The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets (13 page)

Her beautiful girl. She had fine blond hairs like down on the back of her neck and on her arms. Her daughter was a peach, firm and white and not yet ripe. Lacy needed her.

Winnie straightened her shoulders, ignored the thump in her head as she turned to Oren. “So what is this all about? It's not money. Do you have some stupid idea that this is going to make you famous?”

“No!” He spoke through gritted teeth. “I'm not stupid. I'm
sick of people saying that. All the time telling me I'm a dumb shit. I am not. I'm not! I have a job. A good one. I have a real house to live in. What have they done? Huh? With their dumb little lives? Huh?”

“Who thinks you're stupid?” she asked.

“None of your beeswax.”

“At work? Where is that?”

“They like me at work. The Carpet Barn.”

“I know that place.” A big, red barn-like building with rolls of carpets stacked out front. She had passed it many times. What other places had she driven by with kidnappers and murderers inside?

“I'm an account rep,” he said defensively. “Not just an installer.”

All the people we meet, Winnie marveled. Any cheerful face ringing up her purchases or bagging her groceries or telling her to have a nice day could be a psychopath. Anyone, everyone was suspect.

“Listen,” he began. It seemed to be his favorite word. “Listen.”

But then he said nothing. He drove the speed limit down the street, heading for the freeway entrance. Winnie stared out the window at the signs for restaurants, nail salons, and a hardware store. It was beautiful, all of it. She held her breath at the colors in the graffiti on the white wall of the 7-11. The pigeons in flight brought tears. It was all so perfect, so defined. She had never noticed before, but now the world outside the car was crystal clear. She saw a father and young son and instantly knew everything about them. She could taste the pancakes they ate for breakfast, the maple syrup thick and sweet from the plastic pitcher. She felt the little boy's teeth growing in his mouth and the sugar buds drilling into baby enamel. She saw the metal
grill of the braces he would wear in a few years, felt the cut on the inside of his lip. She knew his pain when his wisdom teeth were removed one vacation when he was home from college. She saw the stained yellow of his adult incisors, and then the way his tongue rubbed the worn, flat edges of his front teeth as he waited in the nursing home for his own children to visit. She was the one who was going to die, but everyone else's life was passing in front of her. Out there it was all so clear. Inside this car it was a mystery.

She moisturized daily, but that wouldn't help her here. She said no to that piece of chocolate cake, even though she wanted it so much and her friend said it was the best she'd ever eaten. She said no, but that wouldn't help her here. She bought the expensive biodegradable dishwashing soap. She let the old lady go first. She gave up the parking spot. She never ever littered. She wished on first stars, eyelashes, white horses, pennies, the turned up hems of her shirts and skirts. None of it would help her here.

“Little Lady,” her southern grandmother used to call her. “Looky there.”

She looked down and the hem of her party dress was folded up. She started to straighten it, but her grandmother stopped her.

“Turn around three times and make a wish.” Her voice as broad as her hips. “It'll come true. Always does.”

Her grandmother in heaven. Her mother in New York. Sitting on a cloud or sitting on a couch, painting the sky or reading a script. Each of them, today, right now, were easier to see than she could see herself. She had left that penny lying on the street outside the mechanic's as she got into this car. What would she have wished for? Just four hours ago, what would her wish have been? A better job? A boyfriend?

He was pulling onto the freeway. They were leaving the shops and people behind. Her chance for rescue was diminishing with every mile. She had to make him understand. She would give him whatever he wanted if he would let her go.

“Listen. You listen,” Winnie said to him. “My mother is rich. She really is famous. You've heard of her: Daisy Juniper.” She named her mother's most popular film, "
Dawn of Delilah
."

He shrugged. “I didn't think it was so good. I rented it.”

That stopped her. “When?”

“Couple days ago, three or four.”

“By coincidence?”

He shrugged again.

And then, as if suddenly the truth was sitting on her chest, pressing her back into the seat, she realized: she had not been kidnapped randomly.

“You know who I am!” She could not get her breath. She coughed. “This wasn't by accident, was it? You were after me.”

