Dear Dwayne, With Love

by Eliza Gordon

  “Okay, then. I’m Danielle. Nice to meet you.”

  “You too. How’s it going with Marco?”

  “He’s great.” I rub my tender neck and shoulder muscles. “He’s tough, which is good. I’m sorta new to all this fitness stuff.”

  “You’ve not trained before?”

  “Nahhhh. Just curls, and by curls, I mean lifting a heavy bear claw to my mouth.” I mime curling a doughnut to my face.

  He chuckles. “Well, you’re in the best hands. Marco’s a stud. Super guy. He used to be a stunt coordinator—did he tell you that?”

  “Like, for the movies?”

  “Yeah. Crazy, huh?” Minotaur’s warm laugh echoes through the store. “So—are you the one who’s doing that thing with The Rock in August?”

  Gulp. How does he know? “Did Marco tell you that?”

  “Yeah—he’s only been in Portland for a year or two. And since I do a lot of trail running, he was asking me about good spots around the city to practice that outdoor stuff. Looks like you’ll be doing an obstacle course for this event?”

  “That’s the rumor.”

  “You’re gonna kill it,” he says, offering his fist for a bump. “Come with me. I’ll show you some great protein bars, cheap, so you don’t get bullied into buying crap that tastes like sawdust at the health-food store.”

  I follow Minotaur and his huge cart to the pharmacy/healthy-foods area of the store. There he introduces me to a whole bunch of supplements, vitamins, protein bars, and drink additives. “You can get good stuff at the supplement stores—some of those brands are better quality, sure—but to start out, try these. See what you think. The price is right. I use a lot of these products and then splurge on the other things I like from GNC or the Sports Nutrition Center.”

  “This is awesome. And whatever you’re doing seems to be working,” I say. He flexes and kisses a bulging biceps. “Thank you again.”

  I pick up a protein shake mix and another powder that is filled with vegetables because I cannot choke down the recommended daily allowance of asparagus, no matter what’s at stake.

  “You going to the gym after work?” Minotaur asks, his hand on the wheeled rack again.

  “Barring any unforeseen natural disasters or acts of god, yes, I will be there.”

  “Then I shall see you tonight, Lady Danielle, where we shall proceed to crusheth the weights.” He bows deeply, winks, and heads back to work.

  I watch him move down the aisle, a small smile creeping across my face.

  I may not be a triathlete, but . . . I have a gym buddy.

  EIGHTEEN

  From:Charlene Moyers

  To:Danielle E. Steele

  Subject: A sneaky little feline left me a present . . .

  Hi there, Dani,

  You cheeky monkey, I found the Target gift cards you left on my desk while I was away at lunch. Thank you—and I know you don’t like me mentioning this in front of the other Cluckers, but the kitties thank you for thinking of them. Every little bit helps—even if you think it’s not much. Feeding these buggers and buying so much cat litter gets expensive!!!

  Better go. The Crone is making her rounds. Hiss hiss scratch!!!

  Love and pussycats,

  Char M.

  P.S. Your mother sent another fax—I grabbed it and tucked it away in the back of your codes book before Joan saw it. Penelope Steele sure is a character! The UFO convention sounds like a hoot!!! ☺

  NINETEEN

  FAX

  From: PENELOPE “MOMMY” STEELE

  To: Danielle E. Steele, Building 4

  Hello, Danielle,

  It’s your mother. Thank you for leaving the books on the porch for me in that terrific insulated cooler. Very smart girl, you are. (Chip off the old Mommy block!) Now I can use the cooler to house my “special tomatoes” when I’m making deliveries—unless you want it back? It might smell a little like my friend “Mary Jane” now, but I can soak it for you. L-O-L (Dante says that’s how we write that we’re laughing in messages.)

  I’m sorry I wasn’t home when you stopped by. I was doing a wand consultation for a few members of my “Greys (Alien) Anatomy” study and research group before our monthly meeting. Despite your sisters’ rather vehement protestations regarding my new business venture, I am doing quite well with these healing wands. The folks who’ve bought them from me are very satisfied with their results. If you would like a consultation, I can certainly arrange it.

