The Truth about My Success (4 page)

“That’s the problem, Leone. You don’t think. If you’d told me what was going on, at least I could have done some damage control. I am Paloma’s agent, Leone. I do have a right to know.”

“I just figured she was acting out because of what happened with what’s-his-name.”

“Drachman.”

“Yeah. Him. I figured she’d get over it.”

“Well that’s worked well, hasn’t it?”

Leone is trying to catch the waitress’s eye. “What do you have to do to get another coffee around here? Beat a bongo?” Any second and she’ll be snapping her fingers.

Jack gives the girl a nod, indicating Leone’s empty cup. She gives him her nice smile. And Jack realizes that he isn’t the only one Leone’s annoying. The waitress has been deliberately ignoring Leone because of the crack about the clean cup. He smiles back.

“You still haven’t answered my question. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Taptaptap goes Leone’s spoon. “I told you. I didn’t want to worry you.”

Jack resists the urge to slap the spoon out of her hand. “Naturally, I appreciate your concern for me and my mental anguish, Leone, but now that I do know what’s going on I’m very worried. If I were any more worried I’d probably have a stroke right on the spot.”

“You see?” says Leone. “I knew you’d be like this.”

“Well I’m glad I’m not disappointing you.”

“It’s because you’re not a mother, Jack. If you were a mother you’d know this really isn’t a big deal. I told you, it’s a phase. All teenage girls go through it. It’s so they can separate.”

God help them, Leone’s been watching daytime TV again. “Leone,” says Jack, “this is not an average teenage girl living in the suburbs we’re talking about here. This is our meal ticket. Yours and mine. We can’t afford to have a train wreck. Are you listening to me? Watch my lips, Leone. The ratings are down. The sponsors are nervous. The network’s debating another series. If you’d told me sooner we could have done something about it before it’s too late. But now I don’t know if we can.”

“I’ve tried to keep her in the hou—”

“But she doesn’t stay in the house, does she? What we could have done was send her to one of those brat camps. Make her come to her senses. But that takes a couple of months, and we don’t have a couple of months. The new season’s about to start.”

“She’s just acting out Jack. I can control her. Trust me.”

Trust Leone. Not even as far as he could throw her if she was sitting in her car.

“Really? You can control her? And that’s why as soon as you left the house she ran off with some guy with a ring in his nose?”

Leone is spared the effort of coming up with an excuse for today’s escapade by the arrival of the waitress with her coffee.

The girl puts the cup down in front of Leone without a word, but says to Jack, “You didn’t like the
On the Road
?” It’s hardly been touched.

“No it’s not that,” says Jack. “The fries really are epic.” But he was too busy watching his life go down the toilet to eat. “It’s just that—I guess I’m not all that hungry.”

“I know what you mean.” Her eyes dart from him to Leone and back again. “You want me to wrap it up for you?”

He should take it. If Paloma loses the show he’ll wish he had it. “Yeah, thank you. That’d be great.”

Leone groans. “Oh for god’s sake Jack. Now you’re taking doggy bags?”

But Jack is watching the waitress and doesn’t hear her. “Leone,” he says. “That girl. Does she remind you of anyone?”

“Morticia Adams.”

“No, seriously. Someone you know pretty well. Look at her, Leone. Look closely.” Leone looks. “Picture her with blonde hair. Shorter. Shorter blonde hair.” Leone, frowns, getting as close as she can to looking thoughtful. “And with a little wave,” Jack goes on. “Picture her with wavy, short, blonde hair. And no glasses.”

“Her nose is bigger,” says Leone at last. Forgetting, perhaps, that Paloma’s nose was once bigger, too. “And her eyes are brown.”

“OK, her nose is a little bit bigger and her eyes are brown. So she’s not her identical twin separated at birth. But it’s still pretty uncanny. She’s practically her double.”

“She’s shorter,” says Leone.

She’s also a hell of a lot more likeable
, thinks Jack.

In an out-of-the-way weekend cottage that has yet to be opened for the summer, a group of teenagers is having a party. Technically, what they’re having is a beach party, since the beach could be seen only yards away through the living room window if anyone wanted to open the shutters. Their backpacks, coolers, buckets of fried chicken and potato salad and bags of chips cover the coffee table and a great deal of the floor. The cottage is decorated in a style called mid-century modernism, but what it looks like now is mid-century war zone. Things have been spilled on the carpets and chairs; furniture has been broken; lamps knocked over; pictures taken from the walls and replaced by graffiti. It looks as if someone once tried to build a fire on the footstool. There’s a lot of smoke in the room, which doesn’t come from the footstool but from the joints being passed around.

