ACT II: Scene 5
Aw, Gawwaaan
LOS ANGELES & HOLLYWOOD & BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA
Wherein our hero and heroine go uptown together, and our hero begins to shine up.
We crossed the asphalt, three astride, while I tried to catch my breath at what had transpired.
“If you don’t mind my asking, why the sudden change of heart?” Henry Lyon strode along beside me as we followed Polly out to her car. She was on the phone with her fiancé, Geordie, making those cooing sounds no one outside the dual conversation could stomach. “A second ago you were ready to send me packing back to the station.”
“We’re still at the station, Henry.” I glanced back at the building I hoped not to have to return to anytime soon, whether or not the place had great fish. If Polly ended up craving their tartar sauce, I’d look into a delivery option. “But to answer your question, Mo-No isn’t a hunter in the literal sense. She’s someone who is going to endanger her child if I don’t spring into action somehow.”
“And I’m part of that?” Henry stood by while Polly searched absently for her keys. “You think I can save this child by distracting her mother temporarily?”
Putting it that way it sounded too far-fetched to possibly be effective. Honestly, I doubted whether throwing a homeless man at Monique-Noelle was going to make a dent in the armor of her selfishness, even if he had good teeth. Mo-No wasn’t a sucker for shiny teeth; she was a sucker for a shiny metal credit card and a shiny pile of gold in a bank account.
Frankly, the plan seemed doomed to fail.
“Remember a minute ago, you said the word desperation when you talked about how hungry you were? Well, that’s how I feel right now. Not on my own behalf, but on behalf of a little girl I take care of who is very dear to me.” Thinking of Sylvie growing up and learning she’d been abandoned, suddenly I felt the tip of my nose tingle, and my eyes got misty.
Polly was still ensconced in her steamy conversation, which left Henry and me to hash this out, just the two of us.
“I was serious about getting you the phone.” I sighed heavily, warding off the tears. “I’ll get it now. And you don’t have to do any of this stuff Polly was talking about. It’s more than a long shot. It’s a hopeless cause.”
“I know a thing or two about hopeless causes.”
It came out hard and dry, and I glanced at him with fresh eyes at this statement that seemed surprisingly lucid. Gone was the grime, gone was the disheveled hair, gone was the forlorn state. All I saw standing there was a man who’d been at the end of his rope. The way he looked at me, I thought he could see that I was at the end of mine, too, on Sylvie’s behalf.
As our eyes met, something connected between us. I felt it, and I could tell from the way his breath got shallower and his facial muscles went taut, he’d felt sparks flaring between us, too.
“It’s because I’ve been associated with a hopeless cause or two in my life, I’m in. This seems like it’s nobler than any other shot at a phone I’m likely to get over the next few days, so I’m game. Count me in.”
“But you don’t even know the details.”
“What I do know is that you’re sincere. A little sincerity goes a long way with me.”
Actually, what was happening was that Henry’s sincerity was getting to me.
Which meant even more that I couldn’t drag him into this, not when it was doomed to fail.
“Come on, we’ll go over to the cell phone store and get you set up. Thank you for your willingness to help. We’ll just take this as a bless you for your willing heart moment. I’ll figure out something more practical to help Sylvie.” A plan with a lot fewer holes.
“Sylvie, huh? That’s a cute name, and I bet the little one’s just as cute, so nope.” It came out more like naw-oip. “I’m here, and I said I’d help. Like I said, under normal circumstances that don’t involve starvation, I don’t take handouts.”
But he did ask for phones. Yeah, he was still not quite all there, I had to remind myself. Of course, he’d asked for the phone when he was starving.
He reached over and took my hand, which sent my knees back to Quiverville.
“I’ll help you—on the terms originally agreed to with your friend there. Two weeks and then you help me get a phone. Sure, Jonno will worry, and my geneticist friend will have to figure I’ve let the ball drop on the bull, but that’s how it’s got to be. A deal’s a deal.”
Let the ball drop on the bull. What? It might be an idiom somewhere in the Outback of Australia, but it wasn’t one we’d ever studied in my cultural literacy courses.
“Honestly, two weeks’ work is too long for the payment of one phone, even if it is an international phone.”
“Would you quit arguing against your case? You clearly need me. Sylvie needs me. And I need the phone, and if the terms are that I work for it, all the better. I’d rather work. It’s in my blood.”
