ACT II: Scene 10
I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her [His] Face
SAN NOUVEAU ISLAND, CALIFORNIA CHANNEL ISLANDS
Wherein our hero proves himself even more resourceful and amazing, and our heroine may or may not be falling victim to her own prank, poor girl. She never had a chance, did she? What with those teeth, and all.
The hyperventilation set in as soon as I got to the golf cart and headed down the asphalt path back toward the Bainbridges’ place. I’d left Henry in the clutches of Monique-Noelle and his scores of other adoring fans and bolted away on the electric car loaded with golf equipment.
I’d created a monster. One lucky day on the golf course and he suddenly thought he could ride to hounds? With a gun? And kill a fox?
The poor fox.
Sometimes I thought San Nouveau was the most civilized place on earth, simply because of the screening process. It boiled down to a system where no one with any tendency toward incivility could set foot on the island, ever. Even the groundskeepers and pool boys had to possess top educations and backgrounds and manners to pass the background check.
However, today—to find out there was an organized and, moreover, sanctioned fox hunt planned for the island? I—
“Are you all right?” A man’s voice made me lift my foot off the accelerator. Up beside me jogged the man of the hour, his grin as wide as the sand trap he’d just escaped. And how had he escaped the other, more potent trap known as Mo-No, I had to ask myself.
“I thought you’d be with your new toadies.”
“Is that a Frogs in the Sand reference? Because I don’t want to have anything to do with that movie ever again.”
Neither did I, but that wasn’t the point.
“Obsequious admirers who do your bidding. Toadies.”
“Oh, them. If you’re talking about your friend Mo-No, she’s making dinner reservations. After which we’ll be playing tennis at an indoor court. Apparently, there are tennis courts on the island which are sheltered from all weather conditions.”
Maybe he’d had enough of this afternoon’s December wind already. I knew my own nerves were stretched tight enough to play a C above high C if plucked.
“Good. I hope you enjoy her company.” A bitterness might have tinged my words. Or completely suffused them, more accurately, although I didn’t want to think about the possible reasons why that might be. Including the idea that I could be…jealous.
“What’s going on, Elizer? Tennis not your thing?”
“Actually, I’m decent at tennis.” Which might have been part of the green-with-envy thing going on inside me and seeping out like toxic ooze.
“You were decent at golf, too. Is there anything you’re not decent at?”
He thought I was decent at golf? He thought I was decent at a lot of things? I hated that swooning feeling that swept over me, replacing the toxic ooze and turning me into just a plain gooey mass of longing.
“Heights,” I said. “I’m terrible with heights, especially over water, but that wasn’t what I—argh. Just because your superpower is changing the subject doesn’t mean I have to get sucked into that trap. I can get out of it like you can get out of the rough.”
“I can see that.” He stepped closer to me, his hair all mussed from the wind, and his neck muscles taut. “What did you want to talk about? I take it you didn’t want to ask where I learned to golf like that. Because that’s what everyone else seemed to care about.”
“And now you’re their best friend and off making other sports plans with them.” While the tennis raised my personal hackles, it was the other sports plans that turned my stomach. In fact, a fox hunt shouldn’t even be termed a sport; it was animal cruelty through and through. “Tennis and beyond.”
I wouldn’t put it past the barbarians at San Nouveau Recreational Authority to bring in a fox that had been bred in captivity and kept for this special purpose just for the event. I shuddered in horror.
“I take it you have a problem with my playing tennis with your boss. Because, if you’re worried I’ll come a gutser at it, I can’t blame you. It’s not as easy to fake tennis skills. I might need some pointers.”
The mental image of Henry in tennis whites stymied me for a second, and I couldn’t respond. It got worse when I thought about guiding him through improving his backhand.
“And since she wants to play a match right after dinner this evening, maybe now is the best time for you and me to get cracking on.” He reached out and rested a hand on mine, which was still gripping the steering wheel. “You can show me your serve. I’ll show you my thirty-love.”
Now that was eye-rollingly bad as a pickup line.
“Please. When I say sports, I’m not talking about tennis, and I’m assuming you don’t need any pointers on that either.” I eyed him narrowly and he gave an apologetic shrug, as if I’d hit on the truth and he was secretly Roger Federer and poised to win the Grand Slam. What was with him? How had he been so mighty as to assemble mad golf skills, plus tennis chops, and then ended up homeless, needing a phone to call someone overseas, and forgetting an appointment with a geneticist?
Maybe he was actually sick, despite his protestations to the contrary. He’d claimed he was healthy as a horse, but the behavior and the geneticist reference clues pointed otherwise.
