Foreign Exposure

by Lauren Mechling

  With an apologetic glance to Sophie—who gaped back at me, terrified—I followed Charlie’s deputy to her office, which was as messy and cluttered as Imogen Fox’s room. In one corner were several rows of high-heeled shoes and a vanity cluttered with styling products, blow dryers, and makeup wands of every size. The most prominent picture on her wall was not of a suitor or star, but of four middle-aged women in sparkly sequined dresses huddled together waving champagne glasses.

  Brisk and businesslike, Rebecca ushered me to her granite conference table, which was covered with proof sheets of the Thom Thorpe pomade theft. “Anthony tells me that you’re responsible for this,” she said in that inscrutable tone of hers.

  Assuming I was in trouble, I stammered, “I . . . I was just watching him and, well, I—”

  “I must say, Charlie’s quite chuffed.” Rebecca smiled, and the lump in my throat dissolved. “We had a bit of a chat this morning, and we’ve agreed to give you a bit more of an active role around here. Have you any interest in covering more events like the one in Essex?”

  I thought of the stocked buffet table at Scissors and my dwindling bank account. And then there was Anthony, who never missed an event. “Well, sure, I’d love that.”

  “Excellent. You seem to have made quite a few contacts already, which should come in use. I heard you had Saturday lunch with my dear friend Vicky.”

  “Vicky?”

  “Yes, Vicky Ardsdale—she mentioned meeting you at the Fox home?”

  “Oh, Vicky,” I said, realizing Rebecca was talking about the superbitchy blonde from Pippa and Robin’s house. “You’re friends with her?”

  “So shall we give it a go?” Rebecca asked, pointedly ignoring my question. “Tonight there’s a big restaurant opening in Leicester Square, and I’ve asked Anthony to take you. Do keep a bit of distance from him, though,” she said. “Most celebs recognize him, but you’re an unknown quantity. Let’s try to keep it that way, shall we? While he conducts the interviews, see if you can’t capture a more candid side of the scene. We were hoping you’d be available this evening?”

  “Um, sure,” I said. Lily and I had made dinner plans, but this was my job, after all. “Can’t wait.”

  Sitting in the back seat of Ian’s monster vehicle later that afternoon, I recounted my conversation with Rebecca. “She just wants me to stand around and watch what happens. Isn’t that cool?”

  “What sort of things?” Ian asked, glancing in the rearview mirror.

  “She didn’t really get into details,” I admitted.

  “Best of luck with that,” Anthony said from the passenger seat. “And not to worry—if you don’t overhear anything, we’ll simply invent it.”

  Ian laughed. “Right. It can be the most malicious libel, but if the photograph is smashing, no one’s fussed. Why I bring my slimming lens, innit?”

  I relaxed in my seat, thrilled to be back in Ian’s car. The high seats afforded a rare view of London—a cleaner, more colorful city than New Yo?k, with the ubiquitous gardens and bright neon concert posters set against the wan sky and old stone buildings. Londoners dressed in zany patterns and color combinations that I much preferred to the black and blue denim palette of most New Yorkers.

  As we crawled forward at eleven miles an hour, Anthony briefed me on the Soul Cathedral, the joint venture of a bunch of aging rock legends—none of whom I’d ever heard of, of course. The restaurant’s chief investor was Duncan Palmer, the former bassist of the Junk, a punk band whose breakout album, Vampire Personality, was a huge hit in the late 1970s. But they never had another single, and the group broke up a few years later. Duncan Palmer had been floundering ever since, playing at nightclub openings and art galleries and punk concierge services in boutique hotels. “Nothing he attaches himself to ever lasts,” Anthony said. “I give this place a fortnight at the outside.”

  “Why so cynical?” I wondered aloud.

  “I’m not in the least cynical—but I’m also not a complete numbskull. Duncan Palmer is a smack addict who knows bugger-all about managing a restaurant. Honestly—soul food? How ludicrous is that!”

  “Ludicrous? You can’t say that! Have you ever even tasted soul food?”

  “Forgive me, Mimi,” Anthony said. “I’m not slagging off your nation’s deep-fried culinary traditions. I just seriously doubt Duncan Palmer gives a toss about food of any sort. His waist is thinner than my arm.” He pushed up his shirtsleeve and reached over the seat divider so that I could examine the appendage. His arm was pencil thin, lightly freckled, and spine-chillingly adorable.

