Every Boy's Got One

Travel Diary of Jane Harris

Travel Diary of Holly Caputo and Mark Levine

Jane Harris

Oh my God, you’ll never guess what I just caught Cal Langdon doing!!!! Mr. Hardened News Journalist was down on the terrazza, holding out a plate of Zio Matteo’s tuna to all of these scrawny stray cats that had come slinking over to the villa from the stables.

He jumped like I’d shot him when I said his name, and the cats all ran, but I saw them.

Oh, I saw them, all right.

Between the being-afraid-of-snakes thing, and now a soft spot for cats, I guess Mr. No Heart might just have one after all.

Still, I didn’t let on that I knew. About his heart, I mean. Instead, I told him—because I couldn’t help myself—that I’d spoken to Mark, and that he (Cal) was living in a fantasy world if he thought he could talk him (Mark) out of marrying Holly on Wednesday.

To my surprise, Cal just totally ignored that. Instead— while staring at my Christian Louboutins, as usual—he asked me instead if I knew Indian women sometimes decorate their feet with henna.

????????????

There is something seriously wrong with this guy.

Me: “Um, no. But I do know if they show their ankles in public, they can be punished by having their feet cut off. Why don’t you write a book about how unfair that is, instead of what’s going to happen to the Saudis when the oil runs out?”

Cal: (finally looking away from my feet) “Do you think women’s lives there are going to get easier when their country is essentially shut off from contact with the outside world, due to their no longer having a product we want to exploit? Or do you think they’ll get harder?”

Me: “Harder, obviously. But what can I do about it? Use fewer water bottles?”

Cal: “Yes, overconsumption of petroleum-based products is a leading cause of global warming.”

Seriously, I can’t believe he ever got any woman to marry him. I mean, with a line like that. Even a model.

Hey, maybe that’s why he only dates foreigners now. Because they can’t tell what’s coming out of his mouth.

Me: “Well, then maybe we’d better just use it all up and get it over with so we run out already and can go back to how things were before.”

Cal: “You mean before they started bottling spring water and selling it for a buck fifty a pop and pretending it’s better for you than tap?”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Me: “I don’t know. You’re the one who wrote a book about it. Why do you keep looking at my feet, anyway?”

Cal: “Why do you keep looking at my crotch?”

I SWEAR TO GOD!!! THAT IS WHAT HE ASKED ME!!!!

Then THANK GOD Peter showed up from out of nowhere and went, “Jane Harris, I am hearing your woice and knew you vere avake. Now will you be drawing me the sketches of Vundercat you promised for my Veb site?” and handed me a sketch pad and some markers.

So I said, “Of course, Peter,” in my most gracious voice— even though I was FREAKING OUT about the crotch thing— and drew him about fifty Wondercat sketches, while Cal sat there scowling in the candlelight and going, “Peter, shouldn’t you be in bed by now? Don’t you have school in the morning?”

But of course Peter explained that he goes to Internet school and doesn’t have to log on by any particular time.

And all I could think was, what if Peter hadn’t shown up right then? I mean, Cal and I had basically been in each other’s face over that whole petroleum thing. Close enough that, you know, it occurred to me— just kind of randomly—that if we didn’t hate each other so much, we might have started, I don’t know.

Kissing or something.

I KNOW! I don’t even LIKE him. He’s a totally pompous know-it-all—a modelizer!

But still, he does kind of…exude something. I don’t know what it is. I mean, I was having a pretty good time hating his guts right up until I saw him with those cats. CATS!!!! HE LIKES CATS!!!!

And he so clearly didn’t WANT to be caught feeding them. He looked so GUILTY when he saw me.

And then, when we got close there, during our little argument…

BAM. There it was. I couldn’t stop noticing how handsome he looked in the candlelight, with those too blue eyes and his messy Brad Pitt-y hair and his shirt open a little at the neck so I saw a tiny bit of that chest he’d had out on display earlier by the pool and—

WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME??? I ALREADY HAVE A BOYFRIEND!!!!!!!!!

Well, okay, not really.

But I have one if I want one. All I have to do is go to British Columbia, and WHAM, there he is, the boyfriend. A boyfriend who BELIEVES in love. A boyfriend who would NEVER say love is a mere chemical reaction in the brain caused by surges of phenylethylamine (um, especially since Malcolm doesn’t know any words that big).

SO WHY AM I EVEN THINKING ABOUT CAL LANGDON IN THAT WAY????

It can’t just be the cat thing. It must be all this fresh air. It DOES things to a girl. As soon as I get back to the city and breathe in good old New York exhaust fumes, I’ll be all right again.

I hope.

In the meantime, I’ve just got to STAY AWAY from him and his pheromones or whatever it is that makes me keep thinking about what it would be like to sleep with Cal Langdon.

Tomorrow I’ll make sure to wear my Adidas, too. No guy looks at your feet when you’re in your Adidas.

God, how am I supposed to get to sleep NOW?