Hearing that, I felt the rough of his palms, and knew he wasn’t making that up. He’d done work, hard work, over a long period of time. I looked at him again. An earnestness set in his jaw, which I could see even through the grime and many days’ accumulation of scruff.
“Besides, I still owe you for that meal.” He broke into a grin. “Best snags and mashed spuds I’ve had in ages. This will give me a chance to work off the cost of that.”
Snags. Those were the sausages. Mashed spuds was mashed potatoes. At least I recognized one Australian term. I didn’t have to completely hang my head.
My minor victory softened me.
“You mean it.” I scoured his facial features and still found nothing but genuineness there. “You really mean it. Well, then, Henry Lyon, since your geneticist and Jonno can wait,” and since he had no criminal record Polly and her team of connected snoops could find, “you’re hired for two weeks.”
We shook on it, and as I felt the rough cracks and edges of his hands, I told myself ten times, This is for Sylvie. This is for Sylvie. This is for Sylvie.
“Okay, you two? You get it all sorted? Because I just got off the phone with the coolest person.”
“Geordie?”
“Well, he was first, and so him too, but no. I meant I talked with my friend Burt.”
Burt. I remembered him. Oh, boy did I.
“The one who works at Continental Pictures?”
“The movie studio?” Henry asked, holding the door for me. Blast him for getting me a little swoonier with every passing second.
“Yuh-huh.” Polly nodded with a smug grin of triumph and then opened the car doors. What did she want with Burt?
The three of us pulled away from the bus station together. It was happening, whether I’d started out this trip to get lunch with this in mind or not. Polly headed us back onto the freeway, while describing Burt’s magnificence in a blue streak of detail.
Burt did costumes at Continental, one of the bigger studios out in Hollywood. They weren’t MGM or Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, or one of those other colossal money mills, but they were big enough, and they had a solid reputation for costuming. In fact, for the last six years they’d received practically all the award nominations for costumes.
Burt was their top costumer. He had impeccable taste. He might be up for an award this year, based on his work on a costume drama featuring the cast of Carlsbad Tavern.
Blah, blah, blah.
“And best of all, he’s on board.”
“On board with what?” A sinking feeling filled my shoulders and seeped down through my chest when Polly winked at me as if I should just trust her.
Our car weaved through traffic, and I turned around to check in the back seat to see how Henry Lyon was doing, whether he seemed anxious at leaving his realm, or all right—and whether he was watching the sky for the helicopters again. Since we had left the station, I wanted to keep a close eye on his stability, make sure it held.
Henry looked calm. So calm, in fact, that he even had his head leaning back and his eyes closed. Granted, Polly’s car was nice, and the seats were more comfortable than most people’s sofas, even the back seat, since I’d been third wheel on concert and baseball game outings with her and Geordie a few times and knew. But to sleep at a moment like this? When Burt was being described?
Ha.
Henry Lyon was a wiser man than I’d pegged him for.
I whispered to Polly. “Shush up about Burt for a second so I can tell you something while Henry’s dozing.”
Polly glanced at me, since we were at a temporary halt near an onramp.
“What? You’re not going to insist I take you to the cell phone store are you, because—”
“No, no. I need to tell you I think he’s not exactly what we’re thinking he is.”
“Vagrants rarely have zero past, hon.” Polly always kept a clear head, even when mine got clouded by nice teeth or callused hands. That was why I needed her. For a drama major, she had a surprisingly practical outlook on life. “Just be grateful for what the bus station handed you: its king.”
She was right. I closed my eyes and reasoned.
“Because even if this flops, at least I’ll know I tried everything for that child.”
“You really do love her,” Polly said. “Heinous Mo-No does not know what a gift she has in you.”
I didn’t know about that. After all, I was plotting to deceive her by using a hot hobo. I was pretty sure that wasn’t Mo-No’s idea of a gift.
Polly navigated the freeway system through Hollywood, not my favorite part of the L.A. metro area, but it was better than the bus station—mostly. I didn’t know why we were coming all the way out here, but I had learned early on not to be a backseat driver when Polly was at the wheel.
But then she took the Hollywood Boulevard exit, and in no time we were pulling up at Continental Studios, right to the front gatehouse.
“What are we doing here?” The sinking feeling came back, this time akin to the Titanic.
