Page 44 of The Spirit of Love
“No, you’re right,” I say. “I can’t quit. And I can’t miss the travel shoot. Who but me can stop Jude from fucking up everything we had planned for the season opener? No, I’ll just have to sit on the sidelines, watching him live my dream.” I muster a smile for Olivia. “Otherwise, you know I’d jump out of a plane with you any day,” I say, mouthing to Masha behind Olivia’s back,Not.
The door to LouLou’s chimes, and in glides Olivia’s mom and podcast cohost, the inimitable Lorena Dusk. She’s decked out in one of her mai-tai-shaded ombré pantsuits with an orchid behind her ear.
“Liv, baby!” Lorena says, tearing up, palms cupped to her face. “You look like a princess, honey. I see you at the altar with curls. It’s perfect. All we have to do is dye the dress white—”
“Mom, my palette is purple and green—”
“White is purity, baby. It’s tradition. Vir—”
“Don’t sayvirginal. That’s exactly why Jake and I are eschewing it. We like purple and green.”
“Then…I like purple and green!” Lorena says. “Your late father, on the other hand, may he rest—”
“Mom!” Olivia says. “Sit down. Talk to Fenny while Yas gets me out of this dress. Tell her Jung’s take on synchronicities!”
“What about some champagne for the matriarch?” Lorena calls out, sitting down next to me. “A synchronicity, honey, is an acausal connecting principal. Linked events stronger than coincidence that occur separately in time. They can’t be explained, only acknowledged.” She smirks. “You know, my daughter only invokes psychological buzzwords when she wants to shut me up, but if you actually want to know—”
“I do, Lorena,” I say, clinking my glass sadly with hers. “I need help.”
After Masha, Olivia, and Yas help me fill in Lorena on each new cringeworthy angle of my life, Lorena sits for a moment and thinks.
“Classic presentation of erotic conflation,” the mistress of advice says at last.
“So what does that mean?” I ask. “How bad is it?”
“Well, I made it up,” Lorena says. “But you seeing the same physical features in your work rival as in your recent fling tells me that there’s something not quite right about the connection you made with this Sam individual. There’s a rift somewhere between you two, something you don’t want to confront.”
“I wanted to stay in touch,” I admit. “I don’t think he did.”
“What a fool,” Lorena says kindly. “So you’re superimposing Sam’s features onto Jude de Silva, a completely separate person whom, due to professional circumstances, you are already primed to hate. To destroy. Your subconscious is helping you set emotional boundaries with Sam via the physical form of Jude. I’d recommend not shying away from this Jude de Silva. Love him or hate him, there’s something he’s showed up to teach you.”
Chapter Eleven
“I’m sorry, Fen, I’ve gotnothing,” my sister says the next morning from her sunny Silver Lake breakfast nook. Edie’s wearing her pink bathrobe that should probably be washed, and the same goes for her hair, but she still looks like an empress, nursing her seven-month-old son Jarvis with one arm and using the other to internet sleuth on my behalf.
“That’s impossible,” I say, whisking almond extract, my secret ingredient, into the batter I’m making in Edie’s kitchen. It’s six a.m. on a Tuesday, an uncivilized hour to descend on anyone, unless they happen to have three children under three who can’t get enough of their Aunt Fenny’s pancakes. “You’re the best online detective I know. Your gift for key words is unmatched—”
“Well, you’ve finally found a weirdo who can stump me,” Edie says, in a cooing baby voice, grinning down at Jarvis. “Yes, she has. Yes. Why did Auntie do that? I don’t know either.”
I halve and then spoon the pulp from three passion fruits I plucked from Edie’s vines on my way into her house. Left to simmer in a saucepan with a bit of sugar, the fruit will reduce to a decadent tropical syrup just in time to serve over the pancakes. I preheat the griddle, add a healthy pat of butter, and think about Sam’s cozy cabin kitchen on the two mornings I’d spentthere. The smell of burnt toast…the clove and hickory scent of him when he wrapped his arms around me.
“He was my kind of weirdo. That’s what made the weekend so—”
“Magical? So you’ve said a few times.” Edie looks at her laptop screen. “All I’m seeing about Search and Rescue on Catalina Island is a hiking accident from like ten years ago. Right around the time your young cowboy would have been going through puberty, right? So I don’t think it’s him.”
I frown, dolloping batter onto the sizzling pan. A heavenly aroma fills the air, and I hear Edie’s twin two-year-olds Teddy and Frank squeal “Pancakes!” from the living room couch, where they’re watchingSpongeBob. Which means time is running out before this conversation goes from adult to feral.
“What dirt are you hoping to find about Sam anyway?” Edie asks me. “You know he lives off the grid. You’re not going to unearth some illuminating TikTok account, or even, like, LinkedIn.”
“I need to know if he has a brother…or a cousin or another close relative who is male—”
“Why? Can’t we just assume those odds are good?” Edie sidles by me in the kitchen on her way to refill her coffee. In her arms, Jarvis grabs hold of my hair, tucking it in a vice grip between his gums. That the three of us can hold this pose gracefully for as long as it takes for Edie to re-caffeinate, me to flip a pancake, and Jarv to get his fix of my hair feels like a testament to our bond. This was the right place to come to solidify my on-set warpath.
“Because I know there’s some connection between Sam and JDS.”
“Other than both of them screwing you in the past week?”
“Other than that. In addition to that.” I reach into Edie’s cupboard for the chocolate chips, because what better way to send twin toddler boys into a day of preschool than with a battering ram of sugar in their stomachs? “If I’m going to declare war on Jude de Silva, and he ends up being the first cousin of the love of my life—”