He turned his head and looked at her and his eyes were small and dull. They were a sour moldy green and his eyelids were heavy.

“I was after you, Winnie Parker,” he said. “I need to teach you a lesson.”

Jonathan stood at the sock counter of Mario's Menswear in Santa Monica. He had called Jessica and she had reminded him that this was the place. He was surprised. Who would have guessed this hole in the fence, squeezed between a bar and a locksmith, had the best men's socks in Southern California? How did she know these things? Only six years in LA and already she knew everything. He had grown up just over the hills in the valley and Los Angeles was still a mystery to him.

He held two pairs of socks, a black pair and a different black pair. “Onyx,” the sales guy had called one, and the other, “Ebony.”

“I guess I'll take them both,” Jonathan said. He didn't know which was better. He wore black socks very occasionally, but the pair he had had a hole in the toe. He hated socks. It was a joke at work that he was the only on-camera host in TV who wore a suit and flip-flops. Of course he didn't wear flip-flops, but he did wear his expensive Italian loafers without socks. On the other hand, or foot, if he wore socks, these were the socks to have. That's what Jessica said.

“That will be $151.20.”

Jonathan took his credit card from his wallet. He would not call Jessica and clear it with her. He could buy socks. He didn't remember the world before credit cards, but he did remember not having enough credit to get one. He remembered his bank account slipping down to negative numbers almost every
month, mooching off his friends for beer and parking meters at the beach. Now he had no idea how much money he had. His accountant paid the bills. The valet usually took his car wherever he went. It seemed he could do whatever he wanted and he always had enough money.

“Excuse me?” There was a high lilt to the voice behind him. He turned. A pretty young face, blushing, with blue eyes under brown bangs.

“Hi,” he said.

“Aren't you, I mean, I hate to bother you, but are you Jonathan Parker?”

He smiled. He did not need to say yes. Her face was as fresh as a morning muffin. She made him think of a bowl of just picked blueberries and thick white cream, served in a bright farm kitchen under sunny skies and healthy appetites. He saw her lying on her stomach in front of her family television set watching him as he joked with his contestants and dreaming of the day she would come to Hollywood. Dreaming of him.

“Mr. Parker,” she began.

“You can call me Jonathan.”

“I just wanted to say, well, my mother loves you. She watches your show—what's it called?—every night. When she finds out I saw you—”

Behind her now he saw her boyfriend, dark hair falling across his high Asian cheekbones, snickering as he looked at five hundred dollar sweaters.

“If you could just sign something for her,” the girl was continuing. She dug in her purse. “This would be fine.”

She handed him a folded over grocery list. Tampax. Toothpaste. Onions. And now, Jonathan Parker.

“Thank you. Thank you so much. My mom is such a fan.”

Her boyfriend couldn't help it, he laughed out loud. “Sorry,
man,” he said. “If you only knew her mother.”

Jonathan went out and sat in his Porsche behind the tinted windows. He practiced his yoga breathing. The backs of his hands were freckled. The skin was loose and puckered over each knuckle. He had the car running and the heater on. He had come out of the store chilled and shivering in the California sunshine. A hundred and fifty dollars for socks. Long ago he had seen Marlon Brando in a restaurant in Beverly Hills. Jonathan thought him the greatest actor who ever lived. But when the 70-year-old Brando stood up and turned toward him to leave the restaurant, Jonathan had been shocked. It wasn't the weight, or the plastic surgery; it was the dark in his face. The man he had idolized was gone. The eyes were flat; the lips pressed together like anybody's grandmother. Where was the light? Where had he gone? Where was his hero?

Jonathan vowed then to stay alive. To be himself always. It wasn't hard those first few years, when he was young. Younger. Acting and surfing were all he cared about. If he had a bad audition, the ocean made him feel better. Out in the water he never fumbled his lines or missed his mark. There was no such thing as a bad day surfing.

Then Winnie came along and so quickly there was Lacy. Watching Lacy toddle, grow, learn to speak, had been amazing. He wanted Lacy to love what he loved. He took her surfing before she could walk, put her on his shoulders and rode the smallest waves. It was cool, she wasn't the least bit frightened, and he bought her a little board of her own, but once the game show started he was too busy to teach her. He was too busy to go himself. Winnie was not a surfer, but she had loved the beach and hung out on the shore in that funny one-piece red bathing suit she'd had for a hundred years.

