(This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.)
“Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles” (Frank Lloyd Wright)
Lonnie was seventy-six years old and stuck in a time warp. Her peroxide-blonde curls cascaded past her shoulders, her fingernails were meticulously polished a shade Gucci Red, and she carried an emotional-support Pomeranian named Lollipop around like a handbag.
She had lived in Beverly Hills for decades, the last two alone since her only child, a son, had moved to the beach with a surfboard in one hand and a UCLA undergraduate film degree in the other. Retired from the business world after a brief and unsuccessful stint in acting, Lonnie had run her own profitable housekeeping agency for years, where the homes of the privileged and monied were scrubbed, buffed and vacuumed to perfection.
Her own house, an international style abode tucked within the hills of Benedict Canyon, had once belonged to someone in the more colorful end of the entertainment business. Remnants of his taste remained: mirrors everywhere, velvet and foil wallpaper throughout, and thick-pile carpeting that gave the overall feeling that cocktails were being served with a twist.
Lonnie was not what one would consider a complicated thinker; but what she lacked in intellect, she made up for in activism. Her politics were very liberal, the kind of worldview that seemed to have gotten stuck somewhere around McGovern’s concession speech and never found its way back. Her solution to most of the world’s problems didn’t involve conservative or progressive policies; instead, she felt a long soak in a communal hot tub, followed by a few choruses of Kumbaya and a cup of ashwagandha tea, could cure most of what ailed the world.
Romance had long been off her radar. After two failed marriages and cohabitation with a partner who left her for one of her employees, disappointment was no longer being served. Still, with her pleasingly plump figure and theatrical grooming, she kept a sparkle in her eye in case the perfect blend of Dennis Hopper and Ted Turner should happen to show up on her doorstep and ask her if she’d like to go for a spin.
One particularly sunny day, Lonnie took Lollipop for his afternoon walk through the neighborhood and encountered a man she had never seen before. He was an 83-year-old transplant from the U.K. named Perceval, “Percy” to his friends, an old-school English Lothario who had traded his ascots for an inconspicuous band of puka beads. His once porcelain skin had been thoroughly weathered by the Southern California sunshine, and his tanned legs remained rock-steady beneath the hem of his linen shorts. Percy came from old money, the kind that had obscure titles somewhere down the line, but had since made a substantial windfall in the commercial appliance business. There was nary a restaurant or café within miles of Sunset Boulevard that didn’t have Percy’s thumbprint on it.
And Percy still had an eye for the ladies. Upon setting his eyes on Lonnie, he offered to take her to lunch at one of the swankier boîtes in town: chilled oysters, gin and tonics, and delicious innuendo would be on the menu. Lonnie, alarmed by her curious attraction to this man, politely declined but felt flattered, as if a prized rose had just been named in her honor. Percy promised there would be a next time.
At their next run-in a week later, Lonnie and Percy simply stopped and gazed at one another before exchanging hellos, this time breaking into a spontaneous embrace. Unfortunately, the rubber heel of Lonnie’s bejeweled flip-flop became wedged between two stones in Percy’s dryscape, causing them to tumble down the hill, arms wrapped around each other’s waists, as if reenacting the famous beach scene from From Here to Eternity. Their lovers’ spill was caught on a neighbor’s CCTV, and they soon became a viral sensation.
Lonnie and Percy went on to become accidental relationship gurus through their wildly popular podcast, Ask Lonnie & Percy: How to Tumble into Love. Love has no age limit. Apparently, neither does bad advice. Who doesn’t love a Hollywood ending?
