled a little foil square out of his wallet and twisted it between his fingers. It took Becky a moment to comprehend.

“You brought a . . . a . . . I can’t even say the word in front of you. I can’t believe . . . you actually—”

“I thought you would approve of my responsible—”

She hit him several times in the shoulder, and when he began to giggle, clearly unimpressed by her pounding, she yanked the blanket out from under him, rolling him off it with her foot. He’d begun to laugh again and could only make intermittent gasps and wheezes. When the blanket was finally free, she smacked him with it.

“I can’t believe you!”
Smack, smack, smack
. “You are so naughty, after all this time, you thought I would—”
Smack, smack, smack
.

Felix tried to crawl away from the onslaught.

“You actually thought that I might . . . Here? Now? Enough to bring a—”

“I already . . .” Felix gasped for air. “It’s Ol’ Trusty, I always—”

“Are you trying to say that you’re the sort of person who always keeps a backup, just in case? That it wasn’t for us, it’s just your ‘Ol’ Trusty,’ and that’s supposed to make me feel any better about you?”

“Yes,” Felix wheezed. “But just so you don’t feel bad, know that if you
had
been willing . . .”

Becky folded the blanket into a clublike shape and renewed her attack.

“Ugh! I can’t believe you! I can’t—”

He threw his arms over his head, trying to protect himself, his gasps for breath sounding painful. “Kidding! I’m—”

“Kidding? About which part? About your premeditation to seduce me on this mountaintop or—”

Someone cleared his throat.

“Excuse me?” The helicopter pilot was standing with his hands in his pockets, looking at the ground, his body half hidden by a tree.

Becky froze, still holding the blanket over Felix’s head.

“We should go before nightfall. I’d like to lift off in thirty minutes.” He cleared his throat again.

Felix held up a hand to say “just a moment” as he tried to catch his breath. He stood, brushed off his clothes, and looked every inch the English gentlemen as he said, “Very well. We’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

Becky and Felix both stood very still, watching the pilot walk back up the incline.

Felix cleared his throat. In a very tight, pained voice, he managed to squeak out the words, “Should we—” before they both succumbed. It was a couple of minutes before either could speak again.

“Ow,” she said, holding her stomach. “I wonder how many calories I just burned.”

“A lot. You should probably have another muffin.”