Not Wanted in Hollywood by Leonie Gant Page A

eventually
managed to make my escape from Griffin’s mother, only after she had
extracted a promise for us to have a girl’s day, so we could get to
know each other better. I immediately headed for Monique’s office.
If anyone was going to know why Angela wanted her son back, it was
going to be Monique.

Chapter Eleven
    Walking into Monique’s office I shouldn’t have
been surprised to find my friend and Crystal’s
husband , Edwin, working on the front
desk. Until recently Edwin had been an aspiring actor.
Unfortunately he had no talent at all for acting. Some people just
didn’t. At least he had been brave enough to try. The realization
that he wasn’t going to make it in the acting world had been hard
for Edwin, but he had dealt with it and took as many temporary jobs
as he could to fill in, until he found his one great passion.
Obviously he hadn’t found it yet.
    Edwin glanced
up at me as I entered the office. “Heard you’ve been working in a
strip club,” he said with a huge smile on his face.
    “ Yes I have,”
I said. “If you want to have a laugh about it, do it now so we
never have to revisit this moment again.”
    “ Oh no,” said
Edwin. “This information is gold. The fact that I’ve also heard
that you’ve been learning pole dancing is something that I am going
to cherish forever, to be brought out at the most inappropriate
moments, maybe when your mother is visiting.”
    I looked at him sourly. “You know, I used to
like you. Once upon a time you were nice. Marriage has made you
hard and bitter. It changed you, and not for the better.”
    “ But it’s
fun,” said Edwin with that insane smile of happiness on his face. I
was joking of course. Edwin and Crystal belonged together and
despite the slight bumps in the road they were both deliriously
happy. It was good to see.
    “Any chance of me seeing Monique for a
moment?” I asked.
    “ I could
organize it for a private demonstration of you pole dancing for
just Crystal and me,” Edwin said.
    “Do you realize how inappropriate that
request sounded?” I asked. “Just think on it a moment.”
    Edwin cocked his head. “I know, but
seriously, I’ve seen you dance and if you bring that lack of
coordination to a stripper pole, it would be the funniest
entertainment that we would ever see.”
    “ Not going to
happen,” I said. “Just let Monique know I’m here before I’m forced
to go to your wife about your secret fantasy involving me and a
stripper pole.”
    “ Spoilsport,”
said Edwin mildly as he buzzed me through.
    Monique was
just finishing a phone call when I walked into her office. She
waved me into a chair and went back to tapping on the desk with her
elegant, manicured fingernails. I always said that Monique was the
person I wanted to be when I grew up. She was beautiful,
intelligent and had the sharpest business mind of anyone I knew.
Most importantly for me at the moment, she also knew everything
about everybody who was anybody in LA. I was hoping that meant that
she knew about Angela and what she could possibly want with her
son.
    “So what can I do for you ma petite?” she
asked with that understanding smile that she always used to good
effect.
    “Do you know of an Angela Copeland?” I
asked.
    “ Copeland,”
Monique repeated as she tapped her finger against her chin. “The
name sounds familiar but I would need to look through some of my
records. Any reason you want to know about her?”
    “ She’s
Griffin’s mother,” I said.
    “The one who left when he was a baby?”
Monique questioned.
    I nodded. “For some reason she has turned up
out of the blue and wants to connect with her son.”
    “ Maybe that’s
all it is,” said Monique.
    I shook my head. “I just sat through the
torturous lunch from hell where all she talked about was her life,
not one question to Griffin about what has happened in the thirty
years since she walked out on him and his father. It was strange. I
just got the feeling that she had to