“Burt will find him the perfect things to wear. We just need two weeks’ worth, and they’ll never be missed.”
“Wait. What? No.” It all fell into place. She’d brought us here so that her costume designer friend could outfit Henry for the role. “We can’t be stealing things from a movie studio. Are you kidding me?”
“Burt said he’ll even sign for them. He’s that invested. How could he help it once I told him about Sylvie?”
“You told him about Sylvie?” I blubbered this as the guard waved us through with a Hello, Miss Pickering. How are you today, Miss Pickering? “I don’t know what to say.”
“Burt’s got a daughter.”
Well, that was an obvious conduit for empathy. I stared out the window at the big, boring, beige buildings that held so much thrilling color inside. Burt made magic happen with his transformations; he made people believe a person was someone else, someone important. If anyone on earth could turn our bus station bum into a believable millionaire, it was Burt.
Still, taking stuff that didn’t belong to us, even for a cause like this, wasn’t right.
“It’s more than clothes Henry needs, though. There’s the general cleanup, the hair, the walk.” Well, I should take that last one back. Henry’s walk was just fine—great posture, nice stride-length, good shoulders.
Fine, I know I should not have analyzed that walk in so much detail. So sue me. I was attracted to more than just teeth.
“All those details have been arranged. Burt knows people. Plus, we’ve got Pickering Place to perform the metamorphosis. Oh, did I tell you I once saw a one-man stage play of Kafka’s book by that name?”
“So you weren’t just having a little phone make-out with Geordie while we waited at the car. You were lining up all sorts of details without checking with me.”
“This grousing of yours—it all stems from needless worry. Quit worrying. I was watching, and once the guy had some food in him, he had the walk down. Almost like a cowboy.”
A cowboy walk! That was exactly it. She’d nailed it. And boy did I miss a good cowboy walk. Sure, as a California coast dweller all through college, and now living offshore at San Nouveau, I might live in the western-most part of the American West, but I hadn’t seen a good cowboy walk since I moved from the inland ranching areas—until today.
Henry had that walk down. Mmm.
“If there’s one thing besides piles of money Monique-Noelle claims to be a sucker for, it’s a good cowboy walk.” Just like my obsession with teeth, Mo-No loved a bowlegged stroll. It was her kryptonite, she always said. It might not be my kryptonite, but it was definitely on my personal list of knee-weakeners.
“Well, one look at Henry, and Mo-No is going to be powerless to resist.”
I just hoped that phrase didn’t describe me, too. With my stupid weaknesses, it was possible that his Straight White Teeth and Cowboy Walk could potentially trump Homeless and Paranoid Insanity and send me into swoonsville, like when he’d given me that once-over and shot my body full of sparks.
Plus, he really was a genuinely nice person, who got a lady’s door and offered to help a helpless child. Sincerity dripped from him, as did his sense of humor.
No.
Just no.
I shook myself.
It was time to set my mind back to code here. Sure, we swore no wagers were on the line between Polly and me, but I had to set up a serious rule or wager with myself—no falling for the crazy guy. If I could keep myself from falling for him, I’d quit being such a stick-in-the-mud about dating and accept a dinner offer from the next real guy that came along and asked.
My parents would approve that life choice.
They said I’d been giving every guy I met the freeze-out for a long time, and maybe they were right. I’d told myself the guys in undergrad were too young; then I’d told myself the guys in grad school were too academic. Now the men on San Nouveau were too married. I’d blown off the gardener and the coffee shop guy and the mail delivery guy, even though they all seemed like great catches from what I knew of them.
So, okay. I did a mental deal-handshake with myself on this: if I could safe-guard my heart by allowing logic to win over teeth and a confident stride, I’d open it up the next time the mailman asked for my phone number.
It was time.
“I didn’t tell you the best piece of all—there’s an event.” Polly looked giddy.
An event? My newly wagered heart lurched as she jammed the car into park in a VIP slot. Leave it to Polly to finagle a VIP parking slot.
“What kind of event?” It had better be before Friday when I had to be back at San Nouveau to pick up Sylvie.
“Burt will get us an invitation. It’s perfect for Henry’s debut. Burt’s studio has a film that’s opening—with the premiere happening tonight. Perfect, right? No waiting around for destiny. It’s a small budget film with a big budget cast, the kind that wins at festivals.”
