Damage Control

by Jae

  “Like what?” Lauren asked even though she knew exactly what Mrs. Duvenbeck meant. She couldn’t help baiting Grace’s mother a bit.

  Mrs. Duvenbeck gestured. “Like…like…well, like you.”

  Lauren put down her mug of coffee and enjoyed the much-needed caffeine surge for a moment. “Oh, you mean she isn’t as tall as I am? I think the press noticed that already.”

  With her hands on her hips, Mrs. Duvenbeck glared at her. “You know exactly what I mean.”

  “I do. Just let me do my job without interfering.”

  “Interfering?” Mrs. Duvenbeck repeated in a much higher pitch. “I have been guiding my daughter’s career long before you even knew how to spell PR. If you’re implying—”

  “You two didn’t eat all of the cookies, did you?” Jill asked as she entered the living room with Grace.

  Lauren regarded the two actresses.

  Grace had her arm wrapped around Jill’s waist, helping her keep her balance. If Jill had really told her, Grace was earning points with Lauren for not shying away from Jill now that she knew she was gay.

  “I’m not in the mood for cookies,” Mrs. Duvenbeck said. “We need to find a way to deal with the media. What do we tell them?”

  “The truth,” Jill said.

  Grace studied her. “Are you sure that’s what you want to do?”

  “Yes. Just give me twenty-four hours. I need to tell my parents first.”

  Grace’s eyes widened. “You haven’t told them?”

  “Told them what?” Mrs. Duvenbeck asked.

  No one answered.

  Jill shook her head. Tramp ran over and nosed his mistress’s hand as if feeling her anxiety. “They know I’m a lesbian, but I haven’t told them about—”

  Mrs. Duvenbeck gasped. “You’re a…a lesbian?”

  Jill looked her right in the eyes, not ducking her head. “Yes, Katherine, I am. I hope you won’t hold it against me, just like I’m not judging you for being straight.”

  Go, girl! Lauren wanted to clap her on the shoulder but abstained from doing so.

  “B-but the photos…the things those reporters wrote…” Mrs. Duvenbeck looked back and forth between her daughter and Jill. “They aren’t…?”

  “No, Mom,” Grace said. “I’m not gay. You know that. The reporters misinterpreted the situation. I was merely helping Jill to her trailer; that’s all.”

  “Then you need to tell them that,” her mother said. “Now. Why wait around, eating cookies, while the world thinks that you’re…” She lowered her voice. “…gay?”

  Normally, Lauren would agree and deny Jill the twenty-four hours she’d asked for. When it came to doing damage control, a rapid response was essential. With the Internet, news traveled fast, so they needed to act quickly before rumors snowballed out of control.

  But when Jill and Grace looked at her, she nodded reluctantly. “Twenty-four hours,” Lauren said. “Not one second more.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Ten minutes later, Lauren realized that Jill was fading fast. The actress was slumped against the back of the couch, looking as if she’d just run a marathon. Lauren and Grace exchanged glances; then Lauren gestured at the door, and Grace nodded.

  “I think it’s time for us to leave,” Grace said.

  “Leave?” her mother echoed, her eyebrows hiked up her forehead as far as they would go. “But the paparazzi are still outside. I don’t want them to take more photos of you, writing all kinds of ridiculous things about you and Jill.”

  “You’re parked right in front of the house, inside of the gate, right?” Lauren asked.

  Grace nodded.

  “Good. Mrs. Duvenbeck, are you up for playing the decoy?”

  Mrs. Duvenbeck eyed her warily. “What do you mean?”

  “I want you to put on a baseball cap or something, take Grace’s car, and drive out of here as fast as possible,” Lauren said. “Hopefully, the paparazzi will follow you.”

  “I won’t be able to fool them for long,” Mrs. Duvenbeck said.

  “Doesn’t matter. By the time they realize it’s just you in the car, Grace and I will have made it out of here too, with no photos taken.”

