“This would be Devlin the brute.”
The brute? My father? My father hesitates before swatting a fly.
“Pete, I think.” Marge turns to me with a don’t-say-too-much-look. “That’s his name. Right, Belinda?”
“Yes, but—”
“And Pete Devlin beat her as a child for years.”
Hold on! Now this has gone too far. Marge is getting confused with Belinda’s fictitious father from the New York Intelligentsia article.
“Or,” Mr. Bigshot booms, “how about sexual abuse? That’s always good.”
“Unless it’s been overdone.” Marge frowns. “Do you think child sexual abuse has been overdone?”
“Never. It can never be overdone. There’s always room for more abuse on cable.”
“Alrighty then. Abuse it is. Mr. Devlin abused his daughter for years.”
“Wait!” I jump to my feet, sending the chair tumbling over with a crash.
“Belinda,” Marge chastises me sternly, “remember what I said about saving your comments for later. We can work out the details afterward, right, Bill?”
“Just brainstorming, brainstorming,” says Mr. Bigshot.
Marge winks to let me know she’s on top of it, that we’re in cahoots. Hesitantly, I pick up the chair and sit down again. Carefully.
“Now, about her sister, Eileen,” Marge says.
“The crack addict/prostitute?”
That’s it. “Stop!” I shout. “Stop it. I cannot hear you talking about my family this way. My father would never do such a thing to me and my sister, sure she has her faults, but a crack addict/prostitute she is not.”
“Belinda,” Marge hisses.
“And it’s Nola. Nola Devlin. There is no such person as Belinda Apple. Never is, never was. That’s the whole point of the story.”
“What’s this?” Mr. Bigshot looks at Marge, confused.
“Don’t look at her. She doesn’t know,” I say. The anger is getting the better of me, but I can’t help it. I wish Charlotte were here. At least she knows me. Er, kind of.
Suddenly, I hear Nancy’s voice in my head, urging me to stand up for myself, how if she’d learned that lesson long ago, she wouldn’t have become fat and miserable.
“I’ll tell you what’s what,” I say.
For five minutes I tell Mr. Bigshot the truth. I made up my identity because I was fat and they wouldn’t give me the column. I really live in New Jersey. My family is very stable. My mother goes to church every Sunday and every Wednesday night for forum. She bakes cookies for taxpayers. We all believe in God. I love my sister even though she picked out Morticia Addams bridesmaids dresses and has a boyfriend who requires kibble. Potato salad is our family signature dish.
With each new fact, Mr. Bigshot’s face falls a little more until by the end he is studying his watch.
“Listen, I’ve got a conference call with Vancouver in a minute. I’m sorry that we’ll have to cut this meeting short. Thanks so much for coming in,” he says, shaking my hand. “And I’m sure either I or Marge will be getting back to you, Belinda.”
“Nola,” I say weakly.
He shoots me his finger. “Right.”
“It’s over,” I ask, “isn’t it? I’ve screwed everything up.”
“No, no,” he coos. “It’s all good.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
There is much to be said for the calming effects of Southern California sunshine, a light Southern California breeze, and a rooftop pool. Several hours go by as I lie facedown on the chaise longue underneath a pink-and-white umbrella, napping and thinking, a hotel towel draped over my ass. There is just no way you can wear a swimsuit with a skirt in L.A. if you are under the age of, like, ninety.
What gets me about my meeting at Sweet Dream was how it all ended in a snap. Once I stood up for myself and told the real story, Mr. Bigshot lost all interest. There wasn’t even a follow-up question. And then, to make matters worse, in the car Marge Tuttweiller said nothing except, “You might have held off. I would have handled everything. I know you’re naive, but I would have expected that even you could have understood how negotiations work.”
Perhaps Nancy was wrong. Maybe standing up for yourself should only be done in limited circumstances, like when they’re about to kick you off an overcrowded plane even though you bought your ticket six months before. Or when a pushy mother butts ahead of you in the deli line.
“I’ll call you,” Marge said. “Though I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
This means that every two minutes I open one eye and check the porter, who is standing by the towels, staring into space. I haven’t eaten a thing all day. A first since I had the Great Stomach Flu of 1999, and what’s even weirder is that I’m not even hungry.
