“There’s something you should know.”
I’ve never had a conversation start with those words and end well. I braced myself. “What?”
“I’ve given Vladima a partner.”
“A…? Oh. Um…” For some reason I was completely flustered. “A partner?” I wished I could stop looking into Josh’s eyes. “A partner.” Then I realized what he’d said. “A partner?”
He explained. “I think she needs someone to—I don’t know—to hang out with. I mean, I’ve been thinking for a while that she needs a Watson, you know? A Robin to her Batman? A partner.” The way he was looking at me made it clear that it was important that I agree with him.
But I wasn’t so sure. “You created another superhero?”
He shook his head. “I messed around with that for a while, but then I decided on a mortal.” He reached over to the coffee table and opened a folder. “Dr. Ethan Black.”
I looked at the drawing. A dark-haired guy in a lab coat wearing glasses. “He’s a research scientist?”
“Among other things.” Josh explained. “He used to work for the FBI crime lab, but he got fired because he kept insisting there was a female serial killer who was gruesomely murdering all the mobsters and drug lords.”
Ah-ha. “He was on to Vladima?”
Josh nodded. “That’s what the new storyline is—Vladima’s pursuing a pedophile, and Dr. Ethan Black is pursuing her.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “By the end of the third issue he’ll have decided that her vampire vigilantism is just what this town needs.”
Josh grinned. “Something like that. Will you read it tonight?”
I took the folder. “Sure.”
When I looked at him, I felt there must be something else I should say. I opened my mouth, but suddenly the weirdness came rushing back and choked me.
So I took Vladima and we got the hell out.
I DIDN’T HAVE TIME to go home and change before meeting Max for dinner at a little restaurant on Fillmore that probably had a name, but that we always just referred to as “the cheap Thai place.”
“What’s this?” He gestured to Josh’s T-shirt. “Are we into vintage rock fashion now?”
“It’s borrowed.” I pecked his cheek. “It was either wear U2 or smell like a wino.”
“Tough call.” He put his menu aside and clasped his hands. “So what’s new? Tell me everything. I want to get all the boring ‘you’ stuff out of the way so we can spend the rest of the evening talking about me and my brilliant new show.”
He produced a stack of postcard-sized flyers for San Francisco Follies, the show he was backing, which would be opening in a few days at the Next Stage Theater (which was actually the auditorium of an Episcopal church on Gough Street, but who cares—it’s showbiz).
“I want you to give these to everyone you know,” he instructed. “And at some point you’ll need to explain to me why, if you can get that damn cartoon vampire mentioned in every column in America, you can’t generate a little heat for your oldest and dearest friend, but that can wait.”
He gave me a dazzling smile. “You didn’t answer me. What’s new?”
I set the folder of Josh’s storyboards on the table. “New story for the cartoon vampire, no new story for me.”
Max opened the folder and started leafing through the pages. About halfway through, his eyebrows went up. “She has a love interest.” He looked at me. “She has a love interest?”
I shook my head and took a break from Max to order a Thai iced tea and some red curry. “Not a love interest,” I told him when the waitress had gone, “a partner.”
“You don’t sound very happy about it.”
I made a face. “I really don’t care one way or the other.”
“I believe you. Thousands wouldn’t, but I do.”
“It’s just that if she has a partner, there’s bound to be a power struggle as he tries to control her, and I—What?” Max was giving me his Dr. Freud look.
“Just because your relationships are about power doesn’t mean Vladima’s are.”
“We’re not talking about me. And anyway, my relationships are not about power.”
“Uh-huh.” If he’d had a beard, he’d have been stroking it.
“Oh, come on, Max, aren’t all relationships about power? Connie says—and I’m not saying Connie is in any way my romantic role model—but Connie says in any relationship you’re either the hammer or the nail.”
That seemed to shut him up for a minute. “Well, that certainly explains a lot about her marriage,” he reflected.
“And how the hell did we end up on the subject of relationships anyway? I thought we were going to have a nice quiet dinner where we’d talk about what a marketing genius I am and how you’re the next Flo Ziegfeld.”
“All right, all right.” He held up his hands in surrender. “You win.”
“Good. Are you going to eat all of those spring rolls?”
He held out the plate. “I’ll only say one more word on the subject.”
“Max!”
He snatched the plate away before I’d had a chance to take anything.
“Not until you listen to me.”
I stared at him. “Fine.” Whatever.
“I only want to say that you do have a relationship with a single, straight guy that isn’t a power struggle.”
“I do not.” I speared a spring roll and did my best to ignore Max.
“What about Josh?”
I rolled my eyes. “Josh isn’t a guy.”
“I wouldn’t count on that.”
I gave Max a look. “He’s a colleague. There’s nothing personal about our relationship and there’s certainly nothing sexual.”
“Right. Just out of curiosity, have you seen the way he draws you?”
“He doesn’t draw me. He draws Vladima.”
“Uh-huh. Maybe that was true once, but after a while there got to be a definite resemblance. And in this new one—” He opened the folder and turned a page to face me. “Baby, that is you in a black leather bustier.”
