The More You Chase It

Chef Franco

Daisy couldn’t explain why but she was nervous about delivering the art to James. She really enjoyed his company and their offbeat texting friendship that had developed over the previous two months. James was off shooting a movie but he made sure his plans brought him home in time to be there when Daisy got to his apartment, and luckily he didn’t have a class on Wednesdays. It was nice that summer classes were so sporadic, making his schedule less hectic than the fall and winter, it gave him more time for work, and he hoped more time to see Daisy.

***

June 17th, 2010
{Daisy}

“So, I hear you’re dating a movie star.” Andrew slipped into his seat at the dinner table. Clara stepped into the circle of light from the inexpensive chandelier and placed the last plate down on the table’s wooden surface.

I searched the table for the pepper, “We’re not dating.”

“But he is a movie star?”

I laughed. Andrew was my sister’s boyfriend and he had a very strange sense of humour. He was the most laid back person I had ever met. Nothing ever got him upset or angry and he was always making things into a joke.

“I guess.”

Clara took a seat across from me and settled in to eat, “Just tell him who it is or he won’t stop bugging you.”

“Why don’t you tell him? Obviously you’ve already said something about him.”

She took a bite of the Alfredo covered pasta in front of her, “I just said your movie star boyfriend came in a bought one of my pieces.”

“Is it Brad Pitt?” Andrew rejoined the conversation, already having eaten a big chunk of his food. Men.

“No.”

“Jude Law.”

“What? No.”

“Johnny Depp?”

“I am not friends with Johnny Depp, although, that would be pretty cool,” I paused and had a bit of my food. “Why is it so important who I’m friends with?”

“I would like to know what free movies we can get.”

I rolled my eyes, continuing on with my meal without responding. The inquisition just continued.

“Leonardo DiCaprio.”

“No.”

“Ryan Reynolds.”

“No. Look, I’m friends with James Franco, all right?”

“James Franco.”

“Yes.”

“My girlfriend sold her art to James Franco. Nicely done!” He held his hand up towards Clara for a high five but we just laughed at his enthusiasm.

“You are such a child.” Clara lightly gave him a high five, knowing full well that he wouldn’t put his hand down until he got one.

“Yes but you still love me.” He kissed her on the cheek and she smiled. It was like she couldn’t stop it even though he was acting so... silly.

For a moment it made me remember my ex Daniel. The one I had been with for six years. I remembered the little moments like the one my sister and Andrew had just had and I felt a pang of jealousy. For a second, and only a second, I missed it. Then I remembered all that came with it: not having time for the stuff you love because your partner almost always has different interests than you and the pressure to be the person that they fell in love with and not change.
And just like that the feeling was gone.

“I’m delivering the piece tomorrow. He wants me to help him find something for his dinning room or something.”

“He’s having you pick out decorative pieces for his dinning room?” Andrew smirked for reasons I don’t know.

“He asked for some help.”

“Pretty soon you’ll be moving in.’

“Shut up,” Clara’s tone was hiding a laugh in there somewhere.

“We’re friends. You might want to look the word up in a dictionary because you seem to have trouble with grasping the meaning.”

Andrew made a look of mock hurt.

Having dinner with Andrew and Clara was fun. I always felt bad being the third wheel and interrupting their dinners but they claimed they didn’t mind and it was hard to resist the light hearted conversation and laughter over an evening alone making dinner.

Wednesday started off like any other day, except I might have spent a little extra time on my hair. The morning slowly crept towards noon. I was somewhat excited to see James. It meant not being stuck behind the desk waiting for customers that probably weren’t ever going to come or waiting for a phone call when the phone clearly didn’t want to ring. Clara was going to take my spot downstairs when I went on my delivery. It was my first one of the summer.

I heard Clara’s high heels click down the wooden steps in the back and eventually down the hardwood floor of the hall.

“Ready to go? Andrew’s bringing me some lunch and we’ll camp out here so you don’t have to wait.”

I smiled, “thanks. Can I have the keys?”

Delivering a piece as large as the one James had ordered meant I couldn’t use my car but I hated driving the trucks, so Clara decided I could use her SUV. I’d have to be extremely cautious because it was her baby and driving an SUV in the city was always a pain.

“Just be careful,” she let the keys dangle above my open hand before letting them fall to my palm, “and have fun. I can hold the fort the rest of the day.”

“I’m just making the delivery.”

“Yeah, yeah. But if something happens and you get stuck there until the end of the day don’t worry.”

“I’ll be back after lunch.” I started walking towards the back where the car was parked. One of the usual guys who did deliveries and helped with installations had already wrapped it up and put it and a trolley in the back of the silver SUV.

“Sure you will.” She called as I walked away. I just rolled my eyes, shook my head. Did she know me at all?

I was impatient the whole drive. Red light, red light, red light, every single one all the way there. I followed the directions on the GPS but I was suspicious the lady was purposely leading me along the longest possible route. Then finally, at the edges of downtown, where the tall buildings petered out, she told me I was there. The building wasn’t too tall and it looked as though there were a few larger apartments in there rather than a lot of small ones.

