Disclaimers: See Chapter 1. Any other comments can be sent to me at bironel@gmail.com
Synopsis: A novella about the an insanely wealthy white woman's search for her soul mate and the debt ridden black woman writer, with a vivid imagination, who tries to keep out of her way.
The Absence of Evidence is Not the Evidence of Absence
That same Saturday, three thousand miles away, it was the late morning sun shining into the bedroom that finally awoke Amanda. She opened a tired green eye. She heard loud snoring and rolled her eyes. She smacked dry lips as she raised her head off a - thigh?
A hairy thigh?
A hairy masculine thigh!
Amanda arose quickly to scan on various bodies other than her own on the king sized bed. There was a bald hairy middle aged naked man who was producing the snoring noises and a nubile natural blond sleeping in a painful position, partially under the snoring guy.
Amanda got up and notice the various parts of her body which were sore and that she was in a strange bedroom. She found her clothes, her purse, quickly dressed and left the town house apartment on the east side of town.
Outside she hailed a cab and her cell phone rang as she got in. She had to give the cab driver directions to her beach house twice, since it was at most a fifty dollar fare plus tolls given the distance her beach house was from downtown where she was.
Amanda decided on the whim of hailing the cab that she didn't want to be in the city anymore. Her threesome last night was unmemorable and that depressed her. Amanda knew her life was about to change radically so she allowed herself to indulge in her last night of debauchery. But she seemed to have lost her mojo in the process.
Amanda's mojo was that “joie du vie/devil-may-care” attitude she carried about most of her life. She knew that the tranquility of the surf and sand would help get her mojo back.
She suspected it disappeared when her writer did. She fully expected Nailah to fight her tooth and nail for her novel, but she disappeared seven months ago. It was as she though the freakishly tall woman seemed to drop off the planet.
Amanda even paid a visit to Nailah's Aunt's home to find out what was going on.
----–
Amanda walked up to the colonial house numbered “591” walked through the small black fence, up stone stairs climb to knock on the dark red door. She heard shuffling inside.
Female Voice (yells angrily): Who is it?
Amanda: Amanda.
Female Voice (yells): I don't have any Amanda's and I don't have any need for one. This is a recession you know. Folks gotta start saving for a rainy day and such. You about the devil's work if you pushing folks to buy when they need to save.
Amanda: I'm not selling anything!
Female Voice (yells): I ain't interested in what Jehovah witnessed. He knows what he saw and what he didn't see and he don't need me to weigh in on his witnessing. I ain't interest in churches that believe it's ok for the mens to have more than one wife but frown on me when I may find that one man just ain't enough. I ain't interested in losing weight, gaining weight, enlarging sex organs I don't possess, enlarging my breast nor reducing them. God don't make no mistakes but mankind keeps him wondering. And I especially ain't gonna be lectured by no cult drone parroting paternalistic bullchap to make me feel bad about being me.
Amanda (exasperated): I'm here to speak with Nailah.
Female Voice: Nailah??? How do you know her?
Amanda: We've worked together on a project. I've been trying to get in touch with her but she hasn't returned my calls.
The sound of locks being open made Amanda confident that she would finally locate the missing Nailah Brown. The red door opened and beside it stood an smartly dressed elderly women with smooth and flawless toasted honey skin and salt and pepper curly permed hair. The women didn't look seventy-three she looked like she was only in her fifties. Not a wrinkle on the black woman's youthful face. It was disgusting really how young the woman looked. The gray hair was the only tip off she was a senior citizen.
Auntie: You said you worked with my niece?
Amanda: Yes and I've been trying to get in touch with her.
Auntie: What were you working on with my niece?
Amanda: I just need to get word to her about the project we were working on?
Auntie pulls the newspaper, she was reading in front of her, the arts section, and scans it.
Auntie: If she read this I'm certain she got your message. Congratulations by the way.
Amanda: It's not what you think. I just-
Auntie (interrupts): It's not a matter of what I think, is it? As for my Nailah, I haven't heard from her and I doubt I would let anyone know if I did. It's nothing personal, it just business. Isn't that what you people like to say?
Amanda: I know what it looks like but if I could speak to Nailah... We all want the same outcome here and I can't rectify the situation if she runs away and hides.
Auntie: You see running and hiding, I see taking a chance on an alternative opportunity.
Amanda: I can't be faulted for Nailah's apparent fear of success. One has to have the will to grab it.
Auntie pushes her eyeglasses up to see Amanda clearly. She looks in her eyes searching for something.
Auntie: When the last time you been in church, baby?
Amanda: What?
Auntie: I'm just saying, you're a wealthy woman by the looks of you. You getting accolades and praise for something you didn't break a sweat for and you look like you've been left behind.
Amanda: I don't see what that has to do with-
Auntie (interrupt): Now you know I have better home training than to interrupt folks like I do but you need more guidance than a blind man in the middle of a busy highway. Folks will tell ya life is suffering, life is pain but that's probably so you'll buy whatever they're selling to get rid of the pain. Real talk, Baby, life at the most is serene unless you like taking your meals in the devil's kitchen. If you feel that left behind, you need to get up and go to church.
