Palm Springs Heat (18 page)

Clay stared at the photo. He wanted
to tell his father about what was happening in his life. About Lara. How she
was different from every woman who had passed through The Rotation.

She’s not interested in having
her fifteen minutes of fame or jump-starting a career or whatever. This one’s
for real. She’s interested in
me
.

“You’d like her, Dad.”

He smiled again, this time at the
thought of a Creighton man walking down the aisle. Chase had been intimate with
an untold number of women until he met Clay’s mom and transformed, overnight,
into the consummate family guy. They never got married—too bourgeois, too conventional,
too uncool, man, for the 1960s—but Chase remained faithful to her until, still
pretty in spite of being ravaged by disease, she died on the morning Clay took
his first step.

“And, hey,” Clay said to the photo,
“tell Mom I’ve found someone who reminds me of what I think she was like.”

He slipped the picture back into
the glove box just as one of the big garage doors slid open.

“Good morning, Mr. C,” Morgan said.
“Am I interrupting something?”

“It’s never an interruption if it’s
you,” Clay answered. “Just having a moment to myself.”

The older man took out a cloth and
shined the Buick’s stately hood ornament.

 “Yeah,” Morgan said. “I come
here, too, when I want to spend a little time with your father.”

He stepped back and admired the
hood ornament over the top of his glasses. The chrome glinted in a shaft of
sunlight.

“She sure is pretty,” he said.

Clay nodded.

Morgan turned to leave.

“Morgan?”

“Yes, sir?”

“You were talking about the hood
ornament, right?”

“I could’ve been.” He winked and smiled.
“Oh, and, I assume you know Ms. V is looking for you. What should I tell her?”

“Tell her to keep her panties on.”

“No, sir, I don’t think I will. I’m
only seventy-two and still have a few good years ahead of me.”

The two men smiled at each other.

“I’ll be in her office in a few
minutes.”

“Yes, sir.” He sauntered away.

Clay looked at the photo again,
then put it back into the glove box.

* * *

Sushma had not been gone from
Lara’s room for more than two minutes when there was a knock on the door.

Finally, someone has some
manners.

Lara opened the door to see Tiffany
in a long-sleeved, red velvet minidress. One sleeve had been replaced with
black lace, and chrome-plated cotter pins and rubber loops stood in for
buttons.

“Interesting outfit,” Lara said.

Tiffany bounced into the room. “The
dress came from a thrift store in Venice.
The sleeve I found on some lacy underwear in my grandma’s old trunk. I guess
she was kind of a naughty girl.”

“So I can see.”

“These,” Tiffany said as she tugged
on a cotter pin, “I picked up at Pep Boys.”

 “It’s very nice.”

“Thank you,” Tiffany said in her
birdlike sing-song. “Now, if you eat breakfast and work out in the next hour
and fifteen minutes, you’ll have plenty of time for your sit-down with Magda.”

Tiffany punctuated her
pronouncement with a tap on her phone.

“Magda.”

“Your stylist?”

“I have my own stylist?”

“Technically, she’s the stylist for
all three of you. The girls in The Rotation, I mean. She needs to see you early
today so she can do an evaluation.”

Lara looked at her, waiting for
more.

“You know: Face shape. Skin tone.
Follicle analysis.”

“Something to look forward to.”

“Oh, no. Magda’s totally boss.
You’ll like her. After she’s done with the eval, she’ll do your face and hair,
and then it’s time to make the intro video.”

Ah, yes, the intro video.
Lara had watched the intro videos of all the past new Rotation members.

“No worries,” Tiffany continued. “I
already worked here when Corynne did hers. They prep you and make it pretty
clear what you should say—but not too clear, because it’s supposed to sound,
you know, real. And, of course, Mr. C will be there the whole time.”

“Oh?” Though prepared, Lara felt a
case of the butterflies coming on. Hearing Clay would be there made something
else flutter inside her.

“Great,” she said. “If Mr. C is
there, what could go wrong?”

