What I Did for Love (20 page)

She held up her hand. “Stop right there. No florist, no bartender, and Chaz is making do-it-yourself kebabs. Chicken, beef, and scallops.”

“Are you crazy? We can’t serve Rory Keene kebabs.”

“You’ll have to trust me. Remember, I have a purely selfish interest in convincing Rory to back your project. If you screw this up for me…”

“Georgie, I told you. Helene has to be cast—”

“Leave me alone. I have things to do.” Mainly she had to help him convince Rory that he was the person to make the film. If Rory saw how well he could behave these days, she might forget his past idiocy.

Unlike Georgie, who couldn’t forget a thing.

After he left, she busied herself setting candles around the veranda, but eventually she couldn’t resist grabbing her video camera. Today of all days, she should leave Chaz alone, but what had begun as a whim was turning into an obsession. In addition to her fascination with Chaz, she was also falling in love with the whole process of recording other people’s lives. She’d never imagined how absorbing standing behind a camera instead of in front of one could be.

She found Chaz in the kitchen making a ginger-garlic marinade. When she spotted Georgie, she slammed her chef’s knife down on some garlic cloves. “Get that camera out of here.”

“You won’t let me help. I’m bored.” She panned around the kitchen, taking in the well-organized chaos.

“Go film the cleaning people. You seem to have all kinds of fun doing that.”

Did Georgie hear a note of jealousy? “I like talking to them. Soledad—she’s the tall, pretty one—sends most of her money back
to her mother in Mexico, so she has to live with her sister. There are six of them in a one-bedroom apartment. Can you imagine?”

Chaz rocked the blade over the garlic. “Big deal. At least she’s not sleeping on the streets.”

Georgie’s skin prickled. “Like you did?”

Chaz dipped her head. “I never told you that.”

“You told me about the accident and that you got fired after you broke your hand.” Georgie zoomed in. “I know your money was stolen. It’s a fairly obvious conclusion.”

“There are a lot of kids on the streets. It wasn’t a big deal.”

“Still…It had to be especially hard for you. All that mess and no way to clean it up.”

“I handled it. Now get out. I mean it, Georgie. I have to concentrate.”

Georgie should leave, but the turbulent emotions bubbling behind Chaz’s tough facade had drawn her in from the beginning, and somehow the camera demanded she record it. She shifted her questioning. “Does fixing dinner for more than one person make you nervous?”

“I fix dinner for more than one person practically every night.” She tossed the chopped garlic in a bowl with some peeled ginger. “I feed you, don’t I?”

“But you don’t put your heart into it. I swear, Chaz, even your desserts taste bitter.”

Chaz’s head shot up. “That’s a crappy thing to say.”

“Just a personal observation. Bram loves your cooking, and so does Meg. But then you seem to like Meg.”

Chaz pressed her lips tight. Her blade moved faster.

Georgie stepped to the end of the counter. “You’d better watch yourself. Great cooks know that extraordinary food is about more than mixing ingredients. Who you are as a person—how you feel about other people—shows up in what you create.”

The rhythm of Chaz’s chopping slowed. “I don’t believe that.”

Georgie told herself to let it go, but she couldn’t, not with the camera in her hands, not when this seemed so right. A wave of compassion overcame her, along with an odd sense of understanding. She and Chaz had each found her own way of coping with a world over which they seemed to have little control. “Then why do your desserts taste so bitter?” she said softly. “Is it really me you hate…or is it yourself?”

Chaz dropped her knife and stared into the camera, her black-rimmed eyes wide.

“Leave her alone, Georgie.” Bram spoke sharply from the doorway. “Take your camera and leave her alone.”

Chaz turned on him. “You told her!”

Bram came into the room. “I haven’t told her anything.”

“She knows! You told her!”

Chaz’s anger and self-hatred were visceral, and Georgie wanted to understand it. She wanted to film it as a testament to all the young girls consumed by their own pain. Except she had no right to invade her privacy like this, and she made herself—forced herself—to lower the camera.

“She doesn’t know anything you haven’t told her with your big mouth,” Bram said.

Once again Georgie ordered herself to leave, but her feet weren’t moving. Instead, she said, “I know you’re not the only girl who’s come to L.A. and done what she had to so she could survive.”

Chaz’s hands curled into fists. “I wasn’t a whore. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? I was some kind of crack whore!”

