"Taia Kwan…" mumbled Angie, finding her voice as Rollie started to move toward the woman he had helped escape from her terrorist father over three years before. He had helped fake her death.
 
 

Dingo made a sound bordering on a groan as Rollie, without a pause, picked her up almost off the ground and hugged her tightly.
 
 

"Now, don’t go and cause a public scene here, son…and her name isn’t Ta-ya, or whatever you called her, it’s Suzie…Suzie Wong."
 
 

"God, that’s terrible!" remarked Angie, thinking of the movie made in the early sixties, what was the name? she thought to herself, shaking her head and looked up at her husband in a clench with his former lover. Life was starting to imitate art, she thought with a smirk on her face.
 
 

"Rollie! I can’t thank you enough for all you did. I really didn’t expect to see you again, really!" Taia said, her face close to his as Angie cleared her throat and took a sip of her tea. Dingo met her eyes, seeing the betrayed emotion of her jealousy and without warning, pinched her cheek.
 
 

"Ouch!"
 
 

"Not nice to stew, love…spoils that pretty face. This is strictly business, right Suzie?" Dingo told Angie before directing his question to Taia. He was breaking out in little beads of sweat over his forehead as Rollie continued to gaze at Taia without response.
 
 

"Hmm? Oh sorry there, just so long since I’ve seen…Tai- uh, Suzie," Rollie replied, as he put Taia down and reddened slightly. He could feel Angie’s cold stare on him.
 
 

"It certainly is, Mr. Harcourt. Why, I think we can settle our business right here, in just a few minutes…" Taia replied, in a very catty, Southern Californian accent. Rollie was taken back and Angie raised her eyebrows slightly.
 
 

"Good, that’s what I want to hear…so where is he?" asked Dingo, looking behind Taia who had pulled up a chair and sat down next to Rollie. He smiled at her confused, as Taia ran a hand through her hair, shaking it back over her shoulders.
 
 

"He’s in the car, I had to make sure I wasn’t followed…now that everyone is here and it looks safe, I’ll go get him…" she answered softly, her accent dropping to the voice of Taia that Rollie knew.
 
 

Dingo nodded, and winked at Angie who was starting to worry. Taia being at the airport was no mistake…she was supposed to have met Dingo there when they had arrived…but Rollie had gotten caught in a scuffle in the bathroom where Dingo had gone before him…Something was telling her all the hand-baskets in the world were suddenly full.
 
 

Taia stood and walked back out as Rollie stood;
 
 

"Sit down!" Dingo told him, in a desperate, tight whisper as he jerked slightly on his son’s arm.
 
 

Rollie was starting to see what Angie had already been thinking and suddenly looked at her. Her normally crystal blue eyes were clouded with large, dilated pupils at the moment and he found no solace there.
 
 

"Great, just great…" he muttered.
 
 

"Is that all you can say?" Angie asked, tapping her spoon on the table.
 
 

Taia returned, pushing a young boy in front of her. He was slightly built but had a shock of dark brown curls. His face was a featured mix of his parents, the Asian and the Anglicized features, so charming. His round eyes of light, hazel brown appraised everyone at the table in fear at first but when Rollie smiled, he suddenly smiled back;
 
 

"Papa!"
 
 

"What?"
 
 

Angie felt her heart sink in her chest as her throat became alive with the pulse of a racer getting his final kick. Rollie was speechless as the boy ran over to him and jumped in his lap.
 
 

"No, no….Bastion…stop! Mr. Tyler is just a friend…he is not your papa!" Taia told her son, pulling him down from Rollie and hugging him.
 
 

Rollie blinked and Angie had seen that blink of shock before…it was the look of belief and shock that Rollie displayed only one other time…with her.. when she had told him about sleeping with Loubar, thinking he was Rollie.
 
 

"Sorry, Rollie…my son, Bastion…he has never met his father and he has seen a picture of you that I have kept. He seems to have this opinion that you are his father," she told him, shrugging her shoulders and smiling innocently as she sat, pulling him into her lap.
 
 

"Now, how would he get that kind of thought?," Angie commented, putting her index finger to her chin. Rollie shot her a look of pure anger then and she nervously bit her lip in silent admonishment. That look had hurt her beyond what he would ever know.
 
 

"The boy needs a couple to take him back to New York…act as his parents, you know…and then drop him off at a pre-arranged place. Simple, isn’t it?" Dingo told Rollie and Angie.
 
 

"I’m being watched, Rollie. I tried to get to you and your father at the airport but it wasn’t safe. Your father thought the man in the bathroom was following me so he…" Taia began, caressing her son’s hair softly.
 
 

"Made a scene and made me walk right into it," Rollie replied, frowning at his father.
 
 

"Couldn’t help it, son…had to be done…"
 
 

"So, you ducked into the ladies room, saw me and made a bee-line for the crowd," Angie continued, her eyes watching the boy, and she realized that he looked so much like Aidan, it hurt.
 
 

"Actually, you were a surprise…I hadn’t expected that you would be there and well, I didn’t know how you would react seeing me again," Taia told her, lowering her eyes modestly.
 