Ugh. The kind I hated. I’d rather see an exploding naval battleship than an exploding twenty-year marriage every night of the year.
“The big stars have invited all their friends, and if we go, we get to meet them, sure, but more importantly, Henry gets to meet them.”
“You’re saying we can use it as a trial run for the skills we’re going to instill in Henry.” I got where she was going with this plan, even though the thought made me sick, especially when I asked myself how we would be able to observe Henry’s success or spectacular failure. “Like the racetrack scene in My Fair Lady.”
“Exactly.”
“Shouldn’t we just head out to the Santa Anita racetrack instead? We could foist him onto all the horseracing fans out there. That’d be more parallel to the original.” And it would serve as a better alternative to embarrassing both Henry and ourselves, and possibly Burt, by dragging a gussied up homeless man into the limelight of a red-carpet event. I didn’t say it aloud, but I was sure thinking it.
“Santa Anitas Racetrack is great. It’s historic and gorgeous, but be honest. It’s not Mo-No’s scene. If I’m right, she’s aiming her sights at Hollywood. Henry has to pass muster in Mo-No’s society.”
Or where Mo-No wished she could be. I couldn’t help rolling my eyes.
“Think of it this way—it will give him something to impress her when he first meets her. He can talk about his rubbing of elbows with the A-listers.” Polly beamed, clearly considering herself brilliant for her execution of this project she’d taken on to keep herself from getting bored over her Christmas break from school. Meanwhile, she was crashing into people’s lives, potentially breaking stuff. And I was her willing accomplice.
It’s all for Sylvie.
“I sure hope you’re going to be the one at his side taking notes, because I’m far better with horses than with movie stars.”
“Oh, pshaw. You’ll be luminous.” So that was how it was: she’d decided for me that I’d be going, whether I liked it or not. Would this involve my wearing of Burt’s clothes and hairstyles as well? Now at least I knew where the sinking premonition had stemmed from, and it wasn’t good.
The VIP Visitors sign accused me of being a fraud over and over, each time I glanced at it, knowing what a fraudulent scheme I was cooking up.
“Speaking of horses, you’ve still never taken me out to your ranch in the mountains.”
Our ranch wasn’t exactly in the mountains. Inland California did have mountains, the Sierra Nevadas, but our place ranged more in hilly areas rather than sharp peaks.
“Sometime we’ll go, if you’re ready for ranch life.”
Frankly, I couldn’t see Polly getting along too well with the types of work we had to do there every time I went home. Mucking out stalls, taking care of the animals, all the other chores Dad and Mom and the ranch hands did every day starting long before the crack of dawn, wouldn’t suit her. On days when she didn’t teach school, Polly rolled out of her four-poster bed around noon and spent half the afternoon primping. My parents would tell me she would start rubbing off on me, and tell me to find a friend with a moral compass—moral compass being the equivalent of a work ethic in their terminology.
They’d describe Polly as a life choice.
“After you and Geordie have kids, we’ll go and show them the hills. My dad will take them on horseback rides.” He’d jump at it, especially since he and Mom might never get grandchildren of their own at this rate. “But let’s get this project sorted first.”
“Right! Burt has a tuxedo all set aside for Henry, assuming I estimated the guy’s measurements accurately. I do have a gift for that.” Polly blew on her knuckles and rubbed them across her lapel. “I myself am wearing black, a dress I’ve had for ages. It hides my height, or lack thereof.”
I breathed a sigh of relief at hearing that Polly not only had her own dress to wear but also that she intended to go. In fact, maybe she was planning on letting me off the hook.
“Not to be a spoilsport, but I only brought my dining and shopping with Polly clothes for this trip, so I guess you’ll have to be Henry’s plus-one tonight.”
“Sorry, wrong number.” Polly wasn’t letting me off the hook. “For one, I’m engaged, and I’m not going to endanger Geordie’s feelings by showing up on the arm of a tall blond, tanned man at a movie premier that is going to be getting coverage in all the Hollywood papers.”
“But I don’t have anything to wear except this outfit and its clones.” I pointed to my sweater and jeans. They sported a little bit of bus station soil. Unfortunately, Polly was unfazed by reality.
