The Truth about My Success (16 page)

“Is that so?” Paloma sounds the way a freezer feels. “Well I’m glad you all find this so funny, because this is so totally unfair that the first thing I’m going to do when I get out of here is go to the human rights thing at the UN. I am not supposed to be here. I haven’t done anything.”

Tallulah makes a face that even a visitor from a far-distant galaxy would recognize as total disbelief. “Give me a break, will you Sue? None of us are here because we didn’t do nothing.”

“Well I am.”

“Yeah, sure you are.”

“But I am. My mother did this. She wanted to get rid of me for a while.”

“Why? Because you’re so good?”

Paloma looks at her feet. The nails already need doing. “OK, so maybe I stayed out all night a couple of times and drank and some stuff like that. But it’s not like I burnt the house down or anything.” Some might say that was merely luck. “It was no major deal.” She looks over at Tallulah. “What’d you do?”

In the case of Tallulah Schimmerhorn a more appropriate question might be: “What didn’t you do?” She is, among other things, a felon. Interestingly enough, however, it isn’t the shoplifting, petty thievery, joyriding, or even the drugs and the drinking that have brought her to the ranch.

Tallulah shrugs. “I tried to kill my father.”

For the first time since yesterday, Paloma smiles, though from disbelief, of course, and not happiness. “You what?”

“I didn’t exactly mean for him to die,” says Tallulah. “I just wanted to scare him so he’d leave me alone.”

“And did it work?”

“It must’ve scared somebody ‘cause here I am.” Tallulah shrugs again. “Anyway, I came by to see if you wanted to go to lunch.”

“No. I’m not leaving this room.”

“You have to leave sometime. You’re gonna get pretty hungry.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’d rather starve.”

“OK,” says Tallulah. “I’ll bring you something back.”

Luckily for Paloma, Tallulah knows what it’s like to be difficult, stubborn, angry, contrary and argumentative – and exactly how far it’s likely to get you at Old Ways. And, although it’s true that Tallulah did try to run over her father, she does have a kind nature and a big heart. James Schimmerhorn is the only person she’s ever wanted to see suffer. She brings back food for Paloma. She listens to her grumbles and her rants. She even buys her soda and candy from the vending machines in the common room.

If Paloma were to make a list of every person in the world and rank them according to how much she wanted to be his or her friend, Tallulah Schimmerhorn would be way at the bottom. Under normal circumstances, even if they were stuck in an elevator for fourteen hours, the only words Paloma would be likely to address to Tallulah would be, “Get out of my way.” Indeed, it’s no exaggeration to say that, under normal circumstances, Paloma would rather defuse a bomb with her teeth than have anything to do with a girl like Tallulah, the homicidal hick. And yet, by dint of her stolen meals and patience and treats, Tallulah is the closest Paloma has ever come to having a real friend.

Tallulah is kept out and busy during most of each day, but when she is in the room Paloma talks to her non-stop. She tells her how mean Leone is in exhaustive detail, cataloguing every offence, criticism and crime committed by her mother – and some that weren’t.

“She said she was sending me to a celebrity dude ranch to relax because I have to work so hard!” wails Paloma. “That’s what she said.”

“All parents lie,” says Tallulah.

She boasts about being a big star and making tons of money and living in Beverly Hills. Tallulah doesn’t believe her. She’s told all her friends what her new roommate claims, and they don’t believe her, either. She’s a fantasist. That’s the correct term for it in this group. Fantasist, not liar.

“The only people I know who aren’t famous are servants,” claims Paloma.

“Not any more,” says Tallulah.

Paloma may only be an average actor, but she’s always excelled at complaining. No matter how good things are, no matter how truly terrible things aren’t, Paloma can find something to gripe about. If Paloma went to heaven she’d complain about the clouds. It’s no surprise then that Old Ways provides her with an endless source of grievance. There is nothing about it – from the quality of the sheets to the power of the shower to the country that surrounds it – that meets with Paloma’s approval.

