CHAPTER 10
On Friday morning Grant called to say he had a copy of Lorna's book. He figured I already had plans for the evening but wondered if I could meet somewhere for lunch. "A professional lunch,” he said, as though I would have turned him down otherwise.
I didn’t turn him down. I wanted to read what the book said about both my father and Kari. Despite Maren's assertions that Kari only suffered from bad budgeting, I worried about her. I told Grant I’d meet him at the restaurant.
Maren had relaxed my schedule since I’d returned from my events. I still had dancing, exercising sessions, and studying to do, but my afternoons were free. Maren was spending the day arranging details of Kari’s mega concert in San Diego and had told me that as a reward for my hard work I could go shopping. In fact, she’d left a list of acceptable and unacceptable places.
The restaurant, I noted, was not on the unacceptable list, therefore I technically wasn't disobeying her by going. And the nice thing about living with Maren was that she didn't have paparazzi circling her home. Anyone who was looking for Kari would be camped out by her house.
I called Bao-Zhi to pick me up, texted Kari that I was getting the book from Grant, and headed off.
This time, Grant had purposely chosen an elite restaurant where we could go in through a back door to a private room so we didn’t have to worry about the paparazzi. I'd only been a celebrity for a few days and already I hated them for making my life more complicated.
I told Bao-Zhi he didn’t have to wait for me while I ate; I'd call him when I needed him. I told myself I’d done this because I hated wasting Bao-Zhi’s time. It had nothing to do with the fact that I noticed Grant’s green Jaguar in the parking lot, or that I wanted to prolong my time with him.
Before I’d even gotten out of my car, a guy in a tuxedo came out of the restaurant to greet me. He took me upstairs to a private room overlooking the city. Grant was already there, sitting at the table. Just seeing him, gorgeousness personified, nearly made me stumble. What was God thinking when he created a guy this handsome? He wasn’t a gift to womankind, he was a torture device. I shouldn't be required to look at him when I could never have him.
He smiled, and my heart constricted into a tight knot. I sat down and smiled back.
He slid a two-inch stack of paper to my side of the table. "Here’s what Lorna's written so far. She’s still researching a few of the chapters, so there are some gaps.”
He leaned back in his chair, and I tried not to stare at every movement his broad shoulders made. "I read it last night,” he said.
I skimmed the introduction, which was the story of Kari's firing Lorna because Lorna had tried to help the hospital director do a benefit concert for sick children. I hadn’t gotten far when I let out a sigh of disgust. "This is awful.”
"Which part?”
"The woman doesn’t know how to write. On the first page it says, ‘Caring for no one, the benefit for sick children was turned down.’ Besides the fact that it makes it sound like the benefit cared for no one, the sentence is in passive voice and has a dangling modifier. This sentence alone would raise an English teacher’s blood pressure to dangerous levels.”
Grant picked up his water glass and took a sip. "That’s what bothers you? The dangling modifier in that sentence?”
"Well, I expected the rest to be bad.” I let out a sigh and read on about how Lorna had interviewed several people, etc., etc., and did all sorts of meticulous research.
I moved on to the first chapter, entitled "A Princess Is Born.” It told the story of how Alex Kingsley lost his young wife while out on tour. "His guilt and sorrow overwhelmed him for years,” Lorna wrote. "He compensated by lavishing gifts on his daughter. In terms of toys and clothes, young Kari had double anything she ever wanted, including a slew of nannies, a child-sized Hummer, a personal swimming pool, and a Shetland pony."
It went on cataloging his excesses and told how he threw himself into his work. He came out with four albums in five years. He took Kari and her nanny on tour with him when she was young, some years doing as many as 125 concerts. "Kari learned from the time she was small,” Lorna wrote, "that the only important life was a life onstage.”
A picture of the two of them was included in the text. Kari looked to be about four years old. She wore a cowboy hat, ruffled skirt, and rhinestone boots. He held her up for a crowd to see.
I stared at it and tears pressed against my eyes. The words blurred together and I didn’t even know why I was crying. Was it because I was jealous of the time and attention Kari got from the father I never knew, or the fact that he was so overwhelmed by sorrow and guilt he had wanted to buy for her what she couldn't have, a mother?
I didn’t notice that Grant had come around the table to sit beside me until he spoke. "Maybe this isn’t a good idea. You're already crying, and you're not even to the bad stuff. Why don’t you read it later?"
But I didn't want to wait. "I’ll be okay.”
I wasn’t okay. I got to the sentence, "Friends tried to convince Alex to remarry, but his answer was always the same: He’d already proved he didn’t make a good husband.” And I cried all over again. This time I knew why. I cried for my mother and her dreams that didn't happen, that couldn’t have happened because she'd pinned them on somebody too broken and unattainable to love her back.