“It’s black tie, so no jeans obviously, even if Vera Wang designed them herself. But we’re doing all the gussying up over at Pickering Place, and you can totally wear one of my gowns.” She clapped her hands together, and I heard Henry stir. “I’ve got this pretty blue one that will really bring out your eyes. It’s drenched in sequins.”
I shut my eyes in resignation. At least I wouldn’t be stealing from the studio. There was at least that balm to my woe—slight but soothing.
“You’re six inches shorter than I am.”
“Then you’ll be showing more leg. All the better.”
“Stop.” I did have nice legs. But flashing them in public wasn’t my thing, other than at the beach. While never warm off the California coast, this time of year the Pacific could have been masquerading as the Arctic, so I’d had no tanning time for a couple of months. “I’m not showing leg.”
“Then we’ll buy a dress. That’ll be fun.”
“We might not have time to shop.” This was a flimsy, last-ditch effort before I waved my white flag.
“Fine. I’ll have Burt send one over.”
Oh, no. Not that.
We were already raiding the studio closet, risking theft charges, and I’d rather scale down the crime level as much as possible.
“The blue sequins sound great, come to think of it. You’re right. Blue does make my eyes pop.”
“So you’ll wear my blue sequins,” came the coup de grace. I curled up and died, surrender my only option. I’d be attending a black-tie event, with A-list actors, on the arm of a man who believed he owned the bus station.
What could possibly go wrong?
“You’ll look like a gorgeous mermaid come ashore. Plus, you’ll look perfect on the arm of Mr. Sleeptytime back there when we give him a wash.” She made a sound like she was eating something chocolate. “I’ll just bet he cleans up nice.”
I agreed, probably too much, but I couldn’t let myself think about it in any detail, such as how nice his tan might be, or how well it would contrast with his brilliant smile. Rules had to be rules. Wagers had to be wagers. And I was keeping my heart out of this. Totally.
“Ooh!” Polly squealed as we got out of the car and before waking up Henry. “We should invent a back story for him. Something believable. If we’re going to pass him off to Hollywood’s elite as a handsome transportation baron, we’ve got a story to get straight.”
“Transportation baron!”
“You heard him. He owns the bus station. If that little gem pops out of his mouth again even when he’s been properly fed and bathed and rested, we want to have something that dovetails with it.”
Good thinking. Terrifying, but ingenious. Polly had noted that little quirk of his and would work with it instead of trying to go against the grain. Smart. It was like combing your hair to match your cowlick, rather than plastering it with sticky gel to try to overcompensate.
I had my hand poised on the back door handle. In a second we’d wake him and take him inside to meet Burt.
“Maybe the safest thing,” I said, “is to get him to work up his background story with us, then he can remember it better, in case he’s in a conversation on his own.” I partially hated how well this was all coming together, and I partially hated that now I was contributing to the mania.
But Polly clapped her hands giddily.
“This is going to be so intense.”
That was for sure. Me in a blue, sparkly mermaid gown just to save a little girl, while lying to the world about a possibly crazy man’s identity, just on a dare. Throughout my life, I’d always been a little more laid back. Doing anything like this would never have occurred to me.
My parents would definitely call this a questionable life choice.
For once, they would be totally accurate.
“I mean, if we can get this to stick with the people who made a living of pretending to be something other than they are, and therefore should be able to see right though us, then we’ll have it made in the shade with Monique-Noelle.”
Yeah, that, or we’d fail spectacularly, get banned from all future movie premieres ever, make the gossip columns, and possibly get Burt fired, all based on whether or not a stranger we just met and gave lunch to had the skills to pull off a deception.
Burt should not trust us.
Polly swung her back door open wide, bending over and gently shaking his shoulder.
“Henry, good morning, sunshine. We’re here at Burt’s movie lot.” She turned to me. “Come on. It’s time to watch some magic.”
***
The inside of the studio’s costuming department was more like an acre-square warehouse filled end to end with clothes hanging on rods, two layers high. Signs dangled from the ceilings indicating the types of costumes for that area, kind of like a department store, but instead of Juniors or Big and Tall, there was a section called Westerns and another Sports, another labeled King Louis IV, another Zombie, and on and on.
Actually, an acre might be an understatement.
