Alexander Murphy's Home for Wayward Celebrities

Acknowledgements

Thank you to all of the teachers who got sick so I could substitute teach in their classrooms, especially the ones who did not give me very much to do with their classes other than to babysit independent work, which gave me the free time behind a desk where I wrote the majority of this novel, while still managing to make some money to live by.

Thank you to Federal Express for providing a work environment where I could put my body on autopilot for a significant number of hours and assign my mind onto story tasks, while still managing to make some money to live by.

Thank you to Chapman University's computer lab printers for revising-draft copies.

Thank you to Melissa Quimby, who did an extensive proofread edit on the issues I am pathologically unable to see for myself. If you are a writer in need of an exceptional editor, check her out here: YourIndieEditor.com

Thank you to the readers whose comments and criticisms influenced the 2012-2013 revision (I don’t always take advice, but I like receiving and considering it), including: Jason Mackey, Dan Spencer, Jeffra Hays, and Jeffrey Hannan.

And finally, thank you Diana Soini, of santabarbarahikes.com, who answered a question I had on some flowers. I believe she is the only one I consulted personally for research information I used in the book.

Dedications

For my parents, who made the library a favorite destination, and encouraged everything I have ever done.

And for Steph, the one person I write for, always.

Part One: Design Phase

Chapter One

The road moved with the abrupt seeming randomness of a cat’s tail: sharply curved left, straight, softly curved left, straight, sharply curved right. A rocky little gully for runoff framed the roadside—only leaves within, embrittling in the sun during their long wait to be flushed down with the winter rains—and served as a base for the various privacy inducing walls, progressing from the conceptual boundary of trimmed hedges to the literal wood or finished concrete fences. But it was the sycamore trees that ensured the real privacy with a great contiguous canopy of their palmately lobed leaves that give all other North American trees leaf envy.

And where you can gauge the cat’s adulation or agitation from the tail’s movement, so too, from the backseat of a taxicab, Lucy Faas could tell by the way she swayed and slid gently across the ass-thinned upholstery with the road’s bends, and how the tires purred over the sun-dappled, smooth asphalt, that her driver was getting scratched behind the ears by this drive. The problem this posed was that after her early flight (for her, anything in the AM was early) she was drowsy, and the warm late-summer Montecito air and softly droning taxi threatened to lull her out, something Lucy could not allow to happen.

Lucy was enthusiastic that Alexander’s home lay somewhere ahead in this veritable forest; not that the ride from the Santa Barbara Airport hadn’t held a fleeting promise. She had always dismissed Santa Barbara as an extension of the Southern California stereotype set forth by Los Angeles and Malibu–only with more money and less traffic lanes. It didn’t help that she had only been here once before, when she played the County Bowl, arriving and departing in concealing night which would have blocked any revelatory view regardless had she been peering out of her tour bus’s windows. But the quaint hacienda of an airport led through the adjacent grassy marsh to the freeway, with consistent views of the chaparral shrouded Santa Ynez Mountains that seemed like a great grizzly bear patriarch snuggled up under its favorite old tree-green throw-blanket: worn, so that patches of its auburn (sandstone) body were visible in spots [1].

Then there was the town proper with its distinctive Spanish-tiled roofs, billboards banished by ordinance to hunch sardonically at a twenty mile distance, and the uncouth, spiky heads of palm trees; and even the freeway, with shrub and young tree-landscaped edges and a long, nearly unbroken center of the beautiful but deadly (hence, not derogatively I promise, female) oleander that gave a pleasant green-white-pink blur. Then the transition from Santa Barbara to Montecito lead to a corridor of eucalyptus–the aromatherapeutic leaves almost analgesic, so engrained in childhood respiratory ailments their scent was–where the freeway narrowed to two lanes, and the traffic zippered slow to ensure a lengthy view of the majestic trees, their sword-tongued leaves begging for a koala to spar with. So that finally, when the cab took an exit that professed a college Lucy had never heard of was nearby, she assented that her Santa Barbara stereotyping was pleasantly fallacious.

