Читать книгу Gettysburg - Kevin Morris - Страница 11

Reynolds hadn’t dared tell Norman about his meeting. Three days earlier he’d received a call from an agent he knew from the old days, Scott Stein. Scottie was a good guy, a TV hustler who handled writers, always trying to slap together shows. Like everyone, he had turned to reality. The non-scripted shows had taken over the business, and front liners such as Scottie had to adjust. So there wasn’t any surprise—or, Reynolds thought to himself, shame—when Scottie said, “Would you and Norman ever do reality?”

“Norman wouldn’t,” Reynolds said.

“What about you? I have something that might interest you,” said Scottie.

“How could reality interest me?”

“It should interest you when it’s good. Check it out. I have a former Playmate—one that was Playmate of the Year and was almost married to Hef. She’s famous.”

“What’s her name?”

“Delaney Bedford.”

“You’re kidding,” Reynolds said.

“She’s a good lady. There might be something there.”

“What’s the show?”

“She has some ideas, but that’s why she needs a producer.”

This is how it goes, Reynolds thought. Deteriorate and advance. That’s how the world works. All he could see was a beautiful ass. July 1979. He was thirteen and exploding with hormones. His Uncle John had Playboys under his bed. Reynolds would sneak in to his and Aunt Tchally’s bedroom, pull one out, and smuggle it home, where he looked at it for hours. He studied every angle of the Playmates’ bodies. He read the profiles, marveling at the handwriting, how they dotted their i‘s with little circles, sometimes even hearts. The summer he was fourteen he realized he could get away with buying the magazine himself at the pharmacy. He waited for all the other customers to clear away before he approached the register. The girls behind the counter always gave him half-cracked smiles, like they were watching him undress. One even said, “Don’t go blind.” They weren’t embarrassed at all; it was a one-way street of humiliation.

Delaney Bedford. Hers was the only centerfold picture he could recall taken from the rear. The photo spread, as it were, had a camping motif. In the first few shots, she was outdoors, in a red lumberjack coat with nothing underneath. The coat slipped off, and she was shown in various stages of camping activity. In the centerfold picture, she was lying down, tilted to the right a bit. Her whole aura was blonde, but on close inspection the hair, the skin, the stockings, even the tint of the rouge on her cheek—were all beige and brown. She had large, outstanding breasts, but they were pressed into a sleeping bag and only the side of the right one could be seen. The tent was lit by a kerosene lamp in the background; the sleeping bag was white, and all around her were rough green camp blankets. One pillow tossed to the bottom of the frame had an elk motif on it, its horns pointing to the thing that got him: the just-detectable hint of tawny brown pubic hair running through the divide where her legs met her back.

He devoured the rest of the pictorial, of course, at each viewing, but he returned to the centerfold spread. He thought he had a type, and she was not it: Texas blond, with all that comes with that generality. His type, even then, was the brown-haired, green-eyed girl. This one, though, Delaney Bedford, took over his mind, changed him. She represented something wholly different, something beyond his range. Her mouth was open, the large, white gleaming teeth hinting that she would have looked gawky two years before.

The thoughts Delaney Bedford put in his head made it inevitable that he would come out West. He knew when he sat in his room fantasizing about her that he would have to leave Gettysburg, that there was something inside him that could not sit still while this was out there.

The way her thigh turned to hip, to a C-curved, pure white pad, was just the camel’s nose under the tent. It started in him a desire to get to the center of things. This was only inflamed as he followed Delaney’s progress: she was named Playmate of the Year and moved into the Playboy Mansion. Nearly all issues of Playboy from that period had a reference, a picture of her at a party or something about her. It was as if Hef had seen the same thing he had, the dirty bastard. Even he, with the ten million girls and a new one each month for decades, had recognized something in the frosted-feathered-haired open-mouthed bosomy brown blonde on her tummy on the sleeping bag.

