I turned on my phone and listened to three voice-mail messages from Simon, each one more peremptory than the one before, the third one telling me to follow standard operating procedure tonight and all of them telling me to call him. I turned off my phone. The last thing I needed was to explain the last seven hours to the Feds. I was alone now, Joey having gone to deal with production details, so I began standard operating procedure, checking around for Beverly Hills shopping bags and listening for European accents. Etude did not have a working pay phone, according to my waiter, so I didn’t have to deal with that. Meanwhile, the evening’s couple and expert took their places at a table Paul had lit with a cliplight attached to a tree. A bottle of Takei Sake awaited them.
The contestants tonight were Vaclav and Savannah.
Savannah was a knockout. I’d seen her on television, on the Web site, in TV Guide, and twice in person, but I’d never seen her like this. She looked Old Hollywood, fine-featured and radiant, perfectly made up. Her dress was forties, her red hair swept over one eye à la Veronica Lake. She would have beautiful children. On visuals alone, she had my vote.
Vaclav seemed improved by his close proximity to her. I’d worried that he was too foreign for the TV audience to warm up to, but tonight he seemed dashing and urbane. A lovely, sophisticated couple. I imagined that Savannah had the same improving effect on Henry and Carlito. Not only would viewers want her to reproduce, they’d want her to be their mom.
Across from them sat a generously proportioned woman in a tweed suit and red turtleneck that suggested Wisconsin. I tried, without success, to imagine her manufacturing drugs. Cheese, maybe. When the camera went on, she smiled into it. “Hello, I’m Ursula Fitzgerald-Camacho, a personal educational consultant, here to shed light on a topic that many pre-parents do not find stimulating.”
“As long as you’re stimulating, Ursula,” Vaclav said, giving a throaty laugh.
Savannah said something to Vaclav that sounded like Russian, which produced another laugh from him, and an invitation to Ursula to continue.
Ursula’s smile faltered. “Education in California is one of the most complex issues our elected officials grapple with. Sacramento, like every state capital, must draft a budget that accommodates unfunded federal mandates, demanding fiscal sacrifice-”
“Cut!” Bing yelled. “Sweetie. Words that bore us: ‘Fiscal.’ ‘Budget.’ ‘Elected officials.’ The only sacrifice we want to hear about is human sacrifice, virgins in the rain forest, that kind of thing. Start again. Action!”
Ursula’s smile died, but she launched into a dissertation on public versus private schools. I was distracted from this important topic by a woman one table over, shifting in her seat. Revealing, under her chair, a shopping bag.
“… study elementary school test scores to determine which neighborhood suits you,” Ursula was saying.
“We have to move to have a child?” Savannah asked. Good question, I thought.
“No, dear, only to educate the child. Think Harvard, then work backward. California ranks poorly in pupil-per-teacher ratio nationwide, and L.A. Unified is-”
“Cut,” Bing yelled. “Sweetheart: ratios, nationwide, nobody cares. Make it sexy. Also, you got something green on the corner of your mouth.”
I leaned down to get a better look at the shopping bag. Fendi, Hugo Boss, Ermenegildo Zegna: any of these would indicate a dead drop. And the people at the table, a nice middle-aged couple, would they be Little Fish’s customers or employees? If I could just see the shopping bag’s logo-
“-difference between public schools is considerable,” Ursula was saying.
“So’s the difference in rent between neighborhoods,” Savannah said. “For what it costs to move to Beverly Hills, you could afford private school.”
Another good point, I thought, and slid out of my chair. Ursula agreed, noting that rent saved by living in a less desirable neighborhood could add up to an annual twelve grand, which bought a year of preschool, five half days per week, with snacks.
What kind of snacks? I thought. Caviar? Dom Pérignon? I crouched between tables, straining to see Bing’s camera. I didn’t want to show up in the background of his shot. But Bing was on the move, so I waited, pretending to tie my shoe. I thought of Mrs. Rodriguez and Mrs. Glück, two women who’d helped with homework, packed lunches, gone to track meets, band practices, dance rehearsals, day after day for years. Now, having signed off on the last algebra assignment, term paper, college application, these soccer and fussball moms found themselves filling out police reports.
“The young brain,” Vaclav said loudly, “is a sponge. Languages must be learned before nerve endings myelinate-”
“Vaclav!” Bing yelled. “No nerve endings, no sponges, no science words no one knows. Jesus Christ, it’s like Face the Nation tonight.”
Bing stopped moving, so I approached my quarry in a crouch reminiscent of a runner coming out of the starting blocks. It was hell on my back. I neared the table. The woman uncrossed her legs and the tablecloth shifted, obscuring the shopping bag.
A waiter with a large tray weaved around tables, delivering soup to one and all, intoning, “Lobster bisque” in hushed tones. I hoped he couldn’t see me.
“… overwhelming for pre-parents,” Ursula said. “But look at the top ten best-paying jobs: physician, lawyer, pilot, pharmacist, marketing exec, architect, and the four engineers: aerospace, chemical, electrical, mechanical. Isn’t that what we want for our kids?”
My God, was it? I hadn’t given this any thought at all. I had no career goals for my preconceived child. The realization coincided with a severe leg cramp. I gasped, then straightened up to relieve it, and bumped into the waiter.
Soup bowls slid off the tray, sending eddies of lobster bisque into the air and onto the shopping-bag table, the waiter, and me. The bowls and tray made a lot of noise hitting the ground.
“Cut!”
All eyes turned our way. I flexed my foot, working out my leg cramp, and lowered my head, pulling the sweatshirt hood tighter around my face. The shopping-bag woman was making little whimpering noises. Her companion was swearing. The waiter was on his knees picking up soup bowls. My leg cramp eased, and I crouched to help him. The shopping bag under his companion’s chair revealed its logo: Macy’s. Fine. These people weren’t drug dealers.
“Wollie?” Bing yelled. “What the hell are you doing here?”
I looked up. Bing Wooster and his broken fingers and his Betacam loomed above me. He was joined by Vaclav and Savannah, and then Paul. So much for my disguise. I smiled at them. Bing told everyone to take five, and walked off in disgust. Vaclav held out a hand to help me up.
I found myself face to face with Savannah Brook. Or chest to face, considering her lack of height. She smiled and held out her hand, as if meeting me for the first time. I wiped my hand on my sweatshirt, cleansing it of lobster bisque, and shook hers.
She didn’t let go. She pulled me in close and said softly, “You better back off, bitch. I’m going to take you down.”
I pulled my hand out of hers and backed up. She was smiling again. She said something to Vaclav in the eastern European language, and he said something back and they both laughed. What did she think I was doing here? I turned, apologized to the shopping-bag people, and started back to my own table, feeling sick, embarrassed, tall, and soup-drenched. And stupid. In a nice restaurant, a hooded sweatshirt is as inconspicuous as a nun’s habit. What was I-