Bram shot Georgie a death glare and moved to Chaz’s side. “Let it go. You don’t have to defend yourself to anyone.”

But something seemed to have broken open inside her. She focused only on Georgie. Her lips pulled tight over her teeth and her voice became a snarl. “I wasn’t doing drugs! Never! I just wanted a place to live and some decent food.”

Georgie turned off the camera.

“No!” Chaz cried. “Turn it back on. You wanted to hear this so bad…Turn it on.”

“It’s all right. I don’t—”

“Turn it on!” Chaz said fiercely. “This is important. Make it important.”

Georgie’s hands had begun to shake, but she understood, and she did as Chaz asked.

“I was dirty and living out of a backpack.” Through the lens Georgie watched tears spill over the inky dam of Chaz’s bottom lashes. “I went a day without eating and then another day. I heard about this soup kitchen, but I couldn’t make myself go in. I was feeling crazy from not eating and it seemed better to sell my body than take charity.”

Bram tried to rub her back, but she pushed him away. “I told myself it would be just once, and I’d charge enough so I could get by until the cast came off my hand.” Her words pummeled the camera. “He was an old guy. He was going to pay me two hundred bucks. But after it was over, he pushed me out of his car instead and drove away without giving me anything. I threw up in the gutter.” Her mouth tightened with bitterness. “After that I learned to get my money first. Mostly twenty bucks, but I wasn’t using—I never used drugs—and I made them wear condoms, so I wasn’t like the other girls who were using and didn’t care about anything. I cared, and I wasn’t a whore!”

Once again, Georgie tried to shut off the camera, but Chaz was having none of it. “This is what you wanted. Don’t you dare stop now.”

“All right,” Georgie said softly.

“I hated sleeping on the street.” Muddy tears dripped down her cheeks. “And I hated trying to keep clean in public bathrooms most of all. I hated it so much I wanted to die, but killing yourself is a lot harder than you think.” She grabbed a tissue from a box on the counter. “I met this guy not too long before Christmas, and I got
some pills from him. Not to get high. Pills so I could…stop everything.” She blew her nose. “I was going to save them for Christmas Eve, like this present to myself where I would take the pills, then just curl up in somebody’s doorway and fall asleep forever.”

“Oh, Chaz…” Georgie’s heart ached. Bram drew Chaz’s spine against his chest and rubbed her shoulders.

“All I had to do was wait until Christmas Eve, but I got too hungry.” She balled the tissue in her hand. “One night I saw this guy coming out of a club. He was by himself, and he looked really clean. When I went up to talk to him, he asked me how old I was. A lot of them asked that, and I would answer depending on what they wanted to hear, like sometimes I’d say fourteen or even twelve. But he didn’t seem like one of those creeps, so I told him the truth. He pulled out some money, gave it to me, and walked away. It was a hundred dollars, and I should have just said thank you, but I was sort of crazy from not eating, and I yelled that I didn’t need his charity. And when he turned to look at me, I sort of threw it at him.”

She pulled away from Bram and dropped the tissue in the trash. “He came back and picked up the money and asked how long since I’d had anything to eat. I told him I didn’t remember, and he took me into the bar and ordered hamburgers and stuff. He wouldn’t let me go wash my hands because he said I’d try to duck out the back, but I wouldn’t have. I was too hungry. I wrapped a paper napkin around the food and ate it that way, so my hands didn’t touch anything.”

She went to the sink and turned on the water. Keeping her back to them, she washed her hands. “He waited until I was done, and then he said he’d take me to this place, like this homeless shelter where they had social workers, and I told him I didn’t need any social workers, what I needed was a job in a restaurant, but even though my cast was off, I couldn’t get a job because I didn’t have an address, and I couldn’t keep myself clean.”

Georgie lowered the camera and licked her lips. “So he gave you
a job himself. He invited a street kid he didn’t know into his house and gave her a job.”

Chaz spun back to face her—proud, defiant, sneering. “And he thinks he’s so smart about everything. I could have stuck a knife in him. He doesn’t understand how bad people can be. Do you see why I have to watch him so close?”

“I do,” Georgie said. “I didn’t before, but now I do.”

“I’m sure I could have held my own against a runt like you,” Bram said.

Chaz grabbed a paper towel and stalked toward Georgie, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Now that you’ve got all that in your camera, maybe you’ll leave me alone.”

“Maybe,” Georgie said. “Probably not.”

