by DC Thome
Clay stared at the photo. He wanted to tell his father about what was happening in his life. About Lara. How she was different from every woman who had passed through The Rotation.
She’s not interested in having her fifteen minutes of fame or jump-starting a career or whatever. This one’s for real. She’s interested in me.
“You’d like her, Dad.”
He smiled again, this time at the thought of a Creighton man walking down the aisle. Chase had been intimate with an untold number of women until he met Clay’s mom and transformed, overnight, into the consummate family guy. They never got married—too bourgeois, too conventional, too uncool, man, for the 1960s—but Chase remained faithful to her until, still pretty in spite of being ravaged by disease, she died on the morning Clay took his first step.
“And, hey,” Clay said to the photo, “tell Mom I’ve found someone who reminds me of what I think she was like.”
He slipped the picture back into the glove box just as one of the big garage doors slid open.
“Good morning, Mr. C,” Morgan said. “Am I interrupting something?”
“It’s never an interruption if it’s you,” Clay answered. “Just having a moment to myself.”
The older man took out a cloth and shined the Buick’s stately hood ornament.
“Yeah,” Morgan said. “I come here, too, when I want to spend a little time with your father.”
He stepped back and admired the hood ornament over the top of his glasses. The chrome glinted in a shaft of sunlight.
“She sure is pretty,” he said.
Clay nodded.
Morgan turned to leave.
“Morgan?”
“Yes, sir?”
“You were talking about the hood ornament, right?”
“I could’ve been.” He winked and smiled. “Oh, and, I assume you know Ms. V is looking for you. What should I tell her?”
“Tell her to keep her panties on.”
“No, sir, I don’t think I will. I’m only seventy-two and still have a few good years ahead of me.”
The two men smiled at each other.
“I’ll be in her office in a few minutes.”
“Yes, sir.” He sauntered away.
Clay looked at the photo again, then put it back into the glove box.
* * *
Sushma had not been gone from Lara’s room for more than two minutes when there was a knock on the door.
Finally, someone has some manners.
Lara opened the door to see Tiffany in a long-sleeved, red velvet minidress. One sleeve had been replaced with black lace, and chrome-plated cotter pins and rubber loops stood in for buttons.
“Interesting outfit,” Lara said.
Tiffany bounced into the room. “The dress came from a thrift store in Venice. The sleeve I found on some lacy underwear in my grandma’s old trunk. I guess she was kind of a naughty girl.”
“So I can see.”
“These,” Tiffany said as she tugged on a cotter pin, “I picked up at Pep Boys.”
“It’s very nice.”
“Thank you,” Tiffany said in her birdlike sing-song. “Now, if you eat breakfast and work out in the next hour and fifteen minutes, you’ll have plenty of time for your sit-down with Magda.”
Tiffany punctuated her pronouncement with a tap on her phone.
“Magda.”
“Your stylist?”
“I have my own stylist?”
“Technically, she’s the stylist for all three of you. The girls in The Rotation, I mean. She needs to see you early today so she can do an evaluation.”
Lara looked at her, waiting for more.
“You know: Face shape. Skin tone. Follicle analysis.”
“Something to look forward to.”
“Oh, no. Magda’s totally boss. You’ll like her. After she’s done with the eval, she’ll do your face and hair, and then it’s time to make the intro video.”
Ah, yes, the intro video. Lara had watched the intro videos of all the past new Rotation members.
“No worries,” Tiffany continued. “I already worked here when Corynne did hers. They prep you and make it pretty clear what you should say—but not too clear, because it’s supposed to sound, you know, real. And, of course, Mr. C will be there the whole time.”
“Oh?” Though prepared, Lara felt a case of the butterflies coming on. Hearing Clay would be there made something else flutter inside her.
“Great,” she said. “If Mr. C is there, what could go wrong?”
14
The session with Magda turned out to be, as Tiffany predicted, totally boss. Magda stood barely five feet tall and had a round figure. Like a lot of women on the far side of seventy, she had big, coiffed hair. But unlike lots of women her age, she wore very little makeup—something Lara noticed only when Magda commented, in a grandmotherly Eastern European accent, “I am happy to see you are not gunk up your face.”
“I’ve never been great at makeup. I really like what you’ve done.”
“Ach, what I have done? Is right there already. All I do is bring out what is natural. You are having such nice shick bonns.” She outlined Lara’s cheek with her finger. “Now I ask: Why you are coloring over your pretty blond hairs?”
Lara felt a buzz of fear. Dyed hair—so easy for a professional to spot. “I just wanted to…try something different,” she lied.
“Ho, well. Will grow out again, so is no harm.” Magda squinted and pointed to her temple. “But always remember: What is natural, that is the most beautiful.”
Despite Magda’s demonstrated abilities, Lara balked at having her hair up for the intro video. Up was how Lara wore her hair when she cleaned her oven or lumped around the apartment alone. Hair worn up was glamorous—for other women. Women who have prettier foreheads.
“I don’t know,” Lara protested. “It doesn’t seem to be me.”
“If not you, then who does it seem?”
“Let’s just say I’d rather not.”
