”So, Ms. Munroe, does that offer sound good? Or does the pot need to be sweetened?” She was still mulling that question over in her head as she stood over the stove that night, whisking a scratch barbecue sauce that she tossed together from odds and ends in her pantry. She tasted it from her wooden spoon, made a face, then added a few more lumps of brown sugar from the bag.
Just think of it, she told herself on the ride home through rush hour traffic on the parkway that jumpstarted one of her usual migraines. Catering a FILM! Her name would show up in the credits, for crying out loud! Okay, it still wasn’t like her name was going to roll across the screen during the opening music, but still, this was nothing to sneeze at. It was a pretty sweet pot.
The Spanish tile beneath her aching, bare feet felt blessedly cool as she stirred more teriyaki into the sauce and peered into the oven to check her corn bread. She stepped outside onto the cedar deck, fanning away the flies hovering near her patio door impatiently as she poked the coals on her outdoor grill with a turning fork. They were nearly ready. After taking the reins of the night’s special herself, coconut shrimp and dirty rice with grilled okra, followed by the dessert of passion fruit mousse with a cinnamon glaze, her feet ached clear up to her waist, and she spent the first few minutes of her evening at home collapsed and groaning like a beached whale, flipping between the nightly news and Seinfeld reruns. She gave up on it and plugged in her iPod instead, letting the sounds of Coldplay, John Mayer and India.Irie fill her tiny little condo and sooth her jangled nerves.
This was the kind of news that should have had her hopping for joy, but she didn’t have anyone to share it with; Betsy was out of town on a modeling shoot, and promised her she’d send her some shots of the Eiffel Tower from her Blackberry before she took the flight back into LAX. Remy had a hair show in San Diego and was exhibiting his latest collection of upsweeps and cellophane hair colors, using six different models, each one more underfed and pouty than the last. She smiled when she remembered the delighted look on his face when he opened up her gift last week, promising her that the Versace silk shirt was gonna be “da bomb” at the show when he coupled it with the boots she’d talked him into buying when they browsed Nordstrom’s on her lunch break. He’d playfully swatted her when she dubbed him “L.A.’s only openly metrosexual hairstylist that doesn’t work at Supercuts.” She only made her escape once she promised that she’d stop into his salon for a trim to remedy the split ends he’d been haranguing her about for a month.
That left her social calendar and living room despairingly empty.
She’d just laid the chicken thighs and breasts over the grill and doused them with her own piquant rub when her cell phone called her back into the kitchen, playing her a surprisingly clear rendition of Missy Elliot’s “One-Two Step.”
“Someone loves me after all,” she muttered out loud. She yanked it from her tiny Prada clutch and chirped “S’up?”
“Been keepin’ it warm for me, ya hot and sexy bee-otch!!!!” crowed a smug contralto from the other end of a phone that was breaking up slightly from noise in the background, or a lousy connection, she couldn’t tell. Friggin’ Cingular, she grumped.
“ALI! Where the hell are you? How long has it been? I’ve been dying to hear from you, you never even told me you were already back on the road. How’s the tour?”
“Remind me never again to come to Des Moines. Talk about a dead crowd; we almost got shut down when a guy jumped onstage and licked my fishnets. The boys in blue were gonna blame ME for “indecent public conduct.” Ororo laughed and could hear Ali rolling her eyes.
“I’ll take a memo. When are you headed back?”
“Already here.”
“WHAT?!? You’re shitting me! You’re back already?”
“Went on a bender on the way back through Texas. The roadies tore up the hotel room after we all got good and pissed on the local tequila. The paparazzi got a shot of me leaving hungover, and they ran it in the Enquirer claiming that I was on my way to Betty Ford to be treated for ‘exhaustion.’ Fuckers,” she growled. “I miss my freak. Come out with me tonight.”
“You just got back, are you insane?”
