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It Takes A Long Time
It takes a long time to find a good woman
As far as Hannah’s concerned, everything’s always about her brother. And not in a good way, or even an amusing way, but in a not-Hannah-but-Frodo’s-kid-sister sort of way. He got the damn role and suddenly everyone around him was reduced to titles, as though their real names had been swallowed up by that stupid piece of shit ring. The ring her stupid big brother lost down the drain in their mom’s kitchen anyway. So really, Hannah figures, what’s the fucking point? She thinks this all goes a long way towards explaining why she’s naked in Elijah’s bed with Liv Tyler, passing a joint back and forth between them. One of Viggo’s, the ones he rolls extra tight and fills with weed so good that Hannah thinks he must be growing it himself. Before he’d left he’d pressed a pack of cigarettes into her hand, and she’d opened it on the patio to find it half full of joints. Liv’s got it expertly pinched between her first finger and her thumb and is puffing smoke rings up to the ceiling. Even after months of running with Elijah’s friends, Hannah’s only just now figured out how to inhale without choking or slobbering all over the paper. Liv sends the rest of the smoke out in a straight smooth column and lazily drops her hand in Hannah’s direction. “Where did you get this?” she asks, as Hannah reaches for it. “Viggo,” Hannah says, and tries not to stare at the pale expanse of Liv’s throat as Liv turns onto her side. “He won’t let Henry smoke it, you know,” Liv says. “Viggo’s like the army with me,” Hannah replies. “He doesn’t ask, and he doesn’t tell.” She drops the roach into a glass of orange juice growing three different kinds of mold on Lijah’s night stand and when Liv makes a noise of don’t-waste-that-pot, she says, “There’s more when that came from. Viggo, remember?” And then Liv kisses her. And since Elijah’s somewhere with Orli and won’t need his bed anytime soon, Hannah kisses back.
Hannah has never really been the star-struck sort. It’s something you learn, when your brother is Elijah-fucking-Wood, like Zach calls him, those moments that Lijah gets insufferable and self-important. His friends are all famous people, famous to the rest of the world at least, and he won’t let her hang around if she gapes at them. So she spends a lot of time on his patio with Viggo, because then she doesn’t stare at Orlando or Billy, and Orlando never pats her on the ass and says, “Go get me another beer, would you, sweetheart?” And sometimes when Hannah can’t stand to watch them shout at each other and smash Playstation controllers any longer, Liv’s out there in the dark with Viggo, sharing a bottle of wine or a joint or sometimes both. Hannah likes Liv because she only tolerates the hobbits for three or four beers before their antics drive her to escape to the back yard. (Hannah doesn’t tolerate them for anything, but, then again, Liv is more patient than she is and besides, they never pat Liv on the ass.) Even when Liv and Viggo have been drinking for two or three hours, Liv is still coherent. Interesting. And she even seems to understand Viggo, which is useful when Hannah wants to wrangle a joint or two or six from him. The first time it happens, Hannah accidentally stumbles onto the patio and Viggo says, “Hey, wise woman. What’s the state of the digital nation?” She thinks she might want to sleep with him, but she’s not really sure and she thinks he might still be fucking Orlando. (Later she finds out that it’s after they stopped fucking but before Orlando and her brother took up their seemingly permanent residence in the closet. The front closet. The one with Elijah’s winter jackets. At least, that’s where she found them the last time.) So she tells him that Orlando’s too drunk to be useful and he grins that fucking enigmatic smile at her, presses the joint into Liv’s hand and ambles off through the trees at the back of the house. Somehow the evening ends with Hannah lying in the cool damp grass, beyond the throw of the patio lights, with Liv Tyler’s hand up her skirt. Elijah has a conniption fit when he finds them the next morning and Hannah thinks his temper tantrum is the reason they end up in his bed the next time, but she’s not really sure at all anymore. Licking that spot behind Liv’s left knee is more productive than thinking, anyway.
Elijah is famous, but Liv is famous-famous. Yeah, Hannah thinks, maybe her face was out there to begin with because of her father – Elijah fucking hides his Aerosmith CDs before Liv comes over, how lame is that? – but she’s famous now because of what she’s done. She isn’t a great actress, she’s not like Sir Ian or anything, but Hannah’s seen Empire Records. It wasn’t art but it wasn’t awful, either. And somehow it’s different with Liv. She’s just so … normal. Normal for Hollywood, at least. She leaves off the pretensions that Dom’s grown since he moved here and she’s not nearly as pretty as Orlando. And she looks at Hannah like she’s something other than Elijah’s annoying little sister. Hannah knows she could be famous if she wanted to be. She’s pretty enough, in that sort of exotic way. Hannah thinks that she’d be good at smirking at the paparazzi - or at least giving them the finger, something Elijah absolutely sucks at, which is why he’s constantly on the front page of the tabloids looking like a bug-eyed freak. She could be famous, but she doesn’t really care. Besides, if she were famous, she’d be kissing Liv Tyler in closets like her stupid brother kisses Dominic and Orlando. She won’t ever take Liv home to her mom, of course, but she’s nobody, so if she wanted to, she could. When she tumbles into Liv’s naked arms for the third time (on the couch in the poolhouse where Elijah and Dominic used to live before L.A. rotted their brains), and Liv gasps her name, it’s something Hannah never expected. It’s not about Elijah at all.
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