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    Whackadoodle Times Galore: Whackadoodle Times
    Whackadoodle Times Galore: Whackadoodle Times
    Whackadoodle Times Galore: Whackadoodle Times
    Ebook711 pages10 hours

    Whackadoodle Times Galore: Whackadoodle Times

    By Kim Antieau

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    About this ebook

    Everyone knows Brooke McMurphy as the mastermind behind the monster hit zombie movies starting with Beauty and the Zombie. Most people don't know the incredible story of Brooke's battles with demons both personal and natural. In this complete edition of the threeWhackadoodle Times novels, we see Brooke's genius in action as well as her courageous side as she copes with a movie exec dressed only in fishnet stockings dead in her bungalow, an earthquake, a blackmailing arsonist daughter, a tsunami, her own addictions, grief that just won't die, and a possible zombie uprising. An outrageous mix of high tragedy and high humor, the Whackadoodle Times trilogy provides more than a peek into the movie business. It will make you cheer and cry and thank your lucky stars that you got to know Brooke McMurphy.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKim Antieau
    Release dateApr 22, 2021
    ISBN9798201528010
    Whackadoodle Times Galore: Whackadoodle Times
    Author

    Kim Antieau

    Kim Antieau is the author of Mercy, Unbound. She lives with her husband in the Pacific Northwest.

    Read more from Kim Antieau

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      Book preview

      Whackadoodle Times Galore - Kim Antieau

      Whackadoodle Times Galore

      Whackadoodle Times Galore

      The Whackadoodle Times Trilogy in One Volume

      Kim Antieau

      Green Snake Publishing

      Also by Kim Antieau

      Novels

      Broken Moon

      Butch

      Coyote Cowgirl

      Deathmark

      The Desert Siren

      The Gaia Websters

      Her Frozen Wild

      Jewelweed Station

      The Jigsaw Woman

      Killing Beauty

      Mercy, Unbound

      The Monster’s Daughter

      Queendom: Feast of the Saints

      The Rift

      Ruby’s Imagine

      Swans in Winter

      Whackadoodle Times

      Whackadoodle Times Two

      Whackadoodle Times Three

      Nonfiction

      Answering the Creative Call

      Certified: Learning to Repair Myself and the World in the Emerald City

      Counting on Wildflowers: An Entanglement

      MommaEarth Goddess Runes

      The Salmon Mysteries: a Reimagining of the Eleusinian Mysteries

      Under the Tucson Moon

      Old Mermaids Books

      The Blue Tail

      Church of the Old Mermaids

      The First Book of Old Mermaids Tales

      The Fish Wife

      An Old Mermaid Journal

      The Old Mermaids Book of Days and Nights

      The Old Mermaids Book of Days and Nights: A Year and a Day Journal

      The Old Mermaids Mystery School

      The Old Mermaids Oracle

      Whackadoodle Times Galore

      by Kim Antieau

      Copyright © 2021 by Kim Antieau

      This volume contains the following novels:

      Whackadoodle Times Copyright © 2012 by Kim Antieau

      Whackadoodle Times Two Copyright © 2015 by Kim Antieau

      Whackadoodle Times Three Copyright © 2020 by Kim Antieau

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission of the author.

      Cover Image © Inara Prusakova | Dreamstime.com

      Special thanks to Nancy Milosevic, Lisa Mills Walters, Tracie Jones, and Ruth Ford Biersdorf.

      Published by Green Snake Publishing.

      www.greensnakepublishing.com

      Contents

      WHACKADOODLE TIMES

      ONE

      TWO

      THREE

      FOUR

      FIVE

      SIX

      SEVEN

      EIGHT

      NINE

      TEN

      ELEVEN

      TWELVE

      WHACKADOODLE TIMES TWO

      ONE

      TWO

      THREE

      FOUR

      FIVE

      SIX

      SEVEN

      EIGHT

      NINE

      TEN

      ELEVEN

      TWELVE

      THIRTEEN

      FOURTEEN

      FIFTEEN

      SIXTEEN

      WHACKADOODLE TIME THREE

      ONE

      TWO

      THREE

      FOUR

      FIVE

      SIX

      SEVEN

      EIGHT

      NINE

      TEN

      ELEVEN

      TWELVE

      THIRTEEN

      FOURTEEN

      FIFTEEN

      SIXTEEN

      SEVENTEEN

      EIGHTEEN

      NINETEEN

      TWENTY

      Afterword

      About the Author

      WHACKADOODLE TIMES

      For

      Guy Boss,

      who laughed

      ONE

      I know exactly when things changed. Most people can’t point to the time and place when life went whackadoodle. I can. I suppose if I were introspective I might be able to look back in time and say that life as we knew it started to dissolve when Henry Ford made the car. Or when God made man. Or Goddess made woman. Or when the first two haploid gametes fused to become a zygote.

      Or when I got married. Had children. Became filled with ennui. Lived the dissipated life.

      Only I wasn’t filled with ennui—grief, maybe, but not ennui—and my life wasn’t any more or less dissipated than anyone else’s. At least anyone else on my block.

      Which could have been part of the problem. I didn’t exactly live on a block. More like an enclave. Or a bunch of big houses in an area that could be called a canyon, mountain, or hill. All of it slip-sliding into the ocean that was getting closer every day. But I digress. I babble. Thus my father’s nickname for me: Brook. I added the e for fun when I was in college. I thought that would stop my classmates from asking me if my brother’s name was Up a Creek or Down the River.

      It wasn’t a very good college.

