Our Love Affair (B&T romance), Ch. 1

Characters (in no particular order):

Bette Porter – Director of the CAC, single, 34, spends all her free time at work or at the Planet, helping her sister Kit Porter to manage the café, has no personal life whatsoever.

Tina Kennard – Yale graduate in Art History, 28, she was offered a curator position with a Whitney Museum in New York after a few shows that she handle while working for them as an intern but she turned it down to move to Los Angeles for personal reasons, works at CAC in the Art Restoration and Appraisal Department.

Alice Pieszecki – Bette’s witty secretary, 29, knows everything about everyone at CAC and in WeHo. Has a girlfriend, Dana Fairbanks, a tennis champion, but their relationship has been on and off since Dana began traveling a lot and also occasionally seeing Lara Perkins, the Planet’s chef.

Dana Fairbanks – Alice’s girlfriend, tennis player, 28, she’s traveling a lot and her relationship with Alice is done mostly through the phone conversations.

Shane McCutcheon – Yale graduate in Art History where she met Tina and they became best friends, 28, head of the Art restoration and Appraisal Department of the CAC, female Casanova and won’t have it any other way.

Carmen de la Pica Morales – accountant at the CAC but rarely spends her time in her workplace because she likes to be involved in different fundraisers and in gossiping with Alice, 25, in love with Shane but thinks she has no chances with her.

Helena Peabody – hot, sexy, rich Brit and a new member of the Board of Directors, 30, knows Tina from the times when she used to be involved with the Peabody Foundation while working in New York, recently moved to LA and bought an ocean view mansion on the Malibu beach.

Dylan Moreland – a young uprising artist, 25, she’s preparing for her first show at the CAC and also works there as an intern, fell in love with Helena but kept it a secret…until now.

Jennifer Schecter – writer and art critic wanna-be, 25, didn’t get good reviews on her first book and now works at the CAC as a night janitor while freelancing for LA Magazine. Enough said.

Franklin Phillips – member of the Board of Directors at the CAC, 61, not important to the story really but needs to be mentioned here because he might appear a few times.

Other characters might make their appearances at some point as well and if they will, their names will be mentioned as an addition to the character list.

Time: present, year 2007

Place: Los Angeles, California.

All events are taking place mostly at the CAC with a rare exception of characters’ homes, the Planet and other areas around WeHo, which will be mentioned beforehand.

Prologue:

“Hello, my name is Alice Pieszecki and for the next few months I will be your guide into a wonderful world of art, love, friendship and sex. I want to tell you a story about my friends, Bette Porter and Tina Kennard. Well, they weren’t always my friends. Bette was my boss before she became a friend and Tina was…well, Tina was just Tina until one day she became the best friend I’ve ever had. They’ll probably kill me if they knew I was telling you how they met and fell in love and then realized that…um…I think I’d better start from the beginning, even if they will kill me later. Since I played a big part in Bette and Tina story…the most important part, anyway…I will let the story speak for itself.”

“It all began one beautiful September morning when Tina…”

Chapter 1: We were strangers starting out on our journey

…Tina looked out the window that had the view of a very busy street and sighed. Life was hard but she loved Los Angeles and never regretted moving here from New York. She learned to love LA, it was her home now and it became her favorite city in the world for more than one reason.

After her graduation Tina was offered a great position with the Whitney Museum and she almost accepted it but as we all know, life doesn’t always go as planned. Tina had to follow her heart and leave her dream life and her boyfriend to be where she was now. Maybe it wasn’t a life she dreamed about but she was living it now and she was happy…almost.

When Tina moved to LA two years ago, she immediately applied for several galleries and museums. With her extended Art degree from Yale and an impressive resume, Tina was offered a few positions but finally accepted the CAC invitation to head their Art Restoration and Appraisal Department because her best friend Shane was already working there.

She needed that job, though she wanted to do something else at the gallery but she was happy to have this position. After two years she began to love her job and she always believed that without art life will lose some of its beauty. Besides, it paid the bills and helped them to survive, because after Lisa’s accident, all the insurance money went to pay for her medical bills and she couldn’t work…

Tina heard loud screams upstairs in the twins’ bedroom and shook her head to come out of her daydreaming so she could finish dressing. She put on her new purple t-shirt and her favorite pair of jeans and went to check on the two very energetic 6 years-old boys to help them get ready for their school. She had already fed them breakfast that as usual ended in the cheerios fight and now she had to hurry or she would be late for work.

After the boys were good and ready to go, she stopped by the master bedroom. “How are you feeling this morning, honey?” she asked a half-asleep woman, who was still in bed.

