Part V: Snakes – Paulie Quest #1 (Chapter 93)

The day after the Darryl debacle, Mother packs me off, along with my diet pills and detailed instructions, to Auntie’s for a week.

“I need a break,” she says.

As if I’m her biggest burden.

I like going to Auntie’s, though. We do a lot of running around to interesting places, like Farmer’s Market and Knotts Berry Farm.

Even the Playboy Club, where I nurse a Shirley Temple – her male friend owns two Keys to the Club: a metal entry card and the original Key stamped with the famous Bunny head.

She also visits a lot of cool friends: loopy hard-drinking and chain-smoking women, heavily made up, with big blue hair, Kaleidoscope caftans, and costume jewelry – lots of it – and two fun-loving bankers who live together in a glass house attached to the Hollywood Hills.

But she’s old and wears down fast.

The pills keep me in a permanent state of frenetic motion, so, today, while she rests, I walk all over Hollywood, browsing shop windows and people watching – certainly a worthy pastime in Hollywood, also known as Hollyweird.

Later I will befriend many of the notorious Hollywood Boulevard weirdos, but on this day, I’m just a corn-fed Iowa girl, in awe of Hollywood glitz and out-of-reach baubles in shop windows.

People watch me, too; I’m young and the pills are doing their job as I strut my curvy 110-pound body up and down the Boulevard.

Before I left, Mother thought it was a good idea to enhance my already-red hair to a fiery mop of waves.

I feel saucy in my red, white, and blue striped sleeveless top, red short-shorts, and red sandals – I’m all about red today.

A man approaches me on the street, looks me up and down, and hands me a business card.

He looks a bit like Robert Wagner in It Takes a Thief, but rougher and craggier. He’s reed thin and wears a red silk shirt, open at the neck with a gold chain with a cross, and skin-tight black slacks – leaving little to the imagination.

Pointy snakeskin shoes.

“I can make you a star.”

I take the card. It’s a fancy one, black with gold gilding for his name and contact information: “Rocky Paris, Cecil Hotel, 640 S. Main St., Los Angeles, Tel. (213) 555-1234.”

“I’m having a party tonight at the Cecil, lots of movie people will be there –” He looks me up and down – “Looking for young talent like you.”

“Ummm,” I say.

It sounds tempting…Who wouldn’t be intrigued by the possibility of stardom and riches beyond the imagination?

But something about him gives me the willies.

He reminds me of the man in the raincoat who thought he could drug me when I was six.

My radar beeps big time.

I thank him for the card. “I’ll think about it.”

“Great opportunity,” he says. “It won’t come around again.”

Then I know for sure that this party’s not a good idea – I’m not sure why, but the vibe emanating from this person strikes fear in my core.

“Okay,” I say, walking away.

From behind, he says, “Think about it and give me a ring.”

Not likely.

Later, I show Auntie Rocky’s card.

“Maybe you should go,” she says.

“No way.”

Auntie reads the address out loud and visibly shivers. “I wouldn’t allow it, anyway. That hotel is cursed.”

And that was the end of Rocky Paris.