“You mean by guffawing when the film is wallaby dung?”
Exactly. No guffawing. At all. Whatsoever.
“Maybe when asked we should say, ‘Isn’t to our taste.’” With tutoring—even at this late stage—maybe I could refine Henry’s edges a touch. Maybe.
“You know it’s going to be wallaby dung. Come on.” He helped me into my seat and sat beside me, resting his arm across the back of my chair and leaning in to speak in my ear. “It’s movies like these everyone secretly hates, but they say they love them so they can sound smart in front of the tall poppies.”
Tall poppies? Oh, he meant important people by that. At last my old brain dredged up an Aussie slang factoid from a college class. Add that to snags and mashed spuds, and I was batting one percent at this point. Marvelous.
“But you and I, Elizer, we don’t give a rip what the tall poppies think. We’re removed from all that fakery.”
I blinked. These were my thoughts precisely. “I—”
Nope, I couldn’t tell him so, or—wild card that he still was—he might go expressing that opinion to someone we met later in the night. The dreaded cocktail after-party still loomed, which would be the big litmus test of whether we could pass him off among the even more elite crowd of San Nouveau.
Lights dimmed, and the movie started. He kept his arm across the back of my seat. Partway through the first act, it slid to where it was touching my shoulder. In the second act, it caressed the back of my neck, warming me through. At the point when the heroine rubbed her head with Nair hair remover in a symbol of her misery, Henry leaned in and put a hot whisper in my ear.
“This movie is tripe.” The words were secondary to the sensation of his breath against my bare skin. Musk and spice and soap and heaven all floated around in there, blurring all thoughts for a moment. Finally I managed a retort.
“It’s somebody’s art.”
“One man’s art is another man’s tripe.”
He was right. This whole thing was tripe. Point of fact, I’d eaten tripe quite a few times. It was a staple in the New Year’s meals of menudo some of the ranch hands up from Mexico made for our family at the holidays.
A few minutes later, after the so-called hero of the movie set a pile of tires aflame in his neighbor’s yard, I had to volley back.
“Actually, I’ve had tripe. Calling this movie tripe is an insult to tripe.” I shouldn’t have said it, not when the creator of this atrocious mess sat within earshot. But my filter was gone, and I couldn’t suck the words back.
Henry gut-laughed—just as the scene changed into a moment in the show where no gut-laugh should occur. In fact, the heroine had just put her name on a form admitting herself to film school where she thought she could solve her problems. Yeah—it was funny, but the people here certainly wouldn’t think so. They’d consider it poignant.
The hot weight of angry stares pressed on the back of my neck.
Yeah, we should probably skip the after-party.
One and three-fifths eternities later, the credits rolled. I wanted to bolt for the doors, but not another soul stood. All applauded, calling out names as they scrolled by on the screen—right down to gaffers and best boys and the third cameraman for the location shoot in Death Valley.
“Frogs.” Henry turned toward me. “In the Sand.”
“I wish they had stayed in the sand where they belonged.” Finally, ten minutes later, we stood with everyone else, at which point both my knees and my will got weak. “Let’s just go. We’ll skip the reception and just head back to Polly’s place. I’m sure you’re tired.” Frankly, I was a bucket of nerves. We’d made our way in, but no way would we be coming out alive.
“Seriously? No way.” He said way like why. “That’s the whole reason we’re here. I won’t embarrass you. I promise. Cross my heart.” He crossed his heart.
I hoped to die.
“Don’t tell me you can talk to the people who made that insult-to-intestines with a straight face, and comment on it naturally, or better, without ripping it to shreds like it deserves to be.”
“Not a chance!” He gut-laughed again as we exited into the crystal chandeliered foyer and made our way to a red carpet-covered stairway to where the after-party would be held, and where my social demise would be completed. “But I am an expert at something else: changing the subject.”
Good tactic. I’d have to try it. Brilliant.
Okay. This would be okay. I kept telling myself that all the way up the stairs to the grand ballroom on the fourth floor of the theater.
