Just Like Me, Only Better (11 page)

As I buckled myself into the passenger seat of his now-familiar Prius, he handed me the sunglasses and trucker hat. He looked worn-out today, with circles under his eyes and less gel than usual in his hair.

“We’re going to L.A.,” he muttered, pulling out of the parking lot.

“Why?”

“Appointment.”

“With . . .?”

“Hair designer.”

“For . . . ?”

“Hair.”

The Prius, bogged down in traffic, crawled toward the freeway entrance ramp. Rodrigo stared straight ahead, clutching the steering wheel, his lips tense and white.

“Not that it’s any of my business, Rodrigo, but is something wrong?”

For a moment, I thought he hadn’t heard me. Finally, he spoke. “I hate this town.”

“Santa Fe Springs?”

“No—
L.A.
” He sighed with exasperation and said nothing more for the rest of the drive—unless you count a mumbled
fucking idiot
when someone in an SUV cut him off.

I liked Suck-Up Rodrigo better than Depressed Rodrigo.

The beauty parlor (I guess I shouldn’t call it that) was in a green craftsman bungalow on a leafy street. The sign near the front door was so small that I almost missed it. White with a simple black typeface, it read STEFANO SALZANO, HAIR ARTISTRY. No hours of operation, no phone number: one could only assume that Stefano did not take walk-ins.

Rodrigo pulled into the driveway and parked in the back. Towering hedges surrounded a small dirt lot, so no one would see customers going in or coming out. Inside, the bungalow had wide plank floors, built-in oak cabinets, and an elaborate tile fireplace. There was a cozy seating area with velvet couches and a single styling chair upholstered in tapestry.

When we walked in, Stefano Salzano, his glossy black hair tufted like a woodpecker’s crown, was standing in the middle of the room, hands clasped in front of him, a big, white, bonded-tooth smile on his shiny face. Why did his skin look so eerily smooth, almost plastic? Was it Botox? Chemical peel? Dermabrasion? I bet Haley would know.

“Veronica!” He rushed toward me. “Jay has told me every little thing about you!”

“Like what?”

He stopped short and bit his lip. “That you look like Haley? And that you, um . . . look like Haley? Okay, truth: that’s all he told me.” He broke into a fit of giggles, covering his mouth with a manicured hand. He had two earrings in his (slightly pointy) right ear, a loop in the lobe and a little steel ball high up in the cartilage. He wore black skinny jeans and a tight white T-shirt that showed off his sinewy, tattooed forearms.

Stefano hung my jacket and purse in a coat closet and sent me off to a spacious bathroom, which had purple walls, black-and-white checkerboard floors, a big gilt mirror, and a farmhouse sink adapted for hair washing. I swapped my cotton sweater for a black kimono that looked like silk but whose label ratted it out as polyester.

Back in the main room, Stefano offered me slippers (which I declined) and mineral water in a bright green bottle (which I accepted, even though it would make me burp). Finally, he led me to the tapestry chair. Sullen Rodrigo, meanwhile, had taken up residence on one of the velvet couches. He was so tiny, he practically disappeared among the fringed pillows.

Stefano peered over my shoulder at the mirror, patting my brown locks on the sides and ends. I examined his tattoos in the reflection. The artwork on his left arm was navy-inspired: an anchor, a sailor, a breaking wave. Cartoons ruled the right arm. Betty Boop chased Porky Pig. Tom and Jerry sipped champagne. Fred Flintstone mooned Barney.

“You ready to go blond?” Stefano asked.

“What?” I forgot about the tattoos. When he didn’t react, I turned to look him straight in his shiny face.

“Jay didn’t tell you?” His cupid’s bow mouth twisted with amusement. “You, my dear, are going to join the ranks of Carole Lombard, Marilyn Monroe, and our own dear Haley Rush—and go platinum!”

I froze. “But—Jay said he thought Haley looked better as a brunette.”

Stefano batted at the air. “Hon-bun, it doesn’t matter what Jay does or doesn’t like. Haley’s a blonde—I do her color, BTW—and you have to match. And besides. FYI? Jay has as much style sense as my cockapoo.” He giggled. “I really just wanted an excuse to say
cockapoo
.”

I gulped. “Okay.” It made sense, of course. To pass as Haley, I’d need Haley’s hair.

