Impossibly Tongue-Tied Read online

  That would allow Nina to point out that Pickering had never once invited her to join his private parent tea parties.

  And in no time at all, the Hartes’ place in the Sage Oak Academy’s pecking order would be vastly improved.

  To Nina, phone sex wasn’t lurid—or, for that matter, erotic.

  It was just a job.

  Or at least that was the way she had put it to Nathan almost five years ago, when she first suggested that she try the business—even if it meant she’d have to quit their acting class for a while and put on hold her dream of making it in “the town” (which, for the record, meant anything and everything that is Hollywood).

  At the time she was six months pregnant with Jake, and the cashiering gig at Tommaso’s meant enduring excruciatingly painful leg spasms and swollen ankles from standing on her feet all day. She was already concerned about how long she could last at the store, which, being a non-unionized grocery, paid just above minimum wage, although the medical insurance that came with her job meant that she wouldn’t have to deliver her baby in a ditch somewhere off Hollywood Way.

  Besides, Nina was fed up with their roach-infested Korea-town studio, where the landlord thought nothing of raising the rent every year by at least fifty bucks. At that point she’d have given anything to move to a rent-controlled apartment, preferably on the west side of L.A., that had room for them and the baby, too.

  They had come to L.A. from Joyous, Missouri, population 4,397 and shrinking. Both of them had starred in their high school production of The Music Man. As a three-varsity-letter jock who easily had the pick of the high school’s luscious litter of budding teen drama queens, the charismatic Nathan was a shoo-in for Professor Harold Hill. Nina Sue Wilder—the smartest girl in school, as well as the sweetest and most certainly the most ambitious student that had ever walked the halls of Joyous High—nailed the role of Marian the Librarian with a sultry, heart-wrenching rendition of “Till There Was You.”

  Nathan had to hear it only once before deciding that he had to have her, too.

  If she’d only let him.

  But Nina did not plan on being just another notch on Nathan’s very long belt. Her scheme was grander: She wanted to be his wife.

  And his strongest ally. And the woman at his side when he got that opportunity to stroll the red carpet toward fame and fortune.

  Certainly he’d sung and danced his way into her heart. And yet, despite his flirting, wooing, and begging, she stayed chaste.

  That is, until opening night.

  Backstage with Mr. Bing, the drama teacher (and the only uncloseted gay man in Joyous), Nina watched through the dusty folds of the gymnasium stage’s burgundy velvet curtain as Nathan belted out “Gary, Indiana” with two less musically blessed cast members. She winced when the director clucked his tongue and proclaimed in that pronounced lisp of his: “Hot damn, what a waste! That kid is definitely L.A. material. But he’s stuck in this hellhole for life. And that’s too bad, ’cause the last thing this town needs is another ex-jock car salesman pining over his long-gone days of glory.”

  Granted, Mr. Bing was sweet on Nathan too, but anyone with two eyes in his head could see that he was right!

  That very night, Nina readily encouraged Nathan to get entangled in her very librarianlike petticoats, her lithe limber legs, and her dreams of getting out of Joyous.

  The day after graduation, with his Marian at his side, Nathan did what multitudes of other handsome, talented Harold Hills had done before him: He headed out of town.

  Specifically, he headed for Hollywood—but by way of Las Vegas, because Nathan wanted to get married in the same place Elvis had married Priscilla: the Aladdin Hotel Wedding Chapel.

  And at his side was where Nina stayed, too: cheering him on, scrounging for acting gigs, and taking care of the business of their personal lives.

  The move had been tougher than they’d anticipated. Still, both were auditioning all the time. And while every now and then Nathan scored work as a non-union extra, or got a featured role in a pipe dream indie of some wannabe director, it didn’t take Nina long to figure out that she wasn’t “anatomically augmented” enough to be considered for the typical Hollywood ingénue roles. Too bad, but that was how it was going to stay. She refused to enter the Silicone Valley of the Dolls and inject her forehead and lips with alien life forms, or get a nose job just because hers was a little off-center (or cheek/chin/eye jobs, either, for that matter).

