The Continuity Girl (37 page)

He remembered the party in snapshots, and the one that came to him most reappeared nearly every day. Even now, in mid-wank,
it winged its way from the back of his brain to the front.

His old friend Frank—on the brink of death and about to father his only child but oblivious to either possibility—answered
the door to his house. He, Ozzie, jumped out from behind a laurel bush holding six bottles of champagne wedged between his
fingers like bowling pins. They embraced, Frank delivering several hearty backslaps that nearly knocked the wind out of him.

“Ozzie! You shouldn’t have. Come in, come in.” Frank ushered him in, led him past the sunken living room done in the citrus
and brown of the day (Ozzie recalled the strong presence of macramé wall hangings and varnished twig furniture) and into the
kitchen, replete with state-of-the-art avocado-hued appliances.

Once he had poured them each a Scotch, Frank sat down in front of Ozzie and regarded him seriously.

“What’s up?” Ozzie asked, feeling suddenly apprehensive.

Frank dropped his head into his hands, rubbed his face and looked up. “Look, buddy, I invited you here early—before the other
guests arrive—because I wanted to give you something. It’s real important.”

Ozzie raised his eyebrows and cocked his head. “I’m all ears.”

Frank crossed his legs and nervously wiped a bit of sand off the pointed toe of his snakeskin dress shoe. He had always been
fastidious, both in appearance and surroundings. Hated the thought of a hair out of place, let alone a shot. He lit a cigarette,
drew in hard and then got up and began pacing the kitchen.

“So ever since Annabel and I got married I’ve been thinking. She wants to have kids soon and this directing thing’s not so
stable. It’s fine for now, but there’s no way I’m raising a family doing soft porn, right? I need to make some cash. Regular,
clean, nine-to-five-type cash.” He paused to suck his smoke. “The truth is, I’ve been thinking of getting in on the other
side. Maybe becoming an agent. Or even taking a job with Annabel’s father’s company—oil filtration.”

Ozzie opened his mouth, but Frank stopped pacing and raised his hand. “Wait. Hear me out. So basically I’m at the end of my
rope. I figure it’s make-or-break time and I’m giving myself one year.”

Frank took a breath and before he had a chance to exhale, turned around and pulled open a kitchen drawer. It was the sort
of drawer you’d expect to contain a can opener, a corkscrew or maybe a Danish butter-cookie tin filled with rubber bands.
Instead he pulled out a thick file folder and tossed it in Ozzie’s lap.

Ozzie didn’t touch it. He raised his hands in the air, palms up. “What’s this crap about ‘one year’? You’re talking about
abandoning everything we ever worked for. You were born with a gift, my friend, a gift—”

Frank cut him off. He’d heard this speech before. “Just shut up and look in the folder, Oz.”

“What’s this?”

“It’s a script. A script I wrote.”

“Yeah, I got that, but how come I didn’t hear about it until now? I thought we were friends.”

“We
are
friends, Oz, and that’s why you’re the first person to see it. I haven’t even shown it to Annabel yet. No one even
knows I was working on it. For three years I got up every morning at dawn and went out to the garage and typed my fucking
heart out and didn’t tell a soul.” He looked at the script with pained affection. “It’s my last chance, man. This is it. Either
it goes or I go. You know?”

Ozzie nodded, convinced. Slipped the script back inside its folder. Sipped his Scotch. Drummed five stout fingers on the folder.

“What’s it about?”

“It’s a
Western.
”

“A Western.”

“Yeah. I want you to read it. Tell me what you think. I’m talking dead honesty here. No dressing it up.”

“As soon as I get home tonight. It’ll be my pleasure.”

Frank sat down at the table, visibly relaxed. He smiled and held up his tumbler. They toasted and drank. Through the kitchen
window they would have looked like two friends celebrating an old sports victory or reliving past sexual triumphs. The fact
that within twelve hours one man would be dead by accident never would have occurred to an onlooker.

He hadn’t planned on stealing the script. But after Frank died so suddenly, things went crazy. Ozzie showed the script around,
planning to give Frank a writing credit if the movie got made. But by the time production started so many people assumed it
was his that he started to feel the same way. Credits got traded around all the time in the business, he told himself. Frank
was dead. What difference did it make? Annabel’s family had tons of dough. Frank wrote it—but he would have wanted it to get
made, right? Even if that meant someone else—his closest friend—taking the credit.

