Picture Perfect (26 page)

***

“It’s late,” Barbie says, wearily. Her eyes are tired, but even so, she’s still beautiful.

I check my watch. It is late, eleven-fifteen, but my business is urgent and I can’t wait another minute to get to the bottom of this mystery. I pull the yearbook out of my bag and set it on the bar. Barbie looks at it, stymied.

“How the hell did you get a hold of my yearbook?”

“It isn’t yours,” I say. “It’s my husband’s. De Niro’s.”

Barbie steps back from the bar, as if I’d just shot her in the chest. “Your husband?” she asks, her voice trembling with fear or hatred. I can’t tell which.

“My late husband.”

“Late?” she questions, clearly oblivious to Alan’s miserable fate. “De Niro…he’s gone?” Barbie crumples onto the bar and drops her head in her hands.

I look to Justine, not sure how to respond. Part of me feels like I should comfort Barbie and yet another part wants to shake her until she gives us the full story on their relationship. Justine lifts both her shoulders in wonder. I gaze around the dark bar. It’s nearly empty, but for a couple snuggled up in a corner booth.

“Come. Sit down,” I say to Barbie. “Let’s take a breather.”

I coax her out from behind the bar and lead her to a circular booth. Justine, always the resourceful one, hops behind the counter and prepares three tall glasses of water and meets us at the table. Barbie, still stunned by the news of Alan’s demise, quietly sips her drink as Justine and I sit on either side of her, anxious to get her talking.

“Barbie, I’m sorry if this news comes as a shock, but surely you’ve heard about his death? It’s been on the news around the clock the past two days.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t watch the news.”

“Well,” I hesitate, “Alan was murdered Sunday night.”

“Murdered?” She recoils in shock, covering her mouth with her hand. “I don’t believe it. Who would do that to him?”

“I know. It’s horrible. But Barbie,” I say, trying to steer the conversation to their relationship, “how well did you know Alan? De Niro, I mean.”

She looks at me with tears threatening to spill. “I haven’t seen him since high school graduation.”

“What happened between you two?” Justine presses.

“Between us?” Barbie looks panicked. “Nothing. Nothing happened.”

Clearly, Barbie isn’t ready to reveal the nature of their relationship, but I don’t have time to pussyfoot around this. I need answers, and I need them now.

“I know that you two dated in high school. I’ve seen the pictures in the yearbook. But I need to know, is Jack Alan’s son?”

“Alan?” she asks, looking clueless.

“De Niro,” I say with a sigh. “Do you honestly not remember his real name?”

Barbie’s demeanor suddenly turns cold. “When he left, I swore I would never speak to him again. Never think of him again. The only reason I didn’t toss out my yearbook was because my mother forbade it. She said I would want those memories someday, but she was wrong. He was a cruel bastard, and I’m glad he’s gone.”

“He was awful,” I agree, “but he didn’t deserve to be murdered.”

“No,” she says, a huge sob racking her chest. “I didn’t mean that. No one deserves that.” She covers her face with her hands, her shoulders shaking.

I really want to get round to their relationship and whether or not he fathered Jack, but Barbie appears too distraught for a coherent conversation. Thankfully, Justine calls upon her New York attitude and puts it to Jack’s mom in no uncertain terms.

“Listen, is Alan—De Niro—Jack’s dad or what? Because Lauren and your son have been getting it on hot and heavy, and can you imagine how horrid it would be to find out that she’s been shagging her husband’s kid? We’re talking Jerry Springer territory here. So, get a hold of yourself and tell us who the hell knocked you up in high school?”

Barbie blinks at Justine, shocked at her brazenness. She wipes the tears from her face and sniffs like a kid whose mom just shut down her temper tantrum with the threat of taking away her favorite toy. She folds her hands in her lap and bows her head. She whispers something, but neither Justine nor I can hear it.

“What did you say?” I beg.

“I don’t know,” she replies, louder.

“You don’t know what you just said?” I demand, growing more and more impatient.

“I don’t know who Jack’s father is,” she squeaks.

“You don’t know?” I practically shriek at her. “How can you not know?”

“I cheated, okay?” she cries.

Justine and I stare at her, eyes wide, literally on the edge of our seats.