“If we don’t find what we need here, there’s more on the second and third floors.” Burt led the way through the racks, snagging an occasional item here and there on our way past. “Here’s the men’s dressing room. I’ll measure you, Henry. Don’t want to waste time with the wrong sizing. But to me you look like you have about the same build as Chris Hemsworth, who I fit for that one movie. Six-foot-three?”
At this, Henry nodded. “Or thereabouts.”
Which meant he was a good six inches taller than I was. My heart fluttered.
“Good build, too.” Burt turned to us. “After years at this job, I’m getting pretty good at sizing people up.”
How he could picture Chris Hemsworth in Henry through all those outer layers of rumpled sunburn, I had no clue—unless it was those preternaturally white teeth or the confident walk that blinded Burt to the grime. Kind of like it had worked on me.
Now that he mentioned it, I could see a layer of Thor beneath the grime. Of course, he’d have to get a haircut to turn Mo-No’s head. She wanted better hair on a guy than her current husband’s, but she was definitely not into the scruffy type.
Measurements ensued, the result of which brought Burt forth triumphant.
“I was dead on. Except height. Henry here has an inch on Chris.” Burt shoved forth into the racks, but my eyes were glued on Henry. Was he really that tall? Uh, yeah. He was. And as a tall girl, I appreciated a tall guy.
Monique-Noelle would, too, no matter her own height. Any girl could appreciate that build.
Henry caught my eye and waved me over. I went closer and he whispered, “It’s rare to get gussied up at the station. How about you, Elizer?”
“I’m a nanny. I don’t gussy.” I’d never dream of trying to compete with Mo-No, was more like it.
“Never mind.” He winked at me. “You look great without any gussying.”
I did? Instinct made me tug at the hem of my shirt as my face went hot. Had a wink from a vagabond just made me blush?
An hour later, we each struggled out into the late afternoon sunshine to Polly’s car, where we filled her trunk and two-thirds of her back seat with costumes.
“It’s only two weeks. Who could wear this many things in two weeks?” Even if Henry started now, it would take him almost one week to simply try these on and wear them for an hour each.
“Won’t someone miss this many items?” Henry asked the question plaguing me. Not that we’d even made a millimeter of a dent in the miles of racks.
“You never know when you’ll need tennis whites,” Burt said. “These were from that movie about the British championships. It flopped, so no one is doing a tennis movie again anytime soon. Hollywood types get superstitious; they won’t put their money into anything related to a project that failed.” Burt rolled his eyes. “What they should be afraid of putting their money in isn’t tennis movies—it’s bad scripts.”
So he hadn’t signed them out. My internal Titanic returned.
“So true.” Polly gave him a hug, oblivious to the bad situation brewing here. “You’re the best. Give Ivy my love.” Polly blew a kiss to Burt’s absent daughter.
“I will. She’s calling you Aunt Polly these days. I hope that’s okay.” Burt dug in his jacket pocket. “I almost forgot. You’ll need these.”
He handed Polly an envelope. I leaned over so I could see when she peeked inside. Henry leaned, too. I saw his face fall, and he shuddered when he saw the tickets to the premiere of Frogs in the Sand.
“Oh, brother,” he said under his breath.
Ditto. I might be sick and lose my cedar plank salmon on the sidewalk at Continental Studios. Was the world kidding me right now? I hadn’t realized someone had turned that horror of a book into a movie. Why would anyone? Geez, it was self-discovery poetry from a middle-aged woman who’d been abandoned by her husband. Nobody on planet earth wanted to sit through ninety minutes of that.
“I read this book five times.” Polly gave a squee and high fived Burt. “Can’t wait.”
“Concentrate on your masterpiece there.” He pointed at Henry. “He’s a definite work of art in progress.”
***
The Pickering mansion might have looked like a typical Beverly Hills pink stucco, 1930s Spanish-style two-story from the outside, but inside it was posher than posh. Not only did Polly’s father’s admiralty have a good income, Polly’s mother had arrived in the marriage with a dowry the size of a small U.S. state’s annual budget.
“Here.” I threw three Walmart bags full of personal items—from toiletries to socks and underwear—into Henry’s arms. Polly’s father’s chauffeur, Terrence, had been tasked with picking those up while we were at Costume Acres with Burt. I led him into the Spanish-tiled bathroom with its gold fixtures.
