“C
alifornia?
What am I supposed to do about Walter?” Sophie squealed. “He’s on the brink of death! At least I think he’s on the brink of death. Maybe it’s more wishful thinking on my part. California!”
“Yes, California. Stop fretting, Sophie. Dear old Walter can die just as easily with a nurse in attendance as with you. You can go back for the funeral if it happens. Like Abby says, crisp him up, and it’s a done deal. You collect your insurance check, and it’s all just a memory.”
“Yes, but I thought this was just a quick trip, a mini-vacation. I needed a break,” Sophie argued. She fired up a cigarette. “What if he dies while I’m in California?”
“Then you’ll have your wish and five million bucks to boot. It’s your call. Either you’re in or out.”
Toots stared at the group gathered around the dining room table. After dessert and coffee, they’d gone inside, where Toots found the half-empty bottle of scotch. Half-empty cups littered the table. Sophie used hers for an ashtray. Ida perched on the edge of her chair, ready to spring at any second, while Mavis eyed the bowl of apples and oranges in the center.
“Sorry. When Walter’s name is mentioned, it brings back all those years of bad memories, not to mention bringing out my bad side.”
The women nodded. They understood perfectly.
“Here’s my plan. I’m thinking at the very least we’ll need to hang out west for at least six months if we’re to accomplish our goal, which is to make
The Informer
a source to be reckoned with. The other tabloids have ruled the market for years. It’s time they had some healthy competition.” Toots took a sip of scotch. She shuddered as it made its fiery descent into the pit of her stomach.
“Sounds good, but exactly what do you plan to do? News is news no matter if it’s Hollywood news or national news. You just can’t make it happen. It could take years to develop sources in the business. You need someone on the inside, you need reliable snitches, friends who hate their best-friends-forever and sell them out for money,” Sophie said.
“Remember, we’re talking about Hollywood. News that may not be considered real news is news out there. For instance, remember when Helen Heart disappeared? The tabloids reported that she’d taken a trip to Europe for plastic surgery when in reality she’d been in rehab right in their very own Malibu Hills. While this isn’t important to the world in general,
it’s
very important to those in the business. Would you want to hire an aging drunk for your next blockbuster? I don’t think so. So, to answer your question, the type of news we’ll be working on isn’t important in the sense that it will affect the world, but it will affect Helen Heart’s career and others just like her. The big guns in the business read this stuff even though they’ll never admit it. Abby told me this.
She knows.”
“I don’t understand,” Ida said. “What can you do that the former owner didn’t do?”
“That’s where Abby will come in. She has contacts. She’s told me on more than one occasion that she had
breaking news
before the other reporters, but old Rag didn’t believe her, then the next day, it would be splashed on the front page of
The Enquirer
or
The Globe.
Abby said it happened a lot. Enough that it made her wonder if her boss was on the take. I have no clue what she meant by that. The stories Abby writes are newsy but not front-page news, according to her, even though I tend to disagree. I enjoy reading whatever she writes.”
“Same here,” Sophie said.
“I am very proud of my goddaughter, no matter what she writes. She’s a very skilled writer, too,” Mavis added. “I bet she could write a novel if she set her mind to it. It would probably be a best seller, too. Nothing like that tacky Jackie Collins stuff, either. I have never liked her books.”
“Then why do you read them?” Ida questioned.
“Supposedly her characters are loosely based on real people. I always try and figure out who the ‘real’ people are. Not that I know them, but it’s interesting. I don’t believe all those wild sex scenes, either. What kind of woman has sex with five different men a night?” Mavis said.
“Tramps,” Toots offered.
“Sluts,” Sophie said, “or at least those who want to get a jump start in the business. Happens all the time.”
“And how do you know this?” Ida demanded fretfully.
“I don’t know it for a fact, but it’s been happening since the beginning of time. People use sex as a trade-off.” Sophie looked at Ida, then at Toots. “Right?”
“If you’re insinuating that I’ve done something similar in the past, you would be wrong. Though there were times when I was rather happy that my poor mate couldn’t, well, let’s just say rise to the occasion.” Toots laughed. “And in that sense I was grateful for the payoff. Which was no sex with a man who’d passed his prime.”
