the ground. There was no question who the woman was, and once Coco realized who she was, she ran to their room, while Leslie followed with a worried look. Coco looked absolutely panicked and she was crying as she stood in the living room of their suite. Leslie came to put his arms around her, and didn't understand what had happened. It was just a couple kissing as they watched the swans. They were obviously staying there too, and looked very much in love. But Coco looked as though she'd seen a ghost.
Coco sat down with a thunderstruck look. She was in shock.
“What's going on?” Leslie asked as he sat down next to her with an arm around her. “Tell me, Coco. Do you know that man?” He wondered if it was an old love. The only one he knew about was Ian.
She shook her head in answer to his question, as tears rolled down her face. “It's not him… that woman is my mother,” she said, staring at Leslie, and he was so startled for a moment, he didn't know what to say.
“That's your mother? I've never seen her in person. She's very beautiful.” Coco looked nothing like her, although she was beautiful in her own right.
“He's half her age.” She was stunned.
“Not quite,” Leslie tried to reassure her, but there was no question, he was a lot younger than she was, and they had appeared to be very much involved. She had looked at her companion adoringly when she turned her face, and he looked very taken with her. He was a nice-looking guy, stylishly dressed in the manner of L.A., with relatively long hair, and a handsome face. He could have been an actor or a model, or almost anything for that matter. For a minute, Leslie didn't know what to say. “I take it, you didn't know about him.”
“Of course not. She always says she could never be with anyone after my father. You see what I mean!” she said, suddenly in a rage. “Everyone is full of shit here. Everyone lies, everyone's fake, even my mother, with all her holier-than-thou righteous crap about everything on the planet. She calls me a hippie and a flake, and what is she?” The implication in Coco's voice was not pleasant, and Leslie winced.
“Maybe a lonely woman,” Leslie said gently, trying to calm her. “It's not easy being alone at her age.” He assumed she was at least sixty, given Jane's age, but she didn't look it. She had looked closer to fifty in the light, and the man with her was clearly younger, but it hadn't shocked him. They looked nice together, and happy. If it gave them some joy and comfort, what harm was there in that? But he didn't say that to Coco, who looked as though she were about to have some kind of attack. He had to admit, he wouldn't have enjoyed seeing his own mother in that context either, and she was older and not as well preserved, and she was still married to his father, although they complained good-naturedly about each other and always had. But Coco's mother was younger, sexier, expensively dressed, widowed, and famous. She was fair game.
“She's sixty-two years old, and she's had more plastic surgery than a goddamn burn victim. It's just not right. How can she tell me how to run my life when this is what she does when nobody's looking? My father would never have done that to her.” But even as she said it, she knew that wasn't true. Her father had been a handsome man, with an eye for the ladies, and he and her mother had had their share of battles over his young, attractive clients. Her mother had kept an eagle eye on him, and a short leash. And if he had been the one to survive them, Coco suspected even now that he might have had someone too. She had just never expected it of her mother, and certainly not with a man that age.
“Maybe your father would too. Why do they have to be alone, just because it makes us uncomfortable to think of them as sexual? I hate to say it to you, but she has a right to a life too.”
“And what do you think a guy that age is after? Sex, at her age? He's after her money, power, connections, all the fallout from her fame.”
“Maybe,” Leslie said reasonably. She had calmed down a little, and