“You’re not mean,” he said. “You’re just kind of…fearless.”
Was he high? Fearless? There were a lot of words that Scarlett could have used to describe herself…well, actually, there weren’t, but…if she had had a few, fearless would definitely not have been one of them.
“You just seem like you’ll tackle any problem put in front of you,” he said, thickly spreading ketchup on his burger.
“They don’t go away if you don’t,” she said. “And my ideas are usually bad.”
He shook his head.
“I don’t think you get my point,” he said. “See, I lived in fear of coming here. I come from this little town where everybody knows each other. I was a big star there. I was, like, the actor. Here, there are real famous people. Every other person you meet is an actor. You go to auditions, and there are a hundred people in line ahead of you. Everyone’s talented, everyone’s good-looking, everyone has a good agent. Everyone has a story. Like you.”
Before, liking Eric was like a mirror—it was just a shiny thing, and it only went one way. But he was looking back at her now, and with interest. This was it. This was what people were talking about when they described falling in love. She was almost watching it happen to herself, like she was on the outside of her body.
So it was a bad time for her phone to ring. Mrs. Amberson’s name popped up on the screen.
“She never leaves you alone, does she?” Eric said, pointing at the screen with a fry.
Scarlett slipped away from the table to answer, just on the outside chance that Mrs. Amberson could somehow sense the fact that Eric was nearby.
“I need you, O’Hara,” she said, urgency rippling through her voice. “Whatever you’re doing, I need you to drop it at once.”
“Are you okay?” Scarlett asked. “Do you need a doctor or something?”
“I need you! Be here within the hour!”
Scarlett returned to the table, completely frazzled.
“Something’s wrong with her,” she said. “She was telling me she needs me, now. I’ve never heard her like this. But I can’t…”
“Don’t worry,” Eric said, all too quickly. “It sounds important. I’ll bring your sister home.”
Oh, no. This could not turn into playtime with Mrs. Amberson and bonding time with Eric and Marlene. But Eric was being his absurdly courteous self and was already on his feet, offering to get someone to wrap up her food. Before she knew it, he had introduced himself at length to the head Powerkid parent and been taken into the fold. He even walked Scarlett out and hailed the cab for her.
“I’ll take good care of her,” he promised, as he helped her in. And with that, Scarlett was speeding across Forty-fourth Street, away from Eric.
THE PLAY’S THE THING TO CATCH THE KING
Mrs. Amberson was sitting up in her bed for once—not smoking on the balcony. She was dressed in a long, vaguely oriental set of baby-blue silk pajamas and a never-before-seen pair of glasses were balanced on the edge of her nose. The silver drapes were closed and the wall sconces were lit, giving the room a warm, rosy glow. The expensive Parisian notebooks and papers were all over the bed, and the Montblanc pen (the one without the inkpot) was out of its box.
It appeared that she had actually been writing something. Even in Scarlett’s flustered, heightened state, this registered as being unusual.
She was also not, as Scarlett had been led to believe, dying.
“I need to talk to you,” she said. “Sit down.”
Scarlett sat down on the dressing table stool opposite the moon mirror. Mrs. Amberson took a moment before speaking, opening and closing the red cigarette case several times. She held it up.
“Did I ever tell you about this case?” she asked. “It’s a very special item…from the thirties, made in Berlin. I saw it in the window of an antique store when I first moved to the city. I promised myself that if I got a big break, I would buy it. I checked on it for months, making sure no one took it. And then one day, I got that big break. I went over to buy it. And it was gone! Gone!”
Scarlett was getting the very annoying feeling that she’d been dragged away from something that might possibly, maybe, have counted as a date with Eric to hear a story about a cigarette case…and this did not make Mrs. Amberson more endearing.
“So how did you get it?” Scarlett asked dutifully.
“Someone bought it for me,” she said. “That very day, to congratulate me. I’d never even told him about it. He just happened to pass the store and saw it. I don’t know how he afforded it, either…”
“Who?”
Best to keep this story motoring along.
“A friend,” Mrs. Amberson said. “Funny thing is…this is the only reason I still smoke. I can’t bear to be without it. It was the first truly beautiful, special thing I’d ever owned.”
She removed a cigarette from it, then tossed her beautiful, special thing across the bed.