by Susan Grant
The roof! Jana almost passed out. “What was he doing on the roof?” she cried. After catching a few looks, she lowered her voice. “Did he say why?”
“He was repairing the security system.”
“Oh. Well, see? It’s not all bad. At least he’s helping around the house.”
“Jana, I don’t have a security system. I have an alarm, but it’s disconnected because of the pets. I tried to call the house just now, but there’s some weird busy signal.”
Holy Mary Mother of God. Jana wanted to pray, but she didn’t know where to start. What was Cavin up to? Why did she ever think he’d behave and remain indoors? The elevator finally reached the basement level and she staggered out, leaving a gaggle of disappointed eavesdroppers behind her.
With a finger stuck in one ear and the cell phone pressed to her other, Jana hurried down the hallway toward the Eureka Room. “Evie, I am so sorry. I stayed in your house last night. I was supposed to call and tell you. This morning, I swear. But it got so crazy—”
“Give it up, girl. The goods. Who’s the dude and what’s he doing in my house?”
“If I told you, you’d never believe me.”
“Try me.”
Jana stopped outside the Eureka Room’s closed doors and a sign that said Reserved: Private Function. “Remember Peter from when we were kids? The glowing boy? The one who could fly?”
“The one who owed you three wishes but only gave you two?”
“It’s him.”
At first there was silence on the other end. “He’s imaginary, Jana.”
“That’s what I thought, too.”
There was some rustling on the line then Evie’s muffled voice telling one of her children, “In a minute. Aunt Jana’s not feeling well.” Then the rustling stopped. “Aw, sweetie,” Evie said. “How are you taking this thing with Dad and Jared? I’m sick over it, but I’m trying not to let it ruin the kids’vacation. Are you okay? Do we need to talk?”
“I am talking, Evie. He came back, and I’m hiding him at your house. Peter, my imaginary friend.”
Giggles erupted behind her. Jana turned around slowly. The doors to the Eureka Room were wide-open. At least a dozen little girls with gap-toothed grins were staring up at her as their troop leaders observed her with tentative smiles. Jana blinked away a news headline: State Senator Has Breakdown In Front Of Brownie Troop As Jasper Political Dynasty Continues Tragic Downhill Slide.
“Evie, I’ll call you later,” she whispered and hung up. Then turned around and flashed a blinding, politician’s smile. “Why, hello, girls! Welcome to our State Capitol. I’m Senator Jana Jasper, and I’m honored to meet you.” She thrust out her arm and made sure she shook everyone’s hand. “We’re going to have fun this morning, right?”
“Right,” they chorused.
“I can’t wait to see the projects you made to call attention to the important issue of saving our environment. But first, how many of you have or have had imaginary friends?”
A few shy hands rose up.
“Is that all?”
A few more hands went up.
The first lady, her security detail, and her personal assistant, Keri, walked up to the group. Mary Ann glanced curiously from the girls and their raised hands to Jana. “We’re talking about imaginary friends, Mrs. Schwarzkopf. I had one. Did you?”
“No, but my daughter had one for years.” The woman appeared amused by the question.
“Whether you did or didn’t have an imaginary friend, it’s important to remember just how important imagination is. My grandfather, Governor Jake Jasper, told me that imagination is the ability to look at ordinary things and see magic. We must never stop believing in magic, because without it, we can’t dream. And, girls, our dreams are the building blocks for the future. I understand that all of you cared enough about California’s future to draw posters in support of protecting our environment. Mrs. Schwarzkopf and I look forward to seeing what you made. Why don’t you show us?”
Surrounded by the chatter of excited little voices, Jana placed her hands on the backs of a couple of girls nearest her and ushered them into the room, where they took seats at a table set up for the catered breakfast.
Mary Ann gave Jana a warm smile. She, like Jana, had grown up in a well-known political family. And now, as adults, they found themselves immersed in the game. It gave them a bond that transcended political ideology. “That was a charming way to break the ice,” Mary Ann said.
“Thanks. It worked out nicely for something totally off-the-cuff.”
“If only I were as good off-the-cuff.”
You’d be amazed what a little desperation can do.
