“Scary,” I said.”Close call. Just like today.” She rubbed my thumb with two of her fingers, and the gems in her rings glinted. “There must be an angel looking down on me, or something.”
She finished the rest of the bagel. “Anyway, that’s how Hollywood Me became Malibu Me again.”
“You never did say how you got from Vegas to Malibu.”
“Oh, that,” she said, wiping crumbs from her lips. “After they wouldn’t make me a headliner, I got bored and decided to see what I could find in L.A., figured I’d try modeling or acting or something. I had some money saved up, got myself a neat apartment in the Marina, hit the agencies. But they didn’t want full-figured girls, and I didn’t want to do sleazy stuff, you know?”
I nodded.
“Nudies, hard-core— I mean the body’s beautiful, but you have to keep standards. . . . Anyway, I checked out a few agents for commercials, but they were all losers. I’d started thinking about taking a boring job or something. Then one day I saw this ad in the paper offering good money for being in a psychology experiment. And I said, Girl, if there’s one thing you know, it’s psychology. ‘Cause back when I danced, it was all psychology. Fix your eyes on certain guys in the audience and play for them, pretend you know them and they know you. It set the tone—so you could be … realistic, you know? It made it more real, and that pleases the audience, and when the audience is happy, everyone’s happy.”
“Connecting,” I said.
“Exactly.” She rolled my thumb some more. “So I figured, what the hey, it might be fun doing some psychology. So I checked out the ad, and the guy running it was really sweet and it turns out all he wanted me to do was be in a room with some guys—just be myself—and see what they would do.”
“That’s it?”
“He—the psychologist—was measuring reactions to what he called stimuli. For commercials, ads, whatever. I guess he figured I was pretty stimulating. Another good thing, it was down in Newport Beach, so during lunchtime I got to sit on the sand and chill. I’ve always loved the ocean; there isn’t much of that in Phoenix.”
“All you had to do was sit there and he paid you?”
“That was it,” she said. “Like modeling, but better. ‘Cause there was no photographer making me twist in weird positions. And Ben—the psychologist—was a sweet, sweet guy, never made a move on me. Which, for me, is a twist, you know?” Squeezing my thumb.
I said, “I’ll bet,” and she grinned.
“At first, I figured he was just waiting for the right time, but then I could see he just wasn’t into it, so I started to think he was gay. Which was fine, I like gay guys—I mean I wasn’t disappointed or anything like that. I am not like that.”
Suddenly her voice hardened, as if I’d accused her of something. Her nail dug into my thumb, and I lifted it gently.
I said, “Men come on to you even though you don’t encourage it.”
“Exactly. You listen, don’t you? I mean really listen.”
“On good days.”
“He’s like that, too—Ben. A good listener. Anyway, I did this experiment for a month or so, and finally he did ask me out. But not like a come-on. More like father-daughter, being friendly, wanting to know how I enjoyed the job. He took me to the Ivy at the Shore. He was a perfect gentleman, wanting to know me as a person, we had a real good time even though I didn’t feel any—you know: sparks. And then—and this is the karma part—we’re leaving to get into his car, waiting for the valets to bring it up, and this other car drives up. This gorgeous maroon Bentley Azure, and another guy gets out—older, really well-dressed, really well-groomed—but mostly I’m looking at the car, ’cause how many of those do you see—chauffeur, chrome wheels, a million coats of lacquer. But Ben is staring at the guy who gets out. He knows him. And the other guy knows him, too—the two of them start hugging and kissing and I’m thinking I was right, he is gay. Then Ben says, Cheryl, this is my father, Tony, and the other guy bows and kisses my hand and says, ‘Enchanted, Cheryl. I’m Marc Anthony Duke’—which shocked me. Because once I heard the name, of course I connected it to the face, but you don’t expect someone like Tony to know someone like Ben, let alone be his dad. Ben doesn’t even go by Duke—he uses the real family name. And he’s nothing like Tony—I mean nothing. You couldn’t have two guys more different.”