Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [64]
“What happened?” I cried.
“Sea urchin!” His leg was aflame with the spines of the creature. Cary writhed in pain as we walked the several yards up to the house.
Next to my father, Cary was probably the most stoic man I’d ever known. He did not show pain, and here he was screaming his head off. I couldn’t imagine how much that sting must have hurt. Then the maid came running. She approached me and spoke softly, almost in a whisper.
“Only one cure for dat, mum,” she said. She looked a little shy about telling me, though.
“What is it?”
“You got to make water on the sting.”
“Make water?”
“Yes, mum. You know, you go to the bathroom on it. The urine take the pain away.”
“I have to pee on his leg?”
“Dat’s right, mum. You got to do dat or he gonna have some bad misery for a long time. But you got to do it right on dere. It got to come right from the body, or it won’t work.”
“It feels like someone is holding a red hot poker to my leg!” Cary complained. “Where’s the doctor? I need morphine!”
“Cary, go into the bathroom.”
“I don’t need to go into the bathroom!”
“Yes you do. The maid told me how to fix this.”
“I know how to fix it! I need an amputation! Immediately! Grab a carving knife, will you?”
“Come on, now.” I steered him into the bathroom. “Now, put your leg over the tub.”
“What are you going to do?”
It was hard to keep from laughing. Not because it was funny, but because it was embarrassing. “Okay, Cary . . . remain calm!”
“I’M CALM!” he screamed.
“Apparently, the antidote for the sting is urine.”
“WHAT?”
“Seriously, that’s what the maid told me.”
“Whose urine?” he snapped.
“It doesn’t matter whose urine! But somebody’s got to pee on your leg!”
“Why?”
“It’ll neutralize the poison!”
“I—I—ayeeeeeee! Okay! Anything!”
I dropped my panties and straddled his leg. This is crazy, I thought. I am about to pee on the leg of the biggest movie star in the world.
“Well, don’t take all day!”
“Cary, I’m sorry. I can’t. I can’t go.”
“Oh, heavens to Murgatroyd, why not?”
I turned on the faucet, remembering the old wives’ tale about running water making people get the urge to pee. It worked.
Within a minute, Cary exhaled, then relaxed.
“Whoa,” he said. “Our friend the maid knew what she was talking about. Dyan, I never thought I’d thank anyone for taking a piss on me, but right now it seems like about the nicest thing anybody’s ever done. Thank you.”
One evening when Cary was done filming, he came back to the bungalow and suggested that for dinner, we picnic on the beach. “Actually, I already mentioned it to the houseboy,” he said. “He’s going to bring some sandwiches down by the water at six. Nothing fancy.” I said I thought it was a lovely idea.
We relaxed awhile and then headed out the door. “This way,” he said, leading me out the front door and into the lush garden.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked.
“You’ll see.”
We walked down a long, narrow path that led to the sea. There, just a few feet from the water, was a table for two. Twinkling lights were strung through the tree branches, and flaming tiki torches danced against the inky sky. On the table was a glistening bottle of champagne chilling in a silver ice bucket. Cary led me to the table and held my chair for me, then opened the champagne and topped off our glasses.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. Hearing that made me feel beautiful. “And I’m not just talking about how you look. It’s your inner light that stirs something inside of me.”
We sat there, sipping champagne, looking into each other’s eyes, listening to the tide beat against the sand and the parrots squawking in the trees. We hardly talked. What he was feeling that night spoke so loudly, I didn’t need to hear a word.
CHAPTER TWENTY
A Coke and a Kiss
Not long after Father Goose wrapped, Cary took me to Las Vegas for a weekend getaway, then to New York for some theater, then back to San Francisco for long walks and fresh cracked crab. I caught a cold along the way, and the night after we were back in Los Angeles, I was flat