Mary Ann left her to address the girls at the podium. The walls in the room were made of bricks restored from the original capitol foundation from the 1800s. Colorful posters decorated one wall and formed a backdrop to the podium. At first glance, the projects were the innocent expressions of young children: bright yellow suns, moons and stars, the Earth, animals, and, in one, people with wings that could fly. Which ones were drawn from imagination, and which were unknowingly real? Did these expressions of childhood in fact a represent something far more serious? As in…the aliens amongst us?
Jana pressed a hand over her mouth, indulged in exactly two seconds of screaming panic then, putting on her “normal” face, she waited for her turn to speak. But no matter what kind of outer shell she presented to the public, one fact didn’t change: there was an alien prowling on the roof of her sister’s house.
Chapter Nine
ANSWER THE PHONE, CAVIN. After a long morning of meetings and appointments, Jana was back in the office. For what seemed like the hundredth time, she’d slipped on her glasses and hit Send on her cell phone. She’d been trying on and off since breakfast and, just like Evie had said, all she heard from the other end was a strange busy signal.
The kind you heard when circuits were dead.
Jana sweated under her pale blue pin-striped suit that matched the sky outside her small window, a sky empty of any hint of an impending alien invasion.
Who was she kidding? All of Earth was empty of hints of an invasion. Only she knew anything about it. And what was she doing? Keeping it a secret, hoping it would go away. Well, it wasn’t going away.
Jana scooted up to her computer and called up Google. She typed in Area 51. Google him, Jana. You don’t know anyone. She sniffed. “I know a few people, Evie. A few.” She backspaced and typed in: Josh Holloway.
The first of a hundred fan sites for the TV star and the show Lost popped up. Jana slipped on her glasses and squinted at a photo of Holloway. Okay, he was cute. Cavin had darker, shorter hair and a better mouth, though.
She deleted Holloway and went in search of what she could gather on Area 51. But after a few intent minutes of weeding out the facts from the hype, all she learned was that Area 51 was also known as Groom Lake and was a secret military facility about ninety miles north of Las Vegas. The number referred to a six-by-ten-mile block of land, at the center of which was a large air base the government didn’t like to discuss. It didn’t add much to what she already knew: the place was a remote testing ground for “black budget” aircraft before they were publicly acknowledged.
There was nothing that stated with any credibility that an alien spacecraft had ever been hidden there. It was a rumor with roots dating back to 1947 when a lieutenant at Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release stating that the army had recovered a crashed flying saucer from the New Mexico desert, sparking a conspiracy theory the Pentagon had never quite been able to kill off. The missing UFO had become urban legend, the inspiration for cheesy movies, some really terrible photos, and one heck of a tourist trade in a place few would otherwise visit.
Jana dug deeper. Maps of the area showed little more than scattered mountain ranges, a dry lake bed, and assorted dirt roads winding across the bleak and parched high desert. The perfect location for a base around which you didn’t want people snooping.
She pulled of
f her glasses. If one were to want to hide a spacecraft, Area 51 would be the place to do it.
Her secretary, Vicky, paged her. “Jana, it’s your brother on line one.”
“Hey, Jared,” she said, picking up.
“Busy?”
“Um, doing research. How are you?”
“So far, so good over here. Are you holding up?”
Jana made a sound in her throat. “I feel like one of those circus performers who balance the spinning plates on sticks.”
Jared laughed.
“Each plate’s a promise I’ve made to someone. And all the plates are wobbling.” She swiveled her chair and turned her back to the computer.
“Especially the one you made to Grandpa about being a nun.”
Jana thought of Cavin and steamy, rain-drenched jungles. “I’m spinning that plate as fast as I can.” And how much longer until it crashed?
“That’s what you get for trying to do what they tell you. But then you were always the good kid.”
That’s what you think. “Well, don’t be surprised if I turn out to be the biggest troublemaker this family’s ever seen,” she said glumly.
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Say, I was wondering if any of your air force buddies were ever stationed at Area 51?”
“No one for years. What do you need?”
Jana spun her desk chair to face the window and gazed fretfully at the sky. “I’m thinking of trying to get an old friend onto the base.”
“Who?”