  Leicester Square was the London equivalent of Times Square—a neon mess of fast food chains, huge movie theaters, and flummoxed tourists with unfolded Underground maps. The Soul Cathedral, directly next to a twelve-screen movie theater, was easy enough to find, with spotlights above the door drawing figure eights in the gray city sky, and a red carpet unrolled into the square like a giant dragon’s tongue.

  Cameras flashed and onlookers gawked as overdressed guests passed through the velvet ropes. “In a bit!” Ian said, darting off to secure a spot amid the tangle of paparazzi shooting a starlet in a white minidress. By the time Anthony and I gave our names to the bouncer at the entrance, Ian had pushed his way to the front of the pack. “Miss New York, over ’ere!” he called out, snapping a picture of me. Assuming I must be famous, several other photographers followed suit.

  I was grinning, my chest surging with excitement, when we got inside the restaurant, which was about a million times louder and more chaotic than Scissors Thompson’s Essex salon. Sometimes my life could be pretty ridiculous. I just wished it didn’t move too fast for me to take stock. The room was darker than the Mineral Gallery at the Museum of Natural History, and the crowd was a bewildering hodgepodge of. aging rockers, young actresses, and self-satisfied businessmen. On the stage, an emaciated man considerably older than my father was making obscene air-guitar gestures for the cameras. “Is that who I think it is?” I screamed into Anthony’s ear.

  “Indeed it is,” he screamed back.

  “He is skinny, you were right,” I conceded once we’d reached a quieter nook by the coat check.

  “I’m always right,” Anthony said, grabbing two blue cocktails off a tray. I was about to thank him when he drained both in succession. “Loosens me up for the interviews,” he said.

  “You should try yoga sometime,” I told him.

  Anthony ignored my suggestion, as he was trying to come up with the perfect question to poll the celebrities on that night. “Something interesting, but nothing too hard,” he said, strobe lights playing off his face. “Last month, at a National Portrait Gallery opening, I made the mistake of asking people to name their favorite bit of British history. One scholar cited ‘Independence from America.’ It was positively embarrassing.”

  “Yikes. So you need something easier?”

  “Yes, but also relevant to the event.”

  “How about asking about their favorite place in America?”

  “No, geography’s dodgy. You’re giving these philistines far too much credit.”

  I saw his point. “Well, then, what about asking about soul music—like, do they prefer old school or new school? Sam Cooke or Prince?”

  Anthony looked at me for an instant before slapping his palms together. “Say, that’s beautiful!” he said, lurching forward to squeeze my shoulders. “I rather think I’ll try that one.”

  I was still woozy from this unexpected intimacy when another waiter rounded the corner with more cocktails. Anthony, with a farewell wink, dashed off in pursuit of a third beverage. Left on my own, and too unsettled for sleuthing, I went over to check out the soul food spread. I’d just reached the buffet and was scooping mashed sweet potatoes onto my plate when someone tickled my waist from behind.

  Assuming it was Anthony, I reached back with one arm to pat the top of his head. But instead of a soft mop, I felt a handful of coarse, almost dreadlocked hair. Spinning around, I came face-to-face wi
th a tall, cadaverous older man with kohl-rimmed eyes. An alarmingly large amethyst amulet that could easily double as a weapon hung around his neck. Terrified, I shrieked and dropped my loaded plate. Ribs and sweet potato residue flew like fireworks in every direction. Remarkably, though, none of the revelers around me—not even those whose expensive outfits were smeared with my lost dinner—seemed to notice.

  The chalk-faced man displayed crooked green teeth as he whooped, “Well done, that! Ah, how I love ’em young, I do!”

  “What are you doing?” I cried as the man grabbed both my wrists and, over my faltering protests, delivered me onto the dance floor. Once again, no one around us seemed to find it bizarre that a sixteen-year-old girl was being forcibly tangoed by a Grade-A freak show in a leather vest and matching tight pants.

  “I can tell you’ve a beautiful soul,” he said at one point, pushing some stringy hair out of his eyes to gaze intently at me. “I reckon I could cut inside you and get a closer look.”

