The Seven Month Itch Page 8

  I give Alexa a look. This is supposed to be making me feel better?

  She pulls a face. ‘Okay, so I know Holly’s ears don’t make wax, but you know what I’m getting at here.’

  ‘And she’s wearing a ring, you say?’ I frown again, remembering Holly’s beautiful sapphire all boxed up at home.

  Alexa nods. ‘Kind of like the one he gave her in real life. It’s hideously large.’ I showed the ring to Alexa once. She coughed so hard, she almost choked. ‘Plus, Kent is saying all this stupid stuff about how great it is to work with Holly again, then getting all excited and doing things like standing up on his chair and punching the air, as if he’s eight years old and his parents have just told him they’re taking a road trip to Disneyland over the summer. It’s a complete cringe-fest.’

  ‘Right.’

  My best friend watches me closely for a second or two. ‘Nessa? You know it’s nothing, though, right? It’s just the way the media are …’

  ‘Mmm,’ I say, listening to my stomach harder than I do to Alexa as she continues to try to make me feel better. It’s churning again. It’s practically making butter in there. That awful gut feeling is back. It’s stronger than ever this time and I think that’s because I’ve just realised something.

  Something big. Something butter/stomach-churning worthy.

  Kent Sweetman is Holly’s Tom MacKenzie.

  What I mean is, in The Seven Year Itch, Richard Sherman, the husband stuck in NYC, goes crazy because his wife’s ex is vacationing at the same place. He starts to believe all kinds of things are going on between her and this Tom MacKenzie, including hay rides.

  Yes. Hay rides.

  Oh no. This is not good. Not good at all. I bite my lip now, just thinking about it. I mean, what if Holly and Kent go on a hay ride? What then? We could all be in real trouble. The wedding could be in real jeopardy. My stomach does another back flip and I try not to wince. Everything is so not PPP. It’s all WWW: wrong, wrong, wrong. And, to top it all off, I’ve been dumped for Doris Day and …

  Oh.

  Oh.

  I suck my breath in and hold it. Wait. Hang on. I think about Toby and what he’d said about Holly and Dad, about the seven-month-itch thing. At the same time my mind moves swiftly over the dates, making sure. Yes, that’s right. Toby and I started going out together seven weeks today. Sevens … It’s the seven-week itch for Toby and me, and the seven-month itch for Dad and Holly – just like The Seven Year Itch. It’s a sign. It’s another Maril –

  ‘Nessa?’

  I pause for a moment. Don’t say Marilynism. Don’t say Marilynism. ‘Sorry?’ I haven’t caught a word of what Alexa has been saying.

  ‘I said, it’s driving the media nuts,’ Alexa repeats. ‘You know, that Holly’s marrying your dad instead of someone like Kent, for one. And that they don’t know where or when it’s going to be.’

  I nod. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I know.’

  ‘The security’s been pretty good, though, hasn’t it? I mean, none of them knows.’

  I look up now. My eyes suddenly focusing on Alexa. ‘Yet,’ I whisper. ‘They don’t know yet.’ Forget about my stomach, now I feel winded. ‘Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you tonight. Do me a favour – send a message to Timmons. Tell her I’ve had to go to the doctor with my girl troubles.’

  ‘But, Nessa …’ Alexa starts, but it’s too late. I’m already gone.

  I have to get home. And fast.

  When I get to our apartment building, I make a last-minute decision to take the stairs. It’s the kind of decision you want to make last-minute, because, by the time I get to the penthouse, I’m almost dead. I wheeze my way up the last flight and unlock the door, which leads into our hall. That’s the weird thing with penthouses – the elevator usually zaps you right up into your apartment, no front door required. (Believe me, in our previous life, this was something that didn’t happen to me much. Or, rather, at all.)

  When I’m in, I sneak down the hallway until I can see past the kitchen and into the living room. Well, hello. Those stairs were worth the effort after all.

  Because there, brazen as … brazen things are, is Susannah. Taking photos with a digital camera. So, my hunch, my Marilynism, had been right after all! I step out into the middle of the floor now. ‘Hi, Susannah,’ I say.

  Her head almost hits the plasterwork on the ceiling, she jumps so high. ‘Nessa! I didn’t hear you come home.’

  Exactly.

  There’s a long pause as we look at each other. And it’s Susannah who breaks first. ‘Did you want to have a look? I’ve just had my new digital camera delivered. I couldn’t wait to try it out.’

