Before we left I wrote “Mr. Vargas” in Sharpie on Frank’s hand.
FRANK SAT WITH Mr. Vargas and talked to him all the way to the department store. Nobody bothered staring at Frank and his seatmate, Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein, because Fake Marilyn Monroe and Artificial Charlie Chaplin, en route to Mann’s Chinese Theatre to pose for photographs with tourists, were in the back of the bus sharing a newspaper. As they left, I nudged Mr. Vargas to make sure he noticed. We watched the two of them walk away from their stop together, holding hands. I couldn’t help thinking things might have worked out differently for real Marilyn if she’d gone for a guy with a sense of humor while she was alive.
At the mall, though, locals you’d think would be jaded were thrilled to see Half-Pint E. F. Hutton, monocle screwed into his eye socket and holding his Grandpa Einstein’s hand. They parted in front of us and spun in our wake in sync, like choreography for a 1950s Warner Brothers musical.
Once we were inside the store, Frank stopped abruptly. “Hey. Wait a minute,” he said. “Is this the kind of place where a fellow could buy a trench coat, or is it all handbags and lipstick?”
“There must be a men’s department,” Mr. Vargas said, “where I could also buy pajamas.”
“I thought you wanted to find Xander, Frank,” I said.
“I do, but I thought we could squeeze in a little shopping, after, since we’re here. My mother hates department stores. I don’t know why. Agreed, a Los Angeles department store is not as exciting as a souk in Casablanca, but it does have indoor plumbing.” Then Frank Banning, Private Eye, held up his finger and got a look of intense concentration on his face. “Shhh,” he said even though he’d been the one doing all the talking. “Do you hear it? Xander’s here.”
“I hear it,” I said. I did. The joyful abandon, like a golden retriever fetching an old tennis ball.
“By the escalators,” Frank said. “Over there.” He aimed his elbow to direct our gaze. It wasn’t that much better than pointing with his finger, but still, I can’t tell you how gratifying that concession to good manners was to me. There might be hope yet that Frank would remember to chew with his mouth closed someday, too.
He was right. Xander was over there. In a tux, at a baby grand. A lot of the shoppers brushed past without a second look. The armchairs around the piano, however, were filled with old ladies who’d lost interest in fashion around Mamie Eisenhower’s time but who still had it in them to appreciate a handsome man at a piano. Alec sat on the piano bench next to Xander looking unbearably adorable in a tiny tux of his own. Things were looking up for Xander’s net worth. I had a feeling he’d earn a wad of cash big enough to carry him at least as far as Akron before this performance was over.
He finished the piece with a flourish and acknowledged the spatters of applause. “I’m Xander Devlin,” he said, then swept his palm to Sara, standing in the curve of the piano. “My darling sister Sara, who puts up with all my nonsense.” Then he put the hand on Alec’s curls. “And, of course, the star of any show, my nephew Alec.”
Frank, who’d been watching the whole performance through his monocle, lowered it and said to me, “Aha! Brother and sister. Like William and Eleanor Powell.”
Xander locked eyes with me across the piano. He bolted, abandoning his nephew on the piano bench. He beat it out of there so fast that the two adoring old ladies he dove between checked to see if he’d made off with their handbags. Sure, he was handsome, but those ladies weren’t born yesterday.
“Xander!” Frank yelled. “No running!” Then the kid took off after him.
“I have to—” I said to Mr. Vargas.
“—go after him,” he said. “Yes. I know. Run.”
( 25 )
IF YOU ASKED me why a chicken would want to cross the road in Los Angeles, I would have to say it was because that chicken loved pancakes so much he wanted to be one.
Frank chased Xander out of the mall and down the diagonal slash of the glass-encased escalators splitting its facade. Many double-wide shoppers-with-bags placidly taking in the palm trees and Hollywood Hills got their zen in a wad when I elbowed past, hot on his trail. I burst out onto the street to a symphony of screaming brakes and horns honking. Xander was across the way already. Frank was frozen in the middle of the road, a bus lurched to a stop so close to him that the kid could have reached out and rung the handlebar bell on the bike in the rack on its front.