Same old bathing suit. Same old Winnie. He had changed,
but she had not. He had moved forward, breathing, working, filled with the California sunshine. She couldn't understand that the game show was just a stepping stone; no more worries about money, no more struggling. Then he would really act. But she told him not to do it. She said she didn't care about the money. Easy for her to say. And when he came home exhausted in those first months, tired out from being a game show host all day long, Winnie had that look on her face, disappointment. She said she was happy if he was, but the light had gone out of her and she was snuffing it out in him.

Jessica came along just at the right time. She sent him surfing again, literally and metaphysically—phorically—whatever, to soak up the ocean's energy qi. Winnie had stopped seeing him, who he was. Jessica saw him. She really saw him.

“Shit,” he said out loud. Jessica had seen him the way he thought that blueberry girl saw him before she opened her mouth. Here he was, thirty years younger than Brando was that day in the restaurant and already people were laughing.

“Call Andrew,” Jonathan told his phone.

There was a movie possibility out there. He looked at his blue eyes in the rear view mirror. Still blue. Still there. Still him. I will stay alive, he vowed. I will stay alive.

“Andrew,” he said. “Jonathan Parker.”

“You were my next call.”

Jonathan knew that was just agentspeak for sorry I've been out of touch.

“What's happening with the movie?”

There was a pause while Andrew regrouped and tried to figure out which movie Jonathan was talking about.

“The sci fi thing. That young director.”

“I have it right here,” Andrew said, “Good news. They definitely want you. Definitely.”

Jonathan smiled at his reflection. His shoulders relaxed and his stomach settled. “That's terrific. Which part? The Captain?”

“They want you to play yourself. You know, Jonathan Parker. You were frozen for five hundred years or whatever and then you're thawed. See? It's hilarious.”

“Very funny.” Jonathan pretended to laugh. “I read the scene you sent over. Is it the scientist part?”

“This isn't that kind of film. You'll have a moment. A good moment, but they want Jonathan Parker. The real Jonathan Parker.”

“A walk-on? Who do they think they are?” He was angry. He didn't want to be angry, anger was not healthy, it was not productive, but his breath was coming faster, his heart beginning to thump. He was sweating before he remembered he had the heater going on high. He punched it off.

“You'll be great. A riot.” Andrew gave a hollow chuckle. “Probably the best moment in the entire movie.”

“Fuck! Can't you do something for me? Something better? I'm the goddamn host of the most successful relationship show since
The Dating Game
.”

“Hey, I know. I read the press releases too.” Then Andrew sighed. “I'm sorry. Sorry. You're just so damn recognizable – as yourself.”

Jonathan willed himself to calm down. He used his yoga breathing. Pranadama, pranayama, whatever the fuck it was called. Count to ten his dad would tell him. Then hit the other guy.

“I'm sorry, Andrew. I'm not mad at you. I'm glad I have the show, of course. But other people have done it. Gone back to real acting.”

“You will. We just have to find the right thing. So do this and we'll keep looking. Who knows? This director is young, hip,
a definite up and comer. Maybe he'll like you.”

“I'm an actor. This host thing is just temporary.”

“You just need to prove that you can be someone else.”

They chatted some more, but Jonathan wasn't really listening. Andrew would send contracts over later that week. Jonathan's one day of shooting wouldn't be for a month or so. He didn't want to go to the office anymore. He didn't want to go home. He was afraid Jessica would be at the house, she would know he was upset and when she heard about his tiny cameo role in the movie she would go through the sky – or whatever that expression was. Maybe she was out. She taught super advanced yoga three times a week, but he could never remember when. She didn't have to work, but she did it because she loved it. He admired her for that. And in her classes she met lots of stars and directors and people with money. Jessica wanted to produce feature films. He had no doubt she would do it too. She knew how to work it, how to get people to like her, to give her things just because she was so pretty and so nice, honest and open and fun. He snorted. Maybe she would have a good part for him.