by Dyan Sheldon
But before I could gracefully swoon and crumble, Carla caught sight of us. She didn’t blink.
“Who is it?” Her smile was bright and hopeful; her curls shimmered as though ruffled by a balmy breeze. “Where are they?”
Mr Muscle patted our shoulders. “Right here.”
But maybe all wasn’t lost. The other option was the old double-bluff.
“Carla!” I called. “I’m sorry we’re late. I know we promised but we—”
Carla’s smile became puzzled. She looked straight into my eyes. “I’m sorry…” She was practically purring. “But do I know you?”
I Try And Try Yet Again
One of Karen Kapok’s major reasons for dragging us into the wastelands of New Jersey was that she wanted the twins to grow up in a real community. Every time some old lady was found decomposing in her apartment because no one knew she was dead until the stench got really bad, Karen Kapok would get onto her soap box. “You see?” she’d cry. “That wouldn’t happen in a small town where people look out for each other.”
And though wisdom isn’t my mother’s strong point, she was right about that. You can’t break a fingernail at eight in the morning in Deadwood without the whole place knowing by lunchtime.
“The first thing my mom said when she got home was that someone got thrown off the movie set,” Ella informed me on the phone that night. She was recovering from the traumas of the day by the pool.
“Who told her?”
“Mrs Santini. She said it was some girls from out of town. My mom was surprised it wasn’t you.”
“Mrs Who?” Galaxies away on the other side of town, I had my feet in a basin of water. “In case you’ve forgotten, we don’t know anyone named Santini. We had it from the dragon’s mouth.”
“I wish. If that were true, when people ask me what I did on my summer vacation I wouldn’t have to say ‘swam, rode my bike, read a few books and got publicly humiliated.’” Ella sighed. “Well, at least we can stop now.”
“Stop?” I laughed at the ludicrousness of the suggestion. “Are you nuts? We can’t stop now. We may have lost the battle, but we’re not going to lose the war.”
Ella groaned. “You’re the one who’s nuts. Why can’t you just quit while you’re ahead – you know, like before we get arrested?”
“Because I’m going to be in that movie, that’s why. Come hell or high water.”
“Great,” said Ella. “That’s just what I wanted to hear.”
Unfortunately, my resolve was slightly hampered by the fact that Ella had I had been officially forbidden from going within two miles of the movie set, but this was a small obstacle to someone of my temperament and character. If I was going to find someone who could help me get even the tiniest crumb of a part, I was going to have to get really serious and exchange my usual persona of Lola Cep, exceptional teenager, for that of Lola Cep, super sleuth. It was too hot for a trench coat and slouch hat, but internally I decided to model myself on the great Philip Marlowe and hit the mean streets of Dellwood, New Jersey, with renewed determination. Of course, I had to be seen to go to work or Karen Kapok’s suspicious instincts would’ve been up like a thermometer in August, but this was also a minor problem.
As soon as I’d got home I’d called Mrs Magnolia. I said my migraine wasn’t any better, and that even if it was gone by the morning I’d be too exhausted, fragile and drained to contemplate going into work. Mrs Magnolia said not to worry. She once had a migraine that lasted a month.
Ella was reluctant.
“I don’t think I can handle more than one public humiliation a week,” said Ella. “It’s bad for my self-image.”
“There aren’t going to be any more public humiliations,” I reasoned. “This is my best plan yet.”
Though creative, mine is also a logical mind. I reasoned that the members of the movie company who weren’t basking in the luxurious hospitality of the Santinis (and being fed by their maid) would still need to have regular meals. So all we had to do was scout the local eateries for members of the film crew.
Ella wanted to know if I ever listened to myself. “You can’t possibly actually hear what you’re saying and still think it’s a good idea,” said Ella. “Do you expect us to go into every diner, fast food chain, café and restaurant in the area? Do you have some magical powers you haven’t told me about?”
