Accidental It Girl (19 page)

I feel an unexpected surge of adrenaline, and a stroke of inspiration that's almost Machiavellian in its poetic depravity. This is it, my chance to lose him.

In a low voice I tell Brooke, “Follow my lead.”

She nods her head, and I practically leap on the hood of the first cab to pass by.

I force Brooke (who is still posing) into the cab.

I pause before getting in and lean over the door toward Ethan. I lock eyes with his and give him what I believe approximates a come-hither stare. Well, from my end it feels that way, at least. I do the classic “come here” finger move—curling my finger repeatedly, as if drawing him in by a string.

Stunned, and I think a bit intrigued, he leans toward me. Slowly, carefully, I bring my cheek to his. Barely brushing my lips against his skin, I put a peck on his fuzzy face. I whisper, “You can't beat me. Give it up.”

With a quick tug, I pull down a good portion of his poorly affixed fake beard.

Smiling, I scream at the top of my lungs, “Oh, my Gooooood! It's Ethan Wyaaaaatt!”

“Very funny,” he says, only slightly perturbed.

I grin a knowing, cocky smile of my own (the first time I've been able to use one of those in a while) and watch as his face begins to show little flashes of panic. Little furrows appear on his forehead. The slight dimple on his left cheek smooths out as his smile slowly curls downward. His blue eyes widen as a shrill, frightening sound assails him.

He hears it, that most terrifying of sounds for the unguarded male celebrity: teenage girls, squealing with delight.

With a wink, I slide into the cab and wave good-bye to my dumbfounded (and amazingly scented) celebrity stalker. Luckily, the cab doesn't spring to life before I get a chance to see Ethan Wyatt being mauled by six extremely enthusiastic young fans.

B
rooke and I step onto the escalator of an Upper East Side Barnes & Noble.

“How are we supposed to recognize her?” Brooke asks, scanning the stacks and café as we're deposited on the second floor.

My eyes flit over the wide mahogany shelves and little placards—Self-Help, Biography, Reference. The sunshine must have coaxed readers outside, because most of the comfy chairs scattered around are empty.

“She told me that she's pregnant, that we'll be able to spot her from a mile away.” I return to my visual sweep and notice a very petite, very pregnant woman sifting through a table of bargain books. “That must be her,” I say to Brooke, pointing across the room.

“That little thing was Ethan Wyatt's personal assistant?” Brooke says, verbalizing the surprise I'm feeling myself. She adds, “I imagined a Malibu Barbie type.” Yeah, so did I.

I survey the room—she seems to be the only pregnant woman around. With a name as faintly exotic as Jacinta Brown, I really expected her to be sort of…well,
exotic
. As it turns out, the only thing truly striking about her is that she's managed to stay vertical. Her belly is enormous, especially given her slim frame and diminutive stature. The fact that she's upright seems to defy the laws of physics.

I approach the woman at the bargain books table. “Jacinta?” I ask.

“Oh, hi! You must be Sadie,” she says with a wide engaging smile. Jacinta's auburn, pixie-cut hair shows off her soft, pretty features including, appropriately enough, a peachy sort of glow on her freckled cheeks.

“That's me,” I reply, “and this is my associate, Brooke Nolan.”

“Associate?” Brooke chides under her breath.

“Would you like to sit down?” I ask Jacinta, indicating the in-store café nearby.

Her shoulders droop while her hand moves to caress her belly. “Oh, that would be great,” she replies with a sigh of relief.

Jacinta waddles precariously to a table while Brooke and I bring up the rear—each of us with our hands held out a bit, ready to catch her in case she suddenly loses her epic battle with gravity.

Drinks and Danish are procured, and we settle into a quiet little nook.

I begin. “Thank you so much for meeting with me. I promise that you'll be kept anonymous. I'm sure it must make you a little nervous to break your confidentiality agreement—”

“Confidentiality agreement?” Jacinta interrupts.

Brooke and I look at each other with concern. Oh, no—I've bought a Danish for the wrong pregnant Jacinta.

“Um,” I stutter, “you
were
Ethan Wyatt's personal assistant? Yes?”

“I was,” she replies brightly.

Wait a second. “He didn't make you sign a confidentiality agreement?”

“No, he doesn't believe in them.”

He doesn't
believe
in them? What's there to believe? Nobody has a personal assistant without a confidentiality agreement. If
I
had a personal assistant I'd make them sign a confidentiality agreement, and I don't even have anything to keep confidential.

“You're kidding?” I ask, the only thing approximating a reply that immediately springs to mind.

“No,” she says with a smile. “Crazy but true.”

Oh, boy.

 

For the first half hour of our conversation, Jacinta details just how fabulous and fun it was to work for Ethan. The closest thing to a complaint she could come up with was, “Sometimes his schedule was manic.” She's done everything but regale us with tales of how he hugs lepers and dries puppy tears in his spare time.

