Chapter 5
FIVE
Tania Marie
Word of the day: Ugsome: Frightful, loathsome
They chased her again. They were always fucking chasing her.
Cameras, voices attached to tape recorders.
She’d wanted the limelight once, and now she was being punished for that, for everything, especially for what happened with Marshall.
Why was the woman always the bitch and the man the saint?
She was the one who’d lost her job. He was still America’s most trusted newscaster.
She’d hoped she could slip through the gates of this Mission Canyon place for what old Mr. Warren promised was going to be a private party.
It didn’t feel private. It felt like the usual. How long and how hard did you have to pay for loving the wrong man?
And what about her clothes? The white silk vest under her matching jacket was just low enough to reveal an intriguing glimpse of her only decent attribute.
Pants were in right now—black and white—black on the butt, white on the boobs.
Oh, God, please let me still have boobs.
And diminish the butt while you’re at it, God, if you’re at all in a charitable mood.
She made sure the black silk pants covered the shamrock tattoo on her ankle. Every time she looked at the damned tattoo, she remembered Marshall’s lips on it.
She’d never get to the party before the media caught up with her. Never. She slid her fingers into the side pocket of her bag, shoving the foil-wrapped stash of chocolate chips out of the way. What the frigging hell did women do before they were able to carry their phones with them?
Mr. Warren answered himself. That surprised her.
“It’s me. Tania Marie Camp. The press is everywhere.”
“You poor child. They must be dogging you.”
“They are, kind of.”
“I’ll have the guard lift the gate. You go through. If they try, they’ll be stopped right there.”
She pressed the phone against her ear. He sounded like a kind man, kind enough to give her a chance, she hoped. At least he’d been willing to talk to her press agent. Nobody else had. “Thank you, Mr. Warren. I can’t wait until I meet you in person.”
“Any lady with your track record is a friend of mine.”
That didn’t settle too well. “Listen,” she said. “I know Marshall Cameron claimed I was a psycho when we got caught, but I’m not a psycho, okay?”
“If he allowed that to happen—” Mr. Warren’s voice rasped as if he were already defending her honor “—the gentleman deserves whatever he gets.”
“I agree.”
“You’ll be safe here. I’ll meet you at the gate, sweetheart.”
She looked behind her—at the cars and vans, everyone who wanted to link her to Marshall Cameron, the love of her life, the reason she no longer had even a lowly job in television.
“I’ll be there right away.” She forced herself to turn off the movie channel of memories and tend to the task at hand. “Just have them shut it fast, okay?”
The Interview
You called Tania Marie Camp a scheming manipulator, did you not? How do you feel now that she’s joined the Killer Body family?
What I meant to say was that this is a young woman who told everyone from her mother to her hairdresser that she was going to marry an already-married newscaster who personifies public trust and integrity.
Now, because Marshall Cameron’s housekeeper told the press she discovered them in bed together, Tania Marie Camp is humiliated, and Marshall Cameron and his wife are even closer than before.
Scheming manipulator? I don’t recall saying anything that insensitive.
I sincerely hope Tania Marie’s acceptance of the Killer Body program is genuine and that it will help her to control her yo-yoing weight.
A yo-yo is either tightly wound or all the way down, and we can’t live rewarding lives when we’re always in such destructive motion.
I hope I’ve addressed that topic once and for all. Next question?
How do I feel now that Tania Marie Camp has joined the Killer Body family? My family? If you only knew.
Rikki
Lisa would have loved this room and its glass, its tree-top views.
I hate it.
Most of all, I hate the posters of Julie Larimore that have been situated among the priceless art.
Lisa would memorize how these people are dressed in this historic home, and she’d try to replicate it.
She’d look across this room and see Princess Gabby, and her cleavage-skimming dress of patchwork and lace, her retro olive-green bandanna gathering the loose dishwater-blond curls that fall to her bare shoulders.
And what would Lisa think of Rochelle? Would she see the tight, yet tired lines around her lips? Would she feel a compassion I cannot quite muster? Would she smell the spiraling scent of despair?
Rochelle’s dress is sexy, though, although trashier than Gabby’s love-child ensemble. It both conceals and reveals Rochelle’s age in a parchment-colored crochet. The front ruffles of its matching duster fall gracefully around a body that still refuses to quit, the top part, especially.
