by Jeff Lindsay
“If he said even three, it’s a good sign,” I said. “He must like you.”
Cody glanced up without expression. “Where’s your sister?” I asked him.
He jerked his head at the main door to the suite. “Robert,” he said, and he put several paragraphs of disapproval in that one word.
For no logical reason, I looked toward the door. It didn’t speak, and it didn’t even open. I had been with Jackie and Victor for about ten minutes; I didn’t see how looking at makeup could take that long-but of course, I was not an eleven-year-old girl, or an aging gay actor. Although, come to think of it, I had a piece of paper in my hand stating that actually, I was at least an actor now. I wondered if I would automatically become interested in makeup-or in Robert. It hadn’t happened yet.
In any case, if Astor could spend this much time examining rouge and eye shadow, it was clear that she had gone completely over the edge into her fantasies of being an actress. I didn’t see any harm in it; when this show was over there wouldn’t be a whole lot of other chances for her to peek into the glamorous world of showbiz-unless, of course, I was so devastatingly moving in my cameo part that it launched me into an acting career of my own. It could happen, but it didn’t really seem like the most probable outcome.
Still, for the moment Astor could look and dream, and I could take advantage of one of the small perks of the trade. So I went over to the coffee urn, grabbed a doughnut, and poured myself a cup.
Somehow, I survived the afternoon, and eventually we rounded up Astor and Cody and sent them on their way with their aunt Deborah. It had been a trial, made worse by the way Jackie smirked at me far too much when she caught me in the role of Daddy Dexter. Personally, I didn’t find it all that funny, and I was relieved and happy when Debs finally led them away, and Jackie and I headed back to the hotel for a late lunch, and then to get ready for Renny’s show that night.
Jackie was expected to do a bit more than sit in the audience and laugh for the camera. The network planned a few minutes of Behind the Scenes with the Stars, and she was a part of the plan. She’d been told to show up a little early for this, so we arrived at the Gusman at seven oh-five. The Gusman is actually the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts and, not to be too picky, the theater part of it is, in reality, a restored silent movie theater from the 1920s, the Olympia. The marquis on the front of the building says, OLYMPIA, and tonight, under the big bright letters, it said, TONIGHT ONLY! RENNY BOUDREAUX!
There was quite a crowd stacked up on the sidewalk. A churning sea of faces all turned expectantly to the Town Car as it pulled up in front of the theater. I reached for the door handle, and Jackie grabbed my arm.
“I’m scared,” she said. “It was in the paper that I would be here tonight, and he could … He might be in the crowd, waiting for me.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, and to be candid, I was a great deal more certain of that than I let on. “But if he is, I won’t let him get to you.”
She looked at me, her gaze clicking back and forth from my left eye to my right, as if she thought she might find reassurance in one of them but wasn’t sure which. I had the uneasy feeling that I should say something even more reassuring, so I dredged up a line from some old movie, looked right back at her, and said, “He’ll have to get me first.”
Jackie looked at me for a few seconds longer, and then, quite suddenly, she leaned forward and kissed me on the lips.
“I believe you,” she said.
My mouth was filled with the taste of her lipstick, and my brain was filled with numb shock. I couldn’t think at all for what seemed like a very long time, and when I finally got out one coherent thought, all that came out was, “I, um, I’ll get out. And check …” And then I saw myself jerk into motion like a clumsy teenaged robot, fumbling the door open and stepping out into the street.
The crowd had been watching the car and holding its breath, and there was a large sigh of indifference when I climbed out. Of course it hurt, but after all, they hadn’t seen my cameo yet. I wondered if they had seen Jackie kiss me. I looked back at the car; the tint of the windows was too dark to see through. That explained it; if they had seen her kiss me they probably would have cheered.
I went through the dumb show of checking the area for any signs of Patrick. I found none: no seaweed, crabs, or drag marks from an anchor chain, so I went back to the car and opened the door. “All clear,” I said, and Jackie held out her hand and slid across the seat.
