“That makes sense,” Kate said, blushing a little, probably because she knew “Roman” too. Carmen had considered mentioning to Kate that she and Luke had hooked up all those months ago, in the interest of full disclosure and being a good friend, but then decided it wasn’t even worth mentioning. It would only make Kate feel weird—and obviously Luke hadn’t said anything about it to her.
“Whenever I performed with my ex, Ethan, I hardly had stage fright at all,” Kate added.
“Maybe you should be part of a duo,” Madison said, obviously eager to change the subject. “Like Zooey Deschanel and whatever his name is.”
“She & Him,” Kate said. “They’re good.”
A new text from Laurel reminded Carmen that Kate was supposed to play her guitar in this scene. Kate’s next open mic was still a ways off, and Trevor thought the audience would need to be reminded just what she did with her time. So Carmen, ever helpful, said, “Do you know how to play that song of theirs—‘Change Is Hard’?”
Kate looked startled. “What? Oh, yeah.” She got up from the table—she wasn’t eating anyway—and sat on the loveseat in the corner with her guitar. Slowly she began to strum the chords to the song Carmen had requested.
Carmen smiled as she watched Kate play. She was really good. Dana’d had a lucky strike the day she ducked into that Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Carmen felt like it had been lucky for her, too. It’d been a while since she’d made a new friend. After all, when you were the semi-famous daughter of two very famous parents, figuring out who was interested in you and who was interested in your connections could be tough. That was why Carmen tended to stick with Drew and a handful of other people she’d known forever. They had no tabloid-fueled preconceptions of her (celebutard; party girl; shoplifter), and she felt normal with them. Free. Before Kate, Fawn had been her newest friend. But they’d met two years ago now (in an acting workshop with Carmen’s favorite teacher, well before Fawn developed an interest in taking things that didn’t belong to her).
“I was never no / never no / never enough,/ But I can try / I can try / to toughen up,” Kate sang softly.
Carmen could see the camera’s focus tightening in on Kate and hoped she wouldn’t notice. Kate’s stage fright occasionally extended to the camera lens. But Kate seemed oblivious, quietly singing and playing while in the background Gaby began to clear the table.
Laurel made a slicing motion across her throat; the sound of clinking silverware was overpowering Kate’s singing. Gaby stood uncertain for a moment, a plate in her hand, and then sat back down again. Laurel looked relieved.
When the song was over, Carmen and Gaby clapped. “Another,” Gaby cried.
Madison raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know we were in for a sing-along.”
“No one’s singing but Kate,” Carmen pointed out. She was expecting some kind of snappy comeback, but Madison didn’t say anything; she just drained her wineglass and reached for the bottle. What was this new meekness about? Carmen wondered. She considered exploring how far it went. Could she tell a dumb blonde joke? Could she talk about the hazards of tanning beds? Could she ask Madison about her sister, Sophia or Sophie or whatever her name was? She was weighing her options when Gaby spoke.
“So,” Gaby said, too loudly, “Madison, have you heard from your dad since the other day?”
Madison flinched at the question, which Laurel had obviously just instructed Gaby, via text, to ask. Kate looked up from her guitar, her hair shielding half of her face but her expression of curiosity nevertheless evident. Madison never willingly brought up her family, so now that she was forced to, everyone wanted to hear what she had to say.
“No, I haven’t,” she said stiffly.
“Oh, did you run into him again?” Kate asked. “After that lunch?”
“Oh, it’s so boring,” Madison said, stifling a fake yawn. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”
“It didn’t sound boring to me,” Gaby said. “It sounded fun.” She turned to Kate and Carmen. “Madison and Sophia and their dad went to the Santa Monica Pier, just like tourists,” she told them. “They rode rides, they got cotton candy—”
“So, like six-year-old tourists,” Carmen interrupted. She couldn’t help herself. Madison shot her one of her trademark evil glares, and Carmen smiled sweetly back.