Yes, indeed, Reynolds thought. He was meeting her at Ivy at the Shore, which was right on his way to Enchino. The restaurant was the kind where the waiters wear pink shirts and white aprons. It was loud even when it was quiet, silverware clinking in the recesses, Ella Fitzgerald’s voice covering the room, a fixture of the restaurant as much as the paint on the ceramics. Reynolds had been there a million times. There was a funny thing about Hollywood restaurants: they lived for awards season, the time when actors and writers and directors were on a perpetual cycle, either as nominees or presenters—a constant flow from the ridiculous Golden Globes to the nonsensical Screen Actors Guild Awards to the boring, socialist Writers Guild Awards to the angry Directors Guild Awards to the callow Spirit Awards (Hollywood’s annual opportunity for the parents to drink with the students), all leading up to the sploogie fest of the Oscars.

Reynolds had long since tired of it all. He had seen, in person, Roberto Benigni jump on the chairs and David Letterman do his “Uma, Oprah” bit. Going to the shows was like going to work, no exaggeration. Horrible. He would try to keep it in perspective—mathematical, no emotion—and then the perspective shattered, and he descended into hatred. He wondered why or how he’d got there. Why he cared. Why he didn’t care. Why he was working himself up. It was all part of the game. An expensive game but a game. The hunt of it had propelled him in younger days with a desire to provide and protect. As with anything, the luster had worn off. This was somehow more shattering, though, because Hollywood, in all of its obvious falseness, still managed to promise the never-ending fulfillment and reward of art and artistic process, special among all businesses as the one that is more fun, interesting, and good for the soul. It was lonely to find out it was not.

Reynolds deduced but never let on that one’s ability to be excited by hype corresponded in proportion to one’s ambition for fame. If he had none, he would not have been there in the first place, so there was Original Sin and shame and so forth. But he did quite honestly tire of it. Reynolds had a teenager’s ability to romanticize and live his life by the wisdom of song lyrics. So, he reasoned (internally—advertising or shouting it would be stupid) that he was interested in Hollywood the way Hurricane Carter was interested in the fight game: less and less. It’s his work, he’d say. He did it for pay. When it’s over, he’d just as soon be on his way.

As Norman said, things get fucked up when you mix fame with money. It was no surprise that no one—no committee, no awards show, no benefit—could pay Norman enough to show up in the past ten years. He had already received lifetime achievement awards from the various television, movie, and writing worlds. He told them he was not doing these things anymore, or, more often, Reynolds told them. Even Stella would get calls from event producers and charity groups begging for help, and she would get them off the idea.

It could not be called misery, and that was the bitch of it. There were moments of redemption. He and Stella and Norman tried to keep conversations limited, as best they could, to nice stories about people, or nice recollections, tried to keep their relationship to the town genteel. Foreign stars or kids, nominated before anyone knew who they were, came and went so many times. Reynolds sought encounters with anyone offbeat and brilliant. Years ago that meant John Cassavetes at a little bar in the living room of a house on Coldwater. He coupled that with appreciating the ordinary: he caught things, took an interest in things, tried to be outside-in. He noted kids who had been brought up in red states, with small-town lawyers and doctors for fathers and mothers, rather than in Studio City. Reynolds would not respond at first if one of these kids spoke, testing to see if the kid was for real, and often he or she was not. Even so, he had a weak spot for any actor whom he saw getting his shy and uncomfortable dad a beer, as Jeremy Renner had done at an after-hours party attended by Jack Nicholson and Madonna.

Reynolds headed from Malibu to Santa Monica, where he was scheduled to meet Delaney at Ivy at the Shore. Unless on the phone, he zoned out in the car. It was a hazy state, car-mind-zone-fade, he called it, checked out of life. For Reynolds, it was also a time to assess all that was wrong, undone. He headed south on the PCH as he did every day, ignoring the surfers, hugging the left lane when tourists slowed to watch them at Topanga or Carrillo. Natives had nothing on him when it came to car-mind-zone-fade. He was a pro. If there were a league of car-mind-zone-fade players—say, subway riders from New York and London, taxi riders from Paris zooming in and out of tunnels—all lined up for a showdown, he, Reynolds, would be one of the best. If there were scouts, they’d go nuts for him.

Riding south out of Malibu was very good for the zone. It provided contextualization in real time, because the zone required the smashing together of self-loathsome nostalgia and insecurity-driven anxiety, and it was better if external stimuli could conjure both. Thus, as he drove his black-on-black S63 AMG Mercedes past the pier, past the thirty-foot stucco statue of a taco-eating Mexican in front of Las Chacas, and alongside the cement-colored sand, he thought of sitting in his room looking at the back cover of the Beach Boys’ Endless Summer, which he’d bought despite not having a record player, regarding the investment as sound because he could look at the album art and play it at his friend Arthur’s house.

