"Associate producer, huh, so what's that anyway?" Lulu asked as she and Bonnie rummaged through racks of second hand clothing at a Greenwich Village boutique.
"Wrangling the press, playing go-between with the writers and tech and wardrobe, setting up photo ops and interviews, road managing odds and ends, like that. How's this look?" She put on a set of orange shades and a wide fedora, and threw a multicolored boa around her neck.
"Like Janis, only sober. So you'll be doing what you're doing now, but more of it, with a fancy schmancy title?"
"And with a fatter paycheck, Bob said we're gonna meet about the details when I get back to L.A."
Lulu snorted. "Yeah, heard that one at my other gig at the corner bar, just before my paycheck bounced."
"Cut it out, I have a contract. We're not talking low-rent here." Bonnie caught Lulu rolling her eyes.
"Don't jive me, sister," Lulu countered, "Isn't he the one you dumped your drink on in Paris?"
They'd been spending enough time together for Bonnie to have filled Lulu in on all manner of inside dirt, and Bonnie knew Lulu would take it to the grave with her. Which was just as well, since she had some trouble keeping the details straight.
"No, that was Kirshner!" Bonnie paused to mime spitting on the ground like a gypsy avoiding the evil eye. "Bob's the one who's basically okay but kind of clueless when it comes to throwing his weight around."
"Uh-huh. Oh, right… Mike thinks he's a jerk."
"No, Mike thinks he's the Artistic Antichrist and the Source of All Evil in the world."
They kept rummaging as they talked.
"Kinda simplistic, huh," Lulu observed. "Antichrist and all that."
"Musicians," Bonnie shrugged, "whaddaya gonna do. To some of 'em the world is all black or white, 1, 2, 3, a, b-flat, c. I can't say I don't agree sometimes, but there are better ways to get Bob on your side than getting up in his face. Push him, he pushes back. Nesmith's gotta learn some existential judo."
"And you're just the one to teach him?" Lulu looked hopeful.
"Nah, but it's getting so's I can slow him down now and then. Peter might be the only one who can teach him, and even that's a long rocky road."
"Y'know I saw Peter Tork play a few times around the Village. Never at Strings, but around. Man, he can play anything he picks up."
"Including women," Bonnie laughed, then faked an angelic expression. "But always in the most spiritual sense!"
They both howled with laughter at that one. Lulu saw enough musicians in her work to know that even the most hippie-karma among them were not above indulging in the sexual perks of the business.
Suddenly something hanging on a crowded rack of accessories caught Lulu's eye. "AHA!" She raced to the rack and snatched up a long silk scarf of psychedelic paisley, its ends sewn with a fringe of crystal beads and tiny silver bells. "Perfect!" She grabbed Bonnie and reached it around her waist, tying it at one side, then stood back and looked at her friend. In her time back in the Village – and in Lulu's company – Bonnie had drifted away from the t-shirt-and-blue-jeans look and back to the "beads and spangles" that Nesmith teased her about. Today she was wearing red velour bell bottoms and a hand-embroidered red-on-black Indian tunic.
"Groovy personified," Lulu announced. "Hey, man, we're gonna take this!" she called to the young hippie who ran the shop.
"Let's see," he ruminated, as if trying to remember something. "Sascha put a lotta work into that… five bucks." When Bonnie and Lulu reached into their shoulder bags simultaneously, the guy pulled up short.
"Hey, I know you," he said.
"Yeah, I work at Strings up the block," Lulu told him, surreptitiously waving a pinched thumb and forefinger behind her back at Bonnie to denote "stoned".
"No, you," he pointed at Bonnie. "You work on that freaked-out Monkees show, right? Man, that is the wildest. My friends and me, we get high and watch it every week."
She laughed out loud. "They will be more than proud to hear that." She pulled a twenty out of the leather cash pouch stashed in her bag. "Here, smoke one on me. But for christsake don't tell the press!"
"Too late. See that guy over there?" He pointed to a similar-looking bearded guy checking out the second hand albums in the corner. "He writes for the Voice. Hey, Ramon! C'mere, this lady works with the Monkees."