      Anyway, it began once upon a time, I suppose, the day Hayword and I were sitting out by the pool. It was a beautiful bluish kind of day. (We were close to la-la land at the time, so how blue could it be? It’s what the locals call fog and the scientists call the Earth going to Hell in a hand basket—or in a designer handbag, given we were in Californ-eye-eh.)

      Hayword was working on a script. Yes, I was married to a Hollywood writer—had been one myself for a while. And he was such a cliché, really. One day he was in great demand; the next day no one would return his calls. This made him slightly neurotic and a bit moody. Some might say he was manic-depressive, but he was not. (Can’t a person drink to blackout some days and cry uncontrollably other days without being labeled?)

      Not that Hayword ever drank to a blackout or cried uncontrollably.

      Someone in our house did that, but I don’t think it was Hayword.

      On this particular day, Hayword was working on the rewrite of Powerbreakers, a script that had already sold. He had gotten the money, so he was on his way to the stage when he started to feel guilty over the massive amount of filthy lucre he received for writing down lies. That was how he characterized it. When he was talking to a stud head, he waxed on about story and drama and point of view. When he groused to me, Hayword said he was merely taking out a book from his library of lies—i.e., his brain—and transcribing it.

      Hayword had more guilt about the good life than anyone I had ever met.

      He was like that when we were kids, too. I’d known him since we were in elementary school. He was a little kid—until he hit about thirteen. Then he sprouted up like a big old sunflower. (I’m spinning some corn now because I did grow up in the Midwest.)

      Even when he was little he was always standing up for some cause or some kid, going toe to toe with the bullies that were twice his size. And then there was me, his best friend, motioning the head bully over to me to convince him it would be much more lucrative to let Hayword go. In return, I gave them the answers to some test or paid them a couple of bucks for a week. I’d try to convince Hayword to shut up, but he never would. At least back then. Felt it was his obligation.

      Meanwhile, I was paying off his debts.

      I was glad when he got tall.

      We were sitting by the pool together and the doorbell rang. We both got up to answer it. Hayword may have wanted a break from the manuscript—or maybe he was trying to get away from me. I had been talking about our daughter Fern who was working on her master’s degree in psychology up in Santa Barbara. (I named her Fern because I wanted to carry on the woodland fiction that began with my name. Was Fern grounded, rooted or feathery and wild like her name? No. She was mean. Hadn’t liked me since I birthed her, as far as I could tell.)

      Hayword and I, along with our twelve-year-old son David, lived in an exclusive neighborhood where we knew all our neighbors, and unfortunately, they knew us. We attended each other’s birthday parties, our children’s weddings, and any backyard barbecues, and we occasionally slept with each other’s spouses. And by we, I mean they. Personally, I’d seen too many of them naked and heard their views on too many subjects to be interested in having sex with any of them.

      What I’m saying is that we knew the people in our ’hood. Still, Hayword should not have opened our front door without even looking through the peephole. We did have a gate; Hayword must have left it open. He wanted to pretend he was still that boy from the Midwest who knew and liked everyone. A boy from the Midwest who believed in the goodness of everyone. Every time he started dancing down this particular nostalgic yellow-brick road, I reminded him that he grew up fifty miles from Detroit, which was the murder capital of the world when we were kids.

      Not murder capital of the world, he’d say. Just murder capital of the United States.

      Hayword opened the front door. A startling-looking woman stood on our threshold. She wasn’t dressed like a bag lady, but she was not dressed like anyone I had ever seen in la-la land or environs. She was Caucasian. (I hate that word. Sounds like something out of a police bulletin. That was how I looked at her just then. I wanted to memorize her features in case I had to describe her to a police sketch artist.) So she was white. Probably Irish. English. One of those pale tribes. Yet her skin was slightly brown, as though she’d been climbing a mountain or windsurfing. You know what I mean. She had that burnished look of someone who was outdoors a great deal. Her brown hair was pulled away from her head into those nasty Rasta braids. And she wore some kind of dress—truly nondescript—with pants on beneath it. She had a huge bag slung over her shoulder.

      She did look like a bag lady. Or what I imagined a bag lady looked like. It had been a long while since I had been anywhere bag ladies roamed.

      This woman looked at us with clear blue eyes and said, You got a pool house?

      Conventional wisdom holds that women are sentimental suckers. Let me tell ya: It ain’t so. It’s men. They are such soft touches. Especially when it comes to women. Hayword was no exception. I don’t mean he was leering at this woman. She was probably only a few years younger than I was. Men don’t lust after women my age much, at least not in this town. She looked smart, like she had all her marbles. Hayword probably assumed she was down on her luck. I figured she was selling something.

      Whatever it was, I wasn’t buying.

      Hayword was.

      Sure, we got a pool house, he said. Why?

      I groaned. Whenever he was fully onto the path of the guilty rich guy, he wanted to do good deeds to assuage his conscience.

      It’s not a pool house, I said. Hayword looked at me. It’s more of a garden house.

      Garden? Hayword asked.

      I’m going to put in a garden, I said. Some freaking day I was going to put in a freaking garden.

      So you have a garden house? the woman asked.

      The wind shifted then, and let’s just say that this woman standing on our threshold was a little earthy-smelling. Musky. Sweaty. Not sweat that has turned. But that rich sweaty smell you like on your lover but not on a stranger.

      Look, Eartha, I said, whatever you’re selling—

      I’m not selling, she said. And how did you know my name? My father nicknamed me Earth because I smelled like dirt. I added the ‘a’ so it wouldn’t be so strange. But then people nicknamed me Eartha Kitten. I didn’t really like that. Eartha Cat I can dig. Eartha Jaguar. Eartha Cougar. She was looking at me, but I could tell she was paying attention to my husband, too. I would like to stay in your garden house for a while, she said. I’m a traveller, and I need a rest.

