Ann Beattie - Love Always

“Oh, sure. Glad to. The only thing is — jeez, I hate to ask a star this, but a guy got fired about a year ago. If you can sort of duck down so nobody sees you—”

“You got it,” Nicole said. “Just one sec.”

She ran upstairs, got the cigarette case, her makeup bag, and her purse. She threw them all in, put on her jellies, and ran down the stairs again.

“Man, Poodle’s never gonna believe this. Of course, I’d better leave this part out,” the man said. “I kind of like it that she’s so jealous. I don’t want to work her up, though. I don’t know what she’d say if I told her I was riding around with Stephanie Sykes.”

Nicole hopped in the truck. High off the ground, she felt more powerful. She was going into town with a plan, and she thought it was a good one.

“You know who else I really like? Liz Curtis. Gloria Loring. And Priscilla Presley. I think she can really act. Can you imagine that? Moving into Elvis Presley’s house when she was your age? She’s really a knockout. That natural look makes women look good. She had that teased-up hair when their kid was born. She looked about ten years older then than she does now.”

“I don’t think Lisa Marie’s as pretty as her mother,” Nicole said.

“Jeez — imagine being just a baby and having your old man fall over dead in the bathroom. I’ve got a three-year-old kid, and he’d fall over dead with me if I was on the floor, you know? Not that it’s not always rough, but when you’re just a little kid and one of your parents drops dead, it’s got to be bad. You know he wasn’t any daddy that put bees through the keyholes. He probably pushed diamonds through, huh? They say Graceland’s a pigsty now. It’s a big tourist trap.”

The deliveryman was speeding. Swallows flew past the truck, flying low over the road. A package slid to the floor. When they got off the dirt road, Nicole ducked low. It was too much trouble to bend over that far, so she sat up again, then slid way down on the seat.

“Sorry,” the deliveryman said. “It’s protocol, you know? Did you know that the Queen never carries her own umbrella? Wacky world, huh?”

Nicole nodded.

“My mother-in-law’s neighbor was in a room next to Lucie Arnaz when she had her last kid,” the deliveryman said. “Saw her every day. Said she was really friendly. Kept the door to her room open a lot of the time.”

Nicole’s thoughts were drifting. This wasn’t the outfit she would have chosen if she’d had more time — and it probably wouldn’t have been the moment if she hadn’t been stoned — but what the hell. She might not have friends, but she didn’t have to stay a virgin, and what better place to be deflowered than in a shrine to yourself?

HARRY WOODS was embarrassed. It was one thing to have a Stephanie Sykes shrine in his room, and another thing to have the real-life Stephanie walk in. She walked around, looking at all the photographs he had cut out of magazines, strolling the way people stroll through art galleries on Sunday, with one eye on whatever paintings were hung, while picking up people in their peripheral vision whom they might make a move on. Nicole intended to go to bed with Harry Woods, but she wasn’t entirely sure how to seduce him. She had seen enough movies to know that props would be a help, but there were very few things in Harry Woods’s room. Eye makeup was also a help, but she had forgotten to put on makeup in her rush to get a ride with the Federal Express man. So she was strolling around, trying to think, vaguely assessing different images of herself. There were pictures from newspapers, from magazines, black-and-white glossies he had gotten from the studio. He would probably buy a dozen Stephanie Sykes dolls. There were stories about Passionate Intensity tacked to his bulletin board. There was also a large oil painting of a spaniel with a bird in its mouth, an orange and blue sky glowing behind the dog, and a man down on one knee with a rifle, on a hillside, near a patch of trees.

“Do you like to hunt?” she said, sitting in one of his director’s chairs. She toed one of her jellies off her heel and, with her toe still in the shoe, flapped it.

“Nah, that was there when I moved in,” he said.

“I’m glad you don’t like to hunt,” she said. “I think hunting’s gross.”

“Yeah,” he said. “People come to the inn with deers dripping down their vans and stuff. Sometimes the parking lot looks like a slaughterhouse.”

“That’s really sick,” she said.

“They say if you don’t kill ‘em, they starve to death,” he said. He shook a cigarette out of the pack and held it toward her.

“No thanks,” she said.

“Mind if I do?” he said.

“Go ahead,” she said.

He lit the cigarette and sat in the other director’s chair. There was a white plastic table between the two chairs. He threw the pack of cigarettes on the table.

“So you must really think it’s weird and all, my having all this stuff in my room.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “What do you like so much about Stephanie Sykes?”

He blushed. He looked at the table and tapped his cigarette ash into an ashtray.

“You don’t smoke?” he said.

She shook her head no. She picked up the pack and flipped the top open and closed. Her shoe fell off her foot.

“So you must really think you’re in the boonies,” he said.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “You meet interesting people everywhere, you know?”

“Where all have you been?” he said.

“Paris,” she lied.

“Yeah?” he said. “Are they real nasty to Americans, like I heard?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I stayed with a friend.”

“Yeah?” he said. “They call streets over there boulevards. I know that.”

“Yeah. Paris is really exciting.”

“You speak French?”

“No,” she said. “But it worked out okay, because the guy I stayed with spoke French.”

“Yeah?” he said. “There’s a lot of Oriental tourists at the inn this year.”

They sat in silence. She put the cigarette pack back on the table and ran the tip of her second finger up and down the edge of the arm on the director’s chair.

“You must think it’s pretty odd sittin’ here,” he said.

She shrugged. “The guy in Paris has got a lot more pictures than you do,” she said. “I put up pictures sometimes.”

“Yeah? Whose pictures have you got up?”

“People I’ve met,” she said.

“Yeah? You must know a lot of stars.”

“I guess so.”

“Yeah,” he said. “There’s a lot of pictures with you and Bobby Blue.”

“We’re just friends.”

“You ever meet Brooke Shields?”

“Sure,” Nicole said. “We’re with the same agency.”

“Yeah?” he said. “What’s she like?”

“Well, you know,” Nicole said. “There’s nothing between her and Michael Jackson.”

“I read where there’s nothing between Michael Jackson and anybody.”

“Yeah. I think he’s messed up.”

“You know Michael Jackson?”

“Not very well.”

“Yeah?” he said, with more interest. “You’ve met him?”

“A couple of times,” she said. “He’s real reclusive and everything.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s really a great performer and all, though.”

“Yeah,” he said.

She took off her other shoe and slid a little lower in the chair, crossing her feet at the ankles. She wished she had touched up the polish on her toes. St. Francis had run up to her and licked her foot when the nail polish wasn’t quite dry; the smeared polish made her big toe look bloody. She put her heel over her toes. There was a big pink mosquito bite on her shin. Nothing she could do about that.