31. Overwhelmed on Long Island
31
OVERWHELMED ON LONG ISLAND
O’CONNOR
My time with Archer was over. That was the deal. By design, we were back to business as usual. So, there was no excuse for wondering nervously on my flight to JFK if we’d have some kind of “hello, I missed you” kiss when I saw him.
What a waste of time. A rank inefficiency.
Fortunately (I was sure it was fortunate), our “hello” kiss was an awkward mess. JFK was a madhouse as usual (never fly on a Sunday), and Charlotte wasn’t allowed inside the terminal, so I found Archer outside in the car pickup lanes.
Except he couldn’t even get to the pickup lanes and had to pull over two cars away from the curb and endure the irate honking of other drivers trying to pick up their passengers.
The skycap handling my luggage swore an entire litany to the Virgin Mary when he opened the back door to the BFT and found himself confronted by a massive, charcoal-gray Great Dane, barking hysterically and scrabbling her feet on the floor. Only Archer’s hand on her collar stopped her from leaping across, over, and through anything that might stop her from getting to me.
“Just push the trunk in,” Archer called from his pose, bent unnaturally over the driver’s seat to hold her. “She’ll move.”
“Uh, no way,” the skycap said. “I’m not going near that thing!”
“I’ll get this end,” I said. “Come on—heave. Hi, Charlotte. Hi, girl. Ow, okay, now push!”
Between us, we loaded my tech trunk in and I slung my travel duffel on top. The skycap barely waited for his tip before crossing himself and disappearing back into the crowd.
“I would have seated you like a gentleman,” Archer said when I got in, “but I think one of these drivers might take me out if I left the truck.” He leaned toward me, and I leaned in—our big moment! he was going to kiss me!—and then Charlotte’s massive head was between us. She was standing on my tech trunk to get to me, wagging so hard the entire truck was shaking.
“Cockblocked by my own dog!” Archer laughed and pulled into traffic.
I took Charlotte’s heavy skull into my hands and kissed her. “Hi, you bad dog. Aren’t you the worst dog? Don’t worry, Charlotte, it’s not your fault. We have to blame Daddy. He won’t train you, will he?”
“Aw, you sound like my mother. This is the world’s best dog, aren’t you?”
I didn’t want to know, but of course I wanted to know. “So, how are the groupies?”
He grinned, glancing away from the traffic. “Shit, yeah. Awesome! You’ll love this. There was this woman who got me to sign her, uh—” he gestured at his chest.
“Breasts,” I said dryly.
“Yeah. In Albuquerque, on the Sheree tour? So back then, we had a moment in New Mexico, you know?— ”
“I know.” Locker-room fuck. So very charming.
“And she shows up three days ago in D.C.! We were doing the meet-and-greet for people who paid extra, and I was looking down the line to check the, you know, quality.”
My warm glow was fading. Archer’s charm was losing its luster. “The quality,” I repeated.
“Yeah. You know, just to see who was coming to meet us. And I see this chick.” I suppressed my wince at the use of so dismissive a term. “And she looks kind of excited.” He changed lanes, too focused on the road to notice my distaste. “And she gets up to us, and bam! She whips off her shirt. Right over her head. No bra. There she is, naked to the waist, and she’s had my signature tattooed on her chest! It was so rock ’n’ roll!”
“Some woman you barely know had her body permanently marked with your name?”
“Not just my name, my signature! And guess what happened then?” He didn’t wait for my reply. “She pulls out this lipstick and says, ‘Kiss me with this and I’ll go right to the tattoo artist to get your lip print!”
Despite my unease, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Kiss her where?”
“Man, that’s what I said! She wanted it way high on the inside of her thigh or on her ass. Can you believe it?”
This was exactly what I needed to hear. This would stiffen my resolve to write the tell-all. “Do I have to ask what you did?”
He shot me his triangular grin, overflowing with happiness. “The lipstick wasn’t really my shade, but anything for a fan, right?”
I needed to talk to that woman. She’d be a good story for the book. “Do you even know her name?”
“Angela or something. Anita, maybe.”
He hadn’t troubled himself to learn her name. Yes, this was the tawdry cross between sexual looseness and fan obsession that would turn pages. “And where’d you kiss her? Thigh, right?”
“Nah. We figured the lipstick would smudge. I kissed her butt, and she said she was going straight to her tattoo guy. Subway, too—couldn’t go in a car. She said she didn’t dare sit down for fear of smearing it.”
I’d find her on Instagram. No one tattooed a musician’s kiss on their ass without posting it. “And all this took place in the meet-and-greet line?”
“Well, no. I took her into the bathroom, of course.”
“Of course. Say no more.”