Chaz whipped around to confront Bram. “Do you see how weird she is? Now do you see?”

He slipped his hand in his pocket. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“Just—I don’t know. Just tell her she’s fucking weird.”

“You’re weird,” he said to Georgie. “Chaz is right.”

“I know. I appreciate the two of you putting up with me.”

Feeling as though she’d done something good, she left them alone.

Georgie
locked herself in Bram’s bathroom and soaked in his tub. She and Chaz had both been betrayed by men—Chaz, much more horribly, on the streets; Georgie on a boat in the middle of Lake Michigan, and later by the husband she’d promised to love forever. Now they were each trying to figure out how to move on. She wondered if Chaz would have told her heart-wrenching story if the camera hadn’t been there?
This is important,
” Chaz had said when Georgie tried to stop filming.
“Make it important.”

Did the camera simply record reality or did it alter it? Could it change the future? Georgie wondered if having her story documented might help Chaz begin putting her past behind her so she could live a fuller life. Wouldn’t that be amazing? And wouldn’t it be even more amazing if recording Chaz’s story helped Georgie put her own life in perspective.

She sank deeper into the water and considered the only part of Chaz’s story that had truly shocked her. Bram’s role. He’d been Georgie’s destroyer, but he’d been Chaz’s rescuer. She kept learning new things about him, and none of it fit with what she thought she already knew. He proudly proclaimed that he cared about no one but himself, but that wasn’t entirely true.

She washed her hair and blew it dry so that it fell straight and shiny around her fuller face. She applied smoky eye makeup and
one of her many nude lipsticks, then dressed in cayenne red stretch chinos and a shiny gray cami accompanied by silver ballet flats. With the addition of a pair of abstract silver earrings, she was done.

At the bottom of the stairs, she found Bram pacing the foyer in white pants and shirt. “I thought you were wearing jeans,” she said.

“I changed my mind.”

He took her in, doing his eye-smolder thing, which made her nervous. “You look like Robert Redford in
Gatsby,
” she said. “Except hunkier. A statement of fact, not a compliment, so no need to thank me.”

“I won’t.” He kept smoldering her, his gaze moving from her silver ballet flats, up over her legs and hips, lingering on her breasts, and ending up at her face. “You look pretty good yourself. Those big green eyes…”

“Bug eyes.”

His smoldering gave way to exasperation. “You don’t have bug eyes, and you should have gotten over your insecurities a long time ago.”

“I’m a realist. Moon face, bug eyes, and rubber mouth, but I’m starting to like my body again, and I’m not getting implants.”

He sighed. “Nobody wants you to get implants, especially me. You don’t have a moon face. And when are you going to stop trying to camouflage your mouth and splash it with some red lipstick? I happen to have an intimate acquaintance with that mouth, and I’m here to tell you it’s spectacular.” He slid the palm of his hand along her hip. “A statement of fact, not a compliment.”

This was getting way too hot for her, so she broke the mood with a friendly suggestion. “If you want Rory to think you’re reformed, maybe you should lay off the booze.”

“Iced tea.”

“Yeah, right.”

She headed for the kitchen to check up on Chaz. Cobalt pottery bowls with red pepper chunks, figs and mangoes, curls of sweet
onion, and wedges of fresh pineapple covered the counter. “Make sure you turn the chicken on the grill after four minutes,” Chaz told Aaron, who was arranging glasses on a tray. “No more. Understand?”

“I understood the first two times you told me.”

“Those rosemary sprigs go on top of the beef while it’s cooking.” Ignoring Georgie, she pitched a tomato she’d dropped into the sink. “And baste the scallops with the sweet chili sauce. Remember they dry out fast, so don’t keep them on the heat too long.”

“You should be grilling instead of me,” he said.

“Like I don’t have enough to do?”

Chaz seemed as bad-tempered as ever, which was reassuring. Georgie gave her a break and spoke only to Aaron. “What happened to your hair?”

“I got it cut this afternoon.” Chaz snorted, and he glared at her. “It was taking too long to dry in the morning, that’s all.”

Another snort.

“It looks great.” Georgie observed him more closely. The buttons lined up in a neat row down the front of his dark green shirt with no sign of strain, and his khakis no longer stretched so tightly across his stomach. Aaron was losing weight, and she had a feeling she knew who was responsible.

“Thanks for helping Chaz tonight,” she said as she stole a mushroom from a bowl on the counter. “If she gets too dangerous, use some pepper spray on her.”

