Seeing Stars (36 page)

Morganstern? Vee hadn’t said this was a Jewish psychic. Could Jews
be
psychic?

“I’m a Morganstern by marriage,” the psychic said, looking amused even though Ruth hadn’t said a word. “My maiden name is Guòjónsdóttir. I’m Icelandic. You noticed the accent.”

“How did you know I was thinking that?”

The woman just smiled.

“You know, I’m not really comfortable with this,” Ruth said.

“With—?” Elva opened her arms wide, taking in the whole room and, presumably, the activities that happened therein.

Ruth nodded.

“That’s all right. A lot of people feel that way the first time they come here.” The psychic dropped her yogurt container in a wastebasket. “Thanks for letting me eat my breakfast, by the way. I know it’s not very professional. All right, then, let’s do this—let’s get your payment taken care of. I do ask for it up front, so that will be fifty dollars for a half hour. I take Visa, MasterCard, Discover, or American Express.” She took a credit card machine out of the desk. “Or cash, of course, but no one really uses cash anymore, do they?”

Ruth pulled a Visa card out of her wallet. There’d be no fooling Hugh when he saw the statement. She chose not to think about it. The psychic swiped the card and punched in a few numbers very efficiently, as though she could take people’s money even in her sleep. Then she smiled at Ruth and said, “Let’s go in and see what we can see. Yes, right through there.”

They went into an inner room. Ruth half-expected to see some sort of clinical equipment, but instead there was a large potted ficus; a batik quilt showing a river, a deer, and a log cabin; a small blond credenza; a large blond desk; and two comfortable-looking chairs that Ruth recognized from IKEA. Ruth sat in hers and bounced a little. At IKEA they had a display that showed the exact same chair being pummeled over and over by a piston, presumably to show the chair’s durability and resilience.

The psychic sat down on a small loveseat opposite Ruth, took a deep, slow breath, and said, “Let’s dim the lights. Okay?”

Ruth sat forward on the edge of her seat.

“You’re nervous about this, aren’t you?” said the psychic.

“I know I’m being silly. Go ahead.”

The psychic turned a dimmer switch and the room darkened. Ruth could see a palm tree in the outside yard casting a shadow on the window.

“Now,” said the psychic. “Let’s see the hand.”

“What?”

Elva pointed. “Your hand.”

“Oh!” Ruth turned her hand over. The psychic placed it, helpless as a turtle, across her knee and then stroked the palm with her index finger, over and over. The palm began to sweat. It tickled, and Ruth could feel herself on the brink of nervous, hysterical giggles. She cleared her throat. Elva Morganstern smiled pleasantly. “You really
are
uncomfortable with this, aren’t you?”

Ruth sighed. “I’m trying not to be.”

“You know, a lot of people who come here feel exactly the way you do. And I should come clean.” She inclined toward Ruth confidentially and said, “I can’t cure cancer and I won’t be sacrificing a goat.”

“What?” Then Ruth realized she was being teased. “Oh!”

The psychic settled back, smiling. “Is there anything in particular that you want me to pay attention to?”

“Well, we’re here—that is, my daughter and I—so she can act, but I’m beginning to have my doubts about whether it’s a good idea. I used to think I knew, but she’s only booked one thing in six months, and I gather when she turns fourteen, which is in June, she’ll start being at an in-between age where she won’t be booking anything, maybe for a couple of years, and yet I don’t want to cheat her of opportunities because we are
not quitters
, so if I just had some sense of an
outcome
…” Ruth wound down, winded and embarrassed.

“All right. I need to close my eyes for a minute. It helps me gather things up.”

Ruth watched the psychic’s beautiful Viking bones. Her eyelids were a faint, marbled blue, and beneath them Ruth could see her eyes moving around. That was a little unnerving. What was she seeing back there? When she abruptly opened her eyes, Ruth jumped.

“Well!” said Elva, smoothing her hair like she’d been caught in a high wind. Then she cleared her throat.

“What?”

“Are you stuck—do you feel stuck in place right now? Because I’m sensing that something will break loose for you in the next couple of weeks,” Elva said. “There’s a different energy. It may be health-related, and it may act like an opportunity of some kind. I sense a fork in the road, a place where you can choose a direction to move in.”