“The shower is vintage so it’s kind of tricky.” I explained the hot and cold dials to Henry, showed him the loofa sponge, in hopes of taking off a layer of that sun-murdered skin, and asked if he knew how to use a razor—probably offending him on every level.
He watched me with amusement.
“I know it’s been a while since I had a proper wash-up, but I can probably manage it. Unless you’re offering to be my personal assistant.” His eye twinkled. “I wouldn’t refuse that.”
At which point I realized how I must have sounded to him with all my instructions. A hot blush rose from my neck, flaming my cheeks.
“I hear in Japan,” he said, taking a step nearer to me, “they have soap ladies. If you go to the public bath house—and this bathroom is about large enough to qualify—you can sit there, and a soap lady will scrub your back—and all your hard-to-reach parts.”
I did not want to think about his hard-to-reach parts. Not right now, with my whole head and neck ablaze with embarrassment.
“I’m sure you have it handled.” I turned on the hot water, and the steam floated all through the air between us.
“Ah, but don’t forget, Elizer.” He looked down at me from his dizzyingly beautiful height. I couldn’t remember the last time a guy had looked down at me. “Remember that in My Fair Lady, the street urchin woman had to have someone wash her.”
I cleared my throat. “Ahem. She complained, loudly.”
He stepped a little closer to me, the steam floating between us, as I let my eyes stray to his very nice white teeth.
“I wouldn’t complain.”
My heart pounded, filling up my throat and turning my hands ice cold.
“I’ll leave you to it.” I dashed for the door and left him there in all that steam, but taking my own little steam bath with me.
“Polly?” I found her in the kitchen making sandwiches. She stunk at cooking, but she could assemble the best sandwiches ever. It was a different skill from cooking itself, and Polly had it big time. No one could put precisely the right width of avocado slice on bread with turkey like Polly.
“Henry’s in the bath.” I brushed that image from my mind with a single swipe. She didn’t look up but kept intently focused on her work. Before meeting us, Henry had likely gone a long time without food, and he was probably hungry again already, so a sandwich was a very thoughtful gesture.
“We should get ready while he’s busy.” Much as I dreaded trying to shimmy my tall body into a slinky short dress and then stride out in it for Henry and the rest of the world to see, I’d do it—for Sylvie’s sake.
Well, that sounded weird, but I couldn’t get hung up on the details. For now, getting gussied up and going Hollywood was my best plan—because it was my only plan. If we could pull off the deception tonight, we could definitely make it work on Mo-No.
But when I looked again at Polly for some reaction to my suggestion, she wasn’t her smiling self at all. A tear was perched on her lower lashes.
“What’s wrong?”
“Geordie.”
“No!” I gasped and clutched my heart. With a member of the Armed Forces as a dear one, you could never assume the existence of a tomorrow. “Is he—”
“He’s shipping out.”
I exhaled. Shipping out was so much better than the tragic alternative my mind had jumped to.
“He won’t be at Camp Pendleton anymore?”
She shook her head, her eyes shimmering.
“They’re doing training exercises in the Pacific.”
I couldn’t blame her for her extreme concern. Training exercises were fraught with danger, too.
“How soon?”
“He goes in the morning. I have to see him before he leaves.”
Wait. That meant—
“You’re not coming tonight?”
“I can’t.”
“No. You’re right. Seeing him, that’s absolutely more important.” I hugged her and let her cry on my shoulder for a bit, which she did and then brushed some tears from shining eyes. “What time will you leave?”
“As soon as I’m done making him this picnic. He likes my sandwiches. I made some for you and Henry, too. I know he just ate, but he’s probably hungry again.”
She blubbered on for a bit about stuff that didn’t matter nearly as much as the giant thing that loomed over her of Geordie going out for real-life military exercises we both knew were high-risk. But people often focused on the mundane to avoid thinking of the overwhelming. “I’m driving down there to meet him, but I’m leaving in an hour instead of now, so I can miss the five o’clock traffic.”
We talked another few seconds, and then she moaned.
“Oh, but that leaves you without a ride to Frogs in the Sand.” She dug into her purse and handed me the tickets for the last show on earth I’d want to see, especially with Geordie potentially leaving Polly forever, gone for a soldier on the great ocean deep.
“It’s okay.” I didn’t want her worrying about this. “You’ve done enough by just getting us all prepped, and then you went the extra mile with these sandwiches. Please. I can call a cab.” This whole Operation Deceive Mo-No Into Being a Better Person plan was racking up the costs, in many ways. “What time does the event start?”