He laughed. “It would be indelicate to say more.”
I rolled my eyes. “And you are the very soul of delicacy.”
“Sure I am!”
Gross. Archer really was back to screwing groupies in locker rooms, just like he said he’d be. I had no one to blame for my failed expectations but myself, and no one would profit from it as much as me. So, carry on. Share all the details. Confession is good for the soul. And my bottom line.
And I’d ignore that crushed balloon in my psyche. Just some more mental debris to work around.
His parents’ house could have been used as an illustration of middle-class suburbia. The neighborhood had sidewalks where you could walk the baby in its stroller. It had carefully mowed lawns and groomed front yards. The cars were clean and relatively new.
Nice and boring. No scandal here.
Archer held Charlotte’s collar from the truck to the front door, but he let go of her as we entered. She took off, her feet scrabbling for purchase on the practical, tiled entryway floor.
Almost immediately, shrieks came from within the house.
“Charlotte!”
“No! Damn it!”
Charlotte streaked back into the hall heading for us, a large raw steak dangling from her massive jaws. Archer put out his hands to catch her, but she made a move worthy of the NFL and took a U-turn down the basement stairs.
“Oh, that dog!” An older blonde woman followed after the Great Dane. The resemblance to Archer was uncanny. Definitely his mother. “Archer Lawrence Armstrong,” she shouted as she followed the dog down the stairs. “You get that horse on a leash right now or I will tan your hide!”
A younger woman—Archer’s sister—came behind her. “Hey, that really is Opinionated O’Connor! I follow your podcast.”
“Um, thanks,” I said.
“Yeah. I love it because you are giving my brother a boatload of shit. Cool. Well, come on in. We’ll make sure Archie doesn’t get any steak for dinner.”
“Hey!” He sounded outraged.
“No more than you deserve. I’m Tina, by the way.”
She disappeared back into the kitchen. I put a hand on Archer’s arm to stop him from following her. “Your middle name is Lawrence? What happened to Chaucer?”
He grinned. “Chaucer is my confirmation name.”
“You’re not Catholic. And Chaucer is not a saint’s name.”
“Then it’s my . . . street name?”
“Jesus.” He’d wanted to know my first name, so he’d lied to me. And I’d fallen for it. Once again, only one person here to blame.
Archer’s mother reappeared and shut the door to the basement firmly behind her. “Well, this is a hell of a way to make a good first impression. I’m Ellie.” She shook my hand. “Welcome to our home.”
“Thank you.”
“Archer.” She turned to her son. “You’ll have to go to the store and get another steak. Unless you don’t mind if I carve one off your dog. ”
“But I have a guest.” He gestured to me, a look of gentle innocence replacing the lies about his middle name.
“Your guest will have to do without you for half an hour. Do not buy anything prepackaged. Ring the bell for the butcher. Ask for a porterhouse big enough for five people. If you come back with something other than a porterhouse, expect to eat a bowl of Charlotte’s kibble tonight while the rest of us go out to dinner. Go. Go now.” She pushed her son out the door and closed it firmly behind him. She turned back to me and took a cleansing breath. “Now. O’Connor. Your video on lowlights. I showed it to the woman who does my hair at the salon, and I honestly think my dye job is better. Don’t look critically at me now—I’ll be more put together when everyone arrives tomorrow, but I just wanted to thank you.”
“Oh, um, your hair looks great.”
“Yes, you have to say that. Come on.” She put a warm hand on my elbow and shepherded me down the hall. “You’ve met my daughter?”
Tina was coring and seeding cucumbers at the kitchen island. “We’ve met. Want something to drink? I’m having wine.”
They had the same energy—warm and overwhelming. “I’m on West Coast time. It’s a little early for me.”
“Sure. Where’s that beast, Mom?”
“She’s downstairs licking her chops. I don’t think there’s anything else she can get into down there, but I guess we’ll find out.”
“That dog can probably get something out of the freezer.”
“Then I’ll kill her,” Ellie said calmly. She put a glass of white wine in front of me. I thought about demurring—it was barely past noon in LA—but when in Armstronglandia, do as the Armstrongs do.
I took a sip. Cold and good.
Tina grinned and saluted me with her glass. “Archer has forbidden us to talk to you about being a social media influencer,” she said, “so of course we have a million questions.”
I laughed and shared a few of the more entertaining stories. They were both thrilled by the upcoming feature on princess teas and decided on the spot that they needed to check out the East Coast teas on my behalf.
“It sounds like such a great job,” Tina said. “What’s the downside?”
I’d been about to change the subject to ask about Archer’s childhood, but her question caught me in an unguarded moment. They’d given me a potato peeler, and I was carving away at what would become mashed potatoes for forty-three people the next day. We were all working companionably together at the island, and I’d had half a glass of wine.
