Chapter 15 When We See Ramona Watts
When We See Ramona Watts
“Are you warm enough?” Sam reached for the climate controls in her brother’s truck.
She and Bex were in Laurel Canyon, on their way to Encino to meet with Archie Blasingame.
He had reluctantly agreed to give them ten minutes, if they could make it to the Gymboree before the end of the child’s birthday party he was attending with his daughter.
Bex adjusted her seatbelt. “Yes.”
Sam turned the wipers up, not because it had started to rain harder, but because if she didn’t do something with her hands, her heart was going to explode.
She felt restless thinking about the Macie she’d seen in that dark club, hands cupped around a lit cigarette. She felt like she’d witnessed something she wasn’t supposed to. Sam hated it when Hollywood did that.
Some things were meant to remain behind the scenes.
“Maybe some music?”
Sam had never been so glad Bex could pick up on her moods. It precluded her having to actually talk about her feelings. “Yes.” She grabbed her phone and handed it to Bex. “Here. Play whatever you want.”
“Don’t you need the navigation?” They’d decided to avoid the 101, knowing it would be a mess in the rain.
“The car can do it. On the screen.” Sam gestured at the backlit control screen in the center of the dashboard.
“What do I push?” Bex had swiped Fergus’s console menu open, creating a swirl of rainbow colors. Sam’s phone, in Bex’s hand, pointed out that they had just missed a turn.
“Goddamnit.” Sam slowed and tried to figure out what had happened. “What is it telling me to do?”
“It wants you to take a U-turn at the next intersection.”
“U-turns are illegal. I can see the sign from here.”
The phone’s navigation told them Sam had missed the turn after the U-turn. Return to the route. She bit the inside of her cheek. “Why is the map yelling at me?”
“It wants you to take the 101 to go to Encino.”
Sam checked her mirrors, then changed lanes. “If I wanted to play bumper cars, I would have made Fergus take us to Pacific Park when we were in Santa Monica yesterday. Turn that off. I’ll take Mullholland through the canyon. I need to look at something pretty and play with this truck.”
“I’m looking at something pretty.” Bex ran her index finger along Sam’s kneecap, softly up her thigh, between the top of her boot and the hem of her dress.
Sam felt the psychic grime from the Velvet Chair fall away. “Why, Bexley Simon.”
Bex laughed. “Can you believe that a couple of days ago I was calling you from an airport lounge in Denver?”
“Easier to believe than you right here, right now.” Sam gave Bex a quick smile and moved her leg closer to where Bex had settled her hand over her thigh.
“Can you believe we haven’t seen each other, shared a car, a meal, a glance, in six months?
That’s much harder for my body to believe.
It feels like it will be even harder for my body to give up. ”
Bex didn’t reply. Understandable. Sam focused on navigating the turns of Mulholland. She caught glimpses of stucco and wooden gates grown over with bougainvillea on one side, the gray mist heavy over the canyon on the other.
“I think I have to do Follies.” Bex had put on Tom Waits. It was “Long Way Home,” one of her favorite songs when she wanted to feel mellow.
“You do have to do Follies.”
“The Evermore is in New York.”
“Last I checked.”
“The limited run is eight weeks. There’s a month of rehearsal before that. And press.”
“Yep. You’ve done a limited run or two.”
“They’re putting me up in an apartment in Stella Tower. In Hell’s Kitchen.”
Sam whistled, low. “Nice. You’ll be able to share an elevator with Edie Falco.”
“You can’t walk to the Stella from your front door in ten minutes, Sam. Or from wherever they want to shoot the Theomina thing.”
“Exteriors in Vancouver. Everything else at Howell here in L.A. But I haven’t committed to the Theomina thing yet. It all depends.”
“On?”
“Whatever I decide.” Sam raised her eyebrows at Bex. “My career. My life. Us.”
Bex held her tongue, though Sam could appreciate the energy coming off her in waves as she restrained herself from pulling them both into a big conversation they weren’t quite ready to have.
“I love you,” Bex blurted.
Sam laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Good night, Bexley.”
“I know! It’s not the time. The valley doesn’t even look pretty.
… But I do love you. I just wanted to get it out of the way, because you said what you said by my pool last night, and this is not some will-they-or-won’t-they bullshit here.
This is it for me.” Bex squeezed Sam’s thigh a little painfully.
“We’ve avoided it so far, but if I genuinely do have to figure out how to do dirty things on FaceTime without dropping the phone on my face, I will. I’ll buy a tripod. I’ll hire a crew.”
