Tessa
Jasper, Barb, and I head east on the 10 toward Contessa’s Studios in Atwater Village, where Regina has an appointment scheduled in an hour. Barb fidgets in the passenger seat. She seems distracted, lost to thoughts she’s reluctant to share. It distracts me, too, pulling my eyes away from the freeway ahead, but I chalk it up to nerves over whatever situation we’re walking into, whatever truths we might learn about her daughter.
There are a dozen locations across LA with the nameContessa’s, everything from a premium food store to a life coach’s office. Barb insists that this warehouse in Atwater is the right address, that the appointment is for an audition, not an AA meeting. Apparently Regina was an actor. In a city where everyone from your hairdresser to your dog walker wants to get into Hollywood, it’s hardly shocking that Regina was in the industry. Still, as we make our way toward the 10 and the interweaving of LA’s freeways that will land us in Atwater Village, Barb seems unsettled by this discovery.
“Regina was a film major in college,” Barb says to the palm trees that recede in our periphery. “Screenwriting. She never said anything about acting.”
“In Hollywood, I think you take what you can get,” I explain, which does nothing to appease Barb.
Online, I came across an article Regina had written entitled “My Mother’s Daughter.” It was about her estrangement from Barb. In it, Regina described how the longer she went without talking to her mother, the closer she felt to her. Their relationship became primal, less corrupted by good intentions and hurt feelings. The essay was five years old. I assumed that they’d repaired their relationship. Judging from the way Barb stares out the window, they weren’t as close as either of them would’ve hoped.
From the back seat, Jasper narrates our drive, shouting at trucks and cranes, hooting at a pair of sneakers dangling on the wires above our car.
“Shoe!” he says for several minutes after he spots the sneakers. This snaps Barb out of her trance, and she echoes Jasper’s call, chanting “Shoe, shoe” a beat behind him.
“I hope it’s okay I brought Jasper,” I say as I exit the freeway onto Fletcher. “Normally, I’d leave him at my neighbor’s ... there’s something I need to ... I know how Regina had my earrings.”
I tell her about Ezra Linsky’s, the earrings that Dan Huntsman bought.
When she asks, “So, you think they were having an affair?” she sounds more doubtful than I’d expected.
“That’s the only reason I can think to buy someone $5,000 earrings.”
“And you’re sure he bought them for Regina?”
“I only made five pairs. I didn’t recognize the other names. That would be an awfully big coincidence.”
“I think we can both agree that nothing about this is a coincidence.”
Barb’s quiet for the rest of the drive. I give her the space to absorb what I’ve told her. Regina’s murderer has a name now. A face. A house along the canals where her daughter died.
We park on a residential street a few blocks from Contessa’s. Fortunately, between the dangling shoes, salty snacks, and Barb’s doting, Jasper didn’t fall asleep on the drive.
I turn off the car, then stay seated behind the wheel. “We don’t have to go. It’s probably got nothing to do with what happened to Regina. We can just go back to the Westside.”
Barb casts me a vacant smile and throws the door open. “Don’t be silly.”
Contessa’s is housed in a warehouse with art and music recording studios. We take the elevator to the third floor and follow the signs to the rehearsal space. Drum solos and guitar riffs waft down the hall, entangling with the mustiness of the raw space and the piquancy of oil paint, a particular ambience I haven’t experienced since my twenties in New York and an entirely unfamiliar universe to Jasper, who marvels as I push him down the hall. I have a studio in Santa Monica, but it’s new, luxury. This is raw and real in a way I miss. This is art.
The metal door to Contessa’s scratches the floor as Barb shoves it open. The space is one large room with laminate floors and stark white walls. We’re ten minutes early, but at least forty women are already here, some clustered, others intentionally distanced. Their chatter quiets as we step inside. They’re all in their twenties, thin brunettes. Barb, Jasper, and I are the only people here who don’t fit the type.
“Are you from Reggie Ray Casting?” one of the women asks Barb, who does a double take, the name clearly signifying something to her. Reggie Ray Casting? Could this be Regina’s? Was Barb mistaken—did she get into casting, not acting? Like Barb, Jasper, and me, Regina doesn’t fit the type of the other women in the room either.Reggie.It’s not so far off fromRegina. FromGigi.
All eyes are on Barb, who studies the women as she stitches together the scene, so foreign to us yet so common to the actresses in the room.
“That’s right,” she finally says. “Give us a moment to set up.”
She motions me to follow her toward the sole table in the room, off in the far corner.
“Do you think she meant Regina?” I whisper to Barb.
“Her girlfriend called her Reggie,” she mutters back as we head toward the corner. Jasper leans forward, bending around the side of hisstroller to investigate the women across the room. “And her dad and I called her Regina Ray when she was little. Regina Ray of Light. She was our sunshine.” Barb beams at a distant memory. There’s so much I want to ask her, so much that’s none of my business, so much we don’t have time for now.
“What’s the plan?” I ask as I situate Jasper’s stroller beside my chair. He’s still staring at the women, giggling when he makes eye contact with one of the bolder ones. We’ll see how long his curiosity keeps him pliant.
Barb shrugs, then shouts across the room, “Who was here first?”
The women all raise their hands, fanning their headshots like goods in a market. Barb points to one at random, then leans against the table as she uses her index finger to motion the actress toward us.
