Cross Dressing (37 page)

Dan pulled off the freeway and drove along Foothill Boulevard. Up ahead on the right was Holy Family Church. Though he hadn’t planned to do so, Dan pulled into the parking lot. A minute later he was standing in the cool and quiet of the vestibule, dipping his finger into the font of holy water and crossing himself.

Holy Family wasn’t exactly a cathedral. It was a simple
wood-frame building that had been a VFW hall before becoming a church. Still, there was a mysterious quality about it that appealed to Dan. It was just four walls and a roof, yet it conveyed a sense of peace that Dan imagined it lacked in its VFW days. He stood still for a few moments, absorbing the serenity. It reminded him why he turned to the Church during his chaotic childhood. The calm soothed his jangled soul. Dan walked down the aisle, stopping near the front. He genuflected without thinking about it, then slid into the pew. He looked around at the stained-glass windows dimly lit by the moonlight, then closed his tired eyes and took a deep, relaxing breath.

Dan sat there a few minutes before he had the notion to ask God for help. He decided against it on the grounds that it would be bad form to ask God to get involved in a fraudulent PR campaign. For that, Dan would leave his faith in the media—a false god, perhaps, but one with whom Dan was on better terms. Still, he got down on his knees and prayed, not for the fund-raiser, but for his brother’s soul.

S
IX A.M. DAN WAS SITTING IN THE KITCHEN WAITING FOR
the coffee to brew. He wasn’t feeling terribly optimistic. A few people had called asking about the fund-raiser and some ten-dollar donations had come in the mail, but there was no indication that the public had been swept away by the campaign.

Dan poured two cups of coffee and went to Peg’s room. He walked in and found Peg on her knees in front of the altar Ruben had set up. “Hey, get back in bed,” Dan said. “You’re supposed to be in a coma.”

“Just asking for a little help, Father.” Peg stood up and took the coffee from Dan. “What’s that?” she asked.

“Coffee, what’s it look like?”

“No,” Peg said. “That noise.”

Dan tilted his head and listened. It was the sound of heavy equipment.
Bulldozers? Maybe Larry Sturholm had come early to raze the building.
“Get back in your coma,” he said. “I’ll go see.” Dan was ready to tear a strip off the weaselly bastard, but then it occurred to him that, if nothing else, the bank’s bulldozers destroying the Care Center would make terrific television.
One last shot of triple-strength PR wouldn’t hurt
, he thought.

When he got outside Dan saw neither Larry Sturholm nor a bulldozing crew. Instead, he saw a large flatbed truck and a
stout guy who Dan assumed was the driver. “Good morning, Father!” the man shouted from the road. “Could you use a small Ferris wheel?” The sign on the side of the truck read, “Southern California Carnival Rides.”

Dan smiled and felt an unexpected surge of hope. “God bless you. Want some coffee?”

S
even
A.M.
Dan didn’t know what to think when a truck pulled up loaded with lumber. “What am I supposed to do with that?” Dan asked.

“Ask those guys,” the driver said. He pointed at a caravan of pickup trucks that was pulling in behind him.

It was a group of carpenters from Local 44. “Saw you on TV,” one of them said. “Thought you might need a little stage and maybe some booths for games and whatnot.”

Mrs. Zamora and Mrs. Ciocchetti, who were big fans of Jerry Lewis’s annual telethon, imposed upon the men to build a big glittery tote board to tally the funds raised.

E
ight
A.M.
The owner of a local doughnut shop dropped off two dozen boxes of doughnuts and muffins. Several more volunteers showed up to offer help. Captain Boone directed some of them in painting signs for the booths, and Mr. Avery got the others to spruce up the property a little. A group from a synagogue in Studio City showed up with several hundred dollars’ worth of groceries and went inside to make breakfast for everyone.

E
ight-thirty
A.M.
Val Logan and the KNBC van arrived for early coverage. “Well, Bob, the spirit of volunteerism seems to be alive and well,” she reported. Val turned to stop two women
who were delivering coffee and doughnuts to the other volunteers. They were both wearing tight jeans and loose sweatshirts, and they seemed to be hiding behind baseball caps and sunglasses. “Excuse me,” Val said. “What brought you two out this morning?” The women seemed familiar to Val, but she couldn’t place their faces.

