Butterfly Tattoo (14 page)

Chapter Nine: Rebecca

My radio’s blaring before I’m even off the lot: Elton John, the perfect party music for my Wednesday afternoon. The sunroof’s cranked back, the smoggy late spring air making me feel younger than I have in forever as my hair blows loose and wild and free.
I
feel free. Speeding a little too fast through the studio gate, the security guard shakes his head at me, grinning disapprovingly at the blurring blonde banshee with “Bennie and the Jets” booming through her open windows.

Pulling onto Melrose, my cell phone vibrates against my hip. It’s Cat Marino, my good girlfriend and former co-star on
About the House
. We played spunky fellow soccer moms for thirty minutes every Tuesday night on our predictable sitcom. You know the kind. Big problems, easy thirty-minute solutions, the antithesis of my own life.

“You’re seeing someone.” I open my mouth to protest, turning down my radio, but Cat cuts me off. “I know it. I know it, because I also know that Jake called you the other night, and if you haven’t called
me
to dish about that, then there’s only one answer.” She draws a breath. “You’re seeing someone. So no denials, because I know.”

Laughing in disbelief, not only at what she “knows”, but also at how much she assumes, I ask, “So are you and Jake in league now?”

“No freaking
way
,” she exclaims loudly into the phone, forcing it away from my ear. “It’s a protection racket, my friend. Me protecting you from Jake. I’m running interference.”

“Okay, then tell me why’s he calling?”

“Well.” Again I hear her suck in a preparatory breath, and know she’s about to unleash a stream of rapid-fire, Spanish-accented sentences. “Apparently Darcy dumped him? So now he’s gone all nostalgic on us, thinking about the good old days and all that, when the only thing he’s really nostalgic about is his pitiful career. Gone, gone, hasta la vista, baby!”

“Darcy dumped him?” I’ll admit that this gives me a little thrill of triumph, imagining Jake on the receiving end of his own treatment.

“Well he did that pilot, you know? The one for NBC where he played that future cop?”

“Yeah.” I remember how depressed I felt, reading about it in
Variety
last summer. “Slater Cops a Good One,” the campy headline read.

“Darcy says he took it really harsh when the show didn’t get picked up. That he’s been drifting ever since. No good calls, no auditions, nada.”

“Wow, I wonder what it’s like to be me?”

“Forget Jake,” she says, remembering herself and her mission. “I want to know who you’re seeing.”

“Well,” I begin tentatively. “There is this one guy.”

“Name? Name? I need a name.”

“He’s someone I met down at the lot.”

“What show?” Cat asks.

“He’s not on a show,” I explain. “He’s over in the electrical construction department. For the whole studio.”

“Oh,” she answers in a flat tone, not bothering to hide her disappointment that Michael’s not part of the Hollywood glamour train. “But has he been on a show? Or worked on any good features?”

I name a big sitcom that Michael told me he worked on for a few years as a lighting tech, and also tick off several A-list directors he’s worked under as a gaffer, though that was all before fatherhood took him off the prime-time circuit.

“Okay, cool, cool.” Cat sounds relieved that Michael’s film pedigree is respectable enough. She wants me with a decent guy, like any best friend, but deep down she still wants me with someone from our artificial universe. That she doesn’t notice any inconsistency in that tells you plenty about my dear friend.

“I’m seeing him tonight, actually.” I lower my voice for no particular reason. “We’re going to the Dodgers game.”

“Uh-huh. So he’s one of
those
guys.”

“Which guys?”

“The macho, gotta take you to a sports arena kind of guys.”

I laugh. If only she knew what kind of guy Michael
really
is, she’d let loose a spattering of Spanish expletives guaranteed to permanently damage my hearing. Or even more likely, she’d tell me she finds it a freaking turn-on when a guy swings both ways, then gossip about five other people she’s heard might be bisexual too. Obviously, Cat can be a loose cannon sometimes, and I don’t want anything getting back to Jake, so I keep the rest of Michael’s story to myself for now.

“So how’d you know Jake phoned me?” I ask, wondering where their paths crossed again after the recent run-in at The Derby.

“Well, that’s the other thing I’m calling about,” she answers, serious, and my heart palpitates in anticipation of whatever’s coming next. “And I’ll say straight up I don’t like it. But you should know.”

“Okay.”