“It is not!” I looked at the drawing. It was Josh’s original pencil sketch, unaltered by either Donovan’s ink or Jeremy’s animation. Vladima was rearing back to strike, standing tall over her victim, strong and fearless and gorgeous with her waving dark hair and flashing eyes. “It’s so not me.”
Max sighed. “All right. This is pointless. But at least we got it over with, so now we can talk about me.”
“Fine.”
“Good. Do you still have Shayla’s number?”
“I think so. But I haven’t seen her since we got back from the wedding. Why? Do I need another makeover?”
“We’re talking about me, remember? I’m wondering how much she might know about the proper application of feathered eyelashes.”
“Oh…”
So we had a lengthy conversation about everything from glitter to boas to body paint while devouring really good curry. But all the while a phrase kept repeating itself in my head.
Josh? No way. That would ruin everything.
Twenty-three
As it turned out, Shayla did know a lot about false eyelashes (feathered and otherwise) and she was happy to help Max and his partners in theatrical crime with their stage makeup on the night of the show. Not that the cast of four semiprofessional quasi–drag queens needed much help, but they appreciated her enthusiasm.
I’d been running late all day, and I met up with Connie and Ian on the sidewalk outside the theater. “Have you talked to Vida?” Connie asked in greeting.
“My cell phone battery died,” I told her. “Why? What’s up?”
Connie looked over my shoulder and grinned. “She’s bringing a date.”
A date? Vida? I turned and saw her talking animatedly with some guy as they waked toward us. When he got closer, I thought he looked vaguely familiar. But it wasn’t until he spoke that I recognized him.
“Dude!” he said delightedly.
“Tim!” I pulled his name out of the air just in time. Tim, who was Vida’s surfing-and-work buddy. Oh, well, then it probably wasn’t a date. It was just Tim.
Introductions were made, and Ian was just saying something about going in when Vida’s eyes widened as she focused on someone behind me. “Josh!”
Josh? She’d only met him once or twice, so she was probably—
“Hi,” I heard his voice, low and close to my ear, and got a little disoriented. Like when you see someone from your hometown while you’re away on vacation and the context is wrong.
I turned. Yep, it was Josh.
Vida was introducing him to Tim and then he was congratulating Connie and Ian on their wedding, and they were saying how nice it was to finally meet him, and then he turned to me.
“Hey, Becks,” he said softly, “Max invited me. I hope you don’t mind.”
There was something about the way he was looking at me, waiting or watching for I didn’t know what, that caught my reply in my throat. Vida slapped me on the back to dislodge it.
“No, hey, great. Good to see you.” I nodded. “We should go in.”
So I could kill Max.
ALL THE OTHER BACKERS of the Follies, like Max, had real careers—dentist, lawyer, investment banker, and accountant—but even if their mothers had made them go to college, their hearts still belonged to Broadway. Or at least to a fifty-seat hall behind the Trinity Episcopal church.
The production was heavy on show tunes, with the lyrics rewritten to include witty commentary on everything from the latest ballot initiative to the mayor’s sex life.
In addition to the production numbers, there were a few skits, some improv, and a horrifying attempt at audience participation that involved a woman of a certain age seated in the front row, who would probably never be able to wear her wig in public again.
But aside from that, the whole thing came off without a hitch.
A quick surreptitious look to my left revealed Josh convulsed in laughter during a number about venture capitalists during the dot-com boom, sung to the tune of “La Vie Boheme.”
Ian, on the other hand, looked a little confused.
AFTER THE SHOW, the cast went off to a party at the End Up, and the rest of the investors tagged along with them, but Max said he’d rather hang out with “the little people.” He met us out on the sidewalk after the show, dragging a breathless Shayla along behind him and greeting us modestly with “How fabulous was it and where are we going for drinks?”
Comments were exchanged to the effect of “Very fabulous and we haven’t decided yet.”
Tim suggested a place out by Ocean Beach, but we decided it was too far away. Ian suggested the Irish Bank, but Max said he couldn’t handle the tedium of the financial district set after the glitter of an opening night. Then Josh made my jaw drop when he suggested Martuni’s.
Connie shouted “Perfect!” at the exact moment Ian yelled “No!”—which didn’t bode well for the rest of the evening.
“I know,” Vida broke the awkward pause. “The Lush Lounge.”
“Brilliant,” Connie said, giving Ian a we’ll-talk-later-in-the-car look.
The Lush was a sort of shabby-chic retro-something place that had the added advantage of being within walking distance, so we set out.
We formed into clumps of two, with Max and Shayla in the lead, discussing every detail of the show. They were followed by Tim and Vida—arm in arm, so maybe it was a date after all—and a dangerously silent Connie and Ian. That left me and Josh to bring up the rear.
I rummaged around in my brain for something to say to him, and all I came up with was “What did you think of the show?”
He shot me a sideways grin. “I think I’m required to say it was fabulous.”
“You catch on quick.”
“I was kind of surprised when Max invited me.”
Uh-huh. I planned to corner Max at my earliest opportunity and have a little chat with him about that. “I was kind of surprised to see you,” I admitted. “When did Max invite you?”
