§ § § -- October 30, 1982
That was how, a scant hour later, Jimmy Jordan found himself inhabiting what seemed to be a persona completely alien to him. His beard and mustache had been shaved away, and his wild, shoulder-length, honey-colored hair cut and trimmed into an everyman's business haircut. He now wore a suit and tie and highly polished shoes. Jimmy peered at himself curiously as he, Roarke and Leslie stood in front of the door to one of the mansions in the Enclave. "A little conservative, isn't it?" Jimmy said doubtfully. "Overly clean." Leslie just shrugged, and Jimmy seemed to resign himself, turning to her guardian. "What exactly am I supposed to be, Mr. Roarke?"
Just then the door opened to reveal a woman clad in an expensive but casual dress. "Mr. Roarke, hello." She shook hands with him, then spotted Jimmy. "You found someone!"
"Yes," Roarke said, "I believe I have. May I present…your new butler."
"Hello," the woman said, and Jimmy stuck out his hand before Roarke's words sank in. He hesitated, a dubious look on his face, and eyed Roarke, who stifled a smile. Realizing he was in too tight a spot to protest, Jimmy responded with a strained smile and tried to pull himself together.
"Well, then, come on in," the woman said and focused on Leslie. "Oh, by the way, the girls are here, if you'd like to go up and visit for a while."
Leslie deferred to Roarke, who said thoughtfully, "Yes, why not? When you're ready to come home, Leslie, just call." She nodded as the woman ushered Jimmy inside, and Leslie followed, meeting the rock star's gaze for a moment.
"Is he leaving you here to…keep an eye on me or something?" Jimmy whispered.
"Maybe just to make sure you're settled in okay," she said with an apologetic little smile, taking care not to use his name. "But I think you'll probably be fine."
"Thanks a lot," Jimmy grunted, and Leslie grinned and excused herself, heading up the stairs. One of the girls who lived here was a classmate of hers at Fantasy Island High, and while they weren't close friends, both she and Roarke had seen the opportunity inherent in the situation. It almost felt like playing on the job, and she welcomed the chance.
‡ ‡ ‡
Roarke and Tattoo were busy playing cards in a Wild West saloon of the late nineteenth century when a very outraged Andrea Barclay marched over to them. Roarke stood up, and Tattoo welcomed her with, "Oh, Miss Barclay…we were waiting for your entrance."
"Well, you can deal me out," Andrea said indignantly and shot Roarke a look. "Mr. Roarke, I've been hiking for five miles to get here, and I…" She let out an affronted huff. "I don't even know where 'here' is!"
"You are in Langtry, Texas, Miss Barclay, and this is the Jersey Lilly Saloon," he informed her obligingly, smiling.
"Well, I…I was expecting Broadway, or Hollywood," Andrea began, but was rudely interrupted when a patron at the next table sprang from his chair and angrily overturned the table and everything on it. Startled, Andrea recoiled; Tattoo watched with interest, and Roarke counted his cards as if nothing were happening, while a good old-fashioned bar fight got under its merry way.
"You did request the toughest audience I could find," Roarke reminded her.
"Yes, but I meant critics, not barroom brawlers!" Andrea protested in disgust.
"Nevertheless, there's your stage, and this is your chance to prove that you can perform in front of a tough audience, when you go audition for shows such as Annie Get Your Gun." Roarke gestured behind Andrea as he spoke, while she squirmed every which way in her chair, trying to keep an eye on the brawlers to avoid being hit.
Tattoo added earnestly, but with a twinkle in his eye, "If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere." He winced at a particularly loud crash of bodies against the floor.
"You can say that again," Andrea grumbled. Roarke spread his hands and smiled, then gestured once more at the stage. Resigned, she got up and headed that way, managing somehow to steer clear of the ongoing ruckus. Climbing up in front of the closed curtain, she opened her mouth, took a breath and began hesitantly singing, "Oh my darling…" A couple of guys at the table right in front of her looked up, but the fight continued, and she cleared her throat, raising her voice just a little. "Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine…thou art lost and gone forever…" Her voice trailed off as Roarke and Tattoo saw an annoyed gray-haired man half-run across the room to confront her.
"Young lady, I'm gonna have to ask you to step down from there now," he said sternly, his gray eyes snapping.
