The Best Romance Ever – Ina Disguise
Copyright 2014 Ina Disguise
“Why do his eyes look so filled with hate?” Aldous adjusted his glasses and looked at Kira. They were watching ‘the international health expert’ Sam Redwood’s gadget infomercial on TV.
“I don’t know. It is very aging. He looks tired, old and bitter.” Kira was surprised to find she was not as upset at seeing Sam again, after two years of avoiding looking at him, as she thought she would be. “One thing is for sure, it won’t be anything to do with me. I’m way too insignificant. Try the bit of fluff on the screen next to him, maybe she said no.” The corner of her mouth twitched in irritation.
Sam, unusually thin by his normal cuddly standards, continued to talk about the virtues of drinking greens whilst glaring hatefully out from the screen. Occasionally flicking a blonde curl from his face, he deftly demonstrated the wondrous seed crushing qualities of his gadget, smiling at the cute female sidekick whilst continuing to look homicidal whenever he looked at the camera.
“He is probably hungry. Or maybe this is his new ‘older guy’ sexy look. I don’t know. It looks more like his new ‘older guy’ scary look from here. At least the shirts have improved.”
“Kira, how long have you been in love with this guy now?” Aldous frowned.
“Three or four years, maybe?”
“Have you tried talking to him?”
“No point, he is screwing his staff and they won’t let me. I don’t know whether it comes from him or them but same difference, I don’t get to communicate with him. It’s probably just as well, because at least fifty percent of the time I am furious with him.” Kira lobbed another bit of cacao into her mouth along with the blueberries. “I could always pretend to be a stranger until I had him cornered, but to be honest my apparently god-like beloved and I don’t get on particularly well and we can spot each other under assumed names at a hundred paces.”
“I gathered that from the last time you spoke.” Aldous laughed at the recollection of Kira’s fury at Sam for not accepting Kira’s gift of her artwork, ‘Raw Sex Object.’
“What do you see in him? He still looks like a twat to me.”
“The oddest things set him off and he gets furious. I imagine he thinks he is so impossible to get on with that he doesn’t really like people getting too close, so he keeps everything nice and superficial. My version of exactly the same behaviour is to avoid people entirely. We are the opposite, and yet exactly the same. It’s strange, all I exist for is making the guy happy, and yet the minute I even see a picture of him this deranged child takes over my mind and I say terrible things to him.” Kira paused only to sigh. “The only answer to it is exactly what I am doing, which is to try to avoid even seeing him. It doesn’t help much, we should really just have the titanic fight until one of us, probably me, expires. All I know is that I have never met him, I don’t get on with him, and I miss him every minute of every day, which is, of course, absurd. I should reinstate the team of ex-boyfriends to take my mind off it, but they were hopeless, and besides, that’s why they got the boot in the first place. It’s not really me, is it, the lovesick look?”
“Not really, no, and you don’t even like hippies.”
“Or vegans, schmaltz, hedonists or utilitarians. It’s God’s idea of a horrible joke.” Kira sighed. “Or beards, for that matter, and I don’t imagine for a second he likes short fat Scottish bitches. It’s going to be unresolved forever, whilst I get fatter and fatter and eventually decompose in a miserable twisted heap.”
“Time for a new project, Kira.”
“Yep, I think so too. It’s a shame Aldous, I can think of at least one excellent gentleman that I would have liked to marry, and now I can’t. Love sucks, especially this version.”
“How did the artwork appraisal go?”
“I am reasonably talented apparently.” Kira continued to look glum.
“Great!”
“I suppose so. It’s always the same, you look at your own work, and you think a five year old could have done it because you remember all the things that went wrong. Other people just see the result, so you don’t really know until you show it to people. You have no idea the courage it took to show that thing after Sam rejected it, and he hadn’t even seen it. He was just being a self-important dick. Considering he talks about ‘grace’ so much, he doesn’t appear to know what it is.”
“He looks like he’s probably a bit self-important all the time to me.”
“Nah, just a Yank avoiding being touched by anything. You get a similar effect with over-educated oiks over here. They have to be told what to like by someone with more money than them. It’s the only way they can tell if they’re doing something ‘kewl.’ And you have to remember he likes to be stressed. I was a nasty sounding person when I overworked too. It leads to all sorts of horrible flippant moments because you’re thinking about something else.”