 

"Taia, I’m a big girl…Rollie and I have been married for over two years now…we have a son. You were supposed to be under witness protection, that was the shock…seeing you out in the open at LAX…" Angie replied, her tone softening. Rollie sighed then and Dingo smiled.
 
 

"Truth is, Suzie is being followed…cover may be blown. I ran into her a while back while selling my wares out here in California. We got to talking and well, the time came up and that’s why I came out to California- to help her," Dingo explained.
 
 

"Something isn’t tracking…" Rollie said, pointing his finger at his father, "you’re in this more than you’re letting on…"
 
 

"What? I am helping your old girlfriend with a problem. It’s not like she called you up and asked, is it? Thought that I could help and it was just like kismet, eh- that you and Angie decided to take this little jaunt to California. It worked out nice...at the end of the week, you take young Master Bastion back with you and Suzie can come on later," Dingo replied, acting as cool as he could be.
 
 

"Please, Rollie….Angie…?" Taia began, and she looked straight into Angie’s eyes, tugging at her heart strings as she kissed the top of her son’s head, holding him tightly against her, "he’s in danger here…please!"
 
 

Angie looked down at her lap, and Rollie, usually the one to jump right in with Boy Scout charm, didn’t say a word.
 
 

"Oh, all right…we’ll take him back with us," Angie suddenly blurted out as Taia smiled, genuinely relieved. Rollie looked at his wife, knowing that she had to be questioning who the father of this boy was…and even if Taia denied it, the boy was the spitting image of Aidan.
 
 

Taia stood up and hugged Dingo around the shoulders, kissing his cheek; "I’ll contact you later, during the week so that we can meet and you can take Bastion."
 
 

"No worries, dearie. I’ll be waiting…you can relax, eh? Take Bastion to Disneyland, here- on me…" Dingo told her and handed her a hundred-dollar bill.
 
 

She started to protest but he pushed her hand away and waved her off. She smiled then and looked at Rollie silently. He met her gaze and then looked to the boy who was waving at him. He couldn’t help but do the math …and when Taia had last been in New York. That one night, when she had come to his loft and they had rekindled that young spirit of love- the one that he had kept in his heart since Hong Kong.
 
 

Taia and Bastion left quickly then and it was Angie who was the first to speak;
 
 

"Sooo… gosh- what a surprise!…The World of Suzie Wong…" Angie remarked, throwing her hands up in the air, her mouth slightly open in mischievous jest as that old movie title finally popped into her head. The world of surreal comedy only continued in her mind as she stared at the two men at the table with her.


 
 

"I can’t breath in this damn thing!" Lucinda yelled out, panting and sweating as she pushed past the costume woman and headed for her trailer. She was tired, only having a few hours of sleep and now, they wanted to change scenes on her and put her in that infernal, laced up corset, for ‘realism’…
 
 

"Ha! This is getting on my nerves…first Rollie and Angie arrested and now, switching scenes on me today. I’m not prepared…I feel bloated and I am HORMONALLY CHALLENGED!" she ranted, as Marvin Vanduran watched her pace back and forth in front of him.
 
 

He didn’t even begin to stop her or comfort her at this point. One thing he had learned staying single all these years…when a female offered up that diagnosis, it was best to say nothing and just get out of the way.
 
 

At best, he could simply love her and he did, hopelessly…he didn’t try to examine it or test it, he just did. When he had proposed to her at Lookout Point, he thought everything would just fall into place like Lucinda had just fallen into his life…but it hadn’t. She had paused and for a moment, he thought that his whole world was going to crash and burn in front of him in that car. No, she hadn’t said no, but she hadn’t said yes. She had been stunned, he knew that and then well, the police came and with all the commotion, they had left it at that. How Tyler could always interfere with his best-laid plans, he didn’t know…it just happened. Hopefully, the courts would be lenient and they would be able to finish their week out and give him at least the last two days in California alone with Lucinda to sort out his proposal.
 
 

He realized that deep in thought, he hadn’t heard how quiet it had suddenly become. He looked up, blinking to see Lucinda ripping the corset from her chest, tears streaming down her cheeks. That was the signal, he knew that much.
 
 

"Lucinda! Come here," he told her and came over and pulled her into his arms as she sobbed into his chest. Pieces of cotton and plastic stays littered the floor where Lucinda had literally pulled the corset apart.
 
 

He held onto her for a few minutes and just stroked her long hair and soothed her. He knew they would be rapping on her door any moment and it would likely startle her into a new rage. He pulled her chin up so that their eyes met; her delicate, fine boned features so swollen at the moment, as he kissed her wet lashes.
 
 

"I love you, Lucinda…" he told her calmly.
 
 

"I love you, Marvin…really- I’m so sorry I’m like this right now!" she told him, starting to tremble, "this movie is just getting to me!"
 
 

"Shhh, just think…its only has four more days of shooting, isn’t that what you said?" Vanduran asked her, trying to get her to see the silver lining.
 
 

"Yes…and then, I am working on that picture in New York…it’s set for a couple of months from now…Oh Marvin!" and Lucinda kissed him softly as he smiled.
 
 

The rap on the door startled him as he felt her tense but before she could get herself wound up, he shouted out to the person knocking on the door;
 
 

"Ms. Scarlett ain’t comin’ out till she gets to wear the red taffeta!"