      Just like that? I asked.

      In exchange, she said, I will do one great thing a day for you.

      I looked at my husband. He was smiling. A sly smile. He loved these kinds of distractions.

      Oh yeah? he said. What one great thing would you do today?

      Let me see the garden house, and then I’ll decide.

      Okay, Hayword said.

      Hayword, I said. Are you crazy?

      Excuse us, he said. My wife and I need to discuss this.

      He shut the door gently, with Eartha on one side and us on the other. I stood looking at him with my hands on my hips, like some stereotypical woman in some bad movie who was always ruining the fun of her infantile husband.

      Brooke, he said. This is gold, gold! We’re locked up in this huge house where we never experience real life. Here’s someone offering to do one great thing for us. Even if it’s only for today, don’t you want to see what it is? Just for fun? He grinned. Come on. In the old days, you’d walk a mile for a good time.

      And I’d walk ten miles away from a bad one, I said.

      Let’s see where it goes, he said. Might make a good movie.

      She could be a psychopath, I said. A serial killer.

      I’ll make sure she’s not, he said.

      He opened the door again. Eartha Kitten was still standing there.

      We’ll let you do one great thing, he said, and then we’ll see. First, though, we need to know that you’re not a psychopath, a serial killer, or on the FBI’s most wanted list.

      Oh, good lord, I said. Just stamp sucker on our foreheads.

      Eartha held her bag out to Hayword. You can check for weapons, she said.

      Hayword didn’t take the bag. Neither did I. If this were a movie, millions of people in the audience would be screaming, Don’t, don’t, don’t let her in, you idiot!

      Well, maybe not millions of people.

      She slung the bag over her shoulder again.

      My name is Eartha Jefferson.

      I squinted. Her real name could not be Eartha. She was playing me.

      She seemed to be waiting to hear who we were. I didn’t say a word. Hayword moved out of the way so she could come inside.

      First, the one great thing, he said.

      Eartha stepped into our house. I shook my head. Hayword was going to learn to lock that goddamn gate if I had to shoot him to get him to remember.

      My daft husband led the way through the house and out the back to the pool. Eartha didn’t look to her left or to her right. She wasn’t obviously casing the joint. We walked along the pool and a bit away from the house to the garden house. Hayword opened the door and let Eartha go in first.

      I stayed outside.

      Go sit by the pool, this strange woman said. I’ll be right out with the one great thing. She handed Hayword her bag. He took it this time. He looked at me and grinned. If I hadn’t been so annoyed with him, I would have laughed.

      We went back to the pool and sat in the lounge chairs. Hayword started looking at manuscript pages again. I lay back and wondered if I could really put a garden somewhere back near the pool house. I kept looking over my shoulder to see what Eartha was doing. Probably sticking our valuables under her baggy dress.

      And then she came out of the pool house—garden house—carrying two filled martini glasses. She handed one to me and the other to Hayword. I looked at the drink. It was slightly darker than any martini I had ever had. And the glass was warm. Room-temperature.

      This is your one great thing? I asked.

      How do you know we’re not both recovering alcoholics? Hayword asked, and if I drank this it would end a decade-long dry spell?

      If that’s the case, she said, you might want to do something about that garden house. If you named a place by what was inside it, you’d have to call it the liquor cabinet, not a garden house.

      Hayword laughed.

      There is one caveat, Eartha said. You have a choice. This will be the one great thing for the day. And there are only two glasses of this drink. One each. Once you drink it, it’s done. It’s over. I cannot make another. This one great thing will be gone forever. Do you understand?

      I frowned. I wasn’t sure I understood.

      Hayword said, Sure.

      He downed his martini. Just like that. I yelled his name to stop him, but it was too late. She could have poisoned it. She could have put drugs in it. She could have done anything to it. We had no idea.

      Oh, man, Hayword said. What did you do, Eartha? Brooke, you’ve got to taste this.

      I sighed.

      She’s waiting to see if you’ll go down, Eartha said.

      What? Hayword asked. Oh. He laughed and looked at me. I don’t think she poisoned it.

      I smelled my drink. The scent of juniper went up my nostrils and seemed to tickle my brain a bit. I closed my eyes, carefully brought the glass up to my lips, and took a sip.

      For a moment, I thought I was in a forest. I could smell the pine trees. I could feel the slight chill of the snow on the floor of the forest. And somewhere, someone was brewing hot chocolate.

      The martini had a slight sweet taste of chocolate.

      Just the right amount of gin and vermouth, Hayword said. And maybe lemon? I love lemon. Or orange. I wish I had savored it. That is a continual lesson for me to learn. Savor, savor, savor.

      I took another sip.

      It was the best drink I had ever tasted.

      I held my glass out to Hayword.

      No, Eartha said. One each. That’s yours.

      Do you want the rest of it? I asked.

      I don’t drink, she said. So do we have a deal?

      Hayword looked at me. I looked back at him.

      I want to see some ID, he said to Eartha. And then we’ll take it one day at a time. One great thing at a time.

      Good, she said.

      Hayword stood and reached out his hand to her. I’m Hayword, he said, and this is Brooke.

      Nice to meet you, she said. And now, I’ve been walking for a long while. I’d like to rest.

      I’ll show you where everything is, Hayword said.

      He picked up her bag, and together they went into the garden house.

      I sat in my lounge chair looking at the martini. It was absolutely the best thing I had ever drank. I suddenly felt like that little boy in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe who wants more of the magical Turkish delight the White Witch feeds him. I wanted to keep drinking this liquid forever. I felt so relaxed after two sips. Happy. Contented. I wanted more. And more.