I expected us to be the first couple to arrive as we exited the elevator into the sprawling room with its elegant floors and black and gold theme of the Golden Age of Hollywood. However, there were already scores of people milling around with champagne flutes and plates of canapés and overly loud actors’ laughs spiraling to the ceiling and back down to the marble tiled floors.
“Where should we—?” I was going to say start, but then a fizz of three girls in white beaded gowns sidled up to Henry and took my question right out of my breath.
“And?” one said, while another finished the question with, “Who is this?” and the third continued with, “We heard there was someone interesting from Down Under coming up to this party tonight. Mind if we spirit him away for a bit?”
My eyes adjusted and I recognized The Twins—girls who’d been child stars and were now physically full-grown but emotionally immature versions of their child selves. Tonight their white dresses sported feathered wings at their backs. I didn’t recognize their third wheel, non-Twin. Poor thing.
“Sorry, hon. We’re spiriting him away like the angels we are. We’ll try to have him back before the sun comes up in Sydney.”
I tried to mentally calculate that—and I figured it hadn’t even gone down yet there, if I could think straight. Which I couldn’t. Too many frogs and too much sand clogged my brain.
In no time, another group of giggling women had latched onto the angels guarding Henry. Why, yes, ma’am, he was the belle of the ball, at least for the moment. It reminded me of that little spot in the Bible in the Book of Acts where Paul goes to Mars Hill and all the people there want to do is hear or tell of some new thing.
Henry Lyon was tonight’s Some New Thing in Hollywood.
A group-laugh punctuated the air from his general direction. Fear stabbed through me of what he might have just let fly from his unrefined mouth.
I had to hear this. Grabbing a few stuffed mushrooms off a passing tray, I went over to try to casually listen in.
Before I went to UCLA, this type of gathering, this concatenation of bright young things, would have made me shake in my boots—although growing up I mostly wore ropers, not full-on boots. However, working for Mo-No had cured me of all that in a mere six months. Frankly, I could see through the glitz. These were just people. People in expensive clothes, sure, but they still had to blow their noses during hay fever season, same as everyone else. I currently worked for one of the Sparkly People, or at least an aspiring one. No way could they all be as black-hearted as Monique-Noelle, but none of them were immortal—or angels—either.
Glamour’s blinding light faded fast whenever I remembered that.
“And then, we were just past the point of no return, when suddenly, my horse Gypsy takes a veer to the right, despite my spurs in her flanks, despite the fact I’m tugging her reins to the left with all my strength. And before I know it, we’re galloping at full speed down a snow-covered incline your Olympic skiers would probably call a black diamond run.” He paused for dramatic effect, and the giggle of girls obliged with a gasp of fear.
“Next, there’s a wall of eucalyptus in front of Gypsy’s nose so thick I know she’s going to founder in it. There’s nothing for it—snow flying up all around us, the winter sun beating down, the calf gone into the eucalyptus. Gypsy is determined to round up that stray calf, if she kills herself—and me—in the process.”
Well, somebody besides me had watched The
Man from Snowy River a few too many times. His story mirrored it in every respect except that he was chasing a calf instead of the escaped priceless colt of the girl he loved.
Good movie choice, if he had to pick one to build his fake life around.
“Did you get to the calf? Was she saved?” A breathless young thing touched her bare collarbone, batting her lashes at him. I rolled my eyes involuntarily.
He turned his gaze on her.
“What do you think, Livs?” Oh, my word. Henry was speaking to none other than Olivia Upton. I recognized her now. And he’d given her a pet name in two seconds flat. “Do you think Gypsy saved the day?”
Livs thought a second and then, biting her bottom lip, nodded.
Henry leaned in close to her and said in a sultry tone we all could hear, “She did.”
Livs and half her friends exhaled, with a visible sway, where they had to clutch each other by the arm to stay on their feet. He had them eating out of his hand.
“Oh, there’s my gorgeous date. Bye, ladies.”