“Whoa, there.” Sam’s heart was doing something cataclysmic. A supernova of exultation that crowded out her ability to think.
“My point is that I am committed. And you shouldn’t think that any decisions you make about your career or that I make about mine can mess us up. In twenty years, we’re going to be a Hollywood couple they write those mawkish articles about, like ‘Hollywood Romances with Staying Power.’”
“Ten years. Ten years equals twenty years in this town.”
“Well, I’m here for fifty Ohio years at least.”
Sam swallowed over a few tears. Ridiculous. She was happy with this woman. She was okay with not exactly knowing what came next. And anyway, she was starting to have an idea. “I love you, too.”
“Thank God,” Bex said. “I’ve only wanted to tell you for months, but I didn’t want to in a text. I considered and rejected sending you a voice memo. I had designs on at least two hours without a collection of our relatives around us and a throat-grabbing mystery.”
“So did I.”
The song finished, then started again, and Waits began to sing his gloomy descending notes. Sam wound around a broad curve, hoping that the LAPD detective talking to Ramona’s parents was smart and would know what to do. Hoping she and Bex made it to the Gymboree in time to talk to Archie.
Hoping.
“Hey, Sam?” Bex turned the volume down on the music. “Do you see that car in your rearview?”
Sam glanced at the mirror. “No.” Then there were headlights coming around a curve, far behind them. “The one way back there?”
“I swear it’s been following us.”
“Mulholland doesn’t give you a lot of options to turn off. Why do you think it’s not just a car that happens to be behind us?”
“I first noticed it when it took the same turn you did to drive up into the canyon. It was a little weird, because you turned on a surface street by that church and then navigated through a residential area. Not a common way.”
Sam scouted what was ahead of her. “In a quarter mile, there’s an overlook. I’ll turn in there and let it pass.”
“What if it stops?”
“The turnout I’m thinking of faces the driveway of a house that used to belong to one of my stylists. Right near the entrance, there’s a very-hard-to-see shed on the left-hand side. There’s plenty of room around the gate. We run and duck in there.”
Bex’s head dropped back. “Jesus Pete, Sam. I admire your quick thinking, but you know how short my legs are. You would dust me. This is a bananas thing to be talking about.”
“Get nine-one-one ready on my phone like Fergus had us do.”
Bex picked up Sam’s phone from the console. “This is why I don’t get booked for the action-hero stuff. I’m made for period pieces that style my hair over my corseted boobs.”
Sam let up on the gas. Through the curtain of rain, she couldn’t make out any details of the vehicle behind them. “I’m going to slow down enough that if they are just another car, they’ll think I’m turning and go around me. No one is coming from the other direction.”
“That’s right, you did your own car chase stunts when you played the hot bank robber.”
Sam choked on a surprised laugh. “This is not stunt driving. Or a car chase.”
She slowed, then slowed some more. The car didn’t go around. It slowed with her.
“Fuck. Okay, I’m taking the turnout.”
Bex blew out a nervous breath. “Ready.”
Sam pulled into the turnout, watching her mirror.
And then the car was close enough to see. It was a sedan driven by a woman with a dark bob.
“Son of a bitch!” Bex shouted. She opened both of the glove boxes in front of her seat, one after the next. They were empty. Then she flipped open the lid of the compartment between their seats.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for a weapon.” Bex pulled out a carabiner and tested it in her hand.
“You are not going to brain Ashleigh Chambers with my brother’s carabiner. Come on.”
Sam hopped out of the truck as Ashleigh got out of her sedan and opened a bright red umbrella.
She looked as glamorous as she had yesterday, now in navy cigarette pants with a soft pink blouse bow spilling out over the neckline of a matching cashmere sweater.
Her red lips were on point, her stilettos so high that even Sam’s arches throbbed in sympathy.
“Ladies!” Ashleigh shouted over the rain. “Nice day for a drive, isn’t it?”
Sam handed Bex the golf umbrella. She nearly took Sam’s eye out when she opened it. They were both soaking wet already. “Why the hell are you here?” Bex shouted.
“I’m following you. As I was hired to do. I’ve offered to let you buy my loyalty to you and you alone, but you didn’t call, so here we are. Where are you two headed? I would have loved to get a peek inside the Velvet Chair again. I could tell you some stories. Is Macie holding up?”
“Tell me why I shouldn’t call the cops right now, Ashleigh.” Bex brandished the screen of Sam’s phone with 9-1-1 dialed in.