      I stared at the gulp of drink left in the bottom of the glass.

      Who did she think she was creating something like this and only making enough for two drinks?

      I was no Edmund Peevish in Narnia. Or whatever his name was. And she wasn’t the White Witch.

      I tossed the rest of the drink in the straggly bush next to me.

      I gasped. What had I done?

      And then I licked my lips.

      TWO

      I didn’t sleep very well that night. I kept getting up and looking out our window to see what I could see in the garden house. Didn’t see anything. Which made me very suspicious. Maybe Eartha was sitting inside the house, in the dark, figuring out where to plant the listening devices so she could spy on us.

      I even went into David’s room and looked through his window. He sleeps through almost everything, including me tripping over whatever crap he has on his floor.

      I still didn’t see anything.

      Except for David’s electronic whatever flashing under his sheets. I took it out, turned it off, and put it on his desk. Shouldn’t have those things so close to his body so much of the time. He was going to grow an extra appendage.

      Or become as obnoxious as his sister.

      I couldn’t see Eartha or any of her kittens from David’s window either.

      I had tried to recreate her martini—even though I didn’t ordinarily like martinis—so it was possible my psycho-detector was registering more than usual. I was a paranoid drunk.

      I slept through breakfast and David and Hayword heading out for the day. Hayword took David to his private school. We’d sent Fern to public school—because we were idiots trying to remain grounded in our Midwest values or some such shit. But Fern could take care of herself. Someone picked on her, she’d punch them. Or outwit them with her words. She could be very cruel. In fact, for all we knew, she was one of the bullies going after poor defenseless kids like David.

      David was nearly ten years younger than Fern, and we knew when he was an infant that he would have to go to school someplace special. Nurturing. He was a good kid with a soft heart. Sometimes I thought it was because his little brother Alberto died when David was two. He cried for about a year after his brother died.

      We hardly ever talk about Alberto.

      Or what happened afterward. I was a bit depressed and Hayword decided to fuck some woman in his office. She was a young blond actress who wanted him to write a movie for her. I imagine. I don’t really know. He fucked her. I saw it all. Said I’d kill him if he ever did it again. He begged my forgiveness, swore it was his grief, and blah, blah, blah. I let him come home.

      David still cried for a year.

      After that, I told Hayword I needed a space of my own. You know, like Virginia Woolf. I even quoted Virginia Woolf when I was talking to him. Said if I didn’t get a fucking room of my own, I was going to walk into the sea with bricks in my pockets.

      Not that I was asking for Hayword’s permission. We had come to California together as a collaborating couple. Got some points on our very first little film, Love and Other Insanities, so we made a mint right off the bat.

      Hayword really got into the Hollywood thing. He liked to schmooze and bullshit with all the other Hollywood people. Gawd. I hated it. They’d smile to your face and promise you the moon and the next day they’d sell you out or stab you in the back or whatever metaphor you want to use to indicate that on the whole they were a bunch of lying, thieving assholes. At least the ones with money.

      Of course that is a gross generality. It’s a gross generality based on my experiences. I’m not social in that way. And I didn’t like trying to figure out everyone’s motives all the time. So I stopped doing the circuit—as it were—and stopped going to meetings, concentrated on raising the one kid who couldn’t stand me and on birthing a couple of others, one who died and another who was a bit more fragile than was good for—well, good for me. Hayword was already a handful. He wanted constant reassurance from me. Christ, I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to tell him to grow a pair. I knew if his self-esteem went down, I’d be the one propping it back up, and I was tired of it.

      Anyway, David went to a school he liked where the teachers nurtured him and the other students seemed to like him. Hayword took him to school some days; I took him other days. When I couldn’t or didn’t feel like it or I was late getting to my art studio, I sometimes asked Violeta to take him. Violeta was our housekeeper slash cook.

      After I told Hayword I needed a room of my own, I found a house close to the village. It was a small old style ranch house from the 1930s. White with dark green shutters. White picket fence. Looked so California out under tall old sycamore trees, like a place Carol Lombard and Clark Gable would have lived. So I got it. I bought an easel and some paints, pencils, chalk. All the best material. My intentions were pure.

      Thing was, I wasn’t any kind of artist and never have been. I was a pretty good writer when Hayword and I started out. A commercial writer. I knew what kind of scripts to write to create a play or a movie that people would like. Not great art but something entertaining with a bit of heart.

      But I was not an artist, not someone who used a brush and paints. It didn’t matter: Hayword was so guilt-ridden about his affair he never questioned my artistic endeavors.

      My Enclave neighbors, at least the female ones, called my art studio my love nest. I never confirmed or denied. Although sometimes I let on that I didn’t love anyone who came there, but I was fond of all of them.

      And today, one of the ones I was quite fond of was stopping by.

      Hey, no judgement here. Remember my husband fucked a blond bimbo right after I buried my son, while my breasts were still swollen and sore from the milk my child would never drink.

      I figured it was my right to fuck whomever I wanted to fuck until the end of time.

      Anyway, that morning, the first morning of Eartha being in our house—or next to us in our garden house—I woke up with a headache. I stumbled into the bathroom, downed a painkiller, took a shower, then put on sweats. I looked out the window and saw the garden house. Shit. I had nearly forgotten that some little hippy dudette was staying there. Last night I had made Hayword swear he would not leave me alone with her. But he was gone.

      I texted him, You better get your ass back here.

      He texted right back, I’m having my police source check her out. Chill. We’ve still got one great thing coming to us today.

      I’ll ‘chill’ you, buddy, I said.

