Mr. Massa Okata nudged Ian and said close to his ear, “My wife and my daughter are having a nice time with Miss Karlton.”
“Yes. It sure looks that way, Okata-san,” Ian replied.
Kennilworth and the tall, buxom blonde, who was wrapped in a stunning sable stole, approached the table.
Looming above his stepfather, Kennilworth extended his hand.
“Mr. Okata, it is always a pleasure to see you.”
Mr. Okata lifted himself from the booth and shook Kennilworth’s hand while bowing traditionally.
“Good to see you, Ian!” Kennilworth said, a bit too enthusiastically. “I have been looking forward to our next meeting, Mr. Okata,” he said, turning to the Japanese investor. “Sorry I missed you in Cannes,” he said, louder than necessary. Spurred on by the girl pinching his arm, he cleared his throat. “And I’d like you to meet Miss Francine Papillon. She just landed the lead role in a new television series, and we are celebrating her success,” he said all in one breath.
“How do you do!” Francine chirped cheerfully and waved to everyone like a high school cheerleader.
“Congratulations!” the Japanese family sang out in unison.
Puckering her artificial and overinflated lips, Francine Papillon whispered: “Ooh, thangyooh,” then pulled Kennilworth away to their waiting table.
Kennilworth was the son Ian Cohen had legally adopted when he married his mother, Beverly Hillard-Cohen. The boy had been nine years old. Beverly was the love of Ian’s life. They had almost twenty happy years together. She died of cancer five years, two months, and three days ago, to be exact. Ian never stopped missing her. He wished they had had a child together, someone just like his darling “Bevvy,” someone other than Kennil-worthless.
As the dinner plates were cleared, the conversation at Ian Cohen’s table became livelier. Noora nevertheless kept a serious eye on her host. She noticed he barely touched his food. She wished he did not smoke, but he stubbed out his Camel cigarette before it ended. Perhaps he had shortness of breath again. Perhaps he was feeling ill. She watched as Ian loosened his tie. She saw the beads of perspiration on his forehead.
She could see that he wanted to remove his jacket, and appeared uncomfortable about having Kennilworth a few tables away. If she could just convince him to see a doctor before it was too late. But she was just a new employee and could not suggest anything. So she feigned fatigue, put a hand to her mouth, and gestured a yawn.
“I am sorry. I must be jet-lagged,” she said. Knowing yawning was contagious, she hoped the other ladies would do the same.
Mrs. Okata also yawned and giggled. “Good food too, make us tired,” she said.
Ian signaled to the waiter for the check.
Beneath the Beverly Regent Hotel’s porte-cochère, Kelley bowed to the Japanese family and said, “Oyasumi Nasai,” wishing them a restful sleep.
Mother and daughter, as well as Mr. Okata, were visibly impressed. They repeated the words a couple of times, giggling happily and bowing, before finally crossing the cobblestone driveway and heading to the private penthouse elevators beyond the glass doors. There was something wonderful about that family, Noora thought. She liked Mrs. Okata and their daughter. She liked the Japanese people she had met over the years. They were kind, respectful, intelligent …
“I didn’t know you spoke Japanese,” Ian said, visibly impressed.
“Just a few words.”
“Sounded fluent to me. Where’d you learn it?”
“Well, I learned it … at the hotel … where I worked, sir.” Noora did not dare admit she had been to Tokyo with her family five years before, where they had visited Tokyo Disney and she had learned basic Japanese.
Sam pulled the Rolls-Royce up to the curb and got out to let Noora and Ian in. She wondered if he was aware of Mr. Cohen’s heart condition. The butler must have been his confidant. So what did Mr. Cohen need her for? She still had no clear idea what he expected from her, what kind of work he wanted her to do. Why did he fly her all the way from France when he could easily hire someone from Los Angeles to look after his personal needs?
The moment Sam stopped the car in front of the Bel Air mansion, Ian opened his own door and climbed out. He mumbled a quick “good night” and hurried inside just as Cessi opened the front door.