He never wanted to surf. And he never thought he’d meet Delaney Bedford. Yet in some corollary to the Warholian fifteen minutes, if you lived long enough, that’s what happened to you—sudden brushes against the impossible. He wondered what she would look like, and he started to get a little hard-on. There it was again. He could not believe how much craving for sex he had. He rubbed his hands. He had become like the real Homer Simpson, the one from The Day of the Locust, not the cartoon. At least not yet like the guy from the cartoon. The guy from the book was kinder.

A Billy Bragg song from his Spotify playlist came on:

Ingrid Bergman

Ingrid Bergman

Let’s go make a picture

On the island of Stromboli

Ingrid Bergman

Ingrid Bergman, you’re so perty

You’d make any mountain quiver

You’d make fire fly from the crater

Ingrid Bergman

If you’ll walk across my camera

I will flash the world your story

I will pay you more than money

Ingrid Bergman

Scottie had told him Delaney still looked like she looked in the magazine, just older. Reynolds replied that was a line good enough to qualify Scottie for the agent hall of fame. Reynolds arrived and left the car with the Argentinean kid at the valet; somehow the Ivy had these tall, great-looking Argentinean kids, come to America to park cars, an upside-down American Dream. He went inside, and George said she was already there. And there she was, sitting at the good table, the one in the back left-hand corner under the ten-foot Ed Ruscha painting of a clipper ship with big, bold white letters running top to bottom: BRAVE MEN RUN IN MY FAMILY.

Delaney Bedford gave him a little wave. Scottie was right. The same, just older. She stuck out her hand and said, “Hiiiii.” He could tell the way you can tell that she was friendly; that she had been scooped up by Hef because she was so extraordinarily attractive; that she’d lived her twenties in a blaze of mirrors, cameras, travel, access, and petty jealousies; that she woke up not knowing what hit her, met a business guy who loved her underneath, married him, went into isolation, and raised the kids; that she got divorced; and that she was now in Enchino and trying to figure out what to do. She was battered by life, beaten down by the clock, but she was still hot. That’s what life is like for these women, he thought. Like they had to overcome their beauty.

“So nice to meet you,” he said, in his friendliest tone. As if he were a kid at the top of a waterslide, the waiter pushed him in. His head fogged. He had been to class reunions, which were weird, he later deduced, because multiple things were happening: old emotions revived, passage of time clocked, new impressions made, new events occurring. Now he was going through the same thing with Delaney Bedford, except his relationship with her, while it had gotten physical, was solely in his own head. He told himself it was not any different from meeting any of the ten million movie and television stars he encountered daily, in offices, on sets, at restaurants, concerts, ball games. He’d perfected the Hollywood ability of being bored by it all. First you’re amazed by it, then you bask in it, then you take it seriously, then you think it has something to do with you, then you start to worry that it has nothing to do with you, then you make a new plan and tell yourself you’re over it all and decide to use it for your own purposes. And that’s all this was. In his pocket, a call came in on his iPhone. He had it on silent and it went to voice mail.

In the great tradition, Reynolds and Delaney broke the ice by talking about someone else, in this case the one they had in common, Scottie.

“He says such nice things about you,” said Delaney.

Upon closer inspection, Reynolds saw she had dressed up for him. This was a girl who knew clothes, no matter how long she’d been in the Valley. Reynolds did not have a bone in his body for fashion, but marriage to Stella and a life of materialism had had their effect on him. At forty-seven, he could take a woman in and assess the jewelry, the top, the nails, the shoes, and the bag the way Jason Bourne took in an empty room with high ceilings somewhere in Europe after waking up with amnesia. She had on a silky blouse showing a discreet amount of cleavage, diamond stud earrings, not too big, not too small, and a Cartier Tank watch—that was all he could see from the table up.

“He’s the best,” Reynolds said.

“How long have y’all known each other?” Delaney was leaning forward, as though Reynolds’s response would be the most important thing she’d ever heard. But not in a dumb way—more in a Southern way, the way Southern girls always made everyone feel so special.

