Claire Voyant

by Saralee Rosenberg

  “Your arms have no definition, you have this little nothing tuchas, I can’t tell about your thighs yet, but your shoulders are bony—”

  “That’s my crime? Bony shoulders?”

  “This is one business where you’re not the sum of your parts, love. Look at J. Lo. Nice face, but she’s got an ass like a three-car caboose. Jamie Lee Curtis has more rolls than a bakery. Brooke Shields, Elizabeth Hurley, Cindy Crawford, even Pamela Anderson…they all wanted Anita Hart as their butt double. Believe me, after fifteen years, I know what works on the big screen…. Maybe you should consider catalog work.”

  “You’re killing me, Mr. de Miro. I’m a respected actress, not a lingerie model for Sears.”

  “According to Pablo, right now you’re neither. That’s why I thought you’d be interested—”

  “In what? Finding out that after running rings around most other actresses, the only thing I’m qualified to do is answer phones and fetch Starbucks at some loony bin agency that pays shitty?”

  “I assure you our salaries are commensurate with living costs down here.”

  “Not my living costs. Do you have any idea what Botox injections go for these days?”

  “I see that you’re not afraid to speak candidly…. Most people are afraid of me, you know.”

  “Because they had no idea you just started shaving. And besides, now that I know you can’t help me—”

  “I can help you. Thirty thousand. Final offer.”

  “Why do you want me to work for you at all? You said yourself I’m totally unqualified.”

  “Because at the moment I am positively desperate for someone with brains who can run the day-to-day. Pablo is a pushover, and the last three girls…one stupider than the next.”

  “Is it all grunt work, or would I get to interact with Mr. Scorcese?”

  Raphael laughed. “My dear, who do you think its job will be to tell him to fuck off?”

  “Are you serious? I would get to tell Marty Scorcese to fuck off?”

  “Nicely, of course. Along with all the other pains in the asses you’ll have to deal with. Models, booking agents, casting directors, producers, directors…. We’re now one of the largest agencies in the country for body doubles.”

  “That’s great…. Why did you ask if I could cook?”

  “I like lunch served fresh.”

  “Me, too. God bless takeout.”

  “It gets very expensive.”

  “So does paying me forty grand a year, then sticking me in the kitchen to whip up paella?”

  “Thirty-five, and I adore paella.”

  “Me, too! But here’s the thing. I don’t cook. I don’t even defrost. Once I burned a salad…. The other problem is I’d need a place to live.”

  “Where are you staying now?”

  “With my grandmother.”

  “Move in with her.”

  “I like it. I do. Rooming with an eighty-four-year-old woman who spends half her day pissing in her pants, and the other half looking for her teeth.”

  “You’ll be very happy here.” Raphael kissed my hand. “I give you my word.”

  “Is that what you told the last three girls?”

  “Of course.”

  “And where are they today?”

  “I had them all killed.”

  I was relieved that Viktor did not take offense when I got back into the limousine, closed my eyes, and begged for privacy. Thank God, because I was thinking that if I got dragged into even one more surreal conversation today, I would start looking for my biggest artery and a razor blade.

  First there were all those wackos on my flight down. Then the phone call with my father about Elyce’s wedding…Adam with the whole missing-car-key business…Grams with the meatloaf, and freaking out about Abe Fabrikant…meeting Ben and Drew and setting a hundred lies in motion…bumping into Julia Farber (wonder if Dr. Fiancé knows she once majored in ménage à trois). Then came Drew’s request for me to speak at the funeral (Who asks a complete stranger to do a eulogy?). And finally, the war of words with Viktor the Mouth, Pink Panther Pablo, and Raphael de Lunatic…oh my God…had I actually agreed to consider working for him?

  And yet, what did it all matter? The one conversation that should have happened, the only one-on-one that would have enriched my life and restored my faith in mankind, never took place. And it certainly wasn’t because I’d had my fill of great humanitarians. In L.A., you qualified as a hero if you got a friend Marc Jacobs at wholesale.

