Chapter Four
1
The photographers started to creep back around noon. There were only a few, and they were keeping their distance, but Annabeth Falmer could see them from her kitchen window, hiding behind cars, shoving themselves against driftwood at the start of the beach, waiting. By then she had not only Marcey Mandret but Arrow Normand in her living room, and Arrow Normand’s mother, who she thought was one of the most unpleasant human beings on the planet. Annabeth understood the photographers. They were trying to make a living, and they made a better living the more aggressive they got. Only a very few of them could have “special relationships” with celebrities that would let them get exclusives just for being who they were. Annabeth wouldn’t for a moment excuse their behavior just because of that. Everybody had to make a living, and most people managed to do it without being crude, rude, objectionable jerks. It was just that she understood it, and she didn’t understand Arrow Normand’s mother at all.
“We’d be back in Los Angeles already if it wasn’t for the filming,” Mrs. Normand said, her voice sounding like a television turned all the way up on speakers that had started to go bad. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard they were going to go back to filming the day after tomorrow, but I talked to Carl Frank, that son of a bitch, and they are. Maybe Arrow could get some kind of medical exemption. You’re a doctor, right? Stewart Gordon called you doctor? Maybe you could give Arrow a note and we could get out of here.”
Arrow was sitting in the big club chair. Her mother was sitting at one end of the couch. Marcey Mandret was sitting at the other. Annabeth found herself wishing that Stewart had not gone off to do whatever it was he had to do, because at least he could find a way to talk to this woman. Oddly enough, Annabeth was having very little trouble talking to Marcey and Arrow, who seemed to be mostly young. Arrow was also deeply and profoundly stupid, but there was no malice in it, and she always seemed to be trying very hard. Mrs. Normand looked more like a caricature than a human being. Her hair was long and bright blond. Her makeup would have made more sense on someone fifteen years younger and several shades lighter complexioned. Her nails were several inches long and so red they would have glowed in the dark. Annabeth put the big tray of tea things and cookies and little cakes on the coffee table and then retreated to a straight-backed chair that she didn’t usually consider comfortable. Right now, its principle distinction was being on the other side of the coffee table from all the rest of them, and that was comfort enough.
“Well?” Mrs. Normand said. She sounded annoyed. “Will you give Arrow a note so that she can skip the filming this week? I mean, you do talk, don’t you? A couple of minutes ago, I think I even heard you.”
Deep in the club chair, Arrow stirred, looking mulish. “She isn’t that kind of doctor,” she said. “And Mama, I told you, I don’t want to skip the filming. We only have another week before we’re finished—”
“If we all show up on time all the time and we’re ready,” Marcey said from the couch.
“And I don’t want to have to do this anymore,” Arrow said. “If I skip, I’ll just have to come back and do it later.”
“What do you mean she’s not that kind of doctor?” Mrs. Normand said. “Do you mean she’s some kind of shrink?”
Annabeth Falmer had never used the “doctor” in front of her name except at academic exercises, where other people insisted, and this was why. Now she drew her chair up to the coffee table and began to pour out, starting with Marc-ey’s cup, because she’d spent enough time with Marcey to know what she wanted. She tried to remember how Arrow Normand and her mother had ended up in her house, but it was a blur. Stewart had thought it would be best “under the circumstances,” but she wasn’t sure what the circumstances were, and she had no illusions about this house’s security against rampaging paparazzi. For some reason, Mrs. Normand took the situation as given, so Annabeth thought that must be something, she didn’t know what.
Marcey liked her tea with enough honey in it to re-create a beehive. Annabeth fixed it and handed over the cup. Marcey took it as if she were taking a life preserver, and then she drank half of it off in just one gulp. Annabeth didn’t know how she did it. The water was scalding. She didn’t seem to care. Annabeth looked at Mrs. Normand again. Arrow might be stupid, but her mother was something worse, ignorant and proud of it, and angry as hell.
“I don’t understand,” Annabeth said, without meaning to—she hadn’t meant to speak aloud at all, “why all of you are so angry all the time. You’d think you’d be ecstatic. You’re young. You have more money than most people will ever see. You’re famous. I ’d have killed for half of that at your age. But you don’t seem to like it.”