Absolutely True Lies

by Rachel Stuhler

  Then he turned to me and said, “What are your plans tomorrow?”

  “Um . . . I don’t know, why?” In my short association with the Addams Family, I’d learned not to make any plans. Doing so was only an invitation for the Dixsons to destroy them.

  “I might have time for lunch tomorrow,” he said, like it was an enormous windfall that he be allowed to stop to refuel his body. “I have to make sure we get going in the morning, but I’ll be free by one o’clock. And Daisy has to be on set all day.”

  This is one of the many, many things I hate about men. A woman would have said, “I have time tomorrow, would you like to go to lunch?” rather than lobbing the information out there and hoping you’ll pick it up and run with it. We hadn’t known each other all that long and I was already tired of the undecided nature of our relationship. Were we friends? Were we something else?

  “That sounds great,” I replied.

  “Just come by the set. I’m sure Axel and Sharla would love to see you.”

  It was true, I hadn’t seen either of them once since we left L.A. I hoped they were out at some Roman nightclub, getting into all sorts of strange situations and making out with random Italian guys. I was far too boring to do (or enjoy) any of those things, but it was fun hearing about them.

  Everyone began standing and moving toward the elevator. I threw a glance toward Daisy and Faith, dreading the car ride back. I wasn’t ready to be alone with Hurricane Daisy so soon. Vaughn must have seen my look because he leaned in very close to my ear and said, “Do you need a ride?” His breath was tantalizingly warm, and just before he pulled back, his lips accidentally grazed my skin.

  “Holly Bear, come on,” Daisy whined from the elevator. “I don’t want to ride by myself with the witch.” Faith clenched her teeth and looked away.

  The things we do for our jobs. “I really should go with them,” I said quickly. “But I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Vaughn cast a dubious glance toward Daisy, but she just kept gnawing on a fingernail. “Really?” Seriously, how did she always manage to miss the nasty and chagrined looks that were constantly being leveled at her?

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said, holding up his hands.

  When the elevator doors opened, Daisy stepped inside and yanked me in with her. Vaughn took a few steps to follow us, but she swiftly shook her head. “You can take the next one, John.” The door closed. “I like John, but you can do so much better,” Daisy said to me.

  Faith looked away and giggled. “Oh, Daise. That’s mean.”

  I had no idea if Faith was insulting me or Vaughn. For my own sanity, I chose not to ask.

  CHAPTER 13

  I love to travel. There’s nothing so wonderful as waking up in a different city and knowing there’s a whole new culture to explore right below my window. I’ve been lucky enough to go everywhere from Tokyo to South Africa to Venezuela and so many places in between. I like to collect souvenirs from every city I visit, though my mom is starting to think I’m a hoarder. She’s always saying, “Daisy, do you really need another snow globe from Russia?” I do! Though at this point, I don’t think I can fit any more shelves in my room, but I keep trying!

  I managed to get a relatively normal night’s sleep, but it ended all too abruptly at five-thirty, when a dull roar started somewhere below my balcony. I tried to ignore it, but about twenty minutes in, the sound exploded into a sea of cheers, and I realized that the noise was actually hundreds of little girls chanting for Daisy.

  I walked out to the balcony and watched in shock as the crowd pressed in on all sides to get a glimpse of the actress, who had just emerged from the hotel. Though Daisy was flanked by her bodyguards, she walked right up to her fans, shaking hands and signing autographs. She honestly looked gracious and sweet, just like the teenager I’d first met. God, how I wished the public persona was the real Daisy. It would make my job (not to mention, my life) so much easier.

  Once I had shaken off the last bits of sleep, a thought occurred to me. Yesterday, there hadn’t been a single fan outside the hotel, and today, it was a madhouse. Where were these girls when we’d first checked in, and how did they find out we were here? I also noticed that Daisy stayed outside until quarter after six, signing posters and taking pictures with fans for more than half an hour. While this looked cute and respectful from the outside, I knew she was supposed to be on set at 6:00 A.M. And judging from the time it took the line of cars to maneuver past the rampant screaming teens, I guessed she would end up being about an hour late. Daisy was again making it perfectly clear that in her world, her time was more important than anyone else’s.