Still, sick or not, he should not be participating in a fox hunt. After all, if he was direly ill, he’d be meeting his Maker soon, and a joy-kill of one of God’s creatures would weigh heavy on the conscience at the pearly gates.
“Elizer, if you’d rather have dinner with me, I’ll cancel with Monique-Noelle. You’d be far more pleasant, no question. Plus, putting her off longer will increase potency of my plan, I’m sure. I’ve seen it a hundred times.”
He had?
“If you think it would make the whole plan work better, then yes. Postpone with her,” and eat dinner with me, and let me stare into your deep gray eyes until I’m lost forever, “but do something to keep her hanging on. She’s got a mind of her own, and she won’t want to perceive she’s being played.”
I didn’t want to think about the ultimatum she’d given me, warning me away from Henry. If he wanted to eat dinner with me, who was I to argue?
He nodded as if he understood what I was asserting about Mo-No’s personality, and when he grinned at me, my anger drained away, even about the fox hunt. Under the circumstances, how could he turn down the fox hunt invitation? There had been so much public pressure from the fans at the golf course. After all, I was the one who’d initially thrown him to the wolves.
Er, foxes.
Whatever.
Chances were, he had said yes without considering all the ethical ramifications. If I mentioned my concerns to him, say, over dinner, maybe he’d understand.
And maybe my knee would brush up against his beneath the table, and…
“Yoohoo. Henry.” Along the path toward us minced Monique-Noelle, in all her sashaying glory. “I see you’ve met my employee. Her name is Eliza Galatea. She’ll be tending Chachi tonight while you and I go to dinner and tennis. That is all, Eliza.”
Sometimes Mo-No could be so weird. It was as if she thought her belittlement of others wasn’t completely transparent to everyone around her. In this case, it was as if she hadn’t remembered that she’d offered my services as Henry’s caddy a few hours ago, or introduced us at her house, and spent the past several hours together in the same golfing party.
Her politeness was only ever for show.
“Yes, ma’am.” I’d been dismissed, and my potential plans for dinner with Henry evaporated like so much steam. Tennis practice, too; Mo-No had him in her sights, and she wouldn’t let him out. The little sparkler fizzing inside my chest dipped into a glass of water with a dousing hiss. “I’ll look to Chachi’s needs.”
I was smart enough to know not to try to catch Henry’s eye as I turned to go. But before I put my foot back on the accelerator of the golf cart, I heard him ask one last question.
“Is your offer of a guest cottage still on?” He let his voice get louder. “If so, I’ll have my things delivered.”
***
I lugged all Henry’s clothes from my servants’ quarters bungalow into the guest cottage next door. Both little structures were ensconced beneath giant ferns and bean trees behind the Bainbridge mansion, adjacent and practically sharing a wall. Only a few feet separated his sleeping arrangements from mine.
I tried not to think about that too much as I hung up his borrowed clothing.
I also tried to resist holding the lapel of Henry’s tuxedo from last night up to my face and inhaling that incredible cologne that took me into a twenty-four-hours-back time machine to when Henry entered the parlor of the Pickering mansion and looked at me as if I’d taken his breath away.
Okay, so I didn’t resist that urge very vigorously.
Next, I collected Chachi from the sitter and took her for her walk, after which I video-messaged with Sylvie.
“Hello, little Miss Sylvie. Do you have Mickey ears?”
From her perch on her daddy’s hip in front of the Matterhorn she waved her little fist at me, and all my other cares temporarily melted away.
“Lila!” She couldn’t say Eliza. She held out her new Mickey Mouse ears hat for me to admire. One ear had been chewed to smithereens already. They wouldn’t make it home from the park to her grand-mamma’s in San Jose, that was for sure.
“I love you, Sylvie. See you soon.”
My heart twisted inside me. Anger surged, mixed with pure pity and love for Sylvie. This was why I was taking this risk, foisting Henry onto San Nouveau society. It wasn’t about gadding after some temporary flirtation with a guy I met in the bus station and played makeover on. I couldn’t get distracted by the time machine cologne or the amazing golf skills or the knee-weakening smile.
This was for Sylvie. For her future emotional stability. She was worth any risk—even my heart.
And so, while Henry ate avocado and tropical fruit plates—Mo-No’s dinner of choice every day—and swung the tennis racket, I set up his living quarters in the cottage beside mine and recommitted myself to playing this straight. I refused to get sidetracked by the unaffected, unexpected charm of the king of the bus station.
***
The next morning while Henry made a feint at property hunting with Monique-Noelle, claiming he’d need at least an acre for his horses, I took care of Mo-No’s laundry, including washing her tennis skirt and socks, which she’d worn while she’d swung a racket with Henry Lyon.