“You never met him. Childhood friend. He’s interested in a tour, sort of.”
“Is he military?”
“Actually he is.”
“What branch?”
“Er…foreign.” Very foreign.
“Good luck.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. Anyone in the family? With all our connections, you’d think one of us would know someone who is or was at the base.”
“Grandpa knows General Mahoney,” Jared said. “He used to be Dreamland’s base commander back in the day. He was famous for deflecting the media from what they were really doing out there. He was so good at feeding them bullshit, the guys on the base dubbed him Baloney Mahoney. He’s been retired for decades, but I bet he knows people. Ask Grandpa.”
Jana had a vague childhood memory of a crusty old officer coming to Thanksgiving dinner at the ranch. Baloney Mahoney. He sounded exactly the kind of ally they needed. But to get to the fact-fibbing general, she’d have to go through her grandfather and, frankly, the thought terrified her. She wouldn’t know what to say. “Why does my friend need to visit Area 51, Grandpa? So he can hack into the spacecraft everyone except conspiracy theory enthusiasts and UFO fanatics say isn’t there. Why? It’s how he’s going to communicate with the alien invasion force that’s on their way here. You look pale, Grandpa.”
Jana pressed her hand to her aching stomach.
“Anyway, kid,” Jared drawled, “I called to say I’ll see you at lunch.”
“No you won’t. I’ve got a working lunch scheduled with the Water Board.”
“Viktor said you’d be there.”
“Be where?”
“At Ice. Where else? He’s trying out a new lunch menu and invited us to come. Normally, my lunches are booked, but now that I’m a pariah, my schedule’s wide-open.”
“Oh, Jared.” She wanted to weep for him, for her father.
“So, I thought, why not? Viktor’s family, for God’s sake. He invited Mom, too.”
A regular family reunion. “Wish I’d known about it. I doubt I could have rescheduled this lunch, though. I’d much rather have eaten with you and Mom. Have some caviar for me,” she said longingly before hanging up.
Again, she tried Evie’s home number. It was the same rapid beeping noise. That’s it. After lunch she was leaving. She’d lie and say she was sick, a first for her, and, all things considered from the past day, it wouldn’t be too far from the truth.
But what if she got to her sister’s house and Cavin wasn’t there? A nightmarish image of men-in-black arriving at Evie’s door flashed in her mind: “We want you to come with us, Mr. Far Star.”
Vicky poked her head through the door. “You’ve got flowers!”
“Flowers,” Jana repeated in a dead voice. “From who—?”
“And your mother’s here. Oh, and the Water Board called to reschedule lunch.”
Nothing like everything happening at once. Jana frowned at her watch. “A half hour before we’re supposed to meet, the Water Board cancels? Sure, pencil them in for lunch after Easter recess. Did they say why they canceled?”
“They said you did.”
“Uh, no, I didn’t.”
As she absorbed what her secretary had said, Jana’s expression reflected the uncomfortable feeling in her gut. No one in her office would cancel a lunch meeting without expressly getting her permission. “Have Nona look into it,” Jana said.
Vicky backed up and Larisa Porizkova Jasper, arms full of white roses, soared into the office, immediately gilding it with her golden-blond glamour. Jana had inherited her mother’s coloring and agility, but not her extraordinary presence and classic beauty. But thanks to her mother’s loving encouragement and praise every step of the way through childhood, Jana never felt inadequate in her presence. In fact, the opposite was true. Her mother inspired her.
The scents of real roses and her mother’s expensive perfume filled the office. Mom set the bouquet on Jana’s desk. “Ah, look! Are they not beautiful?”
“They’re gorgeous. Who sent them?”
Her mother dug a card out of layers of velvety petals. “‘To help make a rotten day smell a little sweeter. Alex.’ Awww.”
“Alex Neiman?”
“See? He is a good, sweet boy. Thinking of you in this hard time for our family.”
“It was a thoughtful thing for him to do,” Jana acknowledged. Then she noticed her mother’s eyes. Even a careful application of makeup couldn’t hide the puffy lids. “Mom, you’ve been crying.”
She waved her hand airily. “For a few indulgent moments, only. I have decided, no more crying. What good does it do?”
