he demanded.
“He came with me, Harvey, so leave him alone,” Nora snapped. Then turning to the boys, she cooed: “Taylor honey, Burton darling, this is Mr. Beauchamp.”
“Hello,” they said in perfect unison. Okay, so they were twins after all.
“Hey, guys. Having fun?”
They looked at me as though I’d asked a question in a foreign language.
“Must be kind of cool, working with a real fox and all,” I went on.
Taylor, the taller one, said: “It would make a nice pair of gloves.”
“Honey!” Nora shouted. “Don’t make jokes like that!” Turning to me, she added: “They have a unique sense of humor.”
The boys glared back at me with all the humor of a plane crash. I glanced over at Harvey, who looked like he wanted to backhand the little cyborgs, but knew he could not. He was on Mommy’s payroll like everyone else here, including, soon, me.
“All right, talk to me, somebody,” Nora shouted, clapping her hands. “Where are we? Are we finished with this?”
A man dressed in white linen slacks and shirt with a light meter around his neck—presumably the photographer—came up to her. “I think I have what you want,” he said. “Come over to the laptop and take a look.” Nora followed him over to a table on which sat a portable computer and intently examined a slideshow of photos.
“They’re grinning,” she said. “Why are they grinning? This is a serious poster, for Christ’s sake!”
“We took a variety of poses and expressions,” the photographer explained.
“No…no…no…no…Jesus Christ, Jerry, why would you take a picture like that? Burton looks likes a zombie!”
I glanced over at Burton and found myself agreeing with her assessment.
“You’ve been wasting my time and money!” Nora shouted. “You should go back to the fucking DMV!”
Jerry the photographer sighed, and then said: “Just look at the others, Nora.”
Glaring at the laptop like she was trying to burn holes through it with her eyes, Nora snapped: “No! No! No! Hell no! Jesus, God! No! Wait, that’s it. That one there.”
“There are more—”
“Why are there more? You should have stopped after this one and not wasted everyone’s time! This is the one. Look at that…even the fox looks like he’s pleading not to be killed.”
My guess is by that point the fox was pleading to get away from the lights and the noise.
“Put that one on a memory stick and I’ll take it with me,” Nora told the photographer. “All right, everyone, it’s a wrap.”
There seemed to be a collective sigh of relief in the room as the harsh photographic lights were clicked off and the ceiling’s one remaining bank of fluorescents was switched on. Then the small crew set about to breaking down the shoot. A young woman appeared with a box of wet wipes and began to remove makeup from the boy’s faces, while a couple of college-age guys took down the backdrop. In no time at all, the equipment had been removed and the tiny makeshift studio looked like an abandoned office again. Knowing what I now knew, I could only imagine what sort of activities had gone on in here for the past year. That, in turn, led to another question, which I saved for a time when Nora Frost wasn’t so busy. Right now she was handing out checks to people, and something else along with them: autographed glossy photos of the Brothers Alpha. I could tell that the two guys who had taken down the backdrop were having an awful time trying not to laugh out loud as they received their “gift.”
Within minutes, Jerry the photographer and most of the crew was gone. The only one left was a young Latina who appeared to be in charge of the wardrobe, or at least in charge of picking up after the twins, who left their costumes strewn all over the floor of the makeshift dressing room cubicle. “Hurry it up, would you?” Nora said as the woman put the costumes on hangers, with the hats and boots going into large plastic bags, which she started to lug out.
“Can I give you a hand?” I asked her, and she smiled.
I helped the woman, whose name was Rosario, drag the stuff out of the suite and to her van, the back of which was filled with various costume pieces and boxes of accessories. “You must do this for a living,” I commented.
“For small shoots and commercials, mostly,” she said. “This is my second shoot with the Alphas.”
“I hear they’re real up and comers.”
She looked at me with questioning eyes. “What was your name again?”
“Dave Beauchamp. I work in the building here.”
“So you don’t have a connection with the family?”
“Until today I’d never heard of them. Why?”
Rosario looked around to see if anyone was within earshot and then crooked her index finger for me to lean closer. “I’m not a show business veteran or anything,” she whispered, “but as far as I can tell, the only way those two are going to become famous is if they’re murdered.”
“Nora thinks they’re going to be superstars,” I whispered back.
“I know, but she’s the one who wants to be famous and powerful. The whole family gives me the creeps.”
“Why do you keep working with them, then?”
She closed the door of the van. “A job’s a job, particularly these days,” she said, no longer whispering. “Last week I did an infomercial for a guy who claims he’s invented a kind of tea that will cure cancer. Personally, I think I he’s a con man who should be arrested, but a job’s a job, so I worked it.”
“Rosario,” Nora’s voice shouted from behind us, “did you get your check?” We turned to see her standing just outside the building, with the twins behind her, both totally rapt by the electronic game gizmos they held in their hands.
“Not yet, Nora,” Rosario called back.
“Well, hurry up, we have to leave.”
With a sigh, Rosario half-trotted across the parking lot to her, received an envelope (but no autographed 8x10—presumably she had one from her earlier shoot). I followed, but not as rapidly. In fact, Rosario met me half-way coming back. “Like I said, a job’s a job,” she reflected, holding her hand out for me to shake. “Nice meeting you.”
“Same here.”
As Rosario was preparing to leave, Nora Frost was talking on her cell phone. I tried to walk past her, but she held out a hand to stop me from going anywhere. “What do you mean you can’t do it?” she shouted into the cell. “I need you right now, dammit! What am I paying you for? Well, plans have changed, and I have to run somewhere, and I need to get the boys home. No, I can’t! Goddammit, you listen to me, you…oh! We’ll talk about this later!” She cut the line off so forcefully I thought she was going to crush the phone
