“Ariel,” Lala said. “I am going to repeat this because it bears repeating. You are the daughter I never had. And if you don’t let me run your election campaigns—all of them—I will be very hurt. Wow, I seem to be a natural at this parental guilt trip thing. That guy is very cute. P.S. you’re already signed up to be one of the young people who takes care of me in my dotage. Just FYI.”
Lala grabbed one of the many elegant pitchers that graced the ornate wooden bar. It seemed that among Helene’s copious talents was a flair for mixology. For this special evening, Helene had created a signature cocktail that involved a fusion of champagne, vodka, the pulp from maybe a bazillion hand-squeezed oranges, and edible gold flakes. And at this point in the night’s festivities, Lala was too cheerfully buzzed to say anything negative about Helene’s overabundance of ability.
“Edible gold,” Lala said to Ariel. “Seriously, who knew?”
Lala poured them both another goblet, and they sipped as they continued to scan the crowd. This was another unpredictable lull in the evening’s distribution of libations. It was definitely feast or famine. At times the two lines to the two bartenders were long enough to prevent Lala from doing a tremendous amount of gabbing with each guest. And then there were the happy occasions when a guest or two would stay at the bar to chat with Lala and Ariel, and no one else would show up to interrupt them for a good five or ten minutes. All in all, Lala was thrilled with her plan to stick herself behind the bar. It gave her a chance to meet nearly everyone without having to conjure any transparent excuses to move from one group to the next.
“You’re not driving home, are you?” Ariel asked.
“Nope. I’m probably going to have to sleep over. Not that I’ve checked with Helene yet to see if it’s okay. But, sheesh, look at the size of this place. I could curl up in a bathtub in the east wing, and she’d never know I’m here. You?”
“My boyfriend is picking me up,” Ariel said.
“Excellent! I’ll look forward to meeting him. Is it serious? Huh? Yeah? Huh? Is he going to be the future son-in-law I never had?”
“You are such a nut,” Ariel giggled.
Lala was just about to applaud Ariel for her keen insight when a strident male voice appeared out of nowhere, followed by the sound of cranky tapping of an index finger or possibly a ball peen hammer on the bar.
“Can I get a drink? Whatever Helene’s dreamed up will have to do, I guess. Unless you’ve got any bourbon?”
Lala turned and found an ogre scowling at her. And she was horrified to discover that she might be in the process of recognizing him.
Omigod, Lala thought. It can’t be. What does his nametag say?
“I’m so sorry, we don’t have bourbon,” Lala said.
“Jesus,” Jackson Platt growled. “Okay. Just pour me some of that stuff.”
Lala found herself about to say an elongated version of the word “please” aloud, as she might have to a surly kindergartner who had clearly not been taught any manners. Instead of speaking, she pursed her lips in a tight, contained frown. She picked up a pitcher and filled a large glass and handed it to her favorite contemporary author—who grabbed the glass and walked away from the bar without a word or even the most perfunctory gesture of acknowledgement.
“Yikes,” Ariel said. “Dickhead alert.”
“Wow,” Lala whispered to her. “He doesn’t look anything like he does on TV. On screen he comes across as an affable, cauliflower-nosed intellectual. Which can be very sexy in the right context. Up close, I’d be forced to say he’s more got the air of a cheerless, ape-like creature. Which, I’m sorry to have to report, is rarely, if indeed ever, sexy. Jesus, you’d think it would kill him to crack a smile. And somebody must be doing a Cyrano thing with him whenever he’s being interviewed because he is charming. I’m not kidding. Cute and funny and smart and engaging. What a dickhead. You know what else is really weird? In his case, the camera takes off ten pounds.”
“Who is he?” Ariel asked.
“That’s Jackson Platt,” Lala said. She was trying very hard not to cry. She grabbed her glass and started gulping down signature cocktail in horrible gurgling little spasms. “He’s an absolutely amazing—”
“Omigod,” Ariel groaned, “he’s the dickhead who wrote that piece of crap, A Map Without Latitude. I had to read that for a class, and it was torture. That man should be tried for war crimes. Crimes against humanity. Crimes against good taste and punctuation.”
