Nick felt his spirit drain from his body. The empty feeling started at his neck and moved down through him. He looked down at his feet, expecting to see some kind of puddle of essence or heap of crystals or something.
“Ronni?” It was half-plea, half-question. Bewildered. Lost. Nick sat down in an armchair and cried like a baby. And when he had no more tears left, he wiped his eyes on his sleeve and stood up. He looked around the room for a tissue, but didn’t see one. He walked over to the table and picked up one of the linen napkins and used it instead. Then he picked up one of the shrimp from the bowl of ice..
What a bitch! he said to himself, popping the shrimp into his mouth. The taste of the shrimp reminded him that he hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast. He picked up another shrimp and swooshed it through the cocktail sauce.
What a fickle bitch! he thought. He wondered how long they would stay married, the happy Mr. and Mrs. Fenton. Maybe Ronni would start making a list of former husbands now, instead of former fiancés. Nick ate the last of the shrimp from his bowl.
Nick poured himself a glass of ice water and drank it down. Then he ate a piece of bread to get rid of the taste of the shrimp cocktail. Then he ate Ronni’s shrimp cocktail.
Yep, he thought. It won’t last. More of her words came back to him. “James said he wouldn’t tolerate another engagement and we had to get married immediately.” So even James knew, thought Nick, making her get married so quickly. He pushed away the thought that he had intended to do the same thing and reached for the plate of linguini. It was good. It might not be the chef’s regular thing, but it was good. Nick ate the whole plateful.
And then he ate Ronni’s. And he washed the whole thing down with the rest of the wine.
Yessir, James, you’re welcome to her. You can have her silly games and her pouting lips and her spoiled-little-rich-girl attitude. I hope you’ll both be very happy. Mr. and Mrs. Fucking Blast-from-the-past James Fucking Fenton.
Blast-from-the-past James.
Nick had named him that. James and Ronni had gone to high school together, some upper crust school in Chicago. They had drifted apart when he went away to college and had come back together the summer after his sophomore year. That’s when they got engaged. Ronni found it hard to sustain her enthusiasm for him while he was away at school…or at least for the enforced celibacy that a long-distance engagement called for.
So she started dating casually…oh, she told James all about it…it was just an escort here and there for the various society events she attended. Eventually, she slept with one of them and she broke off the engagement to James. She repeated the pattern twice more before she got to Nick.
Often, when Ronni talked about her youthful days back in Oak Park, the wealthy suburb of Chicago she’d been raised in, a wistful smile would cross her face.
“What are you thinking about?” Nick asked her once.
“Oh, I just had a blast from the past,” she said.
“Does this blast from the past have a name?” he asked her one day. It was happening more often. Her acting career wasn’t going all that well. So far, she’d only managed one television commercial and two movie roles with no speaking parts…the girl sitting in the lobby kind of thing. She referred to ‘the good old days’ a lot.
“James,” she said with a smile, “James Fenton.” And then she’d tell some story that didn’t sound romantic or anything, just a funny friend story. A gang of us were doing this and James said…
Once Nick found out that James was not just a funny friend, but a former fiancé as well, he became jealous. Ronni thought it was cute. She reassured Nick that there was nothing between them anymore and that Nick had nothing to worry about. But it amused her to bring James up every so often just to keep Nick on his toes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Nick pushed back from the table. Look at what you’ve done now, he said. You’ve made a pig of yourself. You’re disgusting.
He felt uncomfortable. A whole bottle of wine, combined with all the food, topped off by the emotional roller coaster ride had left his heart broken, his eyes puffy and his stomach swollen and distended.
He went to the sideboard and poured himself a cup of coffee from the thermos jug that was there. He lifted the silver lid from the remaining dish. Chocolate-dipped strawberries lay nestled on a bed of mint leaves. Nick sighed and popped one into his mouth.
It was a mistake. The chocolate hit the linguini and the heartbreak and his stomach rebelled.
He made it to the bathroom in time to throw up. Wave after wave of nausea washed over him and his stomach heaved and then heaved again. When there was nothing left to come up, he kept retching, long gasping heaves that made him afraid he might choke to death.
Finally, his stomach was still, but his head kept spinning. He laid his clammy cheek against the cool porcelain of the bathtub and closed his eyes in an effort to make the room stand still. He woke up with a start a few minutes later.
Okay, get up out of here, he told himself. You don’t need to fall asleep here. It’d be just like you to slip sideways and crack your head on the toilet or something. How pathetic would that be?!
Nick dragged himself to his feet and turned on the tap. He cupped cold water in his hands and splashed it on his face. He patted his face dry with a hand towel and looked in the mirror.
His eyes were a little puffy and bloodshot, but other than that he didn’t look too bad. He grabbed his toiletry bag and rummaged through it. He fished out a bottle of Tylenol and his toothbrush. He could feel the beginnings of a headache at the base of his skull and he hoped he could nip it in the bud. And his mouth tasted like shit.
Back in the living room, Nick surveyed the remains of the meal and was disgusted with himself all over again. He was too heavy already. He knew that. And he was getting very close to being fat. Right now he could get away with saying ‘overweight’, ‘heavy’, ‘a little thick in the waist’. But he knew he was only a couple of pounds away from ‘fat’.
It was hard. When he was on tour, there was a built-in exercise regimen. It was the show. Jumping around and singing your guts out for a couple of hours wore off quite a few calories. Add that to sessions with a personal trainer and there was a good chance of keeping the weight under control.
When you were on tour, your job was to perform and do publicity. It was someone else’s job to feed you. All you had to do was tell that person to feed you nutritious stuff. Half the time you were too tired to know or care what you were eating, so it might as well be salad.
