On Friday morning Grant called to say he had a copy of Lorna's book. He figured I already had plans for the evening but wondered if I could meet somewhere for lunch. "A professional lunch,” he said, as though I would have turned him down otherwise.
I didn’t turn him down. I wanted to read what the book said about both my father and Kari. Despite Maren's assertions that Kari only suffered from bad budgeting, I worried about her. I told Grant I’d meet him at the restaurant.
Maren had relaxed my schedule since I’d returned from my events. I still had dancing, exercising sessions, and studying to do, but my afternoons were free. Maren was spending the day arranging details of Kari’s mega concert in San Diego and had told me that as a reward for my hard work I could go shopping. In fact, she’d left a list of acceptable and unacceptable places.
The restaurant, I noted, was not on the unacceptable list, therefore I technically wasn't disobeying her by going. And the nice thing about living with Maren was that she didn't have paparazzi circling her home. Anyone who was looking for Kari would be camped out by her house.
I called Bao-Zhi to pick me up, texted Kari that I was getting the book from Grant, and headed off.
This time, Grant had purposely chosen an elite restaurant where we could go in through a back door to a private room so we didn’t have to worry about the paparazzi. I'd only been a celebrity for a few days and already I hated them for making my life more complicated.
I told Bao-Zhi he didn’t have to wait for me while I ate; I'd call him when I needed him. I told myself I’d done this because I hated wasting Bao-Zhi’s time. It had nothing to do with the fact that I noticed Grant’s green Jaguar in the parking lot, or that I wanted to prolong my time with him.
Before I’d even gotten out of my car, a guy in a tuxedo came out of the restaurant to greet me. He took me upstairs to a private room overlooking the city. Grant was already there, sitting at the table. Just seeing him, gorgeousness personified, nearly made me stumble. What was God thinking when he created a guy this handsome? He wasn’t a gift to womankind, he was a torture device. I shouldn't be required to look at him when I could never have him.
He smiled, and my heart constricted into a tight knot. I sat down and smiled back.
He slid a two-inch stack of paper to my side of the table. "Here’s what Lorna's written so far. She’s still researching a few of the chapters, so there are some gaps.”
He leaned back in his chair, and I tried not to stare at every movement his broad shoulders made. "I read it last night,” he said.
I skimmed the introduction, which was the story of Kari's firing Lorna because Lorna had tried to help the hospital director do a benefit concert for sick children. I hadn’t gotten far when I let out a sigh of disgust. "This is awful.”
"Which part?”
"The woman doesn’t know how to write. On the first page it says, ‘Caring for no one, the benefit for sick children was turned down.’ Besides the fact that it makes it sound like the benefit cared for no one, the sentence is in passive voice and has a dangling modifier. This sentence alone would raise an English teacher’s blood pressure to dangerous levels.”
Grant picked up his water glass and took a sip. "That’s what bothers you? The dangling modifier in that sentence?”
"Well, I expected the rest to be bad.” I let out a sigh and read on about how Lorna had interviewed several people, etc., etc., and did all sorts of meticulous research.
I moved on to the first chapter, entitled "A Princess Is Born.” It told the story of how Alex Kingsley lost his young wife while out on tour. "His guilt and sorrow overwhelmed him for years,” Lorna wrote. "He compensated by lavishing gifts on his daughter. In terms of toys and clothes, young Kari had double anything she ever wanted, including a slew of nannies, a child-sized Hummer, a personal swimming pool, and a Shetland pony."
It went on cataloging his excesses and told how he threw himself into his work. He came out with four albums in five years. He took Kari and her nanny on tour with him when she was young, some years doing as many as 125 concerts. "Kari learned from the time she was small,” Lorna wrote, "that the only important life was a life onstage.”
A picture of the two of them was included in the text. Kari looked to be about four years old. She wore a cowboy hat, ruffled skirt, and rhinestone boots. He held her up for a crowd to see.
I stared at it and tears pressed against my eyes. The words blurred together and I didn’t even know why I was crying. Was it because I was jealous of the time and attention Kari got from the father I never knew, or the fact that he was so overwhelmed by sorrow and guilt he had wanted to buy for her what she couldn't have, a mother?
I didn’t notice that Grant had come around the table to sit beside me until he spoke. "Maybe this isn’t a good idea. You're already crying, and you're not even to the bad stuff. Why don’t you read it later?"
But I didn't want to wait. "I’ll be okay.”
I wasn’t okay. I got to the sentence, "Friends tried to convince Alex to remarry, but his answer was always the same: He’d already proved he didn’t make a good husband.” And I cried all over again. This time I knew why. I cried for my mother and her dreams that didn't happen, that couldn’t have happened because she'd pinned them on somebody too broken and unattainable to love her back.
Grant slid the manuscript away from me. “Look, this kind of stuff is said about celebrities all the time. People don't believe half of it, and they don't care about the rest. Even if it does go to press, you’re not going to lose any fans over this stupid book.”
I nodded, but the tears came anyway. I hated that I'd become so emotional here in California. I hadn’t cried this much over my father since elementary school, when I first realized I could never go to the donuts-for-dads-and-kids breakfasts they put on once a year.
Grant slid his arm around me, and I laid my head against his shoulder. I shouldn’t have leaned into him that way, but I couldn't help myself. I wanted the comfort.
He said, "Really, don’t worry about it. A tabloid once said my songs had subliminal messages that brainwashed kids so they'd do whatever I asked. Apparently I'm trying to take over the free world with an army of junior high zombies.” He ran his hand through the ends of my hair, loosely winding his fingers through it. "I had it framed and sent to my high school civics teacher. She thought I'd never paid attention to any of her lectures on government."
I laughed even though I was still crying, but I couldn’t speak. I grabbed my napkin from the table and used it to dab the tears off my face. You spend that much time buffing, concealing, and bronzing your skin and you don’t want it ruined by one outburst. "It's just hard to read about my father.” I could tell Grant didn’t understand, so I added, "Things are distant between us right now, but I don’t want them to be. At least I don't think I want them to be. That's part of the problem—I don't know—and I want to talk to him, but I'm afraid to. I don’t know what he’ll say. I don't even know if he wants me in his life."
Somewhere in that I’d quit being Kari and had become Alexia. My mom had said she hadn’t told me Alex Kingsley was my father because she didn’t want me to be devastated if he rejected me. It seemed like a cop-out answer at the time, but now that I was here in California, counting down the days until I met him, I realized my mother was right.
"Of course your dad wants you in his life," Grant said. And then he pulled me even closer. I let my head fall against his shoulder and stayed there listening to him breathe, feeling the slow rise and release of his chest. Neither of us moved for a long time.