Waking Beauty (23 page)

“Um, before you go, why don’t you give me your info?” said Nathan, fishing out a pen and notebook from his khaki knapsack.

“All right.” I scrawled my address and phone number, and took his, even though I knew he was in the book because I had looked him up months ago for no practical reason.

“So, listen,” he said. “I know this is a long shot, but are you by any chance free on Saturday night?”

“I have no plans,” I said. “Except to read your script.”

“I’ve got a much better idea. Why don’t you come over for dinner? I’ll cook something, we can watch the movie…”

“That sounds good.”

“I make excellent lasagna. You like lasagna?”

“What’s not to like?”

“Good. ‘Cause I have an amazing recipe from an old Italian woman who used to live on my parents’ street.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. She made an industrial-sized pan of lasagna once for some local community event, and everyone went gaga over it. For years people begged her for the recipe, but she refused to give it out until she was, like, a hundred and three and on her deathbed.”

“So her last words were ‘Bake at three seventy-five for sixty minutes?’”

Nathan smiled. “I’ll never tell.” He stuck the notebook and pen back into his knapsack and slung it over his shoulder. “I should probably make the sauce tonight; it’s better if you prepare it in advance. Oh, do you like artichokes? The recipe involves fresh artichokes.”

“I do. I do like artichokes.”

“And you eat meat?”

“Anything with a face.”

“Okay, great. So I’ll see you on the patio at break tomorrow night?”

“Definitely.”

A quick kiss and he was off, backpack bobbing as he dodged jaunty through the early rush-hour crowd that was starting to stream in, weary and purposeful, from the street.

9    

Un grand surprise
when I arrived home. Virginie was
gone. And so was her stuff. The apartment was a shambles and the daisies that Fraser sent had been neatly decapitated. A new note sat at the base of the vase, next to the two snapshots of Old Allison snoozing on the sofa. The note said:
Fuck You! Fuck your fat friend also!!!
I crumpled the note and tossed it in the trash. I was going to throw the photos away, but something stopped me. I guess I couldn’t completely part with my old ugly self. I folded them in half and stuck them in my pocket.

My next impulse was to bolt into my room to check for wreckage. Happily, everything in there appeared intact (it wasn’t until the following afternoon that I discovered the bitch had taken a malicious knife to my Le Château slut dress and deposited the shredded remains under my futon). Then I went to check the answering machine. But there was no answering machine. And no microwave and no thick-slice toaster and no coffee table and no VCR and no DVD player and no hall mirror and no bath mat and and and…

I didn’t have time to deal with it. I would deal with it when I got home from work. With rent looming, and no Virginie to pony up half of it, I couldn’t afford to be late.

Oddly enough, impending bankruptcy didn’t squelch my spirits. I was in a fab mood when I said sayonara to Nathan in the subway, and was still in an elated state as I went along my route, blithely ridding 505 Richmond of its garbage. I felt especially cheered when I entered Peter Igel’s office and found that it was beginning to smell quite strongly of decaying
meat. He had erroneously identified his garbage can as the source of the stench and placed it just outside his office door with a Post-it note attached:
Please empty and scrub out
. God, I was sick of those notes. I dumped the can, took it to the IZ Talent Management kitchen, and washed it in the sink.

As I was returning it to where it belonged, I stopped to peruse some photographs laid out on Igel’s desk: two female models, one of whom I recognized from billboards or television. Both of them were exceptionally beautiful, particularly Amber, the one on the left. A handwritten note clipped to her head shot said:
Peter, what do you think? Just Natasha? Can’t we include Amber or Geneva
? A corner of paper was sticking out from under the smiling Amber photo. I lifted her up and found a sheet of cream-colored paper embossed with the Calet fragrance logo. WORLDWIDE SEARCH FOR THE NEW FACE OF CALET #7, it said in bold across the top.
We Are Currently Conducting a Worldwide Search for the Next Star of an Exciting New Campaign Featuring Celebrated Directors from Three Continents!
The concept of the promotion was to have a trio of hotshot movie directors each film a television commercial in and around the Getty Museum. The idea was to evoke one of the following attributes of Calet #7: Femininity, Timelessness, Sophistication. I recognized two of the directors’ names: Jason Soderman (who would be shooting the Sophisticated element) and Lucas Masson (who would be handling Timeless). The Asian one I’d never heard of: Kwan Shui-Mei (Feminine).