“This afternoon. I was trying to find you at every number I could think of, and I finally reached Max. He didn’t know where you were, but he asked me to come see the show.”
I noticed Josh didn’t come out and ask me where I’d been all day. Which was just as well, because for most of the afternoon I’d been facedown on a massage table at Spa Radiance.
Who could have predicted that the most significant thing to happen to me in England would have been my introduction to spa pampering? But I was now officially addicted. When Josh was talking to Max, I had probably been soaking my toes in a lavender-and-rose-petal-infused milk bath.
“Why were you trying to call me?” I asked him.
He grinned again. “It can wait.”
Okay. So what else could we talk about? “I didn’t know you liked Martuni’s,” I tried.
We’d just reached the Lush, and Josh held the door open, which provided him with the opportunity to give me one of those unnerving looks of his. “We’ll just add that to the very long list of things you don’t know about me.”
Which, for some reason, made my lavender-and-rose-petal-infused toes start to tingle.
This was not good.
“TIM?”
Vida and I were in the ladies’ room, and it was the first chance I’d gotten to grill her about her date—for a date it was.
She held up her hand for me to high-five her. “Tim!” Smack. “Isn’t that the weirdest? I mean, one minute we’ve got our heads together debugging this wicked memory leak, and the next minute he’s telling me he’s had a crush on me for ages.”
“Don’t tell me, let me guess,” Connie spoke up from the stall. “The next minute you were making out on the conference room table.”
“No way,” Vida protested. “We broke into the VP’s office. She has a couch.” She giggled.
“You like him?” I said dubiously. Then I remembered how supportive friends behave. “I mean—you like him!” With enthusiasm this time.
But I still found it hard to believe. In my experience, when a guy you’ve known and worked with for ages suddenly breaks down and confesses his long-term crush on you, the best strategy is a quick exit and a firm follow-up e-mail.
Not so for Vida, who was nodding vigorously. “I totally like him. I always have. But I didn’t realize I was into him until he made a move, and then it just hit me, and I was so into him.” She beamed.
Connie joined us at the mirror. “Sounds like she’s got it bad, Becks. What do you think?”
What could I say?
“Thank God for wicked memory leaks.”
BACK AT THE TABLE, Shayla was holding the attention of the men in the palm of her hand. Actually, she was holding a quarter in the palm of her hand, but since she was demonstrating her ability to flip it upward and make it land perfectly wedged between her impressive breasts, it’s safe to say she had the market on male attention pretty much cornered.
“I don’t understand it,” Max whispered to me as I sat down. “I don’t even like those things, and still I can’t look away.”
Josh was missing, but he returned soon after we did and sat next to me. He took in Shayla’s bar trick and shot me a grin. “I usually don’t go in for matchmaking, but we just have to fix this girl up with Jeremy.”
I choked on my mojito. “You’re right,” I told him. “She’s perfect.” And then it hit me. I grabbed Josh’s arm. “Josh, she’s perfect for Vladima!”
The exuberant makeup artist was making Tim blush furiously and Vida giggle uncontrollably by demanding that he pluck the magic quarter out from her low-cut dress. Then she looked over toward me. “What?” she asked. “What’s with you two?”
“Shayla,” Josh said seriously. “No pressure here, but have you ever considered wearing a long black wig?”
She grinned. “Honey, if that’s what you want, you got it.”
At which point Josh blushed. Which pleased me for some reason.
“Shayla,” I said. “You don’t know it yet, but you’ve just been discovered.”
She laughed and fished the quarter out. “Okeydokey.”
I’D TAKEN A CAB to the show because I’d known there would be drinking afterward, but I noticed Josh had only one beer, so when he offered me a lift home, I took it.
When he’d parked outside my building, he shut off the engine and walked me to the door, looking as if he wanted to say something. I ransacked my purse for my keys.
“Becks?”
He kept fighting back this smile, and since I didn’t know why he was smiling, it was just the slightest bit unsettling. I thought up a brilliant reply.
“Yeah?”
“Do you want me to tell you why I was going nuts trying to find you all afternoon?”
Oh, so he wasn’t going to follow Tim’s example and confess to a giant crush on me. Whew. That was good news. That was probably good news. Was that good news? How much had I had to drink?
“Becks?”
“Oh. Yeah. Tell me.”
He unleashed the smile. “I got a call today.”
“Oh?” From his ex? Wanting to get back together? Why did that pop into my head?
“From…?”
“From a guy named Alan Turnbottom.”
So probably not his ex. “Alan Turnbottom?”
Josh nodded, doing that trick of his, where he looks at me so I can’t look away. “He’s an exec at Fox.”
“Fox?” I echoed. That was nice. Wait a minute…“Fox as in the movie studio?”
Josh nodded, and the wattage on the smile went up a notch. “Fox.”
“Fox?”
“They want to talk about making a Vladima movie.”
He watched me carefully for a reaction, but as I’d completely frozen, he didn’t get one. After a moment, he took the keys from my hand, unlocked the door, and pushed me gently into the lobby. Then he leaned against the open doorway. “You okay?”
I looked at him.
Josh. Real. Not a dream.
The Balance Thing Page 16