Lala gaped at Ariel. She felt the rhythm and sound of waves crashing in her ears.
“That . . . that . . . that . . . that stuff he does with exclamation points? It’s intentional. He does that because he’s trying to—”
Before Lala could give in to her itching desire to start thumping sweet and guileless young Ariel about the head and shoulders as a physical gesture of emphasis to lend support to her literary hero’s calculatedly abundant use of, arguably, that most enthusiastic, if not most subtle, mark of punctuation, Helene’s voice reverberated over and through and all around the room on a sound system that the engineers at Madison Square Garden might have considered boorish.
“Hellooooo, my dear friends!” Helene’s voice boomed.
“Ahhhhhhh!” Lala wailed in terror. Her grip on her substantially full goblet was instantly a thing of the past. The glass dropped to the floor, sending liquor and gold flakes out in a wide radius that had an air of Mardi Gras about it.
Every pair of eyes in the place turned toward the bar. Lala looked back at everyone, her placid expression a dazed cipher.
What the fuck are you looking at? Lala silently demanded.
“Uh oh,” Helene proclaimed cheerfully through the microphone. She was standing on the top step of yet another coy, short little staircase, this one leading to the pool and tennis courts. “I think we might have to cut off my dear friend over there after a few more drinks!”
Ha ha, Lala silently sneered. You are a crackup, Helene. Where’s a clean glass?
“Are you okay?” Lala whispered to Ariel. “Did you get soaked? How did that glass not break?”
“I’m fine. I know; that’s so weird. Is it plastic?”
“That is very weird plastic,” Lala said. “I’d like to know just what the hell our hostess is up to. By rights, you and I should be impaled by shards of glass at this point.”
“I just wanted to take a few minutes to thank you all for coming tonight to celebrate the release of the next book in my European Murder Capitals series,” Helene boomed. “Thank you so much for sharing my joy with me. I love to write. I’ve never wanted to be anything except a writer.”
Lala listened from beneath the bar, where she was crouching on her heels.
If there is not another clean glass back here, I swear I will start drinking directly from one of these pitchers, Lala thought.
“So please be sure to take your gift copy of Copenhagen Pardons No One, and please be sure to let me sign it for you before you leave tonight. Okay, just one more thing and then we’ll go back to celebrating.”
Seriously, Lala thought, which one of these labyrinthine cabinets has fresh glasses?
“I just wanted to bring up my wonderful agent, Kelly Franklin Adams, so I can say a big public thank you to her for getting me a meeting next week at Paramount to talk about the film version of ‘Paris for Homicide Lovers.’”
Lala froze. Then she very slowly put her fingertips down on the floor to steady herself.
I think I may be having a stroke, she thought. Did I just hear that correctly, or did I just have a stroke and die and go straight to Hell? Am I in Hell right now?
As the crowd applauded, Lala very slowly rose. She peeked over the top of the bar. Helene was hugging a frighteningly thin woman. Her short hair was slicked back. It might have been the blackest organic material Lala had ever encountered. Her hair seemed to suck the light in its vicin
ity into its infinite depth.
Helene and the woman hugged each other and then waved at the crowd as though they had just been nominated by their political party for national office.
Yeah, I’m having a stroke, Lala silently concluded as she stared at the woman who had brutally rejected her screenplay on the Ides of March of that same year, a.k.a. two seconds ago if Lala’s vivid agony was any indication.
“Thanks again, everyone!” Helene bellowed. “Wish me luck next week!”
Lala turned to Ariel.
“Is anyone looking at me?” she asked. “I don’t trust my own powers of observation.”
“Umm, no,” Ariel said. “Pretty much everyone is heading over there to surround Helene and her agent. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. You’re a dear and wonderful young person.”
Lala grabbed one of the pitchers and drank directly from it.
Awww, JESUS! Lala thought. It didn’t occur to me to check who Helene’s agent is? It didn’t occur to me to make sure it’s not Kelly Franklin Adams? Stay cool. Yes, I am drowning in a Noah’s Ark-level flood of angst right now vis-à-vis how successful Helene is and what an abject failure I am. Yes, I am feeling a tsunami of disappointment crash over me right now because the literary man of my dreams appears to be a major tool, but I am not going to have a public meltdown the way I did last time my hopes were submerged in a roiling cauldron of watered agony. And, yes, I have zero idea what’s up with all the liquid imagery.
