My Lucky Star

  “Do you imagine I’ll be able to think of anything else? Just don’t, please, count on me to get your necks out of the noose this time, because at the moment I don’t even know where to start.”

  “But you’ll think about it?” I bleated.

  “Yes! And for God’s sake, get some lawyers!”

  “Right,” said Gilbert.

  “And you’ll think about it?”

  “Goodbye!”

  She left and the fragile glow of hope she’d brought with her vanished as well. At this point our rescue did seem a tall order even for a girl of Claire’s prodigious intellect. And did we even deserve her help after the grief we’d caused her? I realized with a stab of shame that we hadn’t even thought to ask how things had gone with her new beau. I bemoaned this lapse to Gilbert, who couldn’t hear me over the blender.

  The afternoon yawned unpleasantly ahead and I couldn’t imagine how to fill it. Gilbert, as is his custom in times of great turmoil, suggested we go shopping, and this was how we came to find ourselves at the bar at Neiman Marcus, sipping martinis while wistfully ogling the neckwear salesman. We each bought two pairs of Italian loafers that we agreed would make us the envy of the cell block. Then we drove home, Gilbert’s silence en route that of a man realizing for the first time that there are some problems in life even Prada can’t solve.

  NOT ALL OF US SUMMONED to face the DA passed the wait as Gilbert and I did, paralyzed with dread. Stephen surely did, as well as his family, and even Moira, I’m sure, passed the time chain-smoking while rereading her copy of Absconding Made Simple. Lily, by contrast, felt only the highest dudgeon that Grimes had forced her to fly home in the middle of her East Coast press tour, canceling three talk show appearances.

  “The nerve of the man!” she fumed, sweeping grandly in as Monty, Gilbert, and I were finishing a last supper of Chinese takeout. “Who does he think he is?! Ordering people about with no regard whatsoever for Regis or Kelly, not to mention their poor disappointed audience! And what’s all this nonsense about criminal charges!”

  “Well,” Monty said gingerly, “the police seem to think that the time we all collided at the spa—here, have some wine, love —that Stephen got a bit frisky with a masseur and Moira got it on tape and that’s why they’re partners.”

  “ No! ” said Lily, agog. Her fascination gave way to a puzzled frown. “But what on earth has that to do with us?!”

  Monty outlined the DA’s curious theory that he and Lily had somehow obtained this compromising footage and used it to compel Stephen to make Amelia. Lily stared a moment, aghast, then threw back her head and howled with mirth.

  “Dear lord! I’ve never heard anything so absurd in my life! As if we’d need to force anyone to buy a script that brilliant! It’s just too ridiculous! Though offensive too, when you think of it. Mrs. Clinton will hear about this! We met in the Today show greenroom and we’re very close now.”

  Lily, exhausted from her flight, retired. The rest of us were less eager for sleep, which would only hasten the arrival of morning. We stayed up till past three watching old movies, drinking far too much wine, and wondering how we’d come to so desolate a pass.

  “Funny thing,” sighed Monty. “You try to do a good turn for your big sister and look what it gets you.”

  “Your heart was inna right place,” consoled Gilbert.

  “It generally is,” said Monty. “It was nice to want to give her something. Where I went wrong was trying to make it a career.”

  “Zackly.”

  “I should have stayed more in the scarf area.”

  “There’s still Claire,” I said, though when I’d last spoken to her at ten she’d declared herself still stymied.

  “This Claire,” inquired Monty, “she has a hat, you say, and is skilled at the timely production of rabbits?”

  “Not this time,” prophesied Gilbert. “We’re doomed.”

  I declared my staunch faith in Claire, and Monty suggested we drink to her, which we concurred was an excellent idea.

  “To Claire,” said Monty, reaching for the wine bottle.

  “To Claire!”

  “Oops. Sorry, lads, I’ll open another.”

