I copied and pasted the best and closest smile, the first one I saw, on my face. Naturally, I modified it down a lot from its original ‘Oh my friggin god, it’s Justin Timberlake…take me now’ origins. But I smiled nevertheless, feeling as though that was the right thing to do in the presence of a celebrity, despite the fact that I only knew a whooping three of his songs and was disappointed the cute one with the large adam’s ball wasn’t here. Now there’s a guy that I wouldn’t have to force a smile for.
But Justin Timberlake would have to do…for now, I guess.
After that interrogation of an interview I wasn’t really sure how to act around him. Especially since damn near everything he said seemed to be laced with a teasing undertone, which left me wondering if he was flirting with me. And after I was done rolling with laughter over the complete ludicrousness of such a thought, I decided not to even bother myself with trying to figure him out. Instead I used my normal way of dealing with a situation of which I wasn’t quite sure how to handle: either I kept quiet or I let my smartass remarks slip out occasionally and fumble with the follow-up words in case he was to become offended.
He returned my smile, only briefly giving me eye contact before focusing his attention on the reason we both were here. Sadie. She leapt at him without a moment’s hesitation. I guess I should tell you that Sadie’s his dog. And yes, my wonderful, life-fulfilling role in all this was as the dog sitter when he was away. And as I would later could to find he was away often. Too often if you asked me. Seemed like as soon as I get the dog smell out of my house, that’s when I get the call. Sadie’s back, Justin’s gone. Purrfect.
Guess I really shouldn’t complain, all that dog sitting - expensive dog sitting mind you “ was what had allowed me to continue to be the starving artist. Only without the starving part, I wasn’t a big fan of that. I’d already done the homeless thing once when I was seventeen when I had decided that I was too grown to be stuck under the rules and regulations of the big house (my parent’s home). After three weeks of living in a Wal-Mart, yes I too had watched “Where the Heart Is” so I’d already learned from Natalie P. what to do if I was homeless (no shopping cart pushing, under the bridge living, a la dumpster meals for me), I decided the homeless thing wasn’t really my style. I’m definitely more of a three edible and FDA approved meals a day, decent lodgings, clean clothes and body kind of gal.
Anyways there was something different about Justin now. Even before Sadie had bounded over to him, I could tell there was a change in his demeanor. Like he was more energized than the last time I’d seen him, like someone had shot his ass up with a thousand watts of happy. He was illuminating. His smiles were all shiny with pearly white teeth that reached an ear to ear stretch across his face. And he was doling them out like they were presents and he was Santa on Christmas Eve. His step had more pep, more bounce in his heel. His mouth was running at top speed as he chatted with anyone who would listen. He was more animated and lively about his gestures and really just in general more so. He was on a hugging rampage, which just forced me to brush up on my dodging skills that I’d developed after growing up as the only non-male child with a bunch of rowdy testosterone driven brothers.
It was fairly easy to dodge him considering how his house was swarmed with moving bodies at the moment, packed with all the people who’d clamored to get inside anxiously awaiting his arrival from the LAX airport. The house had been filled for hours with the hustle and bustle of pots and pans as his mother and a few other ladies who I’d never laid eyes on before glided around the kitchen preparing a meal so large it had to be called a feast. There were two little kids running around leaving their mother’s irritated scolding for them to ‘sit their ass down’ in their wake. A small group of guys had gathered in front of the TV, entirely engrossed in their game of Halo producing a series of grunts and laughs. Other than that there was another small group of girls who upon Justin’s arrival appeared to be more like groupies by their goofy star stuck demeanor than friends or family and some other people who I didn’t know what their reason for being here was.
It was like a freaking circus in here or at the very least a Timberlake family reunion (which made me wonder why had everyone just shown up all of a sudden? Did they always do this every time he came back from somewhere? He’d only been gone for four days, maybe it was some kind of special occasion that I just didn’t know about) and with so many people crowded into one place, it only made my itch to get the hell up outta there grow. But then I wouldn’t have had to be there in the first place if it wasn’t for Janice and her insistence that I needed to take this job because I should ‘expand my horizons.’
Call me crazy but spending all day chasing around and cleaning up after the white fur ball commonly known as an American Eskimo dog was not my idea of horizons being expanded. Speaking of the little devil dog, she was currently licking Justin’s face, wagging her tail so happy to see her daddy. And I guess I was happy to see him too. Now I could get rid of both of them for awhile. Hopefully.
“Alright, this reunion of dog and master is touching, really. But I must retire.”
