Palm Springs Heat (14 page)

“So,” Lara finally said, “what
else?”

“Um…you said there were more
questions?”

“Oh, right. You said ‘we’ are going
to be flying to Malibu.”

“That’s right.”

“We?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, that would
make sense, right?” Tiffany nodded.

Lara flicked her tongue behind her
bottom front teeth.

“Oh!” Tiffany said. “I thought Ms.
V told you.”

Lara waited a moment for the rest,
then said, “Told me what?”

“I’m your P.A. now.”

Lara did the tongue thing again.

“Your personal assistant? On
account of how we hit it off the other day?”

“The other day being yesterday?”

Tiffany nodded with exuberance, her
Lhasa apso hair bobbing all around her face.

“I guess that explains a lot. But
why did you wake me up at five-thirty?”

“Oh, well, you see,” Tiffany moved
briskly to Lara’s side of the bed while manipulating the phone’s touch screen,
“I saw that you like to work out every day, and, really, this is the only time
you’ll have for that today. So I thought you might—” She froze when she noticed
Lara looking down with a furrowed brow and pursed lips. “That’s cool, right, Miss
D?”

“What?”

“That I woke you up so you could
work out.”

“Huh?” Lara stared at Tiffany’s
legs until Tiffany looked down at her silver spray-painted army boots and
tattered fence-net pantyhose that ended just above her knees.

“What, the pantyhose?”

And the boots.
Lara nodded.

“I just snipped them off with a
scissors.” Tiffany tugged at the ragged tops. “And sewed in some elastic so
they’d stay up. They’re boss, right?”

“They’re different.”

“Thank you. That’s so sweet. Is
there anything else for now?”

“No, I think I’m fine.”

“Cool. See you L eight R, Miss D.”
Tiffany bounced toward the door.

“Tiffany?”

“L eight R, like when people text
and they mean ‘later.’”

“I got that. Why do you keep
calling me ‘Miss D’?”

“You don’t like it?”

“No, it’s fine. It’s just that no
one ever called me that.”

“Oh. It’s what people do around
here.”

“So I should call you Miss T?”

“Oh, no. Definitely not. I’m not,
like, a personage.”

“A personage?”

“You know. Like you and Ms. V and
Mr. C.”

“So, what should I call you?”

“Tiffany.”

“Right.” Lara smiled. “It was cool
to wake me up at five-thirty so I could work out. Very good thinking.”

Tiffany let out a sigh of relief.

“But,” Lara continued, “is there
any time in the schedule for me to get a little breakfast?”

* * *

Breakfast was a short stack of
whole grain pancakes done exactly the way Lara liked them—crispy around the
edges, pleasantly spongy in the middle—served with a medley of fruit, including
the biggest, sweetest blackberries Lara had ever seen or tasted. The gym had all
the latest equipment and a massage therapist named Gretchen who gave Lara a
vigorous rubdown in a steam bath fit for a Roman palace. Everything at Heat,
like everything associated with Fast Lane, was top-notch.

Afterward, Lara showered in the
waterfall. Tiffany helped her pick out “traveling clothes,” a simple black
shift and comfy sandals. Two of Chartre’s assistants packed the rest of Lara’s
mountain of new clothes onto the helicopter. Tiffany assured Lara that anything
else she might need or want would be available at the ICE House.

Lara and her new girl Friday
boarded Elway at
eight forty-five
.
Twenty minutes into the flight, Lara looked out a window and marveled at the
way humans had managed to colonize every nook and cranny of the Los
Angeles basin. Even the slopes and tops of those
mountains that bisected it all were crisscrossed with roads—roads that Lara,
lamentably, had so seldom taken advantage of. She wondered how many people
there were like her who felt alone in the midst of an almost endless cityscape.
Had clinging to Van Nuys been a shrinking violet’s way of avoiding novelty and
adventure?

Van Nuys. I wish. When’s the
last time I told someone I grew up in Reseda?

 “It’s amazing, isn’t it, how
spread out it is?” Tiffany looked through the window over Lara’s shoulder.
“It’s so great, though, how easy it is to, you know, just hop onto the freeway
and live whatever dream you feel like having that day. Your bio says you’re
from the valley?”

“I grew up in Van Nuys,” Lara said.