  Mrs. Duvenbeck didn’t seem happy, but she allowed Grace to outfit her with a coat to hide her pink skirt suit and one of Jill’s hats, all the while complaining about it ruining her hair.

  Tons of hair spray had turned her platinum-blonde hair into what looked like a helmet, and Lauren idly wondered how a hat could possibly mess up the bulletproof creation.

  Finally, Mrs. Duvenbeck was ready. Acting as if she were an actress stepping onto the red carpet to accept an Oscar, she left the house and got into Grace’s SUV.

  “Ready to head out too?” Lauren asked.

  Grace nodded. She hugged Jill, whispering something in her ear that made Jill clutch her a little more tightly.

  Lauren averted her gaze to give them some privacy, but she couldn’t help wondering what Grace had said.

  After a moment, Grace joined her next to the front door.

  “We have to be quick, just in case any of the paparazzi are still around,” Lauren said.

  “No problem. I’m not wearing stilettos this time.” Grace held out one sneaker-covered foot.

  A chuckle escaped Lauren. Somehow, she’d ended up in the most adventurous situations since becoming Grace’s publicist. She turned her head and nodded at Jill. “I’ll send you the statement for tomorrow as soon as I have it. We should hold the press conference in the CT Publicity offices, with both of you there.”

  “Okay,” Jill said. “Be careful out there. The paparazzi are crazy.”

  She opened the door for them, and they hurried toward the gate with Lauren in the lead. A quick peek revealed that their plan had worked—the paparazzi’s SUVs were gone. Still, Lauren took Los Feliz Road instead of choosing the direct route, heading west on the freeway, as Mrs. Duvenbeck had probably done. She didn’t want to encounter any of the paparazzi who had surely turned around when they realized their mistake.

  “You didn’t seem surprised to hear that Jill is gay,” Grace said after a few minutes of silence.

  Lauren gave a vague shrug, not wanting to break any confidences. After all, she was Jill’s publicist as well as Grace’s. “Well, you know, we lesbians are supposed to have gaydar.”

  Grace turned toward her in the passenger seat, her knee pressing against the middle console. “Gaydar?”

  “Like radar, just…gay.”

  “You mean lesbians can tell if another woman is gay, just by looking at her?” Grace sounded baffled.

  Lauren glanced into the rearview mirror to make sure they weren’t being followed. Luckily, the coast was still clear. “Some can.”

  “How about you?” Grace asked. “Can you do that?”

  “Sometimes.” Very aware that she was talking to a client, she would have preferred to talk about something else—anything else.

  The sound of the tires on the road sounded overly loud in the silence between them.

  Lauren risked a quick glance to her right, wondering what was going on in Grace’s head.

  Before she could ask, Grace cleared her throat. “What about me?” she asked quietly.

  “You? Are you asking if you have gaydar?”

  “No, I don’t need to ask that. I already know that I don’t,” Grace said. “I had no clue that Jill is gay, and it never occurred to me that you could be too. But that’s not what I’m asking. I mean…what does your…that gaydar thing say about me?”

  “Why are you asking?” Wouldn’t any straight woman just assume that Lauren’s gaydar would identify her as heterosexual?

  “Well, if gaydar works on me, at least my gay fans—if I have any—should realize that I’m str
aight, no matter what nonsense the press writes, right? So, what does your gaydar say about me?”

  Lauren clutched the steering wheel and pretended to need her full attention for driving. “Um…Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “My gaydar didn’t say anything about you.” Probably because it got drowned out by my libido.

  “Hmm.” Grace seemed to think about it for a minute or two.

  “Besides,” Lauren added, “gaydar isn’t exactly a scientific measuring method. Sometimes, it’s affected by wishful thinking.”

  Grace tugged on the seat belt so she could turn even more toward Lauren. “What do you mean?”