Jana scooted her chair closer to the desk. “What happened? What are they saying now?”
“My relatives in Moscow have connections to the Russian Mafia.”
“What?”
“Yes, it is true.”
“It is? We have family in the Russian Mafia?”
Her eyes sparked blue fire. “Nyet, Janushka! But they have mentioned this in the news. Grandpa saw it. It was on CNN.”
Jana slapped her hands on the desk. Papers scattered. “Yenflarg.”
“What is that?
“It means shit in alien. Or something.” Jana sagged back in her chair. “Dad’s campaign finances, Jared’s company, now your family. It’s such an obvious witch hunt, how can anyone believe it?”
Her mother clutched her hands in her lap. Her three-carat diamond wedding ring sparkled in the overhead light. “Grandpa’s in the hospital.”
Unexpected tears stung Jana’s eyes. “When?”
“An hour ago. You’re the first to know. He’s not in immediate danger, but his pressure was too high. He was so angry, so worried that you are next in line to be attacked. I was afraid to leave him alone. The nurse at home is too afraid of him.”
“He is a force to reckon with.”
“He has a private room. They’re running tests.”
“It’s the smart thing to do.” Poor Grandpa.
“But we will do no crying. Here—I want you to have this.” Her mother opened her pale green, quilted leather Chanel purse and pulled out a lump wrapped in perfumed tissue paper. “A gift for you.”
“What is it?”
“Go. Open it and see.”
Jana pulled apart the paper and revealed a small, exquisitely painted matryoshka doll. “This was a gift from Dad to you. I can’t keep this.”
“Yes, you must. You of all m
y children have treasured my matryoshkas since you were small. I remember how you’d gather them and read all the notes, replacing them so carefully.”
Jana guarded the precious bundle in her hands. “But why are you giving me this now?”
“If in the coming weeks, it is hard for you—”
“I’m going to be fine, Mom. Please, don’t worry.” What her mother didn’t know was that Jana was already battling the biggest possible threat to her reputation: it was six foot one and hiding in Evie’s house.
Correction—he was on Evie’s roof.
Jana squeezed her eyes closed briefly and listened to her mother say, “Life is sometimes easy, and sometimes hard, but love is the only constant. No matter how far you rise, or how hard you fall, a good love will always be there for you. I want you to keep the matryoshka to remind you of this.”
Jana opened her eyes and came around the desk to embrace her mother. Their hug was long and emotional. Then her mother kissed the top of her head as she used to when Jana was a child. “Thank you for being a good girl,” Mom said. “For doing as Grandpa asked. He asks a lot of you, but he knows, as we all do, that you are strong enough to rise to the occasion.”
Good? She’d been anything but. Jana’s smile felt so forced that she wouldn’t be surprised if it came out looking like a grimace.
Mom patted her on the hands. “Now let’s pay Viktor a visit. Perhaps it will be a much-needed distraction.”
But as Jana reached for her suit jacket, she couldn’t help inhaling a whiff of roses. Two dozen white roses. Alex Neiman was exactly the kind of distraction she didn’t need.
Chapter Ten
COUSIN VIKTOR FILLED five shot glasses with ice-cold Stolichnaya vodka. “Za vashe zdorov’yeh!” Everyone chorused the toast. Jana tossed back the shot and slammed the glass down. The numbing effect of the vodka was welcome. Probably it would be too forward of her to ask for the rest of the bottle, a straw and some privacy.
An expansive wall of photos of celebrities was the first thing anyone saw walking into Ice: Sacramento Kings players, Governor Schwarzkopf, the mayor, Hollywood movie stars and even Jana, all of them posed with a one, two, or three combination of Alex, Viktor, or Brace Bowie, the three investors in the venture. Brace’s involvement was solely financial. Viktor ran the kitchen, and Alex handled the business side of things. There was even a photo of Janna and Brace taken before his big tantrum, before he hung billboards across the city criticizing her political motives and promising he was going to take her down. Jana’s eyes narrowed at the picture. Her former fiancé’s absence at lunch was about the only good thing that had happened today. Viktor might not be the master of tact, but at least he knew better than to ask the jerkwad to join them.