“That is so awesome.”

Van Nuys is better than Reseda.
But awesome?

“When I was in high school,”
Tiffany chirruped, “my friends and I would just drive until we saw something
cool. One time we hit this unbelievable farmers market in Encino that had all these
wild veggies and things, like kohlrabi and champagne grapes and this spicy
Vietnamese paste that we didn’t even know what you were supposed to do with it,
and we ordered these unbelievable fish tacos. Sometimes we’d randomly stop at
some restaurant—they have the best Mexican restaurants in the valley.
Authentic. Not like the bullshit ones on the West Side.”

“You don’t like any restaurants on
the West Side?”

Tiffany shrugged. “Some. But the
valley is, like,
real
, you know?”

“I’ve been to the farmers market
you’re talking about,” Lara said. “Never tried the fish tacos. Which restaurant
do you mean?”

“It was…si. Si something.”

“Si Maria?”

“Is that a real restaurant?”

“Yes.”

“Then, no. It was more like solly.”

“Sol y Luna?”

“That’s it! Wow!”

“I must’ve eaten there a hundred
times growing up.”

“Get out!”

“They have the best chili
rellenos.”

“Are they like heaven?” Tiffany
gazed off into the ether.

Lara nodded.

“I had a combo platter, because,
you know, that way, you can try lots of different things,” Tiffany said.

 “Where did you grow up?”

“
Silver
Lake
.”

“But you hung out in the valley?”

“I hung out everywhere. Hollywood.
Korea
Town
.
Tarzana.
I mean,
there’s
so many awesome places. Not like I have to tell
you
.”
She sat in the seat next to Lara and checked her phone. “I’m totally stoked
that we’re talking like, you know, BFFs, but there’s still some business to
cover. It’s cool, right?
To talk business?”

“We don’t have to hate each other
to talk business.”

“Oh, right. That’s awesome, because
we’ll be in Malibu in ten.”

Tiffany went over the schedule
again. Lara tried to pay attention, but she figured the schedule would change
and people would herd her around all day, so there was no reason to memorize
anything. Instead, she thought about how much Tiffany’s view of the world
differed from her own. If she had approached life with that much gusto, might
she never have gotten mixed up with her asshole ex-husband? And was it possible
that, instead of being on a mission to avenge the wronged women of the world,
she would be happily married somewhere? Or working as a publicist for A-list
stars who made A-list movies?

What would I be doing right now?
Not flying into
Malibu
to meet a bunch of people whose livelihood I’m secretly trying to destroy.

* * *

As the chopper approached its
destination, Lara marveled at the size of the ICE House compound. The house
jutted from the cliff, leaving plenty of room for tennis, basketball and jai
alai courts, a pool, a smattering of spas and a serpentine dirt track that ran
in and around and through everything else.

“Sometimes Mr. C and other people
get into these little go-kart things and race them around the track,” Tiffany
explained. “And that massive building over there? That’s where he keeps all his
totally boss old cars.”

“Wow.” Lara wasn’t thinking about
go-karts or antique cars. She was thinking about selling her ruse, starting
with the two incumbents of The Rotation.
What
if Taequanda and
Corynne don’t like me? What if they can tell I’m a fraud?

“So,” Tiffany said, “are you
nervous about today?”

Oh, shit, she can tell. But
wouldn’t anyone be nervous in my position?

“Should I be?”

“Not really. I mean, anyone would.
But you’re going to like the other girls. And they’re going to like you.”

“That’s reassuring.”
Truly
.

“Then there’s Spike.”

“What is Spike? A guard dog?”

“The photog. He does look like a
dog, though.”

“A mean one?”

“A snippy one. That likes biting
your pants leg.”

 “I see,” Lara said, though
she didn’t really.

Elway touched down.

“He’ll probably take like a million
shots of you right as we get off the copter,” Tiffany warned. “He’ll expect you
to look natural, like you’re not even aware that he’s there, so don’t try to
look glamorous or whatnot.”

Lara nodded. “Gotcha. Look
natural.”

“Just be you.” Tiffany said. The
chopper’s doors flew open.

The first thing Lara saw was the
piercing flash of a camera. The first thing she heard was a high-pitched,
somewhat male, sing-song voice blaring, “Gotch-aaaaa!”

