Born To Be Wild

by Catherine Coulter

  Mary Lisa gave Chico a little wave as she walked out of the innocently bland building that housed his dojo, set between two upscale antique shops on Briar Street in the middle of Venice. She had called Lou Lou, who was waiting for her, arms crossed over her breasts, leaning against Buffy.

  “Dear sweet baby Jesus, Mary Lisa, you look like you’ve dropped five pounds in body sweat. And Chico, that man looks like a fallen angel.”

  “Only five pounds you think? As for Chico, he’s no fallen angel, he’s the devil himself. I saw it in the mirror on the way out and it was a near-death experience. You want to drive, Lou Lou?”

  “Oh yeah, me and the Buffster, we’re the duo.”

  “Don’t kill me.”

  Mary Lisa grunted as she eased her maimed body into the passenger side, leaned her head back against the seat, and closed her eyes. “My mom would laugh her head off if she could see me now. You know what, Lou Lou?”

  “You’re going to keel over without help from that loon out there?”

  “Not me.” Mary Lisa opened her eyes and grinned real big. “I see everything very clearly now. I was born to be a karate queen. Maybe it won’t even take me two weeks before that creep is really sorry he ever came after me. Oh yeah, come to Mamma. I’m gonna kick your sorry butt.”

  Lou Lou rolled her eyes, honked at a skateboarder, who promptly flipped her a finger, and cut off a little Volkswagen Beetle.

  Mary Lisa alternately groaned and sang along with the radio on PCH on the way back home. She didn’t flinch when Lou Lou nearly rear-ended an SUV that was stopped on the highway for no apparent reason. She braked so fast Mary Lisa pictured her front end crumpling. Lou Lou was embarrassed, so stuck her head out the window and yelled, “You cheap putz! Put some ninety-two octane in that honker!”

  The driver, a woman with carrot-red hair, yelled back some really inventive curses that had them thinking of horses and goats in a very different way. Mary Lisa shook her head. “I wonder what Elizabeth would say about this goat deal.”

  “You’ll see her tomorrow, ask her. She’s flying in at about five o’clock.”

  Mary Lisa sighed. “She’s going to chew my ear. Truth is I didn’t want to worry her, so I haven’t been exactly forthcoming about all that’s happened.”

  Lou Lou pressed her foot on the gas pedal and swerved around a big Pathfinder, whose driver looked ready to spit nails until he saw Lou Lou up close and waved madly at her. “That’s okay, Mary Lisa, I told her everything.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  Dallas and Dynasty were the first American serials to be successfully marketed internationally.

  On Saturday morning, a cup of high-octane Kona coffee in one hand, Mary Lisa opened her front door to an unexpected visitor.

  “Hello, Mary Lisa. I’m glad you’re home, but hey, you don’t leave home alone anymore, do you? Is Lou Lou still sleeping over, or is that tough-looking son of a bitch I saw you with yesterday spending his nights here?”

  “Tough-looking? Yes, okay, I’ll give him that, though Jack Wolf has more a brooding in-your-face bad-boy look if you ask me.”

  “Jack Wolf? Come on, that’s a stage name. I’ll bet he’s got a real name like Benny Schwartz and no one would hire him.”

  “Hmmm. Never thought of that, I’ll freely admit it. I’ll ask him.” Mary Lisa smiled at Margie McCormick, who played her half sister, Susan Cavendish, on Born to Be Wild. Margie stood at her front door looking thin, blond, and gorgeous, dressed in tight hip-bone jeans and a brief stretch top. Mary Lisa had no trouble at all picturing Margie talking her way past Chad at the Colony kiosk.

  There was no smile on Margie’s face. Oh dear. What was wrong with her? “Nice to see you, Margie. What can I do for you on this beautiful Saturday morning? Come in, come in.” She stepped back.

  Margie said, “I don’t suppose the cops have found the guy who ran you over yet?”

  “Nope, nothing yet.”

  They walked into Mary Lisa’s house together, where Margie had visited many times before, right to her favorite chair, a high wingback covered in a bright multicolored South Seas print. She sat down, crossed her legs.