Bonnie dropped her face in her hands until Lulu whispered, "Now's your chance to wrangle!"
Ramon the Reporter looked up, and focused like a laser. "Hey, right." He strode over and extended his hand. "Bonnie Morris, right? I'm Ramon Mendes, from the Voice."
Bonnie shook the offered hand automatically. "Hey, nice to meetcha, look I'm just here on a little vacation and my friend and me gotta go…"
"Setting up for that Mike Nesmith solo gig at Strings Attached, I'll bet." When Bonnie's eyes bugged out of her head, he laughed. "Wow, don't wig out. Word gets around."
Lulu shrank for a moment under Bonnie's poisonous glare, then stepped up and declared, "It wasn't me!"
"Nah, just some random volunteer, saw him practicing some riffs when the club was closed and put it together." Ramon held up a copy of the Post opened to the gossip page. "So any truth to this?"
Bonnie squinted and read: "'What tall dark and mercurial member of TV's hottest quartet is holed up in a New York apartment with the boss's assistant?'" She gaped at the squib and rolled her eyes. "Seriously? Where do they get this crap?" Which was, of course, true, but why give him his own story?
"Maybe here?" He indicated two photos of her and Nesmith, obviously taken the day they'd gone to the Central Park boating pond. "To act like tourists," he'd promised, and they had. The photo caught the two of them standing by the edge of the water, when Nesmith had begun to push Bonnie in and leaned over to grab her back at the last second. His back was mostly to the camera, but the side of his ever-shaded face was not quite obscured by the unmistakable wave of dark hair. Bonnie, on the other hand, was clearly visible and grabbing onto him for dear life. The second, taken seconds later, showed her staring up at him, her arms around his waist and fingers laced through his belt loops, as he bent to mollify her with a kiss.
Lulu examined the photos. "At least they got his good side," she noted, indicating the rear view of Mike's tight jeans in the first one.
"So, what about it?" Ramon persisted. "When's the gig? And are you guys really shacked up here in the Village? Oh, yeah, and I heard that lame bubble gum peddler Don Kirshner got the axe."
Bonnie resisted the urge to knock the paper to the floor and run like hell. Instead, she wrangled.
"Mr. Nesmith is in town shopping for some rare guitars," she lied smoothly. "The proprietor of Strings Attached is an old friend of mine, so I decided to come along and visit. Mr. Lowenstein was kind enough to offer his artist apartments to Mr. Nesmith and myself while we're in town. I don't have any details regarding Mr. Kirshner's departure except that his contract was not renewed by mutual agreement. As for that rumor of a gig, I think you're adding up the parts wrong."
Lulu had taken her arm and they were edging toward the door, Ramon the Reporter in not-so-subtle pursuit.
"You sure that's all? I can give you some great publicity," he offered eagerly.
Bonnie stopped in her tracks. This guy was clearly a rookie. "Ramon my man, we got a gold record, an Emmy nomination, a hot TV show and sold out concerts whenever we feel like going on the road. A Grammy on the way, unless we fall into the Twilight Zone. Publicity, we don't need. Down time, that's another story."
Ramon looked as if he were awaiting a revelation. "Yeah…? So you're saying?"
"No comment!" She and Lulu bolted out the door and down the sidewalk, the ends of Bonnie's new scarf trailing echoes of tinkling crystal and bells. When they reached the back door of Strings they doubled over in breathless hysterics.
"Got a new item for them," Lulu gasped when she could finally speak, "'What overworked associate producer and nameless sidekick did the jive dance all around a Village Voice reporter today'?"
In the midst of their hysterics, Bonnie suddenly found herself near tears. "My god Lu, have I told you how much I've missed you?" She threw her arms around the shorter woman and the two of them hugged tight.
When Lulu stepped back, she said plainly, "I was missing you before you left, Siobhan-y." The hybrid name was Lulu's compromise between her friend's old life and the new one she'd found after losing Benny and going to L.A. "Baby doll, you left you before you left here. Welcome back, to everything. Now let's go see what kinda trouble Tall Dark and Mercurial and the boss are getting up to."
They were still laughing as they traipsed into the club arm-in-arm.