The Good House Part 3

Angela repeated those five words and nothing else for the next half hour. All the while, Gramma Marie's gold ring gleamed on her finger as absolute proof that some things can come back after they're gone.

As far as most of the guests at Angela Toussaint's Fourth of July party knew, it was the first bad thing that had ever happened at the Good House.

Homecoming.

Your home stands behind you, patient.

It knows,cher, you will return.

-MARIE TOUSSAINT.

Two.

LOSANGELES, CALIFORNIA.

Two years later.

BY THE BEGINNINGof her third mile, Angela Toussaint was flying. Her lean, corded legs reached a rhythm of their own accord, piston machinery propelling her white running shoes as they hit the ground. Angela no longer perceived gravity's work on her feet, or the tiny shocks of impact on her legs and hips. She no longer felt the searing sensation that had been d.o.g.g.i.ng her lungs as she struggled to take in enough oxygen. She only felt the dawn air in her face and the blood rus.h.i.+ng hot through her taut body's arteries. Flying. Finally, flying.

This was Angela's favorite time and place to be. She was nowhere and nothing. She had no beginning, no end, no present, no future. When she was flying, she disappeared from herself. Let it last forever this time, she prayed. Let it last.

But it never did. Angela could run ten miles or more without much trouble if she slowed her pace, but she had never learned how to run slowly. When Angela ran, she liked torun, to push her body to the end of what it had to offer. She'd vowed to start slowly today and train the way the experts instructed, but the next thing she knew, she'd been flying again. But she couldn't fly long. Angela could sustain her faster pace for only a mile-maybe a mile and a half, on very good days-but then her body began to complain. A monstrous st.i.tch in her side. Burning lungs. Rock-hard shoulders. Tightening muscles in her legs threatening to knot themselves.

With a squeal of frustration, Angela began to slow down, her strides landing harder and more clumsily, and the world that had been pa.s.sing in a blur while she was high on endorphins took its mundane shape again. She trotted to a stop on the path at four-thousand-acre Griffith Park, nearing the Los Angeles Zoo. This was her favorite morning jogging route despite the number of other runners here even by 6A.M. , when the park off of the Golden State Freeway officially opened. It was a hazy morning, so the daylight was muted and weak, and a pale shroud hid the top of the Santa Monica mountain range at the park's horizon.

Gasping for air, Angela made her way to a bench, where she propped up one leg and doused her head with water from the bottle she carried in a leather pouch slung across her back. When she'd emptied nearly half the bottle on herself, she took it to her lips and began to gulp. The lukewarm water was gone fast. She tossed the empty bottle into the L.A. County Parks recycling bin and doubled over to try to slow her breathing, locking her arms against her knees.

Nearly three miles at full speed and no puking today. That was a good sign. She hadn't done too much damage to herself this time.

"You must wake up every morning feeling like you've been hit by a truck," a stranger's voice said, and Angela looked up to see a man stretching in the gra.s.s ten yards behind her, his legs splayed wide open as he faced her. He was s.h.i.+rtless with a concave abdomen, a typical specimen of Los Angeles perfection-if she'd been into the Richard Gere type. Or if she'd been into anyone. This would be the part in a movie where she and the stranger would strike up a chat, share breakfast together, and then live happily ever after. Except that this was real life. In real life, there was always anever after, she knew, but happy had nothing to do with it.

"Good guess," Angela said through her labored breaths.

"You're out here almost every day. Are you training?"

"Death Valley Marathon. December," she said. She did not recognize him, but why should she? Faces pa.s.sed her without definition when she was running. That was what she liked best.

He pursed his lips at the mention of Death Valley, then smiled. Capped teeth, healthy tan. His handsomeness made her uneasy, strangely. "Braving the desert, huh?" he said. "I do the California International Marathon. That's in December, too. This your first?"

"I turned forty this year," she said. "It's now or never."

"I'm forty-four, and that's not true. I'm on my third." Despite his slightly thinning hair, Angela would have guessed he shaded closer to thirty-five than forty-four, but she took his word for it. The man stood up, brus.h.i.+ng gra.s.s from the backs of his thighs. Maybe he'd felt self-conscious, thinking his goodies might spill out of his gray gym shorts, she thought.

"Listen," the man began. "I know from experience this is ten times easier with a training partner. My wife used to be mine, but the divorce killed that. At the risk of sounding like I'm pulling a cheap line, would you like to meet here and train? I run every day except Sundays and Mondays. My name's Ryan."

Hidden away in a dank, abandoned cave, Angela heard her female soul screaming,Yes, yes, YES. She preferred men with a chocolate hue, but she wasn't blind. Even if she never did anything with him except run, this guy would provide a d.a.m.n scenic motivation never to miss a day. This was a storybook moment, she thought, the moment lucky women experience and rush to tell their girlfriends about. But she was not a lucky woman.