  Margie said, “I don’t suppose the cops have found Puker Hodges yet?”

  “No, still no word, still no leads as to where he was taken or who nabbed him.”

  “Most people think old Puker’s sold his last photo to the fanzines, that he’s in a drainage ditch somewhere.”

  “As much as I’ve wanted to hit him in the chops over the past months, I hope he isn’t dead. It’s true there was a fight in his apartment, but maybe the guy scared him so much, Puker went into hiding-”

  “Oh, get real, Mary Lisa. Where else could he be? In Rio doing a photo spread on beach thongs? Enjoying a taco in Cancun?”

  Mary Lisa said slowly, “That would make the guy a real monster, not just a-”

  “A what?”

  “I don’t know, maybe a minimonster. Margie, can I get you something to drink?”

  “No, thank you. I see you’re studying your lines for all your scenes on Monday.” Margie pointed over at some script pages on the sofa.

  All my scenes? “Are you unhappy about something, Margie?”

  Margie jumped up, began pacing the living room. Then she whirled about and said, “I’ve always been honest with you, Mary Lisa, and I’ve come to say I can’t believe you talked Bernie out of the revenge plot!”

  Mary Lisa cocked her head to one side. “I don’t understand. You agreed with me that Sunday wouldn’t sleep with her half sister’s husband, you rolled your eyes at where the writers were headed. Betsy agreed too. She said no matter what Sunday’s mother and half sister had done, Sunday would never sleep with Damian.”

  “You’re trying to pretend Sunday always has reasonable motives for her behavior? That we all think things through before we act? You know very well that we have to do things that most normal people would think insane. For God’s sake, Mary Lisa, it’s a soap opera! It doesn’t have to make perfect sense as long as it’s entertaining, you know that. If the writers have a bad day, so do we all. Sunday sleeping with Damian? Why not? It’s a meaty plotline, and both Jeff and I would have been right up front, right in the thick of it in a major way for at least three months! The possibilities were endless, and the writers would have hit them all!

  “But instead you bitched and moaned until you got your way and turned everything on its head. What did you do, Mary Lisa? Threaten to walk? To go over to General Hospital? And so Bernie had to come up with a long-missing TV evangelist father for his little princess? Now we’re out of it, do you hear me? I’m out of it. You happy now?”

  Mary Lisa slowly set down her coffee. “I see,” she said quietly. “I thought we were friends, Margie, but I guess that’s not true. All you just said, I hadn’t realized how you felt, I really hadn’t, but now I do. You thought I stabbed you in the back. On purpose. Jeff too, right?”

  “Jeff hasn’t said much, so who knows?”

  Mary Lisa waved that away. “You’re saying I did this because I wanted more face time? And on my terms? Fact is, if you’d think about it for a minute, you’d realize that I’d have been featured as much sleeping with Damian as I will be now dealing with my long-lost father.”

  “None of us is stupid, Mary Lisa. We all know you’re the lead on Born to Be Wild, and we’re all very lucky everyone loves you so much. Even my own real mother knows and accepts that; in fact, she loves you too. We all accept it.

  “But the revenge plot was my chance to share some of that with you. I’d have been woven right in, right in the middle of it-the wife betrayed by both her husband and her half sister. I was so ready! But it won’t happen now, not anymore. I’ll be lucky to have three scenes a bloody week. You betrayed me, Mary Lisa, big time.”

  Margie McCormick jumped up and ran out of the house, slamming the door behind her. Mary Lisa stood stock-still, listening as Margie gunned her pretty white Boxster and roared out of the driveway.

  �
�Well, hello, Hollywood.”

  She turned to see Jack Wolf walk into the living room from the kitchen.

  She wasn’t surprised he was here, in her house. She didn’t think she could be surprised by anything now. “What a mess. Do you know I never even realized, never even considered Margie or Jeff when I bitched and whined about the plotline? I thought only of myself. Aren’t I a fine human being?”

  He picked up a bright red pillow from her sofa and threw it at her. He threw it hard enough that she almost stumbled back when it hit her in the face.