“I was completely in love with De Niro,” Barbie continues, “but he was ignoring me, acting distant and aloof. I was hurt and wanted some attention. So, I slept with another boy. A boy who’d always been after me, ever since ninth grade. I gave in and we had sex. Stupid, drunken sex in the back of his mom’s car. It was quick, so fast there wasn’t even time for a condom. I felt like a disgusting whore afterward, and all I wanted to do was go hide in some black hole somewhere.” Barbie lets out a long, exasperated sigh, as if she’s been holding that terrible secret deep inside her for decades. 

“Go on,” I urge her, desperate to hear the rest of the story. “What happened next?”

“A few days later, De Niro started acting sweet to me again, fawning all over me, calling me his ‘girl’ and all that. I never found out why he’d turned cool toward me, but I didn’t care because all I wanted was to be with him. When you were De Niro’s girl, you were the envy of every other girl in school. He was handsome, charming, popular. It was like dating a pop star.”

I nod my head, understanding fully the spell she was under. Alan had a magnetism that could not be denied. It’s actually surprising that he didn’t become a megawatt superstar the likes of Robert Downey, Jr. or George Clooney. He definitely had the personality and the good genes to get him there. But acting is a really tough business. Sometimes, there’s no rhyme or reason to why one actor shoots to the top and another sinks to the bottom like a cement cinderblock. At least he was smart enough to jump to the other side of the business when he was still young and could make a career for himself.

“Everything was great,” the blonde beauty goes on, wistfully. “We were inseparable, spending every moment we could together. It was like we had fallen in love all over again. And then a couple weeks later, I found out I was pregnant.” Her chin begins to quiver and her voice climbs two octaves. “And De Niro was amazing. He was thrilled to be a father and even wanted to get married after we graduated.”

“But what happened?” Justine begs, just as anxious to hear the rest of Barbie’s tale as I am. “Why didn’t you get married?”

“Because I never knew, you see. I never knew whose baby I was carrying. But I didn’t care. To me, it was our baby no matter whose sperm it was.”

“So, what? Did you tell Alan—I mean, De Niro—or something? Why didn’t you get married?”

“No, I didn’t tell him. Steven did.”

“Steven?” Justine asks.

“The boy I’d had sex with that one time. Right before our graduation ceremony, he confronted me and said that if I didn’t tell De Niro, he would.”

“But why?” I ask. “Why would he wait so long to say anything? Obviously, it had been months since you two had sex.”

“I don’t know, really. I think he had just broken up with his girlfriend and was hurt and just wanted to hurt someone else. I don’t think he even considered that the baby might have been his. He was just lashing out.”

“Then what happened?” Justine asks.

“I tried to stop him, tried to explain that what we did was a mistake, and that De Niro and I were in love. But he was vicious. Not only did he tell De Niro that we had sex, he lied and told him we’d been having an affair for months. In fact, he claimed that we laughed about how stupid De Niro was not to have suspected it. But it was all lies. All designed to hurt me.”

“And Alan believed him.”

“Not at first. He asked me, and I denied the affair. But he saw through me. He could tell that I wasn’t being completely honest. So, I admitted to having sex with him. I explained how and why it happened, but all he heard was that I’d cheated on him. And he just left. I cried through our entire graduation ceremony, and then I never saw him again.”

“Never?”

Barbie shakes her head. “Never. He moved out of his parents’ home and they wouldn’t give me his new number. They were just as horrible as he was, calling me a whore and refusing to speak to me. And only days earlier, they were preparing to welcome me and my baby into their home. Excited to be grandparents. But once they’d heard I’d betrayed their son, they treated me like human garbage. I was devastated.”

“So you just gave up?” I ask.

“This was before cell phones and the internet. I had no way of finding De Niro. And I couldn’t keep harassing his parents. I didn’t know what to do. So, my mom took me to Mexico where we stayed for the summer in a little cottage by the beach. And that’s where I gave birth to Jack. When he arrived, he was such an innocent angel. I wanted him to stay that way forever. I didn’t want him to know how awful his father was, whoever it was. I decided he had to be all mine. I would never let either of those two terrible men get their hands on him. So, when he was born, I said I didn’t know who his father was. It was the truth, anyway.”

