Chapter 25

Monday morning, Max and I left the girls’ place at six so I could drop him home and get to work almost on time. The extra distance from Woodland Hills added maybe twenty minutes to my commute; had I left it any later to get away, that could easily have been another hour. The traffic was beginning to back up for rush hour as I reached the hospital’s parking structure.

Helga was already at her desk, eager to hear ALL the details of exactly what happened at a porno shoot. There was no way we were going to get any serious work done until I’d satisfied my secretary’s curiosity; she had the coffee ready, so I sat her down and recounted a summary of my experience, concluding that I’d been very impressed by Judy’s incredible organizational skills. “She’d be a damn good project manager when we next need one.”

“Not that our legal eagles would accept her resume?”

I chuckled at that. “Maybe not. I wish some of them were as organized and lucid as she is.”

Not that I’m disparaging the hospital’s legal team. It’s just that sometimes it’s kinda hard to retain the will to live after reading one of their briefs. You’d think that there were normally only two sides to an argument; they must have contracts that pay them by the thousand words, because they cover all kinds of stuff. Maybe it’s because lawyer school teaches them to prevaricate and never say anything definite. Perhaps it’s because so much is up to the way the judge interprets the law that they don’t want to commit themselves to anything definite in case we lose. Sometimes I think that lawyers should have the letters ‘ACMA’ after their names, as in Always Covering My Ass!

But I’m catching their habit of digressing.

I called Mel at lunchtime to ask how they were getting on with the editing, joking that I couldn’t wait to see the first rushes. She retorted that they’d already had to discard three hours of me getting my head in the shot, before relenting and telling me that actually, Judy had been impressed that I had NOT tripped over the cables, coughed or spoken at the wrong moment, moved suddenly or made any of the usual newbie errors. Then she giggled as I asked her to pass on that I was in awe of Judy’s management skills. “I hope you’re not hitting on my boss?”

Judy’s more than attractive, but she doesn’t hold a candle to Mel. Certainly not in my eyes. My girlfriend purred back at me down the line after I said that; it was obviously the correct answer.

“Your place or mine tonight?”

“Mine. I’ll pick up something to cook on my way back.”

“Wine?”

“Get one of each, please. I’ll see what’s looking good at the grocery before I decide.”

She cooked us a great pasta dish, with just a little bit of garlic, sliced roasted red bell peppers and chopped black olives; flakes of tuna steak sprinkled over the top. A bottle of Pinot Noir worked very well; after complimenting Mel for the third time, I told her I was SO enjoying good conversation and being able to drink a social glass with my evening meals.

She grimaced when I said that; when I asked why, she reluctantly admitted that a couple of years after she’d first arrived in Los Angeles, she’d gone through a short stage of solitary drinking, and had needed to be shocked out of it when her friend Alaina had noticed the bag of empty bottles waiting to go out in the recycling.

“I hadn’t realized it had gotten quite so bad until Alaina made me line all the bottles up on the kitchen counter. Then she made me do the math. I was drinking almost my own weight in wine every month. On my own. That rocked me back on my heels, so I cut right back. Tried not to drink alone. Alaina was great; she met up with me once a week for just a couple of social drinks and chat at a bar; that helped so much. Then she vanished; I was miserable and nearly started stupid drinking again, but then I hooked up with Ricky.” She laughed, a little more bitterly than self-deprecatingly. “When he split, I discovered computer games. They don’t desert you; you can save it and start again pretty much where you left off. Then I got the dogs, and that did me a whole lot of good.”

What do you say to an admission like that? I’d obviously been on the right track when I’d realized that she’d been incredibly lonely, but I didn’t want to come across as patronizing of what she’d been through.

There was something I could safely confess, though.

I reached out over the table and took her hand. “I did the same for a while when I split with Marsha; tried to hide in a bottle. It’s not good, drinking on your own. Getting half-buzzed before you eat, and then pouring it down your throat like it’s a miracle cure. Might be safer than going out to a bar every night and getting so wasted you have to be taken home, but still a real dumb idea to think that alcohol is your only friend. After I finally worked out it was a lose-lose situation, I did crazy hours at work for a while, then something made me smarten up and I found Max. Since he moved in, I’ve hardly ever drunk enough to give me a hangover in the morning; not with having to take him for a walk first thing.”

Mel giggled; “They do have that effect. When a dog moves in and needs your attention, your own problems tend to have to take a back seat.”

“And they WANT to be with you.”

And, being the intelligent animals they are, they chose that moment to complain about the lack of attention. I keep trying to tell Max not to put his paws on my lap so he can see what’s left on my plate, but he’s not getting the message too well. Not that it got him anything; I learned a long time ago never to give in to a begging dog.

When we got to bed, Mel warned me that Aunt Flo was about to pay her a visit; we made slow and tender love to give us both something to hold on to in the coming week.

It was another early start.

At breakfast, Mel passed over an opener for her garage door. “I forgot to give you this at the weekend. There will be times when you might need it, when you get back before I do.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, Mike. I absolutely want you to have it.”

This from the girl who kept her doors double locked in case of stalkers. “Thank you. I have an idea what this means to you. I feel very honored.”

“It’s because I trust you.”

Oh my. Why did she come out with something so fundamental two minutes before Max and I had to be out of the door? I hugged her tight as I kissed her goodbye, told her again that I loved her.

The commute was better than the previous day. Don’t know why Monday is so bad; maybe it’s all the people coming back from their weekends after staying that extra night. I asked Helga; she joked that it was all the people who found two whole days with the family all too much to take and were desperate to get back to work. I hoped she was joking; but remembering back to the Christmas divorce statistics, maybe she wasn’t.