The Seven Month Itch

by Allison Rushby

  So, I’m going to jump on the plane and, after about six hours in the air, I’ll arrive in LA, getting there three hours after I left (good trick, huh?). I’m paying for it all on the wedding debit card and hoping no-one notices. That bit I don’t feel quite so bad about – it is a wedding expense after all. If I don’t go, there may be no wedding, and what a waste of money that would be! And, well, yes, that’s it. All arranged.

  Except, of course, for Alexa. Although I phone her straight after work and fill her in on Mikey’s great investigative talents, in a way I’m relieved that she’s too distracted by the rush-hour crowds around her to be able to really talk.

  I leave it till late Tuesday evening to make the call. I’ve been kind of dreading it, actually.

  ‘Hey, Ness!’ Alexa sings down the phone at me. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Hi,’ I answer back, just a little guarded. ‘Um … I’ve got a favour to ask.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Can I, um, stay over tomorrow night?’ I say.

  ‘Of course! But that’s not a favour. You know you can stay over here any time.’

  ‘Thanks. There’s something else, though … I kind of need to stay over but not actually be there.’

  There’s a pause on the other end of the line. ‘Say that again?’

  ‘Well, I need my dad to think I’m staying over, but I’m going to be in, um … LA,’ I whisper.

  There’s another, longer, pause this time. ‘Nessa …’ Alexa sighs.

  ‘Look,’ I say quickly, ‘I need to do something here. Things are getting freaky. You know I told you about the Susannah and Mikey stuff?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, there’s my Kent problem to think about too. He’s acting stranger and stranger over there. I need to find out what’s really going on. I think he may be up to something. Like he might be thinking about sabotaging the wedding.’

  ‘But even if he wanted to, how would he? He’s in LA and the wedding’s going to be here.’

  I think about Alexa’s question for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ I say, ‘but he’s got connections, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Like?’

  I shrug. ‘I haven’t worked that out yet. But what if …’ – I shake my head, not knowing where I’m going with this – ‘what if he’s paying Mikey to turn a blind eye to something?’

  ‘Like what?’

  I shrug once more. ‘I don’t know. I guess, like Susannah.’

  Another sigh from Alexa. ‘Let me get this straight. So Kent Sweetman, one of Hollywood’s highest paid actors is paying off his ex-fiancée’s wedding security service and has planted a research assistant in her and her current fiancé’s home.’

  ‘A fake research assistant,’ I correct her. ‘A reporter posing as a research assistant.’

  ‘Nessa …’

  ‘Or maybe they’re not connected at all,’ I continue. ‘Maybe I have two separate problems – a reporter and a manipulative ex-fiancé who’s going to pull something else entirely on me. Like I said, I don’t know, Alexa. That’s why I have to go over. I know it all sounds a bit far-fetched, and maybe it is, but I need to know what’s going on. It’s doing my head in sitting around here and wondering about it all. I’ve left my ticket back open, so I can just jump on the next flight home as soon as I’m done. Maybe I won’t even be gone the night.’

  There’s a third, very, very long pause. ‘Nessa, if your dad finds out you’ve gone all the way across the country by yourself, he’s going to kill you. Or send you to the loony bin. I don’t know which is better. After the cruise ship …’

  I start to growl.

  ‘Okay, okay, we won’t talk about that. But I really don’t know what you think you’re going to find out over there.’

  ‘I just need to know that everything’s okay. That Kent’s not up to anything really bad.’

  ‘Nessa, you’ve got nothing to worry about,’ Alexa reasons. ‘It doesn’t matter what Kent does. Like I told you the other day, Holly and your dad love each other. They’d get married in the living room this Saturday if it came to that.’

  This stops me in my tracks. ‘You think so?’

  ‘Of course I think so. They’d get married in the living room in their underwear if they had to. They don’t care.’

  Now there’s a disgusting thought. My dad getting married in his underwear. Shudder. ‘But I don’t want it to be like that. I don’t want Kent or Susannah or anyone to wreck everything. I planned it all so carefully. All the things they love.’

  ‘Yes, but they love each other more. Don’t you see that?’