I put the photos back the way I’d found them and collected my cart. As I was leaving the agency, I noticed another one of Igel’s Post-its stuck to an IZ Talent envelope at the reception desk. A closer inspection revealed that the envelope was addressed to the Calet people. When I ducked behind the desk and ripped it open, I found a cover letter from Igel, plus a résumé and photo for Natasha (apparently, Amber and Geneva hadn’t been deemed Feminine, Timeless, or Sophisticated enough for the gig). After reviewing her résumé and concluding that she was not hurting for cash, I tore her in
half and tossed her in my trash bin. Then I dug out the blurry snapshots of Old Allison from my pocket, smoothed them out, and stapled them to Igel’s cover letter. I slid the thing into a fresh IZ Talent envelope, sealed it, copied out the Calet address, and placed it back on the reception desk with Igel’s Post-it note on top:
Please FedEx ASAP
!

A blue sports car…yes, George’s baby-blue Vanquish parked illegally on the curb when I got home from work. Who knows how long he had been waiting for me.

“You’re alive,” he said, jumping out of the automobile.

“Just barely. I’m kind of bagged. How are you?”

“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you since yesterday afternoon. Didn’t you get my messages?”

“I didn’t. And there’s a good reason for that. Come on in,” I said reluctantly. I would now have to do something I had never had the opportunity or misfortune to do before. Break up with someone.

George followed me up the walk and onto the porch. “What are you wearing?” He seemed puzzled by my massive Old Allison T-shirt. My greasy hair was tangled in a topknot, and my only pair of jeans were getting grungy, and starting to smell alarmingly like Frito’s corn chips.

“I was at work,” I said.

“Work? What work?” He followed me inside.

“I’ve been filling in for Allison while she’s away.”

“Filling in where? Hey, what the hell happened to this place?”

“Virginie bugged out. Just took her stuff and split. Including the answering machine, which is why I didn’t get your messages.” I dropped my keys on the kitchen table. “I think she may have moved in with Fraser.”

“Like hell she did. I spoke to him two hours ago and he was all distraught because she left this wicked message on his cell.”

“Really? What message?” I hid my smile by turning away and opening the fridge.

“That she never wants to speak to him again and that he can forget about getting his camcorder back.”

“Jesus, she took the food, too.” The fridge was almost entirely stripped of its contents. “I guess I can’t offer you anything, except for some Sunny Delight, or a glass of salad dressing…some bacon fat in a jar.”

“I’m fine. Is there any water?”

“Tap water.”

“Never mind, I’m okay.” He was pacing around, restless.

I carried the Sunny Delight to the table and sat down. “So did he say anything else?” I unscrewed the lid and took a swig. Did George know about my libidinous doorway clinch with Fraser? Was he here to break up with
me
?

“Just that they’d had a big fight, I don’t know. I don’t really know him that well. Don’t you want a glass?”

“Does this bother you?”

“Not especially.”

I took another swig.

“So what’s this work you’re doing?”

“Oh, just filling in for Allison, helping a family down the street clean an office building downtown.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No. Why?”

“That’s ridiculous. You shouldn’t be helping families clean office buildings. That’s absurd.” He laughed.

“Why? I’m helping out my friend and I’m earning some money.”

“I thought you were on vacation?”

“Well, I’m thinking I might stay for a while.”

“Oh, good. That’s good. I’m seeing many weekends at the cottage. Whi—”

“Oh, that reminds me. About the Cecilia Bartoli thing on Saturday—”

“Forget that. I gave the tickets away.”

