Page 79 of Killer Body

“Delbert McClinton work for you?” Without waiting for an answer, he punched a button on the dash, and a raw, bluesy voice reverberated through the pickup, singing about the blues, moving with and through the blues, not making light of it, but coping.

“Rossi,” she said. “You have potential.”

“Yeah?”

They’d been in the pickup almost all night. Soon it would be sunup. The ocean stretched out to her right, illuminated by boats and starlight. He didn’t look short in this light. He looked caring and handsome, in a cocky kind of way. Then he smiled.

“So, now that we wasted this night, what do you think about stopping for a glass of wine?”

The Interview

Who were your role models when you were growing up ?

No one. I was my own role model, and it wasn’t easy. I had this voice I couldn’t get rid of driving me on.

Perfect. I always had to be perfect. It was the only way out. I did it in school. I did it with my looks, the looks that were the reason for my shame. I made myself perfect. If it hadn’t been Killer Body, it would have been somewhere else. I was athletic; I went to work for a gym, met Mr. Warren through a friend there. I always called him Mr. Warren. And then I started working for Killer Body. I became Killer Body. Perfect.

I shut the doors on the past. My life started the day I became Killer Body. The doors are open again now, and I can’t close them. Weak as I am, I’m glad to be back, to be cared for. A child.

TWENTY-ONE

Rikki

Julie Larimore’s cell phone was missing, but someone had used it to call Bobby Warren. He told us she’d said she was coming back to Killer Body, but I’m not sure how much was fact and how much was hope fueled by alcohol. Lucas insisted we postpone the interview, and when I asked if the Killer Body spokesmodel search was still on, I got only tears from Bobby Warren.

I don’t think I could live in Santa Barbara. There’s something wearing, even decadent about constant perfection of climate and scenery. On the way back to my hotel yesterday, I stopped about one-thirty at a Trader Joe’s to pick up a sandwich. My choices were roasted red peppers or turkey bacon, lettuce and tomato. They worked for me, but I wonder how they’d play outside this comfort bubble that Princess Gabby calls“soCalifornia.” Outside the store, I saw a bearded will-work-for-food guy, sign in hand, drinking a bottle of carrot juice. Even the street people here are politically correct.

I told Hamilton that on the phone, when he called from his car, and it made him laugh, not always an easy task. I felt glad he was coming, not only because we needed to compare notes, but because in this world of faces, figures and fitness, I missed the everyday reality of him.

I was up half the night, reading through the reams of material he and I collected on Killer Body. Interview after interview with Julie Larimore, transcripts from talk shows, Q’s & A’s fromKiller Body corporate, reprints of articles. The woman’s life before she disappeared must have been one long interview.

“I’m not sure I like her,” I say as Den and I drive toward the gym where Tania Marie was locked in a week ago.

We’re in his Volvo, so I can look around at the beach as we go, the boats stretching along it forming their own society. I know Lucas has a sailboat out there somewhere, and looking at the white sails, dark wood and variations of fiberglass, I wonder which one is his.

“Based on?”

Hamilton always likes his raw opinions served up with boiled-down facts.

“All of those interviews. She has an opinion on everything and everyone, and yet there’s not a lot of humanity. She can get pretty judgmental. If I can do it, you can do it, and if you don’t, you’re a slob. That kind of thing.”

“So, what does she have that inspires so many people?”

“Looks, intelligence. And a killer body, of course.”

“What else?” His gaze intensifies, makes me feel I’m back in college, or on a job interview, maybe.

“Do you know something that I don’t?” I ask.

“Maybe.” Before I can say more, he gives me that unreadable smile that got me in trouble with him in the first place. “What would you say if I told you there is no Julie Larimore?”

“I’d tell you I thought you were missing a screw,” I say.

Although he’s staring at the road now, I still feel the heat of his gaze.

I turn sideways in the car, giving myself a full view of his stubborn, stubbled face, his slightly slumped profile. He turns, meets my eyes.

“Well, there’s not. Julie Larimore, at least with the data we’ve been given, does not exist and never has.”