“He e-mailed me last night. Wanted to know why you haven’t been returning his calls.”

“
Call
,” I clarify. “He called once.” Everything expands at a geometric rate in Jake’s universe.

“He wants to see you, but, Rebecca, don’t do it. Stay away from him, okay? He thinks I’ll rep him in the deal or something, but you know he’s always been crazy. That’s the only way he can’t realize what a total loser he is.”

“Come on, Cat. He’s not that
bad,” I say, feeling surprisingly defensive on the snake’s behalf. “I wasn’t totally stupid to be with him.”

“Stupid is as stupid does, but I love you anyway.” Yep, Cat knows him like a bad brother, after all the seasons they worked together on
About the House—
including two final ones after I was gone, which makes her
a good reality check whenever I start revising our personal history.

“You’d like Michael,” I announce, picturing the way his rangy frame contrasts boldly with Jake’s smallish, sinewy one. Thinking of how honorable and gentle he is, and that I’m already sure he’d protect me at all costs—not destroy me if given the chance. “He’s the anti-Jake.”

“That would make him like the anti-asshole.”

“He is that.”

“Well, sister, you can’t go wrong with a good guy,” she assesses knowledgably, then adds, “Just don’t call Jake.”

“Geez, give me some credit, okay? I do have a few ounces of self-respect left.”

“Those aren’t the few ounces I’m worried about when it comes to Jake,” she snickers.

“My point exactly.”

***

After doing some research—in other words, asking Trevor—I located some good old-fashioned fried chicken at a place on Ventura, and I’ll admit that I’m using soul food like any well-bred southern woman. As a form of flirtation. Call it pure instinct, but I’m betting Michael Warner will respond to a down-home piece of chicken like a grubby-handed child at a church picnic. Then again, maybe I’m putting too much store by that soft twang that periodically colors his dialect. But hey, if the fried chicken fails me, there’s always the foil-wrapped package of buttermilk biscuits. They’ve transformed the interior of my Honda into the front parlor of my nana’s house back in Dorian, Georgia. “Sugar,” Nana always said with a sly smile, “a good supper is the key to all life’s masculine mysteries.”

I keep thinking that maybe Michael had a southern Nana, one who loved to cook for him like mine did, and these biscuits and chicken might take him back to that.

Driving up into their cul-de-sac, my stomach knots with nervousness. Like I’m sixteen or something, not a thirty-three-year-old woman who lost her virginity a decade and a half ago. What can I say? My dating muscles are seriously underutilized and flabby after a three-year hiatus. Somebody ought to get me a Pilates dating video, stat.

I wish I weren’t the last one here; unfortunately the sight of Michael’s circle of friends in the driveway tells me otherwise. He gives an easygoing grin, but my immediate thought is that he seems distant, aloof, standing there with his hands thrust deep in his jeans pockets. His coolness might have something to do with the scowl plastered across his sandy-haired friend’s face. That has to be Casey, with the backwards-turned baseball cap and effortless California tan, since Marti’s got her arm around a lanky man with black hair, and they’re snuggling like a married couple, not mere friends.

Marti waves at me exuberantly as I shift the car into park.
Too
exuberantly, like she knows I’m about to swim in with the sharks. Her husband smiles at me, too, and Andrea bounces onto the balls of her feet, rushing my car door. Only Casey stands rooted to his few inches of driveway real estate, watching me circumspectly. And judging by the saturnine expression on his handsome face, I’d say it’s a given that he’s not exactly thrilled that Michael’s gotten so chummy with a
woman
.

***

At the bottom of the third inning, the Dodgers are down by two, and I’m about the same. At least I’m not completely striking out, since Andrea’s next to me, a nice reminder that someone in this crowd is rooting for me, as the sun sets on the City of Angels.

Michael is on her other side, so we’re too far apart to do much talking, but I can tell he’s pleased to see her responding to me so strongly. The occasional smiles he transmits in my direction tell me so. And sometimes I catch him looking at me, even when Andrea’s busy watching the game, and I wonder what he’s thinking. It seems harder than usual to read his rich brown eyes tonight. I wonder why? Thank God he’s sitting on my good side, so at least I don’t have to feel self-conscious about
that
.

