SHORT STORIES: Post it on Twitter

Cindy was leaning on the doorway. She had violet hair and tattooed eyebrows. She was much shorter than me, and she was definitely too skinny. She had one of those nose-piercings that made her look like a bull and she was wearing a bright yellow bra with some horrible zebra striped pants.

“Come on, Pat. You can’t miss it. Mark Walhberg will be there.”

Who the fuck is Mark Walhberg?

“Great, Cindy, really great.”

I was tired and sweaty and the only thing I wanted to do was go to bed. Cindy started typing on her cellphone while we were talking. Again.

“Oh Gosh, Taylor Swift texted me! Pat, really. You have to come.”

Cindy didn’t seem as if she had sung for more than an hour. She looked fresh as a daisy.

“Really, thank you so much. I am going to bed.” I replied, trying to seem as polite as possible.

“I have peach vodka.” was her only answer.

“Disgusting, but I appreciate you trying.” I told her, closing the door. Drinking peach vodka was a perfect requirement to apply for the list of people I do not want to go out with.
But Cindy did not seem to look defeated.

“Do you really want me to put on Instagram a selfie with all the celebrities except from you? This is the after party of our first concert of the tour. I have even posted it on Twitter.”
I watched her for a few seconds. I was tired. “Cindy, what the fuck is Twitter?”

She answered with a look that told me only how pitiful I was. Of course I knew what Twitter was, but my answer seemed to discourage her. «Just forget about it.» She glanced down at the screen of the cellphone. “Oh, I have to go, Marcus has just arrived. Wish me good luck!”

She rushed away without stopping staring at her phone. I closed the door, wondering why I should have wished her good luck about this Marcus. I should probably have known who he was. She must have been talking about him during the trip to the hotel, after the concert. We were in a car and I had been smoking and ignoring her, watching New York from the window.

Now I was in my hotel room, alone. I didn’t even feel like taking a shower. I approached the minibar, where I had requested to leave a good Bloody Mary kit. That was the only popstar-vice I couldn’t help to have, but I knew that asking for alcohol after a gig might have been a bit typical for a musician.

I prepared the drink in less than thirty seconds and lit a cigarette, then I got close to the mirror and examined my image. I tried to look sexy for a moment. I hadn’t felt very attractive since the mess with Arnie, but I had to accept it: I was getting old.

It was not like I had never been an amazing hottie, but now my face was all sweaty, my black hair were stuck on my forehead and my eyes were terribly swollen. All for having been singing for one hour and a half, while Cindy seemed active as the protagonists of those horrible advertisements of menstrual pads. Probably it was also because of the ridiculous amount of cocaine she had sniffed, but being a beautiful twenty one-year-old girl must have helped.

Rupert, my agent, had told me. He had warned me about going on tour in the US with a twenty-one-year-old girl who was way too exuberant and spent too much time posting pictures of herself. He said that it would have annoyed me, but actually he obliged me to go. His argument was logical: what does a British musician do when nobody cares about her since they are all too busy with all the busty American singers? Of course, she goes conquering the United States and she opens the concerts of a girl who has half her years and is three times as famous.
Rupert had told me not to feel humiliated, that it was normal, that I was a British artist and therefore I needed a strategy. Or some fake boobs.

I had hesitated. I didn’t want to go. I had thought that I was just fine – I had just released my third album and I wasn’t rich, but I wasn’t even poor. I could have considered myself lucky even if I hadn’t made tons of money by going on tour in the US. I had always written good lyrics – or at least, the critics had said that I was ironical and caustic. No billionaire producer had written my songs or speculated on my ass – my albums were my own works. In the end, my career hadn’t gone bad. Not at all. There were so many young and talented girls that couldn’t release their albums. I really shouldn’t have felt unlucky.

But still, all the celebrities I knew and who weren’t busy succeeding and making money, were all busy giving birth. And, of course, they were married to sweet and fond beautiful studs. After the mess with Arnie, the problem “family” wasn’t at the top of the list of my priorities.

I looked around me. The United States always gave me the same impression. Everything was too, too big – so big that sometimes it seemed useless. Excess of everything. Excess of space. Emptiness. The cars. That hotel room. And most of all, my bed.

I had a single room, but my bed was huge, as to remind me that I was there by myself. I wouldn’t have noticed if Arnie hadn’t dumped me just one month before. I would have been happy because I had an enormous bed for myself and I could have told my fantastic boyfriend about that.

But a great song, a sudden popularity and a new haircut had been enough for Arnie to decide to put his cock inside the protagonist of his new video, a twenty-three-year-old American supermodel.
I had even met her. Her name was Bianca Williams. She had gone to bed with more or less all the most popular rock stars in the world, then she had got bored and she had decided to turn to the alternative, less known bands. Arnie wasn’t so bad, and he had more personality than all the fairly good-looking rockers.

