LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER FOUR

      PIPER WALKED THE ten blocks from the dock to their apartment. She still felt cold from her dive into the ocean, but perhaps it was not only that. Cy was the same handsome, athletic, sensitive man she’d abandoned. Yet he wasn’t. Hurt had changed him. She had changed him.

      She kept up a brisk pace, insisting to herself that she’d probably done Cy a favor. He needed to grow up and see the truth about life.

      It was hard. It was unfair. It was no place for innocents.

      Stomach knotted, she hurried the last stretch, resisting the urge to stop and take in the spangle of stars like she’d done so often with the only man she’d loved desperately in a time that seemed an eternity ago.

      At the apartment complex, a sixty-something woman was sweeping the walk. The late hour did not seem to matter to Mrs. Rapapeet. Piper had never seen her without a broom in her hands. The twists in her elaborate coiffure gleamed in the moonlight.

      “Hi, Mrs. Rapapeet.”

      The woman tightened her grip on the broom, turned her back on Piper and retreated in angry sweeps down the walkway.

      Odd. Piper let herself into their studio apartment. The smell of mac and cheese greeted her.

      “Studio” seemed a grand label for one room, a run-down bathroom and a single burner stove, but for eight-hundred dollars a month, beggars could not be choosers. Uncle Bo had not been able to find a job that stuck, his prior gig as a hot dog vendor lasting only three weeks. She hoped the shuttle driver stint would serve a bit longer. They’d put up a curtain to create two minirooms, and it was enough since Piper stayed on the boat most of the time.

      Uncle Boris was swathed in a “kiss the cook” apron. He wielded a spoon. “Just in time. The feast is served.”

      The yellow glop could have been caviar and lobster and she wouldn’t have relished it any more as she grabbed a paper plate and sat. “Why is Mrs. Rapapeet angry?”

      He joined her at the crooked table and tucked his napkin into his collar. “‘They do not love that do not show their love.’”

      “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” she said automatically, “and Mrs. Rapapeet liked you when I left this morning, so what happened?”

      “Women,” he shrugged. “Speaking of, I visited your mother. It’s meat loaf day—her favorite.”

      Instead of wasting away in prison, Piper’s mother, SueBeth Brindle, had gained fifteen pounds. She maintained that she deserved the extra weight, but not the prison time. During Piper’s visits she would often lament that her downfall was not that she’d broken into the lawyer’s condo to steal his stamp collection, but that she’d panicked when she’d found him at home and smacked him with a fireplace poker. Purely out of instinct, and it left only a small bruise, but the California penal system did not concur. She was sentenced to two years in prison for first-degree burglary.

      Piper patted her uncle’s hand. The guilt shimmered in his eyes as it always did after a prison visit with his sister.

      “Only twelve months to go.”

      He put down his fork and rubbed a plump hand over his face. “I blame myself.”

      “She doesn’t.”

      “She should.”

      Uncle Boris had used the bits of conversational flotsam he’d acquired in his airport shuttle job the year before to glean that the man with the expensive stamp collection would be out of town. An easy job, or it would have been, if the guy hadn’t eaten a bad clam and gone home sick instead of catching his flight to Cincinnati. Boris had been home with a twisted ankle and unaware that his sister had assigned the job to herself. When SueBeth was arrested, Boris had been ready to take full responsibility for planning the heist, but SueBeth begged her brother to stay clear.

      “Someone has to look out for Piper.”

      And he had. Sort of.

      Desperate to cheer him, Piper swallowed the last of the mac and cheese. “Spooley worked on a scene with me tonight. He really thinks I’m good, Uncle Bo. When he sees me in the show, he’ll have no doubts.”

      He raised an eyebrow. “And you think he’ll make good on his promise to recommend you to Dizz?”

      “If he sticks around long enough and convinces Dizz to come.”

      “I watched Dizz’s show last night. He took the participants through these really weirdo acting exercises. Only six more episodes until we find out who he’s gonna pick as the winner.”

      “And that lucky person lands an agent and a spot on a prime time show.” She sighed, biting her lip.

      “Afraid Spooley will leave prematurely, before Steamboat Races opens?”

      She sighed again. “Maybe. There’s been a sort of upheaval. Spooley dropped some hints that the decor was not up to snuff, so the boat manager has blackmailed someone to restyle the reception room into something star-worthy. If Spooley thinks it measures up, he’ll invite Dizz to come in a couple of weeks and see the show while he’s here. It’s my ticket to getting a spot on Acting Up.” She frowned.

      “Complications?” Boris opened the cage for Peaches, his little yellow parakeet, and set him on his shoulder. The bird snuggled up against his chin.

      “One.”

      “Big one?”

      About six feet. “Cy Franco is doing the renovations.”

      “Ah.”

      The syllable spoke volumes. Boris hadn’t met Cy, but Uncle Bo knew enough from what she had shared.

      “If Cy can’t

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