“Honestly, who talks like that?” He said, laughing at me as Sadie rolled onto her back waiting for the belly-rubbing to begin.
“Like, um…I like totally do. Duh!” I said, rolling my eyes at him. “I’ll see ya later. Much later, if I’m lucky.”
He laughed again, getting to his feet. “You know you love Sadie. How could you not?” He said, looking lovingly back at Sadie, who sat by his feet, her tail still wagging.
But when I looked at Sadie all I could see was the poop I had to clean up that was still left in my backyard and the grass that her pee had killed. And when she wasn’t out destroying my yard, she’d be inside bugging me; she was so needy. Pet me. Feed me. Play with me. Give me water. Snacks. More snacks. More. More. More.
“Whatever, just don’t be leaving any time soon.” I muttered as my way of saying goodbye.
I hadn’t gotten more than a fourth of the way through weaving my way out of the maze of gridlocked people standing in the way of my freedom, when I heard, “Hey, where are you going?”
Glancing at the door that was calling my name I turned around and said, “I’m leaving…” before reluctantly adding, “Unless there’s something else you need me to do.”
“Well you weren’t just going to leave without a hug, now were you?”
You’re damn skippy I was. “Hugs aren’t a part of my job description.”
He just smiled at that, not saying a word. Taking his silence as a cue to vamoose, I again started moving toward the elusive exit. Half-way out the door, he called to me again.
“You forgot to say goodbye.” He said, that same grin from before still in tact.
“I already said goodbye to you.”
“I wasn’t talking about me.” He retorted, glancing over at Sadie who was busily tonguing down her crotch which she’d then thoughtlessly turn around and use that same tongue to try to lick my face.
With a sigh, I trudged my way back over to Sadie. Bending down, I scratched behind her ears the way she liked it while I cooed softly, “Hey, girl I’m sorry to leave you with these freaks, but I’ve got to go. Stay strong.” I smiled at her as she gave me her usual confused dog look with her head tilted to the side. “Don’t try to get me to stay by acting all cute on me now.” I laughed. “Bye Sadie!” I called, moving toward the door again hoping this time I’d actually make it out, despite the fact that I could distinctly hear Justin’s grumbles about how I’d given the dog a more ‘proper’ goodbye than the one I’d given him.
I so close to being out the door, when he jumped up suddenly from his position near Sadie and wrapped his arms round my waist, pulling me into a tight hug before dropping a quick peck on my cheek.
“See ya later, Fi!” he called happily bouncing off to do whatever it is that pop stars do when they get some free time.
“Fi-on-na! It’s Fionna!” I called to his retreating form as I swiped at the spot his wretched pop singing lips had been on my face. “Fionna.” I sighed, realizing the walls were probably going to learn to call me Fionna before he was.
The thirty-minute ride home through LA traffic driving my ’89 Mazda Hatchback was always a fun one. I loved pretending that the radio worked while I made up my own radio stations and switched back and forth between them, acting out the commercials and being different radio personalities. I loved when I got caught by a red light with some little snotty nosed sixteen year old to the side of me tucked behind the wheel of his/her new Mercedes his/her momma and papa had so lovingly gave her/him turned to look over at my car and stared in disgust as I jammed along to songs that were only heard in my head, before she/he sped off with all his/her fancy schmacy air conditioning and power lock doors and windows she/he didn’t have to crank to lower. I loved pretending like the hole in the roof of my car was supposed to be there as a sunroof instead of moving target practice for the birds whose aim always seemed just get better and better. I loved waiting at stop lights and signs knowing that there was a surprise waiting for me every time I tried to start moving again. Would my car stall in the middle of an intersection today? Would it even make it an inch from where I’d stopped it? Oh boy, did I love surprises.
But the best part of the ride was when I was able to park my car in my driveway and walk into my house. Okay, okay so it wasn’t all mine; I did have to share it with Janice, who was the only reason I was able to live there in the first place. I think it had been a month after Janice had gotten her job as Justin’s new stylist when her fairly wealthy uncle Bob, Joe, Henry, Tim…I dunno one of them had decided that city life was no longer the life for them and was packing it all up and moving back to the sticks ‘where men were men and women were ladies.’
So to make a short story shorter he had a little two bedroom house that he wanted to get rid of, Janice heard about it and jumped at the chance to have it and somehow it worked out that she wound up getting the house for damn near free. All she had to do was come up with the money to finish paying for the mortgage that was left and for utilities, of course. And no sooner than she had gotten the word that the house was hers did she come rushing to tell me the good news and the next thing I knew I went from forcing myself to be happy for her to trying to convince her that us moving in together was a bad idea.