  If I expected the crowd to dissipate after their idol had left for set, I was wrong. They just sat down in the middle of the street and started singing her songs in adorably accented English. I wondered if they had any idea what those words meant. It was clear I wasn’t going back to sleep, which meant that I should actually try to do my job. I couldn’t believe I’d been putting it off for an entire month. Or that I hadn’t been fired by now. I’d set up my laptop the day before, but hadn’t gone near it since. I paced back and forth in front of my little hotel desk, worried that sitting down and attempting to write would only result in further proof that I was utterly unqualified. It took over an hour before I could summon the courage to pull back the chair and toss away the random pieces of clothing that covered my laptop. It may have been further than the day before, but that was still my limit.

  I left my poor, lonely laptop and went to find breakfast.

  • • •

  At just before noon, I went off in search of Vaughn and the filming location. I knew I had reached Piazza Navona when I saw the throngs of girls packed together like underage sardines on one side of a police barrier. The officials had penned them in, and the kids were surprisingly quiet, watching the activity of the crew with silent reverence.

  The police momentarily pegged me as an overgrown fan and tried to herd me behind the barrier, but I took out the schedule and managed to get Vaughn’s name out before they dumped me off altogether. When they finally realized I worked with the show, I was dragged to a row of a trailers by an officer, probably the only unattractive man I’d yet seen in Italy.

  Inside the trailer, there were three women knee-deep in a mountain of paperwork. The officer pushed me up the stairs, then said to them, “Ospite di Vaughn Royce.”

  One of the women, clad in ratty overalls and a bandanna, looked me up and down before pulling out her walkie-talkie and saying, “Diana for Vaughn. What’s your twenty?” She didn’t bother addressing me and the other two didn’t look up.

  “South side of the piazza, with Colby and Daisy,” came the staticky reply.

  Diana looked up and stared at me humorlessly. “Can you find that?”

  “I think so,” I answered, a little intimidated by her demeanor.

  “Good. Stay out of the shot.” She turned and resumed her work, as though I’d already left the trailer. To avoid any problems, I hauled ass and did just that.

  It wasn’t that difficult to stay out of the shot because it didn’t looking like anything was being shot. The cameras and lights were all set up in the plaza, but there were no actors, and most of the crew seemed to be chatting or hanging around by the snack table. I made my way around to the south side and found Vaughn and another man talking to a very tense Daisy and the young boy from dinner the night before.

  “I need you to focus, Daise,” the man told her, trying to get her to make eye contact with him. He attempted to chase her gaze, but Daisy didn’t look like she was all there. She was biting her nails and anxiously shifting her weight from foot to foot.

  “Yeah,” she answered. Even her voice was spacey. “Yeah . . .”

  “This is a disaster,” whispered a voice behind me.

  I turned to find an exhausted-looking Sharla. I smiled and gave
her a quick hug. She seemed like she needed it. “What’s going on?”

  “I was up to put makeup on her at four-thirty,” Sharla said with a shrug, yawning. “But I’m not a miracle worker. There’s only so much I can hide.”

  I was standing ten feet from Daisy, and she looked amazingly beautiful to me. She also seemed strung out, but that impression had nothing to do with her face. And though I hadn’t been able to see her up close during her parade through the fans that morning, she had been downright chipper then. I wasn’t sure why she all of a sudden looked like an escapee from Trainspotting.

  “What are you hiding?” I asked. “She looks fantastic.”

  “She’s out of her gourd,” Sharla answered. “When I got to her this morning, she hadn’t gone to sleep yet and was trying to cut her own hair with kitchen shears.”

