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Jackie looked at me for a few seconds longer, and then, quite suddenly, she leaned forward and kissed me on the lips.
“I believe you,” she said.
My mouth was filled with the taste of her lipstick, and my brain was filled with numb shock. I couldn’t think at all for what seemed like a very long time, and when I finally got out one coherent thought, all that came out was, “I, um, I’ll get out. And check …” And then I saw myself jerk into motion like a clumsy teenaged robot, fumbling the door open and stepping out into the street.
The crowd had been watching the car and holding its breath, and there was a large sigh of indifference when I climbed out. Of course it hurt, but after all, they hadn’t seen my cameo yet. I wondered if they had seen Jackie kiss me. I looked back at the car; the tint of the windows was too dark to see through. That explained it; if they had seen her kiss me they probably would have cheered.
I went through the dumb show of checking the area for any signs of Patrick. I found none: no seaweed, crabs, or drag marks from an anchor chain, so I went back to the car and opened the door. “All clear,” I said, and Jackie held out her hand and slid across the seat.
“You have lipstick on your mouth,” she said softly, and smiled. I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and took her hand, helping her out onto the sidewalk. There was a two-second pause in which we managed to get a full step toward the front door before somebody yelled, “Jackie Forrest!” and then there really was something to protect Jackie from. The crowd surged toward us, humming like a beehive on steroids. Dozens of cameras flashed right in my face, and for a moment I couldn’t see anything but wildly jiggling purple dots. I blinked, and my sight came back just in time for me to duck as a barrage of hands shot out at us, clutching programs to be autographed and fluttering like rabid birds, and cries of, “Jackie! Jackie!” battered our ears in every possible accent, from Cuban and Haitian to redneck.
Jackie performed the remarkable feat of smiling broadly at the crowd and ignoring them at the same time, hunching her head down and forward and clinging to my arm as if I was the last chunk of crumbling riverbank and the only thing keeping her from being swept away to her death. I tried to shield her as much as I could while still moving forward, but it was impossible to cover all of her, and I could only hope she wasn’t taking the kind of casual, accidental beating I was getting from the star-crazed fans.
Somehow we made it to the door of the theater through the wildly waving forest of arms, and as the crowd finally thinned and then fell behind us, the first thing I saw clearly was three ushers, holding the door and grinning at us. “Thanks for your help,” I told them. They didn’t even look at me; all their attention was on making sure Jackie got through the door without fatally injuring herself on a hinge.
Once they got us safely inside, the ushers stood and smiled proudly, as if they had just saved Jackie from certain death. I felt like conking their heads together; they had done nothing but watch smugly as the crowd tried to rip us to pieces, and now I had a tear in my brand-new guayabera. But Jackie just nodded at them and said, “Thank you,” and gave me her arm. I led her into the theater.
It took a moment to recover from the savage love of the crowd, and as we walked through the ornate lobby and into the Olympia itself, I found a second hole in my shirt, three scratches on my arms, and at least two spots on my ribs so tender they would certainly turn into bruises by morning. And yet, somehow, improbably, it had been exhilarating. Once again I found that I liked the frenzied attention of a crowd of strangers. I knew they had barely seen me, that their focus was all on Jackie, but that was fine. It was even more intoxicating to know that the center of all that adoration was with me; she had actually kissed me, and the crowd could never have that from her. But along with that smug delight, I found that I had to push away a rising bitterness that this had to end, and so soon.
I looked at Jackie’s profile; somehow, even after the pounding and pulling of the crowd, her hair was still in perfect order, and she was every bit the Goddess the crowd needed her to be—a Goddess who had kissed me, and I still didn’t understand why.
She swung her head my way, and locked her violet eyes on me. “What?” she said.
“Oh,” I said, suddenly embarrassed, and not sure why. “Nothing. You know.”
Jackie smiled. “I don’t know,” she said. “Are you going to tell me?”
“Really, it’s nothing,” I said. “Just … the crowd. And you …” I meant to say, You kissed me, but somehow, what came out of my mouth was, “You look so … perfect.”
“About time you noticed,” she murmured, and then we were inside the theater itself and she looked up. “Oh, look at that! It’s beautiful!” She stopped in her tracks and stared upward, but my eyes were drawn to the curve of her neck, and I looked at that for a long moment before I looked at the ceiling, too.
I suppose the ceiling of the Olympia really is beautiful. But I had seen it before, and I’d read in the paper too many times that it’s gorgeous, wonderful, a treasure of restored glory, and so on. It’s just not the kind of thing that really moves me. But Jackie needed a few moments to take in the golden swirls and the faux night sky, and I stood there politely while she goggled.
“Wow,” she said at last. “Beats the hell out of the Chinese Theatre in L.A.”
Down in the front of the theater, in the third row, Deborah turned around, saw us, and stood up. But before she got to us a well-dressed young man came in from the lobby and hurried over to us. I watched him carefully for any sign that he might be a sniper, or a zombie, but he just smiled and said, “Miss Forrest?”
Jackie tore her gaze away from the gaudy ceiling, and the young man beamed at her. “Hi, I’m Radym Reitman,” he said. “Mr. Eissen wants you to come back to Renny’s dressing room—they’re shooting the preshow stuff?”
“Of course,” she said, and then Deborah joined us.
“What the hell happened to you?” Debs said, eyeing the tear on the front of my shirt.
“The adoring public,” I said. “I guess somebody recognized me.”
Deborah snorted and turned her attention to Jackie. “Not a mark on you,” she said.
“Lots of practice,” Jackie said.
“I have to meet Rita in the lobby,” I said to Deborah. “Can you stay with Jackie?”
“Sure,” Debs said, and Reitman cleared his throat. Deborah gave him a really good Cop Look, and he fell silent and just fidgeted. “Oh,” Jackie said. “I have to go backstage for a minute—okay?”
“Sure,” Debs said. “But I got us a couple of beers.” She nodded toward the seat she’d been in when we entered. “Lemme grab ’em first.”
“Oh, good, thanks,” Jackie said, and with a final smile and a pat on the arm for me, she followed Debs and Reitman away toward the front of the theater.