  I shrug my shoulders again, even though Alexa can’t see me. ‘I guess.’ But I can’t help it. I want them to have a great time. I want Nico’s to go off like it’s never gone off before. I want them to think the food and the decorations and the wedding cupcakes are the best things ever. ‘I need to know,’ I tell her again.

  ‘Okay, okay. If your dad calls, I’ll try to fob him off a little, but you have to promise you’ll check in with me every few hours. I need to know you’re okay.’

  ‘I promise I’ll call.’

  ‘Every few hours,’ Alexa insists.

  ‘Every few hours,’ I repeat.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘And, um, Alexa, there’s one more thing …’

  She hesitates for a second before replying. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I’m going to courier over the wedding folder to you in the morning. From the airport. I can’t leave it here, not with Susannah around, and there are a few teensy little things that need checking on tomorrow. It’s all written down. It’ll only take a minute or two. Honestly.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says.

  ‘Thanks heaps, Alexa. I owe you big time.’

  ‘Just be careful, Ness. That’s all I want.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Okay then. Good luck. I hope you find inner peace over there.’

  ‘Yeah, me too.’

  I hang up slowly. I guess if I’m going to find inner peace, hippy, trippy Los Angeles, California, is the place to start searching. New York is, after all, the home of inner neuroticism. And even though I’m not really American, I guess I kind of fit right in here. Hmmm. I wonder if that’s a good thing or a bad thing?

  I can hardly believe how smoothly everything goes.

  My dad doesn’t wake up on one of his midnight/early-morning snack walks and catch me sneaking out of the apartment. The car service arrives on time and the driver knows the way to La Guardia. The airline has my reservation. The flight leaves on time (practically a miracle!). The wind blows the right way. The plane lands two minutes ahead of schedule (unheard of!). And the car service is waiting to pick me up at the other end.

  It must be my lucky day.

  Or at least I think it is until I get to the studio in Hollywood. The car service dumps me and my backpack, rather unceremoniously I feel, at the studio gates and takes off. (The driver probably thought he was picking up Holly Isles from the airport and wasn’t too impressed when I showed up instead.) Right, I think. Now what? I look over at the security booth and the guards inside it that I need to get past. That’s the booth in front of the ten-foot-high security gate. The gate with razor wire across the top. Hmmm. Something tells me I’m not going to simply be making a run for it. Well, okay, here goes nothing …

  ‘Um, hi,’ I call out, waving slightly as I head on over towards the guards.

  The two guys look at me and then at each other in a ‘Hey, we’ve seen and heard it all before’ kind of way.

  Right. Okay.

  ‘Yes?’ one of the guards says. They both watch me closely.

  Yes. Um … I suddenly realise I haven’t really thought this far ahead. I’ve covered the logistics of getting to LA, but haven’t really thought much about how I’m going to make my way into the studio without Holly finding out I’m here, or anything like that. So, yes, um …

  Thankfully, there’s a distraction as a car pulls up behind me, wanting to
be let in. Phew. Hopefully this will buy me a little time to think. I turn around and …

  Oh, wow. It is my lucky day!

  ‘Heather!’ I say to the woman in the red Mercedes convertible. ‘How are you going?’ It’s Holly’s publicist. Talk about brilliant timing.

  ‘Nessa! Hi! Did you want a ride in?’

  The guards look at each other. ‘You know her?’ they say to Heather in unison.

  ‘Sure,’ she replies. ‘This is Holly’s stepdaughter-to-be. Not long now, is it, Nessa?’

  I shake my head. ‘Not long at all.’ I hope.

  ‘Come on then, jump in.’

  So, I do. Backpack in hand, I jump into the tan-leather passenger seat and, just like that, I’m inside the studio. All right!

  Heather looks over at me as she drives ever so slowly through the studio lot. ‘Holly’s on Sound Stage 12 today, it won’t take long to get there,’ she says. ‘She’s going to be happy to see you. She’s been very homesick. And definitely Kentsick.’

  ‘Kentsick?’

