Charming Grace

  “What are you tellin’ me?”

  “It’s this simple: You deserve to be an architect, and you deserve to build that special house here.”

  “I don’t know what I deserve. I only know what I want.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Right now I’d settle for kissing you.”

  She made a soft, urgent sound and reached for me. I reached for her.

  My damned cell phone rang. Grace jumped as if an alarm clock had just cut her off in mid-dream. I grabbed the phone off my belt and said some silent words that could have melted it. The caller was Mojo.

  “The Kangaroo and the Princess just flew in,” he said. Security buzz words. The Secret Service had nothing on us when it came to nicknames for our VIPs. The Kangaroo and the Princess. “Stone wants you to take the Kangaroo and the Princess out to Camp Senterra. He wants you to brief the Kangaroo and the Princess on Grace. The Kangaroo and the Princess have rented townhomes at Birch River. Overlooking the club house and the golf course. You can pick them up there. Their managers know to expect you. ”

  “Tell the Kangaroo and the Princess I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Oh, and remind me to take you off my Christmas card list.”

  “Uh, sorry. I must have bad timing.”

  “Never mind.” I put the phone away and looked at Grace.

  She was livid. “You have to take care of a kangaroo? Has Stone added a kangaroo to the movie? What—does the script now call for Diamond to kickbox with a kangaroo? And a princess?”

  I chewed my tongue. “I wish I could tell you the details, but it’s Stone surprise. A surprise for you. Gracie, I have to do my job. We agreed. I have to get back to work, now. And I can’t talk about it.”

  She snapped to attention, mad as hell. “I’ll see you—and your kangaroo—and your princess—later, then.”

  The light went out of her, and had already gone out of me.

  The Kangaroo and the Princess. A surprise for me. I couldn’t figure that out, and Boone was duty-bound not to tell me, and so, still sad over the Chestatee Ridge tiff, I showed up at Stone’s private/public Fourth of July party with my warning radar set on high.

  In Dahlonega, the Fourth of July started early in the morning on the town square with speeches by anybody and everybody who had the word ‘Honorable’ in front of his name. Then there was an ugly-dog dress-up contest, bluegrass music at the square’s gazebo, free watermelon, cheap barbecue, old-timey mountain folk music at the new-timey Folkways Center, and an all-day arts-and-crafts show. By dusk, several thousand happy, barbecue-filled, watermelon-soaked people were camped out under the trees and on the grassy slopes around North Georgia College’s ROTC drill field, for the fireworks show.

  Naturally, Stone was a bigger attraction that year than even the Big Twirly Screamer Rockets that burst in multi-colored spirals overhead. Considering his showmanship repartee with the crowd, plus his huge, private canopy—sheltering cherry-wood lawn chairs, boom boxes playing Sousa marches, and a buffet table piled with ribs and all the trimmings from the locally famous Pappy Red’s Barbecue—he was far more entertaining than the Screamers.

  “Somebody make a note!” he yelled above the whistle and ka-boom of the fireworks and the applause of all the people who’d crowded close around the roped-off tent to watch Stone watch the fireworks. “We need a Fourth of July scene in the movie!”

  An assistant scribbled on a Palm Pilot. From their miniature lawn chairs, Stone’s daughters clapped to the Sousa marches and pointed up at the exploding, candy-colored pyrotechnics. Diamond lounged, bored and snake-like in black bike shorts and a designer-ripped gold T, on a lawn chair beside some over-stuffed Italian bodybuilder she was dating. On lawn chairs beside mine, Leo and Mika held hands and dreamily watched the pulsing rays of the third moon of Luna 7, or whatever else the fireworks resembled in their imagination vis-à-vis their latest computer game simulation.

  “I want you to make a note about your diet,” Kanda said to Stone with stern affection. She poked her fingers into the pocket of Stone’s Hawaiian shirt, retrieved a forbidden piece of pecan fudge from the Fudge Factory, and tossed it to Boone.

  Stone scowled benignly, kissed Kanda, then bellowed at Boone, “Noleene, you ratted me out.”

  Boone palmed the candy. It disappeared behind his big, agile fingers. “What fudge?”

  “Feed it to Mel and then take him for a walk.” Mel Gibson had just received some kind of directing award, so Shrek was back to being Mel. Stone chortled at Boone. “Have fun, fudge squealer. Pecans always give Mel gas.”