  At this point, I was starting to believe that there were really two Daisys, and Jamie was able to use whichever one suited his purpose at that particular moment. Though I couldn’t imagine why he’d ever choose the crazy nymphomaniac.

  “I saw her this morning with the fans, and she seemed fine.”

  “She can be anyone she wants,” Sharla said, yawning again. “At least for a few minutes.” If that was true, Daisy was a better actress than I gave her credit for. “Listen, I’m going to nap in my trailer. Catch you later?”

  I nodded and waved good-bye, realizing there probably wouldn’t be a lunch. At about the same second, Vaughn spotted me and offered an apologetic smile. Sorry, he mouthed.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I replied quietly. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  I had just turned to walk away when Daisy finally spoke. “I don’t want her here,” she said coldly.

  “Who?” Vaughn asked. It was a logical question; there were hundreds of people in the piazza at that moment.

  “The makeup girl,” she replied, her tone vicious. “I want her gone from here now.”

  Surprised, I looked over my shoulder at exactly the same time Sharla did. She was ten steps closer to the trailers, but well within earshot. The poor girl couldn’t do anything but gape.

  “Come on now, you love Sharla,” the unnamed man cooed, trying to pet Daisy on the arm.

  Daisy heaved the man’s hands off her, her gaze never leaving Sharla. She honestly looked like she wanted the makeup artist dead. It was one of the scariest faces I’ve ever seen. “Fuck her,” she replied. “Keep her away from me.”

  Several people hastened over to Sharla, but she moved away faster. I caught up with her just before she got to the makeup trailer. She tried to hide her face, but I could see that she was crying.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, horrified. When she nodded, I put my hand lightly on her shoulder. “What was that about?”

  This time, Sharla shrugged. “She’s like this sometimes. She’ll get mad at you, too,” she told me. “You get used to it.” Despite her words, Sharla sure didn’t seem used to it.

  She stepped up into the trailer and quietly closed the door. Bewildered, I skirted back around the piazza and was almost to the street when I—literally—ran smack into Ben. Given his enormous stature, I bounced off him and fell backward. In a very Fred Astaire move, he reached one tree trunk of an arm out and caught me before I could hit the ground.

  “I can see why you’re not named Grace,” he said, smiling.

  “I happen to be very resilient,” I replied, still a little too shaken to smile back. “And I drank a ton of milk as a kid, so I have bones of steel.”

  “I have a feeling you need them,” he mused. “Are you here working with Daisy?”

  “I was actually going to have lunch with Vaughn, but there’s a . . . situation. He can’t get away.” I didn’t know how much I could say. The last thing I wanted to do was crank up the rumor mill on set. I would have been surprised if the crew wasn’t at least partially aware of what was going on, but it wasn’t really any of my business.

  “I was about to head over to Maccheroni, if you’d like to join me. I could use the company.”

  I had no idea what Maccheroni was, aside from the pasta, but I was hungry and I didn’t have the foggiest idea where to find a good meal. I’d already noticed that every other restaurant had a sign proclaiming the “tourist menu,” which made me think those eateries were the T.G.I. Friday’s of Italy. I’d come all this way—I wanted to experience the best food the city had to offer. I was also eager to put the weirdness of the last few minutes behind me.

  “Lead on,” I told him.

  • • •

  Compared to La Pergola, Maccheroni was much more my speed. A small, homey restaurant with simple decor and a menu with dishes I understood. I had a rigatoni carbonara that very nearly made me weep with joy and a can of Diet Coke I’d been craving since we landed (the Italians call it Coke Light). And while conversation with Ben didn’t have the same acerbic, sarcastic edge as with Vaughn, it was delightfully direct and easy. It was refreshing.

  “How’s the writing going?” Ben asked me partway through the meal.

  I glanced up in surprise, realizing instantly that not a single other person had yet asked me that question. Not Vaughn, not Faith, not even the damn manager who’d hired me. I briefly considered making up something noncommittal and cutesy, but I went with the truth. Ben seemed like a just-the-facts kind of guy.

