April Smith - North of Montana

‘What kind of stuff?”

“The stuff she wore in the movie. I guess it’s kind of like hers anyway.”

“Does this behavior have anything to do with the drug problem?”

“That’s over. She gave up drugs,” Maureen tells me in a solemn voice. “Big time.”

Tom rolls over and props up his head on an elbow.

“They all steal from the studio, Ana. Standard operating procedure.”

“Someone will go, Where did you get that dress? And she’ll go, Oh, it’s from my personal designer, Luc de France, when it’s really from Twentieth Century-Fox. I love Jayne.” Maureen smiles into the infrared rays.

I realize this girl can’t be more than twenty years old with about as many brain cells.

“How long have you been working for Jayne?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a year?”

“Isn’t that fast to be given such a big responsibility? Don’t they have union rules?”

“Maureen’s an assistant,” Tom explains. “There’s someone else — or actually a few people — in charge of, you know—”

“Designing, buying, fitting,” Maureen chants like a child at her lessons, “conceptualizing.” She waits. Her eyebrows frown. “I don’t really want to do clothes.”

“No?” I drain the bottle.

“I have a great idea for a screenplay.”

“Little Maureen’s big dreams.” Tom strokes her hair affectionately.

“Maaagda thinks it’s a good idea.” She opens her eyes just wide enough to glare at Tom.

He smiles placatingly. I toss the bottle back into the cooler.

“Why don’t you stay and join us?” he offers.

“Join you in what?”

“Whatever.”

I look out at the ocean one more time. The waves are six feet high now, heavy and forbidding.

“In another life. Nice to meet you, Maureen.”

I walk back to the cliff, grab hold of the chain, and hoist myself up the stairs.

When I get to the top, just a touch out of breath, I am startled to meet Jan, who is standing on the head of the promontory, wearing the upper half of a wet suit, hair streaming back over the shoulders in a stiff wind. He is looking at the ocean through a pair of high-powered binoculars.

“Dolphins,” he explains as I pass, without taking his eyes from the glass.

Clearly he is watching the naked lovers.

JAN DOES CALL to “reschedule”—and cancel and reschedule — maybe a dozen times. I keep working on my other cases but drop everything each time Jan says his boss is ready to meet. Once I go all the way to a fancy Italian restaurant at the top of Beverly Glen only to be told by the maître d’ that Miss Mason will not be able to meet me but I should go ahead and order lunch as her guest. I choose a seafood salad for $21.00 and when it comes, to my horror, a tiny naked octopus the size of a dime crawls out of the mixed greens to the edge of the plate and collapses onto the tablecloth.

“To keep the calamari extremely fresh, the chef puts them into the salad alive,” the waiter explains, “and kills them with olive oil.”

The next day I find a rubber octopus hanging at the end of a noose over my desk. What astonishes me is that one of them — probably Kyle — actually stopped off at a joke store and bought a rubber octopus. The merry pranksters also made photocopies of a picture of Jayne Mason and taped them on my wall: “Meet me at the Polo Lounge!” “Meet me in the bathroom.” “Luvya, baby!” “To Ana — My Dearest Friend.”

It is now “absolutely set in stone,” according to Jan, that I am to meet Jayne Mason in the office of her Beverly Hills attorney a week from Monday. That settled, I am able to give full attention to deep intercourse with Les, a new mechanic at Marina All-Makes. I actually enjoy having work done on the Barracuda, it’s such a quixotic challenge to keep it running. Although he can’t explain why the headlight is shorting out he is telling me the smart thing would be to replace the entire wiring and light bulb assembly. It will cost around $300 and we’ll have to wait for parts.

I become aware that something is going on at the far side of the bullpen, a small commotion over a mildly extraordinary event, as if someone had won fifty bucks in the lottery, but I am concentrating on Les, trying to control my irritation, appealing as he was at seven a.m. this morning in a filthy flannel shirt, ponytail down the back, long blackened fingers wrapped around a white paper coffee cup, aromatic vapors and stale breath commingling in the cold air.

Maybe old Les was intimidated by the muscle car, or maybe he just had a hangover, but if he had applied a screwdriver instead of a screw job he would have seen that the headlight bulb is interchangeable with the one Chrysler uses in all its Dodge vans. You could pick the thing up for ten dollars in an auto parts store, but as I am trying to educate him the disturbance at the other end of the office has started to build and is coming toward me. Like a wave cheer in a baseball stadium people are standing up in tiers and within fifteen seconds everyone around me is on their feet.

My first thought is that we are under attack, that some nut has managed to get through the security door, but nobody’s reaching for their weapon and no SWAT teams have arrived. “To be continued,” I promise Les and step around my desk to crane a look, only to find the view opening up as a sea of white shirts parts for Jayne Mason, who is walking right toward me.

I don’t have time to wonder what she’s doing here. Frantically I rip the photocopies of her picture off the wall. Big flakes of plaster come loose and fly into my eye. I stuff everything into the trash, trying to compose myself into the serious-minded FBI agent Jayne Mason has come to see. Then I realize a rubber octopus is hanging over my desk.

I glance down the aisle. I can see Magda Stockman’s glossy black head above the crowd and the flash of gold earrings. She is subtly managing the flow of human energy around her client by positioning herself like a rock, keeping Mason in her lee while moving her along, protecting her from the onslaught while maintaining a benign expression and expertly scanning the room to anticipate what might be coming toward them next. Being almost six feet tall gives her the ability to see over the heads of many people.

I calculate I have ten seconds before they reach me so I grab a scissors and step onto a chair, but two desks away the entourage suddenly turns left, continues to the end of the bullpen, and disappears into Galloway’s office. I climb off empty-handed, staring after them.

Immediately Barbara Sullivan is on my back like a dervish, digging her fingers into my deltoids.

“I got her autograph!”

She sticks a legal pad under my nose. A carefully legible signature has been written across an entire sheet.

Jayne Mason can turn a scrap of paper into a marquee, she can transform the day with a walk across a room. The woman is magical, and even I, a disbeliever, feel on the outs, hurt and inadequate because I am not on the other side of that door. “What is the big deal about Jayne Mason?” I mutter sourly.

“Either you get it or you don’t,” Barbara sighs and hurries away. “I’m calling my sisters in Chicago — they’re not going to believe this.”

She takes two steps, then stops herself and turns back as if suddenly surprised to see me.

“What are you doing here?”

“Trying to get my headlight fixed.” I have already redialed Marina All-Makes.

Barbara’s eyes grow round and horrified. “Why aren’t you in Galloway’s office?”

“She came to see him, not me.” I offer a stiff smile.

“Are you crazy?” She snatches the phone away. “Get in there.”

“Barbara, I can’t just crash a meeting—”