Angela stepped back as Ryan came forward, his hand outstretched for a shake she never returned. "You know what? That's a generous offer, but I prefer to train alone," Angela said.

He c.o.c.ked his head, genuinely puzzled. People who looked like him were not accustomed to the wordno . She saw him make a polite glance at her left hand, checking for a ring. There was none-Angela never wore jewelry when she ran. The one ring she still treasured was far too precious to risk losing again. The man shrugged. "All right, then. I'm sure I'll see you around. Let me know if you change your mind. Can I just...give you a little advice?"

"Go for it."

His face was as caring as any stranger's she had seen in a long while, despite the fact that she had just blown him off. She felt annoyed with herself, at the same time she was annoyed with him for breaking the peace of her refuge. "Try not to run so hard at the start and the finish. You'll hurt yourself. Once you're warmed up, run has hard as you want until the last mile, then...just relax."

Relax.

"Thanks. I appreciate that," Angela said, thinking how sad it was that he had just advised her to do the very thing she had long since forgotten. He might as well have just told her she should flap her arms and fly up to the summit of the mountains wreathed in morning fog.

"Don't bulls.h.i.+t me, Angela. Just tell me what those cheap jerks said."

Naomi Price spoke with such precision that she sounded elegant even while cursing. Every syllable was crisp and rich. Even on a speakerphone, Angela imagined she could see Naomi's perfectly lined crimson lips caressing her luminescent teeth as she spoke, the careful result of her degree in theater from CalArts. Hollywood's hottest rising black starlet had presence even when she wasn't in the room with you-and Angela could remember Naomi when she'd been a pudgy twenty-year-old on a daytime soap.

She stared out at Sunset Boulevard's cityscape from her tenth-floor office, rocking to and fro in her leather chair, twirling the stirrer in a cooled latte. The morning's haze had burned off, and the noonday sun lit up the gla.s.s office towers in her view like sparkling ice sculptures. Across from her window, twin billboards announced a new diamond necklace from Cartier and a new explosion-happy Bruckheimer flick, selling penitence on one side and heroism on the other.

Angela had dodged Naomi's calls as long as she could. She'd only picked up the ringing line because her secretary was at lunch and she'd thought it would be Stan Loweson from FilmQuest. Stan called when he didn't expect her to be in the office, preferring voice mail to true interaction.

"They're saying eight hundred is as high as they'll go," Angela told Naomi.

The speaker made a sound as if it had just been hit by a blast of air.

"This is a premature conversation," Angela said before Naomi could regain speech. "I don't know why you always do this. You pay me a percentage so I can hide the ugly underbelly from you. It's called a ne-go-ti-a-tion. This is foreplay. We say no, they come back higher. But I'm warning you-it won't bemuch higher. You'll peak at a million. You don't have the box office yet, Naomi."

"You better remind them thatPeople magazine said-"

"They know all about it. Stan said congratulations."

"And onHollyview last week, Tom Cruise mentioned me as someone he'd like to work with. You sent them that tape, right?"

Angela ignored that last comment. She'd dutifully put in a call to Cruise's representation, and until they called back, that was all talk. Cruise was too savvy to have said it publicly unless he meant it, but she'd still look like a fool bringing that up with Stan.

"A million, Naomi. And we'll be sweating for that."

"They expect me to show my stuff in bed with this overrated white boy for that kind of money? He's almost old enough to be my father, and you know what they're payinghim! Angela, this is racistbulls.h.i.+t . If I was-"

"Girl, stop it," Angela sighed, cutting her off. "Stay focused on whatis, not what isn't. A million is your biggest payday to date. You build a career a step at a time. I wouldn't care if you did this one for Guild minimum-it's that important. One day, G.o.d willing, you'll be doing love scenes with Denzel for ten million dollars a pop. But that day, my dear, has not arrived."

Naomi made another indistinguishable sound, a cross between a scream and a howl, forcing Angela to turn down the volume on her speakerphone.

"Naomi, am I good at what I do?" Angela said in the ensuing silence.

Naomi sighed, and a wind billowed through the speaker. "The best," she said at last.

"Then trust me. I'll fight to get you a million. Then we move on to the next step."

Thankfully, Angela's line beeped. Stan, of course. Twelve-fifteen on the dot.

"My line's beeping. Just leave this to the pros, Naomi. Go do some crunches or whatever it is you beautiful people do."

"f.u.c.k you, Angela," Naomi said. Then, sweetly: "We still on for dinner?"

"Yeah, but not Roscoe's. I don't know how you eat fried chicken, but I can't eat that stuff when I'm training. I'll call you later and we'll pick a place."

