The Bette Davis Club (30 page)

“Whoa!” she says. “Good to see you too!”

I shut the door behind her and we stand there, facing each other. “It is
not
good to see you,” I say. “It is close to intolerable. But I need my sixty thousand dollars.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” She holds up her hands. “I don’t have any money. Not yet. You took everything I had.”

“I took? Why, you light-fingered little thief! You mudlark! You spoiled, conniving guttersnipe—”

She laughs. “God, Auntie Margo, I always loved the way you talk. I guess I just love the Brits.”

“I’m American!”

“Whatever.” Georgia comes farther into the room, taking stock of the rows of stained glass, the marble columns, the piles of antique fittings. “Wow,” she says. “This is like
Beauty and the Beast
—when he was still a beast. What an awesome space for a party!”

Her eye travels to our left. She notes the long kitchen table and the biscuit tin upon it. “Cookies! Can I have one?” She drops down at the table and pulls the tin to her. She also spies the pot of coffee. “Ooh, and can I have a cup of coffee?”

I don’t want to give Georgia coffee. I want to smack her with the biscuit tin; I want to bludgeon her with the fire poker. This is the idiot who bruised Tully’s heart, who caused us to drive across an entire continent. Yet when I look at her sitting there, swinging a leg and eating a chocolate biscuit, it reminds me of the few times I encountered her when she was a little girl. I recollect a certain sweetness she had then.

I sigh. I introduce Georgia to Dottie. I sit down at the table.

Dottie busies herself with the coffee. She pours out a cup and sets it in front of Georgia, then sits down herself. “We have no milk,” Dottie informs Georgia. The way Dottie says this, it sounds less a report on the contents of my refrigerator than on the state of our post-menopausal bodies.

Georgia shrugs. She reaches for a second biscuit. “These are amazing,” she says. “Lucky nothing ever sticks to me.”

“
Malheureusement
,” Dottie says, “it will.”

This inane talk is killing me. I put my hand to my head, feeling it might explode. “What, what,
what
are you doing here?” I say.

Georgia points to herself. “Me?” she says.

“Yes!”

“Well, I called a while ago, but you didn’t answer.”

I hold up a hand. “How did you get my cell phone number?”

“Mom gave it to me.”

“You and Charlotte aren’t talking.”

“Oh, we are now. Sure we are.”

I jump from the table and stand there with balled-up fists. “God, you’re both insane! Charlotte hired me to find you. I found you—”

“Didn’t I find you?” Georgia says.

“Technicality. I’ve won whatever game we’ve been playing, and your mother now owes me many thousands of dollars!”

“Okay, sure. If you say so.”

Georgia’s youthful indifference is infuriating. I pace back and forth beside the table, then stop and point at her. “You broke Tully Benedict’s heart!”

She laughs. “No, I didn’t!”

I glare at her, and the laughter dies.

“For real?” Georgia says. She frowns. “Shit. That’s so not fair. Tully knew . . .”

“Knew what? That you’re a sociopath, that every word out of your mouth is false?”

“That I change my mind a lot. He said I was a big kid. Well, I guess I am. One night we were high, he was telling me about his divorce, his little girl. It was all so sad, and he was bumming me out. I wanted to cheer him up. So I proposed. Just like that!” She giggles at the memory. “Also, I knew marrying Tully would get me closer to his ex-stepdad.”

I am always the last to learn anything of importance whatsoever, but for once, the penny drops. “Malcolm Belvedere?” I say in wonder. “Those magazine articles—that’s why you had them. You were studying Malcolm!”

“Hell-o,” Georgia says. “Tully probably thinks I left him because we had that big fight. But that wasn’t it. I left because the day before the wedding I found out some super-secret news—I found out Malcolm’s wife was divorcing him. Even mom didn’t know that. So I had this genius idea: Why not dump Tully and marry his ex–big daddy? No offense to Tull, but what a career break for me! Plus, I’d been messing around in Grandpa’s attic. I discovered something.”

“
Spy Team
,
”
I say. “Did your mother know about that?”

“Yeah,” Georgia says. “We argued over it. I think she thought I’d end up giving
Spy Team
to her—but then I split and took it with me. I knew it was a property Malcolm would want. Not only that, I figured
I’m
a property Malcolm would want. All of a sudden, my future was so bright, I was practically self-tanning.”

Pleased with herself, Georgia pulls her feet up onto her chair, tucks herself into a ball, and nibbles on her biscuit.

“You thought you’d sell
Spy Team
to Malcolm as your own creation,” I say. “All you had to do was update it and put your name on it.”

“That was the plan. You have a problem with it?”

“Georgia, I have a problem with so many things you’ve done. I have a problem with that thug, Boone, you sent after Tully and me.”

“Whoa,” she says. “I so did not do that. But I heard about it. Boone goes a little Rambo sometimes. He was worried when you took the script, see, ’cause Kelsey’s dying to play Ariana.”

“The female lead in
Spy Team
.”

“Yeah.”

“Why did you steal
An Innocent Lamb
?” I say.

“I didn’t take any sheep! I—Oh! You mean that old Oregon Welles script?”

“Orson,” I say. “His name was Orson Welles.”

“Whatever. I read some of it. It’s beyond boring. But Grandpa’s name was on there too, so I was hoping maybe it was worth big bucks, like
Spy Team
. But it’s not.”

Dottie, sitting opposite Georgia at the table, has been listening to all this. She leans forward, resting her chin in one hand. “Strictly
entre nous
,” she says to Georgia, “what do you foresee as your current career path?”

“Like, what am I going to do now?”

“Like.”