  For now, the plans for my upcoming 60th party are on hold until your sisters can be more reasonable. (Honestly, when Gerald Robert Steele told me he was infertile, I should not have believed him. All three times.)

  However, in lieu of my grand birthday celebration, I have a different proposal: The annual UFO convention is the first weekend in August, and this one’s a biggie so I’d very much like to go. I think it would be great if you would accompany me—it could be my belated birthday present from you? It’s at the Oregon Coast this year, and I know how much you like it there. We could go halfsies on the motel, unless you wanted to pay for me too, considering I’m turning 60 and I’m on a limited income. I know your sisters won’t go—Jacqueline can never take off time from her surgery schedule, and between you and me and the fence post, I don’t think I could handle three full days with Georgette’s kids running amok. (That Dante—I think Georgie’s restrictive diet is going to turn him into a serial killer. I really do, Danielle. Not even I was cruel enough to feed you girls carob.) This year’s convention has a lot of important speakers too—very big stuff going on out there beyond the stars, and therefore no place for young kids.

  I thought if I mentioned it to you now, you could get the Thursday and Friday off so I could be there for all three days of the conference (Friday through Sunday). Of course, I would need you to drive. And as a bonus, I could introduce you to a nice young man in our UFO group—we have some very smart, promising young men in our ranks, Dani Beth!

  Talk to your boss and let me know posthaste. First weekend in August.

  Now for a joke I heard at this week’s meeting:

  How do you debunk an alien?

  (Throw him out of bed.)

  Love and light,

  Mommy

  P.S. This first-edition Danielle Steel has a coffee stain on the dedication page. Did you not look before you paid for it? I have a call in to Candace to remedy the situation, so I might need you to go back to Vancouver to pick up another one if she can find it. Honestly, who spills coffee on a first edition?

  TWENTY

  First weekend in August?

  My palms are clammy as I look up the email from Lady Macbeth to confirm dates.

  Rock the Tots—the thing I have restructured my entire life for—is the first weekend in August.

  I cannot take Mommy to a UFO convention at the beach for her sixtieth birthday.

  And the fallout from this—it will be nuclear. I mean, she called me Dani Beth. That only happens when she’s pulling out the big guns.

  How can I possibly get out of playing chauffeur and babysitter, not to mention financier, for her weekend away? I’ll have to tell her about the competition, and then she’ll lecture me about having my priorities in the wrong place, about how she only turns sixty once, how if I were like so-and-so’s daughter/son, I would know that family comes first, that it’s ludicrous to put all this effort into something that holds only the remotest possibility for me to meet my idol. (Note the irony of this last guilt ribbon, tied by a woman who named her children after her own idols in the hopes that she’d one day get to meet them.)

  What the hell am I going to do . . . ?

  If I stand up to her, she’ll never let it go. It will become one of those Topics of Conversation—she stockpiles and catalogs our perceived wrongs against her, and then finds ways to weave them into the most benign exchanges whenever we’re gathered. Example:

  “Oh, did you hear that the Farmer’s Almanac is predict
ing a colder winter this year?” says any one of the Steele daughters.

  “Well, I will have to buy all-weather tires and not those cheap snow tires Georgie’s husband talked me into in 2014. I almost died driving with those on.” For the record, Georgie’s husband was working a second job at a tire shop to finish his last year of law school, so yeah, he sold Mommy some tires she didn’t like, and now . . . we hear about it. Like I said: Topics of Conversation.

  INT. IMPERIAL HEALTH & WELLNESS - MIDDAY

  DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON enters wearing an alien costume, carrying an odd-shaped acrylic wand filled with . . . sand?

  DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON

  Dani, girl, you really need to stand up to your mom. Dig deep and find that empowerment you engage and deploy when you are at an audition. Don’t be a--

  DANIELLE

  Please . . . don’t call me a candy-ass.

  DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON

  Well, if the shoe fits . . .

  DANIELLE

  You know my mother. If I stand up to her, she’ll send me a million blistering faxes and burn through all the toner left in the office, and then the Crone will make me clean out the cafeteria refrigerators to atone. You do know there are anthrax-level contaminants in that fridge, right?