This is what Ozzie told himself.

That night they poured more drinks and resumed their usual talk, a gregarious bluster of references to movies, mysterious
business interests and actresses they’d like to screw. When the doorbell rang, Frank jumped up to get it. Just before he left
the kitchen he paused, hands spread on the door frame.

“One more thing, Oz.” He spoke very slowly, looking not at the script but straight into his friend’s eyes. “Be careful with
that. It’s the only copy.”

Jesus fuck!

Ozzie stood in the booth and shook his head—once, twice, hard, like a person trying to get rid of water trapped in his inner
ear. Goddamn memory. It’s like you spend the first two-thirds of your life as a walking, talking hard-on—sex constantly on
the brain, all other thoughts a sideshow—then the last third you can’t even concentrate long enough to get it up for a decent
wank.

He resolved to start from scratch. The lube bottle farted out another dollop of goo. Ozzie picked up the magazine and looked
more closely at the girl in the brown suede skirt. “When Dana isn’t playing for the camera, she likes fast cars and even faster
men,” read the text. “‘I lost my virginity to my driving instructor when I was sixteen,’ says the Mancunian hottie, ‘and since
then I always get turned on when I’m in the driver’s seat.’” Ozzie felt his mind lock in and begin to creep forward. He put
himself in the passenger’s seat, reaching over and slipping his hand under the brown suede skirt. Ah, yes...hello, Dana.

She couldn’t wait to see him. Could. Not. Wait. Another. Second. Meredith wished she could commandeer the plane and fly it
over the ocean herself. And now, of course, because of her impatience, the flight was delayed. And not just a few minutes
but an hour. Another whole hour to add to the thirty-five years she had already spent without him. Which was fine before she
knew him—but not anymore. Now there was no time to waste. Meredith had never felt so insanely impatient to see someone in
her life.

The best of it was this: since Joe had seen her off in Florence she had not felt the Quest even once. Her sperm bandit days
were over. Cured (dare she think it?) by love.

“Look at you!” her mother had said when seeing her off with Jeffrey at airport security several minutes before. “You’re positively
twitterpated.” She had squeezed Meredith’s cheeks and tousled her hair. “Mind you, don’t get too happy and start eating everything
in sight,” she added, patting Meredith’s left hip. “That always used to happen to me when I fell in love. My bottom would
grow to twice its natural size.”

Meredith prepared to say something caustic, but before she could, her mother let out a theatrical whoop and slapped Jeffrey’s
hand away from her nether regions.

“Darling! I told you,
not in public.
”

“Just checking to see if you care for me.”

“Ooh, my little poopsie-woopsie.” Irma began nuzzling his ear and tickling him around the middle.

Meredith rolled her eyes and took her place in the security line.

Nearly an hour had passed since then and she was still no geographically closer to her own poopsie-woopsie.

Why, she wondered, did infatuation turn people into such idiots? It was like Christmas—excruciatingly tacky unless you were
in the middle of it, in which case there was nothing lovelier. She thought of Mish, staying behind with Barnaby and Shane
to tend to the birds of prey in that wonky cottage in the Cotswolds. Life, she decided, was inexplicably weird.

And of course there was Ozzie. Surprisingly he had made more than a token appearance at the wrap party. He was there when
Meredith arrived with her mother and Jeffrey. The place—a new club near Irma’s flat specializing in film types (there was
a retrofitted movie theater decked out with great leather armchairs and footrests)—was packed with people Meredith recognized
from the shoot. Still smarting from the way she’d been fired, Meredith ducked Richard Glass and huddled at a corner table
with Mish, sending Barnaby back and forth to the bar for more vodka tonics.

“Your mother is in fine form,” Mish observed, and Meredith saw she was right.

Irma swept among the clumps of people with the Earl of Dorgi in tow. Everywhere she stopped she seemed to cause a little scene
of hilarity—uproarious laughter and spontaneous dancing broke out in her wake. Meredith smiled and, for the first time she
could remember, took pleasure in the effects of her mother’s charm. Then Ozzie came into view. He and Irma air-kissed and
then Kathleen took a turn. The actress leaned down and whispered something into Irma’s wig. From her vantage point Meredith
could see something between them—either a bond had been formed or a blockage had been removed, or both. Ozzie had somehow
facilitated a truce.