“He’d squirt himself in the eye,” Chaz retorted. She was all attitude, but she knew Georgie had witnessed her pain, and she wouldn’t look at her.

Georgie squeezed Aaron’s arm. “Remind me to give you hazardous-duty pay when this is over.”

Meg stuck her head in. She wore a very short chartreuse tunic with blue leopard-pattern leggings and orange ankle boots. A nar
row, braided jute headband had replaced the
bindi
on her forehead. She grinned and spread her arms. “I look fabulous! Admit it.”

She did, although Georgie knew her well enough to understand that Meg didn’t really believe it. She could wear even the most outrageous outfits with the same authority as her former supermodel mother, but she still insisted on seeing herself as an ugly duckling. Even so, Georgie envied Meg’s relationship with her famous parents. Despite the messy complexities between them, they loved each other unconditionally.

The doorbell rang, and by the time Georgie reached the foyer, Bram had let in Trevor. “Mrs. Shepard, I presume.” He handed over a gift basket piled with expensive spa products. “I didn’t want to add to his drinking problem by bringing alcohol.”

“Thank you.”

Bram took a slug of scotch. “I don’t have a drinking problem.”

Laura arrived immediately afterward, slightly breathless, her pale, flyaway hair disheveled, not exactly the portrait of a high-powered Hollywood agent, but that was why Paul had hired her. She tripped coming into the house and blanched as Bram caught her arm. “Sorry,” she said. “I haven’t used these feet all day, and I’ve forgotten how they work.”

Bram smiled. “A common problem.”

“Great news.” Laura pecked Georgie on the cheek. “You have a meeting with Greenberg on Tuesday.” Georgie’s hackles went up, but Laura had already turned to Bram. “This is a beautiful house. Who decorated it for you?”

“I did it myself. Trev Elliott helped.”

He and Laura disappeared toward the veranda leaving Georgie staring after him. Bram had picked out the Oriental rugs and Tibetan throws? The Mexican folk paintings and Balinese bells? And what about all those well-thumbed books lining the dining room shelves?

Her father showed up before she could process this new information. His lips felt frosty on her cheek. “Dad, I need you to be decent to Bram tonight,” she said as she led him through the foyer. “Rory Keene’s invited, and Bram needs her support on a project. No put-downs. I mean it.”

“Maybe I should come back sometime when you don’t feel like you have to lecture me as soon as I walk in the door.”

“Let’s just have fun tonight. Please. It’s important to me for the two of you to get along.”

“You’re talking to the wrong person.”

As he walked away, a wisp of memory tugged at her…Her mother sitting cross-legged on a blanket and laughing at her father, who was running across a patch of grass with Georgie on his back. Had it really happened, or was it something she’d dreamed?

When she reached the veranda, she saw that Bram and her father had taken up posts as far away from each other as possible. Bram was charming Laura while her father listened to Trev’s description of the comedy he was currently shooting. Meg appointed herself bartender, and eventually Paul drifted her way. He’d always liked Meg, something Georgie had never understood, since he should have hated her undisciplined lifestyle. But unlike Georgie, Meg made him laugh.

Georgie was suppressing a pang of jealousy when Rory came up the path from the back. Laura tipped over her wineglass, and her father stopped talking in midsentence. Only Meg and Trev weren’t thrown off by the new addition to the party. Bram would have jumped to his feet if Georgie hadn’t clamped her fingers around his wrist to slow him down. Fortunately, he took her cue and greeted Rory in a more leisurely fashion. “The roses could use a little pruning while you’re out there.”

“Sorry. Plants die if I even look at them.”

“Then let me get you a drink instead.”

Meg began entertaining them with stories of her recent travels.
Before long, she had everyone laughing as she described an ill-advised kayaking trip on the Mangde Chhu River. Aaron brought out trays with the ingredients for the do-it-yourself kebabs, and they all gathered around to assemble their own. Rory surprised everyone by kicking off her shoes and volunteering to help with the grilling. By the time they were seated at the table with their wine-glasses refilled and plates piled with food, everyone except Bram and Georgie had relaxed.

Bram made the first move in his campaign to earn Rory’s good opinion. He raised his glass and locked eyes with Georgie at the opposite end of the table. “I’d like to propose a toast to my funny, smart, wonderful wife.” His words were soft and filled with emotion. “A woman with a loving heart, an ability to see beneath the surface”—his voice caught oh-so-touchingly—“and a willingness to forgive.”