  Sadly, all I had to show for my lone encounter with the great Abe Fabrikant were the if only’s. If only I’d been a decent human being instead of a self-absorbed little putz. If only I’d stayed on the plane and not lied to his grieving family. If only I’d redeemed myself by confessing the truth to Ben and Drew, maybe I wouldn’t be feeling the unexplainable nearness of something practically on top of me.

  I opened my eyes, startled by the fact that everything was as it should be. Viktor was behind the wheel heading north on 95, yakking on his cell. I was alone in the back seat. Yet as sure as the sun was shining, I somehow knew I had company.

  I don’t know what made me poke around. There was nothing to see or touch. And how stupid I must have looked, waving my hand in the air, a maestro without music. Still, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that there was an enormous energy force beside me that wanted to make its presence known. A cold, improbable heaviness invading my space, mimicking my uneven breaths.

  My instinct was to cry out, but my voice was still. My heart pounded, yet I did not know what I feared. The chilled cabin air was tempered by an aura that warmed my skin.

  “Mr. Fabrikant?” I whispered, actually expecting a reply.

  “You okay beck there?” Viktor lowered the privacy window.

  “Fine. I think…. I don’t know…. Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “Of course. In Russia, we have our barabashkas, our little house ghosts. You leave, they don’t. Then there’s all thi stories about the ghost of Rasputin. You remember heem? The poet and the devil. Oh. And maybe you like to read excellent Russian literature like Gogol’s The Dead Souls….”

  Absolutely! Let’s stop at the library. “What about ghosts of people who die on your lap?” I took a deep breath. “What do they call that in Russia?”

  “In Russia?” Viktor chuckled. “They call thet beeg trouble.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Maybe yur just heving bed dream.”

  “I guess so…. Are we almost there?”

  “If treffic stays good, we be et your grendmotherz—”

  “Yeah, yeah. In blink of yur eye.”

  I reached for my cell phone. Maybe a familiar activity would shoo away the hair-raising thought that to grandmother’s house I was going, only not alone. But with seven missed messages, three of which were from Elyce, I wasn’t sure which scared me more, the bride or the boogeyman.

  Turns out hearing Elyce’s orgasmic voice was bone-chilling. “Oh my God, I’m so excited you’re going to be in the wedding.” Beep. “Call me right away so I know when to set up your first fitting at Kleinfeld’s.” Beep. “Wait until you see the bridesmaids’ dresses. They’re to die for.” (If ever there was an expression I didn’t want to hear…)

  On the good-news front, it occurred to me that if I accepted the job offer from Mr. de Miro, I’d have a great reason not to be part of the Fogel/Berg nuptials. How could Elyce expect me to be a dutiful bridesmaid from fourteen hundred miles away? It would be difficult for me to help plan her shower. And what about all those pesky fittings?

  But did I really want to commit to living in Florida, working in slave mode for a bunch of hotheaded homosexuals, just to avoid a wedding party? What about my shot at the Big Apple? It was too soon to cave. Not too soon, however, to reach Gram’s high-rise apartment building, and to have the fun begin.

  “I ken’t bee-leeve it.” Viktor laughed. “There’s an old lady stending outside in thi hot sun with a plate of food…. What is she doing? Looking fo
r her next husband?”

  I glanced out my window and groaned. “No, unfortunately. She’s looking for me.

  “Grams, you didn’t have to bring the meatloaf down,” I scolded her in the elevator. “Unless you were planning to mail it to the starving children in Europe.”

  “Excuse me, Miss Skinny Minny. I thought you’d be hungry.” Her once-steady hands shook as she clutched the plate of home cooking.

  “Yeah, but I’m not four anymore. I can wait until I get to a table.”

  She mumbled something about her table, and I noticed she seemed agitated, but I was more focused on taking a nap and a bath and then phoning Sydney back in L.A. to tell her about my bewildering day. Maybe she’d consult with her astrology guru and ask if there was some weird planetary thing going on in my birth sign that was creating havoc in my personal cosmos.

  “You girls are so thin nowadays.” Grams looked me over as if I were a paltry chicken at Publix. “I tell everyone. Try my granddaughter’s diet. You eat nothing. Soon you disappear.”

