Born To Be Wild

THIRTY

With cries of American soap imperialism in the 1980s, the French and Germans launched their own direct imitations. Neither country’s soap attempt flew very high or very long.

Lou Lou came out to the front porch the next morning, still in Mary Lisa’s cat pajamas, carrying mugs of coffee on a tray. “Here’s some coffee, sweetie. It’ll clear the cobwebs.”

Mary Lisa was sitting on a deck chair in her front yard wearing rumpled shorts and her favorite pea green T-shirt. She smiled up at Lou Lou as she took the coffee. “You’re a princess.”

She looked over to see Carlo talking on his cell phone, the toes of his bare feet digging into the rain-soaked grass, wearing a black and silver Oakland Raiders T-shirt and loose black pajama bottoms. Mary Lisa wondered briefly if he’d lied to her about sleeping nude or if he carried this stuff around in case of emergencies, such as now.

Carlo trotted over when he saw the mugs of coffee and took a cup from Lou Lou. “Those kitty cats on your pajamas are a real turn-on, Lou Lou.”

“Good to know. Hmm. I think if Daniel said that, I might jump his bones. It’s too bad you don’t wear a badge, Carlo.”

Carlo, who had more money than God, looked thoughtful. “That,” he said, “could be arranged.”

Mary Lisa spurted coffee, coughed, then laughed. “What a lovely way to start Friday morning. It’s going to be a long day, Lou Lou. When did everyone go home?”

“Not long after you went to bed. Hey, there’s some good news.”

Mary Lisa’s eyebrow went up.

“I wish I could do that, but both eyebrows go straight up when I try.”

“It’s a gift, unfortunate that it’s from my mother. What happened that’s so good?”

“Jack has volunteered to take you to work, and stick. You’ve got to be at the studio in forty-five minutes. As for me, I’m out of here as soon as I change out of my hot jammies.”

“The living room looked fine, no big mess.”

“Nope,” Carlo said, watching Lou Lou’s pajama bottoms disappear into the house. “I set up a cleaning detail. One of Nicole’s friends even fluffed up a sofa pillow.”

Mary Lisa settled again in her chair to finish her coffee. She stretched out her legs and breathed in the glorious Malibu morning air.

“I wouldn’t want to tangle with that guy.” Carlo sipped his coffee and pointed with it. “He looks like he belongs in the Outback in Australia, like he camps out on top of Ayers Rock.”

Mary Lisa followed his pointing mug to Jack Wolf, who was walking toward them in a black T-shirt, tight ratty jeans, and low black boots. “Really? To me, he’s just a guy, kind of ordinary, really.”

“Other than looking like he could pull up that palm tree and scratch his back with it. Hey, you’re acting rather blasé about him, aren’t you, honey?”

“Okay, you’re right, I was. Fact is, he scares me. Thanks for coming, Carlo. You’re a prince.” Mary Lisa walked back into her house without greeting Jack. She heard him and Carlo talking. She stopped a moment to look around her living room. It was pristine. She remembered she’d heard conversations from the kitchen floating into her bedroom after she’d gone to bed, heard the refrigerator door open and close multiple times. Oh dear, she’d have to find time to go grocery shopping, since the local locusts had surely cleaned her out.

She went to her bedroom, shut the door, and reemerged eleven minutes later, dressed in a skirt and tube top. She was slinging her purse over her shoulder when a man’s voice said from not more than two feet away, “That was fast. Ready to go?”

She nearly leaped out of her shoes. She clapped her palms over her heart. “Oh goodness, whatever are you doing in here?”

Jack stared at her. “I told you I don’t want you to be alone. Lou Lou had to leave since she’s the one who smears on the makeup this morning and Carlo had to go wax his surfboard. As for Daniel, he’s got a real job to go to. That left me.”