The drive’s only disappointment to Lucy, curiously, was its ocean views. The freeway felt sunken, trough-like, riding low between dull sound-walls for too long; and after the receding western Mesa hills gave the illusion that the highway was rising more than the road’s actual, gradual, few degrees rise, the ocean views were obstructed and infrequent; when a clean line of sight was enabled the oil derricks on the horizon slayed her enjoyment of the view: great iron ticks latched onto the water, leeching earth’s blood.

Some Riviera!

Departing the freeway it became Montecito, well scrubbed and polished for her arrival–no litter, nary a road-killed varmint or fallen branch unbalancing the roadside composition–and Lucy’s interior compass was sent spinning by its tight winding roads, and their frequent turns.

After a dangerously long blink, eyelids so heavy they pulled her whole head down with their weight, Lucy internally mused, So drowsy…wonder if the cabbie would say anything if I slapped myself across the face? Too lost up here: can’t risk him just throwing the crazy bitch out… and thought it a more prudent idea to begin a conversation to keep herself awake; so with a quick glance down to the cab driver’s identification sheet, she asked him, Have you been a cab driver here long, Jim?

Year and a half, Miss.

Lucy.

Miss Lucy, Jim acknowledged

Lucy waited for the possible recognition in revealing her name, where some would provide her last name for her–the ubiquitous, "Hey, you’re…!–not disappointed when Jim didn’t place her any more eminently. The way you steer your course through here I would’ve guessed you were a veteran. I’ll never be able to find my way out," Lucy said with a concluding whistle to enforce her point.

Oh no, every cabbie in Santa Barbara knows the way to Mr. Murphy’s house. Any street over and I need the map, Jim said, flicking his GPS navigation screen, making another deft and ensured turn onto another avenue indistinguishable to Lucy.

Lucy waited for a clarifying continuance from Jim, but soon realized that he considered his reply sufficiently self-evident. Instead he said, You forget how beautiful it is up here.

Why’s that? she humored him.

People up here don’t usually take cabs. They have their drivers pick ‘em up, or don’t care about paying for airport parking.

From the look of these houses I’d believe it, she said as a house with four garage doors waved smugly to their passing.

Yeah, but it’s the ones you can’t see are the richest, he said with authority, and then appended, "When you just see the gate–or gates–but not the house."

Have you ever been to any of them? she asked, looking for a horse in the riding pen they were then skirting.

Naw, but I got my wife a book one time that was all about estates up here. I remember one was so big it had a tram which took you around it, he answered. She responded with a humph kind of laugh and a Wow.

The view was, sadly, equine free. A handsome mansion with an Elizabethan façade passed on the right, and all Lucy could think of was it couldn’t be that great because you could see it from the road. The cab turned right soon after, before an adobe wall colored Latin-American Pink. From there on she couldn’t see more than a glimpse of any home, flash views lacking any architectural context, only gates with Casa or Villa as a prefix to the structures beyond. After another long straightaway, she became quite ridiculously lost in the snugly wound hills. Time, too, had been given the slip for the moment, as Lucy listened to the cab driver’s pleasant prattling about an annual art show at the college she had never heard of, which was apparently comprised entirely of angels, trusting that he indeed knew his way through the labyrinthine roads despite his lack of an opportunity to visit them with regularity.

Central-Coastal Californian light colored the cab (dare I continue the cat similes?) calico. Lucy was feeling a relaxation above simply the famous temperate climate here already, bolstered by her professional cabbie who, if he did recognize her meager celebrity, kept it to himself, and didn’t worry her by looking in his rearview mirror more than was necessary. She would have to remember to send something, some gift, to her agent, Adam, who had suggested that she ask to stay at the home of someone named Alexander Murphy if she wanted someplace fresh where she might be able to get some work done on her comeback (a term she enjoyed as much as LL Cool J). The idea had seemed like Adam was making a joke at first: inviting oneself to stay at a male stranger’s house. But Adam had managed to navigate her through the treacherous straights of inherent wariness that usually kept her secured in her two-bedroom hermitage, convincing her, somehow to shed her character and borrow a more adventurous one [2]. Lucy couldn’t fathom how he had done it; perhaps it was a conciliatory gesture to the time Adam continued to invest in her, when she had not shown him a profit in how many years now? Was it five? And Adam’s contention that he had sent a few of his clients to the home, with only positive incidents occurring, an that there were always several guests staying with Alexander, male and female, helped convince Lucy that she would not be in anything but the usual amount of danger there.