“Wow,” I say, leaning back into the vinyl-covered booth. “And you never told Jack?”

“No. When we returned from Mexico, we moved to a little bungalow in Venice. That’s where Jack grew up. Where I still live. And I never, ever told him how he was conceived. When he was little, my mother told him he came from a magic bean that I had eaten one day. She told him I wanted a little boy so badly that I prayed for a miracle, and he grew from that bean into a baby. He believed it for the longest time.”

“But now he wants the truth. He recognized Alan. He’s looking for answers. He deserves to know who his father really is.”

“I guess you’re right about that. I can’t keep a secret like that forever, can I?”

“Where is he, Barbie?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t heard from him in a couple days.”

“Well, it’s really important that he contact me. So, please tell him to call me if you do hear from him.”

“I will. Of course I will,” she says as Justine and I slide out of the booth.

“Are you going to be okay?” Justine directs her question to Barbie, who’s still sitting at the table, looking shell-shocked.

Barbie lifts her chin. “Yeah, yeah.” She waves us away. “Don’t worry about me. I’m tougher than I look.”

“I bet,” I say. “One tough mama.”

Justine and I drag ourselves back to my car, both of us still processing the origins of my young lover. We drive back to my place, a jazz station filling the silence between us. It’s well after midnight when we pull up to my garage, and it appears that the paparazzi have called it a night. We slip inside the building unnoticed and make our way up to the 23
^rd
floor. We both retreat to our rooms for the night with a short, “Good night.” After such a long, mind-blowing day, neither one of us has the strength for much else.

After cleaning up, I climb into bed and shut off the light. And just as I sink into my pillow, my iPhone buzzes. I peek at the number, and noting that it is unfamiliar, ignore it and close my eyes. However, when it rings again, my curiosity leads me to answer it. My heart nearly pops out of my chest at the sound of the caller’s voice.

“Lauren?”

“Jack?” 

Chapter 21

I wrench open the front door to find Jack holding an olive green duffle bag in one hand and his motorcycle helmet in the other. He drops them both at his feet and instantly throws his arms around me in a tight embrace.

I inhale the scent of him, a mixture of soap and dust and sweat. I slide my arms around his waist, under his leather biker jacket, and bury my head in his chest. Heat radiates from his skin, and I think back to all the moments I spent wrapped in his arms, marveling at the warmth of his touch. Jack is like a ball of fire, burning with passion and excitement. But this tender hug is not about getting into my pants. His heart is as heavy as mine.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers into my ear, and my nose begins to tingle as tears dot my lashes. “I’m so, so sorry,” he says again.

The flood gates open, and all the stress and anxiety of the last week wash over me. I can hardly believe that in the span of eight days I’ve been served divorce papers, started an adulterous affair, been victim of a smear campaign, lost my job (twice), been accused of murder, and discovered that my lover may possibly be my dead husband’s son. Not even Timeless Television could create a better drama. I really think I’m going to need some intense therapy to get over this.

I close my eyes, allowing soft tears to seep onto Jack’s chest. He lowers his head on top of mine and strokes my hair. The sound of his heart beating, the rise and fall of his breath, the soft cotton of his vintage T-shirt against my cheek, the leather belt under my fingertips…he’s finally here. Really here. He’s only been gone for two days, but it feels like an eternity.  

I pull away from him and quietly wipe away the moisture at my eyes. “Come in,” I say, motioning for him to follow me into the living room. I lead Jack over to the sofa where I curl up next to him, tucking my head under his arm. We sit quietly for a long time, just holding each other like two long lost lovers reunited after decades apart and huge battles fought.

“I’m so sorry,” Jack says after some time has passed. “About Alan.”

I press away from his chest to look at him. I want to ask him a hundred questions, but all I can bring myself to say is, “Thank you.”

“I should have been here.” Jack holds my head in his hands and stares deeply into my eyes. My stomach does a little flip as his gaze penetrates my thoughts. “Tell me what happened,” he says, gently taking my hands up in his.

“I don’t know,” I say with a sigh. “Alan is—dead.” My voice croaks on the word. “The police think I did it. Jennifer stole my job. And you were gone. I didn’t know what to think. My life was coming apart.”