Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
Rikki
With that terrible beginning, Lucas and I find our own twisted path to peace and conversation. Now, here we are, only two hours later, driving different cars down the same freeway, having agreed to talk more.
In this darkening morning in a city that is never really light, I travel the freeway, afraid of what will happen or what I will learn, but afraid to do anything but keep moving forward. I can still barely believe what he’s said to me.
We meet in the restaurant parking lot. And I know I have to ask before we go in.
“You okay?” he asks. He looks concerned but not too much so, with his short, dark hair, his cool glasses, the biceps beneath the Brooks Brothers.
“Why didn’t you tell me you knew her?”
“I just didn’t make the connection. You have different last names. Lisa went by Tilton.”
“We were cousins. Lisa kept her father’s name. I kept my father’s name. Only difference is my father died before I was born.”
That appears to surprise him. “I’m sorry.” He’s still just talking, though, not realizing what comes out of his mouth.
“Don’t be. He was one of the final MIAs in Vietnam. I kept his first name as well as his last.” I turn away from the teal sky, the crushing traffic, and look at him, just him, that face. “How did you meet Lisa?”
“A corporate trip. I saw her there, in the lobby.”
“You knew she was engaged?” I can barely contain my venom.
“Not at first.” He glances over at me. “Damn, I’m human, okay, and she was a beautiful woman. The minute I saw the ring, it was strictly business.”
I am contemplating having lunch with a man who is attracted to me because he was attracted to my cousin.
I don’t want to be here, but I am committed.
Later today, he has a tele-vision interview to monitor, an interview with the Killer Body candidates.
I’d like to monitor it, too, but the press is excluded.
The balloon of anger that almost burst within me is slowly deflating. I’m not sure I like that. Hating Lucas Morrison has helped distract me from my true pain, my true grief. Not to mention my aunt’s need for revenge.
The restaurant looks L.A. cute—bicycles parked outside, offerings like shredded-carrot-on-hummus sandwiches.
I order the southwestern salad; he goes for the only red meat in the place.
When I point out that the burger isn’t Killer Body food, he admits the only times he’s ever eaten the stuff is when Bobby Warren wants his input on flavors.
He tells me he wanted to be a writer. That he went to J-school, that he ended up with a job at the Times.
The way he speaks to me reeks of bad-date experiences in my past. It’s the ultimate bad date with someone who talks only to fill the silence. Only it’s not the silence we’re trying to avoid here. It’s the topic. Lisa.
I watch his face, the fierce eyes that his glasses only intensify. His thick eyebrows, his straight, thin lips. I always thought, as Hemingway suggested all writers should, that I have a built-in shit detector. But this man, if he is a liar, is a good one.
I need to make this fast, so that I can get to the TV station. Maybe I can find a sympathetic employee who will let me sit in on the interview with John Crosby. Yet, how can I leave what I’ve been struggling so hard to discover?
“You must visit many Killer Body centers,” I say. “Why Lisa? What was it about her?”
He doesn’t answer right away. Then, finally, the solemn expression lightens.
“I’m sure you’re convinced that I use my job as chick bait, but the truth is, I rarely meet clients, just staff.”
The food arrives before I can answer. Neither of us touches our plates.
“I should have known you were related,” he says. “You look a lot like her, only—”
Only not gorgeous, I think. To him, I say, “Did you tell her she could have a shot at Julie Larimore’s job?”
“Of course not.” The statement almost brings him out of his seat; it’s that forceful.
“That’s what she told her mother.”
“Are you sure? It’s not what I said. I knew she idolized Julie, of course. I told her we could use her in some local ads, and I suggested she might want to go to work as a consultant at the center there.”
Again, I try to lie detect. Again, I see only a sincere, little-bit-too-handsome man who claims his biggest mistake was being attracted to my cousin.
I sort through disjointed conversations in my head, come up with Aunt Carey’s desperate voice the day of the funeral.
She told me Lisa was meeting a man in L.A.
, that she was being trained for television commercials.
And when I insisted that only Julie Larimore was in the Killer Body commercials, she had said, “She didn’t misunderstand.
He told her Julie Larimore was quitting. ”
I pick up my fork and force a piece of lettuce coated with ranch dressing and barbecue sauce into my mouth. As if I’ve given him permission, Lucas picks up half of his burger.
I wait until he takes a bite and swallows. “She said a man told Lisa that Julie was quitting.”
“I wouldn’t have said it, even if that was the case.” Now his candor is replaced by nervousness and eyes that dart from the dark booths to the shaded windows, anyplace to avoid looking into mine.
That alone makes me ask, “Was it the case?”
He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t have talked to her or anyone else about Julie. I probably said there were positions in our company, and that she could be like Julie, but on a local level. There are others like that, at all our centers.”
As the creepy reality sets in, I put down my fork. It clacks on my salad plate like a bad-manners alarm. All I can think of are all those centers, all those women, Lisa.
“Women who want to be Julie Larimore?” I ask.
“I know it’s strange, but something about her inspires that kind of imitation. I’ve seen it at the centers. There’s always at least one with some version of the dress and the belt, and they all have the pendant. Lisa had the look, though. It was organic with her. You, too.”
I ignore the sudden rush of color to his cheeks, not to mention my own quaking self. I am certain of only one thing. I am going to burst into tears if I sit here another minute.