Seeing my expression, Stefano gave my hair a reassuring squeeze. “
Girrrrrrl!
You are going to look
superfierce
—like a cute little man-eating sex kitten! You are going to have the men clawing at your door . . . and then you’re going to come right back here and tell me all about it!”

That made me laugh. Stefano was pretentious, affected—a hairdressing and Hollywood cliché. Despite all that—or maybe because of it—I immediately adored him.

While Stefano fluttered around, Rodrigo remained on the couch, poking at his laptop and pretending not to listen. When he got up to use the bathroom, Stefano whispered, “What’s the matter with Tinker Bell?”

“He’s down on Hollywood, for some reason.”

“Oh, please. All these people come here looking for love. Not of a man or love of a woman—but love from
everybody
. And when they’re not instantly discovered, it’s like, ‘Why are you all so stupid that you can’t see my utter fabulousness?’ Probably Tinker Bell had one of his screenplays rejected. Again.”

“He told you about his writing?” I whispered.

“Ugh!” Stefano ran a comb through my hair, careful not to tug. “He told me, he told my assistant, he told my
cat
—who should be around here somewhere, BTW. I hope you’re not allergic.”

He lowered his voice back into the murmuring range. “Anyhoo, I know some independent producers who read the script. Bear in mind, these are rich kids whose daddies set them up so they can read screenplays all day and buy independent films as a hobby. They’ve never actually produced anything in their lives, and even
they
said it stunk. One called it self-indulgent garbage, one said it was derivative crap, and the third called it . . . well, something that might offend those lovely shell-shaped ears.”

Rodrigo came out of the bathroom and settled back among the pillows. Stefano straightened and began to whistle. He brushed a stinky white solution onto my hair and wrapped it, piece by piece, in foil. while Rodrigo tapped away on his computer.

“Writing another screenplay, Rod?” Stefano asked him.

Rodrigo kept his eyes on his laptop. “Yes.”

“Well, whatever you do, don’t give up your dreams. You’ve got too much talent to let it go to waste.”

It took all my strength to keep my face neutral.

Rodrigo seemed to ignore him, but I guess he was just screening for sarcasm. “Thank you,” he said at last.

When my hair was entirely encased in foil, Stefano lead me to an empty loveseat, draping it with a throw blanket so the chemicals on my head couldn’t endanger the velvet. “Champagne?”

“Seriously?”

He looked up at the tin ceiling and sighed. “Well, okay. It’s
technically
sparkling wine because it’s from
Sonoma
, and you can’t call something champagne unless it’s from the Champagne region in France.”

This was so much better than teaching eight-year-olds how to hula hoop.

Stefano disappeared for a moment before returning with a tall glass and a stack of reading material.

“
Variety
,
Vogue
,
Men’s Health
, or
Fit Pregnancy
?”

“No
Us Weekly
? No
Star
?”

“No, no, a hundred times, no!” He shuddered. “Not since that day when Nicole came in. I’d left
People
sitting out where everyone could see it, and the cover story was all about . . . ” He shuddered again, more dramatically this time.

“Tom Cruise?” I guessed.

“Other Nicole.” He took a step back and studied me.

Rodrigo’s cell phone rang. “Hey, honey, what’s up?” Immediately, he was a different person.

“. . . I don’t know—a while. We’re at Stefano’s. Yeah—the place in Hancock Park, the little house. Jay thought the Beverly Hills salon was too risky.”

“It’s not a little house, it’s a bungalow,” Stefano said to no one in particular, fussing around with his supplies. “And it’s not a salon, it’s a private studio.”

“It’ll be a few hours,” Rodrigo said into the phone, leaning forward, eyes on the ground. “But maybe we can do a late lunch? Or an early dinner . . . I don’t know—Jay told me to stay . . . I just don’t want him to. . . I know you do, but—Well, did you try calling Josh? What did he say? . . . God!” He sounded really annoyed. “You paid him extra to be on call! Is Jay there? Maybe he can do it.”

Rodrigo squeezed his eyes shut. Finally, he said, “Baby, baby . . . it’s okay! Of course I will! Of course!”

He slipped his phone into his pocket, tapped some keys on his laptop, closed it up and slid it into its black case.

“I need to pop over to Haley’s for a little while,” he said without looking at us.

“Troubles?” Stefano chirped.