Along Lucy’s right a stone wall appeared: monolithic without being austere, feeling taller than those previous [3]; she regarded it no more than any of the uncounted walls they had already passed. A minute further an entryway opened in the wall and the cab slowed to a gritted gravel stop before a large wooden gate. Jim the cabbie rolled down his window to face a camera lens and keypad. He pressed a button, and was greeted seconds later with a "Yes?" the word taffy-stretched into a long bell curve. Lucy liked the humorous tone of the speaker, it helped quell the sudden, queasy, extreme close-up Pull upon the fact that she was here at the trailhead of a great mound of unknowns, about to tread her way up in ill-fitting shoes.

Jim yelled to the camera, probably louder than was necessary, Hey Mr. M., I’ve got a Miss Lucy here for you.

Then bring her up to the house, please, Mr. M. replied.

Electric hands pulled the gate open and the cab served as the antonym to Lucy by striding confidently inside.

Chapter Two

The gate opened to reveal a dense colonnade of trees in warm shadow. The lane was paved with grass, with four stripes of light-brown gravel that would narrowly accommodate the wheels of two cars driving in opposite directions. Looking through the gaps between the outside row, Lucy saw only a contiguous profusion of trees, spaced with phenomenal transparency, seeming to reveal more than the twenty or so feet she actually saw; though peering diagonally into the right side of the drive, she caught a glimpse of some dark amorphous shapes that were large enough to be people.

The curve of the sycamore-columned lane was subtle enough that Lucy didn’t realize it was curved until the high hedge wall she noticed rising up far ahead seemed to roll back like a puppet-show curtain, and without warning the lane exploded into an oval meadow, copious with an easy sunlight over bright green grass before the home’s face, the entry and exit lanes splitting to rejoin at the home’s left edge, where the balloon-shaped area burst and a flagstone drive hissed out around the home’s far corner.

The home itself was monumental, too much to process at once: Lucy had to read it slow as a Colin Rowe [4]. The first chapter contained a long, high, three-storied wall leading from the left edge along just short of three quarters of the home’s length, clad in the same honey-brown stone of the fence-wall. Homonym of windows: a small arched window next to a larger round window, mirrored from first floor to second, then eight two-story-high vertical rows of rectangular windows before the circle/arch group is reversed; and there, high on the third story, just under the brown-tiled roof’s overhang, a thin ribbon of windows rushed along in a Morse code stutter. The wall ended, and the second chapter of the home began, short, but containing a lot of important information in its round turret, tapering inward as it rose to its two-story heighth [5]. It was graced with a large eye of rosette window above the mouth of the home’s entryway, reminiscent of a cathedral’s entrance. The third and final chapter of the home rushed past the turret to the right, two stories initially, rising away to a full three-story heighth again toward the rear of the home, the roof in miniature bisecting the front face, shading a row of small windows along the right two-thirds, a large rectangular window lower at right, and a wide lower-case m of color-tinted windows perched above. Lucy discovered there was an addendum to the third chapter as the angle of her view shifted with the cab’s advancement past the front wall’s terminus, further down the home’s side, but the hedge wall obscured critical examination.

The cab spit watermelon seeds of gravel from its tires, halting in front of the entrance steps, and Lucy got out, dragging the bag she had been sharing her seat with across after her into the cut grass and warm wood-scented drive. As it was her only bag, Jim the cabbie stayed in the car to receive his fare with tip, returning a "Thanks" to her offering, and drove the contoured drive away. Lucy turned from the receding cab to have her eyes climb up the turret’s heighth and see a backlit figure bending over the precipice left of the turret, waving to her.