“Why you would rather not?”
“I have kind of a big forehead.”
“Ach. How can forehead be big? Is exactly right size, or you would be having different forehead.”
Magda slung Lara’s hair low, then swept it back up past her ears and swiveled the chair around so Lara could see.
Lara gently patted her new ’do, then retraced Magda’s outline of her attractively highlighted shick bonns.
“Hair is ulleginn. Claasic. Everybody can see more of your pretty face.”
“My father used to say that.”
“A father always know true how beautiful his daughter.”
Lara looked at Magda in the mirror. The elder woman nodded.
“And not just shick bonns and boops,” Magda scolded, grabbing her ample breasts to accentuate her meaning. “A good father see into his daughter heart and soul. That is where the beauty.”
Lara cringed.
“You make ice like you don belief? All good man see this tings. Not just father. Boyfrenn. Lover. Hussbin.”
Magda’s eyebrows arched high when she said that last one. Lara didn’t know what to say next. Fortunately, Tiffany bubbled into the room. “They said I should come in and find out when Miss D will be ready.”
“What do you ting?” Magda said, spinning Lara around.
“Wonderful,” Tiffany said. “I like how—” She finished the thought by outlining her own cheeks. “I’ll tell them any minute.”
Lara got up to go.
“Now, you and your wonderful shick bonns and forehead…go and knock them for dead, yes?”
“Yes, I will. I will knock them for dead.”
She hugged Magda, then headed into the studio, ready for her close-up.
* * *
Unfortunately, they weren’t ready for Lara. The studio contained more equipment than any movie set she could remember from when she worked with Kyle. The décor, on the other hand, consisted of a king-sized bed buried under a mound of throw pillows in f
ront of a curtain. A huge crystal vase on a nightstand overflowed with freshly cut honeysuckle, narcissus and foxglove.
A bedraggled assistant acting as Lara’s placeholder sat uncomfortably on the bed. Spike, who today had pink hair—What happened to the chrome?—and was dressed like an undertaker from a spaghetti western, ordered another bedraggled assistant to move a spotlight imperceptibly back and forth. Each time he massaged his chin as he studied the results, and each time he shook his head before barking, “Left!” or “Right!” or “Toward China! No—San Dimas!”
“Hey, elegant hair.” Corynne swiped a hand up and over her own forehead.
“Thanks. It was Magda’s idea.”
“Yeah, she’s good at that whole ‘finding the inner you’ thing.”
“Where’s Taequanda?”
“She’s not involved in this. The No. 2 girl always introduces the newbie.”
Lara nodded politely. Though she had come to feel at ease with Taequanda, she hadn’t gotten to know Corynne at all. Corynne seemed to be more guarded than Taequanda. Then again, Lara had been guarded around Corynne.
“So, they got you all prepped?” Corynne asked.
“Prepped? Not really. Actually, not at all.”
“Oh, wow. They had me spend a couple of hours with Spike and the corporate image people before we shot mine.”
Right. And I’m going in cold. Lara’s brow crinkled. And my stupid forehead looks like a hairless shar-pei.
“No worries, though.” Corynne patted Lara’s arm. “They probably think you’re already good at this kind of thing because of your experience in the movie business.”
“But I didn’t work in front of the camera.”
“Really? Huh. I guess I had a completely different impression.”
In the credits, Lara had been Kyle’s director of public relations. She did appear in several movies as an extra and doubled for blond actresses in back shots. The one time she got to face the camera, she stood so deep in shadows that no one could see her.
“Moi, moi, moi, but aren’t we looking like a movie star?” Spike studied Lara’s face, then leaned way back so he could scan her body, too. He tugged at the waist of Lara’s black chemise, nodded approvingly, then lightly pinched her chin and moved her head up and down and from side to side.
“You’ve done something with…” He pointed to his own cheeks, then: “No, wait. More like…” He swiped his hand across his forehead.
“It was Magda’s idea. You like it, right?”
He continued looking at Lara for an uncomfortably long time. “Yes, me do,” he effused. “Me likey. A-lots.”
He spun around again, made a wide, dramatic circle with one arm and announced, “Let’s go, pee-pull!” and finished with three crisp claps.
* * *
“We have to take our places.” Corynne took Lara’s hand and led her to the bed. They climbed onto it and sat with their legs tucked under them. Spike played with the miscreant spotlight—the one trained on Lara—a little more, his constant clucks and frowns indicating he was having no better luck than before. The brightness stung Lara’s eyes so that she did not see Sushma come up to the bed.
“I am pleased to see that everyone is so chipper today.”
Lara squinted. “I’m glad to see you, too. Nobody’s said anything about what I should talk about, and Corynne said—”
“The purpose of the video is to introduce you to the world. Your biography, so to speak.”
“But wasn’t someone supposed to prep me?”
“Are you not familiar with your own life story?”
The old cat-and-mouse game again.
“So, I should just talk about…me?”
“You should be able to handle that without needing to rehearse.”
“Of course. I just want to make sure we’re on the same page.”
Sushma made a motion with her fingers and an assistant handed her a manila folder filled with papers.