Aldous giggled happily at the thought of all those thoughtless rich people as he went to feed the cats. Kira hurriedly switched Sam’s hate-contorted face off and continued to sew, idly wondering if her own forsaken expression was any better than his.
Sam, international health guru extraordinaire, looked out of the drab hotel window at the roller-skating blonde. Five years ago, he thought, I could have tapped that. He turned back to the computer, where his book on gardening still lay unfinished. The now familiar cold feeling crept over him as he pondered whether to work on that or his presentation for the next day.
Business was, as usual, doing well. The TV endorsements were making him money, but not as much as he had hoped, and the demands on his appearance and time were frustrating. Now spending more time in NYC, and considerably less time doing what he loved with the smaller health shop venues, he did not feel life was treating him well. The increase in fan numbers had slowed down considerably. Where had it all gone wrong? He patted his tummy and wondered if he dared eat anything. He decided not.
Nothing had really changed in terms of his attractiveness, of course, but Sam felt he was losing his mojo, and it wasn’t a good feeling. He gloomily wondered what would cheer him up. Everything seemed stale and routine, just ‘ticking over,’ and to make things worse, Sam was lonely. He usually functioned at a pace that ensured he was never really aware of being lonely, but things had slowed below his preferred level thanks to the income and restrictive nature of the TV work. Worse than that, the anticipated chat show appearances had not yet materialised and he seemed to be in an unaccustomed rut. Same locations, same subjects, same long term relationships with the groupies that ran his business. Kira had pointed out in one of her many irate videos that this was now stifling his opportunities, and he suddenly had the feeling that the stupid bitch might be right. Surely not? Sam scowled at his wrinkles in the mirror as he pondered the fact that he even remembered this.
The gardening book was designed to push him into a more established mid-life, middle class market. The lack of prospective chicks in this market was depressing in the extreme. Older women were far too complicated and far too challenging if you kept them around too long, a fact he was painfully aware of from the increasing demands of his groupie staff. He had arranged his life to avoid the tedium of long term relationships by employing the keenest and furthest away female fans to run various parts of the business, on the basis that he would drop in to ‘service’ them now and again, but after years of this arrangement, it seemed they all felt they had a claim on him. So it was that what had started as a stable of sexually available workers had turned into a gaggle of nagging wives.
He turned his attention to the new material online under the search term of his own name, a monitoring habit he kept to every Sunday. The usual vitriol from purist vegans, mooning from lonely women, yet more disagreements from aspiring self-professed health gurus. Deftly, he clicked dislike and reported each youtube video that he felt was negative about him. Why didn’t people who didn’t like him just leave him alone to work? Why did they feel the need to answer back? Didn’t they know how much he cared about promoting health? Didn’t they understand the sacrifices he made for them every day? What was stopping these envious, unhappy people from living their own lives, rather than trying to interfere with his? Say what you like about Kira, at least she removed them after receiving her dislikes, although she had curtailed his disliking habits by impersonating him for her pop video, repeating the same image of his ‘thumbs down’ negativity over and over again. She looked particularly fat, of course, and the jacket she had spent a month making for him was far too big for her, making the hideous vision even worse. Ah here she was, popping up on a video after months of saying nothing about him whilst she made cartoons and videos for the pop video she had mercifully abandoned making. What was she saying this time?
“OLD! She says I look old!” Sam exclaimed aloud at Kira’s usual scathing affection. He realised that he couldn’t really click dislike as she would know she had gotten a reaction and would probably retaliate. The only thing to do with bitches like that was ignore them until they dried up and hopefully died. Sam’s heartrate had doubled as he had watched her laughing about what could have caused his sudden aging. He looked in his notebook. Cathy,25, with the spectacular breasts – she was nearby. “Old indeed!” He called Cathy and invited her to his hotel room. No need for wooing with Cathy, he thought with satisfaction.
Tatania Harris looked at her elderly husband with bristling contempt. “What do you mean you aren’t attending the Whitehouse? You can’t say no to the President. You can’t possibly expect me to go through the paparazzi alone?”
David was seventy four, had been Hollywood royalty since birth as a result of his gorgeous mother’s ascent to stardom in the forties, and was currently recovering from a rather expensive bout of leukemia. “I would rather stay home with the kids. We’ve seen all this before. We don’t need them anymore, Tatania.”