Lucy, the figure’s voice glided down, I’ll be right there. Angling her gaze to follow him Lucy could see the doorway he disappeared through and she thought she saw another figure, large and dim, standing back in a doorway shadow, but dismissed it as a trick of the afternoon light soaring over the home.

The lone palm tree at the corner of the flagstone path waved, also craving Lucy’s attention, but the home was blocking the facilitating breeze that would allow the tree to catch her eye. The curve of the turret’s wall inward toward the door pulled her up the half-dozen entrance steps onto the small front landing instead, where she set her bag down. The turret walls were clad in the same stone as the other walls, but here they were ground smooth and polished. Lucy felt the cool stone as it bent to meet the entrance wall, swiveled her neck to look up the wall’s arch to its apex, where there hung an unlit iron chandelier. On the stone Lucy’s hand drummed the fingering pattern that was the left half of her song Cali—this was a common tendency of her hands, the subconscious metamorphosis of whatever object was under her fingertips into piano keys (anthro-piano-phizing?), manifesting itself whenever her attention abandoned her fingers to study things like new cities, or iron chandeliers. They weren’t always limited to her songs either: she had played a compilation album’s worth of Rufus Wainwright, Ben Folds and Teagan Andrews upon the cab door’s armrest on the airport drive.

Turning towards the door’s silent opening, sensing its inward hinging, Lucy saw a man emerge. Hi—welcome, welcome, he said, reaching quickly with his right hand to grasp and pump her reciprocating hand (Not a piano player, she Holmesed (Sherlock, not John) from his grip) while stooping to scoop up her bag with his left, coming back up to his full impressive height [6] before he had gotten two of the shakes finished in his series of five. I’m Alexander Murphy.

Lucy Faas.

Yes, yes—of course. You could say I’m a bit of a fan.

Oh. Good. Lucy said, mustering pleasantness, thinking dryly, "Great. He’ll probably never leave me alone." Alexander was stout, and almost a foot taller than Lucy’s five-foot seven-and-a-half (you always had to add the half). He had short, dark brown hair the color of stained mahogany that lay forward on his head and branched out over his forehead’s precipice; a deep maroon t-shirt over charcoal trousers over black leather shoes; a cheerful though unimpressive face with five o’clock shadow though it was four; but then Alexander has a pair of unbearably blue eyes: clean sky reflected in mountain lake. A woman could drown in those eyes believing she was floating through air if she were not careful. Lucy sighed imperceptibly through her nose, then followed Alexander’s gentlemanly wave through the threshold, into his home.

Lucy stepped into a cavernous entryway. Bright sunlight obscured what lay ahead at the end of a sweeping right wood-paneled wall, pierced only by a set of double doors about twenty feet from the front door. From the far passage back to where Lucy stood a wide stairway curled, widening where it salaamed the floor. Another passage ducked away from the entryway between the staircase and the wall that completed the space at left. Alexander opened the door that alone broke this final plane—one of those split over-under doors, appropriate, for Lucy saw it sentried a coatroom.

Before entering the coatroom she pivoted to appreciate the rosette window. It was of a contemporary design—not symmetrical, but with the figure of a man and small girl at the lower left, and several smaller scenes radiating out. The depicted two were in poor, but modern dress, and Lucy had just begun searching her memory for what Bible story this might correspond to (such was the sacrosanct feeling of the entryway), when Alexander elucidated, "It’s inspired by Les Misérables."

Ahh.

Are you familiar with the story?

I saw the musical years ago.

It’s my favorite Broadway show and novel.

Ahh, Lucy said in the acknowledgement of strangers compiling information to soon qualify for acquaintanceship.

