Affectionately,
Ruth Levine
Travel Diary of Jane Harris
Travel Diary of
Jane Harris
Holly looked happier tonight than I’ve ever seen her. Happier even than the day Brad Toller asked her to the senior prom after she’d spent the entire year just trying to get him to notice her. Seriously. She’s GLOWING. I mean, she’s still pale from having spent the entire day and most of last night throwing up— and her wedding dress is hanging off her, she’s lost so much weight—but tomorrow she’s going to make the most beautiful bride in the universe.
We so did the right thing, Cal and I, perjuring ourselves, etc., today at the consulate’s office.
Now Holly’s drifted off to bed in a dreamy haze, and I just heard Mark come in to join her, and Frau Schumacher seems to have left, and I realize I’m STARVING. I mean, we haven’t eaten since the Hotel Eden this afternoon, so I’m going to forage for food down in the kitchen, then go straight to bed myself, since we have to get up so early tomorrow for the ceremony.
I noticed Cal was pretty quiet tonight, while everybody else was celebrating. I can’t even begin to imagine what was going through his head. That ex-wife of his totally messed him up. I wouldn’t mind running into her in a dark alley someday. I bet I could show her a few things I’ve picked up since living in the East Village, stuff she probably doesn’t run into too much in her suburban kick-boxing class. Really, where do girls like that get off? They take perfectly adequate guys (well, OK, Cal needs work, but I imagine back then he probably wasn’t as much of a pompous ass) and ruin them for the rest of us. That’s just wrong.
Not, of course, that I would want Cal Langdon if he wasn’t damaged goods. Please! The last thing I need is a journalist for a boyfriend.
Although he does look awfully good in a bathing suit—
No! Stop it! I do NOT need to date a modelizer! That is just setting yourself up for heartbreak and many, many pints of macadamia brittle.
PDA of Cal Langdon
PDA of Cal Langdon
This is intolerable. I am in Italy, on a warm, moonlit night by a sparkling pool, with palm fronds blowing gently in the evening breeze, a platter of olives and crumbled chunks of Parmesan and a bottle of extremely excellent wine before me, and a woman radiating a very healthy sexuality across from me…
And I’m playing War with her.
What’s wrong with this picture?
What’s wrong with ME? I shouldn’t want this woman. She’s everything I can’t stand… artistic, obsessed with popular culture, set in her ways, American…
And yet…
I want to kiss her.
Maybe it’s the moonlight. Maybe it’s this damned place.
Or maybe it’s because she made me laugh so many times today.
Damn. What’s happening to me? So she made me laugh. Mark makes me laugh, and I don’t want to kiss him. I don’t even like funny women. And I especially don’t like funny artistic women.
So why is it that I’m going to kill this kid if he doesn’t get the hell out of here in the next five minutes?
One.
Two.
Three.
He’s still not leaving. He’s telling some story about a comic he loves. Jane is apparently familiar with it, though it’s not her own. It appears to have elves and gnomes in it. Peter is gushing over the fact that the final installment is coming out in only two weeks. Jane, who knows the author, says she’s heard what’s going to happen, but flirtatiously refuses to tell the kid. He is delighted by this, and is begging her. She refuses to divulge what she knows, and lays down an eight. Peter’s just lain down an eight.
War.
She won.
The candlelight brings out the highlights in her dark hair, and makes her eyes shine. Her skin looks like butter…
What is wrong with me? I do NOT want to get involved with this woman. Or any woman, for that matter. I have a book to write. I have to find a place to live. I don’t even have a dry cleaner. I can’t get into a relationship….
OK, I’m giving the kid another five minutes to leave. It’s nearly midnight. Doesn’t he have some computer system he has to go hack into somewhere back home?
Now she’s asking him about Annika. Who the hell is Annika? Oh, the girl at the mayor’s office. The mayor’s daughter, apparently. Peter speaks scathingly of Annika, whom he’s clearly in love with, and who, judging by his insistence that he loathes her, obviously doesn’t return his feelings for her.
I slap down a two. So does Peter.
War.
Oh, it’s war, my boy. In more ways than you know.
Wait. What’s that?
Meowing. The cats are back.
She leaps up and heads into the kitchen to find something to feed them. Peter and I are alone at last.
By the time she returns with a bowl of what looks to be the contents of several cans of tuna, Peter is gone.
“Where’d Peter go?” she wants to know.
And I can’t help but believe that she genuinely doesn’t know.
This is a mystery I’m only too happy to clear up for her.
Travel Diary of Jane Harris
Travel Diary of
Jane Harris
IS HE INSANE? I mean, I know he thinks I’m silly, what with my “little cartoon” and my too-high heels that I’m always tripping over and the whole “carabinieri” thing.
But it never occurred to me that he might think I’m the STUPIDEST HUMAN BEING ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET.
Because that’s exactly who I’d have to be to fall for his whole “It’s just a kiss, it doesn’t have to mean anything” routine.
But you know what? I’m not going to let him. Ruin the wedding, I mean. He can sulk all he wants tonight, but if he comes downstairs tomorrow morning with anything but a great big happy smile on his face, I will personally give his arm hairs a twist he won’t forget.
Who does he think he is, anyway, Enrique Iglesias? “I just want to kiss you. You’re an an artist. I thought you people were used to living in the moment?”