      I went downstairs. Violeta was working in the kitchen, cleaning up Hayword’s mess, no doubt. She looked up at me and nodded. Her eyes were red. She brought me a cup of coffee and a croissant.

      I told you that you don’t have to wait on me, I said. Although I liked it. I liked someone bringing me things. I liked someone cooking for me. Loved it, actually. Violeta wasn’t much of a cook, but she loved us—or faked it well. It used to matter to me whether she meant it or not. Now I didn’t care. I took everything at face value.

      It was much easier that way.

      Okay, maybe not everything at face value. But Violeta, at least.

      I drank the coffee—gulped it—and pulled flakes of dough off of the croissant and let them melt in my mouth.

      I squinted and looked over at Violeta who was putting dishes into the dishwasher.

      How are you this morning, Violeta?

      She shrugged. Do you want to know?

      I raised an eyebrow. Did I want to know? Hmmm. Well, hell, I had asked the question. I couldn’t get out of it now.

      Yes, of course I want to know.

      "Mi madre is dying, she said. My sister said it’ll be any time now."

      Seemed like Violeta’s mother had been dying for about ten years now. Or had she already died? I bit my tongue so that I didn’t say that out loud. Violeta probably just wanted to go home early. Or take some time off. But she wouldn’t lie about a thing like that, would she?

      No. I would. I had. Once when I stood up one of my love nesters, I told him a relative had died and I had to go out of town unexpectedly. A place where they didn’t have phones. I gave myself points that I picked a relative who was actually dead.

      Shouldn’t you go home then? I said to Violeta. See, this was why everyone who worked for us loved us. (Or pretended they did.) We always did right by them. Be with your family. We’ll be fine.

      She shook her head. She’s in Mexico City, she said. I can’t afford to fly there.

      She couldn’t afford to fly to see her dying mother? That implied we were not paying her a decent living, didn’t it?

      I’ll buy you a ticket, I said. Hayword would love it. Helping the help always made him feel like we were one of the little people again.

      No, she said, shaking her head. I couldn’t leave you now.

      Why not now? I had already gotten up and found my purse, had pulled out the checkbook.

      Mr. Lightman is so worried about this project, she said, and David is having trouble at school. You’ve got the Benefit. The fires, the protests. She shook her head. No. It is not a good time.

      Well, isn’t it too bad your mother couldn’t die on our schedule, I said. I wrote out a check for two thousand dollars. I ripped it out of the checkbook and held it out to her. Is this enough?

      She came and looked at it but didn’t take it.

      That is plenty, she said.

      I set the check on the countertop.

      Mr. Lightman is always worried about some project, I said. And David will survive. I had no idea what trouble he was having at school, but I wasn’t going to ask her. Then she would know I didn’t know what was going on with my own son. I don’t do much at the Benefit except stand around and still look cute. And the fires come every year and someone is always protesting something.

      The fires are bad this year, she said. It feels like the end of the world some days.

      We live in California, I said. Some days it is the end of the world. Please take this money as our gift. I’m so sorry about your mother. Go and stay as long as you like.

      Do you want me to find someone to help you out while I’m gone? Violeta asked.

      I shook my head. Naw, we’ll figure it out. I’d call the agency I used whenever Violeta went on vacation. Go on.

      I’ll finish cleaning up, she said. Thank you. She looked like she wanted to hug me or something. But she didn’t. I left the room. The kitchen felt more like her domain than mine.

      I took my coffee and went outside to sit by the pool. I had two hours before I was meeting Mark P.—my former plumber— down at the art studio. I needed to do some yoga—or pretend to—and shower, put on my makeup so that it didn’t look like I had any on, and make my hair look natural.

      I didn’t feel like doing any of that right then. I sat in the lounge chair and leaned back. I wished my coffee was a gin and tonic. Or one of the martinis Eartha had made. Oh Christ. I had nearly forgotten about her again. I glanced behind me. No activity that I could discern coming from the garden house. I sighed and leaned back again.

      It would be so much easier if I could go to the art studio and fuck Mark P. looking like I did right now. What a relief that would be. I sighed. Who would have ever guessed that I would end up as a Hollywood wife, or an Enclave wife as we sometimes called ourselves?

      Never. Never would have guessed in a million years. Hayword and I had come to California wet behind the ears, certain we were going to change the world and the movie business because we would be different from everyone else here. We didn’t care about money. We didn’t care what people looked like or where they came from.

      We’d been in theater and we wrote this script that we thought was a play, but then we realized it would work better as a movie. Someone knew someone who knew someone. And soon we got an offer on it. The studio loved it, loved every word, every scene. They handed us a contract and asked us how soon we could start on the rewrite.

      Ah, Hollywood.

      Yes, we love you, we really love you the individual you, now go get a face-lift, boob job, penile implant or whatever so you can fit in with everyone else.

      Like I said, I’m not into that life much any more. Not that I don’t look over the scripts Hayword writes. I do. He sends me the file and asks me to check the spelling and grammar. I agree and then I do whatever I can to make the script a bit better. I add the warmth. The humor. I make the characters real.

      Although I would deny that to anyone. Even to Hayword. If he wants to believe the scripts are completely his work, let him. I could give a shit. Men’s egos are so fucking fragile.

      Nope. I didn’t ask for this life but I got it. I’m not complaining. I let it happen, and now I’ve got everything.

      So I am not complaining.

      I supposed I should find out what was happening with David at school before Violeta left. Couldn’t be anything too big. He loved his school. He was always texting or talking to one or more of his classmates on his phone or whatever.

      I wasn’t a fan of most of the new technology. I didn’t even like telephones. But I used mine to make dates. Cancel dates. Never wrote anything sexually explicit or mushy on it. I wasn’t an idiot.

