Charisma drives me to the airport. “I brought you a surprise,” she says. She fishes around in her purse (a Clinique bag), thumbing the lonely depths that contain a pack of Parliament Lights, hairpins, empty chewing gum wrappers. “It was right here!” she says. She turns her purse over, dumping out its entire contents on my lap, hers, and the floor of the VW Rabbit. “I’m sorry. I know it was in here and I hate to suspect my friend but I can’t help but wonder if this is a case of housemate kleptocracy. You see a purse. You’re certain your hands do not belong in there. But in the end you watch your hands doing things they do not want to do! And I bet that’s where Brooklyn’s stealing ass is. Fuck!” Charisma hits the dash of the car. “I’m sorry, Matt. It wasn’t supposed to work out this way.”
“It’s no problem.”
“No—eff!! Motherfuck.”
“What was in your purse?”
“Huh?”
“You’re looking for something. What was it.”
“More coke.”
“Oh! That’s what I was gonna guess.”
“I suck. I suck my friend!” Charisma says this.
“You do not suck, girl. I mean: that’s what she said. Do not worry your little head about it.”
“Ok. I’m sorry. I wanted to do a line with you before you get on the plane. I had this weekend planned and I wanted it to be special.”
“It was,” I say. “It was special to me.”
“I wanted to do coke with you and have sex all weekend and I tried to make that happen.”
“You did a good job, Charisma. A thing that happens with planning is—you know—things don’t work out—”
“I know! Nothing I plan works out.”
“I was going to say: they don’t work out perfectly. Plans are just predictions of the future that you try to arrange and there’s the expected part and the unexpected part and they’re both joys in different ways.”
“I love the way you talk.”
“I’m just blabbing trying to make you feel better.”
“It’s like poetry.”
“You’re so nice,” I say.
She hits the steering wheel. The horn beeps.
Charisma’s eyes fill with tears.
“I only wanted a few short things. That’s all I wanted. This could be the last time we see each other. You’re going to go off and be with your LA girls and I’m going to get married and have kids and that’s going to be the last of us. This right here is going to be the end of you and me. Don’t you know that?”
“I don’t try to think too far into the future.”
“Pshff.” She wipes her eyes. “Is my mascara right?”
“You’re a little runny,” I say.
I touch the side of her face with my palm.
“You’re a beautiful person. I’m sorry I caught feelings. The one rule was: no feelings. But I did it. I did it before even you.”
“No,” Charisma says. “Every time I told you that was a time when I developed them before you.”
We said goodbye and I was feeling ehh about our weekend so I felt a thrill when I opened the car door, got out, and closed the door behind me. The thrill of something terrible being over and my heading back to comfort. Comfort in LA. It seems that wherever you go, it roses 🌹 up your feelings for home. And makes it ever cosy by comparison.
Past security, I had 30 minutes before my plane ✈️ boarded and I saw a bar so I looped my bag handle around the base of a stool and sat down.
“Whatcha drinking?”
“Gin martini. Dirty. With Bombay original.”
I had just taken the first sip of my drink when—at a bar full of empty seats—a business dude in khakis sits down right next to me. He’s talking on a cell phone—extraordinarily loud in my ear—and he orders his drink while he’s talking on the phone.
“Yeah, uh, I’ll have—do you have Diet Coke? Hold on, Elliot. I’m ordering my drink. Yeah, I’ll have a Diet Coke and..I guess that’s it. Can I have a straw, too, please? Elliot, this hero of a bartender is laughing at me for asking him for a straw—do you believe that. No tip, buddy. No tip. These people think that bartender is supposed to be a flash job. Yes! That’s all. Just a Diet Coke. You’re like an actor in your spare time, right? Think you’re going to be the next Bradley Cooper? How much did he make in his last picture? How much?! That’s insane. I long for the day when actors sang for their supper!” And the businessman goes on talking like this.
“ ‘Nother drink?” says the bartender.
“Thanks, yes,” I say.
For a second I tune out the businessman’s talk but bit by bit it tunes itself back into me.
“SQL? Whatever. It’s a chump’s language. It’s not even a language! You know what I told this data guy the other day? This jackass was like so what tools do you like and I was like we just use the best tools for the job. And he was like so why do you use Windows? And I was like, you mean, opposed to Linux or some new-fangled OS like that? And this fuck nut 🥜 goes on about how in his office everyone uses Windows but he got there and was all, ‘Give me a Linux desktop with a processor half the speed of the next slowest machine and I’ll outperform everyone.’ I know. Elliot. Believe me. For sure! Well I never told him you invested every penny you saved while you worked at Allied, in Limpsoft, and that made you one of the infamous Limpsoft millionaires.”
I looked straight in this guy’s eyes. He looked at me, blinked, and looked away. About a second layer, he looked back in my direction.
Maybe soften your ignorance, I thought. Maybe don’t go so far down a path for which you’ve never seen the map. Maybe learn some new technologies and don’t miss the boat completely when a minor little product called Linux comes your way. I just happened to work for Mead Research when Limpsoft senior VPs were lunching Mead Research VPs and after those lunches, we happened to switch from using Netscape Enterprise Server to Limpsoft’s IIS. I’m not saying any money exchanged hands, I’m just saying, look, Limpsoft maybe wasn’t exactly above board here. Or maybe that’s just how technical decisions are made in the corporate world.
I drink 🍸 another. And another. And my world is getting very soft. And I’m checking my phone to make sure I’m not going to miss my flight and I’m not thinking about limiting my drinks with any measure other than: be able to get on the plane 🛩 and pass out safely.
“Well, they’re dummies,” the businessman says. “I know they’re a charity. They’re a well-endowed charity. No. A non-profit doesn’t mean they don’t charge for their product. No, it doesn’t meant that. Do you know how much money Charles is making off those people? A percentage of every project a person funds. Are you kidding? His site will be obsolete in six months. That’s why we have to bill him for our rewrite as soon as possible. Yes. Charles knows Jim—how do you think we got the contract? A company like that has no reason to work with us. Because Jim told Chuck that we’d do a rewrite for half a mil. Yeah! Ha ha. That’s because right before that Jim got a look at their books and he saw a two million dollar influx after Chuck went on Oprah so Jim was like: We’ll take a slice of that. Yeah. That’s a chunk of change. Yeah buddy!”
I was getting drunk. I was getting pissed. I turn my head to the left and stare into dude’s eyes like I’m saying: You lame duck motherfucker. Please shut the fuck up or I’m going to open my mouth and what might come out might be mean.
He got the idea. He got up, leaving his Diet Coke behind and going to stand in the terminal right outside the bar. As soon as he was gone I felt much relieved.
I stared into my drink and then into another one. It was only once I stood up that I felt their power, that I fully felt my anger, my blood 🩸 boiling right beneath the skin. I unhooked my bag from the bar stool and left.
That business dude was standing with his pushy belly sticking over his belt and he reminded me of everyone I had worked for before becoming a film 🎞 student and I hated those people—hated them for existing and for having detained me for so long and for wasting my time.
I walked straight past that motherfucker and said: “HAVE FUN BEING A JACKASS, YOU IGNORANT FUCKING TURD!!” It echoed through the terminal. I wondered what his wife would think when he told her this story.
On layover Charisma texts me: “Fuck. Found coke. Was in socks. Had it with me the whole time! I’m an idiot.”
I typed: “No. You’re not.” Then I backspaced through it.