“Having a nice sunbath?”
I turn my head away from the porter. In front of me are two long, long legs rising to a teeny white bikini bottom and a bellybutton ring in a slim waist rising to a bust that’s so huge it blocks off the sun like a solar eclipse.
Gloria of the bit-off earring.
“I’m recovering from my day,” I tell her.
“Yeah. Me too.” She sits across from me on the other chaise. I want to advise her to put on a shirt, as her plastic breasts are conspiring to break out of their bikini-top prison. “I didn’t get the part.”
“I’m sorry. Are you sure?”
“Yup. After all these years I think I know a pass. They didn’t have to say it but I’m”—she glances at me wearily—“too fat.”
“You?” I wish Nancy and Deb had been here to hear that gem. “You’re tiny.”
“Not tiny enough. Not L.A. tiny. This morning I woke up and looked at myself in the mirror, saw my pouch of a tummy, and said, ‘Gloria. You are going to have to do something. You are out of control.’”
I wrap more of the towel around me and sit up fully, trying not to surreptitiously inspect whether she does or does not have a pouch of a tummy. “You can’t be serious. How much do you weigh?”
“Around one-nineteen. Maybe even one-twenty. That’s like one-thirty, one-thirty-five with the camera, you know.”
Cinderella numbers. Even the 130. Of course if she drained the saline out of her breasts that’d be three pounds right there, but what woman wants that kind of advice after spending all that money on implants?
Gloria sighs and tells me her tale of woe. “It’s a rough business. Do you know that the producer on the last show I was in sent a certified letter—a certified letter!—to my agent warning me that I was gaining weight and if I didn’t drop ten pounds, I’d be cut? And here I thought I was really knocking off my character. You should have read my fan mail. Not one letter said, ‘Hey, Gloria, you’re getting chubby.’”
I think about what I would do if I were in her shoes. “I couldn’t live in a world like that. I mean, weight can be an issue where I work too, but not to that degree.”
“I’d give anything to be like . . . you.”
“You mean fat?”
Gloria lies back and adjusts her sunglasses. “I mean more like being myself instead of having to fit this certain mold of maximum and minimum measurements. You don’t have to worry about every bump of cellulite or if the fried calamari you ate the week before is going to get you canned.”
Fried calamari, I think, 11 points. “I never thought of it that way.”
“You should. You’re lucky. I mean it.”
“Gloria”—I lean toward her, bent as I am on a new mission to set her straight—“you’re the one who’s lucky. I know you work hard to keep your weight down, and that’s admirable. On the flip side, I don’t have men biting off my earring in the hallway of the O.”
She raises her glasses and squints. “You could if you wanted to, Nola.”
“No, I couldn’t. Look at me. I’m one hundred and”—I check myself—“I’m several more pounds than you are. What man wants me?”
“Think about what man wants me. A guy who’s just interested in big tits and
a firm butt and long legs and nothing more. The guy who bit off my earring, by the way, got my name wrong twice. Kept calling me Gigi.”
She doesn’t understand. No woman who’s been thin all her life can understand. If you tell them you need to lose weight, they say in a perky little voice, “Well, lose it then!”
Gloria touches my dimpled knee. “This is going to sound very L.A., Nola, but sometimes the fat that does us the most harm is the fat between our ears.”
“Miss Apple?” It’s the porter in his white jacket. No phone. “The front desk called. There’s someone in the lobby to see you. They say they have a four p.m. appointment.”
Marge? I didn’t have an appointment with Marge, did I? “Did they give a name?”
“It was a Mr. Stanton. A Mr. David Stanton of Stanton Media.”
That’s when I remembered the fax.
Quickly saying good-bye to Gloria, I rush to my hotel room to shower off the sunblock and change out of my old-lady swimsuit, my brain buzzing. The fax. The fax. There was something on the fax that ’Enri of the errant H handed me when I checked in about a meeting being arranged with Stanton Media.
Except . . .