“No, no. Showing up in a cab is lame. You have to go in style if you’re going to pull this off. I’ll ask Terrence. He can take you in Daddy’s favorite car.”
“But we already asked Terrence to go to Walmart for shampoo and things. Won’t he be sick of us?”
“He’s fine. Daddy’s out of town and Terrence hates down time.”
That’s what rich people assumed about their staff.
“Just—go get dressed.” She shooed me away, probably so she could cry some more. “Oh, besides. You’ll look so good coming out of the Rolls.”
“The Rolls!” That’s what she meant by Daddy’s favorite car? Polly’s dad’s vintage Rolls Royce Phantom had a higher price tag than most people’s homes. “We can’t take that. Are you kidding? You’d be in so much trouble if something happened to it.” I about hyperventilated. “Didn’t you even watch that movie Ferris Beuller’s Day Off? Remember Cameron and his dad’s Ferrari?”
This giant red flag from Hollywoodland didn’t seem to faze her one bit.
“Oh, but you remember that life went on, even after the Ferrari crashed.” Polly shooed me off again. “Besides. Terrence is driving, not you. It’s his job to drive it. He’s the only one who ever does, so it’s not even the same.”
It wasn’t the same, true, but it still seemed like this whole thing was snowballing. There could be blowback against Polly’s parents for their involvement in our deceptive scheme now, if something went wrong. That Rolls Royce was easily traceable to the Pickering family. Even in Beverly Hills, there were a highly limited number of them.
We were roping in more and more innocents all the time.
My stomach knotted. I’d given half my cedar plank salmon to Henry, but now, worry killed my appetite even for a Polly Sandwich Special.
This could go so wrong.
***
“How am I even supposed to sit down in this?” I hovered near the edge of a sofa, my blue sequined dress so tight against my waist, hips, and thighs I could barely walk, let alone topple into a sitting position without the dress climbing to indecent heights on my legs. At least it was long enough to hit me mid-thigh when I was standing.
Okay, fine I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sure whether I looked good in it. I won’t say I looked like an A-lister, but let’s just say I wouldn’t feel self-conscious among some of the other women at the Hollywood premiere.
“Maybe if you leeeeean…and then fall.” Polly tapped against my shoulder, to tip me over. “Don’t rip it. Then you’d be more interesting than the film.”
No doubt about that, rip or no rip.
“And then everyone who worked on the film will be mad at you.”
The door to the living room swung open, and in burst a male model, the kind that does ad shoots for designer cologne. I lost my balance and did fall onto the sofa, not caring whether the dress’s seams held or not. He was shirtless, holding one white piece of cloth in each hand, his hair strategically tousled, and his face shaven a gleaming clean.
“Wh-who are you? What are you doing at Pickering Place?” I had to defend Polly’s home. She was off to see her fiancé ship out, so I knew she hadn’t hired some exotic dancer to come show up here, and I sure as heck hadn’t.
Then he spoke, and I saw the teeth. And I about died.
“I don’t know which of these two shirts to wear.” He held up both white shirts. “This or this?”
Polly’s voice scratched. “What you have on is fine.”
He cocked his head to the side. “I’m not even dressed.”
“Exactly,” she said, all breathy. “Uh, I have to go.” She shot me a good luck look.
In the fastest exit I’d ever seen her make, without so much as a fingers-only wave goodbye, Polly gathered up her purse and her picnic basket for Geordie. But at the door she turned on her heel and scuttled back over to me.
Leaning in she whispered, “Who’d have guessed! Mo-No is toast.” And then she was gone.
I still hadn’t recovered from the shock of the teeth, paralysis setting in at my lower limbs. But her words snapped me back to life.
“Wear the one that doesn’t need cuff links.” I managed.
“Right. Cuff links are a pain.”
My head was clearing, and I knew time was short before we needed to get into the car to go. But we had something vital that still had to happen before we exploded this bomb called Henry Lyon on a Hollywood party. It was something we’d discussed in the car, but Henry had snoozed through it, and now the clock was striking eleven fifty-nine.
“We need to set up your back story. And we need to be extremely careful because one little mistake, and we’re outed as frauds.”
And a whole lot of people could be in trouble.