Party Girl_ A Novel - Anna David [34]
“See you tomorrow,” he says and hangs up the phone.
Staring at the phone, I think about how much I’d like to call Stephanie and tell her about the Kane experience, and about Linda Lewis and inadvertently getting the day off work, and then I feel myself starting to get sad.
Whatever, I think, as I put on Linda Lewis’s CD and blast “Sinner” as loud as I can. Maybe Linda Lewis can be my new best friend.
It was tragic,” Linda says, her features scrunched together as a tear falls out of one of her eyes and hits her lap. “I was devastated.”
And so there it is—my first interview subject to cry in my presence. I had just innocently asked her about the cat she references on the fourth song on her CD; it turns out Daisy was run over by a car, and next thing I know she’s crying. It’s not like I’m angling to be the next Barbara Walters, or that making people cry has been some kind of a career goal, but you have to admit that you’re probably doing something right if a subject’s tear ducts are activated when you simply ask a question. I kind of want to hug her, but after last night’s brush with Kane’s lips, I feel distinctly aware of that reporter-subject line and how much I don’t want to cross it.
I gently lead Linda back to happier subjects, like the moment she got signed by her record label, when she first heard “Sinner” on the radio, and how it feels to be getting the acclaim she so clearly deserves. She cheers up and regales me with anecdotes and thoughts that I completely relate to—like her take on authority (that she doesn’t have the instinct that other people do to respect the people in charge, and it’s always getting her in trouble), feelings about her sexuality (just because she embraces it doesn’t mean she’s not a feminist) and San Francisco (“overrated”). I feel like most of what she says could have come directly from my mouth. Jesus, I’m developing a platonic crush on this woman, I think as she tells me that she so likes the taste of salty and sweet together that when she’s feeling particularly indulgent, she’ll throw Milk Duds into her buttered popcorn at the movies—something I’ve been doing since about the age of ten.
“Me, too!” I shriek for about the thirty-ninth time during the interview.
“Amazing,” Linda smiles. “We’re very connected.”
She actually cares about what I have to say, I think, unlike other people I’ve interviewed who pretend like they do but are just planning when they can stick a tongue in my mouth.
And I’m so enamored with everything she’s telling me that I let some other things slide, like the fact that she’s closed off most of the rooms in the house and won’t say whether or not she’s married. I figure I’m getting such amazingly descriptive answers from her on all kinds of other topics that it will more than make up for some of the other odds and ends the story may lack.
I save the whole age question until the very end, starting it off the way I always do when I suspect it might be a sensitive topic.
“So Absolutely Fabulous is completely obsessed with putting people’s ages in every piece,” I say.
Linda’s lids fly open and she looks at me with wild eyes. “I never say my age,” she says.
“Oh, so Tina didn’t say anything to you about this?” I ask, even though I know the answer. Damn publicists. Linda shakes her head.
“Well, I told her on the phone that this was pretty important.”
Linda seems really cold suddenly, not at all the evolved and loving being she’d been a few moments earlier. “I never say my age,” she says again. “Just tell your editor I wouldn’t tell you.”
I take a deep breath. “That’s the thing about Absolutely Fabulous,” I say. “They don’t accept answers like that. We’re not allowed to let people not answer questions.”
“That’s ridiculous!” she snaps, and then, realizing how harsh that must have sounded, she smiles. “Fine. Just tell them I’m thirty-something.”
“If I don’t get an exact number, they’ll just look it up from DMV records.” I say this