  GILBERT AND I PASSED out on the couch, which was a good thing as neither of us was in any shape to drive. When we awoke, limbs sore and heads throbbing, it was already past nine. We staggered to the kitchen, found coffee, and started a pot brewing. Monty sauntered in, dapperly dressed and annoyingly hearty for a gentleman of advanced years who’d matched us drink for drink only hours ago. He suggested that a spot of breakfast might revive us. We requested Advil omelets, then I phoned Claire. She didn’t answer her home or cell phone and I left suitably frantic messages on each. As Monty whisked the eggs Lily joined us, pert as a pixie and ready for battle. Although our appetites were much reduced by dread, hangovers, and the alarming shortness of Lily’s peignoir, we managed to choke down a few forkfuls and some toast. We were just heading home to spruce up for the beheading when my cell rang.

  “Good, you’re up,” said Claire briskly.

  “I’ve been calling all morning! Where have you been?”

  “Chez Moira,” she replied.

  “The spa?!” I exclaimed. “What were you doing there?”

  “Gathering ammo. Where are you now?”

  “We’re at Lily and Monty’s. We were just heading home.”

  “Don’t. Stay there.”

  She asked for the address and said she’d swing by as soon as possible.

  “Why here?” I asked as the connection began to crackle. “Can’t we talk at our place?”

  “Just stay there!” she commanded and was gone.

  “That was Claire!” I said, grinning insanely, for the last barely smoldering ember of hope was once more a cheery little flame. “She’s coming over! It sounds like she has a plan!”

  “A plan for what?” asked Lily.

  We menfolk exchanged a stealthy glance. We’d agreed that Lily’s complete ignorance of her career in extortion was one of the few advantages we possessed heading into this showdown and that we’d do well to preserve it.

  “Just a plan for dealing with the DA,” murmured Monty.

  Lily laughed feistily. “You leave the DA to me! I’ll settle his hash!”

  It occurred to me that we didn’t know how long Claire might take to reach Los Feliz. It was possible that by the time she’d arrived and briefed us it might be too late for Gilbert and me to go home and change our clothes, which were badly stained with duck sauce, the wine having demolished our chopstick skills. Our hosts offered their showers, and Monty, who seemed roughly our size, placed his wardrobe at our disposal. We hastened upstairs, chose shirts and slacks, and I claimed dibs on the steam shower in Monty’s master. No sooner had I disrobed and lathered up than Monty burst in on me without knocking.

  “Jeez, Monty!” I blurted, modestly covering myself.

  “Oh please, dear, I’ve seen the movie. Claire’s here.”

  “Tell her I’ll be right down!”

  “She says she can’t stay. She just came by to borrow the DVD.”

  “The sex one?”

  “Yes! She says she needs it immediately. Says Moira couldn’t give her a copy—she’s moved all hers to an offshore safe-deposit. So she needs mine!”

  “What for?”

  “She didn’t say. Just said she needs it and if I wasn’t sure whether to give it to her I should ask you.”

  “Give it to her! Do whatever she says! Just tell her to wait till I get down there!”

  But Claire did not wait. By the time I’d dressed and raced downstairs she’d driven off, Monty tagging along to ensure his property’s safe return. I scowled at the empty driveway, cursing myself for having conditioned as well as shampooed. It was nice to know Claire had a plan but maddening to have no idea what it was. What had she been doing with Moira? And why on earth did she need the disk? She couldn’t be thinking of bringing it to the DA, could she?

  I asked Lily i
f Monty had said when he’d be back. She said he wasn’t sure but that if he hadn’t returned by eleven-thirty we should just meet him downtown. Gilbert joined us and threw a minor hissy fit when he found we’d missed Claire and might now learn nothing of her strategy till we were in the DA’s presence or, worse, custody.

  “Such drama!” chirped Lily, wafting up the stairs to dress. “Strange young ladies babbling about mystery disks! Dire last-minute errands! Sometimes I think you keep things from me.”

  When she descended at exactly eleven-thirty, she appeared, from her costume, to be laboring under the misapprehension that we would shortly be boarding the Orient Express. She wore a vivid scarlet suit, its dramatic chinchilla-trimmed jacket more like a cape with sleeves. Her makeup was liberally applied for daylight and the matching pillbox hat with faux ruby starburst beyond camp. But the confidence she exuded was that of a True Star, one who knows beyond doubt that no harm can ever befall her since the Almighty is a Fan.