“Nothing major. Just—that stupid AV system. She’s trying to watch television, and she can get the picture but there’s music coming from the speakers. And Josh is supposed to be on call twenty-four/seven, but he’s in Hawaii with his girlfriend.”

Stefano
tsk-tsked
. “You’d think he’d arrange for a backup.”

“He
did
, but the other guy doesn’t have
clearance
, and Josh should’ve
thought
of that.”

Stefano and I didn’t say anything until Rodrigo’s little green car pulled out of the lot.

“The AV guy needed clearance?” I said.

Stefano giggled. “Honestly! You’d think Roddy’s working for the CIA.”

“Maybe he’s writing a movie about spies,” I suggested.

“Oh, no!” Stefano settled onto Rodrigo’s vacated couch like a Persian cat. “Roddy only writes coming-out stories. One after another after another, like he’s the first gay man in the universe. If he’d just get a boyfriend, it wouldn’t be so bad. Instead, his life revolves around Crazy Haley.”

I remembered the paper I signed. “Are we allowed to talk about this?”

“Of course! We both have
clearance
, remember? We just can’t go public.” He crossed his legs and put his clasped hands on his knees. “We don’t have long. What do you want to know?”

My mouth dropped open. Where to begin? “Everything!” He tapped his cheek. “Okay—the recap. You probably know most of this from the Internet.”

“I don’t get the Internet.”

I expected the usual expressions of horror. Instead, he said, “I’ve never really understood how to work it, myself. Okay.
Let’s start at the very beginning
. . .” He sang to the tune from
The Sound of Music
, and then he spoke quickly.

“Haley Rush came from one of those square-shaped mountain states. Colorado or Wyoming or . . .”

“Montana,” I supplied.

“Montana! Right!” He pointed at me like a game show host. “The official version of how Montana Haley became Hollywood Haley is that she was in some talent show or state fair—or maybe a talent show in a state fair—and some scouts saw her and asked her to come to California.”

“And the unofficial version?” I asked.

Stefano tapped his shiny cheek. “It all started with Haley’s mother. She claims she was a beauty queen once, but I’ve seen pictures, and—I don’t
think
so. Anyhoo, she married young—you can get hitched at, like, twelve in those states. Hubby was much older, just some guy with a couple of hardware stores. Mama Rush had a couple of kids and got all fat, and hubby started running around, and it turned out he didn’t have as much money as she thought he had.

“When Haley was three or five—I think it was five—her mother noticed she could carry a tune, so, voila! She turned her into her little show pony, mostly for her own ego at first, but then she started making a little money off of her. By the time Haley sang at the state fair—she was eight or nine at that point—Mama was three hundred pounds and desperate. Maybe some guy said Haley should go to Hollywood, maybe not. Most agents won’t even set foot in the Valley. You think they’re going to pop off to a state fair in Montana unless they’ve been invited to Demi and Ashton’s?” He bit his lip. “Or is that Idaho?”

“Haley told you all this?”

“Ohhhh, yes. When she talks, she talks a lot. Other days she just mopes. It’s like she’s two different people.”

“And now three,” I said.

He giggled. “True. When they got to L.A., Mama and Haley lived in a crappy motel and spent their days going to auditions and modeling agencies. She has a little brother, but they left him back with Daddy. He moved out here once he turned thirteen, which worked out really well for him because it’s much easier to score cocaine in L.A. than it is in Montana. And, of course, Mama and Daddy got divorced somewhere along the way, and Daddy moved to Reno to marry a cocktail waitress. Shockingly, the relationship didn’t last.

“After they’d been here maybe six months, Haley got cast in a peanut butter commercial, and then there was a laundry detergent commercial. A few others, I think. Her big break came when she was a teenager and she got cast in
The Crazy Life of Riley Poole.
Remember that one? It ran for two, maybe three, seasons. Haley played the nerd.”

“Is Haley still close to her mother?”

“Oh, noooo . . .” He held up a finger to signal “one minute” and disappeared into the back room, returning with a tabloid and a Diet Dr Pepper. He flipped through the magazine until he found the picture he was looking for and handed it to me.

The headline was printed in enormous letters: HALEY TO MOM: GET OUT!

There were several photos: Haley tight-lipped in big sunglasses; Haley as a young, smiling girl standing next to a large, brown-haired woman; a thin, blond, middle-aged woman getting into a car.