Randall #01 - The Best Revenge (5 page)

Chapter 5—Tramps Like Us

The cars on the Interstate seemed to stand still, as if the whole world had been frozen in time as Camilla alone zoomed alone into the future.

She’d seen a TV show about that once—some science fiction thing—but now it didn’t seem so far-fetched. She had a terrible vision of Plantagenet and Edmund, posed like wax dummies in their trendy SoHo loft—and all of Manhattan motionless, as she ran about frantically, unheard and unseen.

Finally, it occurred to her to look at the speedometer. It registered close to one hundred. The gas gauge, however, pointed to empty. This shouldn’t have surprised her, since she had been worried earlier about not having enough gas to make it home.

Home. Now she had no home. Only the horrors at Randall Hall. That man. Who might have killed her father. That woman who was no longer her mother.

She turned off at the next gas station. Before heading for the pump, she parked by the rest room, only now aware of another urgent need. On the way out of the toilet stall, she caught sight of a face that looked as if it had just emerged from a flying saucer—her own gray reflection. How could she let Plant see her like this? As she tried to paint something resembling human features on her blanched face, the awful thought came to her: what if Plant and Edmund were out?

From the phone booth outside, she called Plant’s number. She was relieved to hear a real voice, and not the answering machine.

“Plantagenet?”

“Are you trying to be amusing?” said an English-accented voice that might have been Edmund Quail’s if the speech hadn’t been so slurred.

“I’m looking for Plantagenet Smith. Is he there?”

“Of course he’s not here. He hasn’t been here since he ran off with that little debutramp last January. So if you’re calling again about the blasted
G.Q.
subscription…”

“Debutramp?” Her voice squeaked as she tried to make sense of the word.

“Camilla Randall,” Edmund said. “Little Miss-Wonderbread-for-Brains. Plantagenet has re-invented himself as a straight man. Didn’t you know? I suppose he thinks it will keep him from getting the gay cancer.”

Words wheeled around in her brain, but none came out. Edmund was making no sense. She had never heard of gay cancer. And Plant had always been gay. She heard the sound of ice cubes clinking in a glass. Maybe Edmund was just drunk.

“I haven’t seen him…in a long time, but I need to find him right away.”

“Are you from that infernal pizza establishment?”

“Um, sort of…I really need to talk to him.”

She gave as little information as possible. Debutramp. What an awful word.

“Owes you money, too, does he, love? I wish you luck. All I can give you is the address where I sent his things.”

She grabbed her address book and pen, hoping she was getting everything right as Edmund’s semi-comprehensible voice murmured the information. She stared at the jumble of letters and numbers she had written: “818 Cypress Drive, Laguna Beach, California.”

California
. Pictures flashed through her brain: sunshine, scruffy surfer dudes, Hollywood—that far-away source of the flickering lights on a TV screen, as unreal as Alpha Centauri. How could Plantagenet be there?

“What are you doing in there, girlie, waiting for Superman?”

A toothless tramp with matted gray hair knocked on the phone booth. When Camilla opened the door, she recoiled from his unwashed stink. What had Jonathan Kahn called these people? Homeless. The man was homeless. Without a home. Just like her.

“Since you’re not using that phone,” he went on. “Do you mind if I make a call?”

She stepped out of the booth, still in a daze.

“How far is California?”

“About 3000 miles.” He laughed. “Don’t kids today study geography?”

She picked up a map as she paid for the gas. She used her credit card, wondering how much longer it would be honored.

“What the hell is that—a UFO?” The tramp called from the phone booth as she raised her gullwing door. “You didn’t tell me you were flying to California, man.”

Camilla’s head still felt numb as she set out to drive the five hundred miles back to Virginia, but she felt controlled by a force outside herself. She needed Plantagenet. He was her family now. Her only family. She wasn’t going to think about all that nonsense Edmund said. He said Plant had run off with her and that wasn’t true—so the rest probably wasn’t, either.

She stopped at a budget motel outside of Baltimore and got to Rosewood the next morning just as the banks were opening. She had left a few hundred dollars in her checking account to keep it open over summer vacation. The cash in her hand felt good. If only she’d thought to empty her savings account in Darien before she left. There ought to be a few thousand in it, left over from her last birthday present from Dad.

Dad. She wished she had real facts about how he had died—and could prove Lester Stokes had something to do with it.

After the bank, she stopped at the dry cleaner’s where she’d left her furs for summer storage. She had no idea if she would ever need a lynx coat or a fuchsia mink bomber jacket again, but she managed to stuff them in the trunk. No point in leaving them here.

Rosewood was a college for rich girls, and she wasn’t a rich girl anymore.

She stopped for gas before getting back on the freeway. Spotting a pay phone, she called the information operator and asked for the number of Plantagenet Smith in Laguna Beach, California.

“I have a J. P. Smith on Cypress,” said the operator.

“That’s it! That’s it!” She remembered that Plant’s first initial was “J”, although he would never tell her what it stood for. Feeling revived, she dialed the number and listened to the phone ring on the other end.

In California.

Taking deep breaths, she tried to calm herself. She would hear Plantagenet’s voice, and all would be well.

But nobody picked up. She counted to twelve.

J. P. Smith was not at home.

She looked at her watch. Eleven A.M. Was it earlier or later in California? Maybe Plant was at work. If he wasn’t living with Edmund anymore, he’d have to be working somewhere. Maybe in Hollywood. Was Laguna Beach near Hollywood?