  Boone maintained a stoic expression as the crowd beyond the ropes laughed and applauded. He dutifully fed Shrek the contraband, and Shrek happily slobbered on Boone’s hand.

  I darted poisoned-fudge looks at Stone. Stone, of course, didn’t notice.

  “Fireworks!” he said again, and gave me a grinning thumbs-up. “A fireworks scene showing you and Harp being patriotic! Wha’d’ya think, Grace?”

  “Harp hated crowds. He never came to town for festivals. And he wasn’t patriotic. Not in a wrapped-in-the-flag way, at least.”

  “Whatever! It’ll be a great scene!”

  I got up from my lounge chair and went to the edge of the tent. My eyes burned. Before me, the sky turned into an eye-popping climax of fireworks. Giant chrysanthemums of color bloomed against the gray-black night.

  And then people began screaming.

  I jerked my head toward the sound but couldn’t see anything except the crowd on the slope below us leaping to their feet. I pivoted toward Boone, expecting some grim reaction to potential danger.

  But Boone just stood there, watching the leaping spectators. I caught his eye. He pointed toward the screams, then pointed at me.

  Something or someone was headed my way. And he knew it.

  I faced the chaos. A phalanx of uniformed security guards diplomatically bulldozed a path through the applauding crowd. Behind them walked a handsome, late-twenties-something man and beautiful young woman who waved and smiled big, capped, young-movie-star smiles.

  “Surprise, Grace!” Stone yelled in my ear. I winced and looked up at him. He grinned. “You know that famous story about how Vivien Leigh showed up on the set of Gone With The Wind while they were still hunting for an actress to play Scarlett, and it was the battle of Atlanta scene, so they had set a whole huge studio back lot on fire, and the cameras were rolling, and Vivien’s people went up to David Selznick, the director, and they said—real dramatic— ‘We’ve finally found Scarlett O’ Hara for you, and here she is,’ and Selznick looked over, and right there, against the background of all those giant flames, stood the perfect Scarlett? Vivien Leigh. And it was like magic. You know that story?”

  “You’re planning to set something on fire?”

  He laughed. “Here’s your Scarlett O’ Hara. Both of ‘em.” He swung a big hand toward the couple headed my way. The security men stepped aside, and the gorgeously casual man and woman walked up to me with earnest, gorgeous eyes. Of course, I knew who they were. I just hadn’t expected to meet them at the burning of Atlanta. The man put a hand to his heart, then spoke in a heavy Australian accent. “I’m your husband, Grace. I’m Harp.”

  The woman smiled at me through big, sincere-looking tears. “And I’m you. I’m you, Grace. It’s such an honor.”

  I stared at rising action heart-throb Lowe Taber and up-and-coming Julia Roberts wannabe, Abbie Myers.

  The Kangaroo and the Princess.

  Harp’s cinematic doppelganger. And mine.

  “Frankly, my dears—”

  Abbie Myers burst into sobs as she grabbed one of my hands. “This is the role of a lifetime. I want to be you. I will be you. Please, help me be you.”

  “Ditto,” Lowe added hoarsely, in his down-under accent. He grabbed my other hand. “It’s an honor. Please help me be Harp Vance. Really be him. Be him.”

  Sincere. Clueless. Eager to please. Fond of the Zen of being. Or, at least, the Zen of the word be. r />
  Easy to manipulate.

  So be it.

  The light bulb of a scheme lit my smile.

  “You’re exactly what I hoped for,” I said. “Bless your hearts.”

  Abbie’s real name was Abigal Dunklemeyer. She’d been born twenty-seven years ago in Wisconsin. Kanda—a likewise Wisconsinite—had lobbied for Stone to cast her in the part of me, and Stone liked to make Kanda happy. Plus as a teenager Abbie had been a beauty queen, “just like you, Grace,” Stone said. “You’re two peas in the same beauty queen pod.” I had been Miss Georgia, queen of the Peach State, and Abbie had been Miss Wisconsin, queen of the cheese state. “Everybody knows fruit and cheese go together,” Stone said.

  He said that. Really. I swear it.

  Lowe and Abbie glowed like cut-rate Alabama-interstate fireworks as I welcomed them with open arms. Open arms. And smiling. Miss Hostess With the Mostest Reason To Pull A Fast One.