Like hell we don’t, thought Tatania. A still fiercely ambitious Cornish woman in her mid-forties, she retained her drive despite the inevitable fading of her famous looks. She wasn’t maintaining her celebrated rear end for no reason. She had always known, of course, that her husband lacked her drive, but he had once been an excellent career move. He had enabled her to crack the all-important American market and become an A- lister, invited to the Whitehouse, on this occasion, to increase the popularity of a flagging president. “Get a grip, David. Life is too short to waste opportunities.”
“Yes my love, which is why I am not going to waste the evening at a party when I could be enjoying my children before it’s too late.” David sighed. “Feel free to invite someone else. Maybe Clooney would go with you?”
“I don’t want to go with Clooney, I want to go with you, darling.” Tatania purred. David was the established all-American star, not her. She tried in vain, however, David was shaking his head as he stroked the heavy, metal-plated armrests on his expensive dining chair. “Oh for God’s sake, David.” Tatania lost her patience. She tossed her much admired strawberry blonde waves as she rose from the intricately veneered table, gracefully managing to miss banging her now slightly scrawny hips on the edge. Americans had no taste for the comforting British middle aged curve, and so neither did Tatania. Her looks continued to suffer as a result, necessitating many trips to the plastic surgeon.
“You’ll be fine on your own, darling.”
“I suppose I’ll have to be. Maybe I should try it for a bit longer than tomorrow night.”
David looked at her. Her career had not been going quite so well, of late, he knew that. But why was she so bothered? They had more money than anyone deserved, why couldn’t she just make the effort to understand him, for a change? They had more than enough, and time was short. He was 74, and who knew if he was really clear of leukaemia, or worse, another form of cancer? Why couldn’t she just take a few days off the gym and the overwhelming ambition for a change and enjoy some time with him? “If that’s how you feel Tatania, I am sure you can have some time to yourself.” He so wanted her to be happy and stop wanting so much out of life, but if what she needed was time to think, so be it.
Interpreting this as his not caring about her anymore, the huge and fragile ego of the prima donna kicked in. “Are you seeing someone?” Her blood pressure rose as she expressed her passion for her multi-millionaire meal ticket. She donned her best ‘proud but raunchy’ expression and assumed her most impressive ‘wounded wife’ pose by the fireplace.
“Of course not, I just want to stay in. If you really want to spend some time on your own, you should do it. I don’t want you to be unhappy for a single minute. We’ve been through a lot in the last year or two. I will completely understand if you want a break.” David, desperate to indulge his beloved, dug the unfortunate hole deeper.
“FINE!” Tatania flounced out of the room to scream for the staff. “I need a packer!” she yelled as she ran up the huge staircase. “And the stylist! Tomorrow night is the Whitehouse dinner!”
Unaccustomed to feeling unwanted after years of ensuring quite the opposite, she was not used to the knot sitting uncomfortably somewhere around her waistline. She satisfied herself by bullying the PA, the packing assistant and flirting with the stylist as she prepared for her lonely appearance at the Whitehouse. “Not my packing, you idiot, HIS! I am not going anywhere!”
Malcolm kissed Valerie good morning and ran his hand to the small of her back. The Arbory Retreat, as it was now known, had done well that year, thanks to several rallies under some common health problem banners. The Diabetes Festival that Sam had come up with had borne Malcolm sufficient fruit to enable him to enjoy a couple of months off every year, time he valued as time to spend with the delightful Valerie. With an agility not normally associated with a septuagenarian, he rolled over and sprang out of bed when he heard the ringing of the telephone.
Several minutes later, Valerie emerged from the bedroom to see a naked and bewildered Malcolm still standing by the phone. “What’s up?”
“David Harris wants to come here. Indefinitely.” Malcolm was usually so calm, now he just appeared to be stunned.
“The David Harris from the movies?”
“Yes. He says he needs a break. I didn’t even know he was into this kind of stuff.”
“He’s been ill, he will be into every kind of stuff to make him better. It was on the news. My, we have gone up in the world.” Valerie smiled. “I hope you said yes?” She raised her eyebrows.
“Of course I said yes. He doesn’t want anyone to know where he is, though.”