  Yeah, right. Nice save. ‘Where’s Dad?’ I ask, glancing around. I can’t see him anywhere. And, suddenly, I start to get a bit worried. Susannah and me. Alone in the apartment. Right after I catch her taking photos. And I hadn’t told Alexa what was going on. If this was a movie, I’d be dead soon and no-one would find out what happened to me until the last ten minutes. And there’d be all this spooky music in the background. I don’t want to be the dead spooky-music person.

  ‘He had a meeting that he had to go to. I told him I’d just carry on here.’

  My eyebrows raise. I bet you did … Right. That’s it. Think quickly, Nessa, before the music starts up. ‘I, um, just had to pop home and get my folder,’ I say as I inch towards my bedroom.

  ‘Okay!’ Susannah smiles and points her camera at me. Click, click. ‘Ha ha. Got you!’

  Wow. How about that? She really is brazen. Imagine what she’d do to me if she got hold of me. I don’t want to think about it. ‘Look, I’ll just grab the folder and go,’ I tell her.

  And boy, do I ever. I grab that folder faster than I’ve ever grabbed anything before, and am out of that apartment at lightning speed. I take the stairs again. I mean, I’ve seen those movies where people hide out on the top of the elevator. Yikes. Click, click. Got you! Double yikes.

  When I’m on the street again, I breathe a sigh of relief. Then I sit down on a ledge and pick the sheet of paper I need out of my folder. The one headed ‘Big M Security Service’ (aka Mikey). I check the address and head uptown as fast as my short legs will carry me.

  ‘Um, hello? Mikey?’ I say into the intercom. ‘Is that you, Mikey?’

  ‘No. Who’s this?’ a voice barks back.

  I’m only talking into an intercom, but the voice still scares me. I guess it’s supposed to. ‘It’s Nessa Mulholland. My dad’s getting married to Holly Isles and you’re doing the security. We’ve had a … breach, I guess you could call it. I need to talk to Mikey.’

  ‘Wait a second,’ the voice grunts.

  I stand and look around me as I wait. And just when I’m beginning to think that Christmas is coming before Mikey, another voice booms out over the intercom. A different one this time. ‘Nessa?’

  ‘Mikey?’

  ‘Yeah. You’d better come up. Third floor.’ The door buzzes and I lunge forward to push it open before it stops.

  Another good wheeze sees me on the third floor of the brownstone (those stupid things never have elevators), knocking on Mikey’s door. An eye peeks out at me through the peephole. Talk about paranoid. Still, I guess they have to be. That’s what Holly’s paying them for, right? When I’ve been thoroughly checked out (in a security-once-over kind of way), the door swings open.

  I laugh awkwardly as a big burly guy (who’s not Mikey – I’ve met Mikey once before, and this isn’t him) suddenly looms above me. He looks at me as if I’m lower than dirt and his thumb jerks, telling me that I can come inside.

  ‘You’re not going to frisk me?’ I laugh again. It comes out more like a nervous cackle.

  ‘Should I?’ The guy looms a little further over.

  ‘No,’ I squeak, my eyes wide.

  In the background, Mikey enters the dimly lit room, laughing. ‘He’s only fooling with you, Nessa. Come on in.’

  I practically run on over to him. ‘I know that. Of course I don’t pack h
eat. Not during the day, anyway.’

  Mikey really laughs at this. ‘Get her,’ he says, looking over at Burly Guy. ‘Packing heat. Kids these days. They watch too much Law and Order, that’s the trouble.’

  Burly Guy grunts and heads into the back of the office.

  ‘Now, Nessa,’ says Mikey, recovering himself. ‘Come and sit down at my desk and tell me all about this “security breach” of yours.’

  I felt safe as soon as I got here. As soon as I’d been let inside, I thought that all my Susannah troubles were going to be over. But now my ears actually hear the inverted commas in Mikey’s voice. Oh great, I think as I sit down at his desk. He’s going to give me the little-kid treatment. I take a deep breath and tell myself it’ll be okay. Once he looks into Susannah and sees what’s going on, works out that she’s a reporter who’s being paid to find out details of Holly and Dad’s wedding, he’ll realise I was right all along.

