Deception

Spending the night with a dental hygienist he had picked up in Donte’s had been a big mistake. First woman he had ever met who could match him drink for drink and stay conscious, and he didn’t even get laid. He vaguely remembered her dumping every problem she had ever had since age six on him till about 3:00 a.m., when he had mercifully passed out. He hated himself for sneaking out of her apartment this morning without even having the nerve to look at her and see her face in the cold, hard light of day. This wasn’t the morning to test his strong stomach and he was known to relax his standards in the wee hours of the morning when he was feeling lonely.

He wouldn’t bet on how he would sound trying to sing the commercial he had written. His mouth felt like all the smog in Los Angeles had found a permanent home there, and his head like every car on the Ventura freeway was crammed inside his brain, crashing against his skull trying to get out. What were the damn lyrics? He struggled to remember. No time to go home and dig through his notes. Raking through all that chaos could take days. Why couldn’t they just have hired him from the demo tape? But no, they didn’t think it was quite what they were looking for, wanted a different approach.