Andrea whispers in my ear frequently, a marked change from how quiet she normally seems to be. In fact, she’s downright gregarious, commenting on the game, the players, a bizarre fat man with a painted belly several rows down from us. That guy’s taking face-painting to whole new dimensions, I’m telling you. Andie keeps perching Barbie on the arm of my seat, allowing the doll to narrate her life for me. She’s the one who tells me that Andrea’s last day of school is on Friday. It’s a parade of childlike intimacies, shared only with me. And most of the time Andrea grins and giggles shyly at just about anything I say.

If only everyone else were so easy to please. Marti’s friendly enough, sitting on my other side, so that’s good, but she’s still kind of formal. Like maybe it’s weird to her that I’m here with the rest of them. I’m not really sure. Of course paranoia’s a definite possibility, too.

Casey, though, maintains a churlish expression constantly, and at one point I saw him whisper something into Michael’s ear that cast an angry shadow over my would-be boyfriend’s face. Michael stared down at the field for a long time without talking to anyone, his jaw muscle visibly twitching. I don’t think he’s even looked in my direction ever since.

“He would’ve done this to anyone, you know.” I turn to Marti, confused by her sudden remark. “Casey. He would’ve cold-shouldered anyone trying to step into Alex’s shoes.”

“Good to know,” I reply. Wrapping up the remnants of my chicken and biscuit into a square of tinfoil, I remember the way he taunted me earlier. “Mike doesn’t like fried chicken,” he said with a harsh laugh when I retrieved the takeout package from my tote bag. “God, we all know that!”

Michael protested, explaining that he just didn’t like
bad
fried chicken—as in Kentucky Fried, or heaven forbid, Popeye’s—but it was too late for a save. I’d gotten Casey’s none-too-subtle message: you don’t belong here. My chicken gaffe merely exposed my imposterhood.

“Rebecca, I want to tell you a secret,” Marti confesses, her voice hushed beside my ear. “Just listen, okay?”

I nod, watching Manny Ramirez slide into second. There’s an explosion of tribal cheers and chants in every direction, but I stay still as a statue, wondering what she’ll say.

She leans right up against me. “Casey Porter is the biggest teddy bear you’ll ever meet. Bigger than Michael, even,” she continues. “But you have to be patient. Stick with him long enough to get past his rough hide.”

“I’ve always been a big believer in first impressions,” I say, sipping from my water bottle.

“Well you’ve obviously made quite an impression on Casey, that’s for sure.”

“How do you mean?”

“He wouldn’t be treating you this way unless he thought you were a serious threat.” I remember the biting remarks he made in the car on the way over, the “jokes” about Michael’s new “outlook” on dating. Little gibes about which team would he be cheering for tonight, what with the way he’d switched jerseys lately.

I shrug, looking sideways at both Michael and Casey, silent in their own form of détente. “I think it’s because I’m a woman.”

“Humph. He’d
like
you to believe that.”

“That’s not the problem?” Again, I glance across to where Michael glumly sits, ignoring the stony-faced Casey right beside him.

“Casey’ll be loyal to Alex Richardson until his last breath,” she explains patiently, leaning closer to be heard. There’s a strange intimacy to being so quiet within the noisy stadium, sharing girlfriend secrets amidst the din. “So even if you were from the boys’ club, he’d be acting up the same way. Hell, maybe worse, for that matter.”

I nod, not sure what to say, but feeling a swell of appreciation for her analysis. “So how do you
feel about Michael dating a woman?”

She laughs, loudly—a little too loudly—and it startles me, but then she leans so close against me that I feel a soft roll of flesh on her upper arm pressing against mine. She’s not fat, just soft everywhere, and likes to touch constantly. “I think the better question was how did I feel when Michael first started dating
Alex
.”

My eyebrows arch upward until I actually feel my hairline lift. “Do tell,” I say, hearing my soft southern accent kick in double-time. Marti reaches into her purse, retrieving a subtly disguised flask, and douses her Coke with a bit of liquid that smells like bourbon. She extends the silver container to me and I hold out my own Diet Coke for some enhancement.

“Has he told you that Alex was—” she hesitates, taking a large swallow of her drink,“—a departure? From his usual ways?”

“Yeah, he did, actually.”

“Did you know Michael used to date me? That I’m the one who introduced him to Alex?”

“No way!” I exclaim like a shotgun, and she begins to laugh, shaking her head.