Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
The Interview
What happens when you get too old for the job?
Age is the last thing I fear, and no one else needs to fear it, either.
Age is a bully, when you think about it—all bluff and bluster, that can distract you from the joy of being alive.
Killer Body isn’t about age. It’s about lifestyle, about choices, about giving yourself the freedom to choose.
Inspiration and accountability. That’s what Killer Body is about.
And Julie Larimore is Killer Body.
It’s not age that scares me now. It’s this draining strength, this pain. No one can ever know. Promise me that no one will ever know. Stop the others any way you can.
Tania Marie
Word of the day: Vehemence: Forcefulness, intensity, fervor
Since there was no parking on Third Street, they found a place on Fourth, where she expected Jay Rossi to wait. She’d agreed to an interview and photo shoot for Woman magazine, and she had to find something to wear.
She should have left Rossi behind, but he refused, saying he’d feel better if he could just keep an eye on her. The fact that someone worried about her, even though he was being paid to do so, softened her, and she agreed.
Damned if she didn’t know better. He’d done nothing but harp at her since they left her place. She was keeping something from him, he said. She was a lousy liar. Neither accusation was news to her, and the second had been witnessed by the entire country the year before.
“Even if I did know something, what makes you think I’d tell you?” she’d said as they drove into Santa Monica.
“Because I care.”
“Can it, Rossi.” With that she’d turned up the music, drowning him out in a joyous blare of Van Morrison.
That’s what she got for having dinner with him Saturday. She was glad that was all they’d had. For a moment there, when it had been just the two of them, a bottle of Frogs Leap zin and the foggy slice of moon, she’d considered breaking her short-man rule.
“About an hour?” she asked. “I won’t be long.”
“This is my first time here,” Rossi said, ignoring her request.
Instead, he followed her past the art galleries, jewelry vendors and street performers that made up the center of Third Street Promenade. Restaurants, clothiers and coffee shops lined the sidewalks. The smells of cotton candy, funnel cakes and churros were so real she salivated.
She stopped in front of a cotton-candy concession. “No one has ever seen me shop,” she said. “It makes me too nervous.”
“So, try me. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll wait in your car.” He grinned and walked up to a tiny studio of a store, its windows filled with Asian designs. “Come on. I shop with my sisters all the time. Sometimes, a second opinion can help. Otherwise it’s just you and the mirror.”
She pulled her straw hat lower and pushed up her dark glasses. “How many sisters do you have?”
“Four.”
“That’s obscene.”
“My mother would probably agree with you.”
“You’re the only boy?”
“Yeah, the oldest. That’s why women don’t intimidate me.” He grinned at her. “Not even you.”
“You don’t intimidate me, either.” She tried to move past the shop, but he remained planted in front of it.
“My number three sister was a designer for Ralph Lauren. She’s living in Paris now.”
“She should buy her brother a new truck,” she said. “And some shoes without pointed toes.”
He looked down at his boots. “What’s wrong with these?”
“You ever hear the term shit kicker?”
“I’m not ashamed of my roots. And Blackie’s fine for me.”
“Offhand, I can’t think of any famous chefs who drive old pickups and wear cowboy boots.”
“So, I’ll be the first.” He looked at a variegated blue dolman top in the window. “You could wear that.”
“No, it’s smocked.”
“But the fabric’s light. And the color will bring out your eyes.”
That made her smile. “I’ll bet you don’t even know the color of my eyes, Jay Rossi.”
Her sunglasses were no protection from the intensity of his look. “I know more than you think.”
“Like what?”
“Like that it’s a shamrock tattooed to your ankle, not a clover like the tabloids say.”
That was a surprise. “I’m Irish,” she said.
“I know that, too.”
She caught a sweet, hot whiff of cotton candy. She had to have some, to feel the way it melted the moment it touched her tongue. That’s what she ought to be doing, eating cotton candy, not flirting with her mother’s lackey.
“A very thorough bodyguard,” she said. “Virginia will be pleased.”
His gaze didn’t waver. “This isn’t about Virginia.”
“She’s paying the tab.”
He started to say something else, then shook his head in apparent disgust.
“Come on,” he said, taking her arm. “Let’s go check out that top.”
Before she knew it, there she was, a makeup mask pulled over her face, the dolman sleeves at her side. She looked like Bat Woman From Hell.