“Health-related—is it Hugh, my husband? Because he’s diabetic, except we only found out recently, and I’ve been—well, to tell the truth, I’ve been
annoyed
with him about it, and now, if something happens to him, it’s going to be
my fault
somehow—”

“I don’t think so.”

“
Bethany?
Oh my God—”

Elva grasped Ruth’s hand firmly, as though to keep her from blowing away. “There’s no reason to think this is something frightening. It may be something that is, in itself, very minor. All I know is, the energy is different, and it may give you a chance to look at your circumstances differently. It doesn’t mean you’ll change what you’re doing; it may just mean you’ll reaffirm it.”

But Ruth was busy thinking. “Is it me? Because if something’s going to happen to
me
, I’ll need to put someone on standby for Bethy, maybe Vee Velman—”

The psychic sighed. “I don’t know. No, I don’t think so. You know, it’s best not to take these signs literally.”

Ruth sensed that the woman was getting annoyed, but what did she expect when she was doling out alarming news? “Can’t you look again? Maybe a little harder? Maybe if you squint—”

“It really doesn’t work that way.”

Ruth subsided. So that was it, then; a vague warning about a health issue that could be anything from hives to a heart attack. Ruth felt like she’d put twenty quarters in a gumball machine that had burped out a single misshapen gumball and then died. Fifty dollars, and she felt worse now than she had an hour ago. She could just hear Hugh’s patient voice in her head, saying, “For heaven’s sake, Ruthie, what did you expect? What you do down there is
our
decision, nobody else’s.” And he’d be right, of course.

But still.

And just like that, the psychic stood up and Ruth’s half hour was over. She shook Ruth’s hand very cordially and Ruth walked out of the room and out of the house and got into her hot car and headed straight to Porto’s on Hollywood Boulevard and Magnolia and methodically consumed a chocolate mousse, an éclair, a slab of Neopolitan ice cream, and a Diet Pepsi. Then she called Vee and reported what the psychic had said.

“Don’t freak out,” Vee reassured her. “I mean, she obviously had low blood sugar, right, with the yogurt thing. So that could make the reception go all haywire, right?”

“It’s not TV,” said Ruth.

“Well, yeah, but she’s getting signals, right?”

“I guess.”

“Anyway,” said Vee, “you don’t know.”

“Here’s something I do know: I just ate thirty dollars worth of baked goods.”

“Ooh. Where’d you go?”

“Porto’s.”

“Yum,” said Vee. “What did you have?”

Ruth told her. “They were good and everything, but I mean, for that much money they should have had gold flakes in them or something. And get this—Bethy’s at a class right now that costs a hundred and ninety-five dollars. For three hours.”

“The kids’ stunt school costs eight hundred and seventy-five each,” Vee said reassuringly. “Better?”

“No. I feel just as worried and now I’m about two thousand calories fatter, on top of it.”

“Look at it this way,” said Vee supportively. “You’re now a bona fide Southern Californian.”

T
HE MORNING AFTER THE CALLBACKS
, J
OEL
S
HERMAN HAD
phoned Mimi Roberts to tell her that neither Bethany Rabinowitz nor Allison Addison would be going any further with
After
. That was the language casting directors used to soften the blow:
she won’t be going any further
. The fact was, the Rabinowitz girl had never had a shot anyway, he’d just wanted to see what she could do with the role. But Allison Addison was a different story. She had had a shot, so imagine his surprise when the kid had turned into a train wreck.

“I’m dandy,” she’d said, though she’d looked like she might pass out. “Just dandy.” False and bright as a theater moon. She was stunning, he’d give her that, but she’d been too nervous to hang on to her character. Which was funny, because he hadn’t remembered her as a nervous kid, but just the opposite: the last couple of times he’d seen her, she’d been a little too breezy and a little too flip. It had been just as well that at the table, Camilla David had been on her BlackBerry lining up her next lay.

“Look,” he’d told Mimi Roberts when she tried to finagle another chance. “The kid choked. And if she’s going to—”

“What do you mean, choked?”

“Just what I said—she got nervous. Freaked out. Then she tried to talk me into a mix-and-match so she’d have a scene partner. If she’s going to try and direct
me
, what’s she going to do with Gus Van Sant? I had to physically walk her out of the room before she finally gave up. Kid must get her way a lot.”