You can put your coat in here if you like, he said, revealing a room that encompassed the entire space of that wall, containing perhaps fifty coats, many with boots and galoshes set on a metal grating that outlined the floor’s edge. At center was a large wooden bench ringing a solid rectangular cube of backrest that looked like it had been bought at auction from a Rockwellian frozen pond-side ice-skating rink. If you have rain-boots you might want to leave them here too, Alexander said, holding her bag forward in tandem with his suggestion.

I don’t have any—should I get some?

If you’re planning on staying through winter and going outside it’s a really good idea; when the rains come here they come like they have someplace to get to, Alexander said with a boyish smile.

Lucy took another gleaning look around the room, trying to grasp the variegated fullness of the coatroom. She inhaled the cedar and earth smell of the room, then asked, How many people do you have staying here? placing a particular emphasis on the word have.

Uh, Alexander tried to work out a quick head count, matching jacket to guest, I want to say you’ll make twenty-seven.

Wow, was Lucy’s stunned reply.

Yeah, we’re full up. In fact I’ll be putting you up in my room.

Your room? But I don’t want to be putting you out… Lucy started a sincere protest.

Naw, don’t worry about it. I’m just going to bunk in the studio upstairs. My room should actually work out really well for you if you’re going to be composing.

And before she could remonstrate further, he asked, Now, do you want to go straight to your room and freshen up, or do you want the tour?

I’m a little antsy from the trip, so I think if you can handle my bag I can handle the tour. She enforced this concept with a nervous, energized shake from her hair out to her fingertips.

Alright, Alexander said, leading Lucy back into the entryway, Now you have to determine how you want your tour to be. If you want your tour to start gradually then build to a climax, choose the left path. Or, if you wish, there is the immediate gratification of the right path, followed by a diminishing sense of the impressive.

Alexander couldn’t have known how this simple attempt at character-elevating charm would cut Lucy (not deep—merely a kitchen nick, but those sure can sting). For her there wasn’t a choice: she would like to have chosen the left path had things been different—the singular draw of science fiction for her was the idea that somewhere there was an alternate universe where she wasn’t so directed by the negatives of her past. But the right path, with its promise of intense immediacy, was all she knew. The familiar always trumped the desired. She would endure it; today was not the day when she would throw down her spectral oppressors; and so she winced, and with eyes closed, said, The right.

Up or down? The effect is equal.

Another wince, Down.

Alright, if you’re sure. Alexander sensed Lucy’s reticent change in demeanor, without grasping why—feeling the chill without realizing the source of the draft.

Yeah. Let’s go.

Alexander adjusted the strap on Lucy’s bag so it would hang to his lower back instead of his shoulder blades, and slung it over his shoulder, which was oddly intimate and reassuring to Lucy: Alexander carrying her weight. Walking down the hall toward the room of light, Alexander first pointed to the double doors, simply saying, Kitchen, and then to a series of paintings along the wall. The canvases were curved to match the wall’s curve. These are by a local artist, a professor I had at Westmont, Alexander conveyed.

That’s around here, right? The college there was signs for off the freeway? Lucy asked.

Yeah, it’s a couple of roads over, Alexander replied. Having given this tour countless times, he had developed the habit of slowing slightly after drawing attention to something so that the visitor sensed the option to pause or continue on.

Lucy figured she’d have plenty of time for closer inspection on her all too frequent work breaks (victim to the same malaise that kept me from finishing this novel in a reasonable amount of time), and wanted just the general now, not decreasing the rate at which her little legs strode. She liked that though you could see money as the home’s true foundation here was art made locally, not the ostentation or unimaginativeness of a big name artist. Lucy had always been able to recognize that there are ways money can make things very cheap. What did you major in? she asked.

English, he answered.

"Oh yeah? People always assume that if I were to go to college I would study music. But I always figured, ‘Hey, I already know music’; I’d want to study something I don’t know that much…" She got about halfway through the word ‘about’ when her train of thought uncoupled and crashed down into Lost Idea Ravine, as she entered the far room.