Grant slid the manuscript away from me. “Look, this kind of stuff is said about celebrities all the time. People don't believe half of it, and they don't care about the rest. Even if it does go to press, you’re not going to lose any fans over this stupid book.”
I nodded, but the tears came anyway. I hated that I'd become so emotional here in California. I hadn’t cried this much over my father since elementary school, when I first realized I could never go to the donuts-for-dads-and-kids breakfasts they put on once a year.
Grant slid his arm around me, and I laid my head against his shoulder. I shouldn’t have leaned into him that way, but I couldn't help myself. I wanted the comfort.
He said, "Really, don’t worry about it. A tabloid once said my songs had subliminal messages that brainwashed kids so they'd do whatever I asked. Apparently I'm trying to take over the free world with an army of junior high zombies.” He ran his hand through the ends of my hair, loosely winding his fingers through it. "I had it framed and sent to my high school civics teacher. She thought I'd never paid attention to any of her lectures on government."
I laughed even though I was still crying, but I couldn’t speak. I grabbed my napkin from the table and used it to dab the tears off my face. You spend that much time buffing, concealing, and bronzing your skin and you don’t want it ruined by one outburst. "It's just hard to read about my father.” I could tell Grant didn’t understand, so I added, "Things are distant between us right now, but I don’t want them to be. At least I don't think I want them to be. That's part of the problem—I don't know—and I want to talk to him, but I'm afraid to. I don’t know what he’ll say. I don't even know if he wants me in his life."
Somewhere in that I’d quit being Kari and had become Alexia. My mom had said she hadn’t told me Alex Kingsley was my father because she didn’t want me to be devastated if he rejected me. It seemed like a cop-out answer at the time, but now that I was here in California, counting down the days until I met him, I realized my mother was right.
"Of course your dad wants you in his life," Grant said. And then he pulled me even closer. I let my head fall against his shoulder and stayed there listening to him breathe, feeling the slow rise and release of his chest. Neither of us moved for a long time.
Finally he said, "Can I ask you a question?"
“Yeah."
"Do you promise you’ll be honest?”
"No."
He laughed and I liked the feel of it against my cheek.
"It depends on what you ask,” I said.
"Do you really have a gambling problem?”
I sat up away from him, but not very far away. He still had his arm around
my shoulders. I wanted to answer for me, but knew I had to answer for Kari. "I hope I don't anymore. I worked this whole week doing concerts to pay off debts. Really, that's the honest answer. I could show you my latest dance routine to ‘Two Hearts Apart' right now to prove it."
"I'll pass on that." His hand returned to my hair, flipping it lazily between his fingers. "Do you really have temper tantrums when you’re upset?"
He was asking about Kari. But with his arm around me and the smell of his cologne encircling me, I couldn't be Kari. I relaxed back into him. "I don't have tantrums. Well, I did push Theresa Davidson into a cafeteria garbage can when I was eleven. And there was an incident not too long ago involving some books that ended up on the floor. But I'm doing my best to reform. That's the honest answer.”
"One more question." His fingers were still intertwined in my hair. His gaze settled on my eyes. "Is there any chance the two of us could be more than friends?"
I didn't answer for a full minute. I just looked at the table and felt the heat of his arm draped around my shoulders. Finally I said, "I still consider Michael my boyfriend."
Grant didn’t move. Neither did I.
"You didn’t say that was the honest answer," he said.
"I know."
He shifted his weight to look at me better. His eyes were serious, smoldering. Then his gaze slid downward, stopping at my lips. He leaned forward, about to kiss me. I should have moved, turned away, said something. But I didn't.
Then the waiter came in. "Oh," he said, looking back and forth between us with obvious discomfort. "Do you need more time to order?”
Grant straightened up, picked up his menu, and glanced over it. “Porterhouse steak. Medium rare." He handed his menu to the waiter and turned his attention back to me.
"Do you know what you want?” Only the way he said it made me think he wasn’t talking about lunch.
I peered at the menu, but my heart was beating too fast and it made it hard to concentrate on the words. "Sorry,” I said to the waiter. "I'm searching for something that’s vegetarian.”
He rattled off a few items, which I also had a hard time concentrating on.
Grant made a pondering "hmmm” sound, and I glanced back at him. His eyes glinted wickedly. "Are you sure you don't want to cheat?” And that time for sure he wasn't talking about lunch.
"Cheating is bad,” I said.
"You're right.” He sent a killer smile in my direction. "I don’t want you to cheat. I want you to change your mind altogether. Choose something that's better for you.”
I handed the menu back to the waiter. "Sorry, I’m not going to cheat today. I’ll have the vegetable lasagna.”