  “That’s my fast pillow, you twit. You should see my curve. You will if you keep playing the pitiful martyr. What I heard was all about her, didn’t you see that? There’s only one Sunday Cavendish, Mary Lisa. Everyone roots for her, they care about what happens to her, can’t wait to see what she does next. And Sunday is you, not Margie. I noticed she’s skinnier than you are. Don’t any of you ever eat?”

  “You saw me chow down the fish and chips.”

  “It was probably your first solid food in two weeks.”

  “This is ridiculous.” She threw the pillow back at him, but he snagged it out of the air, tossed it back and forth from his left to his right.

  Throwing the stupid pillow reminded her that her muscles still throbbed and ached despite an hour in the hot tub the previous night and as many stretches as she could tolerate. She was sure her bones had grown longer.

  “Don’t you dare throw your curve pillow at me.”

  “Oh yeah? What would you do if I knocked you right over?”

  She gave him an evil smile. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, you bully. I’ll call my sister Kelly and invite her down to stay with me.”

  In a flash he had a hunted look. It was so unexpected she laughed and followed through. “Where’s my cell phone? Oh yeah, there it is.” She managed to grab it up off the coffee table.

  He grabbed her, lifted her easily off her feet, and took her down on the sofa, sprawled on top of her. He wrestled the cell phone from her hand, tossed it across the living room. “That’s a dirty threat, Mary Lisa.”

  He was heavy. She felt every single portion of him. His nose was two inches above hers. She felt his warm breath on her cheek. “Dammit, you are a complete pain in the ass.” He dipped his face down, stared at her mouth, then jerked away from her as if he’d been shot.

  He walked to the front door, stopped, turned back. “I can’t leave. You’re alone. With your oblivious brain, you’d probably take a long lonely walk on the beach. Or, hey, you feel so guilty about what that idiot woman said to you maybe you’d shoot yourself.”

  “Nah, this is what I’m going to do.” She managed to heave herself up onto one elbow, then grabbed a pillow and threw it at him as hard as she could, but it wasn’t much of a missile. He grabbed the pillow out of the air, tossed it from his left to his right, back and forth, grinning down at her. “That was paltry.”

  If her muscles were fit for anything more, she would have leaped to her feet and rammed him. Her arm that had made the paltry throw throbbed and knotted. All she had were words. “You can leave. I won’t be alone for long. Lou Lou has asked some people over tonight. I think she’s decided it would make me feel better. She asked me to invite you, but please feel free to back out. Please feel free to remove your butt from the premises.”

  “No, not until other people come.” But he was looking at that front door like he wanted to slam through it.

  She managed to sit up on her sofa, swing her legs to the floor. “How long were you eavesdropping in my kitchen?”

  That brought his head up. The jerk grinned at her. “Do you like the bad-boy look?”

  “That’s only on the surface. You’re all huff and puff, afraid of my little sister.”

  “Any sane man would be afraid of Kelly, Pitty Pat included.”

  “Go away, Chief Wolf. Or is Margie right? Did you change your name so people would take you seriously and hire you as a cop?”

  “You found me out.”

  “Go away.”

  “Believe me, I would certainly like to. The thought of hanging back with a beer, maybe watching a ball game on TV instead-”

  “Or you could always go all the way back home.”

  The big clod stood in the middle of her living room and laughed at her. Then she knew he was looking at her mouth.

  She grabbed her empty mug, intending to flatten him with it, but the sudden movement hurt everywhere. She felt a sudden spasm in her arm, dropped the mug, and let herself fall back into a chair.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Irna Phillips created and wrote some of the most successful radio soap operas in the 1930s and 1940s, including The Guiding Light, which premiered in 1937.

  “What’s wrong? What did you do?”

  She rubbed the muscle frantically. He slapped her hand away and began massaging her arm, deep and hard. She moaned, rocked back and forth on the chair.

  “What did you do to your arm?”

  “Just a cramp.”

  “I can see that. It’s your biceps.” He continued massaging, lightening up a bit. “Make a muscle for me.”

  “Are you nuts? No, no way. It’s all right.”

  “Make a freaking muscle, would you?”

  She made a freaking muscle, held the whimpers in her throat as he massaged. To her surprise, it helped.