“Oh God, let’s see. Wow. You know, I think I’ve known Scottie for twenty years.” He was nervous. He felt like he was on a first date. The waiter was there to take drink orders. “Would you like some wine?”

“Ooh. Of course. My kind of guy.”

Thrilled, he ordered a bottle of chardonnay.

“So, thanks again for meeting me,” she said.

“Oh, it’s my plea—”

She lifted her eyes to something toward the entranceway and put her hand on his forearm. “Oh, there she is.” She stood halfway in her chair and waved. “Marisol … Marisol, over here.”

She sat back down and looked at Reynolds. “I hope you don’t mind, I asked my friend to join.”

“Oh, OK,” said Reynolds, not sure what to say.

In a moment, an elegant and tall Latina in big black sunglasses was being escorted by the maître d’ to their table. Reynolds rose from his chair as Delaney embraced her friend.

“I’m sorry for being late, cara,” Marisol said.

“Oh, don’t be silly. Mari, meet Reynolds. Reynolds, this is Marisol Ocampo de Campos.”

They shook hands and all sat down. “Reynolds, as I was starting to say, Marisol is my partner. She’s just the best.”

“Oh, stop,” said Marisol. “You know these days you can’t say that, Laney. He will think the wrong thing,” and she gave Reynolds’s arm a little smack in laughter. Then she directed his attention at Delaney. “Will you look at this girl, she’s still like a Bunny.”

“What this girl won’t tell you,” said Delaney, “is that she was Miss Universe in 1975. From Es-pan-ya.”

Reynolds’s eyes widened. “Oh, wow.”

Marisol gave Delaney the same little slap. “Oh stop, you.” They giggled.

Reynolds tasted the wine and told the waiter it was fine.

After the wine was poured they toasted. “Here’s to success,” Reynolds said.

“And new friends,” said Delaney.

“Even better. To new friends,” Reynolds said, and they all took noticeable gulps.

“So, Mari,” Delaney said after a moment, “Reynolds is a producer, of course.” She returned her look to Reynolds. “Scottie told us all about you. He said that you were an agent, before, or a manager?” They both now looked at him with their heads tilted a little sideways, just a touch, a cue that he should start talking about himself.

“Oh, no, no. I was never an agent. Everything else but,” Reynolds said, with a forced laugh.

“So now, you are a producer?” said Marisol. Like Delaney, she was acting as though she was on an audition. Reynolds got the panicked feeling that Scottie had promised them more than he could deliver.

“Well, yes. I guess so.” He forced himself to focus. “I run Norman Daley’s company.”

Delaney interrupted for Marisol’s benefit. “You know Norman Daley. The writer. He did The Fauntleroys.” Marisol jolted a little. “And It’s All in the Air. And so much else.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” said Marisol. Reynolds would have bet everything he owned and every penny he could borrow that Marisol did not know what The Fauntleroys was. The girls were listening closely. Reynolds had marveled at this quality for years; the transparency of a person’s affected interest was usually correlated in some way to the lack of brain waves behind their eyes. But these ladies were nice. And they didn’t have to be smart. After a bit more chitchat, he refilled their glasses, noting Marisol’s breasts as she held out her glass.

“More wine?” Reynolds said, looking for the waiter.

Marisol said, “Know what? It is a special occasion. Laney, let’s have that special drink … you know, the gim-let.” Reynolds noticed that she pronounced s-words with an extra syllable, “eh-special.”

“Oh, lord have mercy, girl,” Delaney said, Texas-style. “You gonna get me drannnkin’.”

“You want to have Ivy gimlets?” Reynolds was amazed. Those were goblets full of vodka with a bit of mint and sugar. “Sounds great.”

“Go ahead, please, Reynaldo. I don’t mean to interrupt,” said Marisol.

Reynolds listened to himself talk. He took the girls through his background with Norman, all their famous and successful shows. It was a canned speech, something he did on autopilot. But his internal voice, already feeling the wine, ran through a series of debates. Am I really doing this? Aside from being on the receiving end of a few strenuous lap dances over the years, he had never been unfaithful to Stella. But this is—like, literally—your fantasy girl. Should I try for Delaney? What does that even mean? What does “try for both of them” even mean? Is this how a threesome happens?