At the Beverly Regent, Kennilworth left the restaurant and got into his car, forgetting to open the door for his date. His mind was busy with other matters. First, he wanted to dump Francine Papillon. The only problem was, she now lived with him. Kennilworth had done everything, short of (God forbid) marrying the high-maintenance starlet, just so he could get into her pants.
He had conquered. Now he was bored.
He waited for the valet to hurry up and close the passenger door after helping Francine into the car. He never should have invited her to move in with him, he thought, zooming out of the restaurant driveway. That bitch was taking over his closets, his kitchen, his house, and now his life! Luckily, she had an early call the next morning and lines to memorize. Good excuse for him to slip out of his house tonight.
He couldn’t stop wondering how the old man could have had dinner with one of the world’s biggest investors, without inviting him. His own stepfather had deliberately avoided him during the entire Cannes Film Festival. Something was definitely going on. He switched gears furiously, while his Maserati Ghibli screamed up the hill, toward the street he dreaded.
He never took Cielo Drive up to his house. He stayed away from that street at all costs. From Benedict Canyon, he always took Angelo Drive up the winding road to his house, which was on the private street called Angelo View, just below the cul-de-sac.
But tonight, he had been so engrossed in his thoughts that he had somehow missed Angelo Drive. He never missed his own street before. He should have made a U-turn and gone back to Angelo. Too late; he would have to take the next street up. He was too anxious to take Ms. Papillon back to the house and get her off his back so he could turn around and head to his father’s house in Bel Air, which was only fifteen minutes away. He had to give the old man a piece of his mind and find out why he had been ostracized. Something fishy was going on. He was determined to find out.
As he continued up the hill on Cielo Drive, his luxury sports car stalled and died. Just like that, and he was not even low on gas. Kennilworth felt the sweat pour out of every pore in his body. Right in the middle of Cielo, the just-renovated $100,000-plus Maserati Ghibli decided to stall. Why?
It was the street. Cielo was cursed. It was damned with bad luck. Bad omen. Bad shit.
“Shit!” he shouted.
On the dark, unpaved road, left of Cielo, was the house where Sharon Tate had been brutally murdered by the Charles Manson Family back in 1969. Kenni had been eight years old and living with his mother in Sherman Oaks, down in the San Fernando Valley. He never forgot how terrified he had been, glued to the television reports of the grisly murders. More than twenty-five years later, Kennilworth thought he was going to get sick when he found out, just two months after purchasing his beautiful glass house on Angelo View Drive, designed by a renowned architect, that right below the hill of his new home was the residence Charles Manson’s followers had raided, where the horrible killings had occurred.
“Take it easy, honey,” Francine purred.
How easy would she take it if she knew anything? The girl was not even born when the Helter Skelter horrific tragedy happened, just up to the left of that street he was on. He switched the ignition for the third time.
“You’re going to flood it, babe.”
Thank God he hadn’t married her. “Why don’t you get out and push, honey?” Kennilworth sneered just as the engine screeched back into action.
“Excuuse me?”
“Nothing!” he yelled, relieved that his Maserati was back under his command. He swore to himself that no matter what, he would never take Cielo again.
He made a sharp left onto Davies Street and down to Angelo View, wher
e a splendid show of the city’s multicolored lights appeared before them. It was a crystal-clear night. From the horizon, they could see airplanes descending, one behind the other, like stars in succession, into the Los Angeles airport.
“Wow. What a view,” she said. “Takes your breath away, huh, honey? I love it here. Too bad the house is so screwy. Can’t wait to remodel. Right, baby?”
He winced as a nerve began to throb on his right temple. He floored it down the one-lane driveway and finally to his wide, circular courtyard.
The three-car garage was separate from the main house. The light bulb outside had burned out. “Shit,” Kenni cursed under his breath. He hated to walk through the darkened walkway to the house. Carefully sliding his car into the garage—because she had her ridiculous BMW parked too close to his space—he had to open the door for the bimbo. Francine never could figure out how to open his sports car door. It was just as well. Her nails were too long. She would surely scratch the handle.