It all conspired to make me answer honestly.
“It’s a really lonely job,” I said, surprising myself with the depth of the words. “It’s hard to have friends when everyone wants something.”
“You poor thing.” Ellie put a slightly dampened hand on mine; she was peeling potatoes too.
“Not me,” Tina said stoutly. “I don’t want anything from you. I sell Maybachs to the sons of Arab oil magnates.”
“Yeah, they pretty much don’t follow me,” I agreed.
“So, do you know Bella Southdown? Or the guy who runs The Scoop ?”
“Barry Slesinger.” I nodded. “Yeah, I know them. Bella’s not so bad, but Barry? You could buy him with this potato.”
“I believe it!” Ellie thumped her peeled potato into the large pan of water. “He recommended this Italian restaurant in California somewhere, and my college roommate went and she said it was canned pasta sauce and store-bought bread.”
“That’s The Snoop for you,” I agreed. “But with fifty-four million followers, no one dares to ignore him. ”
“I won’t follow him,” Ellie said. “Not after that. I like your posts and Southdown’s Variety .”
“Southdown?” Archer breezed into the kitchen looking insanely handsome and plopped a grocery bag on top of his mother’s peelings. “I talked to her just a few days ago.”
I froze. “I’m sorry. Are you giving interviews to Bella Southdown?”
He fanned his hands out in a “what about it?” gesture. “Well, not like a full interview. She just wanted to know about our invitation to the 9:30 Club. Which was absolutely outstanding, by the way.”
I’d seen nothing about Aftermath on her feed. I wiped my hands hastily and pulled out my phone.
Of all the mind-numbing posts, she was hawking someone’s heating-ventilation-air conditioning company. My god. She must need money.
But there were no posts about Aftermath. No posts about Archer.
Yet.
“Where’s my girl?” Oblivious to my search, Archer looked around for Charlotte.
“In the basement, where she’s going to stay. Archie, you are the worst possible dog owner. I’m ashamed of you.”
“Oh, Mom. What, you’ve put O’Connor to work already? Did you at least give her the tour? Come on, O’Connor. Leave this life of drudgery. I’ll show you my childhood bedroom. You’ll love it.”
I rolled my eyes at Ellie. “I’ll come back and help with this.”
“No she won’t,” Archer called from the hallway. “She’s got to interview me for the next dating-school lesson. No more potato peeling! Call us for dinner!”
“God.” I washed my hands and joined him in the hall. “Rude much? Your mom is having Thanksgiving early for you.”
“She would have had to peel just as many potatoes if we’d had it on the normal day. Come on. I’m going to get my dog out of jail first.” Once Char was with us, Archer threw himself down on the twin bed in his bedroom and leered at me. “Want to hear tales of the girls I seduced right here?”
I really did—and I really, really didn’t. “Your mom’s great. And I like your sister.”
“Yeah, they’re pretty okay, I guess. That’s a baseball trophy.”
I turned to hold it up to him. “Funny baseball trophy with a little basketball guy on it.”
“Oh yeah? Huh. Okay, a basketball trophy.”
“Meant a lot to you, did it?”
“You know. At the time.”
“Too busy seducing girls, I’m guessing.”
“Whatever. You want to set up for our interview now? Or I could take you to check into your hotel?”
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. We could record the interview there.”
“We could do other things there too.” He wagged his eyebrows at me suggestively.
He hadn’t covered himself in glory since I’d arrived. “No, we really can’t.”
“Oh.” His face fell. “You’re actively proving you’re not pregnant, huh?”
“Well, that’s not the only reason. You and I had our three days, Archer. We’re done. Remember?” Remember the woman with your lips tattooed on her ass?
“Okay.” At least he looked faintly annoyed as he sat up. “So, where do you want to do the interview? If we wait until tomorrow, the house will be overrun.”
Surrendering, I set up my cameras and sound. The interview, recorded in his former bedroom, made me edgy. It took me a while to realize that it was boring. There was no controversy. No fire. Nothing at all interesting.
“Useless,” I said, thinking about turning off the recording .
“What? No it isn’t.”
“We’re flatlining here. Someone’s going to call time of death. What about your old girlfriends? Can I interview them?”
“Well, like who?”
“I don’t know. Is there someone still around who dated you? Like, in high school?”
“Well, sure, I guess. I mean, I don’t really know.”
“You don’t keep in touch with any of them?”
“At, like, reunions and stuff.”
“But no one you’d call up now? Why is this so hard? How many of the girls in your class did you date anyway?” He grinned and looked away. “What? How many? Lots? Really? How many? Archer, tell.”