He realized he was talking through his daydream. “But let’s not let me ramble on. I’m here to learn about you two. How do you know each other?”

The girls exchanged looks. “You tell him,” said Marisol. “I’m too shy.”

“Ha!” said Delaney. The drinks came, and they all took a sip. Reynolds tried not to wince at the taste of the vodka. The girls didn’t flinch.

Delaney rolled her eyes. “Wellll … where do I start?”

“Start with the Italians,” Marisol said.

The girls cracked up again. All three took another sip of gimlet. Good lord, thought Reynolds.

Delaney sighed, put her glass down, and set sail. “We married brothers. Italian brothers: Stephano and Silvio. Do you know them? The Rinaldis? They make blue jeans.”

“Designer jeans. Motto Royal jeans?” Marisol said.

“Sure,” said Reynolds. “I’ve read about those guys.”

“Well, we married them,” said Delaney. The two laughed again.

“Didn’t they sue each other?” Reynolds said.

“Oh, my goodness, they sure did. Took nine years,” Delaney said.

“Oh God,” Reynolds said.

Marisol grabbed his forearm and said, “They are animals.”

Delaney went on, “We all met around the same time, in 1983. I had, you know, retired, shall we say, from the mansion and all that. Anyway, I was at a party, and this dashing Italian man starts talking to me. Now, honey, I was used to a lot of money by then, but everyone was kind of, you know, cheesy. This was like a fairy tale. He sent me roses, took me to dinner, flew me to Paris …”

Reynolds reflected on the notion of something being too cheesy for the young Delaney Bedford. He took another drink.

“They did everything together,” she continued. “Whenever I went out with Silvio, Stephano was with us. Always a double date. Stephano always had some bimbo or another. Then out of the blue one night, he shows up with Señorita here, and she and I hit it off like that.” Delaney snapped her fingers.

“We were like sisters,” said Marisol, and she snapped her fingers.

“We did everything together. We got married on the same day, honeymoons, vacations.”

“Had kids same time.”

“That’s right. Our kids are the same age.”

“But you’re both … not with them anymore?” said Reynolds. “The brothers?”

“That’s right. This terrible, terrible fight started about ten years ago.” Marisol’s accent became more intoxicating as she got more intoxicated.

“Ugh, it was awful,” said Delaney.

“They no talk to each other anymore.”

“But,” Delaney said, indicating a bond between her and Marisol, “we told them, ‘No way is this affecting our friendship.’ I said, ‘Silvio, if you think I’m not going to see Marisol, you’ve got another thing coming, paesan.’”

Marisol nodded. “She did. She did that. And when I find out, lo mismo por Stephano.”

Delaney showed the palms of her hands. “So, we all got divorced. They had to let us keep the houses—we’re down the street from each other in Enchino.”

“And they keep fighting each other,” said Marisol. “They spend everything on a fight with each other.”

“Fascinating,” said Reynolds. He tried to remember whether he’d read about the Rinaldi brothers killing anyone.

“So anyway,” Delaney said, “there we were in the Valley raising these kids and homeschooling them and everything.”

“You homeschool them?” Reynolds said.

They nodded in unison. “Is very important,” said Marisol. “We use the Secret.”

“So,” Delaney said, “the boys are in college, and our girls are tenth-grade level, and we have these funny, crazy lives. And everyone is always coming up to us and saying, ‘You two should have a reality show.’”

“Is crazy,” said Marisol.

“More drinks?” said the waiter. They all agreed, without disturbing the flow of the conversation.

“And I know Scottie for a million years,” said Delaney. “Do you know he represented Hef for one of those contest shows years ago?”

“I never knew that,” said Reynolds, kind of impressed by Scottie, who he thought just chased three-episode arcs on How I Met Your Mother.

“He did so much bad things,” said Marisol, talking about Hugh Hefner, Reynolds realized after a moment. “On television. So many stupid shows.”

“So, I asked Scottie what he thought, and he flipped over the idea. We went in for a meeting with him, and—” She showed her palms again. “Well, he just thinks it’s a great idea. ‘We just have to find you a producer,’ he said.”