“I wouldn’t feed this to a mangy old mutt,” she says, scowling at the plate of spaghetti Tallulah brought her from the dining hall.

“So fine. Don’t eat it. I’m not going to lose any sleep because you missed a meal.”

Paloma pulls the plate out of the way of Tallulah’s reaching hand. “I didn’t say I wasn’t going to eat it. I have to have something or I’ll die. I just meant it’s disgusting.”

“Everybody else likes it,” says Tallulah.

Paloma gives her a look that perfectly balances pity and contempt.
As if that means anything
.

“You keep pushing me and I will let you starve,” says Tallulah.

Although Paloma’s room at Old Ways can hardly be compared to solitary confinement in a colonial penal colony, spending all day in a room with no TV, no phone, no music, and no computer does nothing to improve Paloma’s outlook or her mood. Prisoners often occupy their time doing push-ups, or making origami animals, or taming wild birds. Mostly what Paloma does is sleep or weep. Which may be just as well, since she’s finding it difficult to sleep at night. Coming from a major, 24/7 city, she was unaware of all the sounds the night makes when there isn’t any civilization to hide them (and the little civilization there is gets switched off at eleven). Rustlings, thumpings, snorts and cries. Lonely, hopeless calls of longing. Wild, deranged creatures baying for blood. Then, just as she finally starts to drift off, the rooster will decide that it’s daybreak – whether or not it is. Tallulah sleeps through it all. “I prefer wolves and owls to police sirens and breaking glass,” says Tallulah.

Paloma thinks she may be losing her mind through boredom.

Tallalulah may also be losing her mind, but not through boredom. She used to look forward to the end of the day when, after watching a movie or playing a game in the common room, she went back to the privacy of her bunk. The ranch has its own library full of books and magazines, so after her shower Tallulah would get into bed and read for a while, finally falling asleep to the calls and cries and silence of the night – feeling part of the world instead of afraid of it. For her, Old Ways really is a luxury hotel; safe and friendly with no danger that someone is suddenly going to punch you in the head or slam you against a wall.

But she doesn’t look forward to coming back to the room any more. Now she dreads coming back. Gone is the peace and gone is the quiet, replaced by a moaning lump on the other bed. Tallulah has been tolerant, she has been helpful, she’s followed the advice about showing kindness tacked to the wall at the entrance to the serving area in the dining room, but still Paloma just lies there whining and acting like she’s the only person on the planet who’s ever had a bad day.

And so it is that tonight when Tallulah comes out of the bathroom with a towel over her head and sees Paloma hunched up on her bed exactly as she was when Tallulah went in to take her shower (and when she left this morning, and when she returned during the day and after supper), all of the things she’s learned about managing her feelings and letting things go vanish faster than a falling star. The old feeling of wanting to hit something makes her bang the door behind her.

Which does at least make Paloma look over.

“So how long are you planning to keep this up? Isn’t it about time you got out of that bed?” asks Tallulah. “You’ve been here more than two weeks, you know. Your tan’s faded. Pretty soon you’re going to look like you’ve lived in a cave all your life.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well you should care. You can’t keep this up for ever, Minnick.”

Paloma closes her eyes. “I can keep it up till Dr Death sends me home.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Tallulah was once a girl who, finding a damp towel in her hand, would drop it on the floor, but now she drapes it neatly over the back of a chair. “You’ll be an old lady wobblin’ around with a walker before that happens. Ethan doesn’t give up so easy. Nobody ships out of here until they shape up.” Even Zigi Slowly, who did everything he could think of to get kicked out, including setting fire to the barn, was defeated in the end and now works at Old Ways as a ranch hand.

“Well that’s not going to happen. Not to me.” Paloma’s eyes open again. She props herself on one elbow. “Because anybody who thinks I’m shovelling up horse poo and herding cows is seriously wrong. I’m an actress, not the hired help. I don’t do crap like that.”

“There are worse things,” says Tallulah.

“Yeah,” sneers Paloma. “Eating in a cafeteria.”

“It’s not a cafeteria, it’s a dining hall.”

