THE guys had the soccer moms down at the paintball course for the Saturday morning makeup training session, putting them through the paces with the real stuff while Michael was stuck in the office with a couple of studio people, who were now worried about the schedule as well as the budget. He spent a good part of the day in one long, mind-numbing meeting, going over the sequence of scenes they would shoot, making sure that T.A. would have the time necessary to set up for each stunt, of which, he was beginning to note, there was a huge number. How would they ever pull it off?
The only bright spot was that at midday, when they broke for the weekend, Leah was waiting for him at his car, wearing a short little halter dress, sunglasses rimmed with sparkly rhinestones, and a huge smile.
“Let me guess,” he said peering at her shades as he walked up to his car and tossed his briefcase behind the driver’s seat. “Trudy.”
“Right on. And if you play your cards right, I think I can get you one of the Siesta shirts she bought in bulk.”
“Why would she do that?” he asked, curious.
Leah shrugged. “Who knows with her? I’m just thankful I don’t have to take one.”
“So what are you doing?”
“Me?” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and coyly looked away. “Waiting on a guy.”
“Excellent. Would that guy happen to be me?”
“No,” she said with a laugh. “You’re not the only one with passes to movie premieres, you know.”
“Wait a minute,” he said, putting his hands on his hips, “Don’t tell me one of my partners is trying to score with you on any level—”
“God, no—”
“That’s good, because I’d have to kill whoever tried it.”
“No, your partners actually look annoyed most of the time I see them. The other guy happens to be someone with the lighting crew. And he doesn’t have tickets to a movie premiere. He only has tickets to a movie. Very pedestrian.”
Thank God, he thought. “I hope he was at least offering dinner with the movie.”
“Oh yeah, he offered dinner.” She wrinkled her nose. “Mexican food.”
“Idiot,” Michael opined with a grin. “So let me take you to dinner instead.”
“Okay. Where are we going?”
“Mexican food,” he said, and Leah laughed.
THEY spent the remainder of the weekend together, walking along the Third Street Promenade, bodysurfing at Malibu, and eating all the seafood they could possibly stomach at Gladstone’s, a popular joint in Malibu. When they weren’t eating, they were in his loft, making love.
Somewhere in the course of the weekend, the years started to move away from them, drifting like little clouds out the expansive windows in his loft. It began to feel as if they’d never missed a moment—they fell into a rhythm that seemed so natural and real and completely unchanged in the years they’d spent apart. If Leah was harboring any lingering misgivings about him, he was not seeing it or feeling it.
But the love affair they shared was snake-bit from the start, or so Michael would soon come to believe, because by Tuesday of the following week, when the women were being outfitted and meeting with production staff and the director, running lines, and practicing the war scenes, the replacement for the soccer mom with the broken leg showed up.
That wasn’t a big deal—she was athletic and eager to please and learned the stuff so fast that the guys bemoaned the fact they didn’t have fifteen more just like her. What was a big deal, however, was that the woman—Ariel—was known to both Jack and Michael. She was Lindsey’s friend. The same Lindsey Jack was trying so hard to date, and the same woman Jack had talked Michael into accompanying on two dates.
Now Jack had finagled a role in the film for her as a favor to Lindsey.
Not that any of it meant anything in the greater scheme of things—nothing had happened between Michael and Ariel, and in fact, he’d found her to be young and sort of goofy. Of course he said hello to her. He even shared a laugh with her, and chatted about their afternoon in Malibu. He thought nothing of it; he had given her no indication that he was the slightest bit interested, and considered her just another acquaintance. But it obviously meant something to Ariel, who heard about the Spy who Loved Them from the other actresses and felt compelled to mention that she had “dated” Michael a couple of times.
She also mentioned that she had “dated” Michael as recently as last week, which, when pressed by Trudy, who had overheard the conversation, Jack agreed that she had.
Michael knew all this courtesy of Trudy. By Thursday afternoon, he couldn’t seem to catch Leah anywhere on the lot, but he caught up with Trudy. “Hey, kid,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “You’re mean with that paint gun.”
Trudy removed her sunburst sunglasses and smiled up at him. “Ya think?”
“Absolutely.”
She smiled, clearly pleased with his praise.
“So where’s the Yang to your Yin?” he asked.
“Oh honey, who cares? Wanna get a drink? I can show you other tricks I can do with paint guns,” she said with a wink.
He laughed. “I’d love to, but I can’t. I just need to talk to Leah.”
“She went somewhere with Adolfo.”
“With who?” he asked as a couple of red flags quickly popped up in his brain.
“Adolfo,” she said with a shrug. “Some friend of hers.”