A few more red flags and a couple of orange cones popped up. “I didn’t know she had any friends on set besides you.”
“She does. And you should have one, too,” Trudy added, sidling up to him and touching the button of his shirt.
With a chuckle, Michael grabbed her hand and smiled. “I’m tempted, gorgeous . . . but I really need to talk to Leah.”
Trudy sighed. “She’s not going to talk to you, Michael.”
“Why not?”
“Because, silly, she knows about your other date.”
“What other date?” he asked, his confusion raging. “I don’t have another date.”
“Ariel?” Trudy said with a slight roll of her eyes.
“Ariel?”
“Ariel. The new girl.” At Michael’s baffled look, Trudy sighed and said, “The one you went out with just last week? At least she told everyone you did.”
The light suddenly went off. “Oh,” he said, nodding unthinkingly. “Ariel. But wait, Trudy—I didn’t go out with her like that.”
“You’ll have to convince Leah of that. And Nicole.”
“Oh shit,” he muttered.
Trudy laughed, punched him playfully on the shoulder. “But you don’t have to convince me.”
He smiled, took Trudy’s hand, and kissed it. “I adore you, Yin. Thanks for the heads up.”
Trudy sighed and looked at her hand. “God, you’re good,” she said, and smiled after him as he walked on.
ACROSS the studio lot in the commissary tent, Leah was smiling at Adolfo, but she wasn’t really hearing anything he said. He was talking, she thought, about surfing. She smiled, picked up her bottle of juice, and drank, put it down again, and smiled.
Adolfo suddenly paused in whatever he was saying and cocked his head to one side. “What is this frown?” he asked.
“Frown?” she echoed. She’d been trying so hard to smile.
“No, no,” he said, shaking his head as she tried to smile harder. “This is not a smile. This is a frown that is . . . how do you say . . . upside down.”
So busted. “I’m sorry, Adolfo,” she said with a sigh. “I guess my mind is just elsewhere.”
“Where is your mind?” he asked in all seriousness.
She sighed, thinking back to what Ariel had said at lunch today, bragging about the luxury yacht Michael had taken her on the same weekend Leah was trying to call him and thank him for the Van Cleef perfume.
Adolfo was looking at her expectantly.
With a slight grimace, Leah spread her fingers across the table and tried to think of a tactful way to tell him she was thinking of another guy.
“It is with a man, eh?” Adolfo surmised, startling her.
“How did you know?”
“How do I know? It is obvious, mi amor. Men can be very mean to their women.”
She laughed at his quick intuition.
“Tell me,” he said, leaning back in his chair.
“I’m not a whiner.”
“Yes, you do not like wine, this I know. Now tell me,” he said with much authority.
“Okay,” Leah said, suddenly sitting up and propping her elbows on the table. “There’s this guy that I knew five years ago. We were a couple, you know, and then one day, out of the clear blue, he breaks it off. He basically says he’s in a place that doesn’t include me.”
“Bastard,” Adolfo spat.
“Right,” she said, nodding. “So then, I run into him five years later,” she continued. “And he tells me that he made a huge mistake and that he has thought of only me—”
“Liar,” Adolfo cried, jabbing a finger in the air.
“Well, he did show me all the things he remembered about me, and it was pretty much everything, and he did seem very sincere—”
“Sincere? What is sincere?”
“Honest.”
“Ah,” he said, and made a circular motion with his hand. “Continue.”
“He was bringing me gifts and telling me that he’d had this . . . this job that had prevented him from being with me, but he didn’t have that job anymore, and he begged me for a second chance.”
“What job?”
Leah rolled her eyes. “Spy,” she muttered.
Adolfo leaned forward. “Que?”
“SPY.”
Adolfo blinked. And then he burst out laughing. A very loud, very boisterous laugh that filled the entire commissary tent. “I am sorry, I am sorry,” he said, holding up a hand. “But this line is very good! Bravo, bravo! And what does he spy upon? Cows in the field? Beautiful women?”
Leah was beginning to feel like a naive little idiot. “Terrorists,” she said wearily. “Arms dealers or something.”
“Aha! And where are these terrorists?” Adolfo asked gaily. “Do they star in Hollywood movies?”
“I don’t know. Austria, maybe?”
Adolfo laughed roundly again. “Austria!” he scoffed to the ceiling. “And does he prove this? Does he show you something to make you believe? A key, perhaps?”
“A key?” Leah echoed, confused.
“A key. Something,” Adolfo said, waving his hand at something.