“Well, when I split from the wedding, I wasn’t in any rush to go back home because, you know, Wrath of Mom. So after Palm Springs, I headed for Chicago to hang with Kelsey, talk with her about
Spy Team
. Then I thought I’d go to New York. The Tribeca Film Festival is this week. I figured that would be the perfect place—away from Mom and everybody—to meet up with Malcolm, pitch him the script.” She plays with her hair. “Get him to fall for me.”

“Do you know Malcolm Belvedere?” Dottie says, fascinated.

“I’ve met him.”

“Yet you were that sure of yourself?” Dottie says. “Of your own powers?”

“Well, yeah,” Georgia says. “Everybody says youth doesn’t last. But it’s working pretty good for me right now.”

“And do you really consider Malcolm Belvedere a wise choice as a marriage partner?” Dottie says. “A man so many years your senior?”

“You’ve never lived in LA, have you?” Georgia says pleasantly.

Dottie wrinkles her nose and dips a biscuit in her coffee.

Georgia turns back to me. “So anyway, Mom gave me this address and said you might be here. I need my stuff.”

“I have nothing that belongs to you,” I say.

“Yes, you do!” Georgia says.

Georgia no longer reminds me of a child. Her expression has become that of a determined, even desperate, adult. She untucks her feet from her chair and gets up from the table. If we were dogs, the two of us would be circling each other.

“It’s worth a ton of money!” she says.

“So people tell me,” I say, feeling my fur go up. “But you’re not going to get it!”

“You don’t understand—I’ve got to have it!”

We go on quarreling like this, but a knock at the door interrupts us. Georgia, Dottie, and I all stare at each other. The knocking comes again.

“Better answer it,” Dottie says. “Perhaps it’s another puppy.”

It’s Tully.

“I got milk,” he says, coming into the room, his arms full of packages. “Eggs, bread, the
New York Times
.” He stops. His glasses have slipped down his nose, and his arms are so laden with shopping bags and parcels he has to crane his neck to take everyone in. Then he spots Georgia.

“Oh,” he says.

“Hey, babe,” she says.

“Babe,” he says. “Right. Nice.”

She laughs. “Come on, Tull. Don’t blame me for being me.”

“I don’t.” He crosses over and plops his packages onto the kitchen table. “I blame me for being me.”

Georgia observes him carefully. “Hey,” she says, “you sober?”

He takes off his glasses and wipes them with a handkerchief.

“You are,” she says. “Wow.” She glances at a schoolhouse clock on the wall. “Well, okay, this is pretty weird and awkward and everything. And anyway, I gotta get going. So, Auntie Margo, really, I need my stuff.”

“
Your
stuff?” Tully says, putting his glasses back on. “Everything you had, you ripped off from somebody else.”

“That is so not true! Mom—” Georgia cuts herself off. She again notices the clock. “Honestly, I’ve got to go. I’m meeting someone. Auntie Margo, could we talk? In private? Please?”

“Isn’t it Tully you should be talking to?” I say.

“Why would she do that?” Tully says. “Why act like a grown-up?” He gives Georgia a look. “You ran off before without saying good-bye, so how about you just scurry off again?” He makes a fluttery motion with his fingers.

“Okay,” Georgia says, “all right. I get it. My bad. I never thought—”

“No, you sure didn’t,” Tully says. “Because if you had, you would have called. Or texted. That also would have sucked—but isn’t that how you and your friends avoid doing anything unpleasant?”

“This is so not fair,” Georgia says. “Kelsey swears she told you it was over.”

“What?”

“In Chicago. At her place.”

“Christ,” Tully says. “How old are the two of you? Twelve?”

“If you’re mad at me,” Georgia says, “I’m super sorry. But the whole time I knew you, we were just having fun. I never, ever meant—”

“Forget it,” Tully says. “I can’t believe I took you seriously, even for a minute. But now, like you, I get it. You’re a child, Georgia. And I’m too old not to have known better.”

He waves a hand, as if tossing Georgia out of his life for good. “Game over. You said it all days ago—when you didn’t say a word.”

He turns and occupies himself with the groceries and his packages.

Under the circumstances, Georgia’s request to speak privately, away from Tully, seems the thing to do. I lead both Georgia and Dottie upstairs to the mezzanine.

Dottie parks herself on the fainting couch. Georgia leans against a marble statue of one of the Fates. I stand there, still in my bathrobe, regarding them both.

“Please, can I have my stuff?” Georgia says.

“I’m not giving you
Spy Team
,” I say. “I’d rather burn it. Nor, for that matter, am I handing over
An Innocent Lamb
.”

“
Spy Team
?” Georgia says. Her eyes are wide. “I’m not talking about
Spy Team
! Or that stupid Oregon Welles script.”

I look at her.

“I want my dress!” she says.

“Your—”

“My wedding dress! I called that little man in Palm Springs, and he told me you had it. No matter what anybody says, I didn’t steal that. Mom bought it for me, she paid a bundle for it!”

“Your dress?” I say. This is not what I was expecting. “You mean, so you can marry Malcolm Belvedere?”

She rolls her eyes. “You never let me finish. A lot happened when I was in Chicago. A whole lot.” She beams. “I’m engaged to Ricky Wallingford!”

“The English rocker?” Dottie says. Dottie keeps up with popular music. “That skinny little fellow who sings ‘Baby, Come to London’?”

“Yes!” Georgia says. “I just love the Brits! Ricky’s on tour, we met in Chicago. He’s coming into New York at noon. Which is why I’ve got to get going. His tour ends tonight, then we’re flying to London and getting married. Which is why I need my dress!”

“But don’t you want
Spy Team
?” I say. “Don’t you want to put your name on it, pitch it to Malcolm Belvedere, and make millions of dollars?”