“I’ve got to get some air,” I manage, and get out of the booth, almost running by the time I hit the door.
I stand on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, gulping air, realizing I’m not handling any of this as well as I thought I was.
Now I’ve made a fool of myself in front of Lucas Morrison.
I’ll have to lie when I return to the table, make up some story about a dizzy spell.
I don’t get a chance. He’s beside me, hand on my arm.
“You okay?” he asks.
I nod and try to arrange my features. “I just couldn’t sit any longer. I needed air.”
He grimaces. “What there is of it. I don’t know how anyone lives here.”
“They get used to it,” I say. “You can get used to anything.” I look up at the putrid sky. “There are two Californias, three, if you count the Central Valley, and many don’t. Perhaps because we’re in the middle, most of the people where I live identify with either the Bay Area or Los Angeles.”
“I can guess which one you prefer.”
“What about you?”
He stops, lifts an angry chin to the sky.
“I don’t like the film-driven emphasis on style over substance,” he says, counting off his complaints on his fingers.
“I don’t like all of the blue eyes, blond hair and pedigreed dogs.
And I can’t imagine why anyone would tolerate the endless tangle of freeway, that slow, claustrophobic crawl, even for the rewards of being close to Catalina Island or being able to spot Winona Ryder at the drugstore. ”
We take the narrow walk toward the parking lot in back. I have the feeling I could yell rape right now, and the people jogging by would just turn up the music they’re mainlining through their headphones.
“So, where are you happiest?” I need to probe, to figure him out, to discover through these questions, answers to the ones I cannot ask.
“Out there.” He points in the general direction of the ocean.
“Santa Barbara?”
“It doesn’t matter. When the land slips away, and it’s just the ocean, there’s no place to hide from yourself.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
“A necessary thing, for me. Remember what Socrates said. The unexamined life is not worth living.”
“And you know what happened to him.” We reach the back lot, more gray and black, more dust. “Why did you stamp Lisa’s card?” I ask.
He turns, his eyes narrowed, as if trying to sense a trap. Finally, he says, “I didn’t.”
“Well, there was a stamp on it.”
“What did it look like?”
“It was marked Corporate,” I say. “Red ink, and the type was in caps.”
I can’t read his thoughts, but I know he’s trying to decide how much to reveal. “We do have a corporate stamp,” he says. “Bobby likes to comp his friends. Amazing he ever got so rich with that empire of his. He’s always trying to give away the store.”
“Who can use the stamp?”
“Anyone in Corporate.” He frowns. “Anyone who has Bobby’s permission.”
A chill travels along my neck as if a breeze has just ruffled my hair. “Where is it kept?”
“There’s one at every center. Every comp is supposed to be logged, but they get pretty careless. Why would they comp Lisa?”
We reach my car in only a few steps, but I feel I’ve run a mile.
“That’s what I want to find out. Can you check at the center?”
“Okay. I’ll call later on, see what I can find out.” I realize I’m starting to trust him in spite of myself, maybe even kind of like him.
He looks better outdoors than in. That’s why the suits, the glasses, appear to trap him. He makes eye contact, and without a word, lets me know that he’s aware I’m admiring his appearance.
I speak more harshly than before. “What kind of people are usually comped?”
“People Bobby Warren wants to impress. Old friends of his, public figures. They do it all the time for the media.” Never ceasing eye contact, he waits a beat, then adds, “Bobby loves the media.”
I groan. “You know what I need to do, don’t you?”
His sigh is audible, even on this noisy strip of concrete. “You want to interview my boss.”
“I really have to,” I tell him.
He reaches in his suit jacket, toys with his dark glasses. “You know what I wish, Rikki? I wish you liked us better.”
“Us being the royal us or the collective us?”
“Collective, I guess. Bobby. Hell, me. I wish, right now, that you liked me better than you do, okay?”
“I do like you.” Damn, maybe Lucas Morrison really is as vulnerable as he appears right now. Not all beautiful women are stupid. Nor do all handsome men have to be liars, do they?
“But you don’t trust me. Or Bobby, either, for that matter.”
“I don’t know, Lucas.”
I find my keys, jiggle them, as he is jiggling his sunglasses. Two different escape routes. Will I drive away before he puts on the shades?
“Neither do I, Rikki.” He gives me a look that brings new meaning to the word guileless. “I love the old man. My job, one of them, at least, is to publicize Killer Body. Still, I can’t let you do a number on him.”
“I don’t want to do a number on him. I just want to know the truth about Julie Larimore.”
“And your cousin.”
It isn’t a question.
“And my cousin.”
I reach for the car door, insert the key. “You going to be at the TV interview?”
“If I can get in.”
“Meet me there. I’ll get you in.”
My key still in the lock, I look up at him. He reaches for the glasses. His dark eyes spark out more light than this weary Southern California sky has for many years.
“I feel as if we’re pulling on opposite ends of the same rope,” he says.
“Me, too.”
He pauses, holding his glasses the way another man might hold a pipe. “I have an idea.”
“What’s that?”
“Why don’t we both try pulling on one side? We want the same results. Shouldn’t we be on the same team?”
Now I’m the one reaching for the safety of my sunglasses.
“See you at the station,” I say.