Getting frustrated, I begin a new line of questioning. “I hear Ethan is quite a…” How do I say “slut” without using the word
slut
? “I hear he's, um, a bit of a ladies' man.” To put it mildly.

Jacinta laughs. “He's lived in L.A. most of his life, and he's a good-looking guy. Of course he's dated a lot. He'd hate me saying this, but…” Her voice trails off.

Don't stop now!

“But…” I encourage.

“The bad boy image is totally manufactured by the press. He's not like that. He rarely brought women home, didn't really sleep around. I never thought of him as a womanizer or skirt chaser or anything.”

“Oh,” I say, for lack of anything better.

Jacinta adds, “I suppose he's occasionally fallen into bed with the wrong person, but we've all done that, right?”

I hope that's a rhetorical question, because I'd hate to have to get into that. I mean, do I go chronologically from the beginning? Or start with Todd and work my way backward?

I change the subject. “So, he never hit on you, or…”

“No way,” she replies with a laugh. “He likes 'em feisty. I'm way too low maintenance for him. That's probably one of the reasons he gets into trouble—high-maintenance women have a tendency to create high drama, if you know what I mean.”

I don't know why, but I suddenly feel slightly offended.

Jacinta continues, “I think he likes a challenge.”

“Really?” asks Brooke before eyeing me.

What's that look supposed to mean? I shrug my shoulders at her, but she doesn't answer. Brooke simply smiles and takes a gulp of coffee.

Right. This is not going as I'd planned. Let me try again. “But, Jacinta, you quit your job with him. So then, he must have done
something
to make you decide you couldn't take it anymore.”

“You're right,” she says, “he did.” Jacinta looks down to the giant bulge under her Pea in the Pod T-shirt, strokes it gently.

Brooke gapes at me, her eyes widening to the size of dinner plates. She's obviously thinking the same thing I am:
Holy shit!

“Gordon,” Jacinta says sweetly.

“Aw, it's a boy?” Brooke says tenderly.

“What?” Jacinta asks, her nose and eyes squinching up in what appears to be confusion. She adds, “Oh, my God! You thought…” before breaking into a fit of riotous laughter.

Several moments pass—Jacinta laughing, Brooke and I looking at each other perplexed.

Finally, as her giggles subside, Jacinta puffs, “Oh! Don't make me laugh. My bladder can't take it.” She clasps her hands onto either side of her belly—as if trying to stabilize it. She raises her left hand to show us a small but elegant engagement ring and a thin slip of a gold wedding band. “Gordon—my
husband
. He and Ethan worked together on
Out of Harm
. Gordon played one of the foot soldiers in Ethan's platoon. They became friends, and Ethan set us up on a blind date.”

“Ethan introduced you to your husband. The father of your baby,” Brooke says, while a smile—with a troublesome “I told you so” look about it—creeps across her face.

“After we got married Gordon wanted to move to New York…what he really wants to do is direct. I know, cliché, right? But it's his dream. Anyway, I had to quit my job with Ethan. Oh, and by the way,” Jacinta says with a sentimental little gleam in her eye, “it's a girl.”

T
urns out Ethan wasn't even angry when Jacinta quit—not even a little peeved. He was the best man at her wedding.

What's worse, when I got home from Barnes & Noble I did a little research online.

I Googled the crap out of his name and, unfortunately, found out loads of very interesting, very exciting, very
nice
things about him. For example, I discovered that the whole business about “Cocoa with an
a
” was a poorly crafted, poorly executed scam. Cocoa had tried the same paternity suit tactic on the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and the erstwhile owner of a chain of Nevada Gas-n-Sips. Ethan was her third—and probably last—attempt at acquiring a handsome child support settlement. As it turns out, all three of her children were fathered by the same man, a gentleman who goes by the name of Lux. (He also happens to be the D.J. at the strip joint she works in.) This story I found buried deep in the archives of the
Las Vegas Sentinel Voice
. When originally printed, the article sat right beside a piece on the proposed rerouting of sewer pipes. Funny, the story about Cocoa
accusing
Ethan was front page news in the same paper. I have to say, even I found that the slightest bit unfair.