She was well known for being a Vine star, a Twitter celebrity or something like that. I hadn’t still got used to this explosion of Facebook, Tinder, Twitter and that shit. I knew that I should have posted some pictures of myself holding a kitty or praising the sunset, but it did not seem necessary to me. Well, given how much people cared about social networks, I couldn’t complain about the fact that more or less three people bought my albums.

Anyway, celebrities were having that kind of life: you know, cocaine, beautiful dresses, Instagram, Twitter, Vine: the death of communication. A real shit.

In the good old times Arnie agreed with me, but now, as I was painfully drinking a Bloody Mary, he was probably making a video of himself in bed with Bianca. And he would have posted it on Vine later, of course. That was one of the reasons why I did not go to the parties where I knew there would be a lot of celebrities – I was afraid of meeting her, because meeting her meant meeting Arnie, who followed her everywhere like a puppy. She was an heiress and model and she essentially spent her life modeling, going to parties and posting stuff on Instagram. I had started calling her Vine, as her beloved social network.

Then Arnie had left me to fuck her.

***

I didn’t really feel like meeting them. I know that it was a sort of nonsense kind of behaviour, but I couldn’t help it. I knew that she was present at every elite event in the States, so bumping into her as she was clung to my ex wasn’t really something I wanted.

I was just lighting my second cigarette, when someone knocked at the door. I sighed and I thought that it had to be Cindy, probably delirious and drunk. The party was in the hall of the hotel, and it seemed like half the world would be there. I could hear the voices and the music from my own room.

I hesitated. I didn’t want to open. I listened carefully to any noise I could hear behind the door, trying to figure out who could be knocking. If it had been Cindy, she would have yelled some shit to piss me off. But, whoever it was, he or she had just knocked lightly.

It couldn’t be her.

I cleared my throat and I opened the door.

Of course, it was Arnie.

I looked at him. He was leaning against the doorway, wearing his leather jacket, with a cigarette in his mouth and that irritating new haircut that reminded me of Elvis. It was awesome on him, I had to admit that, but I hated it. And he had the usual hangdog look on his face, the one that he always gave people when he had to play the bohemian rockstar role. As now.

I didn’t say anything and I drew a long sigh, waiting for him to end his show: he always used to lean against the doorway for a while, then he passed a hand through his hair, trying to fix the big pomaded curl on his forehead, and then he pulled the cigarette out of his mouth. What an idiot.

“So nice to see you, Arnie!» I told him, sarcastically. «This isn’t a cliché at all, you know. That you are here. This is sooo, surprising. I set foot in the States and here you are. Casual encounters between exes. Who could have thought it?”

He grinned. «Are you going to let me in or do I have to smother your sarcasm with kisses?»

“Smother my ass, douchebag.” I told him, turning my back while he was coming in.

Of course, he sprawled on the bed as he was at his own place.

“How long before you go away from here?” I asked him, approaching the minibar to prepare another Bloody Mary.

“Never.” he answered. “I’m taking one too, anyway.”

My hands trembled for a moment. I thought, hey. This is your chance. Just make him a Bloody Mary dense with Tabasco and throw it in his eyes. This is the right place and right time. I bit my tongue very hard to resist the temptation.

“So, what are you on tonight?”

“Nothing.” he replied.

Bullshit.

“And where did you leave Vine?”

“Can you just stop calling her like that?”

“Where did you leave the whore?”

“She’s at the party. She met some old friends and I was getting bored.”

“I suppose boredom reminded of me and you came here.”

I turned to look at him, taking a sip from my drink. Obviously, I didn’t make him any Bloody Mary. He was still on the bed. He hadn’t taken off his jacket, but he had lit up a cigarette.
“I just wanted to say hi, I was sorry about you being here alone. Bianca said it was okay that I came here.”

“Thank you, Bianca, for being so indulgent and open-minded.” I replied.

“God, Pat. I have been here for two minutes and you haven’t still told me anything that wouldn’t be terribly sarcastic. What about getting a fucking grip? I just wanted to say hi, holy shit.”

I looked at him. He was awfully beautiful, even when he got annoyed and swore so much. I wanted to hit him so hard. Why the fuck had he ruined everything?
“You know, Arnie. We have broken up just one month ago. I really do not make anything of your “hi”, it only makes me fucking angrier. And you and Vine are one of the reasons why I am avoiding the party, so…”
He interrupted me. “Pat, who are you trying to kid? I mean, of course, you don’t want to see me, but do you really think that if me and Bianca hadn’t been there, you would have gone anyway?”
I stared at him for a few seconds.