  But what difference did that make? After all, Nathan loved her just the way she was. In fact, he worshipped her. That was all that mattered.

  To tide them over until Nathan got his break, Nina got a real job—the one at Tommaso’s—while Nathan wangled the part-time gig at Disney. And both of them got creative about ways to offset starvation. Besides bringing home the much-too-ripe fruit jettisoned from Tommaso’s produce bins and some canned goods yanked off the shelves because it was too close to their expiration dates, the Hartes would sneak into the Best Western on Sunset Boulevard and snitch bagels, bananas, and coffee off the continental breakfast counter. Then at night they’d hit anyplace that doled out free all-you-can-eat hors d’oeuvres with the purchase of a single drink, like Q’s on Wilshire, or the Acapulco on La Cienega.

  Sure, life in Hollywood was a struggle. Still, they loved it.

  They loved the 340 days of sunshine and the loonies on Venice Beach.

  They loved the palm trees and bougainvilleas that seemed to flourish in even the grimiest neighborhoods.

  They loved how that sulky girl standing behind them in line at the movie theater at the Grove could possibly be Mischa Barton and her boyfriend, or that the guy at the next table at the farmer’s market could be Ted Danson.

  Even the horrendous traffic, and the smog, and the hundred other Nathan and Nina look-alikes they were up against at each audition didn’t discourage them because they knew they were living the life they were meant to live together.

  Of course, they loved their lives even more so when they found out that Nina was pregnant.

  Because that made them a family.

  That’s not to say that Nathan and Nina weren’t scared witless at the thought of being parents. Of course they were! But now they were more determined than ever to make it in Los Angeles.

  And not head back home to Joyous.

  Ever.

  With their tails between their legs, so that Nathan could take his rightful place as heir apparent in his daddy’s auto mall, where he’d spend his days cajoling customers into the newest Explorer Sport Trac pickup.

  Although Nathan understood and appreciated Nina’s motives for bringing up the phone sex gig, he didn’t jump for joy at this idea for creatively financing his career.

  “Okay, okay,” said Nathan. “Let’s just say I can live with the thought of my wife chatting up other men so that they get hard-ons and beat off. Honestly though, babe, do you actually think you can make enough money to support all of us?”

  “Who knows?” Nina answered matter-of-factly. “All I can tell you is that there’s this chick in our acting class—you know, the homely one who’s a little on the chunky side—who does it a few hours every couple of nights, and she’s got a two-bedroom cottage in the Hollywood Hills that she owns outright.”

  “Yeah, I know the one.” Nathan winced at the thought. “Jeez, it’s a good thing that she’s making some kind of dough with that voice of hers, ’cause she ain’t going to make it in this town on her looks.”

  As Nathan pummeled a charley horse out of her calf muscle—a symptom of standing at a cash register all day while four months pregnant—Nina gasped, “Look at it this way: It would keep me off my feet.”

  He still wasn’t totally convinced, but he knew better than to argue with her once she had finally made up her mind to do something. Instead he sighed, then gave her calf a kiss.

  “Heck, you’ve got a much more seductive voice than she has. Why, you’d have them eating out of your hand.” He laughed. “I guess y
ou can think of it as another kind of acting, right? Ha, if you were a method actress, think of what kind of sex life we’d have.”

  What’s wrong with our sex life, she wanted to ask, other than the fact that I’m pregnant, I work a forty-hour shift on my feet, I’m tired all the time, stressed out about money, and married to a guy who is way too handsome for his own good, and wants the rest of the world to know about it?

  Of course, she’d never say that out loud to Nathan.

  Instead, she called the number of Homely Chick’s “dispatcher,” Mrs. McGillicutty. The tough old broad, who doled out the calls with a throaty purr, took care of the credit card ins and outs, and paid her PSOs—that dainty acronym for phone sex operators—a respectable one dollar per minute.

  She immediately put Nina to work.

  “O” was born that very night.

