Whackadoodle Times Galore

TWO-2

Yes, we love you, we really love you the individual you, now go get a face-lift, boob job, penile implant or whatever so you can fit in with everyone else.

Like I said, I’m not into that life much any more. Not that I don’t look over the scripts Hayword writes. I do. He sends me the file and asks me to check the spelling and grammar. I agree and then I do whatever I can to make the script a bit better. I add the warmth. The humor. I make the characters real.

Although I would deny that to anyone. Even to Hayword. If he wants to believe the scripts are completely his work, let him. I could give a s**t. Men’s egos are so f*****g fragile.

Nope. I didn’t ask for this life but I got it. I’m not complaining. I let it happen, and now I’ve got everything.

So I am not complaining.

I supposed I should find out what was happening with David at school before Violeta left. Couldn’t be anything too big. He loved his school. He was always texting or talking to one or more of his classmates on his phone or whatever.

I wasn’t a fan of most of the new technology. I didn’t even like telephones. But I used mine to make dates. Cancel dates. Never wrote anything sexually explicit or mushy on it. I wasn’t an i***t.

“Wow, that was great.”

I looked over my shoulder and into the sun. I put my hand up to shield my eyes. Eartha was standing there, half-dressed or half-naked, in a yoga outfit. She smiled at me.

“What was great?” I asked. Don’t know why.

“Yoga,” she said. “I did sun yoga out back of the garden house. Man, it is such a cool space. Do you ever do yoga back there?”

“No, we’ve got a yoga studio in the house,” I said. I pretended to use it every morning. And every Thursday, or almost every Thursday, some of the women from the Enclave came over and we all did yoga together. Or our version of yoga: We drank, smoked some weed, lamented our lost youth and sagging breasts.

“Oh, it’s so much better outside,” she said. “You can really feel the energies of the Earth.”

Eartha feeling the Earth. How quaint.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” Eartha said. “I’ve got a good feeling about this place. Some good vibes. Some sadness, that’s true, but good vibrations.”

“So the Beach Boys would be happy here,” I said.

“Yep,” she said without hesitation.

Almost no one got my ironic sardonic hysterically funny sense of humor. Points for Eartha.

“How are you this morning?” she asked. She moved around to the front of me, so I wasn’t staring into the sun.

“It’s a little chaotic today,” I said.

Not for me but for everyone else.

My phone vibrated. I looked at it. Hayword texted, “Philip checked out Eartha. She’s clean as a whistle.”

“Anything I can do?” Eartha asked.

I couldn’t smell anything wafting off of her today. Perhaps she had had a shower.

“You can’t cook, can you?” I asked.

“Yep,” she said. “Cooked for a while in New Orleans. Then at a natural foods restaurant in Santa Cruz for a time. Then at a retreat center in Oregon.”

I held up my hand. “I don’t need your resume,” I said. “Our housekeeper has a family emergency and I have to run down to the village. I’m not sure I’ll be back by dinner. I can get some takeout, but you could earn your room and board for the night by making us dinner.”

“Oh,” Eartha said. “I didn’t know I’d get board. I like that. You need a cook, I’m it. Must be divine inspiration that I ended up on your doorstep.”

“How did you end up on our doorstep?” I asked. “Is this some kind of real life All About Eve? You’ve been waiting in the wings to take over our lives?”

Eartha sat in the chair across from me—on the edge of it—and looked at me. She shook her head. “What’s All About Eve?”

“The movie,” I said. “You know, Ann Baxter is Eve and she is a fan of Betty Davis who is a famous theater actor. Eventually she takes over Betty Davis’s life.”

Eartha shrugged. “I don’t watch movies.”

“You don’t watch movies? Well, you’ve had to be on this Earth a while. You’ve heard the line, ‘fasten your seat belts; it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.’ That’s from All About Eve.”

Eartha stared at me. Then she started laughing.

“I’m yanking your chain,” she said. “Yes, I know that movie. I love movies. I loved that movie. But you’re not an actor, right? And neither am I. What about your life would I want to take over?”

“Any part of it,” I said. “I’ve got a pretty nice f*****g life.”

I kind of liked that she had tried to fool me. Didn’t know why. Maybe because I figured it meant she was a little deeper than she appeared to be. Or a little meaner.

Just then Violeta came hurrying out of the house. “There’s an emergency over at Mrs. Joan’s place. Someone there called and asked for you to come right over.”

“Me?” I said. I put my coffee cup on the table and got up. “If there’s an emergency, they should call 911.”

Violeta shook her head. “They said you should come right away.”

“Oh Christ,” I said. “All right, all right. Violeta, this is Eartha.”

The two women nodded at each other.

“Eartha’s gonna cook for us tonight,” I said. “Could you show her around before you leave? And Eartha, if I’m not back right away, don’t steal the silver. We’ve got your fingerprints and Hayword already had them and your name run through a database. Yeah, he’s got a friend on the police force. Just like in the movies. Can’t think of any particular movie.”