“Bye, Henry.” A few of them came up and slipped something into his pocket. Their numbers, most likely.
Oh, my goodness. So far, so amazing.
“You’re winning them, Henry. Color me impressed.”
“You’re what’s impressive, Elizer. You in blue. Have you had a chance to see how your eyes sparkle in it?”
He was turning his charm on me now. It shouldn’t be working, considering all I knew, but dang if it wasn’t. The guy not only knew all the right lingo for the horseback riding adventure story—reins and spurs and all—but he also knew all the right lingo to rope in a woman.
Blast him.
“Have you actually ridden a horse?” I had to ask him. “You were pretty convincing back there. They believed—and hung on—every word.”
“I like a good yarn.”
He took my elbow again and steered me away from the madding crowd, farther from the orchestra, which made me feel like I could talk, tell him the thing that I’d been thinking the whole time I listened to his horse tale.
“So,” I said, “I didn’t mention this in the car when you were asking for my back story, but that was the hardest thing about leaving the ranch and coming out to L.A.” I let him guide me toward a secluded corner. The orchestra was playing the score from Frogs in the Sand, so the farther the better. He backed me up against a wall, which was great for quite a few reasons. One, I could take some pressure off my toes without having to manage a sit-down. Two, wow, he was leaning in close to me.
Yeah, the closer he stepped to me, the better. My breathing sped up, to match the coursing blood in my veins. Henry was really in my space now, and combined with the cut of Polly’s dress, the closer he got, the less I could breathe.
“What was hardest? Let me guess—leaving your favorite horse.”
“You’re clairvoyant now?”
“What’s his name?” Henry even guessed right that the horse was a he.
“His name is Black Jack.” I let him step a little closer. “But I call him Black.”
That spellbinding cologne combined with his own scent, clean now, but all him, was making all four of my non-olfactory senses shut off. It whisked me out of this room onto a dry, yellow-grassed mountain, atop Black, with Henry by my side on a dapple-gray horse, to match his eyes.
When had I noticed his eyes were gray?
“But you don’t see him nowadays.”
“Never.”
Henry was mesmerizing. I was under that spell a hundred percent. And I’d better make a speedy escape before I did anything to botch this whole operation.
“I think you’re ready,” I said with all the breath I could catch under the pressurized circumstances.
“To leave?” he asked. “But we haven’t even danced yet.”
“No one can dance to this music.”
“Touché. So what am I ready for, then?”
“To brave the gauntlet that is San Nouveau.”
And to meet Monique-Noelle.
ACT II: Scene 7
Just You Wait, ’Enry Higgins [Monique-Noelle]
SAN NOUVEAU ISLAND, CALIFORNIA CHANNEL ISLANDS, A ROCKY PLACE
Wherein the real fun and games begin, and the stakes rise.
The next morning we left before dawn. I had to be at the helipad to collect Sylvie Bainbridge from her handlers by eight a.m., per Mo-No’s edict. We took the speed boat docked at a private marina just north of L.A. and shot out over the cold morning waves for the hour-long trip to the only privately owned Channel Island in the chain which included Santa Catalina, San Miguel, and others. Most of them were state parks now, preserved from development, or else like Catalina, overrun by tourists.
However, San Nouveau had been purchased from a foundering land preservation trust group by a corporation about forty years ago, and since then had very quietly become a haven for the outrageously wealthy.
And by outrageously wealthy, I meant they all each owned their own private islands elsewhere in the Pacific and the Caribbean in addition to their multi-million dollar mansions on this spot of rock jutting up from the water.
Basically, San Nouveau was where they met up with their peers. It was the country club of the super-rich.
I explained some of this to Henry as the front end of the speed boat dipped and slapped the waves. We cut toward the west. I didn’t tell him everything, per my non-disclosure contract. Lots of details about San Nouveau were hushed by legally binding signatures on thick stacks of paper.
