The Girl On The Half Shell (11 page)

“It’s a long flight. I need to sleep,” Alan says to Rene over his shoulder. “If you must speak to me call me Manny. You call me Alan I’ll have you tossed from the plane even if we’re at twenty thousand feet.”

I’ve never seen Rene’s eyes so large. Rene cowed by a guy. I never expected to see that.

It is really very bad of me to enjoy her discomfort. I feel myself smiling. “What will you do to me if I call you Alan?”

He grins. “You get tossed from the plane if you call me Manny.”

Oh my. There was definitely something in his voice when he said that and I feel my crooked smile growing larger. I bite my lip. “Your own nicely organized system?”

“Yes, my own nicely organized system,” he responds, and there is a pleasant, secretive note to that comment.

He leans over for my book bag and hands it to me. He picks up my cello and gestures to Steve. We walk through the airport amid heavy stares, as Steve guides us to the private tarmac exit.

The pilot is outside the plane finishing pre-flight check and the co-pilot is by the stairs. He crosses the tarmac to Alan. “Welcome back, Manny. We’re ready to roll whenever you’re ready to roll. Tower gave us clearance an hour ago.”

It must be his plane. His crew. They are friendly and familiar with each other. Steve is loading our suitcases in the luggage bay. The co-pilot takes my cello and trots up the stairs. The pilot waits for us to board. Alan gestures for me to go ahead of him, but Rene rebounds back into her old self, and runs up the steps before me, and then turns back to the airport terminal, doing a little swish with her hips. “We are independently destitute princesses again. I could get used to this, Manny. Even if you aren’t really my type.”

God, why does she have to be this way? Why does she have to embarrass me?
She disappears into the cabin in a cloud of laughter.

Alan arches a brow. “Independently destitute princess?”

I shrug. “Rich girls without money.”

“Oh.” He rakes a hand through his hair. I stare as his hair floats down around his face and shoulders. He makes a graceful gesture of his arm. “We should board. After you.”

He has such pretty manners. You see none of that in his public persona. Obnoxious. Arrogant. Self-absorbed. Yes, he is right about how the press sees him. But he is sensitive, sophisticated, educated, and elegant. He isn’t at all the type of guy I thought he would be.

At the top of the short flight of steps I surreptitiously gaze back at him. I go crimson.

“Are you all right?” Alan is staring at me. I stopped on the steps for no reason. “You really don’t like to fly, do you?”

I smile and shake my head and continue on. I stare carefully down at the steps. The light touch of his hand against my back is like an electric shock wave all through my flesh. Every move of his body is graceful and nerve-poppingly quiet, but each touch zapping and potent.
He’s like the ocean. He can lure you in quietly and then drown you.

Desperately struggling for my equilibrium, I focus on the interior of his jet. The interior of the jet is luxurious, with comfy cream-colored leather seats and polished wood tables, with a conservatively dressed flight attendant standing in wait just for him. But it is also a traveling trashcan. There is stuff absolutely everywhere: instruments, stacks of mail on the long bench seat, clothing. I start to laugh. If he were some guy living in a car,
this
is exactly what it would look like. What a strange thing to find. What a strange contradiction.

Rene is sitting before the table, her butt in one seat, and her legs over the armrest in the one beside her. She already has a drink and looks comfy in our temporary digs.
How does she do it?
She looks so comfortable, so at ease with her body and being here with him. I envy her, her soaring confidence and her beautiful female naturalness.

I look around in indecision. There is only one cream-leather seat completely tidy and empty—the one across the table from Rene. The one I’m sure intended for Alan. I don’t know where to sit. The seat beside him is stacked high with mail.

“Your plane should be condemned as a hazardous waste site,” Rene announces. “Don’t you have people who clean up after you?”

“I don’t like people touching my things,” he says, his voice cold and polite simultaneously. “Try to remember that.”

Rene lifts her drink. “It looks like you live here. Are you homeless?”

Eyeing her coolly, Alan shrugs. “If it doesn’t meet your standard, please feel free to go back to the United counter and wait for your proletarian travel.”

Boy, he really doesn’t like Rene and I’m uncharacteristically thrilled by that. I stare after Alan as he pokes his head into the cockpit to say something to the pilots.

The flight attendant gestures me forward. “Please be seated, Miss. We’ll shortly be taxiing for take-off.”

