Nina asked, “Do we actually owe Mr. Meffo a million bucks?” She hoped not; she loved her job at the store. Loved everything about the store, in fact.
Liz shook her head. “No, it just feels like it.”
It was still pretty early. The store was open, but the only customer they had was a guy who lived nearby and had some kind of developmental disability. His name was Jim, and he had the sweetest smile and often hung out in the natural history section for hours looking at pictures of animals. Everyone knew him on the boulevard, and watched out for him and said hi, and as far as Nina knew, he thought he was a prince occasionally visiting his fiefdom to check on the peasants.
The door to the store opened and Polly came in. Liz turned and frowned at her.
“Good afternoon, Polly.”
Polly grinned. “Liz, it’s nine thirty. There’s no one in the store except you two and Jim, and Jim’s here often enough that if there had been a rush—which there never, ever is—he could have filled in for me.”
Liz clicked her tongue but let Polly come over and hug her extravagantly, then went away hiding a smile. Polly was the other spinster of this parish who worked at Knight’s, although spinster wasn’t as accurate a description of her as it was of Nina. Polly was an actress. She worked at Knight’s as a way to actually support her passion for movies, both being in them and watching them.
Polly had come to LA when she was nineteen, a beautiful and hopeful girl with lots of charisma and even more talent, and then spent ten years nearly making it. If she’d never gotten anywhere she might have given up and been content to have given it a shot. However, in common with thousands of others, Polly would occasionally get a part in a commercial, or a pilot. She was always auditioning and getting called back, and would be frequently “on avail” (meaning that she was short-listed for something and had to keep her schedule free for a day or so while they made a final choice between two or three girls). It’s this occasional hit of success that makes for a real addict. The breakthrough was always imminent; there was always something about to happen. In the dim interstices between flashes of hope you make your life.
Polly had been working at Knight’s for a little over a year, and she and Nina had become friends, despite the fact that Polly never read books and only knew about plots from movies. For example, in the Harry Potter series, she had no idea Peeves the poltergeist even existed, or that Ludo Bagman wasn’t a luggage outlet, because those characters were totally cut out of the films. Being a lover of drama, Polly was deeply amused by Nina’s sudden family situation.
“Oh my God, you should write a screenplay!” She laughed out loud. “Not that anyone would share screen time with so many other people. You’d have to pare down the cast.”
“The whole point is the numerousness of them,” Nina said, dryly. “Numerosity?”
“There are a lot of them.” Polly nodded.
“Yes, there are. I’ve only met one of them, although he was pretty awesome.” She told Polly about Peter.
“Lucky,” Polly said. “I had to borrow a gay relative from our neighbors.” Her eyes misted over. “He took me shopping for prom.” Another thought came to her. “Are any of these new family members handsome single men?”
“I have no idea. I’ll have to ask Peter and consult my chart.”
“There’s a chart?”
Nina nodded. “It’s laminated.”
“Well, did you Google your dad at least?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but pulled out her phone and got to work. Nina was used to her and kept on unpacking book deliveries that had arrived that morning. There was no point telling Polly she’d already looked online, and besides, Polly was a whiz at searching.
Her patience was rewarded. “Wow,” said Polly with the air of that guy in the movie who is finally going to tie all the pieces of the plot together and whose refusal to do so up till then has led to either comical misapprehensions or mortal peril. “William Reynolds, your dad, was a very social butterfly.”
Nina nodded. “Thus the three wives.”
“Plus possibly innumerable girlfriends?”
Nina turned up her hands, both of them holding books. “Unproven, but suspected.”
“With evidence.”
“Sitting on the floor in front of you.”
Polly turned her phone to face Nina. “Here’s the most recent wife, by the way. The actual widow.” She digressed. “If you’re not married to someone and they die, are you an ex-widow?”
“I don’t think so,” said Nina, looking at the image on Polly’s phone. “What’s her name? I can’t read it from here. I knew I should have memorized that chart.”
“It’s Eliza,” said Polly. She read, “William and Eliza Reynolds attend the blah blah blah.” Eliza was beautiful, and not as young and bimbo-ish as Nina had imagined. Why had she imagined a bimbo? she chided herself. Honestly, had feminism taught her nothing? Why shouldn’t a younger woman fall in love with an older man? Despite his enormous wealth and success?
“I don’t know why you’re not more curious about your dad,” Polly said. “This is precisely why the Internet was invented.”
“To research fathers?”
“Yes.”
Nina sighed. “I did look him up; there wasn’t all that much there. He was a serial cheater and abandoner of children. What more do I need to know?”
Polly shrugged. “Maybe he was really good at skiing and you’ve never even tried it and you could have had an entire Olympic career because you’re naturally disposed to be good at it.” Polly was charming, but not super grounded in reality. “Or,” she said, warming to her theme, “what if he had some inheritable condition?”
“I did think about that, but male-pattern baldness isn’t something I’m concerned about.”
“What about hemophilia?”
“Well, firstly, hemophilia is carried by women and only dangerous to men, so I would be fine . . .”
“Think of your children!”
“. . . and you’d think anything important would have cropped up by now.”
“And there’s where you’d be wrong. I think you should talk to all of them carefully and see what kind of hand you’ve been dealt.”
“I think you’re nuts.”
Polly shrugged. “That might be true, but it doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
Polly apparently had more pull with Fate than either of them realized, because that afternoon she and Nina looked up to see an incredibly handsome man walk through the door and approach them both with a great deal of purpose.
They all looked at one another, and then the man said, to Nina, “You must be Nina Hill.”
Polly audibly hissed, but Nina wasn’t going to let her down. Chicks before dicks. “Yes, I am, and this is Polly Culligan.”
He looked at her and, to be fair, did pause for a half second, but then he came back to Nina.
“I’m your brother. Archie Reynolds. Our father slept with your mother when my mother was pregnant with me.”
It’s possible that someone somewhere has written cogent advice about how to respond to a statement like that, but if they have Nina had never read it. So she stuck out her hand and said, “Pleased to meet you.” Then she said, “Your mastery of pronouns is impressive,” and regretted it. Struggling to recover, she added, “I’m sorry about the infidelity thing, but you know, I wasn’t there at the time.”