  I turned once that night at the festivities, feeling Boone’s dark, wary eyes on me, but also his warmth, his misery, like my own. I searched through the flickering shadows of the tent, and while Sousa marched even louder on the boom boxes and the finale of the fireworks show ka-boomed I finally found him, out in the no-man’s land at the edge of the festivities, or rather, the no-man-and-his-pig’s land. Shrek lay by his feet, scrubbing his head against Boone’s shoes the way affectionate cats rub themselves along a favored person’s legs.

  The pig loved him. And the pig understood why Boone deserved to be loved.

  Boone looked grim but determined. I held up a hand, palm out, giving him a motionless wave, full of repressed emotion. A secret apology from a lady werewolf who was about to bite his boss’s new guests. The great-granddaughter of a moonshining con warned him she was going to make some white lightning.

  My ex-con raised a hand back and wagged a warning finger. Gracie, don’t make me do my job. Leave those tasty little actors alone.

  I touched a finger to my lips. Ssssh. They’ll never even know what bit them.

  “I’m bored with my movie script,” Stone announced the next day to all of us assistants and flunkies at Casa Senterra. “Now that Lowe and Abbie are on the set and Grace is on my side, I think it’s time to start fresh and kick some creative ass!”

  “Oh, shit,” Mojo whispered to me and Tex. “He’s going to rewrite the script.”

  I stared at Mojo. “What gives?”

  Tex bent close and hissed, “Stone said exactly the same thing about ‘kicking creative ass’ when he rewrote Viper Platoon. God help us all. That’s how the killer monkeys got in that movie.”

  “I thought the killer monkey storyline came from a studio exec who was busted for smokin’ crack.”

  “Naw. The monkeys were Stone’s idea. The studio had a shit fit, but the movie surprised ‘em and made a wad of money. And at Christmas the killer monkeys turned out to be the hottest action toys since GI Joe. But when all was said and done, they were still killer monkeys. Stupidest damned thing you ever saw. And Stone thought ‘em up. Just like he’s gonna think up some kind of killer monkeys for Hero.”

  “Mais non. Holy merde.”

  “Shit, yes. Never underestimate the idiot factor in the movie audience, Noleene. Stone understands it. That’s why he’s decided to turn Hero into a killer monkey movie. He can’t resist the urge to do what he does best.”

  My gut twisted. Grace would be piling up more gravel and loading her shotgun for real, this time.

  “I need to talk to you,” I said to Stone later, when I was out back guarding him from squirrels while he lifted weights. “It’s about your rewrite of Hero.”

  “You got a problem with my plan? Spit it out, Noleene! Look at it this way—this lets you off the hook for casing Ladyslipper Lost. I’m goin’ in a whole new direction.” Stone grunted under the heft of two huge barbells. I caught a flash of movement up in the oaks behind the swimming pool. Brian stared down at us, a high-rise spy kid, his eyes as big as marbles. When he caught me catching him he grinned but ducked behind a branch.

  I raised my voice so Brian could hear every word. “If you’re planning to rewrite the script of the movie, Boss, I think you ought to at least let Grace know.” I looked up at the tree. “Let Grace know you’re planning to rewrite the movie to make it less realistic.”

  “What the hell are you shouting for, Noleene?” Stone dropped the barbells. “I’m losing my damned hair, not my hearing. Do I look like I’ve lost my hearing lately?”

  “Sorry. Just makin’ my point. You said you wanted my opinion on how to work with Grace, so here it is: Best to tell her what you’ve got in mind for script changes. It’s only fair.”

  Stone rolled his eyes and sighed. “Noleene, you don’t know women the way I do. They don’t need a fair fight to be happy. They don’t want to win any real wars, they just want to win the war of words. Grace has done that already. She’s made her point, and she’s a happy camper now, and so I can do whatever I want.” He paused, flicking a sweaty hand along the cashmere towel tucked into his customized leather back brace. “So I’m going to jazz up this movie the way it needs to be jazzed up.”

  “But just tell her you’re changing the script, then. That’s my advice.”

  “Nope. Trust me, Noleene, she’s fine. Didn’t you see the smiley face she gave Abbie and Lowe at the fireworks? She saw how good my actors look—how good they’re going to make her and Harp look in the movie. All her fears were settled right then, my man. I could put dancing giraffes in this movie now, if I wanted to, and she’d be okay with it.” He picked up a new barbell, grinned, and shook it at me. “Movies are tricky to make, my man. But women are easy.”