The cottage belongs to a man named Barry Taub, who isn’t here (and who wouldn’t be very happy if he were). No one at the party knows Mr Taub; they picked his cottage because it was the easiest to break into. Amongst the uninvited guests, sitting in a corner of one of the sofas in shorts that wouldn’t cover a small pumpkin and a red halter top (a colour her mother has always told her does her no favours), is Paloma Rose, teen idol and icon. In one hand Paloma holds a chicken leg so greasy it might as well be made of oil; in the other she holds a can of beer.

Paloma is feeling pretty happy. Paloma rarely does anything without a script. If it isn’t the script given to her by the director of
Angel in the House
, it’s the script given to her by the director of her life, Leone Minnick. But here she is, just like a regular teenager, hanging out with her friends. Laughing. Dancing. Fooling around. This is more like it. It makes her feel real; feel empowered. And it’s exciting. Paloma has gone to several Hollywood pool parties (with her mother), but the only beach party she’s ever attended was in an episode of
Angel in the House
(Season Three, Episode Two); the one where Faith Cross saves the stranded whale. She has also never eaten chicken from a cardboard bucket before. Never touched a joint. Never before been involved in breaking and entering. It’s certainly a lot more exciting than a make-up call or being yelled at for blowing your lines. Just the sight of the fried chicken and beer would make Leone pale beneath her year-long tan and start muttering about Paloma’s skin and hips and image, never mind the breaking and entering part. Or the joint. Forget the joint; Leone would never notice it. She’d have gone into shock when she saw what Paloma was wearing.

Paloma tosses the chicken bone onto the pile on the floor. This is living.

Maria was right, of course. Paloma’s new friends are not from the Internet. She met them by chance when she was giving her bodyguard the slip one afternoon and they helped her get away. At this exact moment, they remind her of a group of characters that appeared in another episode of
Angel in the House
– though anyone who isn’t Paloma might have trouble seeing the similarity. In the show these characters were members of a biker gang whose rough, often scarred, exteriors hid hearts of gold, and it was up to Faith Cross (Paloma) to make them and everyone else realize that. In real life, Paloma’s new friends aren’t a gang and only two of them ride bikes, and those are Vespas. The others drive cars. It’s too soon to tell of what metal their hearts are made, but, as well as the ponytail, there are several piercings and tattoos among them so, to Paloma, they look like they might someday own Harleys and secretly do good deeds. They seem to have the drink and drugs and illegal entry parts covered.

She prefers the taste of Diet Coke to beer, but there isn’t anything to mix with the Diet Coke and her mother doesn’t disapprove of Diet Coke on its own, so she sips at her can, pretending to enjoy it. Just as she pretends to understand what the others are talking and joking about.

“Hey, Suze,” calls Micah. It is Micah, the group’s lock picker, who recently rescued her from Paradise Lodge – her hero. “You wanna toss me another brew?”

They don’t know who she is. These kids are not the target audience of
Angel in the House
– they’re too old and too hip, they carry around guitar cases and artist’s portfolios, not Faith Cross pencil cases and lunch boxes, so she told them her father’s a producer. They think that’s cool. It means she gets to go to big-deal parties and hang out with celebrities and attend premieres. At least three of them want to be filmmakers. Indie films, of course, not Hollywood crap.

Paloma opens the cooler. “There’s none left,” she reports.

Micah turns to the boy sprawled beside the other cooler. “Sammy? You got another can in there?”

Sammy shakes his head. “Cupboard’s bare, dude.”

“I guess we better make another run.” Micah turns back to Paloma. “Suze? You got some more dough?”

The one thing they do know about Paloma that is true is that she’s rich. When they went to Disneyland it was Paloma who paid. When they went bowling it was she who paid. When they hung out all night watching movies it was Paloma who bought the pizzas and soda and beer. Just as it was Paloma who filled the coolers today and picked up the tab for the buckets of salad and chicken.

“No. We spent it all.” Once she’s gone through her pathetic allowance (hardly enough to keep a fish in shoes) Paloma has to rely on what she can steal from her parents (which, since they both work for her, isn’t really stealing; it’s more like taking it back).

