Based on a True Story (15 page)

“Oh, don’t worry,” Augusta said. “When I’m finished, you shall have your story.”

twenty-eight

“Here is what I don’t understand about your country,” said Augusta, staring over the top of the plastic menu. “You will quite happily drink liquid butter, and yet even a drop of alcohol is considered poison.” She flapped the menu at Frances. “Not even a beer on this thing.”

They had spent a fitful night at the motel, the sound of traffic and early-morning assignations disturbing their sleep. At one point, Frances had awoken to find the room shaking and bolted from bed, ready to scream “Earthquake!” It was only as the rumbling rose to a rhythmic crescendo that she realized the earthquake had its origins in the bedsprings next door.

At noon, they’d stumbled across the street. Frances was too tired to explain that this pancake house was the cheapest place to fill their stomachs. Listlessly, she pushed her menu away and stared through the window.

Out on the sidewalk, a man sat in a wheelchair, a dirty Starbucks cup in his lap. He’d fixed an American flag to his armrest, and it hung unmoving in the hot morning air. The dog curled at his feet wore an American flag bandana. Frances had watched for fifteen minutes and only one person had dropped change in his cup.

How had he arrived there? How would he get home? It was not a city built for the disabled. She thought of her father, 300 miles up the coast, and the clifftop paths he could no longer enjoy. She drew in a ragged breath.

“No,” said Augusta. “No tears before lunch. I thought we agreed on this one rule.”

“I’m not crying,” Frances muttered. “It’s the stupid sun — oh, shit.”

“I did see shit on the menu,” Augusta said. “But I generally avoid it at breakfast.”

Frances stared into the dimness of the restaurant. “I don’t believe it. I know that waiter.”

Augusta craned her head. “Madam with the beard?”

Frances slumped as deep into the banquette as she could, pulled her sunglasses over her eyes. “We should get out of here.”

“And miss my delightful breakfast of buttery butter fritters with butter sauce? I think not.”

“Oh, God,” Frances whispered. “He’s coming over.”

The waiter who approached their table carrying a water jug had dark hair swept low over blue eyes and a trim goatee. A necklace of Chinese characters was tattooed across his throat. He seemed ridiculously enthusiastic, considering the hour and the establishment.

“How are you ladies this morning?” he asked. “I’ll start you off with some water.” He filled Augusta’s glass, and then as he turned to Frances he stopped, mouth comically agape.

“Frances?” he said. “Dude, is that you?”

“Hey Jason,” she said, and slid her sunglasses off.

He put a hand on one skinny hip, and shook his head. “This is so random. What are you doing in L.A.? Last I heard, you had a job in London.”

Under the table, she clenched her hands together. “Yes, that’s right. At a newspaper called the
Advance
.”

“I know!” Jason crowed, and the diners at the next table turned to look. “You totally escaped this chicken coop. You’re the only one that did. So, you here working on a story?”

Augusta watched as Frances struggled to find something to say. “She’s actually got a very important assignment. With me. We are writing a book together.” She ignored the look of relief on Frances’s face and held out her hand. “Augusta Price.”

The boy wiped his hand on his apron and took hers. “Jason Benedetti.”

Frances had found her voice. “Jason and I went to journalism school together.” She didn’t add: And I was a little bit in love with him, because he never went to class and he played Fugazi in his room at full blast, and I used to dream about sliding between his rancid sheets.

“Frances was our star,” the young man said to Augusta, and she could see by his pupils that he’d been hitting the bong already that morning. She wondered, briefly, if she could ask to join him. He slapped the table with his pad. “We always knew she was going places.”

“Not really,” Frances said.

“Absolutely, bro! You had wings.”

“That was then.” It came out as a bark, and Jason stared at her, head cocked. She forced a note of brightness into her voice. “So, you stayed in L.A.”

“Yeah,” he said, “it’s not London, but it’s holding me together while I get my project on track.” He leaned over the table, lowering his voice. “My real thing is this Tumblr I’ve got going. I’ve been posting all these hilarious sex ads I find on bulletin boards. You would not believe the shit people are capable of. It’s sad, too. It’s like our world in a microchip.”

“Microcosm,” said Frances, before she could stop herself.

“Yeah, well.” He straightened up. “I’ve got a meeting with Fox next week. I’m pretty sure they’re going to buy it.”

“They’re going to buy your Tumblr of sex ads?”

Augusta said, “You may as well be speaking Urdu,” but they both ignored her.

“It’s where the money is, dude.” He made a karate chop motion in the air. “Now what can I get you ladies?”

Once they had ordered, Frances slumped in her seat. “That was brutal.”

“Nonsense. That boy seemed to think highly of you.”

“Only because he doesn’t know what’s become of me.”

“What’s
become
of you? Poor, soiled Victorian maiden.” Augusta moistly unpeeled herself from the vinyl banquette. “Let’s finish our butter and find some real sustenance, shall we?”

Beside them, a fake boulder emitted the voice of Lionel Richie. Augusta peered at it, swaying, and put her hand on a fibreglass palm tree for support.

“I have never seen anything so beautiful,” she said.