The phone beeped again, trampling part of Naomi's response. "-eat there one day a month, and this is my day. You know you love those wings and waffles. Come on, Angela, I've been looking forward to it for weeks!"

OUT OF AREA, the phone display read. Not Stan's usual I.D., but he might be calling from a cell phone. "Let me go. It's probably Stan."

"Well, if it is, you need to tell him those b.u.t.terfly McQueen days are over, and he'd better wake up and realize black actors need to get paid some real money, too-"

Angela cut her friend off in mid-rant. She switched over to the other line, donning her best don't-mess-with-me voice. "Angela Toussaint."

Silence at first. She glanced to make certain the telephone display said Line 2. It did.

"h.e.l.lo? Angela Toussaint," she said again.

An uncertain, frail-sounding woman finally spoke. "Angie?" she said. "Goodness, you sound so different at your office. You really threw me for a loop, sweetheart. I hope this isn't a bad time."

Angela couldn't answer at first. She couldn't open her mouth. She sat with her palms pressed flat on her desktop, frozen in place. Her insides seemed to draw up, squeezing her lungs so tightly that she decided not to breathe. At least for a while.

It was Laurel Everly, the caretaker of Gramma Marie's house in Sacajawea.

"Angie?" Mrs. Everly said. "Are you there?"

"I'm here." Angela hadn't meant to sound so clipped, but those were the only two words she could manage. Mrs. Everly had sent her three letters in the past two months, and she hadn't opened them. She opened none of her mail except bills. Angela had changed her number and become a ghost. Clients had her cell phone number, and that was all that mattered.

Two weeks had pa.s.sed since Mrs. Everly's last letter, forwarded from her old Hollywood Hills address. Angela hadn't thrown the letters away like she had most of the other letters that found her, but she'd managed to convince herself that she'd forgotten they were there. Mrs. Everly must have called Directory a.s.sistance, and she'd found the sixteen-month-old Toussaint Talent Agency.

The things Angela had attached meaning to lost their relevance-her new office suite she shared with a secretary and a.s.sistant, the running shoes under her desk, the photograph she had taken with Sidney Poitier six months ago, the framedVariety article profiling her after she orchestrated a comic's $10 million payday, her biggest feat. That version of Angela Toussaint was foreign, and she found herself confused to be sitting in her place. She was only Angie again.

"Well...you sound busy," Mrs. Everly said, unable to conceal her hurt feelings.

Angela picked up the handset, then she closed her eyes, rubbing her temple. She could feel her heartbeat there. "No, uh...actually, this is a good time, Mrs. Everly. It's lunchtime. I know you've been trying to reach me, but I've been..."

POP.

The sound she heard in her memory-the sound she had never stopped hearing, really-was a mere echo, nothing like it had once been, but it was enough. Angela's mouth went dry. She tried to squeeze away the images that began battering her: The brick wall. The empty wine racks. A growing puddle of bright, ugly red on the floor, snaking toward the wall.

Then, gone. Angela had grown amazed at her power to sweep her mind clean.

"How are you? How's Mr. Everly's back?"

"Some days are good, some not," Mrs. Everly said. "But could be worse. Joseph turned seventy-six last month, and I'm not far behind him. We still do all the work ourselves, except we had to hire out some of the roof work after all the rain last winter. You remember..."

Angela didn't remember. When was the last time she and this woman had spoken? Angela's mind had shoved all of Sacajawea into a tamed, formless shadow, at least while she was fully awake.

"I hope you won't be angry with me, Angie, but I showed the house even though I never heard back from you. They're about to drive me batty, calling me every other day. They're a very nice couple-the man is colored, and his wife is from New York, probably Jewish, I think. They have another B&B in Seattle, he said, and when I told them about Marie, well, you should have seen his face light up. He said he could make the house part of some kind of heritage tour, put it in a directory. He talked about a bronze plaque with Marie's face on it, telling her history. They'll keep with tradition and call it the Good House, he said."

At first, Angela couldn't make sense of Mrs. Everly's words, or the pride she heard in her voice. Then the meaning washed over her. "You opened Gramma Marie's house to strangers?"

"I know it's an unusual liberty, but I wrote you about it-"

Angela's next question came suddenly, surprising even her. "How much are they offering?"

"The same I said in my last letter."

"I don't remember what you said in the letter, Mrs. Everly." Angela fought not to sound as irritated as she felt. Mrs. Everly had been Gramma Marie's friend, so she was a small piece of Gramma Marie left behind. Angela didn't dare disrespect Mrs. Everly.

Mrs. Everly lowered her voice, shy about discussing money. "Four hundred. I don't know if that's a good price, even if real estate's depressed. The house is so special, and the land to boot. But they don't care so much about the land and the timber-it's the house they love. We only hate to see it standing empty, you see."