“What about that old magic plastic?”

“I told you. My mom cut them in half.” That would be after the Disneyland bill. The picture some creep put on Facebook of her in a giant teacup waving her T-shirt in the air didn’t help.

Micah makes a rude remark about Paloma’s mother – whom he has never met and never shall meet – but his is a philosophical nature and he bounces right back from this disappointment. “Right,” he says. “Then it’s Plan B, ain’t it?” There are more ways to get in to a house than through the front door. “Come on, Sammy. Come on, Suze.” He shakes his head as she reaches for her coverup. “No, leave it. Come as you are. Leave your bag here.”

Plan B is simple enough. They will drive to the convenience store up the road. Micah will wait out of sight in the car, its engine running, while Paloma and Sammy go into the store. Sammy will go first; Paloma will follow a minute or two later, giving Sammy time to pick up something – a candy bar, a bag of pretzels, something small – and be paying for it with the exact change when Paloma bursts through the door, breathless and faintly hysterical. Sammy will stroll past her as she rushes up to the counter wailing that someone’s stolen all her things while she was walking on the beach and that she needs to use a phone to call her mother to pick her up. Micah says she should act helpless, like a maiden in distress. If she can, she should cry. While the clerk is calming Paloma, Sammy, seeming to be leaving, will dart back and grab some beer and make a run for the car. Nine times out of ten, the clerk will chase after Sammy, and Paloma will be able to slip out and meet everyone back at the beach. If he doesn’t spot Sammy, Paloma will have to pretend to call her mother. No sweat. “You think you can do that?” asks Micah. Paloma says she thinks she can.

There is only one thing wrong with Plan B and that is that this isn’t one of the nine out of ten times, it’s the tenth. Plan B doesn’t work. Instead of running after Sammy, shouting, “Stop thief! Stop!” the clerk grabs hold of Paloma and calls the police. “It’s Julio down at the Mini Market,” he says. “I’ve got one of those kids.”

Paloma is still trying to convince the clerk that he’s making a really gigantically enormous mistake, that she has nothing to do with whatever just happened, when Officers Clemente and Leung arrive.

“Well look who it is,” says Officer Leung, the proud father of a nine-year-old girl who is not only addicted to television but the owner of a Faith Cross pencil case, a Faith Cross backpack and the series T-shirt. “It’s that angel off the TV.”

Jack
Silk is not happy. Right at this exact moment in time he should be getting ready to go to the kind of party that makes the Golden Age of Hollywood look like it was nothing more than cheap tin. He should be looking forward to an enjoyable – maybe even profitable – evening, with everyone telling him how good it is to see him and asking who it was made his suit. But is he? No, he is not. Like a progressive, incurable disease, this day just keeps getting worse and worse. All that drama this morning. Then the meeting with Leone this afternoon, which threw the dark cloud of Paloma Rose running amok directly over his comfortable life. And now this: America’s favourite angel takes a few more steps towards getting a criminal record. He drives through the hive of photographers, reporters and bogglers outside the gate, honking his horn and looking as though he’d be willing to run them over if they don’t get out of his way. Which he would if he weren’t afraid of damaging his car.

Leone is in the family living room, pacing in front of a sofa.

“Beer!” she wails when she sees Jack. “They think she was trying to steal a six-pack of beer! How could they think something like that?”

Jack takes a chair across from where Leone is trying to wear a track in the carpet, but sits on the edge, as if he may get back on his feet at any second. “She had been drinking, you know,” he says. “Beer, as a matter of fact.”

Leone waves her hands in the air; her bracelets clink and clank. “But that doesn’t mean she was trying to steal it.”

“No. I know a lot of people who like beer who’ve never stolen a can in their lives.” Jack sighs. “But it does mean she drinks it.”

Leone collapses onto the couch. “Oh, Jack, it was hideous, just hideous.” Tears start to fall. He can’t help but think that they’ve been waiting for him. “A police car! My daughter came home in a police car! I’ve never been so humiliated in my life. Thank god they didn’t arrest her. I mean, can you imagine? Thank god the policemen recognized her.” One of them even got her autograph for his daughter. “And naturally, she denied everything,” sniffles Leone. “But of course it’s not like they could prove she was with those boys. You talked to your contact on the force, right? They can’t prove she was with them.”