Chapter One
Luke
The number calling me for the third time this morning is not one I recognize, but I know exactly who it is.
“Assholes,” I mutter.
My big sausage finger hits “decline call,” and I toss my phone on the passenger seat of my Ford Fairlane. My sweet ride. My baby.
As if in response to my cussing, the GPS lady on the phone says we’re at my destination. I look around, and I’m surprised I haven’t come across a security gate yet for the house I’m supposed to clean today. It’s my first day on a new job.
It’s a moderately nice, older neighborhood. Tall palm trees. A Spanish-style home is nestled into the hillside, set back from the road but not hidden.
The phone rings again as I steer into the driveway. I glance over at it. Could be an agent calling me back, could be the number-spoofing assholes again. Could be someone from my other job, waiting tables, asking if I want to pick up a shift tonight.
Pretty sure I know who it is not. Talent agents I’ve cold-called do not call back on this early in the morning, if they call back at all.
I relax when I recognize the number and answer right away. “Lucille, everything OK?”
The older woman’s voice on the other end is hesitant. “The doctor said I don’t need to come in to have my prescription refilled so I won’t need a ride to the doctor after all. He’s called it in for me; do you think you would have time to pick it up? I don’t want to bother you.”
I chuckle, both relieved and touched that this lovely woman thinks she’s bothering me at all. “Will do, Lucille. The usual pharmacy?”
She gives me the details, then we say goodbye in the usual way. “Take care of yourself, Buster.”
“See you soon, Toots,” I answer.
Lucille, my elderly widowed neighbor, says goodbye to me this way in memory of her late husband Burt, whom she called Buster. So to humor her, I call her Toots. Whatever it takes to make that lady happy, I’ll do it.
She asks for very little except an occasional ride to medical appointments, since the state took her license away due to her deteriorating eyesight. Plus, she can’t afford the fees to use the special transportation for senior citizens, and I really wouldn’t want her to anyway. I’ve become quite protective of her, and I enjoy listening to her stories when I drive her around town.
It might seem weird to people that I let this little old lady use her husband’s pet names on me, but it also serves a greater purpose. The one time she didn’t call me Buster, something sounded very wrong with her breathing. Luckily I picked up on it and called an ambulance; turned out she was having cardiac arrhythmia.
Grinning, I shove my phone back in my pocket. It makes me happy to look out for Lucille. She’s a sweet lady and she has nobody else to take care of her.
I have to be careful how quick I am to answer the phone, though. The assholes who keep calling represent the sketchiest of sketchy storefront lending companies, to whom I fell prey one day in a moment of weakness. I needed money for headshots, so I did what I thought I had to do. I walked in and put my car title up for collateral and got the money for headshots.
But in recent days, that company has started hounding me over the phone day and night. If I could go back in time and not put my Ford Fairlane up as collateral, I would.
I step out and lock up my beautifully restored car, the one that took me across the country to try to make it in Hollywood, and I feel like I should apologize to her. This car represents my one and only happy childhood memory. And what did I do to her? Betrayed her. I shake my head.
Even with decent headshots, I still have zero juice in this town. Not a single call back from auditions. Not so much as a hemorrhoid cream commercial.
And now here I am, having plumped up my résumé to get a second job with a housekeeping company, just to earn enough money to make the phone calls stop.
The phone rings again as I walk up the steps to the rounded front door. I glare at the screen, see the likely-spoofed number, decline the call and silence the phone.
At moments like these, I realize I’m too young to have ever angrily slammed down an old-fashioned telephone receiver. Hanging up and declining calls on smartphones has got to be the most physically unsatisfying response to dickheads ever.
Ever since I stopped answering the lender’s calls, they’ve started spoofing numbers, trying to get me to answer. It’s not lost on me that if I’m spooked away from answering the phone, it really puts a damper on me waiting for acting audition callbacks or prospective agents.
So yeah, it’s a fun little pickle I’ve gotten myself into. Fun as in, the kind of fun I imagine it would be to have my balls waxed.
Honestly, I’m not above extreme manscaping at this point, if it’ll get me a paying acting gig.
Huh. I wonder if I could do porn? Do I want to do porn? I’m not terrible in bed, I don’t think.
Focus, Luke. Focus.
On the clipboard in my hand is the paper they gave me at Maid for You with all the information about today’s client. Stella Monroe. By the look of the house and the name, I’m imagining another sweet little old lady, just like my neighbor Lucille.
Rich or not, I’d better do a great job here today. This is my last chance at eking out some way to make ends meet before I give up and head back to Indiana with my tail between my legs. If this fails, hopefully I’ll make it out of the State of California with my sweet baby Fairlane just ahead of the debt collectors.
I don’t want it to come to that. The lender, Golden State Finance, will get their money. Just have to stop harassing me long enough to let me lock down this job.
When the administrator at Maid for You peered at me over the top of her wire-rimmed glasses and asked me if everything on my application was accurate including my experience, I nodded my head and said yes with a clear conscience.
Have I cleaned houses before? Yes. My own apartment. And Lucille’s, when she went into the hospital after she fell ill.
Did she pay me? Only in banana bread. But it was very good banana bread, which I consider enough to make me a professional housekeeper.
Not enough to pay the rent—which, by the way, I’m also behind on—but it sure filled me up when I was out of grocery money.
Hopefully the little old lady on the other side of this door will like me enough that I can earn more than some homemade banana bread.
As the door opens, I pull myself up to my full height and turn on my most disarming smile, ready to charm the pants off the little old lady.
What an expression.
The woman answering the door is wearing a high-end suit, sexy high heels, and a handbag that looks like it costs more than I’ve made in the past year. Pearls, Rolex watch, the whole nine yards. She is not little, or old, but is very much, in every sense of the word, a lady.
How do I know? Beyond the high-end clothes and jewelry, I see the polished poise and posture of someone who’s either been to finishing school, modeling school, or both. And, surpassing all of that, the kindness and humor in her huge, beautiful eyes make me want to burst into song. She’s the most breathtaking human I’ve ever seen. And I’ve spent a lot of time at auditions, surrounded by models and aspiring actors. Many times I thought about asking for their phone numbers, and some of them have asked me for mine after striking up a friendly conversation.