  To some extent, O truly was Nina’s alter ego: Most certainly, she was much more playful—okay, naughtier than Nina. And she took no guff from her phone clients. In fact, after a day on her feet at Tommaso’s, Nina looked forward to O telling her nighttime clients what she’d like to do to them. In turn, the clients loved her take-no-prisoners approach to their libidos—which made Nina wonder how much more respect she might incur from her daytime clients if she talked to them in the same manner.

  But it wasn’t all dirty talk. Sometimes it was just listening.

  To guys who were having problems with their wives. Or their girlfriends. Or both.

  Or their jobs.

  And most certainly, their sex lives.

  O was their ultimate fantasy. But she was also their buddy, their sounding board, and the person to whom they confessed their deepest, darkest secrets.

  And sometimes she was their conscience.

  That was the part of the job she loved the most.

  Unlike Nina, O was never too shy to set an ambivalent guy straight, or to chastise him for a dumb move, or to pat him on the back for doing the right thing. For that matter, she thought nothing of putting a rude asshole in his place, either. Where Nina was shy, O was fearless.

  And that made it all worthwhile.

  That, and of course the money, which was why O also put up with the plenty of creeps who asked her to do things that made her skin crawl. But hey, it paid the rent and a heck of a lot more, because O was really good at what she did. The thirty-four clients she had who were regulars, not to mention the hundred or so others who she chatted up during any given month, were certainly proof of that.

  Mrs. McGillicutty put it this way: “Kid, you’re a natural. Your voice is an audio version of Levitra to these johns.”

  Quite a compliment, eh?

  Well, money speaks louder than words, particularly to a PSO: by the time Nina was in her fourth month, the money was rolling in—in fact, at three times what she was clearing after taxes at Tommaso’s—which allowed her to take a four-month unpaid pregnancy leave of absence from the store when Jake was born without feeling the pinch.

  Within eleven months of becoming a PSO, Nina was able to pay off all their credit card debt. By the time she’d celebrated her fourteenth month, they’d moved into a two-bedroom rent-controlled apartment (with a walk-in closet large enough for O to put in a second phone line and set up shop) on a sunny block in Santa Monica that was within walking distance to the beach.

  And Nina and Nathan started their Hollywood Hills cottage fund. But because cottages anywhere off Sunset go for a million dollars minimally, Nina was prepared for the fact that O would still have to do a lot of “oooohing and aaaaahing” on the phone—at least until Nathan scored enough commercials, or a sitcom, or something to make it feasible for her to quit and concentrate on doing voice-over work. On a mike, she could be anyone. And she had the client list to prove it.

  First things first, though. Nathan’s career was priority number one.

  Because two four-year-olds singing the SpongeBob Square-Pants song at the top of their lungs in the back seat of a Civic are louder than the chirp of a Motorola RAZR V3c cell phone, it wasn’t until Nina was clocking in for her shift at Tommaso’s that morning that she noticed she had two voice mail messages:

  January 11; Message #1, 7:37 A.M.: Hi, sweetheart, it’s Nathan…Okay look, you went to bed so late last night after your shift, and then you left before I got up, so I didn’t have a chance to tell you that—well, don’t be too, too mad but…well, I think we should scrub our plans tonight with Jamie and Helene. Barry—you remember Barry, right? He’s that jumpy dude they got to play Goofy when Kenny got promoted into Beauty and the Beast—well, yesterday Barry mentioned that he’s got a bartending gig at some big-time Hollywood party, and he says they could use an extra pair of hands. Heck, hon, we can certainly use the money, right? And—well, you never know who might be there, ha-ha…I’m trying to be positive here. Can you call the gang and break the news to them, ’cause I’m running late. I’ve got to get in a half hour earlier today because they’re posting a new lineup for the Main Street Parade, but before that, I need to hit the gym to work out, and then I’m going to check out this photographer some dude in a casting office told me about, you know, who does headshots for only fifty bucks…Hey, don’t be too mad at me about tonight, okay? Because everything I do is for us, babe…right?…Kiss the little guy for me…Um, hey, if you want to work another shift tonight—well, I won’t mind. I’m probably not going to be home till real late anyway. You know how those parties are…They can go on till all hours. Love ya. Bye.

