I know Daddy thinks I wouldn’t be fucking Joshua if I hadn’t been in the movie. He thinks I never would have thought of doing it if I hadn’t acted the part of a girl that does. Daddy has such weird, naive ideas about things. Doesn’t he think I know about sex anyway? Maybe he means that being in the movie made me conceited, but I don’t see what that has to do with Joshua either, and anyway, I didn’t get conceited. People’ve always told me I’m pretty, that’s nothing new, and I don’t care about it. Anyway, Joshua doesn’t think I am that pretty. He says he likes me because I have such a nice personality. He doesn’t even like red hair!
Daddy has so many prejudices. I hope it doesn’t get worse once the movie opens. I don’t see how it could get worse, but you never know.
Saturday Deel had to meet with this group she belongs to at school. They’re going to go on a march against nuclear power next week and they’re planning it now. Deel is very active politically, which pleases Daddy because he used to be too, especially when he was younger, in college. He used to belong to the Young Socialists Club and things like that. Mom had to go down to meet one of the writers for the show about the possibility of them putting her back in as her twin sister. Daddy and I had lunch by ourselves. Then we set out to meet Abigail.
Abigail is a little bit strange looking. She’s really short, only 4 feet 10, and she only weighs around 90 pounds. She has very short black hair with bangs, and big black eyes. She looks like a little kid in a way, especially since she always wears jeans and sneakers and big floppy sweaters that are much too big on her. I used to wonder if she was gay, but she was married once. Now she’s divorced and has this little kid named Kerim.
“She has a hard time,” Daddy said on the way to the show. “It’s really tough.”
“In what way?”
“Well, she has to work very hard, yet she has Kerim who still needs a lot of attention and care.”
“Can’t her husband help her look after him?”
“He lives in Boston . . . he’s not that involved with him. And he doesn’t give her much money.”
“Does she wish she didn’t have him?”
“Oh, no, she’s crazy about him . . . but it’s tough.”
When we got to the show, Abigail was there already. She was wearing this loden coat she has with a hood. When she has the hood on, she looks sort of like a monk. You just see her face with those big eyes peeking out at you. “Hi,” she said.
Kerim was with her. He had the same coat, only in red. They look kind of alike. Kerim is little and thin with shiny black hair too, only he wears glasses. You always feel sorry when you see a really little kid, just five or six, who has to wear glasses.
“It’s nice you could come,” Abigail said. “Look, there’s even a line. I’m so glad for Jenny.”
“Do you know her?” I asked.
“I used to . . . before she got really well known.”
“She’s not that well known,” Daddy said.
“She is, Li . . . you just don’t move in those circles. She’s having a book out in June, and Hallmark wants to use a whole bunch of her photo designs for wallpaper, all that.”
Daddy raised his eyebrows, as though to say, “So what?”
“She’s making money hand over fist,” Abigail said, a little mournfully.
“I make money,” Kerim said. He took a dollar out of his coat pocket to show me. “See.”
“That’s pretty good,” Daddy said. “Did you earn that?”
“I trimmed her prints,” he said, pointing to Abigail.
“He’s a good worker,” Abigail said. “I pay him two dollars an hour.”
“What’re you going to do with the money?” I asked Kerim. He was looking at his dollar.
“I’m going to save it,” he said. “I have a bank account.”
“Me too,” I said. “I have one.” I had a big fight with Daddy about my bank account. He wants to keep it in both our names, mine and his. I don’t think that’s fair. After all, it’s my money, money I earned, so why should his name be on it? I know why he wants it that way. He’s afraid now that I have a lot of money, I’ll run out and spend it on dumb things. But the thing is, if I want to, that’s my business, and who says I will? He says if the movie is a hit, and I make another one, I’ll earn a lot. I only earned $1000 a week on Domestic Arrangements.
“So you’re going to be a star, huh?” Abigail said, smiling at me.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Lionel said the movie’s opening in December.”
“Yeah, we’re going to see it next month. Charlie’s giving a party. He’s the director.”
“Yes, I know Charlie. He’s a friend of mine.”
“Oh? I didn’t know that.”
“He’s a friend of mine,” Kerim said. “He paid me five dollars.”
“For what?” I asked.
“For being quiet while he took a nap.”
“That’s pretty good rates,” Daddy said. “I’ll be quiet for five dollars an hour. How come he had to take a nap?”
“He was tired,” Kerim said.
“He seems very up about the movie,” Abigail said.
“I didn’t know you still saw him that much,” Daddy said.
“Just from time to time . . . God, did he tell you the latest with Beth?”
Daddy shook his head.
“Who’s Beth?” I said.
“His third wife,” Abigail said. “She wants to go to cooking school, and it costs—well, she wants him to pay forty thousand dollars alimony over a three-year period.”
“For cooking school?” Daddy said.
“Evidently that’s what it costs . . . it’s a whole big deal. You have to learn restaurant management and how to make puff pastry for a hundred people.”
“I thought she was just a little slip of a thing,” Daddy said. “I thought her whole aim in life was to gaze at him dotingly.”
“It was,” Abigail said, “but I guess she got fed up with that . . . as even the most doting among us tend to.” She smiled slyly.
Daddy smiled back. “Poor Charlie.”
“Why poor Charlie?” I asked.
“Well, this is his third go-around . . . what comes next?”
“Who was he married to before?” I asked. I thought Charlie was a bachelor. He was always flirting with everyone on the set.
“Let’s see, who was the first one?” Daddy said.
“Jessica,” Abigail said.
“Oh, right . . . the prom queen from his hometown.”
“Then there was, you know, the one with the braid,” Abigail said.
“Suki . . . wasn’t she the one with the cross-eyed kid?”
“Right . . . they corrected it with