      Wow, that was great.

      I looked over my shoulder and into the sun. I put my hand up to shield my eyes. Eartha was standing there, half-dressed or half-naked, in a yoga outfit. She smiled at me.

      What was great? I asked. Don’t know why.

      Yoga, she said. I did sun yoga out back of the garden house. Man, it is such a cool space. Do you ever do yoga back there?

      No, we’ve got a yoga studio in the house, I said. I pretended to use it every morning. And every Thursday, or almost every Thursday, some of the women from the Enclave came over and we all did yoga together. Or our version of yoga: We drank, smoked some weed, lamented our lost youth and sagging breasts.

      Oh, it’s so much better outside, she said. You can really feel the energies of the Earth.

      Eartha feeling the Earth. How quaint.

      Thank you for your hospitality, Eartha said. I’ve got a good feeling about this place. Some good vibes. Some sadness, that’s true, but good vibrations.

      So the Beach Boys would be happy here, I said.

      Yep, she said without hesitation.

      Almost no one got my ironic sardonic hysterically funny sense of humor. Points for Eartha.

      How are you this morning? she asked. She moved around to the front of me, so I wasn’t staring into the sun.

      It’s a little chaotic today, I said.

      Not for me but for everyone else.

      My phone vibrated. I looked at it. Hayword texted, Philip checked out Eartha. She’s clean as a whistle.

      Anything I can do? Eartha asked.

      I couldn’t smell anything wafting off of her today. Perhaps she had had a shower.

      You can’t cook, can you? I asked.

      Yep, she said. Cooked for a while in New Orleans. Then at a natural foods restaurant in Santa Cruz for a time. Then at a retreat center in Oregon.

      I held up my hand. I don’t need your resume, I said. Our housekeeper has a family emergency and I have to run down to the village. I’m not sure I’ll be back by dinner. I can get some takeout, but you could earn your room and board for the night by making us dinner.

      Oh, Eartha said. I didn’t know I’d get board. I like that. You need a cook, I’m it. Must be divine inspiration that I ended up on your doorstep.

      "How did you end up on our doorstep? I asked. Is this some kind of real life All About Eve? You’ve been waiting in the wings to take over our lives?"

      Eartha sat in the chair across from me—on the edge of it—and looked at me. She shook her head. "What’s All About Eve?"

      The movie, I said. You know, Ann Baxter is Eve and she is a fan of Betty Davis who is a famous theater actor. Eventually she takes over Betty Davis’s life.

      Eartha shrugged. I don’t watch movies.

      "You don’t watch movies? Well, you’ve had to be on this Earth a while. You’ve heard the line, ‘fasten your seat belts; it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.’ That’s from All About Eve."

      Eartha stared at me. Then she started laughing.

      I’m yanking your chain, she said. Yes, I know that movie. I love movies. I loved that movie. But you’re not an actor, right? And neither am I. What about your life would I want to take over?

      Any part of it, I said. I’ve got a pretty nice fucking life.

      I kind of liked that she had tried to fool me. Didn’t know why. Maybe because I figured it meant she was a little deeper than she appeared to be. Or a little meaner.

      Just then Violeta came hurrying out of the house. There’s an emergency over at Mrs. Joan’s place. Someone there called and asked for you to come right over.

      Me? I said. I put my coffee cup on the table and got up. If there’s an emergency, they should call 911.

      Violeta shook her head. They said you should come right away.

      Oh Christ, I said. All right, all right. Violeta, this is Eartha.

      The two women nodded at each other.

      Eartha’s gonna cook for us tonight, I said. Could you show her around before you leave? And Eartha, if I’m not back right away, don’t steal the silver. We’ve got your fingerprints and Hayword already had them and your name run through a database. Yeah, he’s got a friend on the police force. Just like in the movies. Can’t think of any particular movie.

      "Rear Window, Eartha said. Jimmy Stewart’s character had a friend on the police force."

      Yes, and look how well that turned out for the bad guy, I said.

      Violeta stared at me. Eartha laughed.

      I hurried past them and went through the house to our front door. I opened it.

      Mark P. was standing on my front steps.

      What the? I said. I quickly closed the door behind me.

      Hello, Mrs. Lightman, Mark said loudly. Mrs. Donning sent me over to get you. He looked around. I grabbed his arm and pulled him over behind one of our bushes.

      What are you doing here? I asked.

      He was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, a tool-belt hung from his hips, and his short black hair fell down across his forehead. I summed up the clues: He was working.

      I’m working for Mrs. Donning, he said. I think she’s crazy. She’s got her toe stuck in the faucet and she’s completely naked. I was downstairs working on the bathroom and she called me upstairs to help her. She is completely naked.

      You said that twice, I said.

      He looked almost panicked, which was not Mark’s style. He was always cool and collected. Well, almost always. Sometimes when we were naked together, he was definitely hot.

      And she has her hands on herself in all sorts of places I don’t want to see, he said.

      I almost started laughing.

      No need for us to hide in the bushes.

      Okay, well, I gotta see this, I said. Take me to the spectacle.

      We crossed the street and walked down the tree-lined road a bit, then went up a steep drive. I was surprised Mark P. hadn’t driven over to get me. Everyone around here drove everywhere, even if it was only a block away.

      Why’d you call me? I asked before I opened the front door to the Donning house.

      She told me to call you, he said. She said you would understand. She didn’t even want her housekeeper to know.

      The door opened and Joan’s housekeeper Beatriz was standing there. Mark and I hurried inside.

      I smiled at Beatriz and said, I’m going up to see the missus.