“I guess most of them at one point or another.”
“In a graduating class of how many students?”
“I don’t know. Four hundred and fifty?”
I was glad I’d kept the recording going. “So, of the approximately two-hundred-and-twenty-five women in your class, you dated, what, two hundred of them? Where did you find the time?”
He shrugged. “You’re talking about relationships, not about dating. I’m talking about one event. Go to the game with someone. To a dance. To the movies. To hang out. To . . . hang out .”
“Did you ever go out with the same girl more than once?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Like who? And are they local?”
“I don’t know. Why the third degree?” He looked annoyed, and I was more determined than ever to get hold of some of his classmates. Both the women and the men would remember how quickly he’d gone through girls. “Is there something wrong with spreading my attentions around? I guarantee none of those girls minded.”
I guaranteed more than a few of them did mind. Archer must have left broken hearts everywhere he went. Thank god I hadn’t fallen for it.
Ellie called up the stairs, “Come down for dinner now, you two.”
Archer’s father, Stephen, had arrived, so I met him. He was the origin of the triangular grin, although it lost a lot of its impact without his son’s arrogance.
We ate at the kitchen table, where the scent of things baking enriched the air. “It smells wonderful, Ellie,” I said.
“That’s the pies. We’re having steak, no thanks to that damned dog, and crazy mixed-up cucumbers, which are cooked so Archer’s dad can digest them, and this bread from the Portuguese bakery. I’m sorry it’s not fancier, but with an early Thanksgiving . . .”
“It’s wonderful, thank you. Far better than I usually get.”
Tina, who I already knew was not a shy person, nudged me. “Please make sure I never see my brother’s sex tape if that’s what you were filming upstairs.”
I choked on a cucumber. Stephen groaned, and Ellie put her head in her hands. Archer flicked his sister’s arm. “Jeez! Nice!”
“No,” I said firmly. “We were not recording a sex tape. I promise.”
“Actually, I knew that,” Tina said with a grin. “I stood under his bedroom and listened, and it was way too quiet. Not like when you were with Maggie Danforth, huh, Arch?”
Archer glared at his sister. “You can shut the hell up, Tina.”
“I really don’t want to hear this,” Ellie said hopelessly.
“You remember what I told you about condoms, son?” Stephen said.
Archer actually blushed, which made it a first.
“Well, I do want to hear about this,” I said. I made note of the name: Maggie Danforth. I could find her .
Tina dropped her fork and leaned in confidingly. “Well,” she started.
“No!” Archer screamed.
“I’ll just get some more . . . some more bread, shall I?” Ellie left the table entirely.
“So, as I understand it,” Tina confided, “there was a bet going about who could deflower Maggie Danforth.”
“Tina, could you shut the hell up?”
“I’ll just go see if I can help your mother with that bread.” Wherever the bread was being replenished from, it wasn’t in the kitchen. Ellie and Stephen had left the room.
“And Archer won?” I guessed.
Archer squirmed. “He did not win,” Tina corrected me, the glee of sibling rivalry bright in her eyes. “But not for lack of trying. What’s worse, he filmed the entire event and was going to show it to his buddies.”
Oh, this was scandalous.
“I never would have shown it!” he hollered.
“Sure you wouldn’t have.” Tina laughed. “Now, O’Connor, I can’t tell you exactly what happened in that adolescent bedroom because I wasn’t there. But I can tell you that I was coming out of the bathroom when his door flew open and Maggie came out, her shirt barely on and her bra in her hand. She looked very determined, like she was leaving a bad situation.”
“It wasn’t a bad situation,” he whined. “It was her idea!”
Tina ignored him. “And when I looked into Archer’s room, he was on his floor, gazing in horror at the pieces of my father’s old video camera, which must have fallen out of its hiding place.”
“She didn’t flee! She just left!”
“It was shattered,” Tina said. “It must have gone off like a bomb when it hit. What do you want to bet that Archer had talked Miss Goody-Two-Shoes out of her clothes when the camera made a sudden appearance? If I’d been her, I would have stepped on the damned thing on the way out.”
“She did,” Archer grumbled. “No hope of fixing it.”
“You were recording the seduction of some innocent virgin? God, that’s disgusting.”
Tina nodded eagerly at my side. “Disgusting! My point is, the guy has been longing for a sex tape since he was sixteen, and I didn’t want you to be the one to help him make it.”
“Oh, for god’s sake!” Archer threw his hands into the air. “I hate you.”
Tina grinned at him evilly. “I hate you, and now O’Connor hates you, and god knows Maggie Danforth probably isn’t too fond either.”
“O’Connor, you don’t believe this, do you?”
Maggie Danforth. Yeah, I could find her somewhere.