Lara blinked away the flash to see
a hedge of silver hair. Not gray. Not white.
Silver
. The singsong voice
came out of a mouth below a pair of glasses with the thickest, blackest rims
Lara had ever seen, and it said, “I lu-uv that. Every new girl…always the
same!”

“Now I know what you mean about
Spike.” Lara had to talk over the roar of the engine and beating of the blades.
She moved forward, but Tiffany grabbed her arm until an assistant put down a
step.

“A little to the left,” Tiffany
said into Lara’s ear.

One instance where I don’t mind
being herded.

“Spike, you are such a fucking
asshole,” said a statuesque black woman with angled cheekbones and sumptuous
purple lips. She held out her hand and smiled at Lara. “Take my hand, honey.
I’m Taequanda.”

She wore a dress similar to Lara’s,
but while Lara could feel where hers tugged and bunched, Taequanda’s looked and
moved like it was part of her body.

“I’m Lara.”

“Everyone knows who
you
are,”
Corynne said as she put an arm around Lara’s waist. “I’m Corynne.”

The experienced Rotation members
flanked Lara and guided her toward the house. With the flashes and the sun and
the Santa Anas blowing her hair into her face, Lara worked hard to appear
natural. The other two, on the other hand, simply looked natural.
Such
poise.

“Okay-yee!” Spike wailed. “Let’s
get inside, pee-pull! Grande-double-latte to do today!”

Lara screwed up her face.
What?

“What he’s saying is he’s a pompous
ass,” Taequanda said. “Hey, Spike—how about talking in a language familiar to
humans?”

Lara winced as Spike unexpectedly snapped
a shot just inches from her face. No matter where she looked, she saw nothing
but purple dots.

“That should look natural,” she
said.

 “Don’t let his bullshit get
to you,” Taequanda said as she and Corynne led Lara to the door. “Don’t let any
of this bullshit get to you.”

* * *

Inside hummed like a beehive.
Assistants worshipping their phones and gaffers and grips lugging poles and
dollies and lamps danced in a frenzied ballet up and down the halls and into
and out of the various rooms.

“How many rooms does this place
have?” Lara asked.

“Sixty-nine,” Corynne said.

“Sixty—?”

“You got it,” Taequanda chimed in,
shaking her head. “That’s what happens when men get a say in things.”

 “It looks like we’re having
our pictures taken in every one of them.” Lara dodged a grunt who raced down
the hall with a stack of boxes.

Taequanda glared at the grunt.
“Hey!”

The grunt stopped cold and looked
around the boxes at Taequanda. “Sorry.”

“Damn right, you are.” She turned
to Lara. “Everybody knows that kind of thing doesn’t fly with Tae-Q.”

“Girlfriends!” Spike’s annoying
soprano surfed above the clamor. He clapped twice. The crowd parted and he
sailed toward the three women.

He looks like a Disney
character. Aladdin, but with spiky metal hair.

“I know what you’re thinking,”
Corynne said. “He’s a bit over-the-top, but he actually knows what he’s doing.”

“Just don’t ever let him think you
think he does,” Taequanda said.

Spike stopped a few feet away, put
his hands on his hips, leaned back and gave them the once-over. Multiple times.
“My, but are-ent
oui
altogether a vision of eeee-ternity!”

Lara’s eyes narrowed as she tried
to figure out what he meant, why he had said “we” like
oui
but with an H
in front of it so it sounded like “hwee.”
And why does every sentence he says
seem to end in an exclamation point?

“Can the flattery,” Taequanda said.
“We know we’re too hot for the Mojave. But we’re here to work.”

“Oh, that you are,” Spike said,
eyeing Taequanda head to toe. “And, baby, I love to watch you work!”

He winked at Lara, then turned on
his heels and sped away, throwing an arm in the air and pointing ahead.

“That means he expects us to
follow,” Taequanda explained.

“He’s quite a…”

“Yes he is.”

“Just don’t let him cop a feel when
he’s supposed to be positioning you,” Corynne added.

“
He’s
going to cop a feel?”

Taequanda and Corynne looked at
each other and laughed.

“Whatever it may seem like, Spike
likes tail,” Taequanda said. “The feminine variety.”