Gaby nodded and breathlessly began to recount the Wardell family day. “It sounded to me like her dad was trying to be nice, but Madison was all against him or whatever, but then she found out that he’d sent her all these letters over the years, like he hadn’t totally abandoned his kids to their drunk mother, and—”
“Gaby, shut up,” Madison hissed.
Gaby looked hurt. “What?”
Madison’s eyes blazed. “Do I go around airing your dirty laundry? Do I tell the world how you never eat anything but celery sticks and spirulina? Do I talk about how you’re practically a pincushion for your aesthetician’s Botox needle? Do I mention that when you go to get your nonexistent fat ‘warmed off,’ or whatever your plastic surgeon calls it, you look like you’re being roasted under a fast-food heat lamp?”
Gaby’s mouth dropped open. “I was just—”
“Well!” Kate exclaimed. “Anyway!” Then she walked over to Madison and touched her shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay. I know that must have been hard, having all that intense family time.”
Smart of her to ignore the tirade, Carmen thought. “Yeah, that really sucks, Mad,” she added. She meant it, too. And she felt a surge of gratitude to her own parents for being there for her, emotionally, geographically, and financially.
Madison brushed off Kate’s hand and stood up from the table. “I said I didn’t want to talk about it,” she said. “So drop it, all right? I don’t need your pity. In fact, I don’t need any of this.” She gestured wildly to the whole room and then stormed off down the hall.
“Well,” Carmen said after a few moments. “That was awkward.” She glanced at Kate, who looked worried, and then over at Laurel.
Laurel looked thrilled.
Chapter 16
Walk with Me
Madison wanted answers. Not diversions or evasions. Not a lame “Aw, Sweetpea, I just wanted to see you,” or a “Well, I happened to be in the neighborhood.” No: She wanted real, honest answers about why Charlie had shown up now and exactly what he wanted from her.
The momentary flush of love and gratitude she’d felt when she learned about the letters had dissolved and become tinged with suspicion. It was time to uncover the truth.
The parking lot of the E-Z Inn was littered with fast-food wrappers and empty glass pint bottles still camouflaged in paper bags. (“Give me Rosie in a skirt,” her mother used to say to the clerk at the 7-Eleven; it meant Wild Irish Rose in a paper bag, which she could take to the park while she watched Madison and Sophie climb all over the jungle gym.) A man with tattoos on his neck, his hands, even on one cheek sat on a folding chair outside room 3, smoking. He asked Madison, as she stepped out of her gold Lexus, if she’d like to join him for a drink. Madison shuddered and hurried past, down the row of forlorn-looking doors toward the one that was marked OFFICE.
The last time she’d been in this neighborhood was when she got off the Greyhound from Armpit Falls. She’d made it out of downtown L.A. in under an hour, though.On the bus she’d befriended a guy named Travis who was going to visit his sister at UCLA. When the sister picked him up, she offered Madison a ride. Madison took it and never looked back. A week later she’d found a job at a little salon, and her transformation began with some free highlights and a spray tan.
A bell jangled on the lobby door as Madison entered. There was a man passed out on an avocado-green couch near a fake potted palm. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead. The room smelled like stale cigarettes and mildew.
Madison walked over to the Plexiglas window that separated the owner of the motel from his guests. “Hello?” She tapped her knuckles against the greasy glass and wished she’d brought a bottle of han
d sanitizer. Who knew what kind of infection you could get in a place like this?
“Be right with you.” The owner’s back was to her, and Madison could see that he was playing online poker. The man on the couch turned over and snorted wetly in his sleep. Madison shuddered once again. Maybe this had been a bad idea.
After a moment the owner turned around, and his expression turned from boredom to predatory interest the moment he saw Madison. “Well, hello and hello,” he said to her breasts. “Are you looking for a room?”
Madison nodded curtly. “Yes, I—”
The man smiled. “We don’t usually see your caliber of girl around here. You want the room for an hour or for the night? Money’s due up front, of course. Cash only.”