  “Honestly, it’s not,” I said, almost relieved to be voicing my worry for the first time. “I just can’t get inside her head, I guess. I’m supposed to be writing this ‘behind the curtain’ look at a pop star’s magical life, but the girl the world knows so well doesn’t really exist.”

  Ben nodded thoughtfully and then shrugged. “That’s part of Hollywood life, though. We’re selling a celluloid dream, not reality. People don’t want reality.”

  I considered his words for a moment before responding, “Doesn’t that ever make you sad? Knowing that it’s all just a front . . . that’s there’s no real magic?”

  Ben’s face softened into a smile that somehow made him seem even sexier. “Oh, magic does exist.” He sounded so confident about this fact that I immediately believed him. “But it can’t be planned or replicated; it comes and goes so fleetingly. So we movie and TV types just try to give people a reasonable facsimile thereof, some close approximation to help them remember their own magical moments.”

  I’m the writer, and I could have never crafted that sentiment in a million years. It was beautiful—but it also didn’t help me do my job. “So how do I create a facsimile of a facsimile?”

  This earned a hearty laugh from Ben as he wound his pasta around his fork. “You stop thinking about it so much.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You’re trying to think this all through, be analytical and precise . . . but that’s not who Daisy is.” Ben shrugged again, still grinning. “I’m pretty sure she doesn’t think about one syllable that comes out of her mouth. So pick the logical starting place and just write. Write like you’re making fun of her voice. Just let it all come out and edit later.”

  I stared at Ben for a couple of seconds, wondering if he was a genius or an idiot. It couldn’t be that simple. Could it?

  • • •

  After lunch, we walked down to the Pantheon, which was packed from one side to the other with tourists. For all the talk of the recession crippling tourism, European holidays sure looked alive and well here in Rome.

  “Pantheon means ‘to the gods,’ ” Ben told me. “Marcus Agrippa designed this as a central temple where people could worship as many gods as they chose. As long as the god’s statue was in the building.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “I have a master’s in architecture,” he replied, like it was just some Eagle Scout badge he’d earned. “I’ve always found Roman construction fascinating. We can’t build an apartment complex that can withstand a nin
e-point-oh earthquake, but they have buildings that have stood for thousands of years.”

  I have a lot of hobbies and weird, geeky interests, but they all suddenly seemed petty. I felt like I should take up French literature or computer programming before I had the right to talk to Ben again.

  “Have you been to the Forum yet?” he asked.

  “I haven’t really been anywhere,” I admitted, embarrassed. “I was a little preoccupied with Daisy and napping yesterday, and last night we all went to La Pergola for the never-ending dinner.”

  “I’m playing hooky tomorrow, if you’d like a personal tour guide.”

  “You’re playing hooky?” This was an unexpected revelation; most movie people act like their jobs cure cancer and no one else in the world could possibly handle the pressure but them. It’s why they have no lives and endless streams of exes. I thought back to Vaughn saying he didn’t have any hobbies because work was the only place he really wanted to be.

  The corners of Ben’s mouth curled up in amusement. “I’ve been working for nine days in a row; I think I deserve a few hours off. Besides, it’s just a TV show. If they need something, they’ll call me. And until they do, there are plenty of places I’d like to see.”

  “Like what?”

  He hesitated, blushing a bit. It’s so rare to see men turn red. “The Vatican,” he said. “Wednesday is the papal audience.”

  I was raised a lapsed Catholic and I’d never heard anyone excited about seeing the Pope. My mother used his name as a curse word or a threat. When she’d caught me kissing a boy in the garage, she’d shouted that once the Pope found out, I’d be excommunicated and banned from heaven. Even then I didn’t think the Pope cared what I did in the garage as long as it didn’t involve genocide. But it was sweet that Ben wanted to go see Il Papa.