“I’ll go to the car, get your purse and ID, and come back for you.”
“But then everyone will know. Dalton will be so mad. No, you save yourself. I’ll stay here and wait until the cops come and take me.”
I leaned against the door and made a foothold for Mitchell with my hands.
Mitchell stepped onto my hands and grunted as I lifted him up. It was a tight fit, but he managed to get his body through the transom. I listened as he dropped down, cat-like, on the other side. The door handle jiggled, but the door didn’t open.
“Just as you suspected,” he said through the door. “I need a key. I’ll go steal one, and I’ll come back and free you.”
“You don’t have to do that. You’ll get caught again, and they’ll chain you to the sink in here. Go home, Mitchell. Save yourself. I’ll call you from jail and you can bail me out.”
I waited for his response, but there was only silence. He was already gone.
7
Without a watch or phone, it was hard to guess how long I sat in the holding cell by myself. It might have been twenty minutes, or three hours.
It was long enough that I moved on from fantasies about getting free. My dreams got scaled back, to fantasies about getting a pizza delivered through the transom window.
Time passed.
And then my fantasies got really weird. I started to think about kale, the green stuff that looks like lettuce but tastes like grass. If someone had sent a kale smoothie through the transom, I would have consumed it with gusto.
I was well into my kale fantasy stage when someone knocked on the door.
An austere male voice carried in through the open transom: “Are you two still in there?”
I was lying flat on my back, imagining I was part of a delicious kale salad with grated beets and arugula and goat cheese and radishes and…
“Hello?” he said.
I sat up. It had to be the kale delivery man, with the kale pizza I ordered.
“Are you the kale man?” I asked. My voice came out raspy from disuse.
The man spoke again, with an English accent, “Who’s in there? Are you the two people who crashed the set today?”
An English accent? I had a bad feeling it wasn’t the kale pizza I ordered.
I decided to switch back to my Ursula disguise, complete with my really bad accent.
“Hello, sir? It is only me. I am personal assistant for B-level actor. He stand in background and say peas-and-carrots-peas-and-carrots.”
“You’re not a stalker?” the English man asked.
“I am assistant. I used to clean house. I clean house real good, make tub clean so you can eat in tub. Then I meet actor. I put hand in pants and he say I do very good job.”
“What? Hand in pants?”
I slapped my forehead. The forced captivity and lack of nutrients had made me slip up.
I quickly corrected myself, “You know, how they say, with the dry cleaning. I go to cleaners. Do you know of this actress, Gwyneth Paltrow? Very pretty. I see her at dry cleaner when I pick up pants. That is my job. Personal assistant. Pick up dry cleaning.”
“And your name is Ursula?”
“Is good name, yes?” I got to my feet and went to the door. I pressed my cheek against the cool metal. “Hello, sir? Would you be having key to open door?” No answer. “Sir, please let me out, or I will be in big trouble with boss. He told me no, he say no come to his work today. I don’t know why he say no to me, but I have much time to think here in this prison.”
“I hear people do a lot of thinking in jail. Do you want to go to jail, Ursula?”
“No. I have enough thinking for today, thank you. I see now that B-level actor tell me these things because he knows what is best. I know that Ursula sometimes is not good girl. I do some things real good, but I make mistakes. Now I will listen to B-level actor. I will trust him.”
He didn’t respond.
“I will trust him,” I repeated.
I turned my face to press my other cheek against the cool door.
There were footsteps in the hallway, the sound of people approaching.
“It’s about time,” said the male voice, this time without the English accent.
A woman said, “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t know.” Keys jingled. “The two of them looked exactly like these other two who got me fired from my last job. I guess I overreacted.”
“You were just doing your duty. I do appreciate everything you and the other security staff do to keep us safe. I’ll put in a commendation with your supervisor… if you can find the key and let my wife out of this disabled washroom.”
I stepped back from the door and ran over to the sink to wash the mascara off my cheeks. I still had the black Cleopatra wig on, and I decided to leave it because my real hair was a mess, and wouldn’t match my black eyebrows.
They were still outside the door, trying different keys. Was I hallucinating, or did the kale man say let my wife out of this disabled washroom?
I looked around the tiny room.
Holy melted marshmallows on graham crackers, of course I was in a washroom for the disabled. How could I have thought the studio had prison cells?
The door handle kept rattling.
Finally, the door opened.
Dalton stood there with the female security guard, and right behind them was Mitchell, looking sheepish.
“I am so sorry,” I gushed.
Dalton was still wearing his pale vampire makeup. He gave me one of his scary Drake Cheshire snarling expressions and hissed, “You should be sorry. Sorry for calling me a B-level actor.”
I tried to shrug and look adorable—as adorable as a girl can look after being locked in a disabled washroom for hours and hours.
I switched back to my bad Ursula accent. “Please, sir. I be good assistant. I go to dry cleaner. I listen to boss.”
The guard looked up at Dalton. “I don’t understand. Is this your stalker, or your wife, or what?”
Dalton answered, “This stalker is my wife.”
The woman shook her head, and then walked away muttering about crazy Hollywood people.
I ran out of the washroom and into Dalton’s arms.
He held me tight. “It was wrong for me to keep you at a distance. You’re my wife, and I love you, even if you are a stalker.”
My voice choked in my throat. “I can’t help it. You’re the person in my life who means everything to me.”
Mitchell cleared his throat. “Um, hello? I’m still here.”
“And Mitchell and Shayla,” I quickly added. “Plus my mom and dad and Kyle.”