Down the walkway to the house, she clung to his arm, as she clippety-clopped her stiletto way. He had forgotten to turn on the pool light when they left the house earlier, and it was so dark, he could barely insert the key to the door. The alarm was not always working—mice had long ago chewed on some of the wires through the crawlspace.
It was unfortunate that John Lautner, the renowned architect who had originally designed the house thirty years ago, had recently died. He would have to start looking for an architect who could finish the plans for the remodeling, Kennilworth thought. He had been so busy at the studio, plus traveling and attending the Cannes Film Festival, that he had neglected his dream house.
Tonight, he would find out what was going on with Ian Cohen, why his stepfather had been so secretive. Angrily, he pushed the door open. The ear-piercing alarm sounded. Cursing under his breath again, he ran into the house and turned on the switches that partially lit up the courtyard and the oval-shaped pool. He rushed back outside and pressed the code buttons. The alarm finally stopped. All was quiet again. He knew the alarm was a joke. It wasn’t even connected to the police. The service had been canceled months before, because of his plans to remodel.
“Good to be home,” Francine sighed, kicking off her shoes, swinging her way to their bedroom. “We should have a dog, honey. It’s more fun to be greeted by a little pooch than by something that could damage my eardrums,” she said, removing her dress, letting it fall at the foot of the bed. She tossed her bra across the room and it landed on the carpet near the row of closet doors. She sighed delightedly as she sank into a pile of plush leopard pillows propped against the headboard of his king-size bed. She picked up a script from the floor by her bedside and began to leaf through it.
Kennilworth loathed a messy house. Francine always dropped everything on the floor. He grudgingly picked up her dress and hung it in the closet.
“Honey, when did you say we were going to start remodeling? I like to share with you. But a closet, well, a girl needs her space.” She yawned again.
“Darn it. I forgot to pick up that new script from my father. I won’t be long,” he said, carefully closing the sliding doors of his closet, where one of the hinges had lost a screw.
“You can’t leave me. Not at this hour …”
“I won’t be long.”
“It’s creepy up here by myself.” She puckered her lips, slowly running her hand down to her crotch.
“A girl like you shouldn’t be afraid of anything.”
She threw a pillow at him. He caught it. “You are perfectly safe here. You have the alarm and the phones. You can call me on my cell. Besides,” he said as he crossed the room, keeping his distance from the bed and replacing the pillow, “we wouldn’t want your director to blame me for not knowing your lines.”
She leaped up, grabbed him, and wrestled him onto the bed. “My memory clears incredibly well after a good fuck.”
Before he could break free, she was kissing him hard while her hands yanked his shirt out of his pants.
“You win! I surrender!” he said, pretending to be happily seduced. He would give her twenty minutes of his time. Tomorrow, she would definitely get her walking papers, he thought, rolling over in bed, imprisoned by her arms and legs.
*
In the quiet walls of Ian Cohen’s mansion, Noora sat numbly at the edge of the bed and stared at the doorknob. What if Ian decided to get fresh? She wasn’t sure if the lock worked. Sam the butler was off that night. Cessi, the Guatemalan maid, had a nice little room decorated in pink-and-white lace that perpetually smelled like a mixture of garlic and gardenia. The maid’s room was downstairs, a few feet away from the kitchen. At least there was another woman in the house.
On their way home, Mr. Cohen had asked Noora again if she finished reading the script he had given her. She had told him yes, but she was embarrassed to admit she had a difficult time reading such a terribly bloody and violent script. She had counted nine“F” words just in the first two pages. She had forced herself to read it, the way she used to read difficult books when she attended school in London. But she did not understand all the abbreviated words, apparently movie lingo, and she did not dare ask Ian.
She wanted to write to Annette. She knew Annette was waiting to hear from her, and she wanted so much to tell her all about her new life and Ian Cohen’s Bel Air mansion—and that so far, Annette had been right: Mr. Cohen was still a gentleman.