“Nope. I wanna paint the town. Bring a brush. Doll that ass up, let’s hit the strip. You’re singing karaoke with me,” she threatened, her voice slightly garbled as she took a bite of something and chewed it desperately. Ali was always ravenous when she came home from a tour.
“Could’ve been a little more patient, I would have fed you,” Ororo griped.
“You can take care of the dessert. Put on your face! Move that ass! Meet me at nine,” she trilled, and Ororo heard a click on the other end that allowed no excuses. She pulled her cornbread from the oven and sighed.
Looked like she was going out.
Two hours later, in a suburban neighborhood, Corona, California:
“You and Marie can keep each other company when I go on my trip,” Raven told him, seemingly directing it to her reflection as she painted her mouth expertly with mocha brown lipstick. She twisted the tube shut and deftly flicked it into her makeup case on the vanity. The cosmetics cost more than most people’s weekly grocery bill, but they were the tools of her trade. She enjoyed the laugh she got from the women at her tennis club who actually thought their “makeovers” that they came away from a Mary Kay party with was comparable to what she did to her own face, and a whole stable of celebrities every day.
“Where ya goin’ this time?” He didn’t really want to know. He just figured it was polite.
“Cancun,” she murmured, her voice low and spoken through a short upper lip as she dropped her lower one in the weird little “dead fish face” that women made when they put on mascara or curled their eyelashes. He had to admit, she was still beautiful. The only evidence of Raven Darkholme’s real age was a slight hint of turkey neck that the surgeon’s scalpel could do nothing about. Even the most clever of facelifts and eye jobs fell victim to the cruelties of turkey neck. Her veins stood out in prominent relief on her throat as she turned to face him. “Did you put a check into Anna Marie’s account this week like you promised?”
“Yeah. Sure.” He was on his way to take care of it, but she didn’t need to know that. He planned on giving Marie a little cash on the side, too, just for kicks. She’d met his question about her weekend plans with “Dunno. Might do a little something. Kick back. Call a few friends.” That meant a kegger, loud and clear. She’d need some cash and cab fare. He didn’t trust those ditzy roommates of hers to be the designated driver, no matter how much they assured him otherwise. That little Laura Logan wasn’t too bad, he’d decided; she at least made a point of offering him a cold drink the first time he’d visited Anna’s little hovel of a student apartment in West Hollywood. A menacing poster of Eminem staring sullenly and reminding James of the old posters his sister had of Billy Idol back in the eighties, decorating every wall of her room came back to him whenever he stopped by and saw it hanging by the bathroom door on his way to take a whiz.
“We’re going to be gone for a week altogether,” she announced, “just in case anything comes up, or you were wondering.”
“Eh.” He wasn’t. She still treated him like he didn’t know how to separate his colors from his whites or fold his own underwear, even though they had been divorced five years already. Anna’s hair was finally starting to grow back, dyed in colors that actually occurred in nature again after a few sessions with the family therapist when she was fourteen; she’d told them that she hated herself, and just couldn’t stand to let anyone get close to her anymore. The platinum blonde streak in her hair was the only remainder of the last nightmare of a hairstyle that she’d had during her “Goth phase,” whatever the fuck that was. And her mother successfully managed to steer her toward more sensible cosmetics, even though he didn’t think it was necessary to tell her “I don’t want you looking like someone’s derelict crack addict that frequents pool halls when my Pink Hat club stops by to visit.” Raven threw out her daughter’s drawer full of liquid black eyeliner and the matching lipstick and gave her a tour of the Clinique counter on Mother’s Day last year, ignoring the painting and raffia-tied scroll of poetry that Marie had done herself. She made an empty promise that she’d find somewhere to hang them both. They never materialized again that James knew.
“Victor got a great bonus last month. That’s how we managed to swing this trip so soon. We originally weren’t going to go until Christmas.”
“Be nice if ya saved the holiday fer Marie, fer once,” he grumbled under his breath.
“Don’t start.”
