American Girls(48)

“And this all happened since you came out here?”

“Yes.”

The sad-puppy look again. Not what I had wanted. I did not want to be his good deed for the day. I wanted to be something more.

We parked near the entrance, and I heard my sister before I saw her. She was yelling at Roger, “Only you would pay a poor person to mug someone and think they wouldn’t actually mug them. You get that people aren’t pretending to be poor, right?” The hospital lights had a blue-tinged fluorescence, and Delia looked like something that had crossed over from hell. Her hair was wild; her face was swollen around a tent of a splint pitched on the center of her face.

“If my face is ruined, I will sue you for every penny I could have made in the best of all possible worlds.”

Roger looked desperate. I dare say he was happy to see me.

“Ohmigod.” I hugged her. She hugged me hard and started to cry a little. “What happened?”

“You can leave now,” she said to Roger, and pointed at the exit.

“I cannot leave you. Not until you forgive me.”

“If you don’t leave, I’m going to start screaming, and I’m not going to stop.”

Roger left.

Delia hadn’t even noticed Jeremy, and he seemed to go unrecognized in this place where everyone had something more pressing on their minds.

“You got mugged,” Jeremy finally said. “Have you talked to the cops?”

“They just left. So Roger, because he wants to be super Method and cinema verité or God knows what, he decides that he’ll pay one of the homeless men, someone he just met this morning, to follow me. To give me a genuine scare. And the dickwad tried to take my purse, so I grabbed it and went for his balls. And he punches me in the face. He punches me in the face and says, ‘God, you’re a bitch.’ He took off with my purse, and instead of chasing him, Roger says to me—and I could not make this up—‘I’m so sorry. I never thought he would do something like that.’”

“Man,” Jeremy said. “That’s a problem.”

“What am I going to do? They called me this morning to say that I got the herpes. I can’t lose that. How can I work like this? I can’t even f*cking breathe.”

Jeremy looked confused.

“A herpes commercial,” I said. Delia sounded crazy, like one of those old people who talk about people getting “the AIDS.” I was trying not to crack up, and so was Jeremy.

“So is he a Method director or something?” Jeremy was looking at my sister’s face, which was still beautiful around the edges.

“He’s a Method *,” she said. “And a freaking Brando at that.”

Jeremy laughed. I wondered if Delia knew who he was. As “the twins” they got stopped on the streets a hundred times a day, but when you separated Jeremy out, he became less recognizable by factors of ten.

“Can you give us a ride home?” Delia asked.

“Sure,” Jeremy said.

“And please don’t mention anything to Dex but that I got mugged, okay?”

I wasn’t sure which of us she was talking to, but we both nodded.

Jeremy drove us, tortoise-style, up the winding hills to my sister’s apartment. As we climbed the last hill, the red Honda that Delia claimed I was hallucinating sat parked outside. I wanted to wake her up, but she was finally asleep and moaning in pain. I poked Jeremy and pointed, then shook my head so that he wouldn’t say anything. The car sped away as we approached.

“That car,” I whispered. “It parks outside her place. For weeks, it’s been there. She gave me some BS story about an actress who wanted some part that she got, but I don’t believe her.”

Jeremy shook his head slowly. “Stalkers are no joke. Have you called the police?”

“And said what? A car drives by our house, one that my sister won’t even acknowledge exists?”

“You can tell her that I saw it. You should contact someone. This is kind of a secluded spot.”

“Tell me about it.”

Delia woke up long enough to stumble through the doorway and collapse on the couch. Jeremy made sure that we had ice, Advil, and food.

“I don’t feel great about leaving you here,” he said. “Is Dex coming?”

“I think so. I hope so.”

“Call the set if anything looks weird. Anything at all. I’m due back in an hour, but I’ll wait around in my car to see if anything happens.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Seriously. That’s really nice.”

“It’s no big deal.”

And I could tell that he meant it. It wasn’t a big deal, it was what any decent human being would do, given the circumstances. But decent human beings seemed hard to come by, and his was such unlikely packaging. For a minute I thought he was going to hug me, and instead of opening my arms, like a normal human female, I panicked. I bent down to scratch my knee, which kind of itched, because even more than I wanted him to touch me, I didn’t want him to blow me off.

When I stood back up he was still there, and he rested his hands on my shoulders and held them there. I could barely breathe. If I was supposed to do something next, I had no idea what it was. After what seemed like forever, he squeezed my shoulders gently and ran his hands down both of my arms. Even though he’d only touched my arms, the whole inside of my body felt electric, lit up. And just when I’d almost convinced myself that he was about to draw me close and kiss me, he had opened the door and was waving good-bye.