“You sick mother fucker son of a bitch!” she shrieked, tearing the silver branches from her neck and attempting to stab them at Dominic’s eyeballs. “It’s over! Fuck you!”
Dagmar lifted a three thousand dollar trench coat off the rack, threw it around her shoulders, and ran out the door screeching expletives.
We all stood blinking in horror.
I hesitated, thinking.
“Follow her!” I soon yelled to Grant, as if his very manhood hadn’t just been assaulted. “Grab the damn camera!”
Within seconds, we were chasing Dagmar down the streets of Paris. Camera rolling. Dominic and dogs in tow, like real hounds released into the wild. I couldn’t believe it—a full-on sprint!
Grant was leading the pack with a 35-pound monolith on his shoulder and rolling at the same time. His audio mixer wasn’t far behind with a boom pole, like a spear, clearing the way through startled crowds. The camera assist was leaping small children with a forty-pound backpack and two camera bricks. After about eleven minutes of racing and weaving through traffic, people, statues, and fountains, we saw Dagmar dive into a taxi. For about another ten seconds, the guys thought it a brilliant idea to do a foot-chase after her taxi.
Noooooooo!
About a full minute later, I jogged up to my team as they stood hyperventilating on a street corner.
“We can’t catch her,” Grant panted, gasping for breath.
“We tried,” I heaved, my lungs raw from the chase.
No way in hell was I running any more, even if we could catch her. I, for one, liked my lungs and wanted to keep them inside my body, where they belonged. In my entire life, I had never run so fast. I buckled over, my hands placed firmly on my knees to get air. I thought I might puke. Then, when Dominic walked up, I thought Grant might puke. Dagmar’s European boyfriend was actually a bi-friend, and not a very good one at that.
“Sorry, man,” he said, looking at Grant. “Guess the show is over,” he said, half-laughing and hailing a cab.
“Where are you going?” I said to Dominic. I was coughing and still catching my breath.
“Nothing left for me here,” and Dominic jumped into the cab without waving good-bye.
“Your dogs?” I said, pointing to the rabid little rodents on the sidewalk as they frothed from the only real walk/run of their lives.
“Give them to their bitch,” Dominic said coolly.
With a wave of indifference, he was gone.
On a brisk, sunny Los Angeles morning, Toni picked me up at the airport, over-the-top excited to have me back. We had “catching up to do.” In her mind, that meant several nights of consuming bone-dry martinis, chain-smoking in musty, cave-like nightclubs, and picking up twenty-year-old hotties driving Escalades.
At LAX, awaiting the arrival of my baggage, Toni took one look at Grant, then one look at me, then another look at the two of us, and her balloon began to slowly deflate. She would now be sharing me.
“Have you slept with him yet?” she asked matter-of-factly.
“Actually, no. Not sure we’re ready yet.” I had no intention of spoiling what Grant and I had together by blabbing about it.
“If the sex sucks, the relationship sucks. How do you know you like him?”
“Toni, I like him. . . a lot.”
I pulled my sweater tighter as Toni peeled away from the curb at the airport, the roof of her Beemer convertible tucked neatly into its compartment, the breeze whipping my hair onto my face.
“What if he has a small shlong? That’s grounds for Dumpsville,” she said, wagging her finger at me, completely certain of the truth behind her statement.
“He doesn’t,” I said.
“What about Alex-hotty-host? You like him. You should give him a chance!”
“He’s done,” I said, wondering if that was true.
“Why? What happened?” Toni’s face contorted in disappointment. “I’ve been prancing around here, proud of your scandalous behavior. And now you’ve gone all goody two-shoes on me and settled for just one man? Oy! I give up.”
“Well, first, he has a girlfriend. And, second, I heard from one of the chambermaids that she’s like eighteen.”
“So?”
“So, he’s like thirty-six.”
“So? And what the hell does a chambermaid know?” Toni grunted. “Next thing you know, you’ll be consulting Star magazine for stock tips. Anyway, you should at least confront him before you dump him,” she said as we sped down Lincoln Boulevard toward my apartment.
It had all happened so fast. The show ended—or should I say collapsed—in Paris after Dominic leapt out of the closet. Grant, the boys, the mutts, and I were picked up in