Lala grabbed Ariel’s wrist and urgently whispered to her.
“Ariel, I need to get out of here and I definitely shouldn’t be driving, so can I impose on you to help me figure out how in the living hell to work that app thing, so I can get a ride out of this god-forsaken burg? I mean, in New York, you go to the curb, you stick your hand up in the air and boom, you’re in a cab. Awww, JESUS!”
Lala saw Helene and Kelly Franklin Adams and Jackson Platt making a bee-line for the bar.
A trifecta of tsuris hurtling toward me, Lala thought. Great. What’s next? Leprosy?
“Hi!” Lala said. “Lovely speech, Helene. I’m so excited about Paramount! Listen, I hate to drink and run, but I’ve got to—”
“Lala!” Helene began.
NO! Lala silently screamed. Don’t tell Kelly Franklin Adams my name! Damn it, why don’t I have a normal name? Why do I not have an average, forgettable name? DO NOT tell her my last name! Hey, is Jackson Platt looking at my tits?
“I wanted to make sure to introduce the fellow Wesleyan grads,” Helene continued.
Don’t say my last name, Lala silently pleaded.
“Kelly Franklin Adams, this is my new and very dear friend, Lala Pettibone.”
Barf, Lala thought. There was a definite spark of recognition in her eyes. She knows she knows me, and she maybe even knows how she knows me. Barf.
“Hello,” Lala said. She extended her hand.
Upon seeing Lala’s extended hand, Kelly Franklin Adams didn’t so much take it in hers as allow Lala to lean closer and grab her hand so that Lala wasn’t standing there with a free-floating hand looking like a hapless urchin.
“Nice to meet you,” Kelly Franklin Adams said.
Kelly Franklin Adams’s handshake had the warmth and enthusiasm and tactile commitment that Queen Elizabeth might have exhibited had an exceptionally unwashed commoner broken all rules of royal protocol and grabbed the hereditary monarch for a big, drooling hug at a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
“I thought she was one of the servers,” Jackson Platt said to Helene. He turned to Ariel. “I need another glass. Can’t remember where I put mine, and I’m desperate for another Gold Rush. Gold Rush. Yeah. Clever. I just came up with that. Helene, you should call your cocktail that.”
Ariel gave Jackson a smile that—it was clear to Lala in a world where nothing was clear to her any longer—was a fence holding back a herd of unbroken mustangs of rebuke for the acclaimed author’s surpassing rudeness.
God, my Daughter-I-never-had is formidable, Lala thought. If Jackson were paying a drop of attention, he would see that she’s about ready to kill him. Good for her. Tell him to jump up and kiss your ass, sweetie. What a jerk.
“I’ll just run to the kitchen to get a few fresh ones,” Ariel said. She directed her next words to Lala. “I’ll be right back.”
Jackson scoffed at Ariel’s retreating figure.
“Shoddy anticipation of guests’ needs,” Jackson said. “Don’t hire this outfit again, Helene. So, Lala. Lala Pettibone. What an amusing name. It’s got just enough overtones of the absurd to intrigue me.”
Shut up, Lala thought.
“Where do I know that name?”
Awww, JESUS! Lala thought. Did Kelly Franklin Adams give him my script to read? Did they mock it together? Does the entire world know how much I suck as a writer?
Jackson snapped his fingers and pointed to Helene.
“Your dad is dating her aunt.”
“Yes, he is,” Helene said. “That’s how I was lucky enough to meet dear Lala!”
Jackson winked at Lala.
What? Lala thought. Why are you winking at me?
“Salman Rushdie, yeah?” Jackson said. He bobbed his head with a knowing, conspiratorial grin and winked at Lala again. “Priceless. You can’t write stuff like that. No one would believe it.”
Oh, that’s why, Lala thought. You’re winking at me because you’re a massive dickhead.
“Helene, we need to go talk to your editor,” Kelly Franklin Adams said.