“You have lipstick on your mouth,” she said softly, and smiled. I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and took her hand, helping her out onto the sidewalk. There was a two-second pause in which we managed to get a full step toward the front door before somebody yelled, “Jackie Forrest!” and then there really was something to protect Jackie from. The crowd surged toward us, humming like a beehive on steroids. Dozens of cameras flashed right in my face, and for a moment I couldn’t see anything but wildly jiggling purple dots. I blinked, and my sight came back just in time for me to duck as a barrage of hands shot out at us, clutching programs to be autographed and fluttering like rabid birds, and cries of, “Jackie! Jackie!” battered our ears in every possible accent, from Cuban and Haitian to redneck.
Jackie performed the remarkable feat of smiling broadly at the crowd and ignoring them at the same time, hunching her head down and forward and clinging to my arm as if I was the last chunk of crumbling riverbank and the only thing keeping her from being swept away to her death. I tried to shield her as much as I could while still moving forward, but it was impossible to cover all of her, and I could only hope she wasn’t taking the kind of casual, accidental beating I was getting from the star-crazed fans.
Somehow we made it to the door of the theater through the wildly waving forest of arms, and as the crowd finally thinned and then fell behind us, the first thing I saw clearly was three ushers, holding the door and grinning at us. “Thanks for your help,” I told them. They didn’t even look at me; all their attention was on making sure Jackie got through the door without fatally injuring herself on a hinge.
Once they got us safely inside, the ushers stood and smiled proudly, as if they had just saved Jackie from certain death. I felt like conking their heads together; they had done nothing but watch smugly as the crowd tried to rip us to pieces, and now I had a tear in my brand-new guayabera. But Jackie just nodded at them and said, “Thank you,” and gave me her arm. I led her into the theater.
It took a moment to recover from the savage love of the crowd, and as we walked through the ornate lobby and into the Olympia itself, I found a second hole in my shirt, three scratches on my arms, and at least two spots on my ribs so tender they would certainly turn into bruises by morning. And yet, somehow, improbably, it had been exhilarating. Once again I found that I liked the frenzied attention of a crowd of strangers. I knew they had barely seen me, that their focus was all on Jackie, but that was fine. It was even more intoxicating to know that the center of all that adoration was with me; she had actually kissed me, and the crowd could never have that from her. But along with that smug delight, I found that I had to push away a rising bitterness that this had to end, and so soon.
I looked at Jackie’s profile; somehow, even after the pounding and pulling of the crowd, her hair was still in perfect order, and she was every bit the Goddess the crowd needed her to be-a Goddess who had kissed me, and I still didn’t understand why.
She swung her head my way, and locked her violet eyes on me. “What?” she said.
“Oh,” I said, suddenly embarrassed, and not sure why. “Nothing. You know.”
Jackie smiled. “I don’t know,” she said. “Are you going to tell me?”
“Really, it’s nothing,” I said. “Just … the crowd. And you …” I meant to say, You kissed me, but somehow, what came out of my mouth was, “You look so … perfect.”
“About time you noticed,” she murmured, and then we were inside the theater itself and she looked up. “Oh, look at that! It�
�s beautiful!” She stopped in her tracks and stared upward, but my eyes were drawn to the curve of her neck, and I looked at that for a long moment before I looked at the ceiling, too.
I suppose the ceiling of the Olympia really is beautiful. But I had seen it before, and I’d read in the paper too many times that it’s gorgeous, wonderful, a treasure of restored glory, and so on. It’s just not the kind of thing that really moves me. But Jackie needed a few moments to take in the golden swirls and the faux night sky, and I stood there politely while she goggled.
“Wow,” she said at last. “Beats the hell out of the Chinese Theatre in L.A.”
Down in the front of the theater, in the third row, Deborah turned around, saw us, and stood up. But before she got to us a well-dressed young man came in from the lobby and hurried over to us. I watched him carefully for any sign that he might be a sniper, or a zombie, but he just smiled and said, “Miss Forrest?”
Jackie tore her gaze away from the gaudy ceiling, and the young man beamed at her. “Hi, I’m Radym Reitman,” he said. “Mr. Eissen wants you to come back to Renny’s dressing room-they’re shooting the preshow stuff?”
