She pressed forward, bosoms resting on the table, slid the paper toward me.
“You know,” I said, “I think you’re right—excellent.”
A huge smile spread across her face as I filled in the blanks, and for a moment she looked very young.
“You must be smart, doing these. Maybe I should start doing them too,” she said. “To keep my mind active. I get bored a lot—there’s not much to do.”
“At the estate?”
“I know, I know, it’s everyone’s idea of paradise, what am I bitching about? But believe me, it’s boring. There’s tennis, but I hate tennis ’cause of the sun, and how many laps can you swim, how many times can you ride that cable car, up and down, up and down, and stare at the ocean? Even Tony’s zoo—he’s got these rare goats and some monkeys and other stuff, but it smells bad and it’s noisy and I don’t like animals. Even the kids are bored with it. When they’re up and running around, I keep pretty busy, but when they nap, like now … I want to put them both in preschool, but so far it hasn’t worked out.”
“Why not?”
“So many details,” she said. “Finding the right place, arranging transportation. Making sure about security.”
“Security?” I said. “Like a bodyguard?”
“At least somewhere we can be sure they’ll be safe. There are plenty of movie stars in Malibu, and they send their kids to preschool, but we want to be especially careful.”
“Could I ask a personal question?”
“I might not answer it.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “If you’ve been divorced for a year, why are you still living there?”
“Well,” she said, “that’s another long story.” Her hand rested on mine. “I still want to thank you. For being there, you know? Because Baxter can swim, but he could’ve been in trouble. I didn’t want to make a big deal about it in front of Anita, so I have something else to thank you for—not saying anything.”
“No problem.”
“What do you do for a living?” she said.
“This and that. I have some investments.”
“Ooh,” she said. “That sounds rich. I bet you’re not as rich as Tony.”
“No argument there.”
Her hand trailed up my arm, tickled my chest, touched my lips, withdrew.
“Why am I still living there,” she said. “Well . . . after the divorce, I had my own place. Up in Los Feliz hills, a really cool place. Tony got it for me because of the gates and the security—it was a real safe place. Or at least we thought so. Tony wanted the best for me.”
“Sounds like a friendly divorce.”
“He was sweet. . . . Anyway, me and the kids were in this great old house in Los Feliz—lots of land, all these fancy details, this gigantic bathroom with a view of the hills. And close to Hollywood, so one day I took the kids to the Egyptian Theatre to see A Bug’s Life—it was cool, they had this whole sideshow next door about bugs and stuff, computer games, toys, Bax and Sage went crazy. Afterwards we went out for dinner and ice cream and it was late when we got home and Sage was already sleeping on my shoulder and Bax was pretty close to conking out. Anyway, I turn the key and we walk into the house and instead of greeting me with a big bark the way she always did, Bingles—that’s our dog—was— this gorgeous standard poodle who won a ton of shows—instead of greeting us, Bingles is lying in the entry hall, not moving, with her tongue stuck all out and her eyes real dull.”
“Oh boy,” I said.
“I freaked, Alex. If the kids hadn’ta been with me, I would’ve screamed. Baxter runs over to shake Bingles, but I could tell from the way her tongue was sticking out that she was gone and I’m screaming at him not to touch her and then Sagey wakes up and starts crying and then I smell it. This horrible gas smell. I got us all out of there fast, called Anita. She sent a driver for us, brought us out here, sent some specialists to Los Feliz. Turns out there was this massive gas leak—the house was old and the pipes weren’t great and somehow the main flue got clogged or something. They said it was lucky we left when we did because all the windows were closed because of it was a cold night. They said we could’ve died in our sleep. Or if I’da lit a match, the whole place could’ve gone up. They fixed the problem, but we’ve been here ever since. Eventually, I’ll get another place—but closer to Tony because … he is their dad.”