  “Not back yet, are they? Ah well, much better this way. Just me and a handsome young escort on each arm. That’s how you make an entrance!”

  Gilbert and I insisted on giving Claire and Monty ten more minutes, but when they didn’t show we had no choice but to set off alone, still writhing in suspense.

  As a general rule we felons, when compelled to surrender ourselves to the authorities, hope that any persons accompanying us on our grim journey will comport themselves with appropriate tact and solemnity. Lily, oblivious to the gravity of our situation, joked and jabbered without cease the whole way. By the time we arrived I felt like a death-row convict who, having steeled himself to walk the last mile with dignity, finds that the chaplain is Robin Williams. But even Lily fell silent when we rounded the corner onto Temple Street and beheld the monstrous snare into which we’d been lured.

  “Sweet Jesus!” I yelped. “That asshole! ” exclaimed Gilbert, for it was clear now how base and treacherous an opponent we faced in Rusty.

  A police barricade lined the entire block on which stood the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center. Behind this barricade there seethed a frenzied swarm of reporters and camera crews at least two hundred strong with more crowding in by the minute. Four news choppers circled overhead and the attention of the whole furious phalanx was riveted on a black BMW sedan that stood idling in the middle of the block. The driver of this sedan, which, I presumed, contained Stephen, was honking madly while trying to flee this vile ambush. He was impeded in this goal by three police cars that had neatly boxed him in. There were a dozen or so officers keeping order and two of these were standing next to Stephen’s car in conference with one of his famed lawyers, who was no doubt taking issue with the DA’s somewhat lax definition of “hush-hush.”

  I stared, tremulous, at the press gauntlet through which we would now have to pass. Though they bore a superficial resemblance to the loud fawning horde who’d lined the carpet at the FilmFest, their character and mission could not have been more different. Courtiers no more, they’d come today as inquisitors, bloodthirsty hellhounds who’d gathered in hopes of witnessing the most thrilling spectacle our culture has to offer—that of an actual, still-reigning megastar being roasted alive in the public square. A bonfire of the Vanity Fair set! A Starbecue! They’d seen such immolations before and knew their power to enthrall the populace. But when had a star ever toppled so abruptly or from so dizzy a height? When had the whispered details been so deliciously sordid or the timing so flawlessly ironic? The tabloid perfection of the event had driven the press to complete, unashamed hysteria. They shrieked like bacchantes and seemed ready to fall upon Stephen’s car and chew their way through to him.

  “Look at them!” squeaked Gilbert, clutching my hand. “They’re like wolves!”

  “Vultures!”

  “Jackals!” agreed Lily, freshening her lipstick.

  A loud rapping caused us to jump in our seats and we turned to see a policeman gesturing for me to roll down my window. I obeyed and he told us we were blocking traffic. I explained our situation and he generously volunteered to valet the car himself so we wouldn’t be late for our mug shots.

  Gilbert and I took Lily’s arms and began steering her through the jammed traffic toward the center of the barricade, where a small gap allowed access to the building. Less than a month ago she’d vamped her way past many of the same reporters without exciting a ripple of interest. Thanks though to her recent ubiquity she was recognized the instant we squeezed through the space between Stephen’s sedan and the squad car blocking its escape.

  “Hey!” someone shouted. “It’s the aunt!”

  “Lily! Over here!”

  “Lookin’ good, Lily!”

  “Yo, Amelia!”

  Flashbulbs exploded and Lily, unable to discern the crucial difference between a fan club and a lynch mob, waved coquettishly and began tottering toward them as fast as her dangerously high heels could carry her. I gasped, for I’d suddenly realized that the instant she reached a microphone she would angrily deny that we’d blackmailed Stephen into buying Amelia. I didn’t want her to say this because a.) it was doubtful the press had even heard this charge yet and b.) it was true.

  An intrepid Hispanic go-getter, camera crew in tow, beat her colleagues to the punch and said, “Lily, do you have anything to say about your nephew and these sex-spa rumors?”

  “I most certainly do!” huffed Lily, turning to give the camera her good side. “But first let me say that I’ve never in my life heard anything so preposterous as the DA’s libelous claim that my partner, Philip Cavanaugh, and I resorted to — put me down!”