“Best we keep him in the house then, just in case we get any flying visitors.” Malcolm didn’t get too many since Zeb Toledo, the public speaking megastar, had stopped visiting in his helicopter, but you couldn’t be too careful with such an important guest, he surmised. They made up the guest suite in a state of subdued excitement, adding some exuberant foliage plants from the garden in pots for the private courtyard, settling down to their last week of freedom before their honoured visitor was due to arrive, fresh from his holiday in the Maldives.
I’d better touch up my roots, thought Valerie, patting her hair, as she happily went about the house, checking ionisers and mopping tiles.
Alex, the pool boy, was very surprised to find his trousers around his ankles after he was ordered into the house to see Tatania. A weekly visit was usually sufficient to maintain the large pool at the Harris home and he had assumed that he was in trouble when she screamed from the window for him. He had found himself efficiently stripped down to almost nothing and was now wondering if he was, in fact, dreaming. The strawberry blonde head of the famous actress now bobbed rhythmically at his groin. Could this really be happening? Suddenly, just at the point where he was starting to forget who it was and enjoy it, she stopped. “Now, boy!” She appeared in front of him and flung the gold silk dressing gown open to reveal her still very impressive body, clad only in equally impressive underwear.
“Please, I’d rather…”
“Shut up! Now.” Her rather menacing tone dropped somewhat, to a growl.
Alex blinked. He couldn’t really want to say no to her, could he? He supposed he wasn’t a real man unless he did it, and besides, who would dare to turn her down? ‘Once more into the breach,’ he thought, as he made an obligatory lunge forwards. It appeared to have been the correct course of action.
Sam looked up irritably from his copy of Homes and Garden. This crap wasn’t really his bag, but the marketing masterplan had to work with his age. Aging sucked. He stuck his chin out in mute protest at his homemaking enslavement at the hands of the empire-building money god, and tugged at his beard.
Molly and Happy looked at each other in despair. Would he ever be in the mood? He looked so fed up. They had already tried getting naked. It had failed to distract him from his surly reverie with the interior magazines. “Can we put some music on Sam?” Unaccustomed as they were to actually talking to him, they felt a little nervous.
“Of course you can, I’m not your pa.” Sam snapped. Happy jumped. This was not like Sam at all.
“Have we done something wrong?” Molly’s eyebrows formed a sharp arrow as her eyes widened. The pink plaits, which almost reached her equally pink nipples, heightened the overall effect. Sam noted this, softening somewhat.
“I’m sorry, ladies, I’m just tired of studying this BS. Come here.” He put the glossy magazine down and opened his arms for his beloved chicklets. Molly and Happy were suitably overjoyed.
Aldous removed the headphones and closed the browser on Kira’s company website. “I think that’s as much as we can do today. The call centre reported excellent figures.”
“Oh good. Any idea how the booksales on Raw Scandal 5 are doing?”
“26 a day or so, it seems to be doing very well.” Aldous picked up his jacket.
“Oh good. Maybe I will be rewarded for my efforts in my next life.”
“You’ve devoted a tenth of your life to this guy, you know that? And he still can’t manage an email. Doesn’t it piss you off?”
“It is what it is, Aldous. It makes me feel better, and besides, maybe one day I will want to write about something else and the audience will already be there. This isn’t about trapping him and I’m not really interested in screwing him. I doubt very much I have sufficient skill in that direction. If he wants to talk to me, I’m easy enough to find and he has more than enough determination to figure out how to do it.” Kira paused, frowning. “Given the unusual circumstances he really has to come and get me if he decides he wants to. There’s no point in chasing somebody who has women coming out of his ears and an obsession with his own freedom, however fake that freedom is, unless he wants to be caught. ”
“Do you think that’s likely?”
“Not really, no, by the time he grows up and smells the roses I will be decrepit. He will probably end up in his dotage watching his very much younger wife screw the gardener. He will enjoy that and feel that he has achieved the American dream. At least he won’t be bored.”
Aldous collapsed in a fit of giggles. This was most unusual, Aldous usually saved his chortling for when Kira wasn’t looking, assuming that her jokes were unwittingly at her own expense. Given that Kira’s jokes tended to be very much witting, this annoyed her slightly, but it was nice to have company now and again and it gave her time to see to her mother.
Kira tried to avoid
bridling. “It’s a shame he couldn’t see past the gender issue really, I should
have pretended to be a man when I spoke to him.