She undressed in her lovely, small bathroom and carefully hung up her new suit, then slipped into Annette’s blue dress. She caught a reflection of herself in the bathroom mirror. Is that person really me? The hairdresser had layered her short hair perhaps a bit too much. And the streaks were really blonde. She no longer looked like Noora. But that was exactly what she had wanted. She was now Kelley Karlton. Kelley Karlton, she repeated to herself. She felt a draft on the back of her neck. California nights were colder than she had imagined. She practically dove between the sheets and turned up the dial on the electric blanket that Cessi had tucked between the comforter and top sheet. Tomorrow she would write to Annette and tell her about her dinner with the Japanese family. And shopping at the Beverly Center.
Loud voices came from downstairs. A man was shouting. Ian’s voice loudly retorted. Then she heard shattering glass, like an explosion. A door slammed hard, vibrating the walls of her room. An earthquake? She jumped out of bed. More doors slammed, jarring every nerve cell in her body. Then, an eerie silence prevailed.
After a few moments, she heard sounds of a loud motor rumbling close to the house and tearing up the road; a sports car. When all was quiet again, she ventured to the door and put an ear into it. Should she go out on the corridor and see what just happened? She heard nothing more. Shivering, she returned to her toasty warm bed. Moments later, someone was knocking softly. She hoped it was her imagination, but the gentle knock persisted.
“Kelley?” Ian was calling from the other side of her door.
Noora slipped on Annette’s sweater and grabbed her purse, making sure she had her money and passport. If he tried anything, she would be ready to run.
“Kelley, please …” she heard Ian Cohen’s pleading voice. His distress sounded genuine. She opened the door.
Ian Cohen was breathing hard. His face was pale and covered with beads of sweat.
Under the fluorescent lights of the hospital’s stark waiting room, Noora sat on a cold plastic chair. The wall clock displayed two o’clock. What was taking so long?
Chilled from the air conditioning, Noora wanted to go outside, into warmer air. But if Mr. Cohen were discharged or needed her, she had to make sure he didn’t think she left him. She decided to go through the double doors, and she ventured down the hallway where he had originally gone in.
While searching for Mr. Cohen, she wondered if perhaps she should have told Sam about his employer’s health. Shouldn’t the butler be the one to take Mr. Cohen to the hospital? Maybe Sam would have called an ambulance. Instead, Mr. Cohen drove to Cedars Si
nai Hospital himself. He was so secretive about the state of his health, he probably thought an ambulance would have brought too much attention.
But that was more dangerous. She feared he might have a stroke while driving, but he drove with ease, even though he was breathing hard. On their way to the hospital, the only thing he revealed was that he had just had an argument with his stepson, and heart palpitations started again.
As Noora ventured down the hall in the emergency ward, she overheard a conversation between two nurses.
“You know who he is?”
“Is he that big-shot producer?” one of the nurses behind the counter asked loudly while glancing down at a ledger.
“Ian Cohen,” the other nurse said.
“Ian Cohen? No way.”
“Yeah. Can you believe it? Himself. He wouldn’t give my boyfriend a chance to read for him. He’s a bastard. I hear he screams at everyone who works for him.”
“What’s he in here for?” She opened a file folder. “Overdose?”
“Oversex, I’m sure,” another nurse said.
Noora took a step back to avoid being seen. She heard giggling.
“Heart condition … Too much you-know-what, I’m sure …”
More giggling.
Noora walked further down the hall. Through a glass partition, she spotted Mr. Cohen lying on a bed, wearing a hospital gown.
“Mr. Cohen?”
“Thank God it’s you. I’ve been here with my head up my ass, waiting for my damn doctor to show up. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on. Help me up. See if you can get me a nurse who can speak English. I need to take a whiz.”
“Mr. Cohen, sir, I’m sure this is a great hospital, but I don’t think …” Noora blurted before she could stop herself. She bit her lip.
“What’re you saying?”
“I’m sorry. I’ll … find you someone who …”
“No, wait a minute. What did you mean exactly?”
“Well, I may be wrong, but … the nurses recognized you, and … well …”
“Get me my clothes.” He pointed to the chair.
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