I’d been living in my car at the time, which to me was luxurious considering how my prior residence had been a store that was similar to a blood sucking leech on whichever community happened to be unfortunate enough to fall prey to its plans for world domination - one store at a time. So the conversation went a little something like this…
“So do you wanna be my roomie?” She grinned brightly as if she was giving me offer I couldn’t refuse.
So naturally I did the logical thing and…refused. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I got a place to stay.”
“Where? How come you’ve never invited me over?”
“How come you ask so many daggone questions?” Seeing the knowing look she was giving me, I added, “Maybe I enjoy my privacy.”
“You can have your privacy and live me with me at the same time. You’d have your own room to hole yourself up in all day if you wanted. You wouldn’t have to see me at all if you didn’t want to.”
I scoffed. “Yeah, right. Knowing you, you’d come and find me and force me to hang out with you.”
“Would that be so horrible?” She laughed. “God, Fionna, if I didn’t know any better I’d swear you were trying to say you don’t like me very much.”
Rolling my eyes, I smiled as sweetly as I could muster “ which probably only wound up being a grain of sugar. “I don’t know where you’d get a crazy idea like that from.”
“You’re moving in with me.” She said without so much of a moment’s break in the conversation.
“Is that a question?”
“Did it sound like one?”
Yep and that was the end of that. Janice won again. I swear for as nice of a person as she is she can get pretty damn bossy when she thinks she’s not going to get her way on something.
“Hey Fi!” was the first thing I heard as I pulled my key out of the door.
“Hey Niecy.” I replied dryly.
“So how was your day?” She asked, not letting my chipper greeting perturb her.
“Long.”
“How so?”
I just shrugged as I made my way into the kitchen. “How was your day?” I asked, more in attempt to get her from questioning me than in actual caring about what her answer may be.
“It was okay. Except for when…Oh my god…”
And that’s all I heard. I’d learned after the second week of knowing Janice that any story that began with ‘oh my god’ was worthy of being ignored. Of course I let her think I was listening by giving the occasional head nod seasoned with a generous sprinkling of “mmhmm” “Oh yeah? Really?” and that was good enough to keep her talking for hours and hours if I was unlucky enough.
When I heard a long pause in her ramblings I sighed content in the hopes that I would get to enjoy the ham and cheese sandwich I’d just made in peace and quiet. Unfortunately Janice had other plans.
“So what do you think of Justin?”
“Justin who?” I frowned, taking a bite into my sandwich.
“Justin who?” She laughed in annoying echo kind of way. “Justin Timberlake, silly.”
I really hated when she called me ‘silly’ like I was some silly little girl who didn’t know anything about anything. And yeah, sure it was true but that’s like holding up a mirror to a fat person every day and saying ‘You are fat. Fat. Fat. Fat!’ As if they didn’t know it already without you rubbing it in their face every chance you get. Or if you happened to have a nice flat stomach and had an affinity toward shopping in the children’s section for your shirts and then loved to pat that nice flat stomach of yours while saying to your less body shape fortunate pal ‘My stomach is awful flat isn’t it? But maybe one day I’ll get it to look as good as yours.’
This of course will naturally push up your date with heaven (or hell, however God so wishes to do you) up significantly.
“Fionna!”
“What?!”
“You space out more than any person I’ve ever known in my life.” She laughed, shaking her head in her ‘oh you silly girl’ kind of way.
I wouldn’t call it spacing out, but more of traveling down good ole memory road.
Who made this road anyway? And why isn’t there any other roads to travel? Or at least one that doesn’t lead right back to cheery memories of my dear mother”without whom I probably would have turned out as one of those ‘normal’ square people with ‘normal’ square lives in a ‘normal’ square house. Instead of being this jiggly jello-like mass, constantly trying to fit molds that were never intended for me to fit.
“Yeah, it’s my one and only talent. So don’t ridicule it.” I said with a stark serious tone, seeing her give me a sympathetic look that roughly translated to: ‘oh you poor, poor silly girl!’ “I was joking.” I said; my mouth resigned in a stoic line, too lazy to frown or smile. “So what did you say?”
“I asked, ‘What do you think of Justin?’”
Without thinking, “I make it a rule not to think” came out.
She laughed. “You’re too much.”