“Rear Window,” Eartha said. “Jimmy Stewart’s character had a friend on the police force.”

“Yes, and look how well that turned out for the bad guy,” I said.

Violeta stared at me. Eartha laughed.

I hurried past them and went through the house to our front door. I opened it.

Mark P. was standing on my front steps.

“What the?” I said. I quickly closed the door behind me.

“Hello, Mrs. Lightman,” Mark said loudly. “Mrs. Donning sent me over to get you.” He looked around. I grabbed his arm and pulled him over behind one of our bushes.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

He was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, a tool-belt hung from his hips, and his short black hair fell down across his forehead. I summed up the clues: He was working.

“I’m working for Mrs. Donning,” he said. “I think she’s crazy. She’s got her toe stuck in the faucet and she’s completely naked. I was downstairs working on the bathroom and she called me upstairs to help her. She is completely naked.”

“You said that twice,” I said.

He looked almost panicked, which was not Mark’s style. He was always cool and collected. Well, almost always. Sometimes when we were naked together, he was definitely hot.

“And she has her hands on herself in all sorts of places I don’t want to see,” he said.

I almost started laughing.

No need for us to hide in the bushes.

“Okay, well, I gotta see this,” I said. “Take me to the spectacle.”

We crossed the street and walked down the tree-lined road a bit, then went up a steep drive. I was surprised Mark P. hadn’t driven over to get me. Everyone around here drove everywhere, even if it was only a block away.

“Why’d you call me?” I asked before I opened the front door to the Donning house.

“She told me to call you,” he said. “She said you would understand. She didn’t even want her housekeeper to know.”

The door opened and Joan’s housekeeper Beatriz was standing there. Mark and I hurried inside.

I smiled at Beatriz and said, “I’m going up to see the missus.”

Beatriz gave Mark a dirty look and then walked away from us and went into the kitchen.

“I’ll finish working on the bathroom,” he said.

I looked at him. “You gonna be done in time?” I asked. “Unless this whole thing has turned you off women.”

“I haven’t decided yet,” he said. He grinned and reached for me.

I moved away from him and hurried up the stairs. When I got to the top of them, I called out, “Joanie, I’m coming in.”

I walked into the master bedroom and went to the partially closed bathroom door and pushed it open.

I had to laugh. So I did. Joan Donning was lying naked, smoking a cigarette, in her very large white recessed bathtub. Her short black hair was slicked back, and she had on all of her makeup. Her breasts had not slipped to either side of her chest like mine would have if I were in her position. They were pointing at the ceiling, lined up together like two little soldiers waiting for orders.

“Why isn’t there any water in the tub at least?” I asked.

Joan pointed to her feet. One of her toes was in the faucet.

“Have you tried turning on the water?” I asked. “Maybe the pressure would push your toe out?”

“It hurts when I do that.”

I went to the window and opened it. “Gawd, Joanie. How can you stand all that smoke?”

“Can you bring me a towel at least?” she asked.

I grabbed a plush red towel from the pile near the towel heater. I unfolded it and draped it over her.

“You look even more strange now,” I said.

“Do you want me to ring for coffee?” Joan asked. “Or some breakfast.”

I laughed. “Joanie, why did you call me and what is going on?”

She stubbed the cigarette out on the side of the bathtub. The ashes fell into the tub with her. Then she looked around for an ashtray or something to put the stub in. Not seeing anything, she tossed it in the general direction of a small metal trash can in the corner. She missed.

“Ah, Beatriz will get it later,” she said. “What do you think I was doing? I knew Mark was coming over today. I didn’t really need any work, but I saw him when he came over to fix your plumbing. He looked so scrumptious. You’ve got your love nest. I figured I could have mine.”

“I don’t have a love nest,” I said. “I have an art studio.”

“Art studio?” she said. “Hah! We all call it the f**k studio. Like we call you f*****g Brooke. How do you do it?”

“But the plumber?” I said, ignoring her question. I was actually feeling her out—so to speak—to figure out if she knew Mark and I were lovers. Or fuckers. Whatever you call two people who occasionally copulate.

“When did you get so snobby?” she asked. “Didn’t you f**k a preacher one year?”

“One summer,” I said. “But that’s beside the point. I’m not you. You’re the one who told me you’d never even date someone who made less than a million dollars a year. And you’re married to a billionaire. Mark doesn’t make that much.”

“I don’t care about how much money he makes!” she said. “I want to f**k him, not spend him.”

I looked at her.

“And Bernie is not a billionaire,” she said. “And he’s as flaccid as a ripe banana.”

I groaned. “Thank you for that image.”

“Come on,” Joan said. “I’m a young woman. When I was younger, he came so quick he barely had time to insert his p***s into my v****a. That wasn’t much fun. And now he’s too flaccid to get it into my vagina.”