"Room?" she internally scoffed, wasn’t the right word for this space before her. Auditorium perhaps; Great Hall might suffice. She definitely thought its name deserved a prefacing signifier like Great, or Grand; if dancing were its purpose, Grand Ballroom would be an appropriate title. This Great/Grand room opened up with a big bang, a universe of hardwood floor expanding rapidly away from her, pushing before it a wall of windows, floor to ceiling, encompassing three high-ceilinged stories, a set of glass double-doors only distinguished by their push-bars in the middle. The wall ended to the right in an enormous fireplace of dark rounded stones and decorated iron fireback, large enough, Lucy suspected, that if Alexander was inclined to roast a wild boar, he would find ample space for his spit.

The next wall to the right of the chimney was constructed of the same stone used on the exterior, with eight stripes of windows which were inset four-feet from the floor up to four-feet from ceiling. Several of the windows were stained glass in various abstract patterns of sharp color in soft shapes, and the top windows were slanted downward to follow the roof’s slope from three stories to two, where the wall ended behind her.

Lucy had to walk well into the room to see that there was a full size bar against the wall to her right, like a real European pub with tiers of various spirits before a mirrored back wall, split into three segments by two wooden glass-door cases housing industrial-sized blenders. Tall stools with wooden back-rests lined the offset counter, topped by a set of ale taps, a soda fountain, and at the end what looked like a Slushee machine swirling blue, green and brownish-red. Under the counter she could see three clear-doored refrigerators: one stacked with bottles of wine and champagne (and sparkling wine for the finicky), another with rows of bottled ales, and the third fridge filled with Jones sodas, juices, iced teas, and water; racks filled with the basic varieties of drinking glasses, and a brushed steel icemaker. The only thing to distinguish this from a working pub was the absence of a cash register.

Stepping further into the Great/Grand room Lucy saw that the ceiling over the bar was, on its opposite side, the second floor landing which served as observation deck and walkway, then continued into an L shape along the left wall, helixed wrought-iron staircases at each tip of the L. The left wall continued the wood paneling of the front hall, and Lucy saw freight-sized elevator doors echo each other on first floor and landing early on the walls, a single door further down on the first floor, and three doors evenly spaced on the landing.

There wasn’t much furniture in the expanse of room: a cluster of couches around the fire place; a few cabinets along the left wall; pool, foosball, and air-hockey tables near the bar; a row of pinball machines and arcade games on the wall behind the tables.

Taking everything in Lucy was exceptionally vulnerable to any belligerent bug’s kamikaze attack to her eyes or mouth.

Here’s the living room, Alexander said with nonchalance.

Damn, Lucy said, "a lot of people could do their living here."

Two-hundred-fifty according to the fire code, Alexander specified.

Damn, she repeated. The room had completely disarmed her of any secondary attention, but she was only overwhelmed by the vast possibilities of the room, the variations of living that could occur here. The space seemed out of our time, of another era; she loved it, but knew she didn’t have the language to defend it against those who would say it was more space than one man needs. It was a pure realm of want.

As the initial wonder subsided she began to notice that there were a few people in the room. "Are you ready to meet some of the other guests? Alexander asked, motioning to a man behind the bar employed with filling a pair of margarita glasses with the green contents of the Slushee machine.

Sure, let’s get it over with.

Alright. Alexander led her over to the man.

Lucy looked more attentively at him, and he looked familiar to her. Really familiar. Too familiar. Wait a minute, oh my God it’s…

Trevor, hi, Alexander said to him.

Trevor replied with Hey Alexander, and a slap to his shoulder.

Trevor D. Lehm, I’d like to introduce you to Lucy Faas.

Singer pianist songwriter Lucy Faas?! Trevor exclaimed, each of his titles on a higher plateau of enthusiasm. I love your music! I’ve been trying to get your song, Being Driven, into one of my movies for years, but there’s always some issue with the studio and your label. Whatever, he dismissed this.

One of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood loved—loved!—her music. Even wanted one of her songs to express something in his films. She couldn’t help but gush.

Are you visiting or staying? big Hollywood movie star Trevor asked.

