"Oh, Abby." Julia gathered herself. "That's great. I don't know how to thank you."
"I told you," Abby joked. "Sell lots of books!"
"Okay." Julia laughed. "I'll get right on that."
She hung up the phone, checked the board behind the airline counter, and saw that her layover had been extended by two hours. Great, Julia thought. I'm behind before I even get started.
She reached for her notebook, knowing that she needed to write, especially if she wanted to truly impress Abby and have an early draft when she came back through New York. But Julia didn't feel like writing. For the first time in her career, she had writer's block. She'd told herself that once she started traveling, the inspiration would flow, but so far all she'd felt had been jet lag and turbulence. Inspiration was like lost luggage, and she traveled on, hoping it would turn up somewhere along the way.
She fumbled in her purse for a pen, but found her deck of cards instead, and couldn't resist laying out a hand of solitaire. The cards fell beautifully into place, so she Hew through them, her hands moving without the benefit of her mind, her entire existence on cruise control. Then, as soon as the easy moves tan, I look at the eyes and smile he inherited from his father and I realize that like it or not, when AmufnJ y> close look at Lance Collins, fame is probably ¦ i i
Unlike the barrage of reality-show sti , ,i . generation wannabes, this "It" boy is de-.tn . i.« % ,¦<, but just another fad. ( ? )
Julia dropped the magazine. The woman looked at her then at Lance's picture on the cover. "He's handsome, UH dear?" the woman asked.
"I know him," Julia mumbled.
"Oh, do you now? Tell me." The woman Irritate assuming ( ? ) the posture of a confidant. "How well you know him?"
"I love him," Julia said, surprising easy.
The woman took in a sharp breath. "What a handsome pair you must make." But Julia was crying.
"Oh." The woman leaned closer. "What have I said?"
"Nothing," Julia said. "Nothing." She clutched the magazine and started to leave. Then, remembering, she turned to the woman and asked, "May I have this?"
"Well, yes, dear. Of course."
"Thank you," Julia said. She was already running, dodging the commuters in their business suits and the vacationers wearing Hard Rock Cafe T-shirts and Yankees caps. Her jacket flapped behind her. Her carry-on bag banged against her side, but she didn't care. She just kept running.
The cab turned from Canal Street onto West Broadway. She didn't know where the movie set was, somewhere in TriBeCa. She didn't know if he'd want to see her, probably not. She didn't even know if she had time to see him and make it back to the airport to catch her plane. The craziest thing of all was that she didn't care.
"Lady, I don't know where we're going," the driver said again.
"They're filming a movie down here somewhere," she told him once more. "Just circle around." "But, lady, that could be . . ."
She slammed a fifty-dollar bill against the partition and said, "I have a lot of money, and I'm willing to use it to find that set!"
The driver raised his eyebrows and his voice. "Okay," he said. "Your nickel."
They made another turn onto a smaller street, and Julia saw barricades up ahead and a throng people standing as if they were waiting for something or someone. A cop was directing traffic, trying to make the cab turn around. The driver rolled down his window to speak to the uniformed officer.
"Gotta turn around, folks," the officer said.
"What's going on?" Julia asked from the backseat.
"Street's blocked off shooting a movie."
And with that, Julia tossed money toward the driver and was out the door. She ran the half block between the cab and the crowd. She clutched the magazine, remembering its words: his famous father's name, fame the easy way. Fame that had nothing to do with her.
She gripped the magazine and ran harder, pushing through the crowd of onlookers and tans, celebrity junkies, and starving hopefuls. She hoped no one would recognize her as she pushed on through the belly-hartiig ( ? ), tattoo-boasting, cappuccino-drinking masses until she reached a very large man in a very small T-shirt who was manning the gap in the barricades.
"I need to see Lance Collins," she said, gasping for breath.
"Yeah, lady. You and every other warm blooded female in the country." Seeing the issue of Fad in her hands, he added, "I love it when the pretty boys are on magazine covers during filming. It makes my life so fun."
"But, I know him," Julia said. "I'm"—she lowered her voice—"Julia James."
He looked through a list of names on a clipboard. "Sorry," he said.
"But I'm—"
"Look, lady, I don't care if you're Cleopatra, you don't get in unless you're on the list." "But I'm a friend of his."
"Then you have his contact info and you don't need to go through me." "No! I—"
"You're leaving." He nudged her slightly back into the throng of women—younger, thinner, more worldly women who would probably never make Lance break-and-enter.
Julia racked her brain. What would Nina do? Or Ro-Ro and the Georgias? Or, Julia asked herself, Veronica?
She heard a voice behind her. "Hey, Julia?"
She whirled, praying it would be Lance. It wasn't.
The man was pushing toward her and, although Julia remembered him clearly—it's hard to forget the face of a man who shows up outside a police station with your luggage, airplane tickets, and a running cab—his name was a mystery. She mentally snapped her fingers, trying to remember. She knew he was a member of "New York's thespian underground," but other than that, she was drawing a total blank, so she offered a nice, generic, "Hi!"
"It really is you," he said. Then he pointed to the barriers. "Why haven't you gone in?"
"My name isn't on the list."
"Oh, the list." He gave her a wave. "Come on."
The man guarding the barricades waved at her companion when they approached and said, "Hey, Tom."
Tom!
Then barricade man noticed Julia and asked, "Is she cool?"
Great! I'm at the crossroads of my life, and safe passage depends on being classified as "cool"?
Tom nodded and said, "You don't recognize her?" Then he added, "She's cool."
I am? Julia wondered, but before she knew it, they were inside.
"This is a big set—lots of stars—so security is key," Tom explained as they walked down the closed portion of the street, past trailers and vans and miles and miles of cables. Julia looked around and realized what a far cry that life was from her little farm. She saw millions of dollars' worth of equipment and dozens of hurrying people, and she wondered how long a man like Lance Collins could possibly stay satisfied living in a broken-down house in Oklahoma. She looked at Tom and asked, "He's doing well, then?"