14

The session with Magda turned out
to be, as Tiffany predicted, totally boss. Magda stood barely five feet tall
and had a round figure. Like a lot of women on the far side of seventy, she had
big, coiffed hair. But unlike lots of women her age, she wore very little
makeup—something Lara noticed only when Magda commented, in a grandmotherly
Eastern European accent, “I am happy to see you are not gunk up your face.”

“I’ve never been great at makeup. I
really like what you’ve done.”

“Ach, what I have done? Is right
there already. All I do is bring out what is natural. You are having such nice
shick bonns.” She outlined Lara’s cheek with her finger. “Now I ask: Why you
are coloring over your pretty blond hairs?”

Lara felt a buzz of fear. Dyed
hair—so easy for a professional to spot. “I just wanted to…try something
different,” she lied.

“Ho, well. Will grow out again, so
is no harm.” Magda squinted and pointed to her temple. “But always remember:
What is natural, that is the most beautiful.”

Despite Magda’s demonstrated
abilities, Lara balked at having her hair up for the intro video. Up was how
Lara wore her hair when she cleaned her oven or lumped around the apartment
alone. Hair worn up was glamorous—for other women.
Women who have prettier
foreheads.

“I don’t know,” Lara protested. “It
doesn’t seem to be me.”

“If not you, then who does it
seem?”

“Let’s just say I’d rather not.”

“Why you would rather not?”

“I have kind of a big forehead.”

“Ach. How can forehead be
big
?
Is exactly right size, or you would be having different forehead.”

Magda slung Lara’s hair low, then
swept it back up past her ears and swiveled the chair around so Lara could see.

Lara gently patted her new ’do,
then retraced Magda’s outline of her attractively highlighted shick bonns.

“Hair is ulleginn. Claasic.
Everybody can see more of your pretty face.”

“My father used to say that.”

“A father always know true how
beautiful his daughter.”

Lara looked at Magda in the mirror.
The elder woman nodded.

“And not just shick bonns and
boops,” Magda scolded, grabbing her ample breasts to accentuate her meaning. “A
good father see into his daughter heart and soul. That is where the beauty.”

Lara cringed.

“You make ice like you don belief?
All
good man see this tings. Not just father. Boyfrenn. Lover. Hussbin.”

Magda’s eyebrows arched high when
she said that last one. Lara didn’t know what to say next. Fortunately, Tiffany
bubbled into the room. “They said I should come in and find out when Miss D
will be ready.”

“What do you ting?” Magda said,
spinning Lara around.

“Wonderful,” Tiffany said. “I like
how—” She finished the thought by outlining her own cheeks. “I’ll tell them any
minute.”

Lara got up to go.

“Now, you and your wonderful shick
bonns and forehead…go and knock them for dead, yes?”

“Yes, I will. I
will
knock
them for dead.”

She hugged Magda, then headed into
the studio, ready for her close-up.

* * *

Unfortunately, they weren’t ready
for Lara. The studio contained more equipment than any movie set she could
remember from when she worked with Kyle. The décor, on the other hand,
consisted of a king-sized bed buried under a mound of throw pillows in front of
a curtain. A huge crystal vase on a nightstand overflowed with freshly cut
honeysuckle, narcissus and foxglove.

A bedraggled assistant acting as
Lara’s placeholder sat uncomfortably on the bed. Spike, who today had pink
hair—
What happened to the chrome?
—and was dressed like an undertaker
from a spaghetti western, ordered another bedraggled assistant to move a
spotlight imperceptibly back and forth. Each time he massaged his chin as he
studied the results, and each time he shook his head before barking, “Left!” or
“Right!” or “Toward China!
No—
San Dimas
!”

“Hey, elegant
hair.”
Corynne swiped a hand up and over her own forehead.

“Thanks. It was Magda’s idea.”

“Yeah, she’s good at that whole
‘finding the inner you’ thing.”

“Where’s Taequanda?”

“She’s not involved in this. The
No. 2 girl always introduces the newbie.”

Lara nodded politely. Though she
had come to feel at ease with Taequanda, she hadn’t gotten to know Corynne at
all. Corynne seemed to be more guarded than Taequanda. Then again, Lara had
been guarded around Corynne.

“So, they got you all prepped?”
Corynne asked.

“Prepped? Not really. Actually, not
at all.”