  “Would you stop? I’m in great shape. I eat healthy. I’m fine.”

  Jeez. My family’s obsession with food was scary, especially after I moved back to New York and saw that they’d all been supersized. And no wonder. Every night was either eat out or take in. Feel like pizza? No. We had that last night.

  “I thought you went for a modeling job.” Grams interrupted my thoughts.

  “I did. Well, not a job, exactly. More like a test. An interview.”

  “And that’s how you dressed? Like you came from one of those acrobatic classes?”

  “You mean aerobics?” I chuckled as Grams fumbled for her keys. But when I looked at my ratty gym shorts I knew she was right. I’d had every intention of changing into this pink fishnet and fringe mini, the very dress Adam Sandler said was so hot it would set off the sprinkler system.

  Damn! I’d been in the business long enough to know that fashion statements were paramount to success. Not even a temporary lapse of designer judgment could escape ridicule, unless you traveled in Gywneth Paltro’s celebrity circle. Then you could be the laughingstock at the Oscars, and it wouldn’t downgrade your stock one bit.

  But up-and-comers like myself were always subject to scrutiny, so I could only imagine what Raphael, Pablo, and even Viktor were saying with regard to my cheap ensemble. Pablo probably did an imitation red-carpet twirl. “Who needs Valentino? I’m wearing Target.”

  “Now, don’t get all ferklempt. It’s no big hoo-ha.” Grams interrupted my thoughts.

  “What?” I said.

  Apparently, having tuned out her incessant chatter, I’d missed the part where she mentioned something about her furniture. So the last thing I expected when she opened her door was to see nothing but packing boxes, two lawn chairs, and the TV with a yahrzeit candle burning on top.

  “Grams! What the hell happened?” I threw my bags down. “Were you robbed?”

  “I just told you. I decided to get rid of a few things.”

  “A few things? There’s nothing left. Where’s your dining room set? And the living room furniture?” So much for hoping she’d taken a sudden interest in computers and had created a nice little setup in the guest room. “Oh God. Please tell me you still have beds.” I raced inside her room.

  “You’d be surprised how comfortable the floor is.” She followed me in. “And let me tell you. It’s a pleasure not to have to bend over to make a goddamn bed every morning. Eighty years of tucking this and pulling that…terrible for the stenosis on my left side…no, thank you.”

  “This is insane!” I opened her closet door to find empty hangers. “Where are your clothes?”

  “How much does one person need? A few things, really….”

  “Have you totally lost your mind? You can’t just decide to get rid of all your possessions.”

  “Ridiculous the crap I saved for all these years. Who needs it?”

  “I can’t believe you did this and didn’t tell anyone.”

  “Who listens to me? Nobody! I keep saying I don’t like it here anymore. I want to get the hell out of this joint. Seventeen years. It’s enough already.”

  I quickly surveyed the barren room and clung to the closet door-knob to steady myself. Gone was the imposing cherry maple bedroom set and her tiny silver dressing table with the dainty perfume bottles. Gone was her cherished rocker, the chair where she lovingly nursed her three children, and for years mourned the loss of her only son.

  “I don’t understand why you did this,” I mumbled. “You have so many friends here.”

  “Shows you what you know,” she snorted.

  “Mrs. Greenbaum would miss you.”

  “Not so much. She died a year and a half ago. Colon cancer.”

  “Oh. Well, what about that nice man from Chicago with the two shih tzus?”

  “Marvin Plotzer. Dead. A stroke in the bathtub. Oy. Such a shanda he had with his rotten children. They never came. Never called.”

  “Okay. What about what’s-her-name? The lady whose son is the big dentist in Boynton?”

  “Edith. She moved.”

  “Oh.”

  “Then she died…a massive coronary right in the middle of her mah-Jongg game.”

  “So there’s no one left.”

  “Dead, dead, dead. They’re all dead.”

  “No, wait. No, they’re not. What about Rose down the hall? This morning you said yourself she was driving you to the doctor. She still has to be alive.”

  “Ha! Her arms are so weak she can’t hold a cup of coffee. Her arthritis is so bad she can’t turn her neck. Her blood pressure medication makes her dizzy, she’s got cataracts in both eyes—”

  “And that’s who drives you everywhere? How can she still have a license?”