For that reason, not many Californians knew about San Nouveau—which had been Santa Margarita before its purchase—let alone other Americans at large. The founders had kept its existence under tight wraps—“To keep out the riffraff,” it actually said on actual printed pamphlets.
The place self-isolated. There wasn’t even any internet service for the service class like me. They wanted a shroud of secrecy, and they got it. I could send and receive texts to the mainland—most of the time—but forget kicking back on a day off and streaming Netflix. The owner class had a dedicated satellite for such things, but their workers had to keep things on the DL. We all knew that going in, and while it wasn’t ideal, the pay made up for it.
“Why’s it called San Nouveau?” Henry shouted this to me over the spiking drone of the speed boat engine. “New Saint? Saint New? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Tongue in cheek reference to the people who would be most likely to live there. The nouveaux riches.” Ha-ha, those corporate founders; they had a sense of humor about themselves—laughing all the way to their Swiss bank accounts.
The rocky outcroppings of land themselves were far enough apart that they couldn’t be seen from island to island, except maybe with a good pair of binoculars, so as we headed out to the open ocean, Henry got noticeably nervous.
“You sure he knows where he’s going?” He aimed a thumb at the speed boat driver as a pod of dolphins crested in front of us to the north. “He’s not just going to plop us in the Pacific and leave? This wasn’t your plot for my demise all along, was it, now Elizer?”
“Look.” I pointed to the dolphins. “They’re the welcome wagon.” I took a page from Henry’s Change the Subject book, in hopes of assuaging his nerves. He didn’t seem bone-deep anxious or anything, but I didn’t want his paranoia spiking like it had seemed to when we were in the bus station and he’d been so hungry.
“Want a granola bar?” I handed him one out of my bag.
After more than an hour of straight pedal to the metal on the speed boat’s accelerator, the island came into view. It wasn’t lush, like Gilligan’s Island or any of the giant-fern-covered spots in the Gulf of Mexico or the South Seas. It was basically a rocky jutting of granite, like a piece of the California desert got chunked off and landed in the ocean a hundred miles off shore. Rocks, dry grass, a little soil with some scrubby native plants.
No question, it didn’t qualify as a tropical island, but it worked exactly right for what the residents
wanted: off the grid and opulent, a way to live a posh lifestyle exclusively with people of the same financial class, most importantly with no encroachment from any other financial class. The only reason I could be admitted as nanny was due to my education at a graduate level—and one doozy of a non-disclosure agreement.
Did I mention taking Henry with me to San Nouveau was a risk? And fabricating his social class, his education level, and his occupation was also a risk? Not to mention the throat-clutching legalese.
Yeah, I was pretty much an idiot.
This is for Sylvie, my mantra said again, perhaps less convincingly in the light of day as we approached the place. If it hadn’t been so windy today as we sped toward the dock, my hands would have been sweating.
“Not much in the way of so-called island expectations, is there?” Henry helped me ashore, and we tipped the speedboat driver for helping us get all of Henry’s wardrobe trunks into the waiting cab. “Not even so much as a palm tree. Brother! Even the mainland has a palm tree.”
“I do think you can still get one of those drinks with the little paper umbrellas in it, if you ask.”
“To Miss Monique-Noelle’s today, ma’am?” The taxi driver knew me by sight. He’d been hired for the job because he had a photographic memory and a degree in statistics from a top California university. I guess I don’t need to say that San Nouveau paid well, to be able to draw away a statistician in the age of internet—and from the state that housed Silicon Valley.
Even the taxi drivers and the nannies like me cleaned up on payday.
He dropped us off, and we all three offloaded the trunks at the Bainbridge mansion. Its white concrete panels stretched in modern starkness toward the achingly blue sky. Coy, defoliated azalea bushes flanked the front drive, dwarfed by a line of impressive Italian cypress trees pointing heavenward.
“I’ll take those trunks into my cottage for now.” I fiddled with the security code at the door to the back yard. “We’ll find you a place to stay later.”
My Fair Aussie Page 8