“Seriously. I know you. I know you hate all that cocaine, all those fifty thousand pounds clothes, the screams of excitements, Twitter, vegetarians, the system, the fucking Grammies, the celebrities’ selfies and everything. There’s no need to make me feel guilty because you are like this.”

I frowned. “Like this?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “So negative. As soon as someone gets close to you, he or she has to stand your fucking halo of hatred and intolerance.”

He had caught me out, so I glanced down for a moment, rummaging in my pocket and looking for my cigarettes. –Don’t you think this is the perfect moment to go, Arnie?- I replied, without looking at him, and I realised, in a moment of sheer terror, that my eyes were full of tears.

He got up, slowly, and he approached me. No no no, please. In a few miraculous seconds I managed to hold back my tears and I put the cigarette inside my mouth, nervously. If he had hugged me or anything like that, I would have exploded. My temples were throbbing awfully and I was more and more tired. And tense. I had been tense for so much time, especially during the last month. Or, probably, during all my life.

Arnie stood in front of me, with the hands in his pockets, and looked me in the eyes. He wasn’t smiling, but it seemed like he was going to tell me something nice.

“Pat. I am truly sorry about what happened, right? I knew you would have felt like this, but you shouldn’t.”

“Please, don’t tell me what I should do. You shouldn’t have come.» I replied, coldly. «You left me and you should have disappeared from my life. If I had needed some comfort I would have called you, but, hey, I didn’t want to bother you while you were fucking models and posting videos on Twitter.”

He made an interrogative face.

“Is it really possible to post videos on Twitter?”

I had to hold myself from hitting him with my fist, a nice fist on his asshole face.

“I don’t give a fuck about that, Arnie.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I really can’t do anything with you. You are so angry that you scare me. Try to save all this energy for writing some beautiful songs, or you’ll end up on tour with Cindy Willis.”

That was a low blow, but it wasn’t a good one. I started laughing, embittered. “I knew you would have brought it up, sooner or later. Thanks a lot, dumbass.”

He shrugged his shoulders again. “Honey, that’s not my fault. The whole world thinks the same thing about a thirty five-year-old singer that opens the tour of a twenty-year-old cocaine addict.”
Right. I hated him.

 

***

 

“Hey, Arnie, why don’t you go fuck yourself?”

He looked at me with disdain. It wasn’t really disdain, probably. It was also pity. He turned toward the door, but then he stopped on the doorway.

“This was my last try to tell you that I’m sorry. I know that it is not much and that of course I am not your favourite person in the world at the moment, but if you can’t appreciate the only thing I could do, I really have nothing else to say.”

“This is so generous of you, but now just go away.” I replied, holding my glass as much tightly as I could.

He sighed, opened the door and went out.

For one moment, I wanted him not to. But it was only for one moment.

He turned again, leaning on the doorway as ever.

“I am so sorry for you, Pat.”

I felt the tears again and I opened my mouth, trembling, but I didn’t have time to say anything. Suddenly, Vine appeared behind him. She was stunning as ever, with her brown hair lightened with blonde shades and with the gracious freckles on her nose.

“Arnie, honey, listen, Cindy was drunk, and…”

She couldn’t make it to finish her sentence, because Cindy burst into the room, staggering. She smelled badly. Of shit.

Of course, Arnie felt the need to shout what everyone was thinking and he started to sneer loudly.

“She shitted her pants!”

I stood there, watching the scene, unable to say a word. My ex and his new girlfriend were on the doorway, while my twenty one-year-old colleague was bawling and crying. The smell of shit came into my nostrils. Vine was holding her nose.

“Stop laughing, Arnie!” she cried, but Cindy fell on the ground, just in the middle of the room, screaming, laughing, crying and flailing as she had gone totally crazy. Arnie was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down his face. I was too shocked to do anything, but Vine started to scream at Arnie to stop laughing and to shut up.

I saw Arnie running a hand through his wet face and giving me a quick glance. He was trying to stop sneering, but he couldn’t, and I started laughing as well.

Vine gave me a really mean look. “Why the fuck are you laughing?”

I looked at Arnie. He had almost died laughing.

I glanced at his girlfriend. She was crouched on Cindy and she was staring at me as she wanted to kill me.

“Don’t laugh. She’s sick.”

I bent my knees to look her into her eyes, those bitchy eyes that I had hated so much.

“Why don’t you take a video for Vine now, cutie pie?”

She opened her mouth, bewildered. “You’re an idiot.”

I smiled at her. “Post it on Twitter.”

She didn’t replied anything, too shocked, and I rushed out of the room.

And for just one moment, as I walked through the corridor to go drinking another Bloody Mary at the closest bar, I smiled. Arnie was howling with laughter.