It had seemed the most natural thing for Frances to bring them to the least natural place she could think of, a shopping mall in the centre of the city disguised to look like a nostalgic dream of main street. They stood quite drunk on an acrylic patch of lawn and watched a trolley car trundle shoppers past an ice-cream parlour that sold smartphones.

“Man’s triumph over that bitch, Nature,” Augusta said. “I adore it.” Her eyes shone as she took in everything: the security cameras disguised as trees, the burrito joint pretending to be a Mexican ranch house.

“There,” said Augusta, pointing at the restaurant. “The X on our map.” She staggered toward it, and Frances, with a silent prayer, followed. This would be their third stop since breakfast, each one foggier than the last. Frances had pulled her credit card at every stop. She tried not to picture it, hot with overuse.

A group of women sat with their children, having coffee next to a chlorinated brook. It seemed to Augusta that a magical transformation had happened to motherhood in the past two decades. These women did not appear beaten down or rubbed raw. They all had glistening, honey-coloured hair and legs as long as ladders.

“Hecubah,” called one of the mothers to a tiny girl who ran past in a long lace dress. “Hex, get back here!”

“That child looks just like Stevie Nicks,” said Augusta. “Before the cocaine, of course.”

A half-hour later they were still sitting on the Mexican restaurant’s patio, a metal pail heaped with ice cubes and miniature bottles of beer between them. Frances had had one; Augusta, more.

“What is wrong with this country?” Augusta said. “Enormous plates of food and miniature drinks. The universe turned upside-down. Like putting Australia at the top of the world.”

“Maybe,” said Frances, “we could put that in the new book. ‘Upside-down world.’”

“The book?” Augusta pulled a bit of lime pulp from her teeth. Another bit was stuck to her right breast, a tiny, lewd green tongue.

“The guide to overcoming crisis. Which we’re supposed to be working on.”

“Oh dear God, that book. Books,” said Augusta, pulling a face. “Why on earth do people write them? I’ll tell you why.” She leaned across the table, and Frances caught a bottle just as it went tipping sideways. “To win. So your side of the story can win. Because they last forever, those fuckers. Longer than movies. Longer than music. Much, much longer than love.”

Frances opened a second beer. “There are other reasons to write.”

“No, darling, it’s about your truth clobbering someone else’s.” Augusta caught the elbow of a passing waitress. “Two margaritas, my love. I think this time we shall have —” she squinted at the menu — “the tub o’ fun size.”

A ray of setting sun caught Augusta’s hair, setting it alight, glistening off the lime pulp stuck to her breast. A little boy at the next table had his eyes fixed to her chest.

Augusta met the child’s gaze. “It’s not nice to stare at a lady’s treasures,” she said. “Unless you’re invited to do so.”

The boy’s mother gasped and drew her son close.

A blanket of beer cheer wrapped Frances in its warmth, and made her reckless. “What I don’t understand,” she said slowly, “is what you’re so worried about. What could Kenneth possibly write about you that you haven’t told the world already?”

“What lies, you mean,” said Augusta. She reached for the jacket that lay draped over the back of her chair. The sun had set behind a clock tower whose hands were permanently fixed at noon. “It’s getting chilly, isn’t it? I believe we’re sufficiently fortified for the next part of our mission.”

She scraped her chair back and stood, unsteadily, while the little boy at the next table covered his mouth, laughing. Augusta formed a gun with the forefingers of her right hand and aimed it at his forehead.

“Unless,” Frances said slowly, “unless he’s going to write about Charles. And your dysfunctional little family.”

But Augusta had already left, stitching a crooked line toward the exit.

twenty-nine

Magic hour, and a pale washed-purple sky made every living thing glow with health. Even Augusta, who otherwise might have looked quite green. Frances kept her companion upright with one hand as they left the mall and swayed together down Third Street.

They barely survived the walk three blocks west: Augusta’s spindly heel caught in a grate in the middle of the road as they crossed against the lights. A pest-control truck barrelled down on them, a huge cockroach rising from its front grille like a dragon on the prow of a Viking ship.

“Shit!” screamed Augusta, wrenching her foot free just in time to fling herself out of its path.

The truck roared past, the driver giving them an idle, curious glance. Augusta shook her fist at him and hobbled to the safety of the sidewalk. She’d left the heel of her shoe behind, still trapped in the grate.

From the safe vantage of the sidewalk, they found their bearings. They stood outside a bright-pink shop catering to female roller-derby racers. In its window hung a row of knee socks embroidered with words that must have significance for a younger generation: nerd, bacon, gay. Above them, floodlit against the twilight sky, a billboard warned that the world would end on May 21st:
THE BIBLE GUARANTEES IT.

With a stifled burp Augusta pointed to a shopfront with a sandwich board outside, designed to look as if it had been typed on an ancient Underwood.
HELL YES BOOKS.

“Time to beard the cat,” whispered Augusta, staggering sideways on her uneven shoes.

“The lion,” Frances whispered back.

“Shhh,” said Augusta as they crept toward the shop. Her finger somehow missed her mouth. “They’ll see us.”

“Fuck they will,” said Frances, emboldened.