  Lauren tapped the indicator before making a right onto Franklin Avenue. “Your straight audience likes to imagine that you’re just like them, someone they could hang out and be friends with. The men might even fantasize about—”

  Grace pretended to stick her fingers into her ears. “Lalalalala,” she sang loudly. “Nope. No way. Never happens.”

  Lauren laughed. “If that’s what you’d like to think, I’ll try not to ruin your illusions.”

  “Thanks. So you think my lesbian fans might do the same and wish the rumors about me and Jill were true?”

  Mentally repeating the comments her lesbian friends made about actresses like Grace, Lauren nodded.

  Grace sighed. “No matter what I do, who I am, I can never satisfy everyone, can I?”

  “No one can do that,” Lauren said and wondered why she would even want to try.

  “Sometimes,” Grace said very quietly, as if talking more to herself than to Lauren, “I think the Native Americans were right.”

  The non sequitur made Lauren turn her head to look at her before returning her attention to the road. “Right how?”

  “They believed that if you have your picture taken, you’ll lose your soul. Sometimes, I think that happens to actors and actresses too.” Grace stared through the windshield.

  Lauren braked at a red light and looked over at her. “I know what you mean. But…if that’s what you think, why did you go into acting?” Then she remembered that Grace had been in front of cameras since she’d been in diapers and added, “I mean, why did you continue in acting as you grew older?”

  Grace glanced over.

  Once again, the disturbingly blue eyes startled Lauren. She sat staring for several moments until the driver behind her started honking. Quickly, she cleared the intersection.

  “My father died when I was eight,” Grace said quietly.

  Lauren wanted to reach over and squeeze her arm or her knee, but she was very aware how inappropriate that would have been, so she kept both hands on the steering wheel. “I’m sorry,” she said, hoping Grace could hear the sincerity in her voice.

  Grace nodded her acknowledgment. “Thanks. I’m not saying it to make you feel sorry for me, though. Back then, I was devastated, of course. I have always been a daddy’s girl, right from the start. My father really got me. I could talk to him about anything, while my mother…” She bit her lip. “I think she coped by throwing herself into managing my career. So I learned to do the same. When I was in front of a camera, I forgot about everything else. I could strip off all the pain and the expectations and just…be someone else for a while.”

  Lauren thought about Grace’s words while she drove beneath an overpass and continued west.

  “Do you think that’s weird?” Grace asked when Lauren didn’t comment immediately. For such a famous person, she sounded remarkably insecure.

  “Not at all.” Lauren understood her better than she liked to admit. Her last girlfriend had accused her of doing the exact same thing—avoiding her relationship issues by escaping into her job, where she could deal with other people’s problems instead of her own. “It’s not that different from what a lot of people are doing—using their jobs to avoid dealing with other, more painful areas of their lives.”

  “Christ, you make me sound like someone who could use a lot of therapy,” Grace murmured.

  Lauren smiled. “You mean you don’t have a therapist? Don’t you know that it’s a status symbol?”

  “You saw my car,” Grace said. “I’m not into status symbols.”

  True. Grace’s mother had driven off in the compact SUV that clearly was a few years old, and now Lauren peeked over at Grace’s Levi’s and sneakers. She decided she liked Grace in jeans.

  Apparently, neither wanted to delve more deeply into the topic of therapy or their private lives, so they spent the rest of the drive in companionable silence.

  Lauren navigated the narrow, curvy road, every now and then glancing left to enjoy the incredible view of the city below them. When she rounded the last bend, past the bougainvillea-hung villa at the corner, and caught sight of Grace’s home, she slammed her foot down on the brake.

  Reporters and paparazzi were camped outside of Grace’s mansion. Either they had waited here the entire day, or they were the same ones who’d been in front of Jill’s house and they had driven straight to the house when they’d realized it wasn’t Grace in the red SUV. Their vehicles were blocking the gate.

  Lauren put the car in reverse and backed up before the paparazzi could spot them. “What now?” she asked as she used a neighbor’s empty driveway to turn the car around. “Is there somewhere you could stay? Some place the paparazzi won’t know about?”