Too much what? …is what I wanted to know but resisted falling into that trap. “Seriously though, I think…” I sighed. “I think he’s an okay guy for one that probably knows more about hair and make-up than I could learn in a lifetime of serious study. He’s a smidget too in love with his dog, I wouldn’t be surprised if he kisses her. A little too touchy-feely for my taste…”
“He touches you?” She asked, her eyes erupting into shock.
I waited for the ‘and lived!’ part, where she’d watch my skin waiting for it to start bubbling with its venomous man-killing poison. When that didn’t happen, I shrugged and said, “He hugged me once. Today.”
“Oh,” She paused before admitting, “He never hugs me.”
“Lucky you.” I said, halfway through with my food.
“He doesn’t really talk to me either.” She continued. “It’s almost like he’s ignoring me.”
Ah, the poor baby must not be used to a guy not falling all over her. “He must be gay then.” I supplied, figuring that’s what her ego would want to hear.
Her giggles were sudden, immediate, loud and on the verge of becoming annoying. “No, no, that’s not where I was going with that.” She wheezed, struggling to catch her breath as if the thought of Justin Timberlake being gay was so impossible. At least it wasn’t as far as I could see…he was just a feather boa and sparkling red dress away from being a cross dresser. And unfortunately I’m pretty sure he’d make for a much better looking girl than I do. Okay so maybe I couldn’t see him as full-fledged gay, but at least a weekend swinger to that side.
“I meant more along the lines of he just must not like me.”
“Pshaw, not like you?” My nose wrinkled as I waved off her preposterous conclusion. “Everybody loves you. You might as well change your name to Raymond.”
She giggled again in that girly little way of hers that was slowly becoming less annoying and more like the kind of laugh that I wished I could have. I could see her as one of those cool pretty popular girls, surrounded by all the other cool pretty popular people in the cafeteria entertaining them all by simply laughing whilst the not so cool pretty or popular people such as myself sat on the far outskirts of their world watching enviously claiming that such a laugh was obnoxious and ditzy. Only to turn around and lock theirself in their room practicing said obnoxious and ditzy giggle only to have their mother burst in the door screaming about how she’s been cooking and cleaning all day long for a completely ungrateful family while her one and only daughter would rather spend her time giggling in the mirror than helping her poor miserable mother out.
“Really?” She asked as if she didn’t know the power she had in just her laugh alone. “You really think so?”
“No, I was lying.” I said, my face fallen back into its usual look of perpetual boredom. “I do that sometimes.”
“I don’t know about you sometimes, Fi.” She commented, eyeing me in wonder.
“Fi-on-na! ‘I don’t know about you sometimes, Fi-on-na!’” I cried, throwing my hands up into the air frustratedly.
She giggled again before shaking her head at me. Her long blonde locks laughing at me too. The thought to cut off all her hair in the middle of the night to teach it a lesson for laughing at me, briefly entered my mind before I realized that I was as prone to guilt attacks as a cholesterol addict was to heart attacks. And my knowledge though extensive on gluing cut off hair back onto newly bald dolls, was limited on doing the same to a person.
“I’m sorry, Fi.” She laughed again at her mistake. “I mean Fi-on-na. But honestly, what do you think his cold “ okay maybe it’s not cold just a little on the chilly side”shoulder towards me means? Do you think he doesn’t like my work? But how could that be it when I’ve hardly gotten a chance to work with him? I mean, the most I’ve ever done is made some suggestions for jeans. He couldn’t be that mad over jeans, could he? Maybe he’s really picky about his jeans. Ooh and then I did get to take his measurements once. I was nervous so I fumbled a little bit. Do you think he thought I was feeling him up? Cause come to think of it, he did talk to me a little bit before that. Oh god, he thinks I was feeling him up! Justin Timberlake thinks I’m a pervert who uses my job to molest celebrities!”
A loud scream pierced the air suddenly. Noticing the complete look of shock on Janice’s face I assumed I’d been the one to scream.
“Why…” trailed slowly and quietly out of her mouth as she watched me incredulously.
I shrugged. “Sometimes you just need to scream. But what you need to do right now is shut up and calm down. To be honest I stopped listening after you talked about chilly shoulders. But I’m sure I really don’t need to hear the rest to give you good advice. Dear Abby is my cousin after all. So here it is your piece of advice so I can find some peace of mind…He’s a red-blooded American male. You’re Miss America. Two plus two equals four…except for the times it equals five.”
I took the follow-up silence as my cue to escape. Sauntering away to my bedroom, I was just about to close the door behind myself when I heard, “You’re related to Dear Abby?”