But when you weren’t on tour... Nick sighed. Yes, that’s where the problem was. When he had to be responsible for himself. And he just wasn’t a responsible sort of guy. It wasn’t all his fault. No one had ever taught him how or even let him when he tried. He was the kid, Little Nicky, with four older ‘brothers’ and a slew of management and gofers. The biggest decision Nick ever had to make was which video game he wanted to play next.
That was all changed now, of course. He was a grown-up, twenty-four years old. He was learning responsibility – in his career decisions, in his financial matters, in his dealings with family and friends – but he hadn’t quite mastered how to be responsible for himself.
He was a slob. He never picked up after himself. He paid top dollar for a good housekeeper and he let her earn her pay. That didn’t change after Ronni came around. She was used to being picked up after, as well.
Food was the worst. Food was his enemy. Nick never made decisions in advance. If they were going out at night, they’d ‘get something along the way’. If they were staying in, he’d root around in the kitchen for awhile and then phone out for pizza or Chinese. Mrs. Marquesa, the housekeeper, would have been happy to make meals, but Nick never knew if he was going to be there for dinner and told her not to bother.
The biggest problem with food for Nick was that he couldn’t stop eating until all the food was gone. If there were three guys sitting around a pizza, Nick would eat a third. If it was just him and Ronni, he’d eat his half and then finish off the remains of her half. He drank gallons of soda and beer to wash down all the food.
He hadn’t been with a woman for awhile before Ronni and he was embarrassed the first night they were together. He tried to suck in his stomach and get between the sheets as quickly as possible.
When he commented later that he knew he needed to lose a little weight, she had shrugged and told him it didn’t matter to her. She liked his love handles, she told him, grabbing handfuls of his flesh and squeezing.
And she never nagged him about his eating habits…or encouraged him for that matter…
Oh, come on now, Nick, he chastised himself. Now you’re going to blame Ronni ‘cause you’re fat?
He grimaced at himself in the mirror over the fireplace. Might as well, he thought, she’s never going to have to defend herself.
Wallowing in self-pity wasn’t really Nick’s style, and he’d already done enough of it for the evening. The smell of the food lingered in the air and was making his stomach queasy again. He decided he wanted all evidence of the meal removed. He gathered all the dishes from the table and stacked them on the trays. My God! What would the waiters think? All that food for one person!
Nick shook himself. Who cared what the waiters thought? But still, he didn’t really want to face them. He dialed 5-0 and told the person on the other end that he would like the trays picked up.
“Yes, Sir, someone will be down within twenty minutes or so.”
“I’m going for a walk,” said Nick. “Tell them to come in and get the stuff. Everything’s on the table.”
“Yes, Sir, Mr. Carter. No problem.”
Nick left the floral extravaganza that was Rose Cottage and went out into the real world. He followed the stone path to a larger one and wandered up toward the main building. Along the way he passed signs pointing down other paths. The Doctor’s House. The Livery. Honeymoon Cottage. Hah! He wondered if the Fenton newlyweds would be using that one.
Nick continued along the path leading up the hill. The people who used the cottages were obviously not beach people. The cottages were all in sheltered groves of trees. The Main Lodge stood between them and the beach. To get to the water from them, you had to either go through the main lobby of the Lodge or go around the building. Maybe it was for privacy. Maybe the cottage people didn’t want to mingle with the masses. He had certainly wanted privacy. He got a little more than he was expecting in that regard, he thought. Nick went into the main lobby. He walked past the front desk and out the door on the other side. Wow! What a view!
The main lodge stood back from the lake on a small hill. Terraced down to the water were levels of patios – some with striped umbrellas and molded plastic chairs, others with large Muskoka-style wooden lawnchairs. The patios all looked down onto the beach. Brookhaven Lodge was nestled in a cove. A man-made beach had been carved out of the rocky shoreline. Reflecting in the moonlight, Nick could see a line of floats roping off the safe swimming area. Although it wasn’t that late, Nick didn’t see anyone out there.
The days of families spending weeks of the summer at a lodge were long gone. Anyone with that much money and time traveled to other countries these days. Brookhaven Lodge had moved with the times and now billed itself as Brookhaven Lodge and Conference Center. Their main clientele group these days was corporate. Think-tank meetings and business seminars. Company golf weekends and go-get-em power-building retreats. They had also added an extensive spa facility and that had increased their business way beyond their expectations. There were a lot of women out there waiting to be pampered.
Nick made his way down the terraces to the beach. At either end of the crescent were large rocks, providing a natural barrier to the beach. Nick wondered if they were there to keep intruders out or the guests in. He walked to the far end of the beach and then turned back. But no, he wasn’t ready to go back to Rose Cottage just yet. He wondered what was on the other side of the rocks. He climbed carefully around the edge, trying not to get his shoes wet. On the other side was another beach-like area in that it was flat, but it wasn’t sandy, it was all rocks.
Nick looked over his shoulder. The hotel and the beach had disappeared from view. He was truly alone. A feeling of sadness swept over him. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. Alone. All alone. He had lost his insulation against ‘aloneness’. He had lost Ronni.
When she had come along, he had been estranged from his parents – not totally apart from them, just determined to stay away from both of them until they resolved their marital difficulties. He was not being pulled into that whirlpool of emotion! He wasn’t working on an album or a tour. He was working on songs, sure, writing them, experimenting with sound, but mostly that was alone.
The fellas were busy with their own projects and his regular friends all had day jobs. Ronni had filled the loneliness gap just by being there. And now she was gone. And he was alone.