  “Okay, now loosen. That’s it-flex, loosen, flex, like that. It’s hard to tell which you’re doing, you’ve got such skinny little arms.”

  “My arms are fine, you macho jerk.”

  He stared down as she held her arm. “Did you overdo it with weights at the gym?”

  “No, I wasn’t at the gym.”

  “Then what did you do? It had to be over the top to make your biceps cramp up like that.”

  Mary Lisa pictured herself in a graceful profile, sending her leg out smoothly at Chico to land her foot solidly in his gut. She pictured him grabbing his belly and keeling over onto the ground. Two weeks. Two more weeks and she could do that. “Too much shopping. Trying on all those shoes is tough on the arms.”

  “It’s interesting,” Jack said slowly, watching her stand up, still cradling her arm, “you’re a good actress, I’ll give you that, but still you’re not convincing playing the spoiled prima donna.”

  She didn’t know what else to say, and it was infuriating. She stomped off toward her bedroom, still holding her arm.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I think I’ll go surfing with Carlo. If he’s not around, there are usually lots of cute young guys to help me out.”

  She slammed the door.

  “Yeah, right, give it a try, see how many of those horny teenage boys even know what a massage is.”

  She growled through the door. He heard it. He was pissed and horny, a miserable combination, and he guessed she knew it. He’d almost kissed her when he’d flattened her on the sofa. Almost. He’d managed to stop himself in time. He thanked the Lord he had gotten ahold of himself. He was here to help find out who was terrorizing her, not-well, he didn’t want to think about that. He walked to the kitchen, got himself a bottled water from the fridge, rubbed it over his forehead. He sat down on the sofa, saw the soap script, and picked it up.

  He was still reading it ten minutes later when Mary Lisa, wearing a cover-up over a swimsuit, paused a moment when she saw him. “The mail is due soon. Perhaps you’d like to read that too.”

  “Nah. You’ve seen one electric bill you’ve seen them all. Hey, this is pretty cool. I like this scene between Sunday and her father. Except-”

  “Yeah, except…?”

  “It seems to me that you could make the announcement only once-you know, call a meeting of everyone involved. That makes more sense than having each person find out one at a time, drawing it out like that. I guess this way each character gets a chance to dramatize it?” He tossed the script back on the sofa. “Telling one character at a time about the evangelist father could go on for weeks.”

>   “It will go on for at least a week, maybe two, before it’s done. Welcome to the wonderful world of daytime entertainment.” But she couldn’t leave it alone, she had to justify it. “The viewers want to know how each character will react, or at least their favorite character. And every character will react differently to the news, depending on who they are, what’s happened between them and Sunday or her mother, Lydia. Now, please feel free to take yourself home, Chief. I’m going out to the beach.”

  “I was lying on top of you, Mary Lisa. I very nearly kissed you and you know I probably wouldn’t have stopped, and you wouldn’t have stopped me-”

  She started humming, very loudly. She grabbed up the script and went out back through the kitchen. Five minutes later, Jack was leaning on the deck railing, his opaque sunglasses in place, looking for Mary Lisa. He spotted her sitting in a deck chair some twenty yards down the beach, reading her script. Four surfers, all of them male, all of them below the legal drinking age, were clustered near her, occasionally eyeing her like she was an extra-crispy chicken breast.

  They were playing around, strutting the way teenage boys do, poking each other, trying to impress her. It was almost enough to make a grown man wish he were back in Goddard Bay. Three girls in bathing suits walked up and joined them.

  He pulled up a deck chair and sat down, his feet up on the deck railing, ankles crossed. He leaned back his head and closed his eyes. The midmorning sun was soft and warm against his face.

  He must have dozed off because he only thought he heard a gunshot. There was a yell, then screams. He leaped over the deck railing, landed light, and ran toward Mary Lisa.

  To his utter surprise, none of the kids had scattered. They’d shoved Mary Lisa down, covering her with their bodies. Her beach chair was overturned, and Mary Lisa lay on the sand, her script pages fluttering in the afternoon ocean breeze. He came to a halt over the pile of bodies. “I’m a cop. Is anyone hurt?”