Wemeaning her and her husband.We meaning the whole town. It was none of anyone's business if the house was empty. The line beeped in Angela's ear, someone else trying to get through. "Thank you so much for calling, Mrs. Everly. I'm sorry I've been so hard to reach. I hope you can understand, after everything."Everything was a small word for what it was, the sum of it.

"Oh, yes," Mrs. Everly said, suddenly more motherly than businesslike. "Of course I understand, Angie. I was just afraid you'd be sore at me."

"Don't worry about that. I'll give you my answer soon. I have another call, so..."

Mrs. Everly clicked off without argument. Angela didn't pick up the other line right away, waiting for Caller I.D. to do its work so she wouldn't be caught off-guard again.FILMQUEST PICTURES , the display said. Stan Loweson, king of the lunchtime callback.

Naomi Price was about to get her million dollars, whether Stan liked it or not. Anyone who thought Angela Toussaint was a pushover had no idea who they were messing with.

POP.

But as the phone rang three times, then four, Angela didn't move to pick up the receiver.

Her million-dollar call went to voice mail, and it was gone.

Roscoe's House of Chicken 'n Waffles in Hollywood, tucked inconspicuously at Sunset and Gower, could be hard to find if you didn't already know where it was, but it was a Los Angeles staple. It offered the usual soul food, depending on the day's specials-greens, grits, and biscuits-but its true lure was the fried chicken and waffles celebrated in its name, served together in a combination that seemed mismatched only to people who had never tasted it. Tourists who bought celebrity home maps and hung out at Planet Hollywood would be much better served grabbing a quick meal at the no-frills tables at Roscoe's, Angela thought. Over the years, she had seen everyone from Bobby De Niro to Sam Jackson getting their soul-food fix at the Hollywood or South Central locations, dressed down and ready to eat.

Tonight, the biggest name dining at Roscoe's was Naomi Price. Their table was in the back, but although most other diners had either failed to recognize Naomi or only nodded cordial recognition, two high school girls with microscopically braided weaves stood at their table gus.h.i.+ng over Naomi while she signed autographs. "My mama is not going tobe-LIEVE this...," one of the girls was saying, so excited she was whipping her hands in the air as if they were on fire.

And Naomi was eating it up. She always had time forher people, as she called the well-wishers who flocked around her. In the past year, there hadn't been a single time they'd been out together when Naomi hadn't stopped to chat with a fan, whether it was at Starbucks, the movie theater, or the ladies' room. That degree of renown hadn't been true in the beginning, when Angela first opened her agency and Naomi had been one of the few name clients who'd trusted her enough to hire her. Luck had instigated it: They'd known each other in pa.s.sing while Angela was still at the law firm, they had mutual friends, and Naomi had been ready for a change. The rest, pure magic. After a decade in the business, with Angela's guidance, Naomi had become an overnight success.

Angela had been an agent for only sixteen months, but even as a rookie she was living out an agent's dream, creating an ascendancy. She and Naomi were making a lot of money together, and they were about to make much more. Together, they watched it unfold, as humbled by the process as they were amused.Magic was the only word to describe it.

Naomi had a smooth, oval-shaped face that made her look like a Somali model. Her complexion was a shade lighter than Angela's and two shades darker than Halle's, and she had a natural bustline that put Angela's B-cup to shame. Being Naomi Price was a full-time job, Angela had observed, from Naomi's strict nutritional habits to the killer workout routine she lived by to combat her tendency toward chubbiness. Tonight, in a casual white designer jogging suit and a thick braid nestling her back, Naomi wore gold-tinted eye shadow and fiery cinnamon lipstick that looked as if it had been born on her mouth. Naomi was so lovely, sometimes the sight of her stopped Angela's thoughts cold, the way she might stop to stare at a striking sunset.

"Thank you, Miss Price," the girls said in chorus, and they vanished back to their table. Neither of them had afforded Angela a second glance. Naomi gave her instant invisibility.

"So d.a.m.n cute. That tall one reminds me of my cousin Betty," Naomi said, before slipping a fork full of syrup-drowned waffles into her mouth. This was Naomi's designated "Cheat Meal," the one day a month she ate what she chose. Naomi's face melted with delight as she ate. She chewed her waffle as if she'd never tasted sugar before.

Angela had finished her food long ago, so her plate was a graveyard of stripped chicken bones. "I want to talk about Stan," Angela said. Their usual habit was to avoid discussing business until their after-dinner coffee, but Angela was making an exception.

Still hunched over her plate, Naomi looked up at her with one eyebrow raised. "You better not be about to give me any bad news while I'm eating my waffles, Angela."