Mary Lisa gave Chico a little wave as she walked out of the innocently bland building that housed his dojo, set between two upscale antique shops on Briar Street in the middle of Venice. She had called Lou Lou, who was waiting for her, arms crossed over her breasts, leaning against Buffy.
“Dear sweet baby Jesus, Mary Lisa, you look like you’ve dropped five pounds in body sweat. And Chico, that man looks like a fallen angel.”
“Only five pounds you think? As for Chico, he’s no fallen angel, he’s the devil himself. I saw it in the mirror on the way out and it was a near-death experience. You want to drive, Lou Lou?”
“Oh yeah, me and the Buffster, we’re the duo.”
“Don’t kill me.”
Mary Lisa grunted as she eased her maimed body into the passenger side, leaned her head back against the seat, and closed her eyes. “My mom would laugh her head off if she could see me now. You know what, Lou Lou?”
“You’re going to keel over without help from that loon out there?”
“Not me.” Mary Lisa opened her eyes and grinned real big. “I see everything very clearly now. I was born to be a karate queen. Maybe it won’t even take me two weeks before that creep is really sorry he ever came after me. Oh yeah, come to Mamma. I’m gonna kick your sorry butt.”
Lou Lou rolled her eyes, honked at a skateboarder, who promptly flipped her a finger, and cut off a little Volkswagen Beetle.
Mary Lisa alternately groaned and sang along with the radio on PCH on the way back home. She didn’t flinch when Lou Lou nearly rear-ended an SUV that was stopped on the highway for no apparent reason. She braked so fast Mary Lisa pictured her front end crumpling. Lou Lou was embarrassed, so stuck her head out the window and yelled, “You cheap putz! Put some ninety-two octane in that honker!”
The driver, a woman with carrot-red hair, yelled back some really inventive curses that had them thinking of horses and goats in a very different way. Mary Lisa shook her head. “I wonder what Elizabeth would say about this goat deal.”
“You’ll see her tomorrow, ask her. She’s flying in at about five o’clock.”
Mary Lisa sighed. “She’s going to chew my ear. Truth is I didn’t want to worry her, so I haven’t been exactly forthcoming about all that’s happened.”
Lou Lou pressed her foot on the gas pedal and swerved around a big Pathfinder, whose driver looked ready to spit nails until he saw Lou Lou up close and waved madly at her. “That’s okay, Mary Lisa, I told her everything.”
THIRTY-THREE
Dallas and Dynasty were the first American serials to be successfully marketed internationally.
On Saturday morning, a cup of high-octane Kona coffee in one hand, Mary Lisa opened her front door to an unexpected visitor.
“Hello, Mary Lisa. I’m glad you’re home, but hey, you don’t leave home alone anymore, do you? Is Lou Lou still sleeping over, or is that tough-looking son of a bitch I saw you with yesterday spending his nights here?”
“Tough-looking? Yes, okay, I’ll give him that, though Jack Wolf has more a brooding in-your-face bad-boy look if you ask me.”
“Jack Wolf? Come on, that’s a stage name. I’ll bet he’s got a real name like Benny Schwartz and no one would hire him.”
“Hmmm. Never thought of that, I’ll freely admit it. I’ll ask him.” Mary Lisa smiled at Margie McCormick, who played her half sister, Susan Cavendish, on Born to Be Wild. Margie stood at her front door looking thin, blond, and gorgeous, dressed in tight hip-bone jeans and a brief stretch top. Mary Lisa had no trouble at all picturing Margie talking her way past Chad at the Colony kiosk.
There was no smile on Margie’s face. Oh dear. What was wrong with her? “Nice to see you, Margie. What can I do for you on this beautiful Saturday morning? Come in, come in.” She stepped back.
Margie said, “I don’t suppose the cops have found the guy who ran you over yet?”
“Nope, nothing yet.”
They walked into Mary Lisa’s house together, where Margie had visited many times before, right to her favorite chair, a high wingback covered in a bright multicolored South Seas print. She sat down, crossed her legs.
Margie said, “I don’t suppose the cops have found Puker Hodges yet?”
“No, still no word, still no leads as to where he was taken or who nabbed him.”
“Most people think old Puker’s sold his last photo to the fanzines, that he’s in a drainage ditch somewhere.”
“As much as I’ve wanted to hit him in the chops over the past months, I hope he isn’t dead. It’s true there was a fight in his apartment, but maybe the guy scared him so much, Puker went into hiding-”
“Oh, get real, Mary Lisa. Where else could he be? In Rio doing a photo spread on beach thongs? Enjoying a taco in Cancun?”
Mary Lisa said slowly, “That would make the guy a real monster, not just a-”
“A what?”
“I don’t know, maybe a minimonster. Margie, can I get you something to drink?”
“No, thank you. I see you’re studying your lines for all your scenes on Monday.” Margie pointed over at some script pages on the sofa.
All my scenes? “Are you unhappy about something, Margie?”
Margie jumped up, began pacing the living room. Then she whirled about and said, “I’ve always been honest with you, Mary Lisa, and I’ve come to say I can’t believe you talked Bernie out of the revenge plot!”
Mary Lisa cocked her head to one side. “I don’t understand. You agreed with me that Sunday wouldn’t sleep with her half sister’s husband, you rolled your eyes at where the writers were headed. Betsy agreed too. She said no matter what Sunday’s mother and half sister had done, Sunday would never sleep with Damian.”
“You’re trying to pretend Sunday always has reasonable motives for her behavior? That we all think things through before we act? You know very well that we have to do things that most normal people would think insane. For God’s sake, Mary Lisa, it’s a soap opera! It doesn’t have to make perfect sense as long as it’s entertaining, you know that. If the writers have a bad day, so do we all. Sunday sleeping with Damian? Why not? It’s a meaty plotline, and both Jeff and I would have been right up front, right in the thick of it in a major way for at least three months! The possibilities were endless, and the writers would have hit them all!
“But instead you bitched and moaned until you got your way and turned everything on its head. What did you do, Mary Lisa? Threaten to walk? To go over to General Hospital? And so Bernie had to come up with a long-missing TV evangelist father for his little princess? Now we’re out of it, do you hear me? I’m out of it. You happy now?”
Mary Lisa slowly set down her coffee. “I see,” she said quietly. “I thought we were friends, Margie, but I guess that’s not true. All you just said, I hadn’t realized how you felt, I really hadn’t, but now I do. You thought I stabbed you in the back. On purpose. Jeff too, right?”
“Jeff hasn’t said much, so who knows?”
Mary Lisa waved that away. “You’re saying I did this because I wanted more face time? And on my terms? Fact is, if you’d think about it for a minute, you’d realize that I’d have been featured as much sleeping with Damian as I will be now dealing with my long-lost father.”
“None of us is stupid, Mary Lisa. We all know you’re the lead on Born to Be Wild, and we’re all very lucky everyone loves you so much. Even my own real mother knows and accepts that; in fact, she loves you too. We all accept it.
“But the revenge plot was my chance to share some of that with you. I’d have been woven right in, right in the middle of it-the wife betrayed by both her husband and her half sister. I was so ready! But it won’t happen now, not anymore. I’ll be lucky to have three scenes a bloody week. You betrayed me, Mary Lisa, big time.”