But she’s stuck with me, and I make her as jittery as a gerbil in a cobra pit. Emma keeps a stash of Valiums in her top drawer—the pills are disguised in a Bayer aspirin bottle, to avoid discovery by any of her ambitious rival editors. They would unhesitatingly use the information to cast doubt on Emma’s fitness for newspaper management.
Poor girl. She has a decent soul, I’m certain, and an untested heart that doesn’t deserve to be wrung like an old dishrag. Yet that’s what is bound to happen if Emma stays in this miserable profession. I’m determined to save her; she is one of two pressing personal projects.
The first being, to save myself.
Before heading to Silver Beach, I make two quick stops. The first is a record store, where I purchase the only un-remaindered copy of Floating Hospice. Next, with Jimmy Stoma belting from the dashboard of my Mustang—”My baby is a basket case, a bipolar mama in leather and lace!”—I drive to a drugstore that employs a worldly young woman named Carla Candilla.
Carla is the daughter of my favorite ex-girlfriend. She works the drugstore’s photo counter. She waves when she spots me standing in line—we are on closer terms than her mother and I.
Carla smiles. “Blackjack!” Her nickname for me, inspired by my occupation.
I lean across the counter for a fatherly hug. “Once again I’m in need of instruction,” I say.
“Fire away, old-timer.”
“Cleo Rio. There wasn’t much in the morgue.”
“She’s new on the scene,” Carla concedes. “Is this research, or personal?”
“That’s right, darling, we’re a hot item, me and Cleo. Tonight we’re going to a rave and later we’re getting a suite at Morgan’s. Tell that to your mom. Please, Carla, I’ll pay you.”
When Carla laughs she looks just like Anne, her mother. And Anne laughing is one of my all-time happiest recollections.
Carla asks if Cleo Rio is dead.
“No, it’s her husband,” I say.
“Oh, that’s right. She got married,” Carla nods. “It was in Ocean Drive.”
Carla keeps track of all local and visiting celebs. At seventeen she is a wily veteran of the club scene and a regular pilgrim to South Beach, where she keeps current on music, movies, dietary trends and fashion. Carla is a key source; my only reliable link to modern youth culture.
“So what has Cleo done to make herself semi-famous? What exactly is she?” I ask.
“More specific please. You mean her sexuality? Nationality? Personality?”
“Carla,” I say, “in about twenty minutes I’ve gotta sit down with this woman and drag three decent quotes out of her. This will require first-class bullshitting.”
“She’s a singer.”
“That helps. What kind of singer?”
“Angry,” Carla says, “wounded but not hardened.”
“Alanis clone?”
Carla shakes her head. “Cleo’s definitely going for a more precious effect. You know the type—the suddenly fuckable former fashion model.”
Carla is not trying to shock me. She’s talked this way since she was twelve.
“Tell me some of her hits,” I say.
“Hit singular, Jack.”
“So everything you’re giving me is based on one song?”
“Plus the video,” Carla says.
“Certainly.”
“Directed by Oliver Stone.”
“Who else.”
“Supposedly she flashes some pubes. That’s how she got her name in Spin,” Carla reports. “Personally, I don’t think it was even Cleo on the video. I think they used a double.”
“For pubic hair?”
“Show business, Jack. Hul-lo?” Carla, who has come under the suspicious gaze of the store manager, now pretends to arrange some color slides on the light table for my inspection.
“What was the name of Cleo Rio’s one and only song?” I ask.
” ‘Me.’ ” says Carla. “That’s all. Just ‘Me.’ ”
“And it charted?”
“Only because of the pube hype.”
“Gotcha. Thanks, darling.”
“Where’s the big interview?”
“Her place.”
“I expect a complete debriefing.”
“Of course. Hey, you ever hear of Jimmy and the Slut Puppies?”
Carla arches an auburn eyebrow. “They new?” She’s afraid she’s missed something.
“Nope. Old as the hills.”
“Sorry, Jack.”
Before leaving the drugstore, I can’t stop myself from asking: “So how’s your mom?”
“Good,” says Carla.
“Really?”
“Really good.”
“Shit,” I say.
Carla laughs fondly. The fact that I still miss Anne buoys her opinion of me.