Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen - Dyan Sheldon [64]
Ella leaned across the table and touched Stu’s hand. “You’re not really hungry, are you?” she inquired gently. “Why don’t you just have a coffee for now?” She smiled encouragingly. “Or mineral water. Mineral water would be better than coffee.”
Stu acted like he hadn’t heard her. “Rare,” he ordered. “Swiss cheese.”
Ella turned her smile on the waitress. “Just bring him a coffee,” she said sweetly. She winked. “He isn’t really up to a meal right now.”
Stu stood up. He’d heard her that time.
“I want a deluxe hamburger platter and onion rings!” he bellowed. “And I want it now!”
The waitress raised one eyebrow. “You two better keep him in line,” she warned. “The boss won’t stand for any nonsense.”
I looked over at the heavy-set man behind the counter. The one talking to the two cops who were eating doughnuts and drinking coffee. He seemed to be deeply engrossed in their conversation, but all the time he was glancing around the room. His eyes met mine for one very long second, and then he laughed.
“Don’t worry,” Ella promised. “He’s all right; he just had a little too much to drink.”
After the waitress shuffled off, Stu fell back in his seat and turned on Ella and me.
“What do you want?” he demanded. He seemed a little obsessed with this question. “Autographs? Money? A quick roll in the hay?”
A quick roll in the hay?
I stared at him, agog. Was this the poet whose words of light had lit my darkest days; the genius whose intuition and wisdom had so inspired me? I was shocked, I admit it. Shocked and disappointed. Stu Wolff is a spiritual being. He is supposed to be above things like rolling in the hay.
Ella’s treacherous words repeated themselves in my mind. Stu Wolff’s not an adult, he’s a rock-and-roll star… Stu Wolff’s not an adult, he’s a rock-and-roll star…
“We don’t want anything,” I enunciated carefully into his ear. “We’re trying to help you.”
Stu laughed. It was a laugh of torment and pain.
“You don’t want anything? Well, that sets a new president, doesn’t it?”
“Precedent,” I automatically corrected.
Stu wasn’t listening. He was still talking.
“What are you two, aliens or something?” He listed to the left, knocking over the menu propped against the napkin holder. “Hey!” he shouted to the other customers. “Hey! These girls are from another planet!”
The waitress and the counter-man looked over. The two tired-looking workmen in the next booth looked over. The women at the back looked over. The cops looked over, too.
Ella leaned across the table again and put both her hands on Stu’s. “Shhhh…” Ella calmed him. “You have to be quiet or they’ll throw us out.”
Stu pulled roughly away. “Why? I don’t have to be anything. I have three gold records. I can do what I want.”
One of the cops looked over again.
Genetics is a complicated thing. As different as I am to Karen Kapok, when I opened my mouth I sounded just like my mother.
“No you can’t,” I told him firmly. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself.”
It didn’t work when my mother told me I was making a spectacle of myself, and it didn’t work with Stu, either.
“But I am a spectacle,” he announced to the Purity Café in a working-the-stadium roar. “You think I’m a regular guy? I’m not a regular guy.”
“Shhh!!” I hissed. I didn’t have Ella’s patience.
Stu didn’t shhh.
“I’m a three-ring circus,” he boomed on. “You think anybody knows me? Nobody knows me!” He knocked the bowl of sugar packets off the table. “I don’t even know myself.”
I gave Ella a look. “Didn’t I tell you?” I whispered. “He’s a tortured soul.”
The waitress arrived with our coffees. “Food’s coming,” she muttered. The cop who was eating the powdered doughnut was watching her over his shoulder.
Ella squashed her mouth into a line. “Torture’s involved,” she agreed. She shook her head sadly. “But it makes you think, doesn’t it? I mean, why shouldn’t he be happy? He has everything he could possibly want…”
No, he didn’t.
“What’s this?” Stu spluttered as the waitress set a cup in front of him. “This isn’t a boilermaker.”
“It’s coffee,” said the waitress. “I told you before, this is a