Later, while Henry and Mo-No hit the jogging trails for a long run around San Nouveau, I took Chachi for another walk, praying Chachi wouldn’t give my hand leather blisters from the leash when she saw Daisy Duke, her Yorkie friend running loose at the park.
And so it went: Mo-No and Henry exploring the island, me fading into the invisibility of the background as a good servant should. Polly’s plan was working like a charm, and I texted her to let her know what a genius she was.
Why didn’t I feel more excitement about our apparent success?
Oh, right. The old j-word.
Days slid by. Before now, this job hadn’t bothered me. Sure, Mo-No had bothered me. Any sane person alive would feel the same. But the job itself had been pretty great. In fact, I’d actually felt excited about it most mornings, like I knew a secret—that I was getting paid an outrageous sum for some simple, non-taxing, mundane work of laundry, dog-walking, and baby care.
Like I was getting away with something.
But now that I’d thrown Henry into the equation, suddenly everything rankled.
Polly called on Thursday afternoon.
“He’s really, really gone.” The dejection in her voice plunked like a stone dropped in a lake. “It’s been four official days since he shipped out. He can’t tell me where to, of course, but I did get a call ship-to-shore from him and he’s okay. Sorry I haven’t called you. I’ve been too busy eating my weight in Christmas baked goods.” She described several of them in detail, while I gained five pounds just hearing about them. “My mother also made me sample thirteen different kinds of wedding cake.” She described those, as well. “I’m going with carrot.”
“Good choice.” I would have gone with lemon or chocolate. “Sorry you’re eating your feelings.”
“Oh, but that’s not all the stress. I keep having to fend off the tabloids after your little incident.”
I blinked a few times, not sure I’d heard her right.
“Incident?”
“You know, popping Henry Lyon onto the social scene, making such a kersplash, and then riding off in Admiral Pickering’s Rolls Royce.”
Oh, that. I’d figured it was a one-time article, buried deep in tabloid mags’ back pages. Unknown Aussie looks handsome at party, how big of a deal could that be?
“They’re not still calling about that, surely.”
“Are you kidding? First, the paparazzi traced the make and model to my dad. They keep hounding me. There are women who want him. This includes Olivia Upton—Livs!—and The Twins, who have dedicated their entire social network to him this week, including a cash reward for anyone who can find him. You didn’t tell me he met The Twins.”
Cash reward! Well, at least I had him on San Nouveau. Everyone on the island was contractually obligated to keep each others’ locations under wraps here. I exhaled at that comforting, legally bound realization.
“Why are they calling you, though? Do they assume you know him, just because he was in your father’s car?”
“Exactly. They all want to know when Henry will be returning to see the Pickering family from the land Down Under, and whether they can at least meet him, if not arrange to have his children.” Polly expelled an exasperated sigh. “We created a monster.”
I heard the words she said, but I couldn’t process the reality of them. It was too far-fetched. She had to be joking.
“You’re saying Henry was more than noticed—he was remembered.”
“Hello. I texted you fifty times about it.”
“I assumed that was all exaggeration, Polly. Sorry.” I’d stopped reading them after a while, thinking that she was bored or anxious with Geordie shipping out. I’d taken to looking only through the truncated subject lines of her texts.
“Harsh, much?” Polly sounded like she had a mouthful of something. She’d better lay off the junk food or she wouldn’t fit in that custom-made wedding gown come March when Geordie came back from wherever he was floating off to now. “If you missed my sincerity, then are you saying you missed my other texts? The ones about your Ph.D.?”
My silence must have clued her into how right she was, and shame burned up my neck at what a bad friend I had been the last few days. Granted, my mind had been pretty much occupado with Henry Lyon’s close proximity. Especially at night when I heard his cottage’s door shut in the wee hours of my aching insomnia when he’d come dragging in after another full evening with Mo-No.
“I feel so rejected.” Polly knew how to turn on the dramatics, but I could tell this did bother her, at least a little, so I offered her my most sincere apology.
“I didn’t mean to reject you. It’s just this whole thing with Henry—”
Chachi started barking like a maniac. Either there was a bird on the back lawn, invading her territory, or else Mo-No’s key was in the front door.
“I have to go. I’ll read them and get back to you.”
“Wait, is Sylvie okay? She didn’t fall, did she?” Concern laced Polly’s voice, but she’d clearly forgiven me after my apology. Our friendship survived because neither of us ever held onto hurt feelings very long.
“No, Sylvie’s not even here. She’s with her dad at Disneyland for the whole holiday.”