I parked the car in visitors parking and loaded the piece onto the small metal trolley. It took me a moment of struggling but I eventually managed. Of course I had to deliver one of the biggest pieces in the gallery. Thanks a lot James.

The rickety wheels jolted against the uneven ground as I pulled it towards the door, struggled up a curb, and finally made it to the intercom. As I suspected the list of names was relatively short and Franco was the 4th one down. I punched in the number beside it and waited.

“Hello?” An unfamiliar voice crackled through the small speaker.

“Uhh,” Did I dial the wrong number? “I have a delivery for James?”

“Oh come on up.”

The door made a long buzzing noise and I quickly pulled it open before it could lock again. The trolley and I barely fit in the elevator and when we got to his floor we struggled to the door and knocked. I was a little disappointed at the sound of the mystery voice in the intercom. Did this mean James wasn’t home?

As the thought crossed my mind the door swung open to reveal a man younger than James but with features reminiscent of his. He had thick dark eyebrows but he had James’s smile.

“Come in.” He gestured me in. The sound of The Beatles was subtly floating from the back of the apartment. When I walked in I noticed there were stairs the led from the living room on my right to another floor. The open space was quite large. At the top of the stairs I could see two shut doors and another cracked open through a wooden railing. From the door there was a kitchen on my left, separated from the rest of the space by a bar style table with stools inside the kitchen.

“James ordered this piece a couple of days ago. I’m just here to deliver it.”

“Alright. I don’t know where he wants it. He didn’t mention anything to me.”

“Oh, he said he was going to put it above the fireplace?”

The man helped me wheel the piece in and guided me towards the living room on the right where a fake fireplace adorned the corner of the room so it wasn’t really a corner at all. The fireplace ran diagonally, directed into the room, and above it the wall did the same.

“Are you supposed to be putting it up, or just delivering it?” He looked a year or two younger than me.

“I can put it up. Do you have some scissors?”

He nodded and left towards the kitchen. I took the opportunity to look around as the music continued to infiltrate the room. Octopus’s Garden was such a familiar tune I found myself humming along.

On the same wall as the front door, there were book cases that ran from the floor to the ceiling, completely filled with books, some having to be stacked horizontally in any room that could be found.
There were pictures on the mantle of the fireplace. A lot of them included the man who had answered the door and was just about the return with scissors when the front door opened. James was breathing as if he had been running when he stepped into the apartment.

“Are you okay?” The man was laughing as he looked at James in the doorway. He hadn’t seen me.

“Dave, forgot you were staying here.” He closed the door behind him and took another moment to catch his breath before straightening up.

“Did you run or something?”

“Yeah. I just got off a plane from our shooting location. I have a friend coming over to—“

Before he could finish I let my presence be known by clearing my throat and walking towards them. His head turned to look at me and a smile quickly seeped across his face.

“Daisy, you’re already here.”

“Yeah, I was just about to unwrap the piece.” I gestured over my shoulder to the package behind me.

‘Dave’ looked back and forth between us and smiled, “I was just grabbing her some scissors.”

“Oh right. Daisy, this is my brother Davey.”

“It’s Dave actually.”

We shook hands and a silence followed.

“Well, here are the scissors you asked for,” He passed me the scissors he had been holding, “I was just about to meet up with some friends so I’ll just be leaving.”

On his way out he nudged James in the arm and when he thought I couldn’t see he gave him thumbs up. Maybe he was younger than I thought.

“Sorry about that. I forgot he was staying here.”

I started cutting the strings that held together the brown paper wrapping. Underneath that was bubble wrap.

“It’s no problem at all, he seems nice.”

“He’s a pain in the ass.” He sat down on the couch.

“I’m sure he thinks the same about you.” I could relate, having an older sister.

The brown paper fell to the ground as the last of the string was cut and the bubble wrap was easy to pull off, revealing the birds and park bench.

“Probably.”

“Do you have a ladder to put this up?”

“Do worry about that. I can put it up, are you hungry?”

I turned away from the piece to look at him. His hair was lighter than I remembered it. There were hints of the dark brown I remembered but the ends looked sun-kissed. He even had a bit of facial hair. He still looked handsome.

His arms rested lazily on the back of the couch. His fitted jeans reached the long distance of his legs to his feet, which rested on an automan that matched the arm chair beside the couch he was on. Dark brown eyes looked back at me.

“I thought you wanted me to help with a piece for your dinning room.”

He smiled but it was a nervous one, “I do, I just thought there was no need to rush. You’re probably hungry…”

I looked at him and my resolve was useless. “Lunch would actually be pretty great.”

“Good.” He stood up from the couch with satisfied smile, “What can chef Franco make you?”

I shook my head, “you’re not telling me you can cook too…”

“I like to think I can but perhaps I need a judge.”