      Beatriz gave Mark a dirty look and then walked away from us and went into the kitchen.

      I’ll finish working on the bathroom, he said.

      I looked at him. You gonna be done in time? I asked. Unless this whole thing has turned you off women.

      I haven’t decided yet, he said. He grinned and reached for me.

      I moved away from him and hurried up the stairs. When I got to the top of them, I called out, Joanie, I’m coming in.

      I walked into the master bedroom and went to the partially closed bathroom door and pushed it open.

      I had to laugh. So I did. Joan Donning was lying naked, smoking a cigarette, in her very large white recessed bathtub. Her short black hair was slicked back, and she had on all of her makeup. Her breasts had not slipped to either side of her chest like mine would have if I were in her position. They were pointing at the ceiling, lined up together like two little soldiers waiting for orders.

      Why isn’t there any water in the tub at least? I asked.

      Joan pointed to her feet. One of her toes was in the faucet.

      Have you tried turning on the water? I asked. Maybe the pressure would push your toe out?

      It hurts when I do that.

      I went to the window and opened it. Gawd, Joanie. How can you stand all that smoke?

      Can you bring me a towel at least? she asked.

      I grabbed a plush red towel from the pile near the towel heater. I unfolded it and draped it over her.

      You look even more strange now, I said.

      Do you want me to ring for coffee? Joan asked. Or some breakfast.

      I laughed. Joanie, why did you call me and what is going on?

      She stubbed the cigarette out on the side of the bathtub. The ashes fell into the tub with her. Then she looked around for an ashtray or something to put the stub in. Not seeing anything, she tossed it in the general direction of a small metal trash can in the corner. She missed.

      Ah, Beatriz will get it later, she said. What do you think I was doing? I knew Mark was coming over today. I didn’t really need any work, but I saw him when he came over to fix your plumbing. He looked so scrumptious. You’ve got your love nest. I figured I could have mine.

      I don’t have a love nest, I said. I have an art studio.

      Art studio? she said. Hah! We all call it the fuck studio. Like we call you Fucking Brooke. How do you do it?

      But the plumber? I said, ignoring her question. I was actually feeling her out—so to speak—to figure out if she knew Mark and I were lovers. Or fuckers. Whatever you call two people who occasionally copulate.

      When did you get so snobby? she asked. Didn’t you fuck a preacher one year?

      One summer, I said. But that’s beside the point. I’m not you. You’re the one who told me you’d never even date someone who made less than a million dollars a year. And you’re married to a billionaire. Mark doesn’t make that much.

      I don’t care about how much money he makes! she said. I want to fuck him, not spend him.

      I looked at her.

      And Bernie is not a billionaire, she said. And he’s as flaccid as a ripe banana.

      I groaned. Thank you for that image.

      Come on, Joan said. I’m a young woman. When I was younger, he came so quick he barely had time to insert his penis into my vagina. That wasn’t much fun. And now he’s too flaccid to get it into my vagina.

      I may never have sex again, I said.

      What about Hayword? she asked. Does he still have the wood, or is that why you go outside and play?

      I’m not going to talk about my husband’s sexual prowess, I said. Or about my sex life at all.

      You should be careful with him, Joan said. Katie Williams has been trying to fuck him for years. She’s told me. She thinks he’s a saint for putting up with you. Apparently Ken does not satisfy all of her needs despite the fact that they look like Ken and Barbie dolls together.

      Well, I wish her good luck, I said.

      Joan sighed. The only reason I volunteer to do these benefits is because I keep hoping I’ll find someone to fuck, she said. But the waiters are all so young. They don’t give me a second look.

      I shrugged. Flash some green, I said. I’m sure they’d give you a second look.

      I’m not a prostitute, she said.

      No, that would make you the John. Or the Jill.

      She actually had tears in her eyes. The last time I had seen her cry was. . . . Well, I had never seen her cry.

      She obviously was not going to tell me why she had brought me here. Maybe on some level she considered us friends.

      I went to the medicine cabinet and opened it, found a jar of petroleum jelly. I took it over to the tub, knelt on the floor, then took a gob out and began smearing it on her big toe as far up as I could.

      Mark said you were touching yourself, I said. What was that all about?

      Wow, she said. That feels nice. Could you rub my whole body in that?

      Don’t be gross, I said.

      I had heard that men like to watch women doing it, she said. You know, to ourselves. So that’s what I was doing. Only I got a little carried away and that’s when my toe got stuck and I kind of forgot about Mark.

      I hung my head and laughed. I thought I had a fucked up life.

      You? You have a perfect life. And what I experienced in this bathtub was the best sex I’ve had in years.

      If I cared, I said, that would be incredibly sad. Now move your foot around and see if your toe will come out.

      I can’t, she said. I’ve been here so long I’ve got a cramp. You do it.

      I sighed, took a hold of her heel, and gently moved her foot back and forth.

      Still stuck.

      What if it’s swelling? she said. What if they have to cut off my toe? I should get dressed so that no one sees me like this.

      Let me get some WD-40.

      What’s that?

      Oil. I’ll be right back, I said. I got up and left the bathroom and hurried out of the master bedroom and down to the first floor bathroom where Mark was working. He stood up from the toilet.

      There’s nothing wrong with this toilet or any other part of the bathroom. He looked disgusted. I could have been on a really big job today.

      I didn’t have time for his plumber’s angst.

      You got any WD-40? I asked.

      He pulled a can out of his big ass belt and held it out to me.

      You just happen to have it on you?

      Um, yeah, he said. Half my work involves WD-40. No, more than half. Eighty percent. Hell, if you count today, maybe ninety-eight percent of my on the job problems could be fixed with WD-40.