He smiled and scanned the room with his eyes. Meredith froze, waiting to be spotted.

“Is that him?” Mish gripped her forearm.

“Who?”

“Oh, fuck off. You know who. Whatshisface. The Wizard of Oz. Hugh Hefner. Donald Trump. Alpha-boy. Mister Fuck-Off Producer
guy. The Italian mystery man.”

“He’s not Italian; he just happens to live in Italy.”

Just then his eyes fell on her. He began to push through the crowd like an unpenned bull.

“Whatever. Oh my God, look, he’s totally coming over here.”

“Ow!” Meredith yanked her arm away and examined it to see if Mish’s fingernails had broken the skin.

“Hello, ladies.”

Before Meredith knew it, Mish was having her hand kissed and giggling like a small-town deb at a Texas swan ball. Mish
lived
to have her hand kissed.

“Ozzie.”

“May I steal you for a moment?” he said.

Outside on the roof deck he sipped his Campari and regarded her jealously. It was almost raining.

“That was quite a dramatic exit.”

Meredith shrugged. “I had to go.”

“You might have left a note.”

“Yeah. I might have. I wish I could tell you I was sorry.”

They stood for a moment in the drizzly silence. The conversation limped on.

“I suppose you think I should have told you earlier.”

“Really?” Meredith felt her blood begin to rise. “Because I don’t suppose you should suppose to know what I’m supposedly thinking
at all.”

“Oh, no?”

“Actually
no.
”

“Look.” Ozzie put a hand out toward her and then thought better of it and shoved it back into his pocket. He sighed, rubbed
his eyes with his other hand, searching for better words. “Look, I should have told you earlier. About your father and my
connection...to your past.” He choked a little, and she saw it was difficult for him to get out the next few words. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize!” Meredith half-shouted and then glanced around and lowered her voice. Ozzie looked as if he wished she’d
spared him the trouble of saying he was sorry in the first place.

“The point is, you bankrolled my entire childhood.” She felt a blockage in her throat. “I mean, what am I going to... How
am I supposed to ever pay you back for that?”

He shook his head vigorously. “But you shouldn’t think that, darling. That’s never what I expected. I never wanted for you
or your mother to feel the least bit indebted to me. Not for one second.”

“Why?” Meredith’s voice began to quaver—she
would not cry.
“Why would you do that?”

“For your father.”

“But
why
?”

“Because...” Ozzie looked down at his shoes and up again. “Because I owed him.”

“For what?”

“For everything.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s ancient history now. Just believe me when I tell you that I owed him. I still owe him.”

“I just don’t understand.”

“In this case, trust me when I tell you it’s not necessary. You don’t need to back-match the past, my dear.” Ozzie stepped
back and looked at her. “You’re just like him, you know.”

“Really?” She softened.

“Mmm. In looks, but also in your talents. You have his eye for detail. And his dramatic timing.”

Meredith laughed and, emboldened by the moment, blurted out a question she’d been longing to ask. “How come you never had
any kids of your own?”

His eyes shimmered. “I didn’t need to. I had you.”

Remembering the scene a week later brought on a tingling in Meredith’s breasts. They still hurt from the man who had jostled
her in the security lineup. She pushed all thoughts of Ozzie from her mind and concentrated on what lay ahead. A fresh start
in Toronto. A romance. Maybe even (she could barely even think the word)
a boyfriend.

The message on the screen changed again. BA Flight 92 to Toronto delayed to 12:00. She growled. Another precious fleeting
hour of her youth to be wasted in the airport. Why was nothing ever on time anymore? Meredith tapped her foot, fumed, tapped
the other foot. The rest of the world may have decided punctuality was a virtue of the bored, but
she
was always on time.
She was like clockwork.

Meredith froze.

She checked the date on her boarding pass and confirmed it.

She was four days late.

Joe stood at the Pearson arrivals gate wishing he were somewhere else.

Not that he didn’t want to see her—just the opposite. He was afraid of precisely how much he did. That and the news he had
to deliver.