little twit’s made a point of ignoring me for the entire time I’ve been a guest in her home. She’s standing there in her school uniform, looking like a runaway Playmate with her long, straight blond hair, her huge, gray eyes and that innocent, pouty mouth older women pay big bucks for at the plastic surgeon’s office.
I think she’s talking to the driver until she zeroes in on me and says, “Mind if I ride along to the airport?”
I figure it’s Marlena who’s garnered her interest so I say, “She bites.”
“What?”
That’s when I realize Haley hasn’t even noticed Marlena wrapped around my neck like a fur scarf.
“You need a ride to school?”
Haley shakes her head and starts walking toward the car like she owns it, which I suppose, technically, she does. She breezes past me, clambers into the back seat of the limo and before I can even sit down says, “Are you really Jeremy Reins’s girlfriend? So, what’s he like in bed?”
“What?”
I look at Renee’s princess daughter and know my mouth is hanging open. I reach forward, hit the button to slide the privacy glass up between us and the driver and then turn to give the little twit a piece of my mind.
“Listen, where I come from we don’t kiss and tell—and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell a kid like you about something like that! What is wrong with you?”
Haley leans back against the seat and looks at me and I realize she’s completely unfazed by my attempt to chastise her.
“You’re a prude, aren’t you?” she says, like it’s a matter-of-fact thing and not a slur on my good name.
“No,” I say, wishing Marlena would wake up and bite the little shit. “I am just wise enough to know when to keep my mouth shut.”
“Oh, come on!” Haley says, pouting.
“Does your mother know where you are?” I say, and immediately want to shoot myself for sounding like my own mother.
“Can I bum a cigarette?”
“I don’t smoke,” I say, and realize, too late, that Haley is right in the middle of Mahler’s separation-individuation process and doesn’t really mean what she’s saying. So I remember my training and attempt to be therapeutic; after all, this is the first day of my new life.
“Haley, in order to break away from your mother and become your own person, it is perfectly normal for you to rebel and do things that your mother would disapprove of,” I say. “But smoking will kill you.”
“Oh, blow me!” Haley says. Then she sits up and starts rummaging through the drawers of the wet bar until at last she retrieves a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
“Don’t even think about lighting one of those things!” I command. “Marlena is allergic to smoke.”
Haley gives Marlena a look, like she’s trying to size her up, and finally tosses the pack of unfiltered cigarettes back into the drawer.
“What is he like?” she asks, reverting to Jeremy.
“Spoiled,” I answer.
“Does he love you?”
I give up and decide to enjoy my new role as Jeremy Reins’s fictitious girlfriend. I smile slyly and raise my eyebrows, and then lean in close, like I’m actually going to share a secret with this hellion.
“He’s mad for me,” I say, and giggle. “He fills my tub every night with champagne heated to a perfect ninety-eight degrees, and then he floats rose petals on the water, and not the red ones, either. He knows I abhor red roses, so he has pale yellow and orange ones flown in from his farm in Florida.”
Haley’s eyes are practically popping out of her head and I continue, completely into the lie now.
“He once took a slim silver dagger and sliced a thin line down the center of his chest. When it bled he looked at me, with tears in his eyes….”
“Because it hurt?” she says, interrupting.
I shake my head. “No, it was the depth of his emotional attachment to me that made him cry. He said ‘I would cut my heart out for you, for our love.’”
Haley sucks in her breath. “But like, wouldn’t he be dead then?”
I close my eyes and shake my head slowly back and forth. “No, idiot, he meant it as a gesture and as a way of saying that our love would transcend our current earthly incarnations and last for all eternity.”
“Oh, man!” Haley sighs. “I want to be loved like that!”
Don’t we all, I thought, and am relieved to see the airport come into view. How had Haley learned about my mission anyway? Was her mother careless? What if this had been a really dangerous assignment? But when I ask Haley about it, she shrugs and smiles coyly.
“I’m not the only sneaky person in the family,” she says. “I have my ways.”
I make a mental note to take this up with Renee upon my return. Perhaps the bond between mother and daughter could be repaired with stricter generational boundaries; at least, that’s the family systems theory. I personally think a good smack is in order.
“Please, please, please get his autograph for me,” Haley begs as I get out of the limo and start for the private concourse. Then, apparently thinking this uncool, she shakes her head vigorously. “No, don’t do that! Bring me a pair of his underwear instead. Used.”
I don’t think this even warrants a response. I leave her there, staring after me and walk away as fast as I can. I breeze past the security checkpoint and to where a private plane waits for me. For once in my life, I’m glad to be leaving New York. L.A. and Jeremy Reins seem like a vacation compared to the rigorous two weeks I’ve had training to be a Gotham Rose.
I toy with the idea of calling my mother, but just as quickly decide not to. She and Victor have been in England for three weeks now and I try to forget the argument we had before they left. Parents just have a hard time letting their adult children lead their own lives. Mama was just mad because I bought a penthouse in the West Village instead of living with them.
The flight is so long! It seems to be taking forever to reach L.A. and maybe that’s just fine with me because I can’t decide if I’m nervous about the next week or just sick of flying.
“Miss Rothschild, we are making our approach to LAX,” Tim, the pilot says over the intercom finally. The stewardess emerges from the cockpit, somewhat disheveled from her attempt at keeping her balance while we pitched and rolled, takes her seat and buckles herself in for the landing.
I look out the window and then over at Marlena in the seat beside me. She’s curled up, sleeping, looking like a tiny snowdrift of white fur except for the itty-bitty black satin eyeshades I had made for her. She likes them. The moment I put them on, she settles down and goes to sleep. Before the eyeshades, I had to sedate her when we traveled. I figured, what a ferret can’t see, a ferret won’t worry about, and I was right.
The