  Wait . . . is that one of Mommy’s healing wands?

  DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON

  Yeah, I have a sore elbow. She gave me a good deal.

  And don’t change the subject. You have to stand up for yourself!

  DANIELLE

  This is going to come back to haunt me.

  DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON

  So is dropping out of my incredibly awesome fund-raiser so you can drive your mother to the beach to talk about crop circles and anal probes.

  DANIELLE

  Says the man who’s dressed up like a seven-foot extraterrestrial.

  DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON

  Protection from accidental probing in case of alien invasion.

  I cannot think about making this phone call right now. I also cannot think about the fact that my mother is likely making regular deliveries of a controlled substance to her hippie friends in my lunch cooler. Good god, I hope my name’s not on it. Just what I need—a felony.

  Rather than contending with doom shaped like my mother, I work double-speed, ignoring the flashing light on my phone that tells me there are voicemails (the caller ID reflects that those voicemails will belong to at least one sister), so none of the other hens in my building flash me dirty looks because they think I’ve been off playing about town while they’re here toiling away. Among my coworkers are a few who regard my morning and/or afternoon auditions as inappropriate, and they’re not shy with pointed glares to express their petty jealousies.

  Which is why there are two boxes of Dunkin’ Donuts on the back counter with a love note: “Sweets for sweeties . . . xoxo Dani in Bldg. 4.”

  Yeah, I’m not above kissing a little ass now and then.

  Thing is, the auditions are done on my vacation time, in small bites here and there. It’s why I never take a week off to do a real vacation.

  And precisely the reason I cannot take two days off for UFO Fest.

  My stomach growls—and since I am not allowed to eat the doughnuts I brought for everyone else [insert sad face], I dig out a protein bar that Minotaur sold me. This one says it’s chocolate and peanut butter, but I’m still scared—what if it tastes like chocolate-peanut-butter-dirt kale?

  With the first bite squished gingerly between my front teeth—not bad, actually—I check around the area for evidence of spies . . . and navigate to IMDB.com, the Internet Movie Database. Minotaur says Miraculously Beautiful Marco was a stunt coordinator. If that’s the case, he’ll have a page listing the films he’s done.

  I type in his name one-handed so I can continue to shove the protein bar into my face, and sure enough, he pops up.

  Marco Turner has worked on a ton of films and TV shows, big stuff I’ve actually seen. Weird that he didn’t mention this—weirder yet, why is he now working as a personal trainer at some gym in Portland, Oregon?

  Maybe he fell in love and followed the Object of His Affection to our fair metropolis?

  Maybe he got bored with all those beautiful LA hotties and wanted to come find himself a web-footed Oregon beauty?

  Or maybe he’s a bank robber, on the lam from his native England, hiding out in America and building muscles while he plans his first big heist in the good ol’ U-S-of-A.

  INT. HOLLYWOOD FITNESS - NIGHTTIME

  DANIELLE

  That’s it, Miraculously Beautiful Marco. The jig is up. I’m here to stop you before you empty another vault.

  MARCO

  (sips tea but not daintily)

  Danielle, darling, whatever are you talking about?

  DANIELLE

  Where do you keep it? All the money you’ve stolen? Let me guess: under your mattress.

  MARCO

  (looks around, whispers)

  How--how did you discover my secret? Please, whatever you want, tell me. I am at your humblest disposal. Please don’t tell the Queen. She’ll throw me in the Tower of London, and . . . it’s haunted.

  DANIELLE

  You can rob banks, but you’re afraid of a few ghosts?

  MARCO

  I saw Ghostbusters. Twice. And I am quite sure I am allergic to ectoplasm.

  DANIELLE

  But why? You’re so Miraculously Beautiful. You could be anything you want to be. Why a bank robber?

  MARCO

  Think of me as Robin Hood. I was born in Sherwood Forest, so it makes sense.

  MARCO leans closer. He smells deliriously delicious, a cross between maple glaze and sweat.

  MARCO (CONT’D)

  Do you want to see my biceps?

