CHAPTER ONE
"Yoohoo! Over here, Maddie!"
My mother was waving both her arms frantically in the air, as if signaling a 747 on the tarmac at LAX. Several heads in the studio audience swiveled to see who she was hailing. I gave a one finger wave back in acknowledgement, secretly hoping that gave her the signal that her heroic attempts to flag me down had been seen. No such luck. Her arms continued flapping. More heads swiveled.
Dorothy Rosenblatt, my mother's best friend, must have thought Mom wasn't trying hard enough because she joined the party by waving a yellow scarf in the air, the same bright color as the muumuu she was wearing over her ample frame. Mrs. Rosenblatt was a part-time Venice Beach psychic whose second career was marrying and divorcing the unsuspecting men of Los Angeles. Her hair was Lucille Ball red, her jewelry as colorful as her language, and her horseradish gefilte fish burritos could put hair on your chest. Mrs. R didn't do subtle.
"Maddie!" Mrs. Rosenblatt yelled as she patted the seat next to hers. The loose flesh on her arms jiggled at a faster pace than a belly dancer, making me wish she'd invest in muumuus with sleeves. "We've saved places for both you and Dana."
"Excuse me," I said politely to a twenty-something man sporting a bleached blond Mohawk and the woman next to him who had a variety of colorful tattoos running up and down both her arms. They rose to let me pass, and as soon as I was within reach, my mother pulled me down into the seat next to hers.
"Isn't it wonderful, dear?" She gripped my hand so tightly that I lost all feeling for a second. Mom let go to adjust the blue and white T-shirt she was wearing, with Alex Trebek's face prominently displayed in the center. There was a bubble coming out of his mouth with the words The answer is… Mom had paired the shirt with a pair of black stirrup pants and pink high-top sneakers that matched the pink eyeshadow extending from her lids all the way to her plucked eyebrows. Mom's style was once the height of fashion but had stalled like a Volvo station wagon somewhere around 1986.
"I can't believe we're actually here," she said, her gaze whipping around the audience—who had thankfully stopped staring in our direction and had their attention on the sound stage in front of us where the crew were making last-minute adjustments before the show started taping.
"It is exciting," I admitted, feeling the catchy exuberance. We were on the set of the famous Jeopardy! game show that morning, taping a special Celebrity Jeopardy! Tournament to air later that evening, featuring notable names in Los Angeles. My stepfather, Ralph, had been lucky enough to be picked to compete, and Mom, Mrs. R, and I had all scored tickets to come cheer him on.
Mom's hazel green eyes, which I had inherited, studied me carefully. "Where's Dana? She is coming, right?"
My best friend, Dana Dashel, who had recently become Mrs. Ricky Montgomery, was a working actress, and as luck would have it, she happened to be filming a TV pilot in one of the other studios on the same production lot.
"She'll be here, Mom," I assured her. "She had an early call time, but she promised she could slip away. I know she's been looking forward to it."
"Who hasn't?" Mrs. Rosenblatt asked. "It's not every day that your best friend's stepfather is a contestant on Jeopardy!"
She spoke loudly and purposely, clearly hoping to attract the attention of others seated nearby. As if her outfit hadn't already done that.
Mom chewed on her lower lip. "I hope he's not nervous backstage. This is so important to Ralph—err, Fernando," she corrected herself.
Although I affectionately referred to my stepfather as Faux Dad, most people knew him as Fernando, proprietor of the hair salon by the same name, which was located near the elite Rodeo Drive and catered to the rich, beautiful, and Botoxed of Beverly Hills. Over the years his customers had run the gamut from the wealthy and obscure to moderately famous to downright celebrities. He even claimed to have done a cut and color on Barbra Streisand—or Babs, as he affectionately called her—when her normal hairstylist had come down with the flu just before a big charity luncheon.
Fernando had started life as Ralph Hoggington from the Midwest. But when he'd hit the glamorous West Coast, he'd quickly realized that no one in Beverly Hills would frequent an exclusive salon called Ralph's (or Hoggington's for that matter), so he'd reinvented himself as the European hair sculptor, Fernando. His new persona included a fake Spanish ancestry, regular spray tans to keep the Midwestern farm boy out of his complexion, and black hair coloring to complete the exotic look.
Last month, Faux Dad had been chosen out of dozens of celebrity candidates to appear on the iconic game show, and being a huge fan, he'd jumped at the chance. The fact that any winnings he amassed would be donated to a charity of his choice was the cherry on top.
I crossed one brown suede boot over the other and smoothed out the olive pencil skirt that I'd worn with a sleeveless white lace blouse. "Do we know who he's competing against yet?" I asked.
Mrs. Rosenblatt stretched out her arm, which contained several plastic bracelets that formed the color of a rainbow, and pointed at the stage. "I overheard someone mention that Angela Gold's in Contestant Row tonight. But I'm not sure who the other celebrity is."
"I just love Angela," Mom gushed. "Her character has already been in a coma three times. She's so believable in the role." Mom squeezed my hand. "I hope your stepfather can get her autograph for me."
Angela Gold played the character of Kaley Kingston on All My Husbands, a long running soap opera. Kaley was rich, ruthless, and deliciously devious. Like Dana's pilot, All My Husbands also aired on the same network as Jeopardy!, probably a contributing factor to Angela's addition to the show.
A murmur went through our row as Dana, as promised, arrived through the side door and made her way toward us. Thanks to her last couple of movie roles, most notably as the star of the Lord of the Throne fantasy films, people were starting to recognize her in public. In fact, Mohawk Man at the end of our row asked for her autograph as she passed by. Dana flushed and smiled as she obliged, but I knew that she was secretly loving the attention.
Dana and I had been best friends since middle school, and we'd grown close enough through the years since that we were more like sisters than just friends. A former aerobics instructor, it had always been Dana's dream to be an actress. And while it hadn't been an overnight success for her, she'd worked hard and was finally starting to see her career take off. Much the same way my business designing women's shoes had taken some time to grow but was now finally at a place where I could spend half the day designing, half the day with my preschool aged twins, Max and Livvie, and still have enough in my husband's and my bank account to pay the bills. And even take an occasional day off to support the extended family, like today.
Dana settled in the seat between Mrs. Rosenblatt and me, her strawberry blonde ponytail swishing back and forth. She was wearing a cropped pink shirt with designer jeans that were probably a size zero. Dana had about one percent of total body fat, and if I didn't love her so much it would have been easy to hate her.
She tucked her purse under the chair in front of her. "I saw Alex Trebek this morning arriving on the lot. He smiled at me."