Ms. Taken Identity (13 page)

Overall it’s not much different. But there’s something about it that makes me look sharper, more
GQ
. I’d give myself a second look, I think. “I like it.”

“Fan-tastic!” she says, whipping the poncho off. Then her face gets serious. “Forty-five dollars, you can pay Samantha up
front.”

I don’t say a word.

“Ha! Gotcha!” She slaps my back and roars. “You thought I was serious, didn’t you? I tell you, I crack myself up sometimes.
No, this one’s on the house, so that now you’ll come back when you realize you can’t live without a Rosie-do.”

I get out of the chair and give my foot a shake, to get a clump of hair off my shoe.

“But I do need some of that styling stuff,” I say. “The pomade.”

“You sure do.” She reaches for her container. “Take this one, I’ve got plenty.”

“No, I want to buy it.”

She shrugs. “Suit yourself, Moneybags. Samantha will get you a new one.”

I reach into my pocket and pull out a five and try to slip it to her. “For a tip, at least.”

“Oh,
pu-leeez
,” she says, brandishing her scissors, threatening to cut Abe Lincoln in half. “You want to pay me back? Give me some dance
time on Monday, instead of letting Marie hog you. That’s what you can do for me.”

“Deal,” I say.

She does a little salsa step and points at me. “I’m holding you to that.”

Marie and I go up to the counter, where Samantha rings me up, then Marie walks me to the front door.

“So, how’s the day been?” I ask.

“Extremely busy, all morning and most of the afternoon.” She’s wearing a lace cami in lilac and ivory palazzo pants, her hair
flat-ironed and brushing her collarbone. She always looks decent for lessons, but I’ve never seen her like this, so sophisticated,
stylish, feminine. “We just slowed down about twenty minutes ago. So good timing on your part.”

“And you get off soon?”

“Less than an hour. I have one more appointment.” She tilts her head and fingers one of her hoop earrings. “Actually, Rosie
and Samantha and I are planning to head out for a rush-hour movie, then off to dinner. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind if you
wanted to join us.”

Absolutely, I’d love to join them. Spend some time with Audrey Hepburn and Rosie and this version of Marie. But my little
outing here has already cost me time I’d planned to spend writing. “You know, as much as I’d like to, I think I’ll have to
pass…”

She gives me a coaxing look. “You sure?” The way she’s standing in the light, her eye shadow brings out the tiniest flecks
of green in her eyes.

Of course, maybe I could pick up some good tidbits for the book, in which case it wouldn’t be pleasure at all, but work. “Well
… maybe just for the movie.”

“Great!” she says, her face brightening.

Their plan is to leave at four, so I have about forty-five minutes to kill. I tell her I’m just going to walk around, investigate
the neighborhood. I lean into the door with my elbow and push it open.

“Oh, and Jason?” Her gaze doesn’t quite meet mine, then she nudges it up a bit. “Rosie did a good job with your hair. You
look great.”

“As ‘Customer Jason’?”

“Nah. Just Jason.”

Remember that sensation as a kid, getting a brand-new pair of sneakers with spongy new soles, and lacing them up and tearing
through your backyard or up the street, thinking you were faster, lighter, springier, and look out rabbits and squirrels,
I just might catch up with you? Didn’t you feel quick as the wind? I did. Walking down Wilshire Boulevard, passing other people
strolling on the sidewalk and greeting them, that’s a bit how I feel right now: changed,
springier
, more confident, ready to take on anything, like I want to make eye contact, see and be seen. I feel…
better
about myself. And it’s silly, really, because nothing has changed: a few hairs trimmed, a few others pushed a different way,
some goop mixed in, just like nothing had changed all those years ago with the shoes. It’s all in my head. But sometimes,
I guess, that’s really the only place you need it.

I duck into the antique shop first, and they have all the things you might expect—old dishes, lamps, jewelry—but they also
have a book in the glass case: a first edition of
The Hound of the Baskervilles
. I loved Sherlock Holmes as a boy, and I’d be tempted to spring for it if the eight on the price tag had only one zero after
it, not two. So I head to the bakery. The place smells great, the air swirling with vanilla and cinnamon and butter and cocoa
and ground espresso beans. I grab a coffee, then something decadent for the girls for dessert tonight.