  I scroll through to the Personal Details section—it says my trainer was born in Dublin, Ireland, but his father accepted a new position when Marco was a kid, so his family moved to the Royal Borough of Greenwich. One younger brother is listed—and then links to a collection of articles. I click the first one.

  Oh man. Marco Turner is in Portland because he coordinated a stunt that killed an actor—who happened to be his best friend. The article from the LA Times details that after the incident, the film was shelved, never to be released, and “Turner turned in his union card, packed his bags, and left the City of Angels in his rearview, off to seek an impossible absolution.”

  Shit, this is heavy stuff.

  Poor Marco. Not only is he Miraculously Beautiful, but he’s got a tragic story. And he’s not a bank robber, which is probably good.

  I close the browser window so no busybodies see what I’m staring at.

  With an impressive stack of processed claims in hand to be filed, I ease out of my chair—I don’t know what Marco did to my legs, but I think they might be actively trying to separate from the rest of my body—and walk up the center aisle between the gray cubicles shaped by those industrial fabric-and-steel half walls. The good hens of my building are busy busy busy on the phone, fingernails ticking on keyboards, papers shuffling.

  As I approach Lisa “Dick-Pic” Rogers’s cubicle, why am I not surprised at what I see on the screen.

  Does this woman never learn?

  Except—except wait a second.

  In the photo on her screen, some jackass is holding his semi-erect penis in his palm, and I wouldn’t care, I wouldn’t feel like throwing up right this second if that dick wasn’t curved to the right, if there weren’t evidence of orange toenails just hovering along the periphery of the photo’s framing of the crooked penis.

  Orange toenails? Crooked dong?

  Sometimes my mouth moves faster than my brain, unfortunately.

  Like now.

  “You bitch! That’s Trevor’s dick!”

  [A thick stack of completed medical claims explodes from my hands and flies upward, gently returning to Earth like oversize snowflakes of ruination, someho
w beautiful, like the floating plastic bag from American Beauty, if not for my hands around Lisa’s stupid, skinny, fake-tan-coated, boyfriend-stealing neck.]

  TWENTY-ONE

  From:Jacqueline Collins Steele, MD, FACS

  To:Danielle E. Steele

  Subject: I just got off the phone with Georgie

  Danielle,

  Did you really attack someone at work? Physically attack someone? Georgette said it had something to do with your boyfriend sending pictures of his anatomy to another woman?

  I have a call in to my lawyer to see if the length of the suspension is legal. A month seems excessive, even if a managerial and corporate-level review is necessary. There has to be some middle ground here where we can perhaps negotiate to get you back to work sooner, taking into consideration these exceptional circumstances. I’m guessing you don’t have adequate finances saved to sustain a long unemployment?

  Make sure your fax machine is on. Mommy refuses to plug in her phone.

  Is it true the police are involved?

  Sincerely,

  Jacqueline Collins Steele, MD, FACS

  Board Certified, American Board of Cosmetic Surgeons

  TWENTY-TWO

  “Oh, hello, Danielle. This is Marco from Hollywood Fitness just calling to check in with you, as you’ve missed the last two nights, and I’m worried that you might have pulled a muscle. Can you phone me back to check in? Hoping to see you again soon. Do let me know if I can be of assistance. All right, take care, then. Cheers.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  March 30, 2016

  Dear Dwayne Johnson,

  Don’t be mad at me. I know this was not my shiniest moment, and if you were here, you’d be coolly unimpressed like everyone else, although maybe not—you might be sorta proud of me for standing up for myself? Maybe? Aren’t you always harping at me about that?

  It was like my own personal WWE moment. I know, I know, WWE has no place in the health insurance workplace, but there she was, sitting at her desk, staring at Trevor’s crooked wiener, and before I even knew what I was doing, my hand went around her neck and the other hand pulled her stupid ponytail and I flipped her back in her wheeled office chair—my own version of “spine to the pine”—and she screamed and clawed at me, but I’m stronger than I look, so she didn’t get a good hit because I managed to take her by surprise and yeah . . . yeah, I may have given her The People’s Elbow.