"Oh." The woman leaned closer. "What have I said?"
"Nothing," Julia said. "Nothing." She clutched the magazine and started to leave. Then, remembering, she turned to the woman and asked, "May I have this?"
"Well, yes, dear. Of course."
"Thank you," Julia said. She was already running, dodging the commuters in their business suits and the vacationers wearing Hard Rock Cafe T-shirts and Yankees caps. Her jacket flapped behind her. Her carry-on bag banged against her side, but she didn't care. She just kept running.
The cab turned from Canal Street onto West Broadway. She didn't know where the movie set was, somewhere in TriBeCa. She didn't know if he'd want to see her, probably not. She didn't even know if she had time to see him and make it back to the airport to catch her plane. The craziest thing of all was that she didn't care.
"Lady, I don't know where we're going," the driver said again.
"They're filming a movie down here somewhere," she told him once more. "Just circle around." "But, lady, that could be . . ."
She slammed a fifty-dollar bill against the partition and said, "I have a lot of money, and I'm willing to use it to find that set!"
The driver raised his eyebrows and his voice. "Okay," he said. "Your nickel."
They made another turn onto a smaller street, and Julia saw barricades up ahead and a throng people standing as if they were waiting for something or someone. A cop was directing traffic, trying to make the cab turn around. The driver rolled down his window to speak to the uniformed officer.
"Gotta turn around, folks," the officer said.
"What's going on?" Julia asked from the backseat.
"Street's blocked off shooting a movie."
And with that, Julia tossed money toward the driver and was out the door. She ran the half block between the cab and the crowd. She clutched the magazine, remembering its words: his famous father's name, fame the easy way. Fame that had nothing to do with her.
She gripped the magazine and ran harder, pushing through the crowd of onlookers and tans, celebrity junkies, and starving hopefuls. She hoped no one would recognize her as she pushed on through the belly-hartiig ( ? ), tattoo-boasting, cappuccino-drinking masses until she reached a very large man in a very small T-shirt who was manning the gap in the barricades.
"I need to see Lance Collins," she said, gasping for breath.
"Yeah, lady. You and every other warm blooded female in the country." Seeing the issue of Fad in her hands, he added, "I love it when the pretty boys are on magazine covers during filming. It makes my life so fun."
"But, I know him," Julia said. "I'm"—she lowered her voice—"Julia James."
He looked through a list of names on a clipboard. "Sorry," he said.
"But I'm—"
"Look, lady, I don't care if you're Cleopatra, you don't get in unless you're on the list." "But I'm a friend of his."
"Then you have his contact info and you don't need to go through me." "No! I—"
"You're leaving." He nudged her slightly back into the throng of women—younger, thinner, more worldly women who would probably never make Lance break-and-enter.
Julia racked her brain. What would Nina do? Or Ro-Ro and the Georgias? Or, Julia asked herself, Veronica?
She heard a voice behind her. "Hey, Julia?"
She whirled, praying it would be Lance. It wasn't.
The man was pushing toward her and, although Julia remembered him clearly—it's hard to forget the face of a man who shows up outside a police station with your luggage, airplane tickets, and a running cab—his name was a mystery. She mentally snapped her fingers, trying to remember. She knew he was a member of "New York's thespian underground," but other than that, she was drawing a total blank, so she offered a nice, generic, "Hi!"
"It really is you," he said. Then he pointed to the barriers. "Why haven't you gone in?"
"My name isn't on the list."
"Oh, the list." He gave her a wave. "Come on."