After Rosie locks up the salon, we pile into Marie’s car, top down. Rosie and Audrey are willing to surrender their claim
to shotgun, provided I let them choose the music. Fine. Marie pops in a mix CD that has Gwen Stefani and Coldplay and Shakira,
so the entire way over I’m serenaded by The Three Stylists (never to be confused with The Three Tenors), who let me know in
all manner of vocal stylings and shrill notes and head bobbing that their hips don’t lie and they ain’t no hollaback girls.
As if I ever doubted it.

At the theater I buy a bag of candy, but I quickly find out that the Sno-Caps I paid good money for are not mine at all; they’re
community property. Marie instructs me to dump them into the tub of popcorn she bought, along with Rosie’s Milk Duds and Audrey’s
Whoppers. As she mixes it all up, Marie brings me up to speed on the rules for partaking in this buttery/chocolatey confection.
No hogging the bucket for more than sixty seconds. No rooting around to find the good stuff. Chew with your mouth closed.
Rosie tries to add a special rule, which applies only tonight and only to her: I must make out with her before the lights
come back up. I break it to her as gently as possible that I’ll probably just stick to the rules about the popcorn and chewing
with my mouth closed.

Our movie turns out to be the one with Hugh Grant and Kate Hudson where he plays a washed-up former teen TV heartthrob who’s
making a comeback, thanks to Kate, the spunky publicist who used to be president of his fan club when she was a chubby twelve-year-old
in pigtails and braces. They wind up falling in love. (Surprise.) It’s all right, if you like Hugh Grant. Of course, there
are the tear-jerking moments, like when Hugh breaks up with Kate because he thinks he’ll ruin her life if they got too serious
because he knows he’s a cad, and she flies away to Greece brokenhearted, then he flies off to win her back, which he does,
under the moonlit steps of the Parthenon. Marie and Rosie and Audrey do their share of crying, along with every other female
in the theater. At one point, Marie even passes me a Kleenex.

“I’m fine, thanks,” I whisper.

“Not for you, for Rosie,” she says, unable to pull her tear-stained eyes off the screen.

Sure enough, Rosie has the same glassy-eyed devastated look. I slip it into her hand and she starts using it without even
knowing how it got there.

After the movie, we drive back to the salon lot. They ask me once again if I want to join them for dinner, since the restaurant’s
only just down the street, and it’s Thai and delicious. But I tell them I really do need to go. Over at my car, I open the
door and the smell of the pastries hits me right away.

“Oh, hey, wait up,” I call out. “I forgot something.”

I grab the bag and trot over. Marie meets me halfway, the designated envoy. Rosie and Audrey hang back.

“What’s up?” she asks.

“I forgot to give you these.”

I hand her the bag, and even though it’s only one of those plain white, waxy ones, her face instantly lights up.

“Noni’s!” she says excitedly. She peeks inside: amoretto truffles and cannolis and dark chocolate tortes and apple fritters.

“Jason, how’d you know?”

“I asked. Noni told me the three of you come in all the time. She said those were your favorites. She also said the calories
don’t count, since I bought them. So enjoy.”

She gives me a quick hug. “That was so sweet. Thanks.”

I slow down and give a little wave to the girls as I drive by—Rosie pats her stomach and blows me at least a dozen kisses.
It’s a pleasant evening, the temperature’s perfect, but I keep the windows rolled up; it still smells like Noni’s inside and
I wouldn’t mind savoring the aroma a little longer.

Bradley takes a rain check on our Sunday basketball and day of watching football; he’d forgotten that he and Skyler have plans
for brunch and a matinee with another couple. But I don’t mind, since the writing went well last night and even better this
morning. That’s how it’s been every time I sit down, flowing through me quickly, with ease, and it’s almost like I’ve taken
an enema, which means what’s coming out should be… well, you know. But it’s not. It’s good, great actually. And if it
keeps up like this, I could be finished in a couple months.

This pace is outrageous. Writing is like chess for me, a move every hour, or ten, and I’ve been known to spend an entire day
working on a single paragraph, fretting over commas, pulling out
Moby Dick
because I want the sky to be the same gray color as Melville used for the underbelly of the great fish. But this writing
is different; it’s crisper, quicker, more bang bang: get those characters on stage and get them talking or laughing or kissing
or shopping or taking their clothes off. Get them
living
, I guess you’d call it. So it’s not like chess at all. It’s more like riding a bike: popping wheelies, letting go of the
handlebars, freewheeling and having fun, and maybe there’s some pedaling on level ground, or an uphill stretch, but mostly
it’s coasting downhill, the wind in my hair.