[Cue: the sigh of the prophet who might as well be whistling “Dixie” in an empty parking lot since nobody pays any attention to her.] “We don’t have to go into every single one, El. We only go into the ones that have cars with New York number plates in the parking lot.” All of the vehicles on the set and Hal Minsky’s and the costume designers’ cars had all been rented in the city.
“Lola.” Ella was calm but firm, as though reasoning with a small child. “We’re still not going to finish looking before this movie is out on DVD.”
“You’ll see,” I said. “The gods are going to smile on us.”
“If they do, it’s only because they’re laughing,” said Ella.
Ella picked me up at dawn the next morning, wearing shades and clutching a thermos of coffee. Even though she was fully dressed, she gave the impression that she was still in her pyjamas.
“Did Marilyn give you a hard time, leaving the house so early?” I asked as I got in the car.
“She’s still asleep.” She passed me the coffee. “I left her a note so she doesn’t think I ran away from home. What about your mom?”
There are advantages to having a mother so immersed in her work that she can’t worry about her child every second of the day. “She’s loading the kiln. By the time she realizes I’ve gone she’ll just think I went to work.”
Just to disprove the accusation (often made by Karen Kapok, among others) that I’m as practical as a bag of crisps in the desert, I’d pored over a map of Dellwood the night before to narrow down our search. I circled an area with a five-mile radius to the movie set, which I figured was about as far as anyone was likely to go for breakfast.
“We’ll start in Dellwood and work our way towards the set,” I directed.
I didn’t think it was likely that people from Hollywood would choose weak coffee in a Styrofoam cup and something in bread (also encased in Styrofoam) for breakfast when they could have real food on a plate and real coffee in a china cup, but Ella disagreed. She said that the reason you can find a McDonald’s almost anywhere in the world isn’t because no one eats in places like that. She said that she didn’t get up with the fruit pickers not to be thorough.
So we started with the chains that surround the town. There were New York cars in the car parks of all of them, but on closer inspection they all belonged to bickering families in crumpled clothes or tired looking men in summer suits.
“What did I say?” I said. “These are sophisticates we’re dealing with here, not hicks from the sticks. Let’s try Main Street.” There’s a diner, a soda fountain, a Starbucks and a French café on Main Street.
Of course, since there weren’t any car parks on Main Street to check first, we had to go in each one. We decided to do it in order of cosmopolitan sophistication. We went to the café first.
After the bright lights and noise of McDonald’s and the others, the café looked unnaturally dark and still inside.
“Are you sure it’s open?” asked Ella as we peered through the door.
I, for one, was elated. This was just the kind of place Hollywood people would go to break their morning fast. Instead of a large, lighted menu there was a blackboard. Instead of shining plastic, there were brick walls covered with old movie posters (French, of course) and small, round wooden tables. Instead of a row of smiling faces with nametags, there was one bored girl wearing a black apron leaning against a wooden counter.
“Of course it’s open.” I pointed into the continental gloom. A man and woman sat at the back, talking over their espressos. They were both dressed in jeans and T-shirts and looked like they spent a lot of time outdoors. They c
ould be gardeners; but they could also be cameramen or something like that. “There’s a couple sitting by the big Truffaut poster.”
“By the what?” asked Ella.
Once again I had reason to be grateful that Fate had brought me to Ella. She’d be lost without me. “Truffaut,” I repeated. “He’s a very important French director.”
Ella said, “Oh.”
I said, “Come on,” and opened the door. A voice that had smoked far too many cigarettes and drunk far too much red wine was singing in French. It sounded unhappy (which isn’t exactly a surprise after all that booze and tobacco). “There’s a good chance they’re with the movie.”
I led Ella to a table near the picture of François Truffaut looking intense.
The waitress was so overjoyed to have two more customers that she was on top of us before we could sit down.
Ella looked at me. We hadn’t planned to buy anything until we were sure we were in the right place and needed an excuse to hang around. But the music, the décor, and the laser-like gaze of the waitress got the better of me, and I ordered two espressos.
