“It’s a show,” Nicole said. “I’m a real person. I travel.”
“You’re putting me on.”
“Give me a quiz,” Nicole said.
“What happened when … nah, you watch it like me. You’ll just pass the quiz, and that won’t prove anything.”
“Well,” Nicole said, shrugging. “I mean, it’s not important to me if you believe it or not.”
“Hey,” the man said. “Are you really?”
Nicole nodded.
“Nah,” the man said. “People think you’re her all the time, huh?”
“This is from my agent,” Nicole said, slapping the envelope against her palm. “My agent usually sends me cassettes instead of calling me. Then he can nag me if I don’t remember everything he says. He wants me to play them over at night before I go to sleep. No kidding. Want to hear?”
The man was starting to look perplexed. “Well — if you are Stephanie Sykes, you sure are good on that show,” the man said. “My wife Betamaxes it and I watch it at night. Have a couple of beers and check out what’s new, you know? Good show. Sorry it was canceled.”
“It’s going to be back on in the fall,” Nicole said.
“Yeah?” he said. He stood there, not saying anything. “What did you say you were doing here?” he said.
“It’s a secret house where I rendezvous with Michael Jackson,” she said.
“Nah,” the man said, shaking his head. “Now I know you’re putting me on.”
“How do you know?” Nicole said.
“Because he’s on tour.”
“His double is on tour. Michael Jackson is upstairs in the bathtub.”
The man frowned. He looked past her into the empty house. “Have a good day now,” he said, turning to go. “One second,” she said. “Just one second. I’m going to prove it to you.”
She went into the living room and got the cassette player. She went out to the front stoop — the man backed up so far he almost fell down the steps — and put the player on the little table. She opened the package, took out the tape, and clicked it in. “This is my agent, Piggy Proctor,” she said.
He stood on the first step, smiling nervously. The truck was idling in the driveway. The tape started.
“Hello, cream puff,” Piggy said. “I feel as far away from you as cellulite is from Jane Fonda’s thighs. Just a few words of information before the writer gets there … some Piggytalk to psych you into Sykesdom—”
“See?” Nicole said, clicking it off.
“He does this instead of calling you?”
Nicole nodded.
“And Michael Jackson’s upstairs?”
“I was kidding about that.”
“Jesus,” the man said. “I’m glad. My wife’s not gonna believe this as it is.”
“Would she like my autograph?” Nicole said.
“Oh, would she! She was an abused child herself, and she lives and breathes Stephanie Sykes. Her stepfather locked her in closets and threatened to push bees in through the keyhole. Hey, what she doesn’t know from suffering. She worships you. Would she like it? You bet she’d like it.”
Nicole went into the house and ripped a piece of paper out of Lucy’s tablet. There was another Cindi Coeur column. Nicole would have to read it later. Lucy was really pretty funny.
“You know, the other show she really loves is All My Children. She wrote a letter to Phoebe Tyler Wallingford one time, and she wrote her back. You know, in real life her husband was an alkie, and she had to leave him because they had kids.”
“What’s your wife’s name?” Nicole said.
“It’s … jeez, her nickname or her real name?”
“What name does she go by?”
“Well, her name’s Patricia, but everybody calls her Poodle.”
“Maybe she’d like it if it was informal,” Nicole said. She wrote: “To Poodle — may you always be top dog. Best wishes, Stephanie Sykes.”
“This is fabulous,” the man said. “This is really fabulous. You just thought of that? Right now?”
“Sure. Actresses have got to think on their feet, right?”
“Hey, that’s amazing,” the man said. “I sure am glad I mentioned that you look like Stephanie Sykes. Man, who’d believe it? I ring the doorbell and there you are. Pretty unbelievable.”
The thought of listening to the rest of the cassette was more than Nicole could bear. “Do you think you could do me a favor?” Nicole said. “My aunt was supposed to give me a lift into town. I don’t know where she is. Are you going that way?”
“Oh, sure. Glad to. The only thing is — jeez, I hate to ask a star this, but a guy got fired about a year ago. If you can sort of duck down so nobody sees you—”
“You got it,” Nicole said. “Just one sec.”
She ran upstairs, got the cigarette case, her makeup bag, and her purse. She threw them all in, put on her jellies, and ran down the stairs again.
“Man, Poodle’s never gonna believe this. Of course, I’d better leave this part out,” the man said. “I kind of like it that she’s so jealous. I don’t want to work her up, though. I don’t know what she’d say if I told her I was riding around with Stephanie Sykes.”
Nicole hopped in the truck. High off the ground, she felt more powerful. She was going into town with a plan, and she thought it was a good one.
“You know who else I really like? Liz Curtis. Gloria Loring. And Priscilla Presley. I think she can really act. Can you imagine that? Moving into Elvis Presley’s house when she was your age? She’s really a knockout. That natural look makes women look good. She had that teased-up hair when their kid was born. She looked about ten years older then than she does now.”
“I don’t think Lisa Marie’s as pretty as her mother,” Nicole said.
“Jeez — imagine being just a baby and having your old man fall over dead in the bathroom. I’ve got a three-year-old kid, and he’d fall over dead with me if I was on the floor, you know? Not that it’s not always rough, but when you’re just a little kid and one of your parents drops dead, it’s got to be bad. You know he wasn’t any daddy that put bees through the keyholes. He probably pushed diamonds through, huh? They say Graceland’s a pigsty now. It’s a big tourist trap.”
The deliveryman was speeding. Swallows flew past the truck, flying low over the road. A package slid to the floor. When they got off the dirt road, Nicole ducked low. It was too much trouble to bend over that far, so she sat up again, then slid way down on the seat.
“Sorry,” the deliveryman said. “It’s protocol, you know? Did you know that the Queen never carries her own umbrella? Wacky world, huh?”
Nicole nodded.
“My mother-in-law’s neighbor was in a room next to Lucie Arnaz when she had her last kid,” the deliveryman said. “Saw her every day. Said she was really friendly. Kept the door to her room open a lot of the time.”
Nicole’s thoughts were drifting. This wasn’t the outfit she would have chosen if she’d had more time — and it probably wouldn’t have been the moment if she hadn’t been stoned — but what the hell. She might not have friends, but she didn’t have to stay a virgin, and what better place to be deflowered than in a shrine to yourself?
17
HARRY WOODS was embarrassed. It was one thing to have a Stephanie Sykes shrine in his room, and another thing to have the real-life Stephanie walk in. She walked around, looking at all the photographs he had cut out of magazines, strolling the way people stroll through art galleries on Sunday, with one eye on whatever paintings were hung, while picking up people in their peripheral vision whom they might make a move on. Nicole intended to go to bed with Harry Woods, but she wasn’t entirely sure how to seduce him. She had seen enough movies to know that props would be a help, but there were very few things in Harry Woods’s room. Eye makeup was also a help, but she had forgotten to put on makeup in her rush to get a ride with the Federal Express man. So she was strolling around, trying to think, vaguely assessing different images of herself. There were pictures from newspapers, from magazines, black-and-white glossies he had gotten from the studio. He would probably buy a dozen Stephanie Sykes dolls. There were stories about Passionate Intensity tacked to his bulletin board. There was also a large oil painting of a spaniel with a bird in its mouth, an orange and blue sky glowing behind the dog, and a man down on one knee with a rifle, on a hillside, near a patch of trees.