LITMIR.BIZ

       2

       Book Soup

      A FEW WEEKS LATER JULIAN RAN INTO HER AT BOOK SOUP ON Sunset. Ran into her was probably a misnomer. He was in the poetry stacks, killing time before meeting up with Ashton, and she waltzed in.

      Skipping up the short stairs, she headed for the black shelves by the windows, to the film and theatre section. From his hidden vantage point, his head cocked, Julian watched her scanning the spines of the books. It was definitely the same girl, right? What a coincidence to find her here.

      She had on a blonde wig in New York and cocoa hair now, swept up in a messy, falling-out bun. She was wearing denim shorts, black army boots, and a sheer plaid shirt that swung over a bright red tank top. Her legs were slender, long, untanned. No doubt. It was her.

      Julian didn’t usually approach women he didn’t know in bookstores. Plus he was out of time. He glanced at his watch, as if he were actually contemplating accosting her, or perhaps looking for a reason not to. Ashton in thirty.

      His insane buddy wanted to go canyoneering in Utah! Julian’s job as a friend was to talk him out of it. So Julian had gone to Book Soup to buy the memoir of the unfortunate hiker who had also gone canyoneering in Utah. The poor bastard got trapped under a boulder for five days in Blue John Canyon and had to cut off his own arm with a dull pocket knife to survive. Over lunch of spicy soft-shell crab tacos, cilantro slaw and cold beer, Julian intended to read the salient passages to Ashton about how to save a life.

      But before he could get to the life-saving travel section, Julian got sidetracked by the L.A. poems of Leonard Cohen and then by the hypnotic synth-beat chorus of Cuco’s “Drown” playing on the overhead speakers.

      And there she was, bouncing in.

      It was almost noon. Julian had just enough time to hightail it to Melrose to meet Ashton at Gracias Madre. At lunchtime, the streets of West Hollywood pulsed with hangry drivers. The girl hadn’t even seen him. He didn’t need to be sneaky. He didn’t need to be anything. Put Leonard Cohen down, walk out the open door onto Sunset. Stroll right on out. Throw a dollar into Jenny’s jar. Jenny the blind waif loitered outside the store at lunchtime by the rack of newspapers. The homeless needed to eat, too. Walk to your car, get in, drive away.

      Without traffic, it would take him seven minutes. Julian prided himself on being a punctual guy, his Tag Heuer watch set to atomic time, Hollywood’s legendary lateness insulting to him.

      Julian did not walk out.

      Instead, casual as all that, he ambled across the store to the sunny corner by the window until he stood behind her, Leonard Cohen’s love songs to Los Angeles clutched in his paws.

      He took a breath. “Josephine?”

      He figured if it wasn’t her, she wouldn’t turn around.

      She turned around. Though not exactly immediately. There was a delay in her turning around. She was makeup free, clear-skinned, brown eyed, neutrally polite. Everything on her smooth healthy face was open. Eyes far apart, unhindered by overhanging brow lines or furrows in the lids, forehead large, cheekbones wide, mouth pink.

      At first there was nothing. Then she blinked at him and smiled politely. Not an invitation to a wedding, just a tiny acknowledgment that she was looking at a man whom she didn’t find at first glance to be overly repellent, and to whom she would deign, grace, give one minute of her life. You got sixty seconds, cowboy, her small smile said. Go.

      But Julian couldn’t go. He had forgotten his words. Going up, it was called in the theatre. When everything you were supposed to say flew out of your head.

      She spoke first. “Where do I know you from?” she asked, squinting. There was no trace of a British accent in her voice. “You look so familiar. Wait. Didn’t you come to my play in New York? The Invention of Love?”

      “Yes.” He cleared his throat. “You remember?”

      She shrugged. “Yours was the only playbill I signed.” Her voice—not just her stage voice but also her normal sing-song speaking voice—was gentle and breathy, a girl’s voice but with a naked woman’s lilt to it. Quite an art to pull that off. Quite a spectacle. “What are you doing in L.A.?”

      “I live around the corner,” he said, ready to give her his street address and apartment number. “You?”

      “I’m just visiting. Auditioning.”

      “From London?”

      She chuckled. “Nah, that was fake. I’m Brooklyn born and raised—like Neil Diamond.”

      “Don’t you have a show to do?”

      She shook her head. “Nicole came back.”

      “Why was she out that night?” Gwen was still carrying on about it.

      “You’re upset about that, too? The theatre got so many complaints.”

      Julian stammered. “No, not me.”

      “Would you believe it—Nicole’s driver took a wrong turn into the Lincoln Tunnel.” Josephine chortled. “He had a brain freeze. He drove to Jersey! I mean, Jersey is always the wrong turn, but then they got stuck behind an accident coming back, and—well, you know the rest.”

      “Wow.”

      “Yeah. My contract ended a few days later,” she said. “They didn’t renew.”

      “I’m not surprised,” Julian said. “Nicole must’ve been afraid for her job. You were fantastic.”

      “Really?” She beamed.

      “Oh yeah,” he said. “You stole the show. They don’t forgive that in the theatre.”

      The girl thawed. She said some things, a thank you, and a you really think so? Julian barely heard her. His sight grew dim.

      That night was the only night she took the stage.

      In front of him.

      Blinking, he came out of it. “Plus,” he said, “you couldn’t make up a better stage name than Josephine Collins.”

      “How do you know I didn’t make it up?” She twinkled. “And what’s your name?”

      “Julian.”

      She shielded her eyes—as if from the sun, even though they were inside—and assessed him. “Hmm. You don’t look like a Julian.”

      “No? What does a Julian look like?” He resisted the impulse to check his attire, as if he forgot what he’d put on that morning. “I’m no Ralph Dibny,” he muttered, not meaning to say it. It just slipped out. In the comic book universe, Ralph Dibny was an ordinary man in ordinary clothes who drank a super-potion that changed him into an extraordinary contortionist.

      Josephine nodded. “Agreed, you’re no Dibny—unless you’re made of rubber. Julian what?”

      “Julian Cruz. Did you say rubber? You know who Ralph Dibny is?”

      “The Elongated Man? Doesn’t everybody?” she replied in her dulcet soprano.

      Julian didn’t know what to say.

      “Are you sure you’re not a Dibny?” Josephine stood clutching a book to her chest as if they were in high school. “Why else would you look like a geeky middle-school teacher?”

      “I

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