“Aunt Julia! Aunt Julia!” cried the girl in the long socks and the penny loafers. Her name was Emma Roberts, and she was sixteen.
“Why, what is it?” exclaimed Aunt Julia, a pretty woman who would not give her age. She was over by the window of the living room, rearranging her photographs of disastrous fiancés.
“I have finished with Nancy Drew,” replied Emma disappointedly.
“My goodness! Well, sometimes these things are not meant to last,” sighed her aunt.
“Don’t be silly!” corrected the girl. “Nancy is not a person. She is a fictional construct, created in 1930 by Carolyn Keene, herself a pseudonym under whom simply tons of different yet equally useless writers have taken shelter. Don’t you remember? I went off to play Miss Drew in the new movie. I was encouraged to do so by the example of my father, Eric, himself an actor, though never in the same wage bracket as you, his more famous sister. Not that he minded!” she added with a silvery laugh.
Aunt Julia smiled, something she seldom did in public for less than twenty million dollars.
“And tell me, what was it like?”
“It was splendid,” replied Emma, pausing to adjust the headband on her fine reddish hair. “The story begins in River Heights, a town full of delightful white people. I am motherless and my father is a lawyer, so both of us are rather sad! For a treat we move to Los Angeles, where the girls at my new school say I remind them of Martha Stewart. They are so ‘right on,’ it really is a joy!”
“And what happens next?” asked Emma’s aunt, her excitement mounting.
“Well, the house the Drews are renting once belonged to a movie star—you know, one of the super-old ones.”
“Like Lana Turner?”
“Who?”
“Skip it. Who plays the part of the actress?”
“The beautiful Miss Laura Elena Harring. After some ace detective work, I discovered that she was in a film called ‘Mulholland Drive,’ which dealt with similar material. Isn’t that coincidence just a little too suspicious? And the plot leads Nancy to a resort by the name of Twin Palms. Another clue! To sum up, a friend of mine said the film was like Lynch without the lesbians or the dwarves. What are lesbians, Aunt? Are they friends of Snow White’s, too?”
“More than you will ever know, dear.”
“Oh, Aunt Julia, come to the première, please do. I shall take a tray of cupcakes.”
“I—I—” Her aunt’s voice faltered.
“Why, what is it?”
“I doubt if any female over the age of twelve would get much pleasure from the film,” she hazarded.
Emma giggled. “Oh, Aunt Julia, you may be old, but you’re not that old. Not just yet!”
Her aunt’s hand crept toward the heavy glass paperweight that stood on the side table next to a portrait of Lyle Lovett, which, while in soft focus, was not quite soft enough. What was she thinking? Finally, she spoke:
“Oh, I’m sure the film will do as well as it deserves!” ♦