Her father frowned. Meg looked bemused, Laura a bit dreamy-eyed. Trev seemed confused, but Rory was impossible to read. Bram smiled at Georgie with a heart full of love.

A heart full of bullshit.

Georgie choked herself up. “Stop it, you big idiot. You’ll make me cry.”

They drank their toast. Laura smiled. “I know I speak for all of us when I say how great it is to see the two of you so happy.”

“We both had some growing up to do,” Bram said with all kinds of sincerity. “Especially me. We’ll be nice and ignore Georgie’s marriage to Mr. Stupid. But we’re finally where we want to be. Not that we still don’t have a few things to work out…”

Georgie braced herself for whatever was coming.

“Georgie only wants two kids,” he said, “but I want more. We’ve had some fairly big arguments about it.”

The man had no shame.

Paul set down his fork and addressed Bram for the first time. “With Georgie barefoot and pregnant, it’ll be tough to support your
current lifestyle.” He gave a short laugh, an unconvincing attempt to pass off his comment as a joke.

This was exactly what Bram had warned her would happen, but he merely kicked back in his chair and offered up a lazy grin. “Georgie’s healthy as a horse. They can shoot her from the chest up. Hell, I’ll bet she could have a baby and be back on the job the next day. What do you think, sweetheart?”

“Or I could just squat in the middle of the set and give birth right there.”

Bram winked. “That’s the spirit.”

“The unions wouldn’t put up with it,” Trevor said. “A violation of their labor contract.”

Meg groaned.

Bram had won that round, and her father looked sulky as he turned his attention to his plate. Trev told a funny story about his current costar. They all laughed, but a shadow had crept across Georgie’s heart. She wished Bram hadn’t brought up children. She either had to give up the idea of having a baby or find the courage to go it alone. And why not? Fathers were vastly overrated. She could go to a sperm bank, or…

No.
Absolutely not!

For dessert they indulged in a rich lemon cake garnished with a few fresh raspberries and a chocolate curl. Afterward, Bram dragged Chaz out from the kitchen. Everybody complimented her, and she blushed furiously. “I’m glad you…like enjoyed it.” She shot Georgie a glare.

“A great dessert, Chaz,” Georgie said. “A perfect balance between tart and sweet.”

Chaz regarded her suspiciously.

Trev had a 6 a.m. call and left, but the others were in no hurry to end the evening even though the wind had picked up and the air smelled like rain. Bram put on some jazz and engaged Rory in a quiet conversation about Italian cinema. Georgie mentally congrat
ulated him for displaying so much restraint. When Rory excused herself to go to the powder room, Georgie slipped to his side. “You’re doing great. Give her plenty of space when she comes back, so you don’t look desperate.”

“I am desperate. At least—” He stared at her hand as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Where’s your wedding ring?”

She glanced at her bare finger. “I accidentally knocked it down the drain while I was getting dressed. You’re just noticing?”

“You
what
?”

“It’s cheaper to order another one than pay for a plumber.”

“Since when are you worried about
cheap
?” He spun toward the guests, speaking calmly, but with an underlying tension. “Excuse me for a few minutes. One of my fans is on his deathbed, poor guy. I promised his wife I’d call him tonight.” And just like that, he disappeared.

She smiled sadly and acted as if deathbed phone calls were all in a day’s work.

Rain began to fall in a gentle spatter that made the candlelit veranda seem even cozier. With all her guests engaged in conversation, Georgie slipped away unnoticed.

She found Bram on his knees, his head stuck under her sink, a plastic bucket and a pipe wrench by his knees. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to rescue your ring,” he said from inside the vanity.

“Why?”

“Because it’s your wedding ring,” he said tightly. “Every woman has a sentimental attachment to her wedding ring.”

“I don’t. You bought mine on eBay for a hundred bucks.”

He pulled his head out. “Who told you that?”

“You did.”

He muttered something, grabbed the monkey wrench, and stuffed his head back inside the vanity.

She was getting a creepy feeling. “You did buy it on eBay, right?”

“Not exactly,” came his muffled reply.

“Then where did you get it?”

“At…this store.”

“
What
store?”

He poked his head out. “How am I supposed to remember?”

“It was only a month ago!”

“Whatever.” His head disappeared.