With further digging—and carefully sifting out tabloid reports of bar brawls and how Ethan “loves the ladies”—I found dozens of articles about how great he is. Of course, I also found dozens of articles labeling him a sellout and discounting every bit of work he's done since about 1999 as blatant and pathetic bids for money with no regard for artistic merit or, more important, plot. It seems Ethan was expected to be the new indie poster boy—doing good work for next to no pay. He was supposed to be Paul Giamatti, only disturbingly attractive. River Phoenix, only alive. He was to be the rich man's Vincent Gallo. This all ended when he became the rich man's Ethan Wyatt, star of such memorable films as
Loose Girls
and
Felony Charge
. As much as I'd like to defend my own comments about how Ethan has turned into a “plastic action figure,” the criticism I'm finding online seems to be overkill. I guess the backlash against him “going Hollywood” probably wouldn't have been so harsh if, in early interviews, he hadn't proclaimed that it was his dream to be a serious actor. He said—repeatedly—that his goal was to “do small but important films” and focus on his “craft.” But, come on. I mean, maybe he just saw his first action picture as his one big opportunity to pay off his credit cards. Maybe at first he thought he could do both—one big action flick, followed by one indie. Maybe he just got used to the comfort, and let's face it, joy, of not being beholden to someone else to help pay the rent. Is that really so hard to understand?

Honestly, I don't know how they do it…people who really go after their dreams. How do people manage to stick it out and put up with the life of a starving artist? How do they survive the uncertainty of not knowing if the dream will come true or just be a complete waste of time and energy? I can't really blame him for taking a shot at something more stable.

He's a man with a razor-sharp wit that's both self-effacing and charming (and not just in that sort of evil way that I've experienced). And, okay…though I wouldn't ever admit to this in public, even if forced to take an oath, I can almost see how someone—not me, mind you but
someone
—might fall for him. In that sort of quixotic way that Brooke has fallen for Duncan Stoke, I mean. If he weren't a phone-thieving stalker, Ethan Wyatt would almost be a bit of a catch—and it's driving me crazy. There has to be
something
wrong with him.

Could he really be this amazing, semisensitive, outrageously good-looking do-gooder? Really?

Would a guy like that stoop to petty vengeance and harassment? I don't think so. There has to be more to him than that. I just have to figure out what.

I turn up the Jason Mraz on the stereo and sing the words into my toothbrush. To stimulate my brainstorming, I polished off an entire box of Chocolate Fudge Frosted Pop-Tarts. To prevent stimulating myself straight to Jenny Craig, I must now stand before my full-length mirror and lunge to the beat.

I lunge at the sinister Brown Box in the corner and raise my voice, hoping to frighten the thing out of existence using only my horrible Jason Mraz impersonation. No dice.

Damn, I have the windows open, no less than three fans going, and am wearing only panties and a tank top; still, my bedroom feels hot enough to slowly roast a chicken. I position myself in front of the box fan on my windowsill, spreading my arms wide, doing mini arm curls. The mintiness of the toothpaste and the sharp blast of air combine to mimic passably the feeling of a chilly breeze. Lovely.

A shrill clang somewhere outside my window interrupts my brushing and curling. It almost sounds like rusty metal being bent or—oh no. The fire escape.

Jason Mraz sings, “Say it isn't so / How she easily come, how she easy go…”

Oh, God, it's getting closer. And, by
it
I mean some evil nightcrawler that will no doubt make me prime pickings for a “ripped from the headlines” episode of
CSI: NY
. I can see it now, the rubber-gloved hands pawing my dainty underthings, big burly men examining my medicine cabinet for overused prescription drugs, that chick from
Providence
flirtatiously swinging her curly hair over my headless corpse.

Man, I wish I had that baseball bat now. Unfortunately, since I ambushed Ethan Wyatt, Brooke has refiled it under a completely different category. It could be in her frighteningly large box of hair accessories, for all I know.

What do I do? I mean, besides panic?

Okay, what am I freaking out about? It's probably some drunk guy who forgot his keys (hopefully not the sicko who lost the four-foot rubber penis in the alley). Or, a really ambitious window cleaner (with a knife fetish and a collection of spy cameras). Or, I am totally hallucinating…because I think I see Ethan Wyatt on my fire escape.

“Hey,” he says, his voice sounding quivery and comical as it comes through the fan on my windowsill.

I approach the window in silence, clenching the toothbrush in my mouth, and blinking my eyes repeatedly in the hopes that this bizarre 3-D mirage will dematerialize without several thousands of dollars of intensive therapy.

“You didn't play fair before,” he adds smugly.

I slowly remove the fan from the window. I inhale deeply and poke my index finger in the direction of the hallucination.

My nail jabs into a soft cotton T-shirt and then beyond, pressing into actual, tangible human flesh.

The hallucination speaks. “Ouch.”

Oh, he's really here.

He's really here!

Crap—and I am in my underwear.

I quickly back away so that he can't see the cottage cheesyness of my thighs. “Ever hear of a telephone?” I mumble, spitting bits of toothpaste all over the floor. “I'm in my underwear here,” I add.

“Yeah, you are,” he says dumbly, staring at me with a strangely blank expression on his face.

“Well, turn your head!” I demand while backing myself to the nearest pair of clean pajama shorts. Oh, God, where would that be? Drawer? Closet?

I switch off the stereo and look behind it for any signs of wayward clothing. Then I freeze as something disturbing occurs to me. “Do you have a camera?” “Have” sounded more like “hab” through the toothpaste, but whatever.