Madison paled. “Excuse me?” she said. “Do you think I’m”—she looked both ways and angrily whispered—“a prostitute?”
The man shrugged.
“Sir,” Madison scoffed. “This is Stella McCartney,” she said, motioning to her dress.
“Okay, not your line of work. No problem. So you want the room for the night, then.”
“I’m not here to book a room,” Madison said with more than a hint of disgust.
He held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, don’t act so offended. You know we’re all prostitutes in this life, baby. We just make our monies different.”
“Says the philosopher of the fleabag motel,” Madison remarked acidly. “Thanks so much for your wisdom. But I’m looking for a Charles Wardell. I believe he’s staying here?” She glanced over her shoulder at the guy on the couch, who was now upright and leaning by the door.
“Ready when you are, darlin’,” he said, leering. It was 11 a.m., and he was already (or still) drunk.
“Oh my God.” Madison clutched her YSL bag closer to her body. “Ew. Can you just tell me where Charlie Wardell is staying?” she said to the owner.
“Room nine,” he said. “I’m Earl, if you should need . . . anything.”
Madison rolled her eyes. He was talking to her breasts again. “Thank you,” she said coldly.
She turned on a heel and almost ran into the drunk. “Hey,” he said. “Aren’t you that girl on the billboard on Sunset?”
But Madison was already pushing past him. She couldn’t get out of there fast enough. She passed the tattooed man again, who waved, and hurried toward the far end of the building.
Her dad’s room was located between the fire escape and the Dumpsters. Madison knocked on the metal door and waited, feeling uncomfortable and out of place in her heels and short summer dress. She should have tried a little harder not to stand out. Too bad she’d thrown away the clothes she’d brought from Armpit Falls long ago; cheap denim and pleather shoes would have been just the ticket for today’s excursion.
Sometimes she wondered what her life would have been like if she hadn’t run away from home when she was fifteen. Would she still be miserable and alone, a fish out of water? Or would she finally have accepted her hardscrabble existence? If she had, she’d be settled down with one of the guys from the paper mill by now, the mother of at least two little brats and the proud owner of six Ford pickup trucks, only one of which ran.
She shook the thought from her mind and knocked again.
“I’m coming,” Charlie yelled. “I told you I won’t have the money until—” The door flew open and he stopped speaking.
“Oh! Mads, I thought you were Earl.”
“No, not Earl. Nice place you picked out.” Madison looked past her father into the dim, tiny motel room. She could smell cigarettes and bleach. The TV was on in the corner but its picture was blurry. There were two beds, both of them neatly made. She supposed he’d developed that particular habit in prison.
“Oh, where are my manners?” Charlie said and stepped aside. “You want to come in?”
Did she want to? No, absolutely not. But did she need to? Yes. She told herself that she was just trying to find what a therapist would call “closure,” but she sensed there was something deeper involved. Something weaker.
“Sure,” Madison said, and entered the room.
Dirty yellow curtains covered the windows; only a sliver of light came in. The comforters were probably mustard-colored once, but they had faded to a dingy shade that looked like the room smelled. There was a small Formica table and two chairs next to the built-in wooden dresser. The door to the bathroom hung ajar, one of its hinges broken.
“It’s temporary,” Charlie said, sounding apologetic.
“Of course. The Standard must have been booked.” She tried hard to keep the revulsion she felt from being visible on her face. She examined one of the chairs and determined it looked clean-ish enough to sit on.
“How are you?” Charlie asked.
“Fine,” said Madison stiffly. “You?”
“I got a job,” Charlie said, settling himself into the chair opposite her. “Well, I mean I had the interview for the job, and the guy said he liked me. He’s supposed to call later this week.”
“Doing what?” Madison asked. She had no idea how he’d made the little money he had.
“Mechanic,” Charlie said. “I was always good with my hands. Sometimes it seemed like I only had to open the hood and the car would just tell me what was wrong with it.”
“Really?”
“Really. Except for that damn Mustang. I spent years of my life lying under that thing and I never could get it to run right.” He laughed, remembering. “I swear, on a cold clear night you could just hear it rusting.”
