Dazzled by Maxine Nunes
We are delighted to welcome back mystery author Maxine Nunes to Omnimystery News.
Maxine first visited with us in October when we discussed her new mystery Dazzled (Five Star Publishing; October 2013 hardcover and ebook formats). We asked if she would mind providing us with an excerpt to post for our readers, and she graciously agreed to do so.
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WHAT'S REAL? DARLA USED TO ASK ME. How do you know what's real? I never understood the question. But then I didn't have platinum hair and cheekbones that could cut glass, and no one ever offered to buy me a Rolls if I spent one night naked in his bed. Darla was a brilliant neon sign flashing pure escape. You almost didn't notice that those lovely green eyes didn't blaze like the rest of her. She was both main attraction and sad observer at the carnival. Something had damaged her at a very young age. We never talked much about it, but we recognized this in each other from the start. Isn't that what friendship is?
The week she disappeared was as extreme as she was. Triple-digit heat in late August and wavy layers of smog suffocating the city. By ten in the morning, it was brutal everywhere, and on the sidewalks in front of the homeless shelter, with the sun bouncing off the film crew trailers and the odor of unwashed bodies and general decay, it was a very special episode of hell. Beneath an archway, a tall man with a filthy blanket draped over his head rolled his eyes heavenward like a biblical prophet. Or a Star Trek castaway waiting to be beamed up.
In one of those trailers, where air conditioning brought the temperature down to the high nineties, I was being stuffed into a fitted leather jacket two sizes too small. Perspiration had already ruined my makeup and the dark circles under my eyes were starting to show through.
Heat keeping you up, hon? the makeup girl had asked. I'd nodded. Half the truth.
Mykel Z, the costume designer, was trying to zip me into the jacket, but his fingers were sweating and frustrating his attempts. "If you'd get yourself boobs, Nikki," he said, "we wouldn't have to squeeze you into size zero to work up a little cleavage."
"Bigger boobs for you, smaller nose for my agent. Average it out and I'm perfect."
"Almost. Legs from here to eternity, long dark hair to die for. But the nose is a bit roller derby, darling. Did you break it?"
"When I was a kid."
"I'll give you the name of a marvelous doctor, a genius with noses. And his lifts for my older ladies … I swear the seams don't even show."
"I'm not sure I want to wake up one morning and see someone else in the mirror."
"An idealist. Good luck, honey."
I was used to this. At my first Hollywood party, a guy asked me what I did. When I told him, he looked bewildered. Then he brightened. "Oh," he said, "I guess you could play a real person."
Outside, a prop guy was spraying a couple of shopping carts to dull down their newness, and a wardrobe assistant walked a few extras onto the set.
"No, no, no!" Mykel cried, running out the door, letting in a flush of hot air. "Layers! They need layers!" With a broad motion of his arm, he pointed to some people in the little park on the corner. "Use your eyes! The homeless totally invented layering!"
I took advantage of the break, managed to find my phone in the junk shop that is my shoulder bag, and called Darla's cell again. It flipped straight over to her voice mail. Like it had for three days, since this shoot had begun. No point leaving another message.
Mykel flew back into the trailer, stared at me for a few seconds, blinked like he was fighting back tears, and began to tackle the zipper again. It moved up an inch, then caught on the leather.
He dropped his arms, his lips trembled, then he opened the trailer door again and stuck his head out.
"Benito!" he hollered, with an edge of real panic in his voice. When Benito, his "shlepper," did not appear, Mykel flopped down on a chair and blotted his face with a tissue.
"Where the hell has he gone?"
"You sent him for a Frappucino," I said.
"Ten minutes ago!"
"It's hard to find a decent barista on Skid Row, Mykel."
"Maybe that's why these people look so depressed."
"You know what," I said, "let's forget the jacket for a while. They're nowhere near ready to shoot. I'm gonna grab some water from the fridge. Want a bottle?"