  Um, pardon—cut inside me? I had to get away from this lunatic, and fast. When, seconds later, he gripped my hand to twirl me, I made my move. I spun away from him, and I kept on back-stepping, faster and faster, farther and farther away, until somehow I landed dizzy and breathless outside the door of the ladies’ room.

  Inside the bathroom, which turned out to be roughly the same size as the restaurant floor, I found yet another party under way. A half-dozen overdressed women around my mother’s age were smoking cigarettes and striking dramatic poses on the settees and loveseats. I retreated to an empty ottoman in the corner, where, with my bag held protectively over my stomach, I breathed deeply and attempted to recover from the scarecrow freak’s hijacking attempt.

  At the mirrors, a woman with fuzzy dandelion hair was holding forth about her recent decision to move into her daughter’s bedroom. The other women listened attentively. “Vanessa’s absolutely livid,” the woman was saying, “but she’s got her own flat in Fulham that I bloody well paid for, so I simply ignore her. Other than that, it’s marvelous, this separate-bedroom arrangement. I’m sleeping properly for the first time since we got married. I told Richard we should’ve tried this a decade ago.”

  “Yes, but is Richard all right with it, love?” one member of her audience asked. “If I ever proposed such an arrangement to Jonathan, he’d doubtless find somebody else to bunk with him fairly quickly.”

  While a few of the women gasped at this possibility, the dandelion woman just shrugged. “Oh, I suppose he whinged a bit in the beginning, but you know Richard, not cut out for a battle. Now I think he’s getting on just fine—and indeed, he looks much perkier at the breakfast table these days. “

  “Yes, Linda, but do watch that he doesn’t get too perky,” a woman with a heart-shaped face and long black hair warned. “I should’ve known what trouble I was in when Stuart started singing ‘Yellow Submarine’ in the shower every morning.”

  Just then there was a commotion outside the door, and who should barge into the bathroom but my emaciated dance partner. In the light I could see his leather pants clinging to him like Saran Wrap. Heart racing, I whipped around to face the wall; maybe he wouldn’t recognize me from behind.

  “Bloody hell, this is the ladies’!” one woman screamed, but the freak kept at it, the chains on his boots clinking with every step. He knocked on a stall door. “Dancing queen, you in there? I’m here for you.”

  When he crouched down to peer under the door of the handicapped stall, the dandelion woman named Linda shouted, “Out with you—shove off this instant or we’ll have the police on you!” She flailed out her arm, as if threatening to beat him with her purse.

  I took advantage of this opportunity to flee the scene. “Go on, love, quick,” Linda urged me as I shot back into the main room. I darted through the crowd for a few feverish minutes before spotting Anthony. He was leaning against a velvet banquette, talking to yet another starlet. Why was it he never interviewed men?

  “Ah! There you are, twinkle toes,” he said pleasantly when I came up. “I saw you were having quite the time of it on the dance floor—well done on finding such a fetching partner.”

  “Funny,” I said, nearly panting. I was in no mood for flirting, not with my scarecrow stalker still on the prowl. “Anthony, I need to take a break. I’m going to walk around the block.”

  To my surprise, without so much as a word to the starlet, Anthony said, “I’ll come with you,” and hustled me toward the exit. “Just as I predicted,” he said on our way out, “it was a bloody awful party—I was absolutely desperate to leave.”

  Back outside in Leicester Square, he text-messaged Ian to meet us at Benjy’s, a sandwich shop around the corner. Only after ducking inside this comfortingly anonymous chain did I feel safe again.

  Neither of us said much as we picked at our prawn-mayo sandwiches and waited for Ian. He strolled in about ten minutes later, gloating over the photograph he’d taken of ultimate soap star hottie Tricia Evans, in a supershort dress. As soon as Ian sat down, Anthony snatched the camera and began searching for the money shot. “And where’d you slope off to?” Ian asked me. “Making friends in the kitchen, were you?”

  “Close,” Anthony told him. “The loo.”

  “You awright?” Ian cocked his head tenderly. “Those blue drinks got you a bit squiffy, did they?”

  “No, I wasn’t sick. I was hiding from this psychotic Alice Cooper look-alike who wanted to cut into my soul,” I said. “Fun, right? I’ve always wanted my soul cut into.”