A slight smile found its way to Madison’s face. “I remember that car. It was cherry red.”
Charlie nodded. “Yes, it was. Beautiful, but useless. Though I did get it up and running once.” Charlie reached into a Styrofoam cooler beside his chair and pulled out a Dr Pepper. “I took you around the block a few times before it shit bricks.” Charlie shook his head at the thought and popped open his soda. “You want one? I can get you something else, if you’d rather. They got a vending machine. Ice, too.”
“No,” Madison said. “Thank you.” She leaned forward a little and clutched her hands tightly in her lap. It was all well and good to share what few childhood memories they had, but she still needed answers. “Why, exactly, are you getting a job as a mechanic? I mean, Trevor is paying you. Isn’t he? To be on the show?”
Charlie gazed over toward the window, and a shaft of light lit up one stubbled cheek. “Mr. Lord did make an offer, yes.” He took a drink of his soda. “But I wouldn’t take it.”
Madison looked at him in surprise. Charlie had declined money to be on the show? But he so obviously needed it; he was living in this horrible place, and he didn’t even seem to own more than one pair of pants.
“Don’t look so shocked, Sweetpea.” His voice was soft.
“I’m not shocked,” Madison said, although of course she was. “I’m confused. Why did you say no?”
Charlie’s blue eyes met hers. “I told him I wasn’t here to cash in on your success, only to get to know you. Sophie said she didn’t think you’d see me unless it was on-camera.”
Sophie had been right about that, Madison thought. At least at first.
“That made sense to me, because this is your life now,” Charlie went on. “But profiting off it just didn’t seem right. I’ll be okay. I’ll get that mechanic job, find a studio apartment. It’ll be enough. Hell, it’ll be more than perfect if I get to see you and your sister. I’ve waited more than a decade to be able to do that.”
Though she might have been tempted, Madison didn’t ask him what it was that had kept him away so long. (He wasn’t in jail the whole time, so what was his excuse? Had he been shipped to Siberia? Had he suffered from temporary amnesia? Or was he always nearby, just not near enough for her to see?) She kept her mouth shut because she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. She just wanted him to keep talking.
“Of all the things I regret in my life—and believe me, there are a lot,” Charlie said, “the biggest is not getting to wa
tch you turn into the young woman you are.”
Madison smiled wryly to herself. From the breast augmentations to the syringes of Restylane, from the hair dye to the personal training regimens, it had taken a lot to turn her into this particular young woman. She didn’t think Charlie would have actually wanted to witness any of that.
He reached across the chipped, slightly sticky table and touched her arm. “I’m so proud of you,” he said. “You made it out of there. And what’s more, you made it here.”
Madison turned away and looked through the dirty slice of window toward the freeway. Why was she tearing up?
He left you, she reminded herself. He left you, and don’t you forget it.
But she could tell herself that a thousand times and still there would be the small, hollow part of her that cried out to forgive him. To love him and be loved by him. He had come all the way to Los Angeles, and he had not taken any money for it. He wanted a relationship with Madison and her sister, and he was willing to live in a shithole like this to prove it.
“I have to go,” Madison whispered. She stood and ran her hand over the back of her dress, smoothing out the wrinkles.
“I’ll walk you to your car,” Charlie said. “It’s not a great neighborhood around here, as you may have noticed. It’s not a good idea for a young lady to walk alone.”
Against her better judgment, Madison paused to wait for him, and her heart opened a bit more. Yes, she wanted a father. She wanted a father to compliment her and protect her and worry about her and be proud of her. “Okay,” Madison said. “Walk with me. I’m just down the parking lot a little ways.”
When they got to her Lexus, Madison unlocked it and folded her legs inside. Charlie stood in front of the car, still holding his Dr Pepper can.
“I don’t suppose you have much need for a mechanic with a new thing like this,” Charlie said. He ran his fingers along the gleaming hood. “Drive careful, all right?”