  So, I sit up in my seat, trying to look a little older than my fifteen years, and spill. I tell Mikey about Susannah moving in, posing as Dad’s research assistant, and the whole actress-slash-sociology-student thing. I explain how the marriage licence went missing and how I’ve just caught her taking photos. And, honestly, now I’m sitting here repeating all of this, I can’t understand how I didn’t work it out from the start. No student could afford to maintain those foils, those nails, that fake tan. There’s a reason students slum around in Birkenstocks with bad bed hair: they can’t afford anything else. (I mean, it costs you three hundred dollars to go to the hairdresser in Manhattan, and if you go to a good one, that’s just in tips!) ‘What I’m really worried about, though,’ I say, finishing off, ‘is that she knows the venue where the wedding’s going to be held. She said she knows Nico’s well.’

  Across the desk from me Mikey leans back in his big leather chair, his arms on the armrests, his two beefy index fingers touching slightly. ‘Hmmm. Hmmm.’

  ‘Well?’ I sit forward. ‘What do you think we should do?’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Mikey says again. And then, suddenly, he leans forward and laughs, slapping his desk and making me jump. ‘You’re a real card, aren’t you, doll?’

  I freeze. Card? Doll? ‘What?’ I look at him and frown.

  Mikey laughs that distinctive huge laugh of his again that practically fills the room, squeezing us out. Squeezing me out. ‘Your dad told me something like this might happen,’ he says.

  I sit up again. ‘Something like what? Like Susannah being a reporter?’

  I get a bigger laugh at this and have to wait for Mikey to pull himself together. It takes a while. ‘No, duck. With you. He said you’ve got a …’ – he looks down at an open folder on his desk and reads – ‘a bit of a vivid imagination.’

  My jaw clenches. ‘Did he?’

  ‘Yeah. He told me the whole story about the cruise ship.’

  Geez. WILL EVERYONE JUST SHUT UP ABOUT THE CRUISE SHIP ALREADY?

  There’s a long silence, which I use to stare at the wood grain on Mikey’s desk. Thanks, Dad, I think to myself. Thanks very much.

  ‘Nessa?’ I look up to see Mikey leaning forward towards me. He reaches over and pinches my cheek. ‘You never know, duck, so I’ll check out this dame for you. I’ll give you a call tonight, eh?’

  Mikey takes my cell-phone number and, a minute and a half later, I’m back on the sidewalk. I look up at his window with a sigh. Card, doll, duck, dame … I hope Holly knows who she’s hiring here.

  Then, with a shrug, I head back home. To my fate. To Holly and Dad’s fate. But, hopefully, no spooky music whatsoever.

  I avoid Susannah and my dad (who’s thankfully now installed back in the lounge room, working) and hole up in my room once more, waiting for Mikey’s call. I check my cell every five minutes to see if I’m getting okay reception – which is ridiculous, because of course I’m getting perfect reception. This is Manhattan. Manhattanites think they need perfect phone reception like they need air and water. As I wait, I berate myself for joking with the security people again. I mean, didn’t I learn my lesson with the top hats/tails/cane thing? Did I really need to go a second round, with ‘packing heat’? What was I thinking? No wonder Mikey thinks I’m a little kid. I sound like a little kid.

  Finally, finally, at about quarter past seven, Mikey calls. ‘Nessa? I took a bit of a look into this Susannah broad.’

  ‘And?’ I lean forward as I sit on my bed.

  There’s a pause. Then …

  ‘And she’s fine. Real fine.’ There’s laughter in the background with this.

  Right. I see how it is. He probably didn’t check anything other than Susannah’s measurements. ‘Yeah, thanks for that, Mikey,’ I say. ‘So, do you have any reason why she’d be taking those photos?’ I’m doubting it. Like I said, it was probably a measurement check only.

  ‘Well, did you ask her why she was taking them?’

  Wow. Isn’t he full of the sneaky moves? Holly should consider giving him a bonus. ‘I told you,’ I reply. ‘She said she’d just had a new digital camera delivered and couldn’t wait to use it.’

  ‘Was there a box?’

  Double wow. He’s practically Sherlock Holmes, isn’t he? I think back. There was a box. I saw it on the table. But so what? Her editor probably couriered the camera over from the office. I shake my head, not bothering to answer his question. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I tell him. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing. I’m sure you know what you’re doing.’ Not. I hang up and throw my cell onto the other side of the bed. It doesn’t look like Mikey’s going to be any help at all.