Delaney looked at Reynolds. Marisol looked at Reynolds. Not knowing what else to do, Reynolds lifted his eyebrows and turned his palms up too. Marisol did the same. The three sat with their palms up and their gimlets in front of them.

“And here we are,” he said. They giggled. “Terrific.” The waiter returned.

“Ready for something to eat?”

“God, yes,” said Delaney. “I’m getting smashed.”

“I missed something,” Reynolds said, after the waiter left. “What do you mean when you say you have ‘the secret’?”

“The Secret,” said Delaney.

Marisol leaned closer. “You know, the Secret.“

“You know,” said Delaney, “The program, the books. The Secret.”

“Ooh,” he said. “And how do you do that?”

“Well, it takes a long time to explain,” said Delaney. “But basically we follow the principles of the Secret in everything we teach them.”

Reynolds did not want to betray his lack of knowledge of the Secret, so he nodded.

Marisol had put on a pair of sexy-librarian-style glasses to read the menu. “Scottie said the Secret is a big hook for the idea.”

Delaney nodded. “Said we could work that in there.” More drinks came, and they both asked for Cobb salads with no bacon, and at Reynolds’s insistence they ordered crab cakes to share. Reynolds said he would have the swordfish.

“So, what do you think? Are we just a couple of suckers? Please, you have got to tell us if we are being silly,” Delaney said.

“Yes,” said Marisol. “Look, Reynaldo, we both have seen a lot.”

“A lot,” said Delaney.

“We have been boolshitted by the best.”

“You can just tell us straight.”

They were staring at him. Reynolds couldn’t tell who was more beautiful. He grabbed a piece of bread, because his head was starting to spin from the vodka. And then nerves took over again, and he took a sip of his drink while he tried to think of what to say.

He cleared his throat. “OK. Here’s what I think.” He leaned in. “One of the most important things I’ve learned from Norman—that’s Norman Daley, of course,” he said—looking at them both, like a speaker at a TED conference trained in eye contact—“is the importance of genre.”

“That is so true,” said Delaney. Marisol nodded in agreement.

“He was—is still—a genius at ushering in a style of television just as—or even just before—the public realizes its appetite for such a program. So, you see, Artie in the Army was one of the first half-hour situation comedies, John Iron one of the first hour-long Westerns, Ten Sector Red an old cop show, and so on.”

“God, I loved John Iron,” said Delaney. “That man was so sexy.” Marisol lifted her eyebrows at Delaney in mock surprise at her randiness.

Reynolds went on. “Cut to today, and now, of course, we are in the age of reality.”

“Yes!” said Marisol.

Her vigor threw Reynolds off his rhythm for a moment, but he recovered. “The important thing with reality, or non-scripted programming, as it’s sometimes called, is to know which niche you are approaching.”

Delaney put her elbow on the table, set her head on her palm and nodded. “My gosh, Scottie was right about you. Wasn’t he right, Mari?’

“Um hmm,” Marisol said. “And he didn’t say he was so cute.”

Reynolds continued quickly to show the girls he couldn’t be distracted. But inside he was freaking out. “So I think we just have to bang it out a little—find our genre. Once we do, we can figure out our target distributor and go from there.”

Delaney put her hands together like she was about to pray and gave a little clap. Marisol grabbed Reynolds’s upper arm and looked at Delaney and said, “OK. So now we bang it out a little?” They laughed. “Laney, we have to lighten him up a little, no?”

“Seriously!” Delaney said. “C’mon, Reynolds, tell us more about yourself. What shows are you working on now?”

“Well,” he said, “you’re getting me at a good time. I’ve taken a break for the past several months. To tell you the truth, I’ve been looking for the right vehicle to get back in.”

Marisol said, “We can be your vehicle, no?”

“Oh, keep your claws off him,” said Delaney. “What have you been doing while you’ve been off?”

“Well, I keep things going with Norman. He has a lot of legal needs, of course. And, I don’t know, I spend a lot of time reading, I guess. I have a daughter in college, like you guys.”

“Aw. How cute.” Delaney tilted her head to the side a bit. “So, you ended a show last year?”

“Yeah,” Reynolds said. “Well, it didn’t get picked up.”

“What was it?”

“It was sort of an experimental show about sleep.”

“You are kidding me,” Delaney said.