I’ll be staying, Lucy squeaked. Lucy was the mousy music-girl high school student she had missed out on being through the developing music career that started for her at fifteen, necessitating independent study, finally culminating at seventeen, talking to her star quarterback, prom king, John Hughes flick hero, who was inexplicably excitably interested in her.

Fabulous! Trevor beamed, but then suddenly his countenance fell, and he asked, Are you okay?

Lucy was taken off guard. She had to ask herself, You’re okay, right? Herself answered, Yeah, I think so… There was doubt now.

She answered and asked Trevor, Yeah—why?

His reply, Because you’ll be staying here… didn’t really clarify anything for her. Well, if you ever need to talk, we’re in the Yellow Room. Come over anytime. Really. The genuine look of concern on his face worried her, and she could see that he didn’t really believe that she was okay as she had insisted, that he was going to patiently wait for the possibility to help her out on her timeframe.

I should get back to Steven. It was great meeting you. He reached for her hand and shook it warmly (it was an effort for Lucy to restrain herself from batting Trevor’s hand away and jumping into his arms like a monkey). His hand was manicured and soft, and Lucy felt self-conscious about her piano-hardened fingers. Alexander, Trevor said to him in parting, picked up a small tray with his margaritas and walked off towards the far window-wall doors.

Would you like something to drink? Alexander asked her. We have margaritas, virgin Cherry-Coke and blue raspberry here, pointing to the Slushee machine. Beer, wine, soda, liquor?

Maybe some water. So Trevor Lehm is staying here?

Yeah. He just wrapped a film, and usually when he wraps he likes to spend a few weeks here cocooning with Steven.

Steven is… she hoped she hadn’t guessed right.

His partner. Steven Michaels—he’s an art director.

Lucy’s high school fantasy, as was typical of her fantasies, acquired an inoculating dose of reality. No, she said in much the same way she would have responded if Alexander had said Trevor had cancer. I had no idea.

It’s not public.

But, I mean, there aren’t even any rumors!

They’ve been pretty lucky so far.

Why is he keeping it ‘in the closet’? I mean, he’s a big enough star that he could come out if he wanted to.

He’ll give you a better answer than I can.

God, my mother is going to die! A precursory gossipy glint already graced Lucy’s eye.

Maybe now would be a better time to tell you about my home. Why don’t you sit over here, he waved her over to the nearest barstool. You wanted water, right? He crouched before the appropriate fridge and read out, Aquafina, Evian, Poland Springs, Perrier, or this blue bottled Welsh water.

Lucy sat and swiveled her narrow bottom into her stool. Tap is fine, really.

Oh no, the local water here is way too hard to enjoy.

Whatever one you recommend, then. She looked over at a couple playing air hockey to see if they looked familiar too.

Ice?

No, thanks.

Alexander set an Aquafina bottle in front of her with a pint glass, drew himself a pint from the tap that read Henry Weinhard’s Root Beer, set it down on a cardboard pub coaster, and walked around the bar to meet it. Lucy poured and partook, then glanced over the bottle’s label; despite the bottle’s insistence on a fancily filtered purity, the water tasted metallic—not unpleasantly, almost sweet—and so cold that it felt solid when she swallowed it, like a silver oyster, which then skipped across the excitement-plus-jetlag-churned contents of her stomach. He sat down, took a small sip through the head to avoid a bubble moustache, and started, Okay, now about this home…

Chapter Three

"My first real encounter with celebrities was with Brice Well and Julie Fennelsburg. I had seen celebrities before, of course, all near here. I met Charlton Heston at an art exhibit featuring his wife’s photography at the Westmont Art Gallery, I’ve seen Steve Martin renting at Captain Video, and I’ve seen Kathy Ireland at Vons, but Brice and Jules were the first I had ever interacted with.

"I had spent the sunset at the Biltmore Wall—that’s this popular spot on the beach by the Biltmore Hotel—and was walking back to my car through the long Santa Barbara gloaming where the sun is unrushed for