"Thank you, sweetie." Mykel placed the jacket back on its hanger with all the tenderness due a garment that cost more than I was being paid for a week's work.
Beneath my tank top, a trickle of sweat from my bra reminded me I was still padded with chicken cutlets — the silicone inserts the director wanted for every female in the cast over the age of twelve — and when I removed them, I felt almost human again.
Outside, an assistant was trying to wrangle the extras — a task that had turned chaotic, since real street people kept slipping past security to get to the bagel table. But even from this distance, it was easy to tell them apart. You only had to look at their faces. On some, the flesh itself was infused with misery, the eyes dazed with hopelessness. The rest, in the same soiled layers, were radiant and eager to be noticed.
I'd had a taste of both, but a year on the streets at fifteen had been enough. I got a false ID, found jobs, and managed to take care of myself. But there was something restless in me and I never stayed in one place too long. Somehow, more than a decade slipped by. And what had seemed like freedom began to close in on me.
Then I wound up in L.A. and started picking up rent money working as an extra. A crime show was shooting a Manhattan street scene in downtown Los Angeles, and I got pulled out of the crowd because of my "New York face" for a line they had added: Ain't seen her in a long time, mistah. That amazing stroke of luck — and the three-thousand dollar initiation fee I was still paying off — got me my union card.
Now I had pictures and an agent and classes, and that was what really hooked me. Acting may be make believe, but class was where the truth beneath the face you showed the world was not only welcome but demanded.
Only that wasn't exactly what working as an actor was like.
This job was for a midseason pilot called Street, a "fish out of water" comedy about three girls from Beverly Hills who start a gourmet soup kitchen for the homeless. "Clueless meets Pursuit of Happyness" is how my agent described it. My role — two days' work that could "go to semi-recurring" — was as a homeless person who gets a makeover.
A wave of hot air blew into the trailer, followed by the production assistant, who looked at me and let out a shriek.
"Mykel! Why isn't she in costume? They're ready for her."
And they were.
Four hours later.
By the time they released me it was past ten, and as the crew struck the lights and equipment, the homeless began crawling into makeshift tents of newspapers and old blankets and cartons, or gathering in doorways, palming small packets that would get them through the night.
At home, my little cottage still held all the heat of the day. I stripped down to panties, then finished off a pint of Chunky Monkey — ate it from the carton in a current of cold air from the open fridge door — and dragged myself into the bedroom. Then I used up all the cool spots on the sheet in about five minutes and picked up a mystery from the night table.
Darla still hadn't returned my calls, which really wasn't like her at all. Even when she was on location, she'd phone and talk about anything — what they had for lunch, how filthy the honey wagons got — just to keep from feeling lonely.
I wondered if she was mad at me, if maybe I shouldn't have been so blunt about her ex-boyfriend Jimmy. It was past midnight and too late to call. But I sent a quick text, then found myself listening in the silence for the phone to chime with her answer.
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Photo provided courtesy of
Maxine Nunes
Maxine Nunes is a New Yorker who's spent most of her life in Los Angeles. She has written and produced for television, and currently writes for several publications including the Los Angeles Times. Her satiric parody of a White House scandal won the Pen USA West International Imitation Hemingway Competition.
To learn more about the author and her work, visit her website at MaxineNunes.com or find her on Facebook.
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Dazzled
Maxine Nunes
A Nikki Easton Mystery
During a brutal L.A. heatwave, four people are murdered in the Hollywood Hills and Nikki Easton's best friend Darla Ward has disappeared. The police think she might be one of the victims.
No stranger to life's rough side, Nikki survived the streets as a teenage runaway and now brings that edge to her acting roles. But she has never seen anything like the battered girl on the gurney. Could this really be Darla, her beautiful face so damaged it looks barely human, her path to stardom ended in the county coroner's morgue.
In her relentless search for the truth, Nikki discovers the hidden side of her friend's life, laying bare secrets buried before Darla was born, and uncovering widening layers of corruption that reach far beyond Hollywood to the highest levels of government.
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