Milo's Bong & Fiona's Dreams: Ch 26 of Lady Slipper Farm And The Summer People

In earlier chapters: 23 year-old pop star, Fiona Neal, has tracked down her high school sweetheart, Milo, a law student working as a waiter in Vineyard Haven. She’s moved him into her swank Aquinnah house, to the horror of her controlling assistant, Teddy Zizik. Justin Bieber has been summoned for a publicity shoot, to be followed by a publicity breakup, to be succeeded by Fiona’s specialty, a new agonizing lost-love song. . .

At Lady Slipper Farm, the fourth partner, Thorn Dixon, is back after 12 months in rehab and he appears to be doing great.  

In the luxurious three-bedroom guest house behind Fiona Neal’s McChateau in Aquinnah, Milo held a black bong over the coffee-table. He flicked a lighter over the spout.

            “Frig it, man! I need this so bad!”

            His buddy Lenny, still dressed in the red tee-shirt from the O.B. café where he worked, said, “What do you mean you need it?” He gestured around at the high windows shedding light on over-stuffed sofas, thick costly carpets on dark-stained hardwood floors, and fancy-framed abstract art. “You hit the jackpot!”

            The bong made gurgling sounds at the bulbous base as Milo greedily sucked from the top. When he came up for air, a look of stultifying stupidity reamed his face.

            “It was just a – just a – a whaddyacallit?”

            One of his other two buddies in attendance, Jack with the shaved bald head, said, “Just an old g.f. who saved you from waiting tables?”

            Handsome, dark-haired Felix chimed in, “A g.f. who happens to be a hottie fame-ramped singer.”

            Milo giggled, his mouth still open over the bong top. “I’ve never even listened to a single one of her songs.”

            Felix said, “Like my mom used to say, ’Don’t bogart that bong, my friend, pass it over to me.’”

            The four young men swapped tokes, an operation that involved regular fill-ups of weed and water. Milo nodded to Lenny who presided over the CD player.

            “Let’s hit that, man.”

            Justin Bieber’s voice filled the lofty living room space:

You’re beautiful! Show it! You’re beautiful!

            The four guys listened with heavy-lidded eyes. Milo, rolled forward and back. He looked in danger of performing a face plant on the coffee-table.

            Jack sniggered, “Bieber must’ve used that ‘You’re beautiful!’ line on those two waitresses he picked up in the Hamptons.”

            Felix still retained a thread of un-doped intellect. He said, “I read about that. Some dude didn’t want him taking the two chicks home. Justin gave him lip ‘cause he’s got his body-guards at his back, an’ things got ugly for the poor bar boy.”

            Milo looked up foggily in the direction of the beach. “You think he’s got his enforcers with him now?”

            Lenny said, “’a course!”

            Milo said, “It’s just him an’ Fiona an’, like, a photo shoot crew, man!”

            Felix said, “You’re not jealous they’re gonna be kissin’ an’ everything?”

            Milo shrugged, “I hardly know her.”

            Jack leaned over the coffee table and shouted in Milo’s face, “Dirtbag! You’re marrying this chick in a six days!”

            Milo’s eyes were glazed over. “Yeah, I guess.”

            Felix asked him, “What happened in high school? Why’d you two break up?”

            Milo tilted his head back and scratched his chin. “She was the original ice queen. I had a night with one of her friends. She found out at the prom, an’ told me to go fry an egg on my face.” He eyed each one of his buddies in turn, hard to do as ripped as he was. “She lived in a trailer park, ya know. It never woulda worked out in the end.”

            Justin Bieber’s theme changed to the chorus:

                        All around the world people want to be loved! 

                        No different from us!

            Felix chuckled bleakly. “Lame lyrics.”

            Lenny asked, “We gonna go take a look at him?”

            Milo said with a firmness that transcended his gooey mind-set, “I’m not goin’, so you’re not goin’. I don’t want any of the peeps back in town knowing I ogled Justin Bieber.”

·      *

Thorn and Mandy, each with a shovel in hand and faced in opposite directions, dug a trench for their intended celery saplings, when two men in dark suits approached from around the massive herb garden on the western edge of their acreage.

One of them called out to the tall, thin farmer, “Are you Thorn Dixon?”

Thorn and Mandy, clad in filthy grey overalls, their sneakers caked in mud and grime, turned in shock at the two heavy-set men. One had salt-and-pepper hair brushed back from his large sun-burned face, the other had ginger hair brushed back. The one with the salt-and-pepper hair pulled a badge from his pocket.

“Congratulations. You’ve just won an eight day stay in the Martha’s Vineyard hospital.”

Mandy, a full head shorter than her friend, stepped in front of him.

“What on earth for?” she asked them with enough defiance, Thorn thought, to turn back Mongol hoards.