“Cleaning toilets and boiling beans.”

Tallulah gets into bed. “You know, life here isn’t that bad.”

“Maybe it’s not for
you
.” Although Paloma is wrong about quite a few things, she is, of course, right about this. Old Ways isn’t that bad for Tallulah, not any more. At first Tallulah would rather have been in solitary, but now this is the best Tallulah’s ever felt without alcohol or drugs. She has friends. She has a lot to do. She isn’t under threat every minute of the day and night. She’s proved that she can do more than get into trouble. A lot more. And where she used to shriek and scream and hit things all the time, now she rarely raises her voice. Though that, of course, isn’t what Paloma means. What Paloma means is that Tallulah is a nobody. “You probably live in a trailer.”

Tallulah harrumphs.
I’d rather live in a trailer without
you
than the White House with you
. But she knows she shouldn’t take everything personally; she isn’t the problem, Paloma is. “Nobody said you have to like it here. You just have to look like you’re trying.”

“I want to look like I’m lying beside an infinity pool reading
The Hollywood Reporter
, that’s what I want to look like.”

Tallulah reaches for the switch on the lamp beside her bed. “I thought you wanted to go home.”

“Of course I want to go home.” If Paloma’s voice were an insect, it would be a mosquito. “This may be
your
idea of a vacation, but it isn’t mine.”

In contrast, Tallulah’s voice is sweeter than corn syrup. “Well then you better get in the same story as everybody else, Princess La-di-dah. Because the longer it takes you to do that, the longer you’ll be here. That’s the way it works.”

“They can’t just keep me here,” argues Paloma. “Not against my will. This is America. I have rights.”

Tallulah raises her eyebrows. “And who’s going to get you out?”

There is a truth in this simple statement that Paloma has avoided facing until now. She hasn’t been kidnapped, she’s been sent here deliberately. By the very same people who are the only ones who can be expected to rescue her. They can only keep her here till Audrey Hepplewhite recovers from her injuries, then they’ll have to bring her home. For the show. But she could still be here for a while longer. A week. Even two. Maybe three. And her tan
has
faded. If she doesn’t get some sunlight soon everyone really will think that she’s been in jail. Paloma isn’t familiar with the term “sensory deprivation” or its uses in torture and mind-control, but she may be starting to feel its effects. Making friends with a cow may not be too high a price to pay for getting out of this room and having something to do, even if it is beneath her.

“I am not sitting with a bunch of losers talking about my problems,” says Paloma. “That is absolutely something I am not going to do. There’s no way.” That and hiking up some mountain with them singing campfire songs like a bunch of Boy Scouts. “How am I supposed to do all this stupid stuff? It’s not who I am.”

“You keep saying you’re this hot actress. So act.” Tallulah turns off the light.

Out of the mouths of babes
… as the saying goes. Or, in this case, out of the mouth of a difficult teenager.

Paloma spends a restless night, doing what she doesn’t always do best: thinking. Weighing her options. Considering the possibility of acting not out of mood, whim, or rage, but logic and reason. Maybe it’s time to not just react to things she doesn’t like, but to make a plan to overcome them.

When she finally falls asleep, she dreams that she is sitting beside Ethan Lovejoy in the old pick-up, being bounced and shaken back to the airport. They aren’t talking because of the racket of the truck, but she’s so excited there are tears in her eyes. The first thing she’s going to do when she gets home is go to the spa. Then she’s going shopping. Then she’s going to her favourite restaurant and will order that chicken they do with the truffles and kumquats and wild rice. When they get to the airport, Ethan lets her off in front of the departures terminal. “You did real good, Susan,” he tells her. “You have yourself a nice life.” She’s so happy she says that she will. She picks up her bag and practically runs to the entrance. And that’s when she sees herself reflected in the doors and windows. She’s an old lady with grey hair and wrinkled skin, and it isn’t a suitcase on wheels that she’s holding but a walking frame. She turns around to shout at Ethan, to ask him how this could have happened to her, but Ethan Lovejoy is gone.