“Then who or what the heck are you nannying?”
“Chachi.”
“The dog? You need to quit that job.”
“I know.”
I knew it more than ever. We hung up.
Chachi kept up her crazed barking until I let her into the back yard so she could attack the bird, which flew to perch on the wall, possibly simply to torture Chachi a few inches out of her ability to jump. It sang a warble of taunting.
I kind of liked that bird.
While that drama played out, I dug through my phone’s old messages. Filtering out the sixty or so mopey ones related to Geordie’s departure, and only skimming the Oh, my gosh, Henry is Famous batch. But then, I saw something that made my heart lurch. There, buried among the detritus were the texts Polly had referred to, texts that concerned my entire future career path.
Girl, you are going to hate me for three seconds until you figure out how much you love me.
This did not bode well.
Why you’ll hate me is I used your laptop, which you really should probably password-protect when you leave it lying around, to send an email.
She’d used my laptop? She had a good one of her own, one way better than mine that was leftover from my days in undergrad.
Why you’ll really hate me is the email was to your doctoral committee.
A deluge of shock drenched me from scalp to toes.
She what? Every blood vessel in my body constricted, and my ears rang shrill as my pulse went through the roof. I fell wobbling past the patio furniture, against the house, my back slamming against the sliding glass door. Please say this wasn’t happening. This had to be a prank.
Don’t worry. I was professional.
No. No, no, no, no. I rubbed my head and started talking aloud. No, no. No. Polly…
All I submitted was what I called a “trial balloon,” floating the idea to them of researching the effect of a man’s Australian accent on the psyche and interest of an American woman. I mean, it’s kind of obvious, but it’s never been formally studied or quantified, from what I looked up on Wikipedia.
She had looked it up. On Wikipedia. And then emailed my committee. Hyperventilation on the order of the other day when I was looking over the edge of the rocky cliff at the breakers set in.
I might just lose my breakfast.
You’re in a perfect position to study this.
Try as I might, I could not get a hold of my breathing. Everything was wrong with this. A, it wasn’t my idea. B, Henry wasn’t actually Australian. He was a homeless man we’d picked up at a bus station in L.A. Sure, he used the accent, but that was because he was either just gifted with accents, or else—as Polly well knew—he was a mentally unbalanced person who had spent too much time watching Dingo Nights and fantasizing himself into that life.
I looked around for a paper bag to blow into, but finding none, I breathed into the arm of my sweater to get my hyperventilation under control.
This was so wrong. It was one thing to rope him into the whole Mo-No life-changer deception for two weeks. It was another to turn him into a six-month or longer lab rat held captive as research for my Ph.D.
Beyond that, Henry was not a good choice of study subject. Whether or not he could now golf, play tennis, or hold his own in a conversation, he was volatile—too volatile to throw into a serious research project upon which hinged my entire future. There were too many variables, too many flaws for this research to begin. Polly didn’t understand about control groups or double-blind studies or anything, or how long they took to set up and verify using the scientific method.
No way could this work as a research topic in the first place, and my committee would see that immediately, and reject me for the fourth time.
Was there a precise number of failures at which a Ph.D. candidate simply struck out when it came to swinging at dissertation topics? If so, I was pretty sure I’d approached that limit. This little shenanigan of Polly’s could possibly have put me over the edge.
I sank in despair, at which point Chachi came over and licked my face. Just what I needed, a kiss from a dog. I looked up at the late-morning sky and wished it would just open up and suck me into a black hole somewhere in the far reaches of space, and then spit me back down here in a hundred years, when no one who knew me was still alive.
I could start a fresh life, with no failures in it.
My phone pinged in my pocket, setting Chachi a-yapping again. She snarled at my hand when I pulled out my phone. This was what came of Mo-No’s letting her watch Dog Fancy videos on YouTube for an hour a day: pet tyranny over phone usage.
A text from Polly blinked at me. There was a short apology visible, so I opened it.
Sorry. I know you’re busy with that super-important dog, but I didn’t get to tell you the most important thing.
Oh, so this was a non-apology in return from her for ruining my educational efforts of the past several years.
I shouldn’t be checking your email. So sue me. But the committee did get back to me. Er, you. They approved your project! They said in essence, “It’s perfect. So original.” You can’t let Henry get away now. He’s the key to your future.
No way did they say that, even in essence. I knew those people, and they’d respond with seriousness, “Your proposal has been accepted,” although I’d only heard “rejected” to my own proposals up to now—and they were far superior to the idea of whether a hot accent was attractive to women. Please.
I had just a one-sentence response for Polly. In all caps.
