Torn (6 page)

Tyler blinked at her in amazement, a slow smile curving his own full lips. “Sure.”

Chelsea’s sheepish smile deepened into a full-fledged grin.

“In fact,” he continued, “I was going to ask
you
if you would like to join
me
for a walk… And thank you again for dinner last night. I had a great time. You have a beautiful family.”

“Thank you,” she said as she stepped toward him. He turned slightly to accommodate her capacious skirts, and the pair walked slowly away from the set, moving easily together as if they’d done it for a lifetime.

“You’re welcome to join us anytime,” Chelsea said. “And Julie too.” She laughed softly, under her breath. “Jake thought I was a character when he met me… what with me being from The City. I can’t wait until he meets Julie.”

The New York reference nagged at him, so he asked, “You mentioned New York last night. Which borough?” he asked.

“Manhattan. Born and raised.” Chelsea glanced at him again before dropping her gaze to the uneven terrain. “Careful… Cow pies and deer droppings abound,” she warned, lifting her skirts to keep the material from getting snagged by snow-dusted sagebrush.

Tyler, who’d been watching her rather intently as he tried to place this new piece of information, felt his boot slide into something suspiciously thick and surprisingly squishy. He looked down to see puffs of steam escape from the edges of his boot, engooed, as it was, by the hot pile. “Shit.” He narrowed his eyes as hers perused the landscape, trying to find the bovine instrument of his costume’s destruction.

“Correct on the first try,” Chelsea laughed as he did a weird shuffle-hobble over to a rock to attempt to scrape the dung from the shoe. “Tyler…”

“Crap. Leslie’s going to kill me.” It was a doubtful scenario –– the costume coordinator adored Tyler and everyone, including the young woman at his side who rolled her eyes at him, knew it.

Still laughing, Chelsea tugged on his arm with one hand and pointed to the dirt road not far from them with the other. “Let’s walk on a relatively safer surface,” she suggested. “The dirt and gravel will probably take it off without much effort on your part.” Chelsea stepped back and eyed him up and down, her look blatantly admiring as she took in his costume of brown leather duster, tan leather pants, brown wool vest, and the loose, cream colored, muslin shirt. “Besides, you can always tell Leslie that it’ll lend authenticity to your character.”

“Good lord. Julie’s created a monster.” A grin tugged at the corner of his mouth and he let her pull him with her over to the road. “Who happens to be right,” he agreed, lagging for a moment to give the manure another chance to remove itself from the sole of his shoe against a clump of frozen, snow-encrusted grass.

When they reached the road, Tyler automatically held out his arm –– much like Paul would do for Tina –– and Chelsea, just as automatically, took it. He stopped, and she shot him a questioning look. It quickly became one of comprehension when he took off his coat and wrapped her in it before hooking her arm with his once more. “It’s chilly… I noticed the goose bumps on your arms.” He didn’t mention that he also noticed the hard beads of her nipples against the cotton of her gown. In addition, he refrained from mentioning the way the golden rays of the sun cast a reddish hue over the mocha skin, her dark, near-black hair, giving her a glow as though she walked in fire.

“Thanks, I was getting cold,” she lied, grateful he didn’t know the real reason for her goose bumps. The sun appeared to be caught in his hair; the sun-kissed, shoulder-length locks were bright yellow flames against his golden, tanned skin. Chelsea shivered, looked away from him and noticed a red-shafted flicker in a tree skeleton not far from them. A good omen. But of what?

“Hey, look at that bird.” His whisper in her ear made her start, and Chelsea glanced at him long enough to note that he saw the bright orange and brown bird as well.

“It’s a flicker,” she said in low tones, hoping the bird wouldn’t fly off. It’d been a long while since she’d seen one, even though Jake often brought home their feathers.

The thought of her husband made her look at her hand; her palm rested against the fine, silky, platinum hairs of Tyler’s thick forearm as though it belonged there. She slipped it from the warm skin, planning on letting it drop to her side, but Tyler caught her hand in his and, as if by their own accord, their fingers entwined together as they walked on.

“Where in Manhattan?” Tyler asked. “Which part?”

“Uptown, on the outskirts of Harlem.” And, though Chelsea figured Tyler knew what she meant, she clarified anyway. “Near Columbia University.”

He laughed and she looked at him. “What?”

“You mean to tell me that you’ve never noticed how New Yorkers always capitalize ‘The City’ when they speak of it, as if no other city exists?”

Chelsea grinned. “You mean like how people from Los Angeles always say ‘L.A.’ rather than ‘Los Angeles’ when asked where they’re from?”

Tyler rubbed the dark blonde stubble at his chin, as if pondering the question. “Yeah,” he drawled, his teeth white in his face as her smiled at her. “Exactly.”

She shrugged with false modesty. “That’s because there
is
no city like New York City.”

“Sometimes, I do. Jake and I keep saying we’ll go back for a visit at some point but something always seems to come up.” Her smile faded as her eyes glazed as her focus turned inward. “I’d love to take the girls to The Bronx Zoo, the Botanical Gardens, the ballet, the Met… V & T Pizzeria…” She shook her head, dispelling her East Coast memories, and looked at him. “Eesh. I sound like a tourist guide. What about you?”

Tyler frowned, trying to remember the name of the strange place. “It was a weird one but had a cool vibe. I remember it had this… I don’t know. Motorcycle parts and metal sculpture of sorts at the door, which was actually a flight of steps that led down to the bar. Not a very big place once you were inside, but was it packed.”