Now that I’ve gotten the hang of it, I’ve even jazzed up the original plot. Old storyline: Valerie is a second-tier model
who gets discovered and leaps to the big time. New storyline: Courtney (like the name?) is a hairstylist (thanks, Rosie and
Marie) in her late thirties with an ex-husband who left her for a younger woman (though she still, god help her, pines after
the asshole) and a teeny-bopper daughter; it’s the daughter who wants to head to the mall for an open casting call for models,
and Courtney takes her, but it’s
Courtney
who gets discovered. Hello extreme makeover and unlikely runway star, and handsome young studs who love the idea of bedding
an older woman, and lots of exotic trips and food and sex, and a husband who now wants her back, and she takes him, and everything
is on track for sorta happily ever after—
but hold on
—because she’s getting caught up in a web of glitz and glamour, and losing her daughter and her way and her self-respect,
and she realizes all this with the help of her lifelong male friend from college who’s always loved her from afar but could
never tell her how he truly felt, but eventually he does, and so now she must choose between staying with her ex-husband in
this seductive world that’s sucking the life out of her or starting a new life with the soulful and quietly handsome man who
thinks she’s the most beautiful woman in the world, even without makeup or fancy clothes or touched-up photo spreads. Hmm.
Who do you think she should choose?

And I’ve even come up with a title:
Catwalk Mama
. Kinda catchy, if I do say so myself.

O
ne of my favorite books of all time is a book I can’t even read because it’s written in Latin. It’s called
Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry
and it’s an illuminated manuscript, one of those medieval books with fancy first letters and lots of calligraphy and gold
leaf pages and illustrations of churches and palaces and angels. (Mine is a reproduction, obviously.) A few years back, I
bought a cheap calligraphy kit because I wanted to learn how to do it. But I didn’t. In fact, I never opened it. On Monday,
I bring the kit and another copy of the book to the studio and give them to Fran.

“I thought you might like these,” I tell her. “Since you do such creative things with your hands.”

Now it’s not like I’ve gone out and spent a fortune: the kit, as you know, I had lying around the apartment, and the book’s
under twenty-five bucks. But from Fran’s reaction, you’d think I gave her a Cadillac. She starts getting teary eyed and gives
me a hug, and I realize I’ve made a huge mistake because it’s all turning into a scene, and the fewer people who know that
our resident pharmaceutical rep has literary tastes more along the lines of a certain medievalist PhD candidate named Mitch,
the better.

Fortunately, Fran and I are off in the corner and everyone else is out on the dance floor, buzzing about something. I calm
her down as quickly as I can, then offer to take her goodies out to her car so she won’t have to lug them out after the lesson,
and thankfully, she gives me her keys. By the time I come back in, her eyes are dry and she’s retired her Kleenex, and it’s
just like nothing ever happened.

The reason for all the commotion on the dance floor, I discover, is that we have guests. Dancer guests. Shandi and Tony, Latin
Champions, Midwest Region 2008, friends of Adonis. They’re certainly dressed the part: Shandi, with heels and a shimmery outfit
that must be taped on in places to keep it from showing more; Tony, with slicked hair and a satiny shirt. And despite his
questionable judgment in leaving so many buttons unbuttoned (though I suppose when you’ve got a chest like that, you want
people to see it), they look great together. They do a demonstration, and it’s a little breathtaking the way he whips her
around, and she doesn’t break, but looks sultry and sexy and makes faces at him that suggest she’s having an orgasm.

After their bows, she comes over to work with the men, Tony with the women. I catch myself glancing over to their side every
now and again, and it’s pretty revolting the way they’re fawning over him, laughing for no reason, making googly eyes, though
I guess it’d be fair to say we’re doing our share of tripping over ourselves on this side. I realize this whole Shandi/Tony
thing is a mixed blessing. On the plus side, it lights a new fire under all of us, makes us want to do better, rise to the
occasion of dancing with such a partner. But it also sets expectations off kilter. After tonight, we go back to dancing with
the likes of Rosie and Vicky and Gina, and worse, they go back to dancing with the likes of Steve and Dave and me.