“Why do we always end up discussing sex?” Ida asked.
“Because none of us are getting any,” Sophie said with a huge grin. “At least none that I know of.” She glanced at her three friends seated at the table, wondering if one of them was lucky enough to dispute her statement.
Zip.
“Says something about us, doesn’t it?” Toots challenged. “We’re not
that
old. We’re going to Los Angeles. I think it’s time we changed our status. What about the rest of you? Are you game for a change?”
Toots eyed her friends seated around the table as she waited for an answer. Her hands in her lap, she crossed her fingers.
“As long as I can bring Coco, I’m in. I can get Phyllis, my neighbor, to close up my house for the summer. Better yet, she can use it when all of her grandkids come to visit after school gets out. She’s always complaining about how cramped she is when they visit. This will work out just perfect!” Mavis clapped her pudgy hands together, smiling from ear to ear.
“Ida?” Toots asked. “What about it?”
“I don’t know. There’s this condition…”—Ida looked down at her hands covered in latex—“…ah…problem. I know you all think it’s irrational, but I can’t seem to help myself. I wouldn’t be an asset to the paper or to the three of you, so I should probably head on home when you all leave.”
Sophie chimed in. “So that’s a no? You won’t even give this a try? You want to spend the rest of your years wearing latex, struggling to breathe behind a mask, and smelling like bleach?”
Good old Sophie, always going straight to the heart of the matter. Toots smiled. This is what Ida needed, a good dose of reality, and there was no one better than Sophie to serve it up with a large dollop of her smart-ass humor.
Ida turned to face Toots, tears pooling in her eyes. “What should I do, Teresa? I don’t want to be like this. I’ve tried to fight it, but it’s a losing battle. And before you ask, I’ve been to three different shrinks.” She held out her gloved hands.
The three old friends had convinced Ida to get rid of the surgeon’s mask when Sophie threatened to shoot out her kneecaps. Toots figured it was more or less a start of sorts on Ida’s rehabilitation. After a little too much scotch, Ida confessed her obsession with germs started when Thomas, her last husband, died from the E. coli he’d consumed by eating tainted meat. The friends’ ready solution was unanimous:
Stop eating meat.
“I can’t make the decision for any of you. Either you want to come along or not. I can’t say it doesn’t matter one way or the other because it does matter. I would like nothing more than to have Abby’s godmothers, my oldest and dearest friends, accompany me on this adventure. And I guarantee it will be an adventure, but if you can’t or won’t, I understand,” Toots said coolly. She’d be damned if she’d reduce herself to begging.
“What the hell! If Walter dies, I’ll rush back to New York, fry his ass, and collect my money. Count me in,” Sophie said, a little too gleefully.
Toots grinned. She could always count on Sophie.
“I’m in.” Mavis giggled, evidence of too much scotch.
Toots suddenly remembered her promise to take Mavis to Liz’s Stout Shop for a new wardrobe. Maybe she could coax Bernice into doing it.
“Oh, phooey, if you girls can put up with my disorder, I suppose I could give California a try,” Ida offered hesitantly.
Toots thought her old friend looked like a deer caught in the headlights. She clapped her hands in approval. “Then it’s settled. We’ll spend tomorrow making whatever arrangements we need to make to put our current lives on hold, then it’s off to California. Deal?” She caught the eye of each woman and held out her hand, palm up. This was the secret handshake they’d had since high school.
Mavis placed her hand palm-down on top of Toots’s. Sophie laid her hand on top of theirs, then Ida, latex glove and all, placed hers gingerly on top of the others.
On the count of three, the women fanned their arms up in the air, then in unison shouted, “Deal!” Toots and Sophie each fired up a cigarette. Mavis reached for an apple from the bowl on the table, and Ida took a sip of scotch, sealing the deal.
Toots announced in a grave, solemn voice that they were about to become secret
Informers.
All she needed now was confirmation from Christopher that her offer to purchase
The Informer
had been accepted, at which point they would be bona fide
Informers.
She couldn’t wait to tell Abby her godmothers were coming to visit.