“Of course,” she said, and then Deborah joined us.
“What the hell happened to you?” Debs said, eyeing the tear on the front of my shirt.
“The adoring public,” I said. “I guess somebody recognized me.”
Deborah snorted and turned her attention to Jackie. “Not a mark on you,” she said.
“Lots of practice,” Jackie said.
“I have to meet Rita in the lobby,” I said to Deborah. “Can you stay with Jackie?”
“Sure,” Debs said, and Reitman cleared his throat. Deborah gave him a really good Cop Look, and he fell silent and just fidgeted. “Oh,” Jackie said. “I have to go backstage for a minute-okay?”
“Sure,” Debs said. “But I got us a couple of beers.” She nodded toward the seat she’d been in when we entered. “Lemme grab ’em first.”
“Oh, good, thanks,” Jackie said, and with a final smile and a pat on the arm for me, she followed Debs and Reitman away toward the front of the theater.
I watched them collect their beer, and then follow Reitman off to a side door. When they were gone, I looked at the stage. There was really nothing to it, except for a backdrop of a nighttime cityscape. Hanging from the top of that was a bright and spangly sign about eight feet tall that said, RENNY. In front of that, close to the edge of the stage, was a stool with a bottle of water on it, and a wireless microphone on a stand. No glitz, no gimmicks; it was all up to Renny.
I looked at my watch; miraculously, it had not been torn off my arm or smashed to pieces by the crowd, and it was even still working. The time was seven twenty-eight; I was supposed to meet Rita in the lobby at seven thirty, so I sauntered back up the aisle and into the lobby.
Based on Rita’s past performance, I was quite sure I would have to wait for fifteen or twenty minutes; she lived on Cuban Time, even though she was a blond Anglo. She had never been less than twenty minutes late for anything in all the time I had known her.
But I had reckoned without her girlish obsession with all things Hollywood, and as I moseyed into the lobby, I stopped dead, stunned at the sight that met me. It was Rita, already there and pacing nervously as she waited for me. She reached the far end of the lobby and turned, and the filmy almost-negligee she wore swirled around her. Even at this distance I could see the worry lines on her face, and she was nervously rubbing the back of her left hand with her right. Then she saw me; her face lit up and she practically sprinted across the floor.
“Dexter, my God,” she said. “I think I just saw Andy Garcia? And they said the mayor-Is that your shirt?” She put the palm of her hand on my guayabera and stroked it, as if she could turn it into something more acceptable. “Oh, Dexter, there’s a hole in it right on the front-is that really what you’re wearing?” She sucked her lower lip between her teeth and looked worried.
I bit down on the impulse to tell her that no, it wasn’t my shirt; it belonged to Andy Garcia, and I was just about to change clothes with him, right here in the lobby. “It’s perfectly all right,” I said. “This isn’t a formal ball-it’s a comedy show.”
“Yes, I know, but really, it’s a hole,” she said. “And another on the back-and what’s this on your sleeve?” With a frown, she rubbed at something, and I realized it was the lipstick from Jackie’s kiss that I had wiped on the sleeve.
“Oh, it’s just, you know,” I said with as much nonchalance as I could muster. “Somebody in the crowd or something.”
Rita shook her head and, happily for me, didn’t seem to hear how feeble my answer was. “The whole shirt is-You’re a mess, Dexter-and it doesn’t even go at all with what I–I mean, now I look like some kind of-How much time is there until-If I really … I could change into-”
“You look fine,” I said, although in truth, when I compared her ensemble to what Jackie was wearing, she was brutally overdressed.
Rita ran both hands down the front of her dress, smoothing out wrinkles that weren’t there. “Yes, well, fine,” she said, and she shook her head dubiously. “I mean that’s-You should have told me that this was-What is everybody else wearing?”
I know a great deal about many things, but I will cheerfully admit that couture is not one of them, and I did not think the lobby of the Gusman was the place to learn. So I mustered my most commanding attitude and put a hand on her arm and pulled gently. “Let’s go inside,” I said. “You can see for yourself.”