  Grace nibbled on her lip as if considering whether she should tell Lauren about whatever hideaway she might have. Finally, she nodded. “Go back to Laurel Canyon Boulevard and then take the Ventura Freeway west.”

  “And then?” Lauren asked. Where was Grace leading her? Did she own another luxury villa, maybe in Malibu or some other place where the rich and famous lived?

  But Grace gave nothing away. “You’ll see.”

  “Turn left here,” Grace said as Lauren navigated the constant twists and turns of Old Topanga Canyon Road.

  Lauren eyed the dirt road to the left. “Are you sure this is the right way?”

  Grace smiled. “Trust me. It is.”

  “All right.” Lauren slowed to a near crawl. Her poor car bumped along a steep, winding dirt road that constantly narrowed. With damp palms, Lauren clutched the steering wheel, hoping that no rocks would damage the bottom of her car. She was beginning to understand why Grace drove an SUV. Just when she thought the road would end in the middle of nowhere, the car made it up an incline and a cottage lay in front of them.

  “This is it,” Grace said, a pride in her voice that hadn’t been there when she’d invited Lauren into her multi-million-dollar mansion.

  Lauren parked where Grace indicated, and they got out. Bending, Lauren checked to make sure the oil pan and the car’s undercarriage had survived the drive up. Everything seemed to be fine, so she straightened and looked around. The cottage was nestled among a grove of trees that screened it from view. The scent of sagebrush hung in the air. Lauren lifted her nose into the light ocean breeze and inhaled deeply. It was hard to believe they were just forty minutes from LA.

  Grace led the way to the cottage’s front door and unlocked it.

  This small, modest home was as different from her Hollywood Hills luxury villa as possible. Grace’s little hideaway up in the Santa Monica Mountains was all wood from floor to ceiling, including the simple furniture. A rocking chair, a pockmarked oak coffee table, and a couch with a brown-and-white afghan faced a wood-burning fireplace. A tiny kitchen was tucked into one corner of the room, and a ladder led up to a loft, probably a bedroom right under the eaves.

  The tense set of Grace’s shoulders seemed to relax as soon as she entered.

  This was her home. Lauren sensed it without an explanation. “This is nice,” she said and realized she had lowered her voice as if she were in a sacred place. Maybe she was. She would bet her nex
t paycheck that Grace didn’t bring visitors here very often.

  “Wait till you see the view from the patio.” Grace opened the sliding glass door and waved at Lauren to follow her.

  Several small lizards that had warmed themselves on the patio darted away when they stepped outside.

  The cottage was nestled high up in the mountains, and the patio offered a breathtaking view of the canyon, which was blanketed in thick, blue-green stands of chaparral and sage. Lauren thought she could even detect a very distant glimpse of the ocean.

  At a piercing cry above them, she looked up and saw a red-tailed hawk soaring in large circles against the blue sky.

  Lauren made a living with words, but now she didn’t know what to say. “Wow. This sure isn’t the luxury beach house in Malibu I expected.” She bit her lip when she realized what she’d just blurted out.

  But Grace didn’t appear insulted. She just grinned. “Disappointed?”

  “God, no. I could see myself hiding out here. Well, if not for the fact that you probably don’t have Internet or phone reception.”

  “Yeah, phone reception is pretty spotty here, but the Internet works most of the time. If you want to stay and write that statement for tomorrow…”

  Lauren thought about it. She wanted to stay and enjoy some peace and quiet for a change, but was it really the proper thing to do? If the media found out they had stayed together overnight in this little cottage with just one bed, it would start the rumors flying. But then again, if the paparazzi found their way up here, she didn’t want Grace to have to face them alone. If she returned to LA, she’d leave Grace stranded without a car or a means to call for help should anything happen. The thought made her shiver despite the warm sunshine. “I’d love to,” she said firmly.