  ‘Oh yes. Everyone’s Kentsick.’ She leans back slightly in the seat and clasps a hand to her forehead as she drives, as if to demonstrate her exasperation. ‘He’s really giving everyone the run-around and wasting a lot of the studio’s money. People are not happy. I’m certainly not. You must’ve seen all that jumping on chairs he’s been doing, like a five-year-old who’s had a tad more than his daily allowance of additives and preservatives.’ She glances over my way again at this point.

  ‘You could hardly miss it.’

  ‘If he thinks he’s impressing Holly with all of this, he’s wrong,’ Heather continues. ‘The guy’s a psychopath.’

  I sit up a bit. ‘A psychopath?’

  ‘Well, okay, maybe that’s taking it a bit far, but he’s definitely a bit of a nut. I can’t see Holly working with him again after this.’

  That’s more than fine with me. ‘Um, Heather?’

  ‘Mmmhmmm?’

  ‘Could you maybe not tell Holly I’m here?’ I ask. ‘I want to surprise her.’

  Heather shrugs. ‘Sure. If that’s what you want. Both she and Marc will probably be busy until lunch, because they’re re-shooting a scene, so why don’t you hang about in her trailer till then?’

  ‘Okay! That sounds like a great idea!’ And it does – hopefully I’ll find out what I need to know by then and already be heading back to the airport. The sooner I’m out of here the better, as far as I’m concerned. Dodging both Holly and Marc is not going to be easy, I’m sure. Especially Marc. He’s not the kind of guy who misses much.

  ‘Here you go then. That’s Holly’s trailer right there.’ Heather points and I’m out of the car in a flash. We’re still pretty close to the security gates, and I realise I could’ve walked the distance in the same amount of time. I guess it’s true – no-one walks anywhere in LA.

  ‘Thanks heaps, Heather,’ I say. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  ‘Bye, Nessa. Good seeing you again. I’ll catch up with you on Saturday. I’m sure you’ve got something amazing planned!’ Heather adds before driving off.

  I do have something amazing planned, I think, as I watch the red Mercedes disappear and the movie people scurrying around me. Now, if only everyone would let me –

  ‘Eek!’

  Standing dumbly in the middle of the bitumen as I am, surveying the scene and wondering what on earth I’m going to do next, my eyes suddenly fall on Marc. Oh God … I quickly run over to duck behind Holly’s trailer as he turns, no doubt searching for the source of that strange screeching noise I just made; then, not seeing anything, he frowns and goes on his way. That was close. (Note to Nessa: if you don’t want to be seen, hiding might be a good idea. As would not ‘eeking’ out loud.)

  When I’m sure he’s gone, I take a good look at the trailer I’ve been pressing myself up against. It’s huge. Probably twice the size of the ones trailer-park families actually live in. I wonder what film companies actually expect people like Holly to do in them? I mean, she never stays in hers – they always put her up at some fancy-pants hotel. I guess, like she’s told me before, it’s all about having the biggest one so you look like the most important person on set. And Holly’s is the biggest one here, along with the one sitting beside it. I guess that must be Kent’s.

  Still not knowing what to do with myself, I duck around to the opposite side of the trailer and check the door – it’s unlocked. Quickly, and with an even quicker flick of my head to make sure no-one’s coming before I do, I open the door and then shut it right behind me. And, just like that, I’m in Holly’s trailer. Which looks like … Holly’s trailer. I’ve never been in one before, but she’s shown me photos from other films she has worked on. To tell the truth, it’s not all that interesting. Just bits and pieces of Holly’s stuff, a few magazines, some fruit and bottles of water. There’s also a couple of framed pictures of Dad and me and Marc lying around, which is nice, but there’s no denying it: within seconds I know there’s nothing for me to learn here. So, I turn around and exit the trailer. But then I pause, my hand resting on the metal rail, when I reach the last of the three steps that lead down to the ground.

  Again, now what?

  I bite my lip and look over at the trailer beside Holly’s. If I’m looking for information, I realise, information about Kent and the fact that he might be up to something in particular, that might be the place to try. It’s a bit more risky, though – I mean, being found in Holly’s trailer I can explain, but Kent Sweetman’s? Hmmm. That would be a little harder. So, to check how I’m going for time before they break for lunch, I decide to get over to the sound stage and see how things are faring with that scene that Heather was talking about.