“Much better, Tina,” the woman smiled warmly.

“Well, I’m off to work. I’ll take the twins to school and Karen will bring them back at 3 pm. I’m off work at 5, so do you think you can handle the boys on your own for two hours?” Tina asked with concern, looking at the pale skin and a slight perspiration on the woman’s forehead.

“Of course…at least I can walk now.”

“Thank goodness for that,” Tina patted her hand, “Oh, I forgot to tell you that the nurse is coming later this afternoon to check up on you. I think the hospital will be ready for your final tests this week and I really hope for some good news.”

“Me too, darling…Tina, I can’t thank you enough for everything. You left New York and Eric for me…I will never…” the woman began crying softly as Tina placed her finger on her lips and replied gently, “You don’t have to thank me…I love you, Lisa. You and the boys are the most important thing in my life right now. There’s no other place I’d rather be.”

She leaned down and kissed Lisa on the cheek, “I have to go but I will call you later to hear what the nurse has to say. Love you, honey…”

Tina drove to the twins’ school as she had done every morning for the past two years, first when they were in preschool and now the first grade. She parked in front of the entrance and turned off the engine.

“Guys, you’d better behave today. Why is every teacher complaining about you?” she looked at Henry sternly.

“I’m incorrigible.”

“Oh, puh-lease…don’t give me this von Trapp crap again, you don’t even know what it means. I never hear the teacher complaining about other kids when I go to the PA meetings. Why did you eat Play-Doh for lunch?”

“I was hungry and Josh said that that stuff was tasty with sugar…”

Tina turned to face Josh and saw him smiling mischievously.

“You are old enough to know that you don’t eat it, you play with it…and why did you put glue on your teacher’s chair? Mrs. Goodman told me all about her ruined new dress…just be good, okay? Think about your mom and make her proud because it’s not good for her health to worry about you. She needs you to be good so she can feel better.”

“Is mommy going to be okay?” Josh asked seriously.

“Of course, sweetie…she’s getting better every day.”

She watched them go inside the school and started the car again, checking her watch so be sure she wasn’t late for work…again.

~~~~~~~~

“Hello, it’s Alice again. Before the story unfolds, I would like to introduce a few key players…if you care to know about them, of course. You can always skip to the action but as the saying goes, ‘There’s a time for all things’, or ‘A journey of thousand miles begins with one step’, or better yet, ‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know’. Well, anyway…I hope you caught my drift and will stick around for the introduction.”

“Here’s my boss, Bette Porter, the director of the California Arts Center. She knows everything that there’s to know about arts and artists. It happens. There are some people who know all the important and boring shit…oops, sorry, is there children reading this? Important and boring stuff, and there are others – pointing at myself – who just go with the flow. But it’s not about me…yet.”

“So, Bette Porter…she comes to work before anyone else and leaves home after dark, when everyone has already left, which basically means that Bette is single. We call her affectionately, ‘Our Ice Queen’…behind her back, of course. Bette is always so determined and direct, powerful and controlling but empty inside and very lonely, though she rarely admits that. She always dresses classy and impeccably well but never loosens up, never allows herself to live a little, to let her hair down, sort of speak.”

“The next person I want to tell you about is Shane McCutcheon…Tina’s best friend. They met while studying artsy-fartsy stuff at Yale. What attracted Tina to Shane was her unexpected, for such a young person, wisdom and optimism…something that Tina needed in her life at that time. Shane became her most trusted friend and Tina spent many nights confiding in her as well as watching Shane breaking every female heart on campus.”

“After their graduation, Shane accepted a position with the CAC and moved to California. Tina decided to stay in New York because of her boyfriend but without Shane she felt lost and confused. Her best friend called her all the time, telling her about the busy life in LA full of people, parties, celebrities, her numerous girlfriends, house in WeHo and of course, the art. And now they are working together and it makes Tina happy…and Shane’s happy too.”

“There’s Carmen de la Pica Morales. Every time she walks into the room I swear I can hear flamenco playing and I start craving margaritas. She is muy caliente and uses it to her advantage…at work especially. You see, Carmen’s very active in the fundraising activities and spends most of her time organizing parties, events and shows. It makes her forget that she was originally hired to work in the accounting department.”

“Carmen is completely and hopelessly in love with Shane but knows that there’s a little chance to tame our own local Casanova so she just confides in me about her sleepless nights when she follows Shane to the Planet or Milk and watches her seducing other girls while she goes home lonely, planning the next fundraiser to occupy her mind.”