“Oh…”

“That’s why I’m here,” said George. He smiled and
handed me a rectangular white card. It was embossed with a stylish silver logo:
H&E
.

I read:
You are cordially invited to the opening of Heaven & Earth
. “What is it?” I asked, flipping the card over.
This invitation is nontransferable
.

“A new club, the
only
decent nightclub in Muskoka. I mean, this ain’t some country club with a dance floor and a deejay. This place was über-designed from the ground up. They’ve been working on it forever. And it’s going to be an amazing party, impossible to get into and probably crawling with celebs that have places up there. Kurt and Goldie, maybe Kate Hudson, and I heard Steve Martin, and Matthew Broderick, who’s shooting a movie in the area.” George was all excited, pacing, pacing. “Anyway, the guy who owns it designed some offices for Father last year. Hence the invite.”

It was then that I noticed the name of “the guy who owns it” on the white rectangle, and realized, with a small shiver, that what I was holding in my hand was not just an invitation to the grand opening of the
only
decent nightclub in cottage country, but also a direct-access pass to my adopted father, the elusive Simon Penny.

“So I was thinking, you should come with me for the weekend. You could pack up now, spend the night at my place, and we could leave in the morning.”

“What,
this
weekend? I can’t.” Saturday night. Nathan. Deathbed Lasagna.

“Why? You’d love it up there. We have a brand-new hot tub overlooking the lake, boats galore, and this party is going to be amazing, seriously.”

“It’s just—well, for one thing, I have to work tomorrow night.”
So I’ll see you on the patio at break tomorrow night? Definitely
.

“Cleaning the building with the family?” He laughed. “Just call in sick, quit!”

“I don’t think I can do that.” He’s making the sauce in advance. Fresh artichokes are involved.

George was incredulous. “You’re telling me you can’t get a better job than that?”

“No, I intend to. It’s just—well, I don’t really have any marketable skills, and this job was handed to me.”

“Well, hand it back. I don’t like you doing that, anyway. You don’t need to be doing that.” He waved his hand dismissively.

“But I do need to be doing it. I have to pay Allison’s rent at the end of the month. Now that Virginie has taken a powder, I’m going to have to pay her rent, too. Plus, my credit card is smoking, I have about twenty-seven dollars to my name…so, yes, I’m afraid I do need to be doing it.”

“Well, cripes, Allison, I can lend you some money. Why didn’t you just ask? What do you need? A couple thousand?”

“You would do that?”

“Sure. No problem. What do you need, a few thousand? How about three? Would three tide you over?”

I hesitated. “You want to just lend me three thousand dollars?”

“I have a checkbook in the glove compartment. I’ll go grab it. And listen, I’m supremely confident that, skills or no skills, a gal like you could walk into any number of establishments tomorrow and get hired like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Any bar, any makeup counter, any clothing boutique…I mean, think about it.” He snapped his fingers again. “Like that.”

It was true; a “gal like me” could get hired pretty easily. And with three thousand dollars in my pocket, I wouldn’t have to go back to 505 Richmond. No more garbage carts, no more Peter Igel, no more Andrew McKay and
WUT Up
magazine. Also, no more patio breaks with Nathan, but I no longer needed 505 Richmond to rendezvous with him. I felt a strange comingling of relief and nausea as George strode back into the apartment, sat down at the kitchen table, and began filling out the check.

“This is good. Now you can come with me, right?” He
ripped the check out of the book and held it up. “It’s really beautiful up there.”

“Um…” I stared at the name on the invitation. Direct Access. Real face time with my adoptive father. Maybe I could chat him up and ask him about his past, find out why, after battling for custody, he hadn’t kept in touch with his daughter. Maybe I could even tell him who I was; after all, he hadn’t seen me since I was five years old. Wasn’t it possible that I had blossomed into something beautiful? Maybe we’d hit it off, really like each other. He’d invite me to visit him in L.A.; I could stay in the guesthouse by the pool….