The next morning we loaded the X6 on Lainey’s trailer. Not only was Lainey willing to take the car to the dealership for me, she even agreed to take Tiffany home to Fallbrook, since it was close to Temecula anyway. The two girls had become good friends over the weekend and I kinda wanted Mom to meet Lainey, so it was a complete win in my book.
Imogen and James suggested that they could give Emmy and Angela a lift back to Los Angeles, sparing us the hassle of getting to the airport in Tucson. This left me to play with my new toy all alone on the way back to Los Angeles.
Sometimes life is good.
Unfortunately, when I tried to map a fun way home, fun wasn’t on the menu. There really was no good way to incorporate any winding back roads into my route. It was going to be a simple backtrack on the freeway the entire way.
Watching the Athertons’ jet take off from the small county airport, I consoled myself with the thought that at least I’d be in a truly amazing car, right? I gassed up in town and hit the road west, keeping to a reasonable speed. After all, an exotic supercar done up in Gulf Racing blue and orange would be a choice target for state troopers and highway patrol…
Resolved to get the car re-wrapped into something a bit less conspicuous back in Los Angeles, I set off for nine hours of staring at the desert and the hubcaps of other vehicles on the freeway.
I stopped for gas in some micro-sized town (if it could even be called that) west of Phoenix. Wondering what I could find for lunch, I spotted a taco truck that seemed fairly popular across the road. Thankfully they had a few picnic tables set up under a big canopy- there was no way I was going to eat in the Porsche.
A guy sat down at my table while I was eating.
“Is that your Porsche?” he asked, gesturing in the direction of the baby blue and orange supercar.
“As of this morning,” I replied.
“Really?” he asked, intrigued.
“Yeah, I just bought it used out in the eastern part of the state. East of Tucson.”
“What year is it? They only made nine hundred and eighteen of those, right?” he asked, surprising me that he recognized the car, and even more that he knew anything about it.
“From what I understand, all of them were designated 2015 model year, but this one is number 914. So very nearly the last one,” I replied.
“Could I ask you a favor? Before you take off, could you, um, rev it up? Give me a sound check?” he asked. “That’s mine over there,” he said, pointing to a vintage 912 I hadn’t noticed.
“I love that color,” I said, looking at his nicely restored Targa.
“It’s called Bahama Yellow, but I tend to think of it as more butterscotch,” the guy replied.
“From what I understand, my 918 is Sapphire Blue Metallic under that wrap,” I said. “Not the color I would have ordered, But I guess it’s O.K.”
“Well, you’ll never see it under that Gulf livery anyway,” he said.
“I kinda like the Gulf colors, but it’s just a bit too much for me. I’m going to have it redone in something a bit more…” I trailed off, thinking of the right word.
“Subtle?”
“Yeah, that works. I was thinking something that doesn’t say ‘arrest me officer, I was flagrantly violating the traffic codes’,” I said with a laugh.
Laughing at that, the guy asked if I was heading to Los Angeles. When I told him I was, he said that he was involved in the LA Porsche club and that I should think about joining. They do some fun get-togethers and drive-outs, he explained. I told him I’d think about it and said maybe I’d see him around. He followed me to the car and I remembered he’d wanted to hear the engine, so I turned the car on. It made its clicks and hums, but that was about it.
“There you go,” I said.
“Right, it’s in electric mode,” he said with a chuckle. “Is it possible to switch it to gas so you can get the engine running?”
It took me a few moments to remember it was a selector on the steering wheel, but when I toggled it into ‘gas only’ mode the engine started right up. I dutifully revved it, and I have to admit that I enjoyed the sound as much as he did. The exhausts were about a foot behind my head, and with the T tops removed the sound had an almost direct line to my ears.
“That’s beautiful,” the guy said when I let the RPMs drop back to idle. I switched back to hybrid mode and the engine shut itself off.
“It’s gonna take me a while to get used to that,” I admitted when the car went silent.
“My daily driver is a Prius,” the guy said. “When I first got it, the same thing. Every stoplight, and it dies. It was weird to get used to at first, but after a little while seems normal.”
After I took off, and faced with a long drive ahead, I set the cruise control and played with the car’s various settings in the complicated menu options. It was going to take me a while to get the car’s user preferences dialed in to my liking, but on that freeway, the softest road settings were surprisingly plush and just right for top-down cruising.
The Spyder was a surprisingly good road car, if a bit claustrophobic- perhaps even more so than my Vantage. Thankfully, the open roof helped with the shrink-wrapped feeling, but still… Roomy is not a good description for the Porsche at all.
Realizing that the clicker for the entry gate to the Batcave was still in the X6, I parked in the front motor court. To my surprise, there were at least a dozen cars parked there, none of them familiar.
Curious, I followed the loud music into the sound stage. There was a set that looked like a high school classroom, and a band I didn’t recognize was shooting a music video.
“Can I help you?” asked a woman about my age with too many tattoos. She was holding a clipboard, and looked to be an assistant director or some similar job description.
“I just came in because I heard the music,” I explained. “Who are these guys?”
“These guys?” she asked, waving her pen in the direction of the band, who were goofing off between takes. “The name of the band is Murder Ballot. It’s Zach Miranda’s new project,” she explained, as if that explained anything.
