Junk Mail

Chapter Eleven - Lies, Love and Larry

Ben's worried expression softened completely when he saw Susanna and he offered her a sympathetic smile. Here he was complaining about how hard it was to be famous, and Susanna had been living in a shopping trolley her entire life. Ben wondered if the shopping trolley had been a baby when she was born too, and whether it had grown up with her as she blossomed into a young and sometimes very critical woman. Did it follow her wherever she went and did she sometimes sneak snacks under the kitchen table so she could feed it? Then Ben realised he was being silly. Susanna would never have a kitchen table! She didn't even have a kitchen, only a shopping trolley to her name! This small detail made Ben sad all over again, so he decided he would listen to her and get in the car. Perhaps listening would be the first gift she had ever received.

"Why are you staring at me like that?" Susanna asked, twirling a diamond ring around her finger. "You always have that same expression on your face when you look at me. Just to reiterate from last time... we're not dating and stuff, so you can get that lovesick puppy look off your face."

Ben sighed at Susanna's words. Clearly she wasn't over him and she was just trying to be mean to him so she could bring up the past and reignite their non-existent memories, hoping to push them back together. Ben promised himself he wouldn't fall for such tricks. He also thought back to his fame, which brought a familiar pang of sadness to his stomach, and wondered if Susanna who had never lived beyond the confines of her shopping trolley suddenly wanted to come back to him because of all the money he had not yet made.

"You shouldn't love people for their money," Ben said wisely, directing his words at Susanna. "You should love people for who they are because love makes you happy and strong and content. Bringing money into relationships makes them bitter and ruins the love that should be there. I hope you know that Susanna because it's something that's very much believed in within my family. My mum and my brother and my sister don't care about money at all. They never have."

Susanna thought love also made people naive and idiotic, and that it could and would get people in trouble. She had seen the breakdown of her own parents' marriage, which was made more dramatic due to the intensity of their feelings. Thus she vowed never to allow love into her own life; she also vowed to get rid of Ben as soon as possible because he spouted nonsense wherever he went.

"Hey Peps," Susanna said to Pepe el, ignoring Ben. "I see your parking has improved drastically since the last time I saw you in this town."

Pepe el smiled. "Yeah, it went really good. Now I hit trees. Before I hit lakes."

Ben felt jealous and intimidated by the history Pepe el and Susanna shared. He also thought that Pepe el was like his own brother, and that it seemed like Susanna had dated Pepe el; therefore she had dated Ben's brother which was not okay in the bro-code. Ben knew that Susanna had dated Pepe el because she had spoken to him and it was a fact that all women (except for family members) were dating you when they initiated a conversation with you, or had dated you in the past. Ben knew this because he had had no relationship experience but felt that he was an expert on relationships.

"So are you two going to get in the car or are you just going to stand here all day waiting for the reporters to find you?" Susanna asked.

"How come they haven't found us already?" Ben asked aloud. "They must not be very good at their job. I can tell because they've made one mistake so they must be terrible, which is great for me."

"Well they must think you have a different car," Susanna said. "They perhaps don't expect you to be driving around in a white van."

"But they saw us leave in a white van!" Ben cried. "They must be somewhere. What if they found out I'm lying about dying? That I was never ill in the first place!"