I’ve played it safe in my jeans, a soft lavender shell and a violet suede coat Lisa bought me at Christmas. Our last Christmas. I’m a reporter, not a contender, and I can dress any way I damn well please.
I slip into the room, unnoticed, and I just stand there at the bar, grabbing a drink I don’t want, some kind of liqueur that, although it tastes like rotten peaches, won’t matter the moment it numbs me into a less painful state than this.
My interview with Princess Gabby yesterday didn’t reveal anything that wasn’t in the press kit. I’d come on too strong, and she appeared to be rattled, distracted.
I look around and realize that, for all its elegance, this is an old man’s home, a home maintained by paid help.
If it were not for the paintings, which may or may not be real, and the sweeping view of the city below, it could be one of the sprawling farmhouses that dotted the central California valley where I was raised.
For a quiet gathering, which Bobby Warren’s marketing man told me this was going to be, there’s plenty of noise, most of it coming from a frenetic African-American man at a baby grand.
He has a strong, Broadway kind of voice, enough to attract the attention away from the tiny knots of conversation sprouting up around him.
A good-looking man with too-short dark hair and a New York-formal suit stands with a winsome blonde by the door to the balcony.
They appear in unsmiling conversation with Robert Warren—Bobby W to his friends, and he appears to have many of them.
He also appears to have aged since the last time I saw him on television.
Rochelle McArthur slides next to the piano man. Damn, I hope she’s not going to sing. Maybe not. Maybe she’s just flirting with him. Her husband-slash-agent seems to be hitting it off just fine with Princess Gabby.
Behind me, I hear Gabby telling him and two other men about a play she saw last week in Pasadena.
“It’s so California,” she says in her accent without a country, and I wonder where the hell the lady in the most California patchwork-quilt ensemble this side of Rodeo Drive thinks she is.
I hold in my rage, grateful for anonymity and whatever I’m imbibing, which has slowly become friendlier to my palate and my brain. I’m thinking I’m safely incognito, trying to continue my eavesdropping. Then someone grabs my arm.
“You’re the reporter, aren’t you?”
I turn around and just cannot believe the childlike face shining up into mine.
In spite of the cobalt-blue John Lennon glasses, the short, heavily gelled black-cherry flip, and the baby bangs that had to be cut with two fingers above her eyebrow, this chubby little thing is so innocent-looking that she almost glows.
“Tania Marie?” That’s who this creature in the flowing black silk pants and white jacket and vest must be.
Tania Marie, the honey bee. Marshall Cameron’s nickname for her was almost as embarrassing as her confiding the fact to too many people she thought she could trust. How the hell did she get in here, and what is she trying to prove? “How can I help you?” I manage to ask.
“You’re writing about all of us, aren’t you?”
“All of who?” No, it can’t be. Killer Body, Inc. couldn’t be so cruel as to make this poor baby believe she has a chance against the others.
“Well, us. Bobby Warren’s picks.”
“You’re in the running for Killer Body’s spokesmodel position?”
She takes off the glasses and nails me with her cool blue-green gaze. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Good question. I was just—”
“I know what you were just. I don’t know how you media people sleep at night, you know that?”
You don’t sleep at night when your cousin drops dead, when your aunt, the woman who raised you, more or less demands that you find out why. You don’t sleep at all.
I could tell Tania Marie all of that and more, including how rotten I feel about the way I tore into Princess Gabby.
But I am not sure if I can say it without tears.
And besides, Tania Marie is a documented bimbo, a psycho chick who tried to bring down one of the most respected news commentators in the country.
What can she ever understand about anything?
I dig up my reporter voice from the attic of my mind. “I am just a little surprised. And, yes, I do hope to interview the finalists for Julie Larimore’s job.”
“It’s not her job.”
“No one’s clarified that for me.”
“It’s just not.” Her gaze holds mine then drifts, bouncing over my shoulder, past me, for anyone to rescue her.
“Not one of us wants anything that belongs to Julie. But there’s room for more than one Killer Body on the planet.
” She smooths limp white hands down her shantung-covered hips, as if hoping her touch will melt away the fat there.
“What do you think it takes to be a Killer Body, Tania Marie?”