I step farther into the plane. The steps are pulled up and closed behind me. I’m actually winging my way to New York with Alan Manzone and there is no backing out of it now.

I stare down at the seats just as Alan comes up behind me. His hands touch on my hips. I feel instantly surrounded by him.

“What do you want me to do with all this?” I ask.

“Chuck it on the floor, Chrissie. My manager probably had them leave it here in the hopes I’d look at it. Brian hoped wrong.”

Piece by piece I start to move it onto the table into a careful stack.

Amused laughter floats from behind me. “It’s not a holy relic, Chrissie. It’s the mail. Just dump it.”

His hand moves from my hip to my shoulder. His other arm snakes around me. With the swipe of a hand the contents of the seat is scattered onto the floor and I spring back into him and he laughs.

“Sorry, but if we did it your way we’d be on the tarmac another hour.”

I drop down onto his seat and scoot over to mine. I concentrate on fastening my seatbelt as the attendant goes through the plane’s safety procedure in a calm, clear voice. Alan is relaxed in his seat beside me, long limbs stretched out in front of him, eyes closed. Jeez, he looks good this morning, all tousled hair, simple olive t-shirt, soft faded jeans. Even wearing those crummy worn leather Water Buffalo sandals that I think he took from Jack by mistake, though how could anyone mistake those hideous things as their own shoes is a mystery. But he does look good, even in hideous sandals.

Rene is staring at him over her drink. She looks like the Cheshire cat. Maybe he does intend to sleep through the flight.

The plane surges forward and starts taxiing toward the runaway. I pull down the window shade.

“Why are you afraid of flying?” he whispers.

So he’s not asleep.

“Chrissie is afraid of everything. Would you like the list?” Rene answers before I can find my words.

My cheeks burn.
Jeez, Rene how could you say that!
She is just being Rene, but I’m not liking it at all today.

“I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t have a little fear,” he murmurs.

Rene flushes. “Then Chrissie is the girl for you.”

She looks out the window, annoyed. I know that look. Icy cold. She’s pissed. Rene is pursuing and he’s rejecting.

Both of them are silent now. I stare at the stack of mail on the floor. At my feet lies a movie script with a typewritten offer on the letterhead of a well-known studio. I pick it up. This is what he considers just the mail?

“Studios mail you scripts with offers?” I ask. “You don’t have to audition? They just offer you roles.”

He nods.

“Why?”

“I’m an incredible actor.”

“Modest too,” Rene scoffs. “What makes you so good that they want you without testing you first?”

His heavy lids lift above his black eyes. “Early childhood training. I was raised in a house of liars.”

I hold up the script. “Do you mind if I read this? It looks interesting.”

“Be my guest.”

Rene motions to the flight attendant for another drink. What is she drinking? Is that why she’s being more outrageous than usual? Alan closes his eyes and I open the script.

Once we’ve leveled off in the air, Rene pops from her seat to go to the bathroom. She is halfway through the cabin when Alan looks at me. His thumb brushes my lower lip and he is staring into my eyes.

“I don’t like your friend,” he whispers.

Now I’m annoyed. Rene isn’t even here and she’s dominating the conversation.

I shrug. “She’s OK.”

“No, Chrissie, she’s wired. She’s coked up. How long has she had a problem?”

Coked up? I feel instantly protective of Rene. “You’re wrong. She’s just high-strung. I’ve known her forever. I would know.”

He frowns. “You shouldn’t trust her, Chrissie.”

“People always get the wrong idea about Rene. It’s just how she comes off.”

“If you say so.” He hasn’t taken his fingers from my face and he eases into me until we are very close. “I don’t like her. She shouldn’t be your friend.”

Jeez, who would have thought that Alan Manzone and Father Morris would share the same opinion of Rene? But they are both wrong. Rene is a true friend.

He studies me for a long time and after what feels like an eternity, he inches back from me. Then I see Rene closing in out of the corner of my eye.

He doesn’t look at her. “I just got out of Rehab. That story in print is true. I would appreciate it if you don’t forget your vial on my plane, and if you go to the bathroom one more time to powder your nose, I’ll have them touchdown at the first airport we reach and have you booted from the plane. What the fuck were you thinking, carrying that through airport security? Don’t you give a shit about your friend?”