  Great. Just great. Nina groaned. Of course she was disappointed that she couldn’t get all dressed up and go out and play with two of the few friends they had who were as young, as poor, and as hungry as they were to catch a break in this town: Jamie Braddock, a comedian trying to expand beyond the periodic stand-up gig to commercials and maybe even a sitcom; and Helene Conover, who, despite having a Harvard MBA, always scored commercials that called for tall, willowy, dumb blond bimbos. Both of them were in Nathan and Nina’s acting class—well, Nathan’s acting class, anyway. Nina had dropped out right after Jake was born. Staying home meant she could man O’s phone line an extra night each week, and that meant more money for the Hollywood Hills house fund.

  Now Nina would have to call Jamie and Helene and beg off. Of course, they would assume it was because the Hartes really couldn’t afford to go with them to the Lodge, a celebrity hangout that catered to the town’s hottest and hippest young stars and their entourages. And while that was definitely the case, it still hurt to have others think that.

  Besides, it had taken Nina, what, three weeks to find a babysitter? And now the babysitter was going to be pissed off, so pissed that she’d probably ask to be paid anyway, since everyone who was going out tonight had already lined up sitters, and would just kill their husbands if they were bailed on.

  Everyone but Nina, that is.

  Because Nathan was right. They did need the money. And he certainly needed to take every opportunity presented to him to make as many connections as he could, if they were going to make it in L.A.

  As she tied on her regulation Tommaso’s apron, a plump tear rolled down her cheek. Looking around to see if anyone else was paying attention, she caught the heavily made-up eye of Tori, who looked at her hot pink Anne Klein bracelet watch (an indication that, yep, not only had she seen Nina bawling, but she’d also noted that Nina had come in eight minutes late), then clucked her tongue in disapproval.

  “You know, doll, with all that bawling you do over that man of yours, it wouldn’t hurt you to invest in some waterproof mascara. We’re having a sale on it, you know. Max Factor 2000 Calorie Aqua Lash. Simply to die for…Better yet, you should seriously consider going in for a little eye work. It’s never too early, I say. Tuck now, and you’ll wrinkle less later. Comprenez-vous?”

  Since becoming the shift manager—and, finally, all woman—Tori had also become a bit bitchy about the little things that mattered.

  Like sympathy for her fellow man.

  Or woman.
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  On the other hand, Tony, the big lug, always had a free shoulder to cry on.

  “Thanks, I’ll check it out…the mascara,” Nina murmured. She then turned back to her locker, a not-so-subtle indication that she’d prefer to listen to her messages without her boss’s unsolicited commentary.

  Tori knew better than to push. After all, Nina was the best concierge the store had ever had, and she’d be almost impossible to replace. Not only did that steel-trap brain of hers never forget which Tommaso’s preferred customers wanted their deliveries on what days, she also knew every one of the VIP customers’ food fetishes, gastronomic cravings, and culinary idiosyncrasies by heart.

  For example, Nina knew that a certain movie actress known for her couturier-slim physique had for years kept it that way by living on large quantities of a specific brand of organic baby food, despite the natural assumption that she bought cases of the stuff for her adopted Russian toddler; she also knew that a young actor who publicly eschewed eating “anything that walked the earth” while espousing the benefits of a vegan diet had a weekly standing order for Kobe steaks. Best of all, when Nina was bitched out by some blue-rinsed Beverly Hills relic because the delivery boy had dropped off the wrong gourmet cat food, she let it roll off her back—which was why Tori knew better than to ruffle Nina’s feathers too much. Having made her point, she huffed out into the store to see if there wasn’t some lowly stock boy she could harass instead, leaving Nina to stare in dread at her still-blinking cell phone.

  The second message was probably lousy news too, like maybe Jake’s teacher had noticed that he was sniffling, and Nina should pick him up and take him home before he infected all the other precious children at SOA, which meant that Nina would have to ask Tori to let her go home—without pay, of course, because a four-year-old with a bad cold (or strep throat, or chicken pox, or an ear infection, or pink eye) doesn’t understand that the store’s policy called for only five sick days a year, which, in Nina’s case, had already been used up—and it was only the second week in January, for god’s sake.