“Sleep is so important,” said Marisol. They all nodded.

“What do you like to read?” Delaney said.

He took a drink. “These days I read a lot of history.”

Delaney dropped her fork. She stared a Marisol, who broke into a smile. “Marisol and I love history.”

“It is absolutamente our favorite.”

“Verdad?” said Reynolds.

“God’s honest,” said Delaney. Marisol widened her eyes in delight and lifted up a little, as if she were tasting something delicious. Delaney said, “And I will tell you something else.” She paused and grabbed her purse and started to stand up.

“Yes?” he said.

“Smart men are so sexy,” she whispered, as she started to squeeze by. “Lemme get through you, I gotta go to the little girls’ room. Don’t you go anywhere.”

“I come with you,” said Marisol.

Delaney slid past him, and the two glided away. Reynolds was awash in vodka. He watched them walk. And there it was. The rear end of Delaney Bedford. The Holy Grail of his youth, like a sacred religious relic in a Dan Brown novel. She had kept it up. Yes, he could make the connection between the butt walking away from him and the image from thirty-five years ago. How was that possible? And yet it was true. There was a particular dimensionality to it—not flat, not circular. It was just shaped damned well. Exceptional. He felt like he could see the top of Everest.

As impossible as it was to compete, Marisol was nothing if not also compelling from the rear. Who’d have ever dreamed that when Delaney Bedford actually came into his range he would at the same time meet her Spanish doppelgänger? With Marisol, it was like watching the Spanish-language version of a favorite game show. There was the fundamental appeal of, say, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, with its pot-roast-like comfort, and underneath it the sensation of consuming something ridiculous through a foreign language. Different and yet the same. It was a bonanza of head-splitting proportions.

They moved through the restaurant like tall ships tacking to harbor. He had seen a lot of women head to the bathroom mid-meal, actresses, models, hookers, the gamut. But those had been nothing like these two at a late Friday lunch at Ivy at the Shore. And what is even crazier, he thought, as he tasted mint on the tip of his tongue and swallowed the last piece of crab cake in spicy Thousand Island sauce, they are my age. Even a little older. They weren’t young idiots. In his now drunken state of mind he reasoned that this was better than what other middle-aged guys were up to. While it would be a disaster to be found out, if this came to anything, he wouldn’t have to worry about the scorn of his contemporaries, the shame in front of his mother, the additional sense of letdown and anger and disgust from Stella and Bella that would accompany any kind of interaction with twenty-five-year-old models. No, sir. Delaney Bedford and Marisol were older women.

In truth, they reminded him of the older girls he’d flirted with in high school and college. Those moments with the babysitter or his neighbor’s girlfriend or the TA for chemistry class—or one drunken night with a grad student that had been close to against his will. Not typical moments for the male, but they existed in his memory nonetheless, always submerged. But wow, what could have been had been great to consider.

The waiter was refilling their water glasses. “Another round?”

“Why not?” said Reynolds.

“Right away,” he said, clearing the dead soldier gimlets.

Reynolds could see the guy was enjoying waiting on this table. “Pretty phenomenal, huh?”

“Sensational,” said the waiter. He bent a little to Reynolds’s side. “Who are they?”

“Playmate of the Year in 1979, and the other was Miss Universe. Way before your time.”

“Wow.” He shook his head. “Like, from Sweden?”

“What?”

“Like Miss Universe from Sweden?”

“No,” said Reynolds, whispering, because they were coming back from the restroom. “She’s from Texas.”

“Ooh, so the blonde was …?”

“Playmate.”

“Wow. And the Mexican lady was Miss Universe?”

“She’s Spanish.”

“Got it.”

“OK, scram,” Reynolds said, smiling. He was in that gauzy place. The girls sauntered back to the table like a couple of floats from the Rose Parade.

He stood as they sat down. “Marisol, I haven’t asked you what part of Spain you are from.”

“Barcelona.”

“Oh, I love Barthelona,” Reynolds said.

“You’ve been?”

“Oh, yes. I am a huge fan of Gaudí.”

Marisol stared at Delaney as though she’d seen a ghost. They broke into laughter.

“What?” Reynolds said. “What’s so funny?”

“I tell Laney … I tell her all the time … I say the first man in America who knows who Gaudí is—I will marry that man!”

