Chapter 5 #2
“Passionate desire. That’s more important than anything, the passion.” I’ve already gotten down her answer when she slams her hand over her mouth. “You know what I mean about desire, not that it’s sexual or anything. Drive is probably closer to what I meant to say.”
“Drive?”
“Yes. To be the best. And Killer Body is the best. It helps people metamorphosis.”
She has a difficult time getting the word out, but once she does, she pats her short, spiked flip and flashes me a jittery smile.
“So your weight—” I pause, not even sure I can be this cruel. “You’re not concerned that your body type will be a factor in the final decision?”
“Put away your fucking notebook, lady.”
I try to raise a questioning eyebrow, but I can’t say that I don’t understand her anger. “I wish I could do that, Tania Marie, but I can’t.”
“You don’t wish shit.” Tears streak her powdered face. “You just want good copy. That’s what you media bastards call it, right? You don’t care about me, and you don’t even care about Julie Larimore.”
“Do you?” I shoot back.
“Damned right I do.” A handsome server approaches us, shaved head, starched jacket, big-time attitude. His tray of drinks glistens. Tania Marie grabs for a crystal stem. “You take one, too, just so I don’t feel so guilty.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me.” I lift a flute that twinkles like a baby lava lamp with what looks like champagne. The taste confirms my guess. It’s not my usual bottled Fiji water, but it will get the job done.
I study the waiter’s name tag. “Thank you, Christopher,” I say, then look again at his face, more closely this time. Before I can ask if we’ve met, he moves away.
“Who is he?” I ask her.
“Beats the hell out of me.” Tania Marie makes short work of the flute. When she sees that I’m watching her, she adds, “Booze isn’t my thing. I just have to numb myself somehow. I’m scared shitless.”
My hand creeps into my shoulder bag for the notebook.
“Why?”
“You think I’d tell you?” Her voice rises, probably in proportion to the amount of alcohol she’s just inhaled. “I know about you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. I have a Ph.D. in media, lady. And I learned it the hard way.”
My itching fingers can’t help themselves. I attack the notebook, scratching down every word.
“I’m sorry,” I say, “but this story is important to me. I’m not trying to hurt you.”
“The hell you’re not.” She wraps her sad white jacket around her, as if trying to squeeze off inches from her formidable shape.
Not an unattractive woman, I think, in spite of the newspaper cartoons that make a caricature of her short legs and chipmunk cheeks.
I begin to see what might have attracted Marshall Cameron to her.
“Do you know Julie? Have you met her?” She waves a fist at the poster. “You’re trying to stir up all of this shit, and you don’t even know her, do you? You have no idea what she’s been through. You’re just trying to ruin her life.”
I move closer to the poster, tuning out Tania Marie as I study the pose, arms crossed, brown hair streaked blond—the same as Lisa’s had been.
The tank dress, with its wide belt at the hip is identical to one Lisa wore frequently.
The ensemble, the Killer Body uniform, even has the same side slit, the same ankle-high boots.
And that red pendant that is supposedly modeled after Julie Larimore’s body; Lisa had one just like it.
As I look at her there on the poster, I realize that Julie Larimore could have been my cousin.
And my cousin had wanted to be Julie Larimore. Why didn’t I ever realize it before? And when had it begun? Before she joined Killer Body? After she’d been promised the possibility of a television commercial?
Tania Marie has run down, like a clock.
“Not fair,” she finishes.
I try to reverse my spiraling emotions, pull away from the pain. I have a job to do. “How well do you know Julie?” I ask.
“We’ve met.” She crooks her finger at the champagne server, who leaves Princess Gabby’s side, almost reluctantly, I think.
Tania Marie’s features are far more refined than they appear on television, her lip color a pinky-brown blend that matches the subtle blush on her cheeks.
It’s a little-girl look—kooky with the spiked-up flip and baby bangs, for sure—but this woman is not the psycho she’s reputed to be.
For a moment, I feel almost sorry for her, but I remember my promise to Aunt Carey.
“Are you and Julie friends?”
“Everyone’s Julie’s friend.” A prim smile. She gives me a blank, vague look. The waiter approaches with his tray. Her arm shoots out. The tray moves toward me. I decline.
“What do you think happened to her?”
Her exaggerated grin doesn’t erase the fear in her eyes. “Julie’s always been loyal to Bobby W. I know she wouldn’t do anything to harm the Killer Body family.”
Killer Body family. The wrong combination of words said to the wrong person, a person whose family is one person less, possibly because of someone at Killer Body.
I swallow my anger and ask, “So, you don’t think she just took off?”
“Of course not. She’s not like that.”
“But she’s missing. Gone. How do you know her, anyway?”
Tania Marie gulps down the rest of the glass. For someone who claims alcohol isn’t her thing, she is demonstrating an amazing capacity.
“What business is it of yours?”
I swallow a little liquid fuel of my own. “Everything about this story is my business. I don’t want to hurt you or anyone else, but I have to know the facts.”
I expect her to flip me off. Instead, I can see from her eyes that she buys it. I start to feel guilty again, start to question what I believe about the whole Marshall Cameron Tania Marie Camp scandal.
“It’s personal. But what happened—it made us close, in a way.”
My fingers tingle, but I don’t dare try to write this down or do anything else to derail her fragile thought process. “You met through Killer Body?”
“No.” Innocent little-girl eyes, eyelashes like gold-tipped black spikes. “That’s all I’m going to say. Can I go now? I’m supposed to meet my bodyguard here.”
She is asking me for permission to leave. A nauseating wave of guilt damned near fells me. “I didn’t know you had a bodyguard,” I say, a bit too shakily.
“Virginia, my mom, just hired him. I don’t even know where he is.
The whole thing is ridiculous, but if you knew Virginia, you’d understand that some things you just don’t argue.
” She shrugs, feigning more happiness than either of us can possibly stomach at this moment.
“Let me know if you see a short guy in cowboy boots walking around. I hate short men, don’t you? ”
That strained, breathless tone in her voice makes me feel put off, as if she’s asking about the bodyguard to distract me.
“Must be tough for you having a famous chef for a mom,” I say.
She tosses her head. Her gelled hair doesn’t move.
“Virginia’s cool.”
“Do you always call her by her first name?”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
I get the point. Virginia Camp, like Oprah, Elvis, Madonna and God, doesn’t need a last name. Icons seldom do.
“This guard of yours—does he work full-time for your mother, or is this a special assignment?”
She shoves her hands, champagne flute and all, to her hips, and I can see the true, top-heavy form the expensive ensemble almost conceals. It isn’t pretty, and witnessing it doesn’t make me feel any better about myself.
“He works at her San Francisco restaurant, okay? I don’t even know the man, and I don’t need him or anyone else for backup.”
“What’s he supposed to do, exactly?”
She gives me a bleached-white grin—good, even teeth—reproach, maybe even disappointment, in her eyes and voice.
“Protect me from people like you, for starters.” With that, she turns her back on me and disappears into the body-to-body crowd.
I get the feeling she’s fighting tears, and it bothers me more than it should.
For a moment, I wish I could run after her, take her arm and tell her to get the hell away from Killer Body.
But I’m a reporter on assignment, a reporter who’s promised her aunt she’ll uncover the truth. And I will.
The woman walking away from me has been exploited by the media more flagrantly than anyone in a long time, but I don’t dare allow myself to dwell on that now. Tania Marie is a source. That’s all she can be.