Through the window of Hell Yes Books, they watched a handful of customers leafing though manga comics, guides to film-set locations, short-story collections by maverick directors.

Augusta’s nose pressed flat against the window as she peered inside: no sign of Charlie. A young woman in cat’s-eye glasses sat reading at the till, but there appeared to be no other employee in sight.

“Look,” hissed Frances. The sandwich board advertised an event that evening: Sister Mary Martin would read from her bestselling memoir,
Cells and Frames: My Escape into Film
, with a book signing to follow.

“Maybe that’s where he is,” Augusta slurred. “Supravising the reading.”

“Supervising.”

“So I said.”

Augusta lurched toward the door on her one broken heel, a sheriff from an old Western. Gathering herself, she entered the shop with a regal smile for the girl behind the till. The effect was ruined as she pitched sideways, her shriek mingled with the scream of an animal in pain.

“Watch for the cat,” called the clerk, as Frances leapt forward to catch Augusta.

A Persian the size and shape of a footstool scurried under a nearby table. They stood, breathing hard, Frances’s arms wrapped around Augusta’s midriff. The other customers had turned to stare.

“Reading?” inquired Augusta, pushing the hair from her face with great dignity.

“In the back,” said the girl at the counter. “But it’s already started.”

Head high, Augusta hobbled between bookshelves, pausing only to move Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook to the very bottom of a stack. At the back of the shop, a heavy curtain had been drawn. Pale light gleamed from around its edges. A low voice was speaking within, the words indistinct. Augusta stopped, one hand at her throat.

“He mustn’t know we’re here,” she whispered.

Frances felt the effect of the afternoon’s drinks and those that had come before. She sailed, beer-tossed, on an unfamiliar sea. The room and her stomach heaved in concert. She needed a bathroom, and a bed, possibly with a bucket beside it.

Augusta limped over to the curtain and tugged it aside a fraction. Frances crouched underneath her and shoved her head in the gap just below. A dozen rows of chairs were wedged into the small, dimly lit room, almost every seat taken. Immediately in front of them, between the curtain and the chairs, a table was piled vertiginously high with a mountain of books, each featuring an elderly woman on the front cover, her round face smiling under a cap of bushy grey hair. The same woman stood at the front of the room, dressed in shades of beige, from her sturdy Rockports to the cardigan draped over her shoulders.

Next to her, under a single spotlight, stood a slight young man in a T-shirt that showed Peter Lorre, haunted, staring into a mirror. The young man’s toffee-coloured hair stood up in stiff peaks from a pale face and his voice, as he spoke into the microphone, came from a place Frances couldn’t name. New England, maybe. Or Canada?

“And I want to thank Sister Mary Martin for kindly overlooking the name of our book shop and coming to join us tonight,” he said, to a chuckle from the crowd.

Above her, Augusta said, “He’s lost his accent. I don’t believe it.”

A man two seats away turned to glare at the noise, and, seeing them hiding in the curtains, put his finger to his lips.

“I think this may be a first for us,” the young man said. “We’ve had some unholy guests, but I think this is the first time we’ve ever had anyone who’s actually taken holy orders.”

“A fucking nun,” said Augusta, incredulous. She put out a hand to the table of books to steady herself, and the tall stack teetered. “He never invited me to read, but he asks a goddamned nun.”

The man sitting nearby frowned at her and made an ostentatious show of leaning forward to listen.

Frances, crouching under Augusta, reached out to steady the stack of books with one hand. It felt as if her head would split in two. Surely Charlie would see them at any moment, or he’d hear his mother’s slurring from her hiding place?

“Augusta, please,” she whispered, not sure what she was pleading for.

Augusta swayed above her and reached down to clamp a steadying hand on Frances’s head.

The young man, caught in the spotlight, was too intent on his purpose to notice the distraction.

“It’s not every day you find that someone who lives a life of seclusion and contemplation has written a best-selling book, but that’s exactly what happened to Sister Mary Martin when she sat down to remember the ways that her favourite movies informed her devotion. It’s a book she wrote only for herself, never intending that anyone else would see it. Fortunately for all of us, a friend at a university read it and convinced her to share these remarkable observations with the world. And, as we all know now, that book has touched a resonant chord.” He turned to the elderly woman, who gave him a shy smile. “I think it’s fair to say this is not something you expected.”

She shook her head, fingering the small cross that hung around her neck.

A sound like ripping paper: Frances looked up, horrified, to see Augusta catching the tail end of a burp with her hand. She swayed against the curtain. The man in the audience was furious now.

“Shhhh!” he hissed, and jabbed his finger at the empty seats beside him.

“Augusta,” Frances whispered, low and urgent. “Charles is going to see us if you don’t keep quiet. We should sit down. Come.”

Reaching up, she caught Augusta’s hand and tugged. As she tried to rise from a crouch, her shoulder caught the edge of the table. It began to shudder, its feet rattling unsteadily against the wooden floor.
No
, Frances thought,
no no no.
She reached with one hand to steady the books, but as she did she pulled Augusta, already unbalanced, off her one good pin. Augusta gave a little howl as she tumbled, face-first, into the teetering stack of books and surfed a wave of bestselling wisdom all the way to the floor.