“But he’s mine!” Delaney said.

The waiter returned with more drinks.

“Ay, no!” said Marisol. “Ray, you gonna get us drunk.”

“Ah, you two can handle it,” Reynolds said.

“What is your favorite about Gaudí?” Marisol said.

“Oh … let me think. Isn’t there a park in Barcelona that was his dream project, which didn’t get finished?”

“Yes. The cemetery … you’ve been?”

“Oh yes. I spent a day there.”

“You see, this is the kind of thing Laney and I want to do with the show. The people will think, ‘Here is two stupid, you know, bimbos who look at nothing but fashion magazines and were beautiful when they were young, but now they have no life and they just get old and divorce and die.’”

“Exactly,” said Delaney. “But we can come in and surprise them all. We can talk about art and history and architecture and the Secret and all of this deeper side.”

“And we can speak to all the women out there who feel the same way. There is a big market out there in the women who feel this way, Ray,” Marisol said.

“They want to be deeper. Y’all men don’t get it,” Delaney said.

Reynolds nodded in agreement. He thought Marisol looked like a younger Sophia Loren. He thought Delaney was a cross between Ingrid Bergman and Loni Anderson—young Loni Anderson.

“OK, so let’s think this out,” he said. “What other show could it be compared to?”

“That is the thing,” said Marisol. And she held her head up in a regal manner. “There is no show that has ever been like this.”

“It’s unique,” said Delaney.

“Well, OK,” said Reynolds. “What channel do you see it on?”

“Fox,” said Marisol.

“OK,” said Reynolds. Like Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling speaking to Hannibal Lecter, he was jarred out of the manipulated state he’d allowed himself to get into. He remembered he was the one outside the cage. “Maybe FX. Or FXX. In fact—” He snapped his fingers. “Guys, you know what? This must be a cable show. Like Lifetime, or Discovery—maybe A&E.” He considered what he was saying. “Maybe.”

“Well, that’s why we need you,” said Delaney.

Reynolds chewed a bit of swordfish. He noticed that the ladies were not eating, just pushing around their salads. They must be smashed, he thought. How can they not be smashed? He thought about what Norman would say right now. He put it out of his mind.

“OK, tell me about the Secret,” he said. “What’s is the Secret?” He paused. “I mean, I don’t know a thing about it. I want to know.”

Delaney brought her napkin to her lips. “Well, it’s not really a one-lunch, wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am kind of thing.”

“It’s very complicated,” said Marisol.

“But it’s also very simple,” Delaney said, as much to Marisol as to him.

“Sí. Is very true,” Marisol agreed. Reynolds noticed Marisol’s Spanish was coming out more as she got drunker.

“But it’s complicated, she’s right,” said Delaney.

“Sí.”

“OK,” said Reynolds, “but what is it?”

“It is a program developed by these fab-ulous people. They are doctors, for the most part,” said Delaney.

“Men?” Reynolds said.

“And women,” said Marisol.

“One main woman and a prominent doctor, who is a man. And many other doctors,” said Delaney.

“Yes, and another group of man and woman,” Marisol said. Realizing it sounded a bit convoluted, she waved off the explanation, “Es a little confuso. But look, papi, the basics are that it is a book, and there are DVDs. You follow their program, and you begin to see the most wonderful things happen.”

“Your life, it goes through so many wonderful changes,” Delaney said. “Things just start happening for you.”

“The sex life gets much better,” Marisol said. They giggled at this.

“The key is: you have to believe,” Delaney said.

The girls were staring at him, nodding. He was hammered. Ella Fitzgerald was in the background, and the restaurant was emptying. The busboys and waiters in their shirts and white aprons were setting up for dinner. Delaney Bedford was staring into his eyes. He returned the look, just as he had at fourteen when she was looking back at the camera, with her back arched, next to her standard issue green blankets and sleeping bag. She was right there, in the flesh. Just older. Above, the stars moved and stayed put; simultaneously static and in motion, moving or not moving, all within a super crazy gigantic box of space and time.

“Do you want to go have a cigarette?” Delaney whispered.

“Fantastic,” he said. “I haven’t smoked in twenty-five years.”

“Good,” said Marisol. “We gonna live a little.”