She kept the makeup mask on. It made her look even more ridiculous—Bat Woman From Hell wearing a blue old-lady shower cap over her face, short little clumps of hair sticking out at all angles.
The designer, a Japanese woman wearing a plum version of the same top, frowned. “I can lengthen it for you.”
For a moment, Tania Marie was afraid she might have recognized her through the mask. Then she realized the designer was thinking of ways to minimize the maximum. “It looks better on you, that’s for sure,” she said.
“It’s lovely on you,” the woman said. “Perhaps we should lengthen the sleeves.”
Tania Marie felt ready to pass out with only the designer, the close quarters and her reflection in the mirror.
“Why the hell not?”
Gabriella
She sat in the back seat as Christopher drove the town car north on the I-5.
The rearview mirror indicated NW in turquoise digits.
Northwest. Such a comfort to know where one was going.
Although the weather outside had been a little on the warm side, within the car it was colder than she preferred.
Christopher kept it that way because he always wore a jacket, today one matching the gray leather seats and upholstery.
At least the car was paid for. She couldn’t bear to give it up, although heaven knows, she’d given up a great deal more.
“Do you think this is a good idea, meeting with Tania Marie again?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but I couldn’t turn her down.” She wasn’t sure how she felt about it, either. “I don’t think she’s a bad person,” she said.
“But it can’t help you to join forces with her.” He was always gentle in his suggestions; maybe that was part of the reason she always listened to him.
“I don’t plan to join forces, only to hear what she has to say. And what Rochelle has to say, too, for that matter.”
“You think she’ll even show up?” Christopher asked as they passed the first of the San Clemente exits.
“I think she’ll be afraid not to.”
It was a springlike day, and the clumps of purple and pink along the highway added to the illusion.
Rain was predicted for the following week, but you wouldn’t know that now.
She’d dressed accordingly in white and a floral print top and the wonderful bandanna Christopher had to buy for her that horrid day at the hotel gift shop.
“Maybe Tania Marie’s going to withdraw,” he said. “She’s suffered enough embarrassment.”
“So have I, but neither one of us is a quitter, and I doubt that Rochelle is, either.”
They drove a few miles more, and Gabriella knew he was chewing on something, as her grandmother would say. Right after San Juan Capistrano, he cleared his throat.
“What is it, Christopher?”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s something on your mind. The air in this car is thick with it.”
“As a matter of fact, there is, but I want to wait until we stop.”
“So, let’s stop.”
“Not until we get closer. I want to hear what Tania Marie has to say first.”
“What difference should that make? I’m more interested in what’s bothering you, and I don’t want to wait. After all we’ve been through, we shouldn’t be keeping secrets.”
“It’s not my secret. It’s yours. How much do you really want this Killer Body thing?”
She leaned forward in the seat. “It’s not Killer Body I want. It’s the talk show and the wherewithal, of course. I’ve got a really good chance if I gain some exposure, and Killer Body will do that for me.”
“Why don’t you go straight for the job, don’t even mess around with Killer Body?”
“You know why.” She couldn’t even speak the words, so shamed she was by her financial situation. “I just can’t bear living like this any longer. And I can’t keep begging Alain for money. I’m not going to give him that kind of power.”
“I don’t think it’s power he wants.”
“Of course it is. He loves to see me beg. Thinks it’s what I deserve for cheating on him in such a public way, regardless of what he did to instigate said cheating.”
Long Beach. They were getting closer. Finally Christopher coughed again.
She leaned forward over the too-cold air, on the wide console that separated the two seats.
“You might as well just tell me.”
“I can’t lie to you, Gabby. I talked to Alain.”
“What do you mean you talked to him? How did he find you?”
“He didn’t.”
“You mean you contacted him? Oh, Christopher, you didn’t.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”
It was impossible to get angry with Christopher. This was the closest she had come. “For starters, you could have talked to me about it first.”
“I knew what you’d say. I know how proud you are.”
She pulled the bandanna down over her eyes, sinking into the seat with a moan. “You didn’t ask him for money, Christopher. Please tell me you didn’t do that.”
Gabriella spotted Rochelle right before they got to the beach.
“Park here,” she told Christopher, indicating the line of snack bars and a pipe shop whose only clientele appeared to be tattooed skaters and potheads.
He parked in front of an old-fashioned liquor store, meeting her eyes with his sad ones as she stepped from the open door. As upset as she was, she gave him a hug. “I hope this won’t take long,” she said. “When I get back, we’ll talk.”