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my autograph had been requested was on a credit-card slip.
    I was back at the prep counter, instructing Jerry and Cliff about putting aside plates of pie for Angie and the security guards when I heard Liddy’s voice behind me.
    “That was a great show—and the pies were so good they were positively evil .”
    She was accompanied by Nicholas—who, I was thankful to see, was beaming—and an exquisite girl with perfectly spaced features, large brown eyes, and hair the color of corn silk. A little taller than my five foot seven and considerably more slender, she looked like an artist’s rendering of a princess from a fairy tale. She was so beautiful it was almost jaw-dropping.
    My first thought was that her mother must have been beautiful, too.
    And probably still was.
    Nicholas introduced us.
    “Hello. I’m glad to meet you, Celeste. I hope you enjoyed the show.”
    “You seem to cook quite well,” she said. Her voice was soft and had the tiniest trace of an accent—one that I’d heard before, in film clips of Grace Kelly after she married the ruler of Monaco, or Madonna right after she married a British movie director. A mid-Atlantic accent, it was called. Although Celeste’s words were inoffensive, there was a suggestion of superiority in her tone.
    This eighteen-year-old girl, this breathtaking vision, was being condescending to me, and it didn’t look as though Nicholas had noticed.
    I felt the first trickle of the “choppy waters” Liddy had predicted lapping against my feet.

4

    Liddy must have caught the girl’s tone, too, because she filled the momentary silence with bright enthusiasm. “Why don’t the four of us go out to dinner?”
    Celeste frowned.
    Nicholas said, “We’ll do that soon, but tonight I promised to take Celeste around to check out some of the hot clubs.”
    “Hot” was not a word I’d ever heard Nicholas use about an establishment. I suspected the only reasons a teenage girl would want her father to take her out were that she didn’t have a car, and didn’t yet know anyone else.
    “I’ve got to tell you something exciting, Del,” Liddy said. “Celeste wants to be an actress.”
    “You certainly are beautiful enough for movies,” I told Celeste. “Liddy’s an actress.”
    Celeste looked at Liddy with interest. “What have I seen you in?”
    “Most recently, I was the passenger in first class sitting next to Brad Pitt in Flight Path . I hid his revolver so the terrorists wouldn’t see he had one and realize he was an air marshal.”
    “Oh,” she said, losing interest fast.
    Liddy was undaunted by Celeste’s unenthusiastic response. “Della and I are going to the Hollywood Film Society luncheon tomorrow. Major people in the movie industry are always there. We’d like you to come with us, Celeste.”
    This plan was news to me.
    Suddenly animated, Celeste said, “I’d really like to start meeting people.”
    “That’s nice of you.” Nicholas’s tone was pleasant, and he smiled at Liddy and me, but I could see that the smile didn’t reach all the way to his eyes.
    I wondered if he’d known about Celeste’s desire to be an actress before tonight. I didn’t think he would be pleased. Nicholas had told me stories about what he called the “girls around town” who thought their good looks were a no-limit Visa card. Very few of those actress-wannabes had happy endings with the Hollywood men who used them.

    Later, in my Jeep on the way home, Liddy said, “You should have seen Nick’s face when he heard Celeste tell me she wanted to be an actress. He looked as though he’d just been sucker punched.”
    “She has the looks.” My newly awakened suspicious nature made me think that she could act, too—at least offscreen. I prayed silently that she was sincere in wanting to be with her father, and that she hadn’t come here only because he lived in Hollywood.
    “What’s this about the Film Society luncheon?” I asked. “You’d never mentioned it to me.