  “Who said anything about a license? And listen to this. Yesterday she comes over and I say to her, Rose, you’re not wearing any pants, and she looks at me like I grew two heads, but I know what I’m talking about ’cause her heiny’s showing, and she’s talking about going to the market. And believe you me, she’s not the only one who’s lost her mind down here. They’re all batty.”

  Except you, of course. You’re still perfectly sane. Naturally, I felt for her. It must be awful to lose all your friends. To know that the next shiva might be your own. Meanwhile, what a travesty to reach the stage of life where your presence in the universe meant so little to so few. Where the bustling, ever-changing world not only left you sidelined but rendered completely irrelevant. Functionally obsolescent. Of no use to anyone besides the doctors who profit from your misery.

  I studied my grandmother’s face. Really took a good look at her tired eyes and sagging cheeks, the once-silvery hair that had lost its tarnish. For as long as I could remember, she had stood so tall and proud, a bean pole among her fleshy contemporaries. Whereas they had wingspans for arms, Grams’s remained pencil-thin. Whereas she had always seemed dignified in posture and poise, now she appeared almost minute, her narrow frame hunched, her regal fingers short and swollen.

  And here I was, depressed about turning thirty and competing for film work with a bunch of latent teenagers who didn’t know directors’ chairs from musical chairs, while my grandmother struggled every day to hold on to the remains of her dignity, or at least her memory.

  “All right. I get the point.” I looked around the room. “You want to move. But you gotta be realistic. You can’t just sell your stuff and walk away. You have no place else to go.”

  “Don’t worry, darling. We’ll find something. Tomorrow we’ll borrow Rose’s car.”

  “Fine, but this isn’t like shopping for a dress. You can’t just walk in and buy something off the rack. You have to look around, compare prices…. I gotta call Mommy. She is going to freak—”

  “No,” Grams yelled so loud I jumped.

  “Yes.” I started to fumble in my purse for my cell. I didn’t mean to speak to her like she was a child, but one of us had to play the part of the grown-up.
/>
  “She doesn’t listen. She doesn’t care if I live or die. This is none of her goddamn business.”

  “It is her goddamn business, and I’ll make her understand. I promise…. Where are you going?” I followed her into the kitchen and watched as she rifled through a drawer.

  Meanwhile, I dialed my mother’s cell.

  “Put that thing down,” Grams yelled, pointing something small and silver at my head.

  “Oh my God!” I shrieked. “What the hell are you doing? That’s a gun.”

  “You don’t think I know that?”

  “Is it loaded?”

  “I don’t know that.”

  “OH MY GOD. Give it to me, damn it. You could kill me.” I moved closer.

  “Drop it!” She waved the gun in my face. “You can’t call home, you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear.” I tossed the phone on to the countertop. This isn’t happening. I’m looking at the barrel of a revolver because my eighty-four-year-old grandmother thinks we’re Bonnie and Claire. “Just give me the gun, Grams. Oh my God…where the hell did you get that thing?”

  “From Mr. Morales’s son.”

  “Who?”

  “The super. His son just got married. He needed furniture, so I says to him take mine. I’m moving anyway. Then he tells me he don’t have any money, but he’s got a gun he can give me.”

  “That’s absolutely nuts. There’s probably an all-points bulletin out for that thing. What do you bet he killed someone with it and had to get rid of the evidence?…I can’t believe you.”

  “So let the son-of-a-bitch cops arrest me and throw away the key,” she cried. “Then nobody has to bother with me anymore. I’ll have a nice place to live…and I won’t need no furniture!”

  “Grams, give me the gun right this minute,” I said softly. “I won’t call Mommy. I promise.”

  Just as she was about to hand it over, my cell rang.

  “Can I at least see who it is?”

  “No. First I gotta tell you a story.”

  “Great! I’m being held hostage so my grandmother can read me Cinderella.”

  “No, ma’am. Not a fairy tale. A true story…about that Mr. Fabrikant. The stupid son-of-a-bitch who died on the plane.”