I’M COMING TO GET MY LAPTOP.
***
“Oh, Eliza, I can’t remember when I felt this way last.” Mo-No clutched Chachi to her chest and spun in a circle, the skirt of her white dress swinging outward as she twirled.
“When you met Mr. Bainbridge?” I hinted.
She whirled on me, her ball gown skirts flying out, a look of shock in her eye.
“Oh, heavens no.” Her lip curled in disgust. “Never. Have you seen how old he is?”
“He’s your husband. He’s Sylvie’s dad.”
Her tanned shoulders fell.
“So. Gross.”
Sylvie or Mr. Bainbridge? I didn’t know, and frankly, I didn’t care about her opinion of them. I didn’t know Mr. Bainbridge well, since he traveled so much, but from what I’d seen, Sylvie had inherited the bulk of her good personality from him.
“I think you underestimate how great you have it. Beautiful daughter, wealthy husband, one who gives you a good life.”
Mo-No’s eyes narrowed at me.
“You don’t know anything. Now, zip me up.”
I slid her zipper up her back, the bones of her spine protruding. She made her face a mask of calm as she looked in the mirror. If I didn’t know her at all, I might think she was pretty at first glance, especially her incredible blond hair.
“Do you think Henry will like this gown? He’s taking me to a black tie affair at the yachting club this evening. I have heard rumors they’re going to ask him to run for mayor. After what happened in the regatta race this afternoon, the way he sailed the narrow pass between the two haystack rocks, everyone worshiped him. He’s just so…everything.”
So it had worked. My plan had come together. She’d fallen for him, despite his background. I couldn’t muster much enthusiasm.
“Mayor, huh? He doesn’t even own a place on San Nouveau. Don’t you have to be a resident?”
“Oh, in his case, I imagine they’d make an exception. The way he problem solves. Remember when he saved Chachi? That was when I first knew I had to have him. And he’s almost, almost mine. The second I secure him, I’m filing my divorce papers from MacDowell. Of course, I’ll demand to keep the house, so Henry doesn’t need to look for property, see?” She added two more swipes with her lip gloss wand. “He’s my ticket out.”
Staring at the lip gloss wand, I let a question fall from my mouth that shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
“Have you…kissed him?”
She tilted her chin and got a coquettish look.
“A lady doesn’t tell.” For a second she batted her eyelashes. “But since I’m not a lady, and since you’re probably never going to have the bliss of conquering a man worth having, I’ll let you in on my little secret—tonight is the night.” She giggled, sounding like she was sixteen, not thirty, and also not a complete tramp. “He said he doesn’t kiss married women. But we’ll see.”
She spritzed her neck with designer fragrance fraught with gardenias and shook out her skirts, making them rustle as if she were Scarlet O’Hara herself.
Mo-No left me a jealous wreck in the wake of her perfume.
While she and Henry danced the night away at the yachting club, furious energy fueled me as I scrubbed the tub, vacuumed, wiped glass, and folded laundry. Meanwhile, my thoughts went on a rollercoaster worthy of one of those theme parks on the mainland meant for teens.
Up zinged my stomach into my throat—he hadn’t kissed her yet! Down it fell into my gut—she was filing divorce papers after a week of dating someone younger and hotter than Bainbridge. Flippity-flop, Henry didn’t kiss married women. Flump, I hadn’t actually planned out how to spring the news on Mo-No about Henry’s real identity as a bus station hobo.
Just how was I supposed to do that without shaming him at this point?
I got out the oven cleaner and sprayed it in the bottom to let the chemicals soak in.
As the degreaser settled, my soul went soaring over California when I thought about the fact not only Monique-Noelle had been snared by Henry’s charm, but the whole town was ready to crown him king. Then it fell into the breakers where it got smashed to bits when I realized someone actually might get hurt, and not just Mo-No, by this ruse.
Super-kerplunk, she was ready to drop Sylvie without a backward glance.
And then came one last, mostly-unrelated resounding clunk: Polly had secured a dissertation research topic for me that would turn me even further into someone who used people; in particular, I’d be using—as research—the one man on earth I found myself most inexplicably and irrevocably drawn to. Moreover, it was a topic I didn’t think of myself, and didn’t want to do.
Why was it that the one time I hadn’t submitted my own idea of a research plan, it got accepted? My heart was not in this topic. Well, make that my heart was too much in this topic. Meanwhile, my educational degree was doomed.
The clock struck midnight just as I finally put the last stack of folded shirts in my drawer, when I heard a soft knocking in the other room.
I opened the front door, and there stood Henry in his tuxedo.
“Can I come in?”