      Oh my gawd. How much longer was he going to talk about WD-40?

      I took the can from him.

      Do you know how to use it? he asked.

      Yeah, don’t I just pucker up and blow?

      He looked at me. No. You put that little tube where you want the oil to go and then you hit this button.

      Obviously not a movie connoisseur. At least not this morning. He usually got my sense of humor.

      I didn’t really care if he did or didn’t get my humor. He fucked like he wasn’t a movie star. Which was a good thing. Movie stars fucked like they were masturbating. Cared more about how they looked and how they were coming and going than anything else.

      At least that had been my limited experience.

      Movie execs were fast and furious.

      Writers inventive and insecure.

      Politicians? Please. Impotent.

      Directors. Hmmm. Sometimes too instructive.

      Regular actors were too varied to categorize.

      Although, really, I tried to fuck outside the business. Felt too incestuous or something otherwise.

      Plumbers, electricians, teachers, restaurant owners. Male, female. I didn’t care. As long as they didn’t care, except for the short time we were together.

      Not that I was promiscuous. That sounded like I was fucking everyone in sight. Not at all. Not at all. I was fairly monogamous until it was over.

      Oh Christ. I was staring at Mark and imagining him naked while Joan had her toe stuck up her . . . faucet.

      I hurried away, went up the stairs, and back into the master bedroom.

      Where have you been? Joan asked. I think my foot is about to fall off.

      Good, I said. Then this will be over.

      I got on my knees. I raised the little tubing on the can of WD-40. Then I tried to put it up the faucet, near her toe. I was at the wrong angle. I went to the other side of the bathtub. Still wrong.

      Maybe if I do it upside down, I said. I tried that. Pushed the button. Heard something, but nothing came out of the can.

      I think you need to shake it, Joan said.

      I shook it.

      Now try, she said. You better hurry. I’m getting horny again. And you’re looking good this morning. Although you don’t have any makeup on. What’s up with that?

      Oh crap. I didn’t have on any makeup. I was dressed in sweats. And Mark had seen me. That was it. I couldn’t fuck him ever again.

      Don’t look so distressed, Joan said. You look good for someone who hasn’t had any plastic surgery.

      Will you shut the fuck up, I said. I’m trying to get you out of this mess. I can’t find the right angle. I need to be closer to the faucet.

      Shit. I was going to have to get into the bathtub with Joan.

      No one is allowed in my bathtub with their clothes on.

      Joanie, move your left leg over to the right. But keep the towel on. I don’t want a view with a womb.

      All right, all right. Man, you’re cranky in the morning.

      She moved her leg up and over. I climbed into the bathtub. I tried to crouch between her legs and position the WD-40 so I could squirt it. The damn thing was supposed to work at any angle.

      Finally I sat down, leaned over—with Joan’s left leg practically pressed up against my cheek—and I squirted the oil up between her big toe and the faucet.

      That feels nice, Joan said.

      I was about to give it another squirt when the door opened. Bernie Donning stood with his hand on the knob. His mouth fell open. He looked like a deer in headlights.

      I could only imagine what we looked like.

      Just then Joan’s toe slipped out of the faucet and her foot fell down, knocking me back into her, so that she was kind of straddling me backwards.

      Much better. Joan.

      Good. Me.

      May I join you? Bernie.

      We both looked at him.

      I didn’t think he was joking.

      We both started laughing.

      Bernie closed the door, with him on the other side of it.

      I pushed myself up off of Joan and got out of the tub. I held my hand out to her.

      I guess Bernie is a little lonely himself, I said.

      Joan took my hand and I pulled her up. She got out of the tub, wrapped the towel around herself, and then looked down at her toe.

      It’s a little sore, she said. But I’ll live.

      I picked up the cigarette stub and put it in the trash. Not sure why I did that.

      You won’t tell anyone, will you? she asked. She put her arms around me and hugged me tightly. I could feel her hard breasts squishing up next to my . . . lower breasts. You’re the only one in this whole place I can trust. You understand life. You’ve had shit happen to you. The rest of these women are a bunch of bimbos.

      Including you.

      We’re all a bunch of bimbos, I said. Amazon bimbos. She still held on to me.

      Sometimes I’m just so sad, she said.

      I gently pulled away from her. Sadness is contagious, you know.

      Meaningless sex isn’t going to make your sadness any better, I said.

      Wasn’t sure where that had come from. Meaningless sex was a way to pass the time.

      Then I’ll make it meaningful by having a really good time.

      She smiled. The tears were vanquished. She checked her makeup in the mirror. All right. I’ve given you enough thrills for today. I better get dressed. I’m sure you have things to do.

      I slapped her on her towel covered ass. Then I left the bathroom. Beatriz was standing in the bedroom.

      I looked at her. Where’s Mr. Donning? I asked.

      He went back downstairs, she whispered. I told him there were cookies. She does this kind of thing for attention sometimes, you know.

      We walked out of the bedroom and into the hall.

      No, I didn’t know and I didn’t want to know.

      And her wanting attention from that boy, Beatriz said. She made a face. She would look so foolish.

      I glanced at her. Did she know about Mark and me?

      He’s hardly a boy, I said. And—

      She looked at me as we walked down the steps.

      Never mind, I said. I’m glad everything worked out.

      At the bottom of the steps, Beatriz went toward the kitchen while I went out the front door. I walked down the long curving drive. When I was almost at the end, I saw Mark’s truck. He was leaning against it, his arms crossed over his tight white T-shirt. He shook his head when he saw me.

      You went running, I said.

      No, I finished my work, he said. "I always finish my work. Not that

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