Andrea stared worriedly at him in the sudden silence. "Was I that bad?"
"I said now!" the man repeated loudly, grabbing her arm and yanking her off the stage altogether. He pulled her a safe distance away from the stage, then turned to her and, with the entire crowd looking on, continued: "Now you're new in town, so I'm gonna give you a little piece of advice."
Andrea tried to defend herself: "Well, Mr. Roarke said…"
But that was the last either Roarke or Tattoo heard of her voice as they stepped through the time-travel-room door into the study; her words came as if through a long, echoing tunnel. Tattoo peered up at Roarke as the latter closed the door. "Boss, are you sure she's gonna be all right? I mean, maybe you gave her a tougher audience than she can handle."
"It's what she asked for, my friend," Roarke said with a broad smile. "And believe me, if she can learn to handle that audience, she will be able to handle anything—to paraphrase your admirable quotation a few minutes ago."
"Or about a hundred years ago," Tattoo bantered, and Roarke laughed and nodded.
‡ ‡ ‡
Leslie had been listening to records and tapes with Taylor Buchanan, almost eighteen, whom she had met a few weeks before in school, and her fifteen-year-old sister Cassie for some time when a voice yelled from downstairs: "Taylor? Taylor!" The girls all looked at one another; Taylor rolled her blue eyes before training them on Leslie.
"Want to come with me?" she inquired, tugging at the pale-pink headband that held back her chin-length dark-blonde curls.
"Sure, why not?" Leslie agreed with a shrug. She didn't know Taylor all that well, but she did know that Taylor's parents were dead and that she was living with her sisters. The two girls trotted down together, Taylor clearly with an attitude, Leslie slightly uneasy.
The young woman who had greeted her at the door—Taylor's older sister, Michelle, aged twenty-three—held up a black-and-white photo with a heavy marking on it; as the girls approached, Leslie realized that someone had drawn a couple of thick, curly lines on the upper lip of the woman in the picture. "Taylor, are you responsible for this?" she asked.
Taylor grinned and replied saucily, "Just the mustache."
"Taylor!" Michelle exclaimed, clearly hurt.
"Gimme a break, Michelle," Taylor said indignantly. "Two minutes after Father died, she and half her estate were out the door. You hate her just as much as I do."
"That's not the point," Michelle retorted. Leslie heard footsteps and turned to see Cassie pausing in the doorway to watch curiously. Nearby stood Jimmy Jordan, helpless witness to the entire scene. Michelle went on, "What if someone at the party tomorrow had seen this? What would they think?"
"Don't worry," Taylor assured her sarcastically, "I'll be a good little sister and erase it before your fiancé and his parents come."
"Who's this guy?" Cassie asked at that point.
Michelle tried to calm herself down. "Cassie, Taylor, this is our new butler, Mr. …" She hesitated, looked at Jimmy expectantly.
Jimmy glanced at Leslie, who raised her eyebrows at him. He peered at the ceiling for a second, then offered, "Godfrey."
Cassie was scrutinizing him carefully. "Where've I seen you before?"
"You can ask silly questions later," Michelle cut her off. "Right now I want both of you to go shopping." Having delivered this surprising order, she marched past them toward the doorway. "Sorry about that, Leslie. Come on, Godfrey, I want to show you the rest of the house, then you can drive them."
Jimmy headed away after her, saying, "Ladies," as he went. The three girls stood and watched him vanish into a room across the large entry hall.
"He's kinda cute," Taylor remarked. "I think I'll have an affair with him."
"Taylor," Cassie said, looking disgusted.
"An affair?" Leslie repeated in disbelief.
Taylor looked superior. "It's very chic to become sexually involved with your butler nowadays. If you would watch the soaps, you would know that." She shifted her scornful look from Cassie to Leslie, who scowled and rolled her eyes before following the sisters' gazes after the departed Jimmy Jordan. With Cassie's and Taylor's attention on Jimmy, Leslie had a chance to shake her head and wonder to herself why she bothered to try to be friends with Taylor, who was too rich and acted too sophisticated for her taste, and how soon it would be before Cassie managed to figure out who the new butler was.