The taller woman tossed her hair theatrically, then shrugged. “I woke up feeling charitable this morning,” she said in a sort of mock-bitter tone, “which
never
happens. So I called my friend and we decided to come by and see if we could give a little back to the community, as they say.”

With that, the shorter woman took off her glasses and her baseball cap and Val nearly fainted. It was Madonna.
The
Madonna. “Let’s go, El Lay,” she exhorted. “Save Sister Peg!”

The taller woman yelled into the camera. “Get your butts out here and bring your big fat wallets! We got a comatose nun to take care of, dammit!” They walked off cackling, leaving Val stupefied. “Uh, back to you in the studio, Bob.”

N
ine
A.M.
After the Material Girl’s TV appearance, word spread like a brushfire in a Santa Ana wind. Cars full of people from all over Southern California were suddenly heading for Sylmar. Dan put Josie and Mr. Saltzman in charge of parking. “Park it over there, buster! Don’t look at me that way!”

A radio van arrived, followed by a black stretch limo. Ricky D, L.A.’s most popular and outrageous radio personality, showed up to do a special Saturday broadcast. “You know what I’d like to see,” Ricky said. “I’d like to see the comatose nun naked. What do you want to bet that I can get that priest to take me in there and show me some nun tit?”

“Ricky, you are awful,” his sidekick said. “I shouldn’t even be sitting next to you, you’re going to get struck by lightning.”

“C’mon, where’s the harm?” Ricky insisted. “She’s in a coma, she’s not gonna care.”

B
y noon, the party had spilled onto the street and LAPD had replaced Josie and Mr. Saltzman in the parking and traffic-control department. Every television station in Los Angeles had a mobile unit on site covering the story. The amount of coverage itself had become a story within a story, with late-arriving reporters interviewing the ones who had been on the story since it broke. A quick glance at the tote board showed that they had raised $4,832.

O
ne
P.M.
A half dozen middle-aged musicians showed up with roadies and equipment and asked to see Father Michael. They weren’t a group per se, more of a collection of the faceless studio musicians that Los Angeles is known for. Dan recognized the keyboard player but couldn’t think of his name. When the guitar player introduced the band, all he said was that they had once played backup for Jay and the Americans. They started off by playing a familiar pop song that was reminiscent of something by Horace Silver. Josie hopped onstage and sang backup.

T
wo
P.M.
Mrs. Gerbracht and Mrs. Zamora were taking in good money at their concession booth, where they were selling cheese fritters, grilled cheese sandwiches, and cheese-on-a-stick. Every now and then they would hear Alissa yell “Hello!” as she circled endlessly on the Ferris wheel.

T
hree
P.M.
The Los Angeles Lakers arrived with their cross-town rivals, the Clippers, the Laker Girls, and two portable
basketball hoops which they set up on the street in front of the Care Center. They announced that they would play anybody who put up $500 for the cause. First team to ten would win. Make it, take it. They raised $10,000 in forty minutes without breaking a sweat. “Hey, big man, post one up for Sister Peg!” Two minutes later you could hear one of them yell, “Game! Next! Get off the court with that weak stuff!”

F
our
P.M.
The streets of Sylmar were absolutely choked. The Care Center was surrounded by dozens of media vans and satellite transmission trucks. Church groups were arriving in school buses and thousands of cars were pouring off the freeways. People were parking a mile away and hiking in. It was the most amazing display of people coming together in the history of the city.

F
our-thirty
P.M.
“This is an unprecedented event,” a network news anchor said. “Police are estimating the crowd at over sixty thousand and I’ve just been told that they’ve closed the Foothill Freeway due to traffic. Let’s go over to John Randall, who is somewhere near the stage. John?”

D
an ducked into Peg’s room. “Hey, it’s almost time.”

“Ready when you are.” Peg pulled back the covers, revealing a thick, full-length white cotton nightshirt. “How’s it going out there?” She sat on the edge of the bed and made sure her wimple was on tight.

“It’s unreal,” Dan said. “We’ve raised close to ninety thousand dollars and people are still getting here. Oh, and Ricky D says he’ll cough up ten thousand bucks if he can see you naked from the waist up.”