Rita dug both feet into the carpet and did not budge, and a look of alarm spread across her face. “Everybody? My God, I don’t think I can-”
I tugged a little harder. “Come on,” I said. “I’ll introduce you to Robert Chase.”
If I had thought Astor overreacted to Robert, it was only because I hadn’t seen her mother’s response yet. Rita turned bright red, and she began to tremble, and for the first time ever, she had trouble getting out even one word. “Ro, Ro, I real,” she stammered. “Is-You-Rob … Robert Chase is here? And you …?”
I watched her performance with annoyance. In all the time I had known Robert, he had revealed nothing to indicate he deserved to be shown even the mildest kind of respect-and here was Rita falling into a weak-kneed reverent trance at the mere thought of being in his presence. And I was pretty sure I had told her Robert would be here, so there was really no excuse at all for her collapsing into a drooling coma that threatened to ruin the Gusman’s carpet. Would she be less nervous if I told her Robert was gay?
On the plus side, in her weakened state she was in no condition to resist; I tugged once more on her arm, and she stumbled forward. “Come,” I said. “Miracles await within.” And I led her through the lobby and inside the theater.
I had been given a pair of seats only two rows back from the stage, in the center section and on the aisle. Whether it had been the network’s idea or Captain Matthews’s, I was supposed to be seated right next to Robert. I suppose it had been set up that way so the cameras would find the stars sitting happily next to Real Police People. Whatever the reason, it made introducing Rita to Robert almost unavoidable, but as we came down the aisle toward the stage, Robert was nowhere in sight. But as we approached our row, he came out of the door where Jackie and Debs had disappeared, and strode toward us, smiling and waving at the crowd.
It had been my naive thought to perform a simple intro as we slid into our seats, and then get on with life. But once again, I had reckoned without the abject reverence of Rita’s Robert worship. The moment she saw him she stopped dead, went pale, and started to tremble again. “Oh, no,” she said, which seemed an odd thing to say if she really wanted to meet him. “Oh, my God, it’s him, it’s him.…” She started to bounce up and down on the balls of her feet as she said, “Oh, my God, oh, God, oh, God!” and similar evocations of a deity that, as far as I could tell from brief acquaintance, had absolutely nothing to do with Robert.
Around me
in the theater I could see heads turning toward us, some amused and some curious. It is true that I had liked the reflected attention of the crowd as they adored Jackie, but this was very different; I smelled amusement, condescension, even scorn in the many looks that came our way, and this I did not like. I pushed Rita forward once more and she went, with short and jerky steps. I finally got her to our seats, although she refused to sit. Instead, she just stood there jiggling and staring at Robert, until I realized that if I didn’t do something we would be standing in the aisle all night.
So I stepped into the aisle and waved to him, and he came at us, smiling. “Robert,” I said. “This is my wife, Rita.”
Robert held out a hand. “Hey, terrific!” he said. “Really great to meet you!” Rita just stood there with her face frozen into a numb and staring mask. I hoped she wouldn’t actually drool.
After an awkward pause, Robert reached over and took her hand. “Wow, I can see where Astor gets her looks,” he said, shaking Rita’s limp hand. “Terrific kids you’ve got, Rita.”
Rita spoke at last. “Oh, I ahaha,” she said. “Oh, my God, I can’t believe-I am such a big fan of-Oh, God, it’s really you!”
“Well, I think it is,” Robert said with an easy grin. He tried to drop her hand-but now, even though she hadn’t been able to reach forward to shake hands with him, Rita clamped onto Robert’s hand in a desperate, sweaty death grip. “Um,” he said, and he looked at me.
“Rita,” I said, “I think Robert would like his hand back.”
“Oh, my God,” she said, and she flung his hand away and jumped back, landing firmly on my toes. “I’m so sorry, so sorry; I just-”
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Robert said. “Great to meet you, Rita.” And he smiled at her and then pushed past us and sank gratefully into his seat.
Rita stared for a moment longer, in spite of the way I prodded her in the back, and I finally said, “Shall we sit down now?”