Sure enough, Cassie remarked, "I just wanna know why he looks so familiar." Leslie sealed her lips together, determined to play dumb as long as she could get away with it.
To that end, she found herself pretty much forced to agree when Jimmy returned from his tour and offered to take the girls into town. It would at least provide her with a ride home; it was a long walk from the Enclave to the main house, and the shuttle bus came only twice an hour. She followed Jimmy, Taylor and Cassie out to a waiting limo and willingly settled herself into one of the plush seats, determined to enjoy this. After all, she reasoned, it might be the only time in my life I ever get to ride in one of these things…
The shopping expedition itself was fairly boring, only because Leslie didn't have any cash on her with which to buy anything. As disdainful as she was of the self-important rich, she had been trying to give Taylor the benefit of the doubt; Taylor, due to her attitude, wasn't very popular with most of the kids at school and was very much an outsider. Even Leslie's friends had wondered why she'd bothered talking to Taylor; but in fact, Leslie could remember feeling very out of place on her first day at school on the island, and she was still grateful to her friends for easing her way. She had hoped to pass on the favor, although there were occasions when she was convinced Taylor failed to appreciate her gesture. Still, they had become familiar enough with each other to tell each other their life stories; like Leslie, Taylor was an orphan, though she did have a stepmother who she claimed had disappeared with an enormous amount of the family's money as soon as the girls' father had died. Taylor was sometimes brassy, sometimes vulnerable; too often Leslie saw the brash side of the other girl, and at those times she found herself thinking her friends might be right.
Finally they headed for the pond restaurant, where Cassie decided she wanted to have an ice-cream sundae and Taylor decided to see if she could get away with ordering a mixed drink. As it happened, the bartender firmly nixed it, and Taylor took her seat at the girls' table sulking a little, with a nonalcoholic version of a piña colada, identical to Leslie's, in one hand.
They were about halfway through their refreshments when a dark-haired young man at the bar arose and approached them, ignoring Leslie and Cassie entirely and focusing on Taylor, who had deliberately dressed and made up to look older than her actual seventeen years. "Hey there, ho there, hi there," he sang out, snapping his fingers and slapping his fists together in what he must have thought was a smooth gesture. The girls stared at him, all with dubious looks on their faces.
"Are you talking to me?" Taylor asked coolly.
"Oh, I think I just found the best-looking girl in the place," the guy said. Leslie and Cassie exchanged glances; it was plain he thought he was something special, and he was quite handsome, but his method left a great deal to be desired.
"Oh, I'm really very flattered," Taylor purred, injecting a vein of sarcasm into her tone, "but I didn't come here to get picked up."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, I just wanna talk a little, that's all," the would-be stud protested with a little smile. "C'mon now, be nice."
"She is being nice," Cassie spoke up, eyeing the guy with contempt. "I would've told you to butt out the first time you opened your mouth." Leslie blinked and tried not to laugh aloud; the situation was over her head and beyond her experience, and she emphatically did not want to get caught up in it. That didn't mean, however, that she was against playing spectator to the impending three-ring circus.
The young stud took a moment to recover, carefully erased the look of consternation from his face, and regarded the two sisters with indignation. "You know, you two make one hell of a couple. You sit there and feed your face—" This made Cassie freeze in the midst of a bite and stare at him. "—and Miss High-and-Mighty here sits and feeds her ego." He fielded their cold looks, then made a huffing sound and started to leave—only to have Taylor neatly stick out her foot and trip him as he moved behind her chair. He smashed to the floor, clipping a tray of drinks being carried by a native waitress on his way down. The other patrons laughed at the sight, and Leslie and Cassie, who had stood up sharply at the stud's impact, giggled at each other while Taylor gazed at the ceiling and looked pleased with herself.
The stud scrambled to his feet and snarled at Taylor, "You did that on purpose! I oughta knock your—"
"Go ahead," Cassie challenged loudly, laughing. "She's a black belt. C'mon, Taylor, show him your stuff."
The stud's eyes widened with outrage and he stepped forward; Taylor stood up to meet the challenge, and that was when Jimmy Jordan, who had been standing discreetly in the shadows keeping an eye on the girls, burst out of hiding. "Whoa, whoa, wait a minute," he blurted. "Just—just hold everything. If these people wanted violence, they'd be home watching the news, right?" he inquired affably.