David Stanton couldn’t be meeting me. He’s in London. He wanted me to meet him at the Ritz there today. What is he, an eighty-eight-year-old Superman? Able to leap continents in a single bound? There must be more to that Ensure stuff than I knew.
I get out of the shower and, on a whim, approach the hotel scale. They don’t have scales in hotels on the East Coast. In California, though, they’re everywhere—in the hotel gym, by the pool . . . It must be a state law, like not smoking.
I cannot believe my eyes. Is this for real? Back at home the scale wouldn’t budge from that one number. It gives me hope that I’ll reach my goal by Christmas. I love the Cinderella Pact.
Now, what have I been doing right? I haven’t had a bowl of Special K since I’ve set foot in this state. Then again, I really haven’t had much to eat of anything. I fell asleep last night after getting off the plane, made a cup of tea in my hotel room . . .
Brrring. Shoot. I almost forgot. David Stanton. I snatch up the phone without waiting to hear who it is. “I’ll be right there.”
“Where?” It’s the unmistakable nasal twang of Marge Tuttweiller, agent to the stars.
My heart stops. “Marge?”
“You asked me to call you, right?”
She doesn’t have to say any more. If it were good news she’d jump right in with how much they loved the proposal, how much money they were paying me. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
“That depends.” She pauses dramatically. “Sweet Dream does want to pass, for now . . .”
“I knew it.” My shoulders slump as I throw myself on the bed.
“I said for now. They may reexamine the option later.”
“What does that mean?” Is this more California agent double-talk or sincere encouragement?
“They love your story, Nola. I have to admit, I was wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“When you gave that speech about your real life in New Jersey and being too fat. Bill Benjamin ate it up.”
“I thought he hated it. He suddenly had a conference call.”
“He really did have a conference call. No, he was impressed. He’s so used to people telling him what he wants to hear that it’s startling when someone tells him the truth. To use his words, he was very impressed.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Two things.” Marge clears her throat, just like my mother. “The first and most important is your, um, visual projection.”
“Pardon?”
“Your presence as a larger woman, Nola. I’m sorry. I think it’s because Bill had an image of you as Belinda Apple. You know, thin and British and trendy.”
Oh, God, is this humiliating. “And I am anything but.”
“It’s just that you didn’t match his mental image. You know how that is. For example, let’s say you eagerly go on vacation, like, to a Caribbean resort, anticipating palm trees and white beaches with no one on them and instead you find it’s crowded with families and trash. It’s somewhat disappointing.”
Thanks, Marge. Thanks for calling me trash.
“I was talking to Charlotte and we had this brilliant brainstorm. Why don’t you go ahead and write the script and we’ll bring it back to Bill.”
“Script? Written by whom? I thought the deal was dead.”
“It was Bill’s suggestion, actually. It’ll save him money and it’ll be in your own voice. I think it’s a terrific concept.”
I’ve never written a movie script before. The only person I know who has is Nigel Barnes.
“Of course, you’ll start off with a treatment. Though a treatment and a script would be ideal.” It’s as though Marge is having a one-way conversation with herself and I’m just here to keep her company.
Line two is blinking. David Stanton. I feel awful that I’ve kept him waiting so long. “Gotta go, Marge. Thanks for everything.”
It is now four thirty and I have no clue as to how long I’ve let Mr. Stanton wait. Nor do I know what I’ll say to him in my utter embarrassment. It’ll come to me, I think. Inspiration from on high. Yes, that’s it. God will whisper in my ear.
OK. I check myself out in the elevator mirror and approve. My hair is done up. My lips are a nice light pink, and I am thinner than I was yesterday. Yes!
I trip over the sill as I run out of the elevator into the lobby, a million apologies on my lips.
But there is no eighty-eight-year-old man waiting for me anywhere. Clearly he got fed up and left.
’Enri is at check-in scrolling through his BlackBerry. Even in a suit coat his muscles bulge. “Uhhh. A Mr. Stanton was to see me,” I say. “I’m so sorry I’m late. I got a phone call. He didn’t leave, did he?”
’Enri doesn’t even look up. He just points over my shoulder. “That’s him right over there.”