And like Lou Lou had said, Jack stayed on at the studio. In fact, Clyde was very pleased he was there, as was Betsy Monroe, who played Lydia Cavendish. She wondered aloud, in his hearing, if he was unattached. So he was a little on the young side for her, who cared? This was make-believe land, anything could happen. Jack looked alarmed, then saw she was kidding him and laughed, told her she was too hot for a small-town guy like him.

Mary Lisa shot three scenes, from eight-thirty until noon. Jack mostly sat on a folding chair near the set with his legs crossed, beside Candy, whose job it was to keep an eye on Mary Lisa’s wardrobe and hair. When she was done with the third scene, Mary Lisa walked over to him. “Give me ten minutes to wipe the goop off my face.”

Lou Lou had to stay on into the afternoon since she also had to deal with Margie McCormick’s makeup on Fridays.

As Mary Lisa walked out of the studio, Jack was slightly in front of her, assessing everyone in sight, scanning the parked cars and a stand of trees beyond them. “So your father is a TV evangelist and that’s why he insisted your name be changed to Sunday?”

The three scenes they’d shot had been intense, two of them repeated multiple times. She was exhausted. And Sunday had yet to see her long-lost father for the first time. The writers were stretching out the anticipation for as long as they could.

“Yep, isn’t it cool what they’ve come up with? This means I don’t have to sleep with my half sister, Susan’s, husband, who’s a sleaze.”

He grunted, never stopped looking. “Yeah, a real sleaze.”

So he knew all about that, did he? She grinned up at him, but couldn’t make out his expression because he was wearing his dark opaque aviator sunglasses. She put on her own sunglasses. “I begged and whined and pleaded for them not to have Sunday sleep with Damian, and lo and behold, the consulting writer, Suzanne, came up with this. Sunday has never questioned her name. I don’t think anyone did until Suzanne came up with my supposedly long-dead preacher dad. This is going to change the course of the show for a good long time. On Monday I’ll meet Phillip Galliard for the first time.”

He grabbed her arm, pulled her behind him as a green Chevy roared past.

Then he saw the three teenage boys waving madly at her, whistling, calling out lovely suggestions.

Mary Lisa pulled a 49ers cap out of her purse, stuffed her hair beneath it, and pulled it down low on her forehead. “It’s my hair. That’s what makes me recognizable, or maybe they think, given where we are, that I should be someone famous. You never know.”

Jack shook his head as he checked the street again. “What a weird life you lead.”

She looked surprised, then thoughtful. “Yeah, maybe you’re right. But you know, after a while, it simply became the way I live-you know, getting dressed, going to work, hanging out with friends. Well, of course there’s memorizing lines. It becomes ordinary.”

“You really don’t see yourself as different? As someone special? As someone others look up to?”

“This obsession with celebrities, it’s a little scary, like it’s a giant beast and there’s simply not enough food to appease it. The fact is, I’m an actor, Jack, that’s my job, like being the chief of police of Goddard Bay is yours. The real difference between us, I guess, is that for now, I make more money, which is very nice indeed. On the other hand I have to wear really big dark glasses and a baseball cap over my hair whenever I go out of the Colony.”

“Yeah, you could buy and sell me.”

She said matter-of-factly, “Who cares? Don’t you think it’s strange that some men still feel insecure if they’re not making more money?” An eyebrow went up. “Not you, surely.”

“Of course not, but it’s not that at all,” he said, but she heard the touch of defensiveness in his voice and had to smile. He continued, “The fact remains, though, that men are supposed to take care of their families, they’re regarded as bums if they don’t.”

“That was certainly true of our parents, but now? Both husband and wife usually work, fact of life. And I always knew that I never wanted to be dependent, that I always wanted to earn my own way. That’s a problem with you?”

“Dammit, no. If a guy had a problem with that today, he’d be spit upon.”

“Yep, that’s true. As for me, I’m trying to salt it away like a squirrel getting ready for a long winter.”

She shrugged as she got into the driver’s seat of her red Mustang convertible.

He raised an eyebrow at the car. “That’s the new model. You salted a good amount on this baby.”