“Naturally,” he says, suddenly sounding like Cary Grant. Coincidentally enough, he also has Grant's signature mischievous grin.

“Don't you dare!” I command, while searching for something to put on. I have literally seventeen pairs of shorts—where are they?

Behind me, I hear the click of a shutter.

“Ahhhhh!” I scream. “Stop! This is illegal! You're on—” Oh, I was going to say private property but that sounds vaguely familiar.

“What?” Ethan asks, his eyebrows rising dramatically. He puts his hand to his ear. “What was that? I'm on
what
?”

“Ugh!” I groan while going ass first in three directions before stopping altogether. I have no idea where clean shorts are—pathetic.

I grab a small but heavy ceramic cat figurine that sits on my bookshelf—another gift from Paige (Needed. Gift for: female. Age: thirteen. Likes: kittens and Scott Baio). I raise the cat over my head. “Get out of here!”

“Hold on!” Ethan says, letting the camera swing down on the strap around his neck. “Okay, relax.” He puts his hands up like bullets might shoot out of the cat's beady little glass eyes. “I shot at the ground just now. I swear.”

“That better be true, Wyatt,” I say, sending bits of bubbly toothpaste dribbling down my chin.

I lower the cat slowly to the bed. He lowers his hands slowly to the windowsill.

At my feet, I spot a semiclean pair of shorts crumpled in a pile. I slip them on and race to the bathroom. While rinsing my mouth out, I double-check my wilt factor. Pretty repulsive.

I whip my hair into a quick ponytail, dab the perspiration and Pop-Tart dust from my face…. Oh my God, I'm trying to make myself look presentable for a man who just climbed up my fire escape to torment me. I drop the hairbrush and calmly saunter back into the bedroom.

“Okay, now what the hell are you doing here?” I try to display the proper level of gruff obstinacy, but sitting in my window with that stupid camera around his neck, Ethan Wyatt suddenly looks like a schoolboy on a field trip. I try to keep a smile from creeping onto my face.

“You didn't play fair today,” he says gravely.

A tight knot forms in my throat. Oh, God, he knows about Jacinta. He knows about Jacinta, and my plan B, and now I'm sure he thinks I'm a horrible person.

Ethan continues, “I
liked
that shirt.”

Oh! I exhale, relieved. Trying to act casual, I ask, “Which one was it?”

“You know, with the little plastic Army guys going across the front.”

“Oh, right.” It does look good on him.

“Yeah, well, it's now a wife-beater.”

I can't help it, a smile makes its way to the surface. “You are
so
exaggerating.”

“Fine. But, seriously, though, how do you get hot pink lipstick out of cotton?”

Before I can check the impulse, I'm laughing.

“It's not funny,” he gripes.

“Uh, yeah, it is,” I reply.

I am laughing with my stalker.

Right. Remember, Sadie, you hate him.

Okay. I clear my throat and wipe the grin from my face. “Couldn't this have waited till—oh, I don't know—dawn? Or, um…
never?
”

He replies nervously, “I saw your light on.”

What the hell was he doing looking at my lights? And climbing up six flights of rickety fire escape? I guess it shouldn't surprise me. Actors live by a whole different set of rules than the rest of the universe. “Wait, how did you know it was
my
light?” I ask.

My question catches him off-guard. He tips his head and raises an eyebrow with boyish charm—the charm of a
guilty
boy. He stutters, “Binoculars and…” He points to the little arch-shaped nook over my bed. “The Galella print over your bed. I took a chance.”

“What were you going to do if it wasn't me?” I ask—out of unquenchable curiosity.

“Sign an autograph?” he says goofily, while shrugging his shoulders.

“Interesting…”

The room falls under an uncomfortable hush.

Suspecting that he could sit here being uncomfortable for all eternity, I say, “I, uh, don't do laundry. So, is there something else I can do for you?”

“Well, now that you mention it—I had a question,” he says, regaining that Cary Grant cockiness. “Were you just brushing your teeth with a Yoda toothbrush?”

“Oh, no,” I retort immediately.

“Oh, no—what?”

“I'm not going to let you sucker me into saying something that you can blab about in the papers. You can't use those tricks on me—”

“What tricks?” he asks, a smile spreading across his face.

“Those tricks!” I point at him.

He looks over his shoulder. “What are you talking about?”

“That little…sexy, charming, debonair thing you've got going on, with all your smiling and twinkling and…whatnot.”

“Whatnot?”

“Exactly!”

Ethan laughs, takes off his Red Sox hat, and scratches his head. “Just answer the question. What am I going to say, Duncan Stoke's secret girlfriend is a Yoda fan?”

You'd be surprised how mundane a thing has to be to make it into the papers. I tip my nose down and stare at him, glaring at him like my dad used to glare at me when I was a teenager.