He could hear the woman wheezing on the other end of the line, weighing her options.

“Look,” he said impulsively. “Keep an eye on her. Something’s odd there.” Never let it be said that he was a cold and callous bastard. He’d done his bit, run the old storm flag up the flagpole. When he hung up, Mimi Roberts still hadn’t said a word.

Goddamn managers.

I
T CAME AS NO SURPRISE THAT
B
ETHANY WAS DONE
. M
IMI
had guessed that Joel was just trying her out, seeing how she’d do with a part completely different from the one she’d played on
California Dreamers
. Ruth Rabinowitz, of course, had nearly broken down on the phone, so real had been her evident delusion that Bethany had ever had a shot.

But Mimi was deeply disappointed that Allison, too, had been dropped. She had had hopes that the girl might have a real shot at Carlyle. Jumping ahead into a lead role wasn’t unprecedented for a young actor with Allison’s looks and capabilities.
Unlikely
, yes, but by no means impossible.

But Joel’s warning, though chilling, rang true. Mimi didn’t know where the girl’s mind was these days. She’d been uncharacteristically edgy over the last couple of weeks, alternately agitated and subdued. Except for Carlyle the girl had shown no interest at all in the several costar auditions Mimi had sent her on. She’d been so disruptive in Donovan’s last two sessions that he’d taken Mimi aside and told her point-blank that unless Allison could settle down, he’d have to ask her to leave the class. And now she’d fallen apart at an audition, when she’d always been one of Mimi’s most rock-solid, reliable actors. You could throw the girl into the deepest ocean and she’d come up with something that floated every time.

Mimi was well aware that Allison was exactly the age when children began leaving the business in droves: they asserted their independence about what they would or would not do, informing the stage moms that they wanted to go to “real” school or that their real ambition was to become a doctor or engineer. Allison might be no exception, though she’d always seemed to have the perfect temperament for a career in the industry: focused without being obsessive, able to let go once an audition was over and move on.

It was five thirty on a Saturday afternoon; the studio was at an uncharacteristic lull. Mimi sat for some minutes, thinking in the quiet. Then she did something nearly unprecedented: she closed and locked the empty studio’s front door and picked up the phone to make a call she’d probably been putting off for too long. Allison’s mother, Denise, answered on the second ring, and the minute she heard Mimi’s voice she said, “Oh, god
damn
it. You were supposed to be my attorney.”

“Well, I’m not, but I need a few minutes to talk with you. Can we do that?”

Allison’s mother said, “I guess, but I’m warning you right now, if my attorney calls, I’m hanging up on you.” Mimi heard the sound of a disposable lighter and the long first inhalation of a cigarette. “So is my kid in trouble?”

“I’m not sure. She’s been acting out.”

“Isn’t that what she’s supposed to be doing? I mean, we’re paying through the nose for her to be there.” She sounded sulky.

“Acting
out
,” Mimi said. “Acting inappropriately.”

“Oh. Like what does that mean exactly?”

“She’s been spending a fortune on beauty products, she’s starting to dress like a twenty-year-old, and she’s disruptive around the other kids in class. Her head’s not in the game.”

Denise exhaled straight into the phone receiver. “So what exactly did you have in mind?”

“I don’t have anything in mind,” Mimi said. “I was hoping you’d have some insights.”

“Nope. Not really. Are you still being stalked, by the way?”

“What?”

“Allison told me you had a stalker so everyone’s phone numbers and e-mails had to be changed. I haven’t talked to her in a couple of weeks. She won’t return my calls.”

“So she hasn’t confided anything in you, then,” Mimi said.

“What do you mean?”

“Some kind of problem.”

Denise laughed so hard she ended up in a coughing fit. Mimi considered the possibility that she was drunk. “Problems? Allison? What problems could she possibly be having? Why don’t you ask me about
me
? Because
I’ll
tell you about problems. My husband’s been cheating on me and my marriage is ending and I have a fucking lawyer who won’t return my calls, and everything in general is just turning to shit.
Those
are problems.”

“How much of this does Allison know?”

“All of it, honey. I have no secrets. I’ve told her she’s going to have to come back home, too. She’s my only family.”