“Whaddever.” Never mind that he had a point. Fine, then; all the more of Anna Marie’s time for him to monopolize while her mom went on a toot. He never abandoned his stepdaughter when he divorced his wife. They were still like two peas in a pod.
The familiar engine of Vic’s Escalade rumbled outside, and James shot the door a disgusted look when he heard him honking the horn.
“He ain’t even gonna come in?”
“We’re running late already. Anna Marie’s due back any minute now.”
“Hope so.” His stomach growled angrily as he waited for Marie to honor their impromptu dinner date. “Safe trip, Ray.” She hated when he called her that. She didn’t rise to the bait.
“Good night, Jamie.” Although she did give as good as she got. He hated it when she called him Jamie. She left the house in a cloud of Liz Claiborne “Bora Bora.”
“Lock up for me, would you?”
“Sure.” The door slammed shut, and James stood there, once again feeling too much like a bull in a china shop as he stood in Raven’s frou-frou living room. Too many damned sculptures and knockoffs of famous statues graced every available space. She had the prerequisite Van Gogh print in a pretentious wrought iron frame, opposite an Ansel Adams waterfall on the other side. Her couches were white, a hallmark of every middle-aged trophy wife whose kids were grown and burning up tuition payments on useless majors at any of the CalPoly’s or UC’s. Raven scoffed at Marie when she voiced a desire to go to film school. James reminded her that when she had her finished B.A. and a job of her own, she could study whatever she damned well pleased.
His pocket started ringing, vibrating against his thigh. He freed his cellular from his slightly wrinkled chinos and barked “This is Jim.”
“Hey, Daddy! Do ya mind if Ah go ahead and take a raincheck?” He smothered a sigh of frustration. Dinner with her was the only bright spot of his night that he’d looked forward to.
“Something came up?”
“Carol’s parents offered ta take us ta Chi-Chi’s,” she explained. “Then Ah was gonna stay over with ‘em tonight, ‘cause they have an extra ticket ta see ‘Wicked’ in San Francisco tomorrow. Ah’ve been dyin’ ta see it.” That didn’t surprise him. Anna Marie was a dyed-in-the-wool theater buff since they went together to see “The Lion King” in Sacramento four years ago.
“Fine. Wish ya’d have called me earlier,” he pointed out.
“Sorreeeee,” she drawled. “Ah’ll make it up ta ya one of these days.”
“I’ll put a check into your account for your books,” he promised. “It’ll credit on Monday morning.”
“Oooh! Thank you, Daddy! Ah’m fine fer now, Ah’ve got a little something left fer the trip tomorrow.”
“Naw. I’ll leave some money in your mailbox, too, but make sure you check your mail before you leave, ‘kay?”
“You’re the best!”
“Yer biased,” he grinned. “Love ya, kiddo.”
“Love you, too, Daddy.”
Logan locked Raven’s deadbolts and gate on his way out; she’d left him the spare key in the interest of retaining a house sitter, in what was one of the most amiable post-divorce arrangements in southern Cali. He clicked the button on his keychain remote, popping the locks on his three-year-old black Honda Accord. He missed his Jeep Cherokee, but he couldn’t afford the second car once he started funneling Anna Marie’s child support payments into her college trust fund, along with a huge chunk of cash that it took to keep Raven comfortable in alimony. He’d loved to hear the rumble of the engine whenever he’d shifted gears in that car and took her off-road in the mountains. It had been a while since he’d gone anywhere off the Grapevine for a little R&R.
He let himself into the car and loaded his Eric Clapton disc into the tray, turning up the volume as he headed first to Anna Marie’s little apartment, then to the nearby Pollo Loco. No sense in spending more money on a fancy meal that Anna would appreciate more than he would.
After that, who knew? A Blue Cadillac margarita was calling his name. He felt like hitting that funny karaoke bar that Anna had taken him to once to watch the beautiful people make fools of themselves.
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