Our coffees were still in the machine when it became obvious that the couple at the next table weren’t with the movie company. They weren’t gardeners either. They were on their way to the mall to buy baby furniture.
Ella looked as though she’d known they were expecting parents the whole time. “Now what do we do?” she hissed.
I said we drank our coffees and then we paid the bill.
Ella said it was just as well I’d ordered espressos; at least they’re small.
I still had high hopes that the soda fountain or Starbucks would turn up something. The soda fountain’s considered a landmark in Dellwood. In Europe something has to be around for at least five hundred years before it’s considered old, but in New Jersey if something lasts fifty years it’s practically ancient. The soda fountain was built in 1928 according to the front of the building, and (except for the microwave behind the counter) it pretty much looked it – chrome and Formica counter with high stools, black and white linoleum floor and soda from taps. Filmmakers looking for local colour were bound to flock there. And Starbucks was generically cosmopolitan and would at least be familiar to people from LA.
I was wrong on both counts. The soda fountain was filled with men going to work and Starbucks was filled with young mothers who didn’t.
That left only the Dellwood Diner.
“You never can tell,” I said optimistically as Ella and I climbed the concrete steps. “The diner is an intrinsic part of American culture. It’s just the kind of place that recorders of that culture would feel at home in.”
But Ella’s nature is more pessimistic than mine. “Right,” she muttered as we stepped through the glass door. “They’ve probably been lining up here since dawn to get in.”
“Oh ye of little faith,” I whispered as I came up behind her. “What did I tell you? Just look there!”
“Where?”
“Those two guys over there in the booth.”
Ella’s eyebrows rose in a way I found pretty irritating. “And?”
“And the one in the ‘Read Orwell’ T-shirt is the same guy who marched us off the set.”
Ella glanced over at the man in the T-shirt, then turned back to me. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.” I might forget to take out the rubbish or where the exact location of East Timor is, but I would never forget someone who’s manhandled me. “I remember him vividly.”
But the Gerards’ only child still wasn’t convinced. “Well I don’t remember him.”
“That’s because I was trying to reason with him while you went into toxic shock. Trust me. He’s got a ruby ring on his right pinky and he kept pressing it into my wrist. It really hurt.”
“So what if it is him? He’s not going to help us, is he?” argued Ella.
“He’s not going to recognize us from the other day.” I assured her. “We look totally different when we’re dry and not bleeding.”
Ella sighed in a resigned kind of way. “So now what do we do?”
I was about to say that we sit down in the booth behind theirs when I suddenly noticed who was at the counter no more than a few feet away from them. [Cue: gasp of shock and horror.] “Sit down! Quick!” I hurled myself into the nearest seat.
“Now what?” muttered Ella. But she followed my lead and threw herself across from me.
“Don’t you see him? At the counter. Right next to the booth where the movie guys are sitting.”
Ella gazed around my head. “There are two men at the counter.”
“The one with the baseball cap.”
“They’re both wearing baseball caps.”
“You know, maybe you should think of being a lawyer,” I snapped. “You’d be great on cross examinations.”
“Oh excuse me,” Ella snapped back. “But in case you didn’t notice, they both are wearing baseball caps.”
I was grinding my teeth so hard my jaw felt like it might snap. “The one with his hat on backwards.”
“What about him?”
It never ceases to amaze me how a person can be both really smart and about as bright as a nightlight at the same time. I begged the gods for patience. “What does it say on the baseball cap?”
“Creek’s Auto Repairs,” read Ella. And then a happy smile lit up her face. “Is that Sam’s dad? I’ve always wanted to meet him. He’s always under a car when I go to the garage.”
“Well you’re not meeting him today.” Is it me, or is it simply astounding how the gods can give with one hand and snatch it right back with the other? I hunkered down in my seat. “I can’t let him see me.” Thank God I was wearing a hat and sunglasses.
Ella gazed at me in what looked a lot like bafflement. “Why not? I thought he liked you.”