Grant shook his head in mock disappointment—or maybe it was real disappointment; it was hard to tell since he was still smiling—but he didn’t bring the subject of us up again.
We spent the rest of lunch discussing things like where we’d like to travel. He had actual plans. I had dreams I passed off as plans. He asked me what my favorite natural wonder was, and I said, "The ocean.”
"I don't think that's technically a natural wonder.”
"It is to me. I love swimming in the waves.”
"I meant like the Grand Canyon.”
Without thinking about it, I said, "I've never been there.”
I realized this was a mistake when his eyes widened. "You’ve never been to the Grand Canyon?”
Kari probably had, but I couldn't take it back now, so I shrugged. "I’m too busy to take the time out for that sort of thing.”
He shook his head in disbelief. I knew I needed to change the topic of conversation. “So what were your favorite subjects in school?"
"School?" He leaned back in his chair as though he needed the extra space to think about it. "Probably math. It always made sense. Unlike English, economics, and girls."
"And exactly how do you plan on taking over the free world if you don’t understand economics?”
“I'll hire advisers. I'll hire you, in fact.”
"Okay. Let me know when your army of junior high zombies is ready."
I didn’t want lunch to end. I ordered a fudge brownie sundae for dessert, even though I wasn’t hungry anymore and Maren wouldn't approve of me eating something dripping with calories. I just wanted to prolong the time I spent with him.
But finally even that disappeared and then I didn’t have a reason to keep him any longer. We both stood up and he said, "I’ll walk you to your car.”
"I had my driver drop me off,” I said. "I’ll give him a call."
"Oh, then I'll take you home," Grant said.
In retrospect the problem was that being with Grant made it hard to think straight. When I asked if he knew how to get to my house and he said yes, I didn't think anything more of it. He’d already taken me to Maren's before, which of course was where I needed to go. I was so wrapped up in talking to him that I didn't realize he'd driven to Kari's house until we went up the drive and he asked for the gate code. Then he said, "Oh, never mind. It looks like we’re following the pool truck. Do you have a nice pool?"
Probably. Unless pool trucks came to houses for other reasons. I smiled over at him. “It’s okay.”
Then I took deep breaths, suddenly realizing that the next few minutes could go very bad in a lot of ways. “How did you know where I lived?” I asked, doing my best to keep my voice at a normal pitch.
"When Lorna first came down to the hospital after you’d fired her, I drove her up here to talk to you. You weren't home, though.” He glanced over at me and smiled. "I wonder what would have happened if we’d met then? Do you think things would have turned out differently?”
Oh, yeah. They would have turned out very differently. The real Kari would have turned the hose on them. Then at the club, Grant would have seen that I was a fake from the start. But I shrugged like it was one of those unknowable mysteries and scanned the yard and trees to make sure Kari wasn't out for a stroll.
Thankfully, I didn’t see her.
The pool truck stopped by the house. Were they going to ring the doorbell? Would Kari come out to talk to them?
Grant pulled up near the garage and stopped the car. I didn’t move. I just stared at the yard trying to think of any plausible excuse for why we should leave immediately.
An older Latino man got out of the pool truck. He hefted a toolbox and a jug out of his truck bed, then walked around to the back of the house.
I couldn't even tell if Kari was home right now. Who knew whether her car was in the four-car garage. Really, her house had a four-car garage. Like maybe her Porsche wanted to have slumber parties. Grant got out of the car, but I still didn't move. My muscles had completely stopped working. What if she'd seen us pull up and came to one of the front windows to see who it was?
Apparently Grant thought I was waiting for him to open my door, because that’s what he did. I got out and scanned the house windows as we walked to the front door. Nothing. I opened my purse and fumbled through it until we reached the doorstep. "I, uh—this is really embarrassing. I don't have my house keys with me. But I know my assistant has an extra copy. I'll give her a call and she can—”
Grant leaned over and tried the doorknob. It swung open. "You’re in luck. You also forgot to lock the door.”
"Oh,” I said. "Great." How come Kari never locked her doors? Didn’t she know that was unsafe? I looked inside. No sign of Kari. I stepped through the doorway. I had told her I was getting the manuscript, so she might not be surprised to see me at her house, but she would definitely be surprised to see Grant. And he would be really surprised to see her. "Thanks for lunch, and for the manuscript. I’ll, um—"
He let out a sigh and stepped inside after me. "Look, we need to talk. You know, about what happened at lunch. Or at least what I wanted to happen at lunch. Despite what you said about Michael, I think you wanted it to happen too."
What was I supposed to say to that? I opened my mouth and nothing came out. Then I heard footsteps clickin
g on the tile off in the left side of the house coming toward us.