Rene’s face is candy red and it betrays the truth. With that, Alan closes his eyes and goes to sleep.

* * *

“Chrissie. We’re in New York.”

Someone is trying to wake me. I don’t want to wake. I’m in a pleasant sleep, curled into something warm. There is sound all around me. I hear voices. His voice. Yes, I’m with Alan. I’d recognize his voice anywhere.

“How bad is it?”

“Bad,” says the co-pilot. “I don’t know how they knew we were landing in New York today.”

“Shut all the window shades. Make sure the car is ready before you lower the steps.”

Alan. He is angry. Why is he angry? The snap of the window shade beside my head jerks me out of grogginess. Alan unbuckles my seatbelt and climbs from the seat. I realize that the pleasant pillow beneath my cheek was his shoulder and it’s now gone. My eyelids slowly lift and I see Rene alertly watching the fast action around us.

I find Alan standing above me, tense, and his eyes a strange mixture of concern and apology.

He lowers until he’s at eye level with me. “Chrissie, we have a problem. About half the New York Press corps is on the tarmac. I need to get you from the plane to the car without anyone noticing you.”

I straighten up in my seat. “Why? What does it matter if they see me?”

He stills and his eyes widen. “The worst possible thing I could do to you is let the tabloids see you with me. I should never have let you travel to New York with me.”

Oh my
…I know why he’s worried. For the last year he’s existed in nonstop tabloid ink. Just being near him can get you tarred in tabloid ink.
Oh jeez, what will Jack think of that?

Alan looks determined and grim. It’s very sweet that he’s so worried about this, but it’s not exactly something new to me and I do know how to handle this.

I gaze up at him and smile. “Alan, I know how to be invisible. Trust me. Just let me get off the plane alone and no one will even notice me. This is something I am expert at.”

Alan shifts from the flight crew to face me. “If the tabloids realize who you are, Chrissie, it will turn into a shitstorm. I don’t ever want you hurt because of me.”

I stare at him, stunned. He spoke in an intense way, as though not hurting me really did matter to him, but then how could it matter? We hardly know each other. It makes no sense. As I climb from my seat, I realize there is a lot about Alan that doesn’t make sense.

I shrug. “It won’t be my first shitstorm, Alan. So don’t worry about it. It’s going to be all right.”

His mouth presses into a hard line, but then, almost reluctantly, he starts to laugh. “I’m sorry, but I’ve never heard anyone say shit quite the way you do, without the ‘t’ at the end and with lots of ‘shhhh.’”

My temper flares. “I’m a Disney character. Remember?” I mutter, in an overly dramatic way to hide the sting I feel from his criticism.

I make an exaggerated face and he rolls his eyes. “You are never going to forget that, are you?” he says in an aggravated way, before he turns to talk with the crew again.

“Here is what you are going to do, Chrissie,” he says firmly, but he seems less worried about everything. “You are going to step off this plane without me. If you have sunglasses, put them on. Look at no one. Answer no one. And you will walk, neither fast nor slow, to the car with Natalie. Don’t stop. And don’t look back. If we’re lucky the tabloids won’t notice you.”

I shrug. “It’s what I was going to do anyway.” The co-pilot hands me my cello.

“And what am I supposed to do?”

Rene’s voice startles me. I’d all but forgotten about her. She is curled on her seat like a cat, irritated at not being the center of attention.

“You will do exactly as I tell you,” Alan says, his gaze fixing on Rene. “Exactly as I tell you. And you will be silent.”

Alan walks to the cabin door with me, carefully stopping so as not to be seen. “I’m sorry, Chrissie.”

I shrug and Alan eases forward to push my sunglasses up from the tip of my nose until they are flush against my face.

“Say nothing.” Alan runs his hand through his hair, a nervous gesture I now realize.

I step into the open cabin door and the press below spring into action. I tense like you do when you expect something to hit you, a suspended moment, and then it passes. The cameras don’t flash, I notice Natalie the flight attendant at my side, and the voices below are still mute. I touch the metal steps and the press hardly even look at me.

I cross the tarmac toward the car, surrounded by a strange kind of heavy silence. The driver opens the car door and takes my cello as Natalie disappears toward the terminal. I’m about to slip into the seat, when something makes me jump and I look back.