  She made this request because Gilbert and I had just thrust a hand under each of her armpits, scooped her up, and were now sprinting toward the entrance with her dangling indignantly between us.

  “No comment!” we shouted to the outraged mob whose first morsel of red meat we’d rudely snatched away. “No comment!” we screeched over the uproar and kept shouting it till we’d entered the lobby, from which the media had been barred.

  “What on earth did you do that for!” asked Lily irately.

  “Just keeping you safe,” said Gilbert. “You might have been trampled.”

  “I saw no danger!”

  Turning, I saw that Stephen had taken advantage of the distraction we’d provided. He’d bolted from his trapped sedan and, flanked by four attorneys, was barreling toward the entrance, Gina and Diana scrambling behind. He was soon spotted and the press went berserk, screaming his name and pelting him with the sort of questions journalists pose on these occasions less in hope of an actual response than as a means to broadcast unsubstantiated rumors and generally spice up the festivities.

  “Stephen! What sex were the hookers?!”

  “Has Gina forgiven you?”

  “Is it true there are pictures?!”

  “Are you a sex addict?!”

  Stephen paid them no heed, but just kept charging toward the door, barely visible beneath his thick parka of lawyers. To his credit he held his head high and his chin tilted defiantly, though a redness around his eyes bespoke a nice little cry in the car.

  Once they’d escaped into the building his look of noble defiance was replaced by one of black outrage.

  “ That fucker! He is so going to pay for this!”

  “How dare he do this to you!” I said supportively.

  “Fuck you!”

  “Right.”

  We were squired through metal detectors, then whisked upstairs to Rusty’s office. We entered through an antechamber where his secretary, a chubby and, given the circumstances, offensively cheerful woman, greeted us. Her name, she informed us, was Dorothy but we could call her Dottie. She ushered us into the lair of our captor, where Moira stood by the window, staring down at our well-wishers.

  “Rusty’s running a little behind today,” said Dottie, “so just make yourselves comfy and he’ll be with you in a jiff!”

  “Thank you,” replied a lawyer. His tone was curt and clearly
dismissive but Dottie felt chatty and was not so easily dislodged.

  “Wow! You people sure drew us a heck of a crowd!”

  We eyed her balefully as Stephen icily replied that this had not been our intention.

  “Well, I just love your movies!” gushed Dottie.

  “Thank you, dear,” said Lily.

  “Can I get you guys anything? Water, coffee, soda?”

  Stephen’s lawyer said we were fine and would she please just leave us the hell alone. Dottie, adopting a droll look of contrition, mimed zipping her lip before tiptoeing hilariously from the room.

  The office was a large corner one with tall windows that enabled us to gaze below and monitor the progress on our pyre. In addition to Grimes’s imposing mahogany desk there was a sitting area with a badly scuffed leather couch, two armchairs, and a poker table in the corner with seating for eight. The side tables and shelves were crammed with photos, law tomes, and the sort of books publishers promote heavily in the weeks prior to Father’s Day. The decorative accents reflected Rusty’s keen interest in the Wild West and combat aviation while the walls bore many proud plaques and citations from groups whose names contained various combinations of the words “Police,” “Republican,” “Christian,” and “Family.” It was not, in short, a room designed to make a nervous homosexual feel any less so.

  We sat awhile in a fraught silence that was finally broken by Lily, who waspishly inquired what precisely Diana was staring at.

  “Well, forgive me, Lily, but that suit! You must have bought it forty years ago! You wouldn’t catch me wearing my old things from the sixties!”

  “As if they’d fit!” laughed Lily, winking saucily at a lawyer.

  “Well, we can’t all stay as young as you, dear,” cooed Diana. “I really should see your cosmetic surgeon. Perhaps he can give me that lovely, trapped-in-a-wind-tunnel look that suits you so well!”

  “Oh,” riposted Lily, “I think you’ve had quite enough work for now, love. I mean be frank with me—is your hair in a bun or is that skin?”

  “Catfight!” I thought to myself. “At last something in this office a gay man can relate to.” But then the door opened, the ladies retired to their corners, and the Grimes boys were upon us.