Peg smiled and wiggled her toes. “Gosh, that’s awfully tempting but … no.”

“That’s what I told him. I said, ‘Ricky, for God’s sake, she’s a nun. She’s in a coma. It’s gonna cost at least fifty K.’” Dan couldn’t help staring at Peg’s feet. He had worked with professional foot models in his print advertising days, but he had never seen sexier toes in his life.

Peg stood up and held her hands out to Dan. “Come here,” she said. Dan walked over to her. “You saved us,” she said before she kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.”

Dan held up his hands. “Enlightened self-interest,” he said. “This place goes under and I’m unemployed. Plus, I think we make a pretty good team, you and me.” Dan suddenly felt like a fifteen-year-old trying to sound like Bogart. “I didn’t want it to end, that’s all.” He shrugged.

“I don’t want it to end either,” Peg said, gesturing for the door. “So let’s make sure it doesn’t.”

“Well, all right then,” Dan said as he opened the door. “Let’s coup de grâce.”

J
ohn Randall was standing halfway between the stage and the front of the Care Center. “I haven’t seen this many celebrities in one place since that two-for-one special at the Betty Ford Clinic.” John shaded his eyes against the bright sun as it filtered through the brown haze. “Just looking around, I can see eight or ten stars from television, film, and the recording industry.” John approached an Academy Award—winning actor. “Can you believe the turnout for this thing?”

“It’s unbelievable,” the actor said, turning to make sure the camera was getting his best side. He looked into the lens. “Come on out here and save Sister Peg!”

In the background, a man held up a sign that read “John 3:16.”

•        •        •

R
uben had his artwork on display in the booth nearest the stage. He had sold several of his paintings and had an offer for a gallery showing. He was just standing there, looking at the huge crowd in pure, delighted amazement, when supermodel Stacy Sanders walked by and smiled at him. He could almost hear her teeth. Unbelievable.

A moment later another beautiful woman with a winning smile walked up to the booth and started looking at Ruben’s work. He didn’t know it, but she was a prolific and talented film producer. She seemed to like one or two of the paintings, but something else really caught her eye. It was a multimedia sculpture composed of exactly one thousand two hundred and thirteen dollars worth of losing lottery tickets. She had to have it. “How much?” she asked.

Ruben read her lips. He smiled, then wrote a figure on a piece of paper: “$1,213.”

“Sold.”

R
uth was upstairs in her room. She had been sitting on the corner of her bed most of the afternoon. She felt useless, like she was doing nothing to save the Care Center, nothing to help Dan. She felt like she was just in the way. She wanted to help, so she opened the box that held her belongings and she reached in. She found the razor blade and held it between her thumb and forefinger. She had to do something, so she put it to her skin.

O
ren Prescott was in his Malibu home, depressed and a little drunk. He was trying to get his mind off his inability to come up with a decent new campaign idea for Fujioka. He could feel the account slipping between his fingers. He grabbed the
remote control and turned on his eighty-two-inch Fujioka big-screen, hoping for something to distract him for a little while.

What he got was a network news reporter standing in the middle of what looked like tens of thousands of people. She was interviewing a priest. “Father, in your wildest dreams did you imagine this sort of response?”

“It’s fantastic,” the priest said. “Unbelievable! I think we’re close to a hundred thousand dollars. I don’t know what to say.”

Oren dropped his drink. He’d heard that voice a thousand times. He looked closer at the giant face spread across the screen. It was the face of Oren’s savior.

T
he network news reporter was wrapping up her segment with Dan when suddenly there was a commotion on the front porch of the Care Center. “What’s going on?” the reporter asked. The cameraman turned and zoomed in on the excitement.

Someone shouted, “It’s Sister Peg!”

Peg was all but staggering across the porch with one hand on her forehead. Dan thought she was overplaying it a bit. The reporter grabbed Dan’s arm. “Oh my God,” she said. “It’s a miracle! She’s out of the coma!”

Dan pulled away from the reporter and rushed to Peg’s side. He pulled her close and whispered, “Stop hamming it up, for crying out loud. You’re out of a coma, not back from the dead.”