“Perhaps this would help.”
Lara slid out the first sheet and tried to make sense of what she was reading. The second page had more of the same. So did the third. And all the ones that followed.
“Who told you—” Lara could hear herself getting louder, so she paused to collect her wits before continuing more quietly. “Who told you all this?”
“You do not know?”
“Kyle.”
“Does reading about these events disturb you?”
“What events? None of what it says here ever happened.”
“In that case, you might not want to talk about them in your introduction video.” Sushma snatched the file and marched away, leaving Lara with a dry mouth and sweaty palms.
“Okaaay, pee-pull, let’s get rolling!” Spike clapped again. An assistant opened a door and Clay strode in. Lara took solace in his confidence—and in the thought of what was underneath his signature white cotton shirt.
As he got onto the bed, Clay said, “Yo, Spiker, ease up on the death ray.”
He brought his sparkling golden-rimmed irises to within a few inches of Lara’s. “Hey, babe. Like your hair. I can see more of your face.”
Things are better already. She wiped her hands on the bedspread.
Clay squeezed Lara’s shoulder as he nestled into the mountain of pillows. “Come back over this way a little,” he said, patting the space between them. “You’ll go blind over there.” Lara started to move back—but Corynne moved faster, crawling in between Lara and Clay and kissing him on the cheek.
“Hey, Corr. Feeling kinda gung ho?” Clay’s voice contained no hint of sarcasm or surprise. Lara, though, felt a flash of heat as Corynne arched her back and stuck her little twenty-three-year-old butt in the air.
Who does she think she is?
For some reason, at that moment, Lara noticed that Clay wore slippers. Expensive ones, for sure—they were Ugg Romeos—but still incongruous, considering the rest of his wardrobe.
Focus on what matters, damn it.
No matter how hard she tried, though, Corynne mattered most. The peck on the cheek. The skanky crawl. The loose-fitting shirt. The way she avoided making eye contact.
“Okay-yee, we start with sweetie Corynne giving her spiel, then we turn it over to Mr. C.” Spike raised his arms, making him look like a vulture in cowboy drag. He glanced around the silent room, smacked his hands to his sides and shouted, “Act-chee-own!”
“Hi, I’m Corynne McFee. I’ve been a member of The Rotation here at Fast Lane since February.” Corynne’s voice sounded lower and smokier, like a woman in an ad for a “local singles” phone line on late-night TV. “One of the great things about being involved with Clay and with living the Fast Lane lifestyle is that there are so many opportunities to get to know really amazing new people all the time.”
She’s already said Fast Lane twice! Do they be expect me to do that?
“You’ve probably already heard about the newest addition to the Fast Lane crew.”
Three times!
“Her name is Lara Dixon, and she’s really great. She’s pretty and exciting and fun, and she’s had a glamorous—and mysterious—career in the movie business. I’m sure she’ll want to tell you all about that.”
Wait a minute…
“You’re going to just love her. I, myself, only got to meet her just a couple of days ago, and already I feel we’ve known each other forever, like sisters.”
What?
The butterflies in Lara’s stomach morphed into crows. Her mind—and her heartbeat—raced as Spike signaled for Clay to talk.
“Thanks, Corynne,” he started. “You know, all the girls in The Rotation are special to me.”
Lara could tell he spoke with his usual bravado, but she couldn’t make out most of the words over the cawing in her ears. She heard something like, “corra girlatation spesha,” followed by a bunch of garble. The last syllables sounded like “wafferfall.”
Wafferfall? He’s not talking about us making love in the waterfall? Maybe if
I look at him I’ll be able to understand.
She tried to turn her head, but the room moved instead. In slow motion. I’m going so fast; why is everything else going so slow? She saw Sushma, hands on hips, head shaking in obvious disapproval. Then she saw Corynne, eyes at half-mast, licking her lips and making circles on Clay’s leg with her fingers.
She suddenly became aware of the scent of the foxglove. Movement off to one side caught her eye. Her head rotated at two miles per hour until she spotted Spike, crouching and pointing at her with both hands in the stance used by TV cops carrying gigantic handguns. His mouth moved as though his jaw had turned to liquid.
And there was no sound. The flowers next to the bed swayed as though they were underwater. Like a fish in a bowl.
Lara forced herself to turn toward Clay. He looked surprised. Concerned? His eyes still had that sparkle. It grew and spread until the whole world seemed to shimmer, as if Lara were looking through amber into a bright light.
And then, everything went black.
* * *
Lara’s eyes flickered open. It took her a while to realize she lay on the bed in the studio with Clay cradling her head in his lap. The buzzing in her ears blended into the hubbub around her. The sun seemed to be beaming directly into her eyes, but Lara felt cold and sick to her stomach. The fishbowl effect was as strong as before. Eyes peered at her from every angle.
The world stopped spinning when she saw Clay’s smile.
“Welcome back,” he said.
“Wafferfall?” Lara’s voice sounded shaky and thin. She tried to sit up, but she swooned with a moan. Clay caught her.
“Hey, whoa! There’s no hurry,” he said. “Just take it easy.”