  “How apposite for a soul food restaurant,” Anthony said, laughing.

  “Come on,” Ian chided Anthony. “Try to be a bit more sensitive.” Then, to me, he asked, “I suppose there was no silver lining, then? Didn’t manage to pick up any tidbits for Deputy Bridgewater?”

  “Not really,” I said. “I just sat in the bathroom listening to a group of middle-aged women discussing their sleeping arrangements.”

  “Go on, then,” Ian prodded me gently.

  As I began to relay the overheard conversation, Anthony’s head jerked up from the camera. “A daughter Vanessa and a husband Richard, you say?” he asked, regarding me with great interest. “But surely you don’t mean Linda Ross?”

  “Uh, I don’t know,” I said uncomfortably. “Her name was Linda. She was nice; she saved me when that psycho guy burst in looking for me.”

  “Wonky Rod Stewart hairdo? Bit of a plastic surgery overload?” Ian took his camera back from Anthony and flipped through the pictures. “That’s Linda, innit?” He showed me a shot of the woman from the bathroom.

  I nodded again, and the men exchanged excited glances. “Why you, you’re a lucky charm!” Anthony cried. He then explained the potential tabloid significance of my discovery. Linda Ross was a longtime A-ha! favorite, an early-eighties pop star who’d recently revived her career with a stint on the reality TV show Idol Escape. “Richard used to be her handyman, you see,” Anthony said. “He worked on her boiler before her comeback, and now she’s giving him the boot—why, but that’s brilliant, isn’t it?”

  “N-no,” I stammered, “she didn’t say anything about giving him the boot. She just wanted more sleep.”

  “Oh, go on with you,” Anthony said. “Separate beds my arse!”

  “Yes, but it’s so they can sleep better,” I insisted. “When my family used to take trips and my sister and I had to share a hotel bed, I never slept.”

  “Sounds like prelude to Splitsville to me,” Ian said. “The old missus only resorts to separate beds in extremis.”

  “Yes, but—”, I’d liked Linda Ross, and felt indebted to her, but I didn’t know how to convey this without sounding stupid or sentimental.

  Across the table, Anthony was already leaving a hysterical message for Rebecca Bridgewater, repeating my report. When he got off, he looked at his phone and flicked through his text messages. “I’m afraid I must toddle off now,” he said. “My flatmate’s having a birthday dinner that I’m not permitted to skip.
”

  After Anthony left, Ian offered to walk me down to the Charing Cross Tube station. “It’ll save you a transfer,” he told me.

  Without Anthony to abuse, Ian seemed different—kind and protective, almost paternal. “This your first time in old Blighty then?” he asked on our way down the street.

  I said it was, then briefly described the trip my family had taken to Rome while I was in junior high: “Every day my dad photographed us in front of a new fountain. He was so excited.”

  “But this round’s a bit trickier, I reckon,” Ian said in a serious voice. “You’re on your own. Now, if you’ll permit my saying, you seem like you’ve got your head screwed on the right way, but between you, me, and the gatepost, this city can be right difficult if you don’t watch it. I’m a Londoner through and through—been here man and boy thirty-seven years now, and I still can’t get my head round the place. Say, you got something I can write on?” he asked suddenly, stopping outside a theater. When I handed him the reporter’s notebook, he wrote his number on the back with a Sharpie he excavated from one of his pockets. “Should you ever need help, help of any kind, don’t hesitate to give me a bell. I mean anything, from hanging curtains to giving the what-for to some tosser chasing you round a party. If you’re ever in a pinch, Cassidy’s your man.”

  “Thanks,” I said, taking my notebook back and admiring his big blocky handwriting. We resumed walking. “And speaking of people chasing me around a party, can I ask you something? About what happened in the bathroom?”

  “Fire away, love.”

  “Well, why do we have to print a nasty story about Linda Ross’s marriage? It’s not true, and she’s the one who saved me from my stalker.”

  “C’est la vie, I’m afraid,” Ian said levelly, stepping down from the sidewalk onto the crosswalk. “It’s been like this since the beginning of time. It’s human nature to need heroes, innit. The ancient Greeks had their gods, and now we’ve got our Linda Rosses. You see? It’s continuity, like.” He seemed pleased with this reasoning.