“Oh, wow. They had me spend a
couple of hours with Spike and the corporate image people before we shot mine.”

Right. And I’m going in cold.
Lara’s brow crinkled.
And my stupid forehead looks like a hairless shar-pei.

“No worries, though.” Corynne
patted Lara’s arm. “They probably think you’re already good at this kind of
thing because of your experience in the movie business.”

“But I didn’t work in front of the
camera.”

“Really? Huh. I guess I had a
completely different impression.”

In the credits, Lara had been
Kyle’s director of public relations. She did appear in several movies as an
extra and doubled for blond actresses in back shots. The one time she got to
face the camera, she stood so deep in shadows that no one could see her.

 “
Moi, moi, moi
, but
aren’t we looking like a movie star?” Spike studied Lara’s face, then leaned
way back so he could scan her body, too. He tugged at the waist of Lara’s black
chemise, nodded approvingly, then lightly pinched her chin and moved her head
up and down and from side to side.

“You’ve done something with…” He
pointed to his own cheeks, then: “No, wait. More like…” He swiped his hand
across his forehead.

“It was Magda’s idea. You like it,
right?”

He continued looking at Lara for an
uncomfortably long time. “Yes, me do,” he effused. “Me likey. A-lots.”

He spun around again, made a wide,
dramatic circle with one arm and announced, “Let’s go, pee-pull!” and finished with
three crisp claps.

* * *

“We have to take our places.”
Corynne took Lara’s hand and led her to the bed. They climbed onto it and sat
with their legs tucked under them. Spike played with the miscreant
spotlight—the one trained on Lara—a little more, his constant clucks and frowns
indicating he was having no better luck than before. The brightness stung
Lara’s eyes so that she did not see Sushma come up to the bed.

“I am pleased to see that everyone
is so chipper today.”

Lara squinted. “I’m glad to see
you, too. Nobody’s said anything about what I should talk about, and Corynne
said—”

“The purpose of the video is to
introduce you to the world. Your biography, so to speak.”

“But wasn’t someone supposed to
prep me?”

“Are you not familiar with your own
life story?”

The old cat-and-mouse game
again.

“So, I should just talk about…me?”

“You should be able to handle that
without needing to rehearse.”

“Of course. I just want to make
sure we’re on the same page.”

Sushma made a motion with her
fingers and an assistant handed her a manila folder filled with papers.

“Perhaps this would help.”

Lara slid out the first sheet and
tried to make sense of what she was reading. The second page had more of the
same. So did the third. And all the ones that followed.

“Who told you—” Lara could hear
herself getting louder, so she paused to collect her wits before continuing
more quietly. “Who told you all this?”

“You do not know?”

“Kyle.”

“Does reading about these events
disturb you?”

“What
events
? None of what
it says here ever happened.”

“In that case, you might
not
want to talk about them in your introduction video.” Sushma snatched the file
and marched away, leaving Lara with a dry mouth and sweaty palms.

“Okaaay, pee-pull, let’s get
rolling!” Spike clapped again. An assistant opened a door and Clay strode in.
Lara took solace in his confidence—and in the thought of what was underneath
his signature white cotton shirt.

As he got onto the bed, Clay said,
“Yo, Spiker, ease up on the death ray.”

He brought his sparkling golden-rimmed
irises to within a few inches of Lara’s. “Hey, babe. Like your hair. I can see
more of your face.”

Things are better already
.
She wiped her hands on the bedspread.

Clay squeezed Lara’s shoulder as he
nestled into the mountain of pillows. “Come back over this way a little,” he
said, patting the space between them. “You’ll go blind over there.” Lara
started to move back—but Corynne moved faster, crawling in between Lara and
Clay and kissing him on the cheek.

“Hey, Corr. Feeling kinda gung ho?”
Clay’s voice contained no hint of sarcasm or surprise. Lara, though, felt a
flash of heat as Corynne arched her back and stuck her little
twenty-three-year-old butt in the air.

Who does she think she is?

For some reason, at that moment,
Lara noticed that Clay wore slippers. Expensive ones, for sure—they were Ugg
Romeos—but still incongruous, considering the rest of his wardrobe.