“That’s why. I don’t want him to start chatting to us. Not in the middle of Operation Hollywood.”
“There’s not much of an operation if we’ve got to hide in this booth till he leaves,” said Ella.
I picked up a menu. “Just give me a few minutes to think. I’ll come up with something.”
Like all great actors, I’m one of those people who works well under incredible stress. By the time the waitress brought our order I was calm and cool again – I had a plan.
“Do you think we could have the bill now?” I asked as she set two cups of tea down (neither of us could drink another coffee without risking cardiac implosion). “We may have to make a quick exit.”
In my experience, though diner waitresses aren’t likely to be asked out by royalty, they’ve not only pretty much seen it all and aren’t easily thrown, they often have kind hearts as well.
“Sure, honey.” She tore a sheet of paper from her pad. “Just leave it on the table.”
“Now all we have to do is wait,” I said to Ella. “When the movie guys go, we follow them out.” What could be easier?
For once it really was as easy as I thought it would be – at least to start with.
We sipped our tea in companionable silence until Ella leaned across the table and said, “Lola! They’re getting ready to go.”
“Really? What are they doing?”
“They just gave the waitress their money,” reported Ella. “Now they’re standing up.”
“Right.” I took some money from my pocket and stuck it under our bill. “Be ready to move!”
“Here they come!” whispered Ella.
I watched the two men pass us. I watched them open the door of the diner. I watched them step outside.
I gave the command. “That’s it! Let’s go!”
We slipped from our booth and went after them.
Ella had her hand on the door, and I had my eyes on the backs of the two men as they crossed the street, when someone accustomed to screaming over the sound of drills and engines shouted my name so loudly that a hush fell over the Dellwood Diner and all eyes turned to us. Ella, who isn’t as accustomed to thinking on her feet
as I am, froze. Which meant I froze, too.
It was all I could do not to wail out loud, “Oh ye gods! Why does everything go wrong for me?”
“Lola!” Mr Creek shouted again. “Wait up!”
I looked over my shoulder, smiling with delighted surprise.
“Oh, Mr Creek! Hi!”
Mr Creek slid off his stool with the grace of a man whose tango is a New Jersey legend and moved towards me. “Lola, I was just talking about you.”
“I’m really sorry, Mr Creek, but I’m kind of in a hurry.” I gave Ella a shove.
Mr Creek gestured vaguely behind him. “But I wanted—”
“I’m really sorry, but I can’t now.” I edged myself through the door. “It’s an emergency. Ella’s mother just rang and a raccoon got into the house.” This really did happen to someone in Dellwood, though not to Ella’s mother of course. It’s hard enough for micro-organisms to get into the Gerard house, never mind a largish mammal. I read about it in the local paper.
Mr Creek stopped. “But, Lola—”
“Next time!” I cried, waving wildly as I ran down the steps.
Ella was already on the pavement. “Well they didn’t park on Main Street,” said Ella. “There’s no sign of them.”
I started to run. “Quick! They must’ve parked behind the bank.”
But there was no sign of them in the municipal parking lot behind the bank either.
“They must’ve been helicoptered out,” I moaned as we started back down Main Street.
“Well, we tried,” said Ella. “We came close.”
Close, but no cigar. Not even the stub of a cigar.
Across the street, Mr Creek came out of the diner and climbed into his van. I pulled Ella into a doorway so he wouldn’t see us loitering and wonder what the big rush had been for.
“It’s all his fault,” I muttered. “Why can’t he eat breakfast at home like a normal person?”
The man Mr Creek was sitting next to at the counter came down the steps of the diner, gave him a wave, and got into the maroon people carrier in the next space.
I’ve noticed that sometimes, when something really horrendous happens, to protect you from having a nervous breakdown your mind gets caught on some tiny, mundane detail. I got stuck on the fact that Mr Creek’s breakfast companion had a really long nose. “Ella.” I gave her a poke. “Ella, does that guy look familiar?”