“I guess that’s cool,” I said.
“I hate to be rude,” the woman said, “But this is supposed to be a closed set.” She gave me a meaningful look, trying to be polite and only hinting that I should shove off.
Just then somebody yelled out for everybody to get on their marks, and a smoking hot model dressed as a very sexy teacher took a seat on the edge of the desk facing the rest of the room. She had a bright red apple in her hand, but an amazingly bored expression as the wardrobe lady opened another button on her shirt, then did something to pull it tighter across her chest.
“Dana, she can stay,” said a familiar voice from behind me. “She owns the studio, anyway, so kicking her out wouldn’t work very well anyhow.”
I turned and opened my arms for a big hug. “Steph!” I said, wrapping her up tight. “Is this your band?” I asked when I finally let her go, almost immediately missing her familiar smell.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Stephanie had a slightly dazed look on her face. “Damn, Leah, you’ve gotten so strong!” she said. Then, recovering, she said, “Yeah, they’re one of the bands I’m managing now.”
“Quiet on the set!” yelled the director, so we shut up and just watched for a few minutes while they shot the scene.
“So, um, Emmy said that you guys live here at the studio? You have a house on site?” Stephanie asked after the director yelled “Cut!”
“That’s sort of not the right way to describe it, but yeah,” I said. “Can you take a break here and come visit?”
“I don’t really need to be here,” Stephanie said. “All I’m really doing is babysitting these jackasses,” she said, hooking her thumb in the direction of the band. “I swear, if they don’t freaking grow up a little I might have to fire their asses.”
“Harsh!” I said with a laugh.
“I don’t understand how these guys manage to tie their shoes,” Stephanie said with a sigh.
“Come on- let’s go to my house. We can crack a bottle of wine and catch up. You’ve been talking to Emmy?”
“I mean, some, yeah. When I heard through the grapevine that you guys bought and renovated an old studio, I contacted her about filming some videos here, and she put me in contact with Jackson. I guess he’s the one doing all the studio business, right?”
She turned to the AD and said, “They’re all yours now. I’m taking off. I probably won’t be back. Good luck!”
“Alright,” Dana said. “I’ll shoot you a text when we wrap for the night.”
I led Stephanie farther into the studio complex, taking her down the back stairs to the middle floor and then to the elevator. She followed along, bemused.
“There’s a lot of empty space here,” she commented.
“Yeah, a bunch of these are rehearsal rooms, and as far as I know, you’re the first actual customers. Eventually this place should get pretty busy, but right now, yeah, it’s kind of a ghost town,” I said as pressed the button marked ‘3’.
When the elevator started to descend, Stephanie said, “What? How can we be going down to the third floor if we were already on floor number two?”
“It’s a joke of Emmy’s,” I said. “From the front of the building, what seems like the ground floor is actually the top floor of three. If we’d called the ground floor floor number three it would be kinda strange, so the floors are actually numbered going down. So ‘3’ is actually two floors below ground level. But the whole place is built on a slope,” I said. “So 3 is the ground floor on the west side of the building.”
“That’s freaking confusing,” Stephanie said, as the door behind her slid open. Hearing the noise, she turned around, surprised.
“Welcome to our house,” I said, ushering her out the door.
The door closest to the elevator was one of the giant steel doors from the old film vaults, and as I cranked the handle to swing it open Stephanie asked, “Where are you even taking me?”
I swept my arm out to indicate she should look in, and she saw the wine cellar for the first time.
“Oh. My. God!” Stephanie said, stepping in and admiring the walls of backlit clear plexiglas cubbies for bottles. Less than ten per cent were occupied, despite the fact that Angela had dutifully unloaded all the cases from France and from our trips to Central California’s wine country.
“White or red?” I asked.
“Rosé,” Stephanie replied cheekily, looking at the neon sign on the back wall that said ‘Save Water, Drink Wine’ and showed a bottle of red being poured into a glass. “Leah, you could have amazing wine parties in here,” she said.
“That’s the idea,” I agreed. Finding a bottle of rosé from one of the vineyards by Solvang, I tucked it under my arm and guided Stephanie back out. She followed me down the hall and up two flights of stairs to the great room. There was no sign of Emmy or Angela, to my surprise.
I opened the bottle and poured two glasses, then led Stephanie to the couch. “So, tell me what you’ve been up to,” I suggested, turning to face her. Stephanie had been very pretty back in high school, but now, almost six years later, she looked even better. She was well-dressed, nicely manicured and her chestnut-brown hair was sleek and lustrous. She carried herself with confidence and a certain maturity, too, and I found that very sexy. She’d gone from a pretty girl to a beautiful woman, and I was very pleased for her.
“Well, I think I told you that I’ve taken on a number of other bands besides the Sons, but they’re still my top performers,” she said, sipping her wine. “I just bought a house up here in LA- a little bungalow over in Silver Lake,” she said.
“Seriously? That’s awesome!” I said, glad to hear that her life was going well.
