86'd by Dan Fante Page A

Neiman’s, please.”
    Reaching over, J.C. pulled a magazine out of her purse then held it up. A thick copy of the fashion magazine Ooh La La. On the cover was a glossy photograph of a beautiful, tall girl with long black hair in a low-cut white dress. Two huge dogs were sitting at her feet.
    “That’s her, my granddaughter,” J.C. said. “I’m meeting her.”
    “That’s your granddaughter?”
    “Marcella. Marcella Maria Sorache. I call her by her given name but everyone else, including her mother, my status-obsessed daughter Constance, uses her nickname, Che-Che.I find it absurd and insulting. The name makes the child sound like a stripper.”
    “She’s a very beautiful woman.”
    J.C. snorted. “My daughter Constance’s second husband is a Milanese ne’er-do-well named Gianluca. He inherited a good deal of money, but thank God, also excellent genes. Against my protests the child was raised in Italy and schooled in New York and Switzerland.”
    “Sounds like she could have done worse.”
    “Bruno, kindly do not annoy me. I’m an old lady and I don’t want to burst a blood vessel and breathe my last in this ridiculous automobile.”
    Outside Neiman’s side entrance were half a dozen photographers, milling around, waiting for someone—a celebrity or a movie star—to leave. J.C. eyed the group. “Nuts,” she whispered, “I might have expected this. They’re here for Marcella.”
    “They are? Are you sure?”
    “Clearly you don’t read tabloid newspapers or watch enough television, Bruno.”
    “I guess you’re right,” I said. “Help me out.”
    “My granddaughter is a model. That should’ve become obvious.”
    I smiled at J.C. “Believe it or not I somehow put that together on my own.”
    “What you may not yet have put together is that Marcella is the spokesperson for a cosmetic line called La Natura. Her face appears on television commercials twenty times a day.
    “Oh.”
    “And the child just divorced her drug addict husband, Todd. Todd Adamson.”
    “The guy everybody calls Terrible Todd? The rock singer?”
    “Now you’re current. Apparently, in the last few months, they’ve become quite the tabloid couple.”
    “Hey, well now I know. Che-Che and the guitar player everybody calls Terrible Todd. Ooo-eee.”
    “I’m pleased to have spared you the thrill of reading Snitch magazine.”
    “Hey, maybe I’ll buy one just for fun.”
    J.C. glanced down at the two books on the seat next to me. One novel was by Mark SaFranko and the other by Tony O’Neill. “So, you’re a reader too?”
    “I am, believe it or not.”
    “Who are these writers? I’m not familiar with either of them.”
    “I guess you could say that O’Neill and SaFranko are part of a new wave of fiction writers. I like their stuff.”
    “Are you also following in your father’s footsteps? Are you a writer as well?”
    “Yes, I am.”
    “I shouldn’t be surprised. If James Patterson can have a bestseller I presume that any day now some homeschooled lackwit with fifth-grade credentials will win a Pulitzer and become the new John Steinbeck.”
    “I wasn’t homeschooled, J.C.”
    “I wasn’t referring to you.”
    “That’s good to know.”
    “It appears that I will need your help, Bruno. A small favor.”
    “Sure,” I said. “Whatever.”
    “I’d like you to go inside and tell Marcella that I’m waiting for her here in the car and that there are photographers everywhere as well. Will you do that?”
    “Sure. Do you know where she is?”
    “I did mention that La Natura is a cosmetic line. Where then would you suppose that the spokesperson for a line of makeup, making a personal appearance, would be in Neiman Marcus?”
    Once again I felt my pee-pee being slapped. “At the makeup counter?” I said.
    “Bravo, Bruno!”
     
    There was Che-Che surrounded by women and fans and a cable TV camera crew. She was six feet tall and ridiculously beautiful. I made it past the crowd then whispered to her that