“More on this later, dear ones. Would you excuse us? Jackson, flirt with Lala.”
“With pleasure,” Jackson oozed.
Lala winced as Helene and Kelly Franklin Adams strode away. She felt Jackson’s hot, leering gaze on her and reluctantly rolled her eyes in his direction.
“So. Lala Pettibone. I think it’s about time we blew this shit stand, yeah? Where are you taking me for a nightcap?”
_______________
Lala was happily engulfed in a white bathrobe that felt like a rich, thick cloud. She was in a California King bed with 800-thread-count sheets. She had created a sloping wall of pillows against the headboard of the bed to prop herself up in a semiprone position. Room service had knocked on her door an hour earlier and brought in a cart covered with two servings of french fries and chocolate molten lava cake with vanilla ice cream for dessert. The TV was on to Say Yes to the Dress, and Lala was on the phone with Geraldine.
“I swear, I became Blanche DuBois tonight. The Daughter-I-never-had, so that makes her the grandniece-you-never-had, was very skillful at getting me out of the house without making it at all obvious that I basically couldn’t walk without weaving. Not so much because of the alcohol as because of the impotent rage I was choking on. And I owe Ariel my freedom because she also prevented me from committing homicide against a certain unctuous author before I left.
“Maybe Helene can use tonight’s murder-mystery-plot-that-almost-happened for her American Killing Capitals series, which I assume she’s feverishly working on right now because Paramount and Sony and the Weinsteins are in a bidding war for her work.
“Ariel basically grabbed me by both elbows and glided me over the wood floors, which were, by the way, dangerously polished. I’m surprised someone, and by someone I mean me, didn’t break a hip. Thank God Ariel is very sporty, because between the booze and the bile, I could not have been easy to maneuver.
“Then the adorable young valet drove me over to the hotel in my car while another adorable young valet followed us in his car so the two of them could head back to Helene’s house after they deposited me in the lobby of the hotel and stayed long enough to make sure there was a vacancy.
“I think you can imagine how much resolve and conviction it took for me not to invite the two of them up for a ménage à trois. Seriously. But for the kin
dness of strangers, and my own last shreds of dignity, who knows what I would be doing right now. And with whom. And how many times.
“Damn it, they really were both quite sexy. I should have gotten one of their cell phone numbers. Maybe I can get the concierge here to send someone over to Helene’s house to get one of their cell phone numbers.
“You want to know something hilarious that happened? One of the bellboys, who was adorable, by the way, escorted me to my bungalow. This place is amazing. They have bungalows, and it’s so cute. So, as we’re exiting the lobby, I walk right into a bee. Or it dive-bombed me, I don’t know. The bee just smacked right into my face. My left cheek just below my eye, specifically. It didn’t sting me. It just whacked into my face and then flew right away. I was absolutely terrified for a moment, and then I started laughing because it was so bizarre, and then, of course, my laughter segued right into me sobbing all the way down this exquisite garden path next to the unbelievably posh pool to my adorable bungalow.
“Have you got me on speakerphone? Please tell me you’ve been accomplishing things while I’ve been raving. I can’t believe how much of your time I’m taking up. Shouldn’t you and Monty be bonking each other right now?”
“Monty can wait,” Geraldine said. “And I do not have you on speakerphone. I am listening to your every word. I did blank out for a few seconds during the part about the bee. I am not doing anything else while I am listening to you. Because I love you, and you are very important to me.”
Lala grabbed a cloth napkin off the room service cart that she had wedged right next to the bed to keep her need for movement to an absolute minimum. She frantically dabbed her eyes.
“Ohhh, Auntie Geraldine,” she gasped. “Please don’t be so kind to me. If I start crying again, I’ll probably explode or something. Or my face will get beet red once too often, and it will stay that way for the rest of my life. I’ll have to wear kabuki makeup all the time just to look even vaguely normal.”
“Listen, you go ahead and cry if you have to,” Geraldine said. “You relax and do whatever feels comforting and soothing tonight. Except have sex with two young and adorable valets, or any number whatsoever of nearby and thus easily accessible bellhops.”
Lala Pettibone's Act Two Page 17