I spin around and face a tall man who has his back to me, his hands in his suit pockets, studying an aerial map of Los Angeles. This is not what I expected at all. “Mr. Stanton?”
He turns and for a moment looks confused. “Don’t tell me you’re here with Belinda.”
But there’s no way I can answer because Mr. Stanton isn’t Mr. Stanton.
He’s Chip.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Of course, what I do is lie.
“Actually, I’m trying to sell a screenplay.” I blush easily, red running all over my body faster than fire because I am sooo mortified. Absolutely mortified. Computer Chip is actually David Stanton. He must be the publisher’s son, which would explain everything, the chip off the old block, the California/ Princeton connection. The fact that Old Mr. Stanton maintained a “country home” in Princeton . . .
“A screenplay? That’s awesome.” He strolls over and looks down at me with admiration. It’s so weird to see him out of context or, rather, in his natural environment. He’s blonder. Taller. Better than my imagination.
“Gosh, it’s good to see you. You look awesome,” he’s saying. “I’m sorry we never got together again. I had to rush out of town, back to L.A. right away. How’s the car?”
I still can’t believe I’m talking to the man formerly known as Chip. Here. In L.A. His chest a mere five inches from my own. “The car’s great,” I manage. “It was so incredible of you to arrange all that. I’ll never forget it.”
He shrugs. “It was a gas.” Then, as if remembering why he’s here, he asks, “Listen, you haven’t seen Belinda Apple around, have you? We were supposed to meet an hour ago. I think she stood me up.”
“Funny thing about that,” I improvise. “Uh, Belinda had to leave suddenly to go back to home.”
“Really?” He wrinkles his misshapen nose.
“Yes. I ran into her on the street and she mentioned that she had this hotel room all paid for and would I like to stay in it. You see, I was staying at the uh . . .” Wait. I don’t
know any hotels in Los Angeles. “The Holiday Inn.”
“The Holiday Inn on Sunset or Brentwood?”
“Uh, Brentwood, I think it was.”
Chip nods. “Uh-huh. Go on.”
“And it’s not nearly as nice as the O.”
“Not nearly.”
“Sooo, I said sure. Apparently, Belinda had to fly back to”—can’t say London because Old Stanton’s there—“Ireland. Family emergency. You know, one of those Irish deathbed scenes.”
“Mother?”
“No, she’s dead.” Ha! Didn’t fall for that trap, did I? “This time it’s her father.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.”
“But Belinda did remind me to tell you to pass on her regrets. She was really looking forward to meeting you.”
“Was she? Interesting.” Wheels are clicking in his head. I catch sight of ’Enri, who is shaking his head in definite disapproval.
“Well, that’s too bad. I was really looking forward to meeting her.” Chip doesn’t take his eyes off me. There’s a funny twist to his lips, a kind of kissable twist that I can’t even contemplate since Chip is a married man, or so my mother claims. If only I could check out his hand for a wedding ring but, darn it, it’s in his pocket.
“I’ve got a crazy idea,” he says brightly. “If you’re not doing anything this evening, how about I show you L.A.? You know, I even made reservations at Gladstone’s.”
“Me?” I blink innocently.
“I know, I know. It’s touristy, but it’s got a very fun atmosphere and they do have great seafood and it’s a beautiful evening. There’s a deck so you can watch the sun set. We can take a walk up the beach in Malibu, just you and me.”
Let me get this straight. Dinner with Chip at Gladstone’s overlooking the Pacific Ocean. A beach in Malibu to walk on. Stars of all kinds. I am feeling lightheaded.
This is my chance to make a stellar impression, and I’m not going to blow it. I will be witty and gracious and flirtatious and so delightful that Chip will fall madly in love with me and end up begging to spend the night.
I’m sure of it.
There are a million questions I want to ask Chip, starting with his real name and ending with a delicate inquiry into his relationship status. But for a while he does all the talking as we pull onto Sunset Boulevard in his gorgeous olive green BMW Z4 Roadster. It is a far cry from the Toyota truck, and even though this may be very shallow of me to say, he looks far sexier in this deal.
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