Chelsea stopped in the road, her hand tightening around his. “Was there a great, big, black guy at the door whose voice had a higher pitch than expected given his size?”

“That bar you were at is called the Scrap Bar.” Her large, dark eyes grew darker, wetter. “I used to hang out there with my friends all the time… From when I was fourteen, until I moved out here.”

“
Fourteen
?”

“Fourteen going on twenty-one.” She flashed him a cheeky grin and winked. The smile faded as she frowned. “Was there another bouncer there, a white-looking guy with brown curly hair to here?” Chelsea gestured with her free hand to her shoulders. “Another muscular guy.
Very
good-looking guy.”

Tyler rolled his eyes. “I don’t know. I wasn’t exactly looking for a date, you know. Possibly. White-
looking
?”

“He’s a mutt, like me. Multi-racial.” Her lower lip trembled. “Dan the Leo.” The trembling turned into quivering as it stretched into a smile. She blinked, and the collection of unshed tears spilled down her cheeks. Chelsea reached to wipe them away, but Tyler was faster. His thumb swept the moisture away, and he looked at her, shocked.

“You’re homesick!”

“Once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker.” Chelsea shrugged again and Tyler thought to himself that she was doing a lot of that lately. “Sometimes,” she admitted. “I don’t know.” She blinked again, and Tyler found himself catching another tear. “More so with you guys here.”

His brows came together. “What do you mean?”

She caught her bottom lip in her teeth, chewed it as she contemplated the question. “I haven’t seen a movie set since I left New York… I used to run across them a lot.” She grinned as she looked at him. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been in a movie. Bet you didn’t know I was an ‘extra’ in
Ghostbusters
, did you.”

Dumbfounded, Tyler shook his head.

“Yeah, well, they shot a large portion of that movie in my old neighborhood. I was among hundreds walking across the Columbia University campus that day. I wore my navy school uniform and crossed that campus as I did nearly every day on my way home from St. Hilda’s and St. Hugh’s.”

Her grin turned into laughter. “Well, anyway… If you squint really,
really
hard, you might be able to notice me on the steps in the background.”

His laughter joined hers, rumbling from his chest into the cool air between them.

“Then there was
Who’s That Girl
.”

Tyler’s laughter turned into a groan.

“Say what you want, but
I
got to meet Madonna. I think I was like in the fifth or sixth grade at the time. I can’t remember. All I do remember, was thinking, ‘She’s so tiny!’ Here I was this… whatever-grader, and I was taller than Madonna Mega Star. Such a humongous personality in such a petite package. It boggles the mind.”

“If you say so.”

Chelsea laughed. “Okay, it boggles the
grade
-school mind. Happy?”

“Infinitely.”

She rolled her eyes, and without a word, the pair began walking again. Tyler observed that as Chelsea warmed to sharing her memories, a sparkle appeared in her voice that hadn’t been there before. As egotistical as it sounded, he couldn’t deny that it seemed as if she’d kept the information locked inside herself, and now that she had someone who could relate, who’d perhaps been in similar places and situations, she was free to share them.

“I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I ‘ran into’ John Taylor from Duran Duran,” she confided, “and his girlfriend at the time. That was when he still lived in that building on the Upper West Side… hell, I can’t remember it, but it had its own name. I kept hoping Simon le Bon would be with him. And of course the rest of the band. Then I started hanging out with my friends at clubs like the Cat Club and the Limelight and Danceteria, CBGBs, and bars like Holiday, Z Bar, and Scrap Bar. Met lots of rock stars… I even met River Phoenix in my own neighborhood before he died.” Her voice blurred, turned sad. “What a
nice
, really nice guy.”

Tyler dimpled at her. “Sounds like you’ve met more famous people than I have.”

She dimpled back. “Not likely. But I did meet quite a few. What’s funny is that I never wanted to ask anyone for his or her autograph. The thought of asking for one always made me feel stupid. I think I did it a couple of times when I was younger but then I just stopped and visited instead. That was always more special to me, more fun.”

“Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Tyler said.

“What?”

“I always feel stupid
giving
my autograph. I mean, I’m a grown man getting paid to wear makeup. It’s not like I
do
anything. It’s not like I’m a musician or anything.
That
I can understand. But an actor?”

Chelsea laughed. “Kiss wore makeup. So did Mötley Crüe.”

“Yeah, but
they
helped me get laid back in the day. I seriously doubt that
I
can say the same for my services.”

Her shoulders shook from the force of her laughter, and the duster slipped as she slapped her knee and howled.

Tyler took a step towards her and she waved him away, gasping for air. “I got to sit down,” she managed to squeak out, “my sides hurt from laughing in this damn corset.”

“There’s a big rock over there that could probably handle all those petticoats.”

She followed where he pointed with her eyes. “Thank God.” Without waiting for him, Chelsea plopped herself down on the boulder, thankful for the yards of material that kept the chill of the stone at bay.

His laughter ceased. “
You’ve
met Robert De Niro?
I
haven’t even met him yet. That’s messed up.”

She smirked and had the audacity to stick her tongue out at him. “
That
was a coup. He’s
hot
.”

“I think there was
one
other person… Who was it…” She tapped a delicate, unvarnished fingernail against her lips. “What
was
his name?” She looked at the handsome man who sat across from her. “It’s been about twelve years or so...” She crossed a stocking-clad leg over one knee and propped her chin on her hand, her elbow braced against the raised knee. “Why don’t you tell me?”