  About that time, Kanda marched out of the house. She carried a bathroom scale, a book on high-protein diets, and a stuffed antelope head from Stone’s safari collection. She halted in front of her big lug of a goyim husband, who took one look at the antelope head and began to turn red. “Now, honey,” he said.

  “Don’t even try to fake me out, mister. Do I look like a Wisconsin Jew who fell off the farm-girl wagon yesterday?” Kanda upended the antelope head and shook it. “You schmuck.”

  A dozen hunks of Fudge Factory fudge fell out of the antelope’s neck.

  “I have no idea how those got in that animal’s head,” Stone lied.

  She plunked the scale down on the patio. “Let’s see how much damage we have to undo by the time you start filming Deep Space Revenge this fall. On the scale, mister. Now.”

  “Honey, sweetie, awww—”

  “Now. On the scale.”

  Stone scowled at her, then at me. No one was going to witness his weigh-in and Kanda’s follow-up lecture. “Beat it, Noleene.”

  For a man who thought he could control women, he was one, big, teddy-bear-hearted, fudge-addicted wussy. Kanda touched my arm sympathetically. “Thank you, Boone. I know you’ve tried to keep his fudge indulgences under control. I don’t blame you for this pathetic incident.”

  “I searched the moose head and the rhino. Just never got around to the antelope.”

  “Beat it, Noleene,” Stone repeated grimly. “Kanda doesn’t like witnesses when she slaps me around.”

  “That’s right,” Kanda said.

  I nodded grimly and headed indoors, but not before I heard the oak limbs rustle under the weight of little-boy spy feet. My good deed for the day was done.

  Brian was hurrying to tell Grace every word.

  “And Stone Senterra says he might even put dancing giraffes in the movie!” Brian reported when his grandmother dropped him off at the Downs.

  G. Helen and I traded dark looks. “I should have shot him, back in May,” I said.

  “Personal armadillos,” Tex liked to say. “That’s what separates the great actors from the ones who end up doing ads for old-lady diapers, Noleene. The personal armadillos that make ‘em unique.”

  “Personal peccadilloes,” Mojo liked to correct, just to piss him off. “Pecc-a-dilloes. Peccadilloes are defined as ‘qui
rky personality traits.’ Arm-a--dillos are small, clawed mammals with hard shells.”

  To which Tex always yelled in his best west-Texas growl, “Son, where I come from, even the pecc-a-dilloes got claws and shells!”

  Whether it was peccadilloes or armadillos, Lowe and Abbie had been at the front of the line when God handed out dillos. Meaning, like Stone, they saw their place in the world as special. They were big sponges of special-ness, always trying hard to absorb more special-ness from other people.

  I think Grace spotted their armadillos from word one.

  Over the next few days I watched her wrap them around her finger like she was gold and they were magnetized glitter. Lowe worried about not being taken seriously as an artiste after a string of kick-ass car-chase movies. His mama and papa were serious thespians, Shakespeare-festival types down in Australia. Lowe was tired of only getting the babe-wearing-a-tight-tank-top parts. She had a family acting tradition to honor, too. “My grandparents,” she told Entertainment Tonight, “were some of the most revered vaudeville actors in the upper Midwest and both the Dakotas.”

  Lowe and Abbie saw Grace as their one-stop-shopping source for info on hers and Harp’s every Oscar-worthy quirk and twitch.

  Stone saw Grace as the perfect, trustworthy godmother for his two lead actors.

  I saw Grace as the armadillo of love. Her plan to scuttle Stone’s movie, whatever it was, would bite me in the ass.

  HERO

  NEW SCRIPT

  NORTH CAROLINA MOUNTAIN SCENE, FILMED ON LOCATION

  IN GEORGIA

  (N.C. state road signs and other N.C. trivia to be added digitally in post-production.)

  SCENE: GBI agent Harp Vance creeps through the steep forests of a North Carolina mountainside. He sniffs a handful of leaves from the forest floor, fingers a broken twig on a tree, then slips up the side of a ridge. Looking out over a misty panorama of Blue Ridge mountains, he spots the curl of chimney smoke from a hidden campsite in a wild hollow.