The stud stared at him, and Jimmy, waiting for a response, glanced behind the other man. Leslie followed his gaze and saw two men at the bar staring openly at him—the same two men she, Roarke, Tattoo and Jimmy had seen from the study that morning. Without taking his eyes from them, Jimmy ordered, "Cassie, Taylor, get your things, we're going home. You too, Leslie, I'll drop you off at Mr. Roarke's."
"Oh, Godfrey," Cassie wailed in protest.
"Cassie," Jimmy said warningly, "get in the car." Sulking, Cassie began scraping her belongings together; Leslie quietly pushed her chair back under the table, more than glad to get out of the restaurant by now and even happier to be on her way home.
Taylor sidled up behind Jimmy and murmured to him, "That masterful tone of voice you're using really turns me on." She smirked at the young stud, then turned to follow Leslie and Cassie up the stairs toward the entrance.
The three girls paused at the top to wait for Jimmy, who peered up at the stud, a good foot taller than he and looking ready to cave some skulls in, particularly Taylor's. "Have a nice day," Jimmy offered with an ingratiating little smile, reached up to flick an invisible particle off the badly soiled lapels of the stud's baby-blue sport jacket, then came up the steps and herded the girls out. Leslie tried to let Cassie and Taylor pull out ahead, but Cassie was laughing again and making fun of the stud, playing to an audience.
At the main house Leslie wished Cassie and Taylor a good night and got out of the car, hesitating beside the driver's window where Jimmy was about to shift gears preparatory to departing. "Are you gonna be all right?" she asked low, leaning over in an attempt to prevent Taylor and Cassie from overhearing her.
"There's probably security at their house, isn't there? I mean, all that money," Jimmy said, with more hope than conviction. "Too many priceless and valuable things. If I stay put in whatever room they give me, I oughta be all right."
Leslie sighed. "I sure hope so," she said. "I'll tell Mr. Roarke what happened, anyway. See you tomorrow." Jimmy smiled wanly at her, and she stepped back and watched the limo retreat up the lane toward the Ring Road.
She hurried into the house just as Roarke and Tattoo were preparing to go out to the veranda for a late supper. "Ah, Leslie…would you care to join us?" Roarke inquired, with just a trace of dryness in his tone.
She cleared her throat, embarrassed. "Oh, well, you know how Taylor is, Mr. Roarke," she said. "She and Cassie insisted on having something to drink at the pond restaurant after a shopping excursion their sister Michelle told them to go on. Ji—I mean, Mr. Godfrey just dropped me off."
"Mr. Godfrey?" Tattoo said blankly.
"Our guest's cover name," said Leslie. "He came up with it on the spur of the moment. Anyway, Mr. Roarke…while we were there, some guy tried to pick up Taylor, and she cut him down, and there was a big scene that, uh, Godfrey had to stop. And you remember those two guys we saw out behind the terrace this morning? Well, they were sitting at the bar and saw the whole thing."
Roarke frowned. "Where is Mr. Godfrey now?" he asked.
"He took Taylor and Cassie home. He told me that if he stays in his room for the night, he should be okay. They do have an alarm on that house, I'm sure…that's what he said. If someone tries to break in, I'm sure they'd know it. Besides, according to Cassie, Taylor's a black belt. She could probably easily do away with anyone trying to get in."
Roarke shook his head. "Very well, Leslie, we'll let it drop for now. Though there are times when I don't think it wise for you to spend much time with Taylor."
Leslie smiled wryly. "Believe me, Mr. Roarke, sometimes Taylor scares me too. I feel like I have more in common with Cassie, even though she's two years younger. And speaking of Cassie…I think she suspects who their new butler really is."
"As if being hunted down wasn't enough," Tattoo snorted, "now this kid's out to reveal his identity. Maybe you should have placed him with someone else over there, boss. Like maybe that British family that comes to the island and stays in their house here about once every ten years, in months with two full moons." Leslie rolled her eyes; she knew he meant the Lightwood-Wynton family, with whose son Simon she had had a disastrous nine days during the summer just past.
"That's too often for me," she said disgustedly. "Let's go eat, I'm starving." Roarke chuckled and led the way onto the porch.