went back into the outer office just as the door to the stairwell opened and a woman came into the studio. I didn’t recognize her at first. She was wearing a baggy plain white T-shirt tucked into a faded denim miniskirt. Her legs were long and straight and strong. Her straw-coloured hair was drawn back in a short ponytail, emphasizing her striking, chiselled features. Her deep-set half-moon eyes, surrounded by smile lines, were a bright cornflower blue. She was carrying a shoulder bag that looked large enough to hold most of my wardrobe.
She smiled hugely, eyes crinkling and flashing. “Hi, Tom.”
“Reeny!” I said. “Hey, it’s great to see you.” Irene “Reeny” Lindsey was an actress — pardon me, an actor — I’d known for a couple of years. I hadn’t seen her in almost a year, though, not since I’d helped her move the old sailboat on which she lived from the marina in Coal Harbour to its winter mooring on the Fraser River, where the fresh water killed the saltwater toredo worms that invaded the wood hull during the summer.
“You two know each other?” Willson Quayle said, surprise in his voice if not his face.
“Sure,” Reeny said. “We’re old friends.” She put slight emphasis on the word “old.”
“Wait a second,” I said, having noticed that Reeny looked quite buff, much more so than when I’d last seen her. She wasn’t as developed — some would say overdeveloped — as a female bodybuilder, but it was obvious that she’d been working out. A lot. “Reeny, you aren’t — are you?”
“Tom, Barbie,” Willson Quayle said. Did Reeny stiffen slightly as he laid his arm across her wide shoulders? If so, he didn’t notice. “Meet Virgin.”
“His Botox injections haven’t just paralyzed his face,” Bobbi said later, after Willson Quayle had left. “I think they’ve paralyzed his brain as well.”
Reeny giggled. Giggly women usually annoy me, but Reeny’s giggle was throaty and full of mischief. “I know what you mean,” she said. “He is rather dense, isn’t he? Ricky — that’s Richenda Rice, who plays Star — she calls him One-Way Willie. Lots of stuff comes out, but nothing much goes in. Not to his face, of course. His company is a major sponsor.”
“His company?” I said.
“The company he works for,” Reeny amended. “Rainy Day Toys. He’s the senior account manager in the marketing department. Most of the women I work with think he’s drop-dead gorgeous, but, well, he creeps me out. Maybe it’s the Botox,” she added with an exaggerated shudder.
“You don’t use that stuff, do you?” Bobbi asked.
“Botox?” Reeny smiled, cheeks dimpling, eyes crinkling. “Does it look like it?”
“You look great, actually,” Bobbi said.
“Yeah, you do,” I added. “Very, um, fit.”
“You guys are great for the old ego,” Reeny said, colouring slightly. “How ’bout I take you to a late lunch?” she added. “My treat.”
“Uh, I wish we could accept,” I said. “But we’ve got a shoot this afternoon.” I looked at my watch. It was almost one. “We should get cracking.”
“I’ve got nothing on this afternoon,” Reeny said. “Do you mind if I tag along? That is, as long as you’re not going to be hanging from a helicopter under the Lions Gate Bridge or anything silly like that.”
She was referring to a photograph I had taken in the spring of a pair of workers dangling by their safety lan-yards beneath the Lions Gate Bridge after their scaffold had collapsed in sudden high winds. It had been shot from Wes Camacho’s helicopter from under the bridge. I’d been contracted to take some aerial photos of the harbour area, the bulk yards on the north shore, and had hired Wes and his chopper. We were calling it a day because of the winds when we saw the scaffolding collapse and plummet into the water two hundred feet below. Wes hovered under the bridge, while the winds beat at the helicopter, relaying information to the rescue crews. The photograph had earned me an award and a fair bit of free publicity. Wes and I had also shared a citation for bravery from Vancouver Fire & Rescue. Truth be known, though, I’d been scared half to death, had kept shooting simply as a distraction.
“Nothing like that,” I said. “We’re shooting the board of directors of West Coast Hotels for their annual report this afternoon. In their boardroom.”
“I could schlep for you.”
I looked hopefully at Bobbi.
“Why not?” she said with a wry smile. “Save me from having to do all the schlepping.”
Thank you, I thought gratefully.
“But, um,” Bobbi said.
“What?” Reeny asked. Bobbi was looking at Reeny’s long, bare legs. “Oh.”
“I might have a pair of sweats that will fit you.”
“Not to worry,” Reeny said, and pulled a pair of jeans out of her huge bag.
“Will Quayle implied that your show’s pretty popular,” I said. “You’re not worried about being mobbed by your fans? Or being seen in the company of dull normals?”
“Speak for yourself,” Bobbi said.
“Star Crossed isn’t that popular,” Reeny said. “Not yet, anyway. And I doubt it’d have many fans on the board of directors of West Coast Hotels. Besides, I’m not very recognizable. In addition to my character’s, um, physical enhancements, she wears a mask in a lot of scenes, and when she isn’t wearing a mask, her hair is short and red and her eyes are yellow. We’re only just starting our second season and, so far at least, I’ve managed to retain my anonymity. If it takes off, though, that might not last. I’m not sure how I feel about it.” She looked at Bobbi. “Tom can tell you, I’m a very private person.”
Reeny changed into the jeans and Bobbi loaned her a spare vest, so she’d look the part. We gobbled a quick lunch from the Chinese bakery across the street, then loaded the cameras, tripods, light stands, reflectors, cables, and portable seamless backdrop into the van and were on our way by two.
“What happened to your old Land Rover?” Reeny asked. She was sitting up front with Bobbi while I sat on the equipment case welded into the back of the big Dodge Ram van, clinging for dear life to the seat backs.
“I let Bobbi drive it,” I said. “She killed it.”
“Put it out of its misery, more like,” Bobbi retorted.
“And your Porsche,” Reeny said. “Do you still have that?”
“Yes,” I said. The Porsche was an ’84 fire-engine red Carrera 911 that I’d acquired a few years earlier in lieu of payment from a client whose “pre-owned” luxury car business had fallen on hard times. It was great fun to drive, especially on the winding roads of the Sunshine Coast, but it was totally impractical for work and spent most of its life in the lock-up I rented in the boat works shed at the west end of Granville Island. “I’m thinking of selling it, though. Know anyone who might be interested?”
“I might be.”
“Oops,”