“It’s nothing like this,” she said, indicating the house we were in, “But it suits me perfectly. It’s a little three bedroom two bath, so I have my bedroom, a guest room, and a home office. It’s on a quiet street, but close to good shopping and great restaurants,” she said.
“That’s one real negative about this place,” I said. “There’s nothing within walking distance. We’re really tucked away up here in the hills.”
“I like urban living,” Stephanie said. “I’d hate to have to get in a car to go do anything.”
We talked for a while, and I can hardly express how proud I was of Stephanie’s accomplishments. Unlike me, nobody had thrown a giant pile of cash in her direction. She’d made every dime herself, starting with precious little.
We were on our second bottle when Emmy and Angela came home, carrying bags of groceries.
“Oh! You are home!” Emmy exclaimed. “I did not see your car in the garage.” Then, spotting Stephanie, she set her bags on the kitchen counter and came over and gave Stephanie a hug and a cheek kiss. “Stephanie,” she said. “I am very glad to see you. Will you stay for dinner?” Then, remembering her manners, Emmy introduced Angela to Stephanie and vice versa, completely omitting any sort of details about relationship status or anything.
Explaining about the lack of gate opener, I said I should re-park the Porsche and excused myself. Stephanie got up to follow me so we could continue talking. We went down to the third floor again, making Stephanie laugh at the crazy upside-down numbering. I grabbed the remote from the Aston, then we went back up to floor number one, but exited from the front door of the elevator into the studio.
“O.K.,” Stephanie said. “I think I get that one side of the elevator opens into the working studio areas, and the other into the house side, but how does that actually work?” she asked as we made our way past the sound stage, where Murder Ballot was still filming their video.
“There’s a trick to it,” I said. “Normally, whichever side you enter from, that’s the side you exit from. If you’re in the house and enter the elevator, it’ll open back into the house for you, and the other way around. There’s an unmarked button that you have to press at the same time to get it to switch, and that button is biometrically locked. It recognizes certain peoples’ fingerprints, so not just anybody can do it.”
“That is freaking awesome,” Stephanie said as we walked out onto the motor court. When she saw the car we were headed for, she said, “Seriously, is that your car?”
“Yeah, I just bought it,” I said, opening the door for her.
Getting in, I thumbed the car into EV mode and pulled us around to the sort-of hidden other gate.
“This also goes to your house?” Stephanie asked, puzzled.
The gate opened and I drove in, hitting the remote to open the big roll-up door. Of course, there was an Aston Martin parked in that bay, so I had to get out of the car and enter the garage to hit the wall button to open the fourth bay day so I could pull the Porsche inside.
“You know I said that my new house wasn’t anything like this one?” Stephanie asked as she surveyed the garage big enough for ten cars. “I lied. My house is exactly like this- except the opposite. How big is this place, anyway?”
“That’s sort of hard to answer,” I said, putting the remote back in the Aston, then hunting for where the unused remotes were stashed. I finally found them as I was explaining that the entire building was roughly fifty-seven thousand square feet under roof, but most of it was still the studio, but some of it was shared use between the studio and the house. Figuring out which was the correct remote for the bay I’d chosen for the Porsche, I dropped it on the driver’s seat.
“Come on- let me give you the full tour,” I said. As we exited to the outside, I explained that the place had been built in the Forties as a film studio. I led her around the back side of the house and to the lagoon pool area.
“This is what I mean about mixed-use,” I said, indicating the pool and the lounge. “The idea is that during working hours, this place would be open to people using the studio as a break area, when they just need to relax for a bit. After hours, it’s ours, to have parties, or whatever.”
Spotting the pool table in the lounge, Stephanie smiled. “Up for a game?” she asked, selecting a cue from the rack.
I laughed and admitted there was no way I’d be any sort of challenge. “Steph, you know how bad I was in high school. Well, I haven’t gotten any better. Probably worse, since I really haven’t played since then.”
Stephanie laughed as she racked the balls. “Babe, it’s good to know that there is at least one thing I’m better at than you.”
“Steph,” I said, sitting on the edge of the pool table. “You know I don’t like it when you say things like that. You’re amazing, and you always have been.”
Smiling a bit wistfully, Stephanie said, “You know, you were the first person that ever made me feel like that might be true. Back when Emmy got taken back to France by her parents, and you helped me with my grades. You had so much faith in me, I almost started to actually believe it might be true.”
Lacking words, I pulled Stephanie into my arms and just held her for a while. At first she was kind of stiff, but soon she wrapped her arms around my waist and leaned her head against my chest. We stayed like that for a few minutes. There was no need to say anything- we both understood perfectly that we still cared for each other, and that wasn’t going to change. Eventually we parted, and once again I felt that tiny little pang of loss. We may have both moved on with our lives, but Stephanie still owned a certain tiny part of my heart, and probably always would.
She set the cue ball and broke the table, sinking two stripes. She continued on and ran the rest, before calling the eight ball in a corner pocket. She sank that one easily, with just the softest of clicks as the cue ball nudged it in.
“I was the SDSU champion my junior and senior years,” she said with a grin. “I made a lot of money and scored a lot of free drinks playing this game.”
“Yeah, there was no way I was gonna beat that,” I admitted with a laugh as Stephanie put her cue back in the rack.