  A quick hop, skip and jump sees me over at the sound stage’s gigantic metal sliding door. If anything, the place looks like an aircraft hangar. An aircraft hangar with a gigantic green ‘12’ painted on the door. I peek around the edge of the door and my eyes are immediately drawn to a lit-up area at the back of the building, where there’s an entire bedroom set up. A bed, dressing table, side tables, everything. It looks like a real bedroom. I spot Marc standing with a bunch of other people in the edge of the darkness, out of the lighting. He’s busy talking. Good. I take the opportunity to duck inside and hide behind a large mound of stacked tables and chairs that have been pushed up close to the sound-stage door. Phew. Made it. And it’s quite a good spot, actually. I can see the set clearly if I peer between a certain two stacks of chairs, and …

  Oh. My brain freezes as Holly and Kent walk into the bedroom, Holly talking, her hands flying around. It looks like they’re fighting. But then I see something else: the red lights that have flicked on in the darkness. And when I look over at Marc again, the group he’s standing with have stopped talking. I guess this is the scene itself. My eyes turn again to Holly and Kent, who are still arguing. No, wait. They’re not arguing now – they’re kissing.

  Really kissing.

  Ugh. Yuk. And this isn’t good. This isn’t good at all. I watch, my lip curled upwards in disgust. I mean, it’s horrible enough watching Holly kiss my dad. But at least he’s her fiancé. Watching her having to kiss Kent Sweetman, though. Again, yuk.

  Through my disgust, the thought registers that, at one time, Holly used to do this for real. Kent used to be her fiancé, after all. Before Dad. I shake my head slightly, my eyes still wide as I look on. What did she see in him? I asked her about it once and she said that, when you wiped off the Hollywood, Kent was a nice guy. He was just a bit confused. She said she had hoped she’d be able to help him and that it took her a long time to see that this should never have been her job in the first place. So, next time she went fiancé shopping, she made sure she picked one up that didn’t need any fixing whatsoever. I had a real laugh at that. As far as I could see, my dad needed plenty of fixing, and I told Holly she could start with his wardrobe. She giggled at that and admitted it was true, his wardrobe could do with a little work. I told her she could say that a
gain. She didn’t, though. Instead she laughed a bit more and told me she’d be basing that new wardrobe around showing off his cute butt. I warned her about the childhood deafness thing again then, and also let her know that the sight of my father parading his ‘cute butt’ (and, yes, it was extremely difficult to form those words and get them out of my mouth) could possibly result in childhood blindness as well. Just like the scene in front of me now could do.

  But finally, finally, the kiss ends.

  And it looks like it’s not a moment too soon, because Holly takes a couple of steps back from Kent, the red light flicks off again and – I can hardly believe my eyes when I see this – she wipes her mouth with her right hand. Wow. That’s pretty rude! She says something to him, then throws up a hand and, immediately, someone steps in between them, facing Kent. The director? I’m not sure. He says something to Kent, who doesn’t look very happy. Then this same man turns and speaks to Holly, looking as if he’s kind of pleading with her, but she waves a hand, shakes her head slightly and backs off, walking over to join Marc.

  Alexa’s comment from the other day comes back to me: They don’t kiss for real. Well, it looks like Kent’s trying his hardest to break that rule. Poor Holly.

  Half an hour later, I’m still peering between the two stacks of chairs and have watched Holly kiss Kent another two times. Wow. So, this is Holly’s job? Talk about disgusting. Not to mention boring. She earns her millions if this is what she does all day and has to kiss people like Kent Sweetman over and over again. Bleh.

  I stand upright for a second … Wasn’t I supposed to be doing something? Duh, that’s right – Kent’s trailer.

  I wait until it looks like they’re about to start the scene all over again before I peer outside the hangar, then back inside, and, when the coast is clear, I run across the bitumen once more and slam up against the side of Kent’s trailer. (I’m really getting into this sneaky stuff now – the next time I cross the bitumen, I may consider a quick commando roll.) I take one last look around me … Perfect. There’s no-one around. And then, as fast as my legs can run, I’m up those three stairs to his door.