  With a huff and a puff, I grab the remote and switch the TV on for some distraction. Big mistake. Another news report fills the screen with Kent and Holly’s faces. Kent does his big punching-the-air routine again and a second huff and a puff exits my lungs. That guy is such a moron, I think as I switch the TV off once more. And just as the sound turns off, a peal of laughter skips down the hallway. Susannah. Now I want to pick up that cell phone and hurl it through my window.

  But I don’t. Because that’s what hot-shot reporter Susannah would want me to do, wouldn’t she?

  So, instead, I do the opposite. I take a deep breath. I calm down. I get Zen. Or do Zen. Or become Zen. Whatever … I do the Zen thing. I have to, because I need a plan here. A plan that’s bigger and better and bolder than Susannah’s. She may be a fox, but I can outfox her. I know I can.

  I have to.

  So, I think hard. I Zen out. And, after a Zen while, I work out that I know three things for sure:

  Holly and Dad’s wedding is in five days.

  It looks like it’s down to me to hold it all together.

  This seven-week/month/year-itch thing is catching, and it’s catching fast. If I don’t hotfoot it around right now and apply a bit of cream to everybody, there’s no telling how scratched up things could get.

  So, that’s what I decide to do. A little cream application. A little scouting of my own. A little damage control. Pretty much the kind of thing Mikey should’ve done and should still be doing.

  I have to work the following day, Tuesday. And, believe me, Mrs Timmons is not overly impressed with Monday’s ‘girl trouble’, even though I spin the most excellent story about having problems with my tilted uterus, whatever that is. (It’s some term I picked up from a midday movie. Those made-for-TV dramas can be very educational.) Oh yeah, and Timmons is not exactly happy that I turn down the offer of working extra hours this week, either. Luckily, Alexa’s busy showing groups around the museum during lunch, so I get to spend my break planning. Planning my trip to LA that is.

  What?

  Yes, that’s what I said – my trip to LA. As I see it, I’ve got a war on two fronts here. The first front is here, at home: the Manhattan front. That’s my war with Susannah. All that gut twisting wasn’t just my imagination working overtime after all. She’s a reporter, I’m sure of it, and she is after my dad. Just not in the way that I initially thought. But I’ve fought the battle of Manhatta
n and lost (for the moment), and as there’s not much I can do about it right now, it’s time to concentrate on the second front: the LA front.

  Last night, I had a big think about where that photo leak of Holly and Kent kissing could’ve come from and I kept coming back to one person – the Kentster himself. He’s never been able to get over Holly and still sends her presents on her birthday and at Christmas, and things like that. He’s always trying to get directors to hire her as his leading lady and is forever inviting her to premieres and charity balls, and so on. Basically, he’s a sick, sick, lovesick man. Plus, he knows very well that Holly is set to get married this weekend, and it really does seem a bit of a coincidence that suddenly all those kissy-kissy love scenes need to be re-shot in LA when absolutely everyone else is happy with them.

  Hmmm.

  Anyway, I figure Alexa is right – I’m never going to get the truth from reading the tabloids. What I need to do is go over there myself and see what’s going on. Find out exactly what Kent is up to. (Um, I don’t think Alexa thought this last bit, but what’s a bit of extrapolation between friends?) The only thing is, I kind of don’t want anyone to know about my little excursion. Not Holly or Marc, because then Kent might find out I’m coming. And definitely, definitely, definitely not my dad, because somehow I’m guessing a solo spying jaunt across the country would probably not be okay with him. And, of course, he’s very busy right now and I don’t want to worry him. So if I don’t tell him I’m going, it’ll be okay.

  Won’t it?

  Sure, of course it will. So, I’ve got it all planned out. I’m going to take Holly’s car service to the airport tomorrow, Wednesday, and catch a really early flight, leaving a note for Dad to say I’m out and about wedding planning and, if he needs me, to get me on my cell. Then, later on, I’m going to call him and ask if I can stay at Alexa’s, which will be fine, because he thinks Alexa and her parents are the bee’s knees. And, yes, I do feel bad about the lying thing, because I (almost) never lie to my dad, but it’s all for a good cause, right? (It’s like Marilyn Monroe herself once said, ‘If I had observed all the rules, I’d never have gotten anywhere.’ And, right now, I definitely need to get somewhere. To LA, and fast.)