Thorn sighed. “Forget it, Mandy. I was afraid of this.”

As the men dragged him off, one of them with a clenched hand around Thorn’s forearm, Thorn turned back to Mandy and explained:

“It’s about Obama’s visit. I made some wild claims when I was burning down the corn fields. I don’t remember any of it, but it’s on my records. I’m now in that exalted group of one of the island’s certified nut-jobs.”

* *

On the beach, perched on two matching red and yellow beach towels, Fiona and Justin chatted like old friends while the camera crew set up around them.

            Fiona said, “I hope it’s okay with the storyboard writer that I’m five years older than you.”

            Justin grinned, “Are you kidding? I love older chicks! Did you hear the trash-talk about the two cocktail waitresses I picked up last week in Southhampton? One of them was thirty-two and, man, was she hot!”

            Fiona, who wore a white cotton smock over her bikini – she would not unveil until the camera rolled – looked shocked. “Why would you want to pick up two women?”

            Justin lowered his black shades to give the pop star a penetrating stare with his big brown eyes. “Are you kidding me, darlin’? You’ve never heard of a three-way?”

            The director, a slight woman with a mop of brown frizzy hair, called out from one of the three silver screens reflecting sunlight off the two stars, “Okay, kids, we’re just about ready. Who’s got the piglet doll?”

            “The what?” asked Justin, appalled.

            “It’s part of the storyboard,” said Fiona with a giggle, pulling a frayed pink stuffed Piglet from Winnie The Pooh from her voluminous similarly pink bag. “I’ve had it since I was a kid. They thought it would be cute if they photograph me shyly showing it to you.”

            He let out a chuffing sound. “You’re not shy about showing it now.”

            She took a long look at his dark blond hair, cut short in the back, but sprawling out, then flipping back in a way that looked like a structural challenge. It reminded her of – oh, what was her name? – that actress from old old movies? – oh snap! right! Katherine Hepburn! Her hair used to have that same lavish breaking wave on her forehead.

            The director called out, “Put your arm around her. And, Fiona, stick Piglet back in your bag and go like you’re just starting to pull him out.”

            As the cameras clicked away, and new instructions were called out, Justin and Fiona peeled off their cover-ups, keeping up their desultory conversation. Fiona admired Justin’s fully upholstered left arm of tattoos, particularly the growling panther over his bicep. Instead of bathing trunks, he wore low-riding black jeans with a black belt, black Calvin Klein underpants the focal point of this look that had flooded back into style.

            Justin asked, “So who’s this dude you’re going to marry?”

            Fiona, who now hugged Piglet to the cleavage above her black-and-white striped bikini top, said, “We were sweethearts in high school. And you know what, Justin? You know what’s really funny about this? His parents and friends thought I wasn’t good enough for him. His dad was a lawyer, mom a CPA, they had a nice house an’ all, and I was trailer trash. My dad left when I was two, my mom was a seldom-recovering alcoholic – the whole nine yards.”

            Ignoring the director’s order to keep his sunglasses in place, Justin took them off and treated Fiona to a tender stare. “And then you starting writing these amazing songs.”

            Fiona fetched up a heavy sigh. “They’re always sad songs, though, Justin. I’m just one sack of sorrow.”

            “Well, you’re a beautiful sack of sorrow,” he said, and he scooped her up in a full-on kiss, a brotherly kiss, but nonetheless on her lips, even as the director shouted:

            “What are you doing? Not yet! Oh, what the hell! Shoot it, boys! Are you getting this? This is good! Out of sequence, but who cares? It beats Piglet!”

            When they pulled apart, Justin Bieber said, “Don’t do it, Fiona. Don’t marry this dude. It doesn’t feel right to me. Does it feel right to you?”

            Fiona sighed again. She looked up and saw, beyond the kindly and overweight photographer on her left flank, Teddy Zizik looking worried. Poor Teddy. For a long time she’d resented his taking charge of everything in her life. She had considered firing him at the end of this summer vacation. But now . . . now he seemed more like an annoying but caring uncle.

            How could she unravel all the crazy stuff messing up her life? Marriage to someone who could hardly remember her through the haze of bong smoke? A wedding ceremony that felt like a vendetta against a small town that once considered her beneath notice, although now its claim to fame was that she, Fiona Neal, famous singer and song writer, was a native daughter.

            They kept hassling her to come home and accept an award. 

            Was that not enough to close out a vendetta?

            She turned to Justin who, for all his silliness and flipped back Kate Hepburn hair, and two cocktail waitresses, was really rather sweet and thoughtful.

She told him, “I think I have to marry him. I just have to.”

            He grinned and assumed a bumptious country minister tone, “Well then, God bless you, my child,” and he pulled her to him once more and kissed her on the forehead.

            The cameras went on clicking.