No matter. It was in California. And that’s where she was going. She was not waiting for Superman.

~

Two, maybe three days later—time had ceased to have meaning—she sat in a small diner somewhere near Amarillo, Texas. She had finished a chicken fried steak, grayish green beans, and tasteless grits—but she was still hungry. She looked around the dingy room and thought longingly of
Votre Maison
. 

Even meeting Jonathan Kahn hadn’t been as depressing as Texas.

She had been driving through the Lone Star State all day, and the flat, brown land showed no signs of turning into New Mexico or Arizona, or whichever one of those states was supposed to come next. Pushing away her plate, she took the map out of her purse and tried to read it in the flickering light of the fluorescent tube that sputtered and buzzed above her head. She found the words “Laguna Beach” printed in small letters close to the purple blob identified as Los Angeles. It was many folds from the spot called Amarillo, Texas. She sighed, wondering how many more days she would have to drive before she wouldn’t feel like an extra in a Clint Eastwood movie.

As a waitress with large orange hair refilled Camilla’s coffee cup with mud-like liquid, Camilla asked for the nearest pay phone. Her motel was so low-rent it had no telephone. The waitress pointed to a shadowy spot at the end of the diner.

Fishing out her supply of change, Camilla dialed the number she now knew by heart. She counted the rings, planning to let it ring the usual twelve times, just in case. But after the eighth ring, she was startled to hear a voice.

It was a woman’s voice. Deep and rich, but definitely female.

Camilla’s mouth went dry. J. P. Smith wasn’t Plantagenet after all. It was Janet Prudence or something. She stammered his name.

“Right place, wrong time,” said the voice. “He used to live here, but he left for Samoa last week. I’m afraid I don’t have a number for him. They’re filming on location.”

“Samoa? Filming? On location?” Camilla tried to sort out the words. “I have to see him. When will he be back? Are you the maid?”

The voice laughed.

“Sometimes it feels that way. I guess you could call me the landlady. But I’m afraid I haven’t the slightest idea when he’ll be back. I’m sure he doesn’t, either, poor dear. Sorry, but I’m in an awful rush.”

As the phone clicked to a buzz, Camilla looked blankly at the remaining coins in her palm. Halfway to California and now she had no reason to go. She had no reason to go anywhere. She was pretty sure she couldn’t drive to Samoa.

California
. Wait. She did know somebody. She flipped through the address book and there it was—scrawled in purple marker across a whole page: 210 Starlight Drive, La Jolla, CA. Even the phone number. She dialed.

When Wave Nelson’s familiar, bouncy voice answered, Camilla had to fight the urge to cry.

“Camel? Camel, is that you? Where the hell are you? I can barely hear you.”

“Somewhere near Amarillo, Texas.”

“That’s like, a joke, right?”

“I’m on my way to Los Angeles.” Camilla tried to sound casual.

“Awesome! I’m a couple of hours south of L.A. You’ll have to visit. Come in a couple of weeks and I’ll have my own place. We found this cool house down in Ocean Beach—me and my friend Jennifer. She’s a model at Neiman-Marcus—and we can move in next week, if we can find another roommate. It’s got a hot tub…”

“You need a roommate?”

“Yeah. The rent’s only five hundred a month, but we don’t have the bucks for first and last. Jen had a roommate lined up who had cash, but she O.D.’d or got pregnant or something.”

“I’ve got money in a savings account in Connecticut! I can cover it!”

“You want to be our roommate? What about L.A.?”

“I’m flexible.” This would solve everything.

 “Try to be here by Friday, OK? So we can sign the papers.”

 Camilla had no idea how many days it was until Friday. Her brain seemed on hold as she made her way back to the table and her cold coffee.

She kept thinking she saw Clint Eastwood, wearing a straw cowboy hat, staring at her from the shadows at the other end of the diner. She made several attempts to get the waitress’s attention so she could pay her bill, but the woman was busy discussing Elizabeth Taylor’s weight with a man behind the counter. The other tables were empty. All Camilla wanted now was to get back to her motel room and sleep.

Finally she walked up to the counter and asked for the bill.

“It’s been taken care of, hon,” the woman said, nodding her orange head toward the far end of the diner, where the man in the cowboy hat stood in the shadows picking his teeth with a wooden match. He grinned. His smile glinted with gold fillings. He didn’t look like Clint Eastwood any more.

Quickly, she walked to the door and pushed. It wouldn’t open. She pushed again.

“Oh, that’s locked, hon,” said the waitress. “We close at eight.” She looked significantly at the clock above the counter, which gave the time as eight thirty-five. “I’ll unlock it for you.”

As the waitress fiddled with keys, the man with the toothpick came toward them.

 “Howdy, pretty lady.” He tipped his hat like a movie cowboy. His smile was creepy.

The waitress finally got the door open and Camilla rushed outside, but the man followed and reached for her shoulder. His hand felt heavy and hot.

She smiled without meeting his eyes.

“Are you the person who paid for my dinner? You didn’t need to do that. Here. Let me pay you back.” She reached into her purse. “I have plenty of money.”

“I doubt that.” The man grinned as he glanced at the raw edges of her carefully frayed dancer-style sweatshirt, cut-off Calvins, and distressed-silk Issey Miyake jacket.

She pulled a ten-dollar bill from her wallet. She knew she’d be wasting her breath trying to tell him her outfit cost considerably more than he made in a month.

He pushed her money away.