“Now that we’ve all agreed on temporarily relocating to Los Angeles, one of us needs to come up with a feasible excuse as to why we’re there. I’ve got the first week covered. I’m going to tell Abby I convinced you all to come for a visit since she wasn’t able to come east to see all of you. The second week I think we all could use a spa vacation. I’ll invite Abby along though I know she won’t go. This is as far as I’ve planned. And I’m not one hundred percent sure any of this will fly. Abby’s a smart girl. She’ll know soon enough we’re up to something,” Toots said.
“Why don’t you just tell her the truth?” Sophie suggested.
“I should, but I can’t. At least not yet. Heck, I’m not even sure that derelict she calls her boss accepted my offer. I thought for sure I’d hear something by now.” Toots was a bit worried that she was jumping the gun, but if push came to shove, they’d all have a nice visit with Abby, a trip to a fancy spa, and they’d call it a day. She could always fall back and regroup until she figured out some other way to help advance Abby’s career.
The phone rang, focusing their attention on Bernice, who answered on the second ring, then passed the phone to Toots. “It’s for you.”
“Hello? Yes?
Really?
Why, of course I will. That much? Well, I did say double the offer. Fine. And, Christopher, remember, Abby is not to get wind of this. I’ll see you day after tomorrow.” Toots hung up the phone, then waved her fist high in the air.
“Bernice, listen up! I am now the official owner/publisher of
The Informer!
Well, I will be as soon as we get to California to sign the papers and turn over the money. What do you think of that?” she asked dramatically.
Muttering and mumbling under her breath about crazy people not knowing what they were doing, Bernice returned the phone to its stand. “Lord help us all.”
“And we’re your new second-string cub reporters, right?” Sophie added.
“Not yet, but be careful of what you say. I have a sneaky feeling all of us are about to launch a new career,” Toots observed. She couldn’t help but visualize Leland gyrating six feet under at the price she’d just agreed to pay for a tabloid rag. Ten million bucks. Double what it was worth. Toots wasn’t one to give up easily. She’d make that damn paper profitable, come hell or high water. Caution warned her to keep the financial end of things to herself. She’d pay the girls a whopping salary for whatever she needed them for. Whatever came after, she’d play by ear. She’d always been pretty good at doing things on the fly.
Who would’ve thought Toots,
Teresa Amelia Louden
berry,
would be the proud owner of an honest-to-God, at least sometimes, newspaper? She could see the headlines now: R
ICH
W
IDOW
R
AISES A
R
AG!
“I can take care of the grammatical stuff. What’s proper and what isn’t,” Mavis offered.
“I am
a retired English teacher.”
“Of course you can. I never thought of that, but I assume there has to be someone who checks that sort of thing,” Toots said. “Remember, though, this is all on the QT, at least for now.”
“What about a fact-checker?” Sophie asked. “I could do that when the time is right.”
“Sophie, don’t be such an idiot. Tabloids don’t check facts. They make things up and print them. Pure and simple. Isn’t this right, Teresa?” Ida stated matter-of-factly.
“I think there’s a little more to it than that, but in a nutshell I’d say you pretty much have the gist of it. I do believe little granules of the truth are simply embellished to make it more exciting and stir up the public’s interest. At least that’s what Abby said when I asked her where she comes up with all of her stories,” Toots said.
“You know, I did work for a photographer when I first moved to New York,” Ida said, looking at the others. “I’m sure you’ll need pictures to go with your stories.”
“Ida, times have changed since you were snapping that Kodak Brownie or whatever it was back in the day. Have you ever heard of digital photography? Photoshop? How else do you think the tabloids get pictures of humans mating with aliens? They fix the photos. Can you do that?” Sophie asked her.
“I can learn. I’m not stupid, Sophie.” Ida grimaced.
“I didn’t say you were. You want to take pictures, you’re going to have to get your hands dirty. You can’t wander around Los Angeles with latex gloves on and expect all the Hollywood starlets to pose for you. They’ll look at you like you’re the nut that needs to be photographed.”
“Sophie has a point,” Toots said as she looked pointedly at Ida’s gloves.
“You’re both right. Until I get this disorder under control, I can’t run around in a dirty city filled with God knows what kind of germs and expect to act as your photographer. I’ll work in the office. That is, if you want me to.”