He dropped his bag to the floor. It was also covered in the substance.
“I was just a few blocks away, I was on Park, and some guy came along in a Hummer and stopped at the red light. He opened the window and asked me if I was David Frieze, and before I could even answer, he tossed a milk shake on me. He just reached out and dumped it over my head. Would have been a good day to have my bike, which has still not been stolen. That was my day. How was yours?”
“Lola’s home. She’s getting yelled at. We think.”
This calmed him a little. He leaned backward out the door to have a look. He seemed contented by the fact that Lola was being dealt some justice.
“I guess I should shower,” he said. “But all these flies are following me, and they think I’m their god. I feel responsible.”
“Power corrupts,” Scarlett said.
He was about to leave, but then remembered something and stepped back inside.
“You have to help me learn some pages. Script’s in the bag. Let’s do the jail scene, the one where I’m locked to the chair. It’s in the middle.”
He dropped the bag and went off. Scarlett went over and carefully extracted the script. The next episode was a very confusing one. The writers were clearly struggling to work fast and fill some space until they figured out what to do next. The entire episode was just scenes of the police mourning Sonny in their own ways—excessive drinking, emotional outbursts, making bad decisions and smacking people around—and David Frieze sneaking around the city doing suspicious-looking things until they caught him. There was a scene at Columbia, which took place in a lab. He was stealing chemicals when the police burst in and took him off to the station.
“Why are you stealing this stuff?” Scarlett asked when Spencer returned.
“I think I’m building a bomb or something.” He dropped to the floor and ran his hands through his clean, wet hair. “It doesn’t really make any sense.”
“And why is Benzo always so stupid?” she asked. “He punches you in the face while you’re handcuffed to a chair at the station?”
“Yup.”
“Won’t that, like, ruin the trial? Beating up the defendant?”
“I do what they tell me,” Spencer said. “I’m just the actor. I think they’re just writing that in because people want to see me get hit.”
He reached around and felt the back of his neck, as if the sensation of the milk shake running down it was still with him.
“Okay.” He rubbed his hands together. “I was looking at these earlier. I think I have them. Let’s try it.”
They had gotten through the scene four times when the door opened slightly and Lola poked her head inside.
“Hey,” she said. “We, um, need you guys for a second.”
“Need us for what?” Spencer asked. “How was Boston? Did Chip show you all the coloring projects he made in school?”
“We didn’t stay in Boston,” Lola said.
“No?”
“No. We went to Vegas.”
For once, Spencer looked like he might actually approve of a Chip and Lola adventure.
“Trip to Vegas,” he said, nodding. “I respect that. You did it right. Finally, Chip did something worth doing with that credit card of his. You totally beat anything I ever did. From now on, you are master.”
“Vegas?” Scarlett said. “That’s kind of…far.”
“It’s not that long of a flight,” Lola replied. “We did it on the spur of the moment.”
“I like it when you get crazy,” Spencer added. “Pretty soon you’ll be putting unironed sheets on the beds and forgetting to moisturize.”
“Spencer…”
“I mean it,” he said. “I think that’s great. It’s good for you. You need a wild phase. So what did you do? Did you get one of those rooms with a champagne-glass hot tub? Did you get one of those old-timey photos? Or one where you’re dressed like you’re in Star Trek? I love those. Chip would look so good dressed as a Klingon. I can see it now…”
“You should come down,” she said, and vanished.
Spencer and Scarlett looked at each other in bafflement.
“My trials were never public,” he said, shrugging. “Maybe we’re the jury?”
There was an air of manufactured calm in the Jazz Suite. Scarlett’s parents were sitting side by side in a stiff tableau. Lola was on one of the sagging armchairs that used to be in the Sterling Suite.
“Shut the door and sit down,” Scarlett’s dad said. “We all need to talk.”
“This is kind of awesome,” Spencer said in a low voice. “I never got this.”
“Lola?” Scarlett’s mom’s eyes were a bit red, and it sounded like keeping an even tone took effort. “Why don’t you go ahead?”
“We already know,” Spencer said. “You two are back together. We’ve accepted it. All I want to know is…does this change the being-nice-to-Chip rule? Because I think that was just when you two were broken up.”
“She didn’t say that,” Scarlett said.
“Traitor.”
“Guys,” their dad said.
“I think it was pretty clear,” Scarlett cut in.