My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster [45]
Apparently while I was busy babbling—possibly93 spitting—at some point in my superspeedy diatribe I gave Chris the idea that Fletch was not listening to his music while huffing away all punk rock by lifting heavy iron bars but instead that his music was spurring Fletch on in spin class.
Chris signed Fletch’s book wishing him the best of luck and to “Keep spinning.” And Chris is a rock star, so I didn’t want to correct him and tell him, “No, no, you got it wrong,” so now Fletch’s idol thinks he takes spin class and most likely walked away from our encounter wondering how the hell one spins to Pigface.
And then—then!—I asked to get a picture together and he sweetly obliged each of the fifteen times I demanded because the shots wouldn’t save because I’d filled up my BlackBerry’s memory by taking too damn many photos of my new dining room table, which I then inadvertently admitted out loud and Jolene had to take the photo with her camera because I was really starting to make him nervous.
To recap, Fletch’s icon believes: (a) he spins and (b) he’s married to an idiot with a predilection for fast-talking and table porn.
This would be the equivalent of Fletch telling Candace Bushnell I bought all my handbags at Kmart.
After that, I pretty much had no choice but to buy Fletch the new flat-screen TV he wanted for the media room. Granted, all of our money is pooled, but somehow he found victory in me writing the check.94 Fortunately, I had the wherewithal not to tell Chris that Fletch couldn’t come to the signing because he’d had a run-in with Thanksgiving leftovers that had turned; otherwise I’d have been on the hook for a surround-sound system, too.
For a while we drive in contented silence. Stacey’s paying strict attention to the slick roads while I’m lulled by the gentle back-and-forth motion of the windshield wipers. Stacey breaks the stillness by asking me, “How are you feeling about tonight? Are you still worried about talking to people at the cast party?”
“Actually, I’m kind of okay. I figured out what my problem is. It’s confidence.” I wag my finger at her before she can protest. “Bup, bup, before you disagree, I realize I’m always going on about my own self-confidence. I mean, we’ve established that we’re both girls who like ourselves and how we look and what we’re about. That’s not the issue. What’s going on here is situational confidence. I discovered I can only be confident in a situation if I’ve been in it before. I have trouble with firsts.”
“Since you’ve already been to a cast party, it’s old hat? No big deal?”
“Exactly. I can be my usual calm, cool, collected self now. It’s totally the Eliza Doolittle syndrome.”
Stacey clicks on her turn signal and we ease onto a side street. The tires crunch in the snow. “How do you figure?”
“The first time she had to talk like a lady in public, she was sharting herself. She was under pressure not just internally, but from Higgins and, at least tangentially, Pickering, too. But as soon as she got that initial conversation under her belt, it was easy-peasy. She’d done it before and knew what to expect, so she handled herself beautifully.”
“Except for the ‘move your bloomin’ arse!’ bit.”
I stare straight ahead. “Rome was not built in a day, Stacey.”
“So you’re good.”
“I am unflappable,” I agree.
“And what happens when you meet Vince Vaughn?”
“HOLY SHIT, IS VINCE GOING TO BE THERE?”
“No, just testing.” She flashes me a playful grin.
“Oh. Don’t do that to me. I just had, like, fourteen heart attacks. Otherwise, I’ll be the frigging Miles Davis of cool; just you wait. What are we seeing tonight anyway?”
“It’s called Old Glory. I honestly don’t know anything about it, except that it will be done well because we’re going to Writers’ Theatre,” she tells me. She pulls up to an intersection and yields to oncoming traffic.
“How do you know?” I ask.
Stacey