I followed him into the kitchen where I turned one of the stools around so I could watch him.

“What do you have?” I asked as he examined the fridge. Nearly half of his body disappeared behind the stainless steel door.

“I’m not here as often as I’d like to be so it looks as if we’ll be stealing some of my brother’s groceries.”

“I thought he was a pain in the ass?”

James’s head peaked out from behind door, “He’s a pain in the ass when he’s not doing my grocery shopping.”

“That’s valid I suppose.”

“Do you like Waldorf Salad?”

“Do I what?”

James laughed at me. It was an adorable laugh, one of the things that made being with him so much better than merely texting him.

“It’s a type of salad with apple and grapes. One of the grips on Spiderman introduced me to it.”

“Sounds good.”

Apples, grapes, celery and Miracle Whip all came out of the fridge and on to the counter. Then James went searching through the cupboards until he found a bag of chopped walnuts.

“What about the lettuce?” I asked in a concerned tone. Okay, so James could apparently act and write and direct and was a marvellous student but perhaps cooking did not sit within the range of his abilities. Lettuce is kind of the mainstay of a salad.

“Just trust me.”

I continued to hum to The Beatles, still playing softly in the background.

“I can turn that on in here if you want.” He went to the corner of the room and pressed a power button in the speakers and suddenly the music was playing in the room.

“That’s really cool. How did you set that up?”

“One of my old UCLA friends was into all that electronics stuff so he set it up for me,”

James went back to the counter and the task at hand. He sliced the apples and we would sporadically sing and sometimes talk. It was a perfect atmosphere for a Wednesday afternoon.

It wasn’t until everything had been mixed that James finally pulled out some lettuce and washed it. He grabbed two smaller bowls than the one he had used to make the salad and put the large leaves of lettuce along the bowl as a type of liner.

“If you get the bowls, I’ll take the salad.” He grabbed salad tongs and the large wooden bowl of salad, turned off the music with his elbow, and I grabbed the two lettuce lined bowls and we went back to the couch. The salad looked straight out of a cooking magazine and I actually felt myself eager to try it after he served some up.

His eyes were glued to me as I got ready to take the first bite. There was a hint of saltiness to it but that was counteracted by the juicy grape and the small bit of apple and celery. The mayonnaise actually worked with them better than I had thought.

“Well?” James said in suspense.

“I was wrong. You can do everything.” I took another bite of the amazing salad.

“You doubted me?”
James laughed, finally settling into the couch with his bowl, and grabbing the remote to the TV. He searched through his recorded shows and we both agreed on a documentary about Ingrid Bergman, one of my favourite actresses. The hour and a half that the show lasted went by quickly with the conversation and salad.

After that I looked through a collection of records James had as he cleaned up the plates. I mocked him for a few of them but commended him for ones that I had as well. Overall, he had a similar music taste as eclectic as my own. There was definitely a reason it was so easy to be his friend. Then I moved on to the bookcase. There were school books and novels and endless amounts of poetry. I would have assumed it all be for show, if it weren’t for the tatty bindings of a lot of them, as if they had been read over and over again. I pulled one out that looked especially worn. The title read Golden State written by Frank Bidart. When James finished up in the kitchen he came out to find me scanning the back of the book.

“It’s a collection of poems he did. One of my professors made us read one them and I liked it so much I got the book.”

James was drying his hands with a tea towel as he walked towards me.

“And why is it so worn?” I asked, genuinely curious, as I looked up at him. I didn’t realize until that point that he was right beside me, his chest almost touching my shoulder, and looking at the book in my hands.

“It’s pretty dark stuff but for some reason I really liked the poem “Herbert White”. The way it reads like a confession and the way he gets into the mindset of a man like that just really caught my attention. I was so fascinated with it I directed a short film adaptation.”

It took me by surprise to hear him talk about poetry like that. If he got any more perfect I might just come close to breaking my rule and actually be charmed by him. What he was doing being friends with me was something beyond my understanding all together.

“That’s really interesting. I’ve actually never heard of him as a poet.”

James smiled at me and went to return the towel to the kitchen, “you should borrow it. Then you can tell me what you think.”

“I don’t want to take your favourite book from you.”

“It’s ok. Borrow it. I mean, if you want to read it.”

“Thanks,”

“It’s no problem.” James came back out and showed me his dinning room table, positioned near the kitchen as part of the open space of the first floor. There were only two full walls you could see from the table. The more narrow wall of the two had shelves with various objects scattered on it and the other wall was completely bare.

He clapped his hands together, “so, ideas.”

“That’s a big wall.” I said as we stood staring at it.

“I was thinking I could put more than one piece on it. I just wasn’t sure what medium I wanted to go with.”

I nodded, “Well, I could pick out a few pieces that I think would work well with the wall colour and furniture and you could come in and take a look some time next week.”

“Sounds perfect.”

We talked about it a little longer and I didn’t realize the time until Dave returned through the front door and it was already dark outside. So much for being back after lunch.
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