Amanda: Like you, I don't have a high tolerance for all things religious.
Auntie (laughs): You don't speak English so good do you? I said church. I didn't say anything about religions or anything remotely religious.
Amanda (sarcastically): Perhaps you'd be so kind as to suggest one.
Auntie: I can see how you're so successful in the material world with your eyes firmly set on the external. Girl I don't know which specific church you need to visit. Just that you are in dire need to visiting one. Now I could wax philosophies with you all night, you remind me of Nailah in that regard, but I have things to do and little time to do them. Mind what I said it might save your life.
Auntie gently shuts the door and locked her locks, shuffling away from the door until all noise of her presence faded into the deep interior of her house.
Amanda (soliloquy): I have stepped into the Twilight Zone.
-----
As the cab entered the toll plaza to enter the highway, Amanda took out her cell phone to retrieve her messages. Her first call was to Surinder Singh, her manservant.
Surinder answered on the third ring: You have reached the De Klerk-Zwart residence.
Amanda: Surinder it's me. I'm on my way to the beach house. If anyone else calls I'm out of town on business. Has-
Surinder: No, Miss Brown has not called nor left any messages.
Amanda: Fine. Before you descend on me, I can fend for myself for a few days. Do I have any other messages?
Surinder: Mrs. Pamela Townsand called twice but left no messages. Doctor Li called. Her message is as follows, quote: The window of opportunity to complete the procedure is closing. Please schedule a follow-up appointment as soon as possible. Unquote. Mr. McGnathy called and he needs you to call him back as soon as you get his message.
Amanda: Yes I see that he called my cell phone as well. I'll see you no sooner than three days from today Surinder so enjoy you mini vacation.
Surinder: Very well Miss. Should I bring the golf clubs?
Amanda: Good call, bring them. I need to work on my stroke.
Surinder: Until then Miss. Take care.
Amanda hit the end call button and looked out the window as the vast metropolis disappeared behind her and the seemingly unending ribbon of asphalt flowed before her.
-----
Amanda sat on the sand watching the sun rise over the calming tide on her private beach. She had been there when the sun came up yesterday. She fell asleep under the warming afternoon sun and woke to a midnight sky with millions of tiny stars twinkling in the distance.
With no other interest than to watch the day pass, Amanda waiting until the first fingers of dawn stretched across the sky. It would have been almost zen-like if her mind wasn't preoccupied with wondering where in the hell did Nailah disappeared.
With the mid day sun, Amanda rose from her perch on the small mound of sand, to go inside her beach house. She entered the stone path leading into the back patio glass doors. She walked into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator finding it completely empty.
Amanda (yells): Surinder!
Then she realized that he isn't there and wouldn't be coming to the beach house for a few days, by her instructions. She slammed the fridge door shut, frustrated by the growling from her empty stomach.
She grabbed her car keys and pulled her wallet from her purse, which laid on the tile floor where she tossed it as she walked out towards the beach the day she arrived at the house.
Amanda jumped into the fire red Jeep parked in the car port, turning the ignition three times before the engine would fire up.
Backing out of the driveway she careened down the one way street backwards before turning her wheels and putting the car in drive zipping down the lush tree lined road.
Amanda nearly missed a woman crossing to street to breeze into a parking spot she eyed before the teenagers in the huge SUV with the booming speakers. As she turned the Jeep engine off and jumped out the car, she gave the teenagers the proverbial “finger” as they slew curses at her.
She entered the Whole Foods market making her way to the prepared foods section. She grabbed a green bowl and piled it high with all sorts of Indian delights, chicken masala, two samosas, a dollop of coconut and chutney, and a piece of Naan. She grabbed an organic Mango Soda sweetened with raw sugar cane cultivated by farmer workers making a living wage in some third world country somewhere on the planet to wash it all down.
It was when she stood in line to pay for her dinner that a curious item in the national newspaper caught her eye. There was a blurb about continued unrest in Surinder's country so Amanda added the paper to her purchase.
She settled down at an empty table and began to wolf down her food as she read the newspaper. When she got to the arts section, she nearly choked on her last piece of Naan. Once she was able to expel the offending piece of bread out of her mouth and into the back on the bald man's head who was sitting at an adjacent table, with a healthy cough, she grabbed her naturally sweetened organic soda and took a long swig ending with a loud burp.
The bald man, whose head was the accidental target of Amanda's partial chewed and swallowed bread, yelled obscenities to her as she ignored him and reread the section of the paper that shocked her. She grimaced as she retrieved her cell phone from her jeans pocket and dialed an often called number. She cursed out loud when Gerald's answering machine picked up on the fifth ring and she left the following message:
Amanda: Gerald, I'm going to hang up and call again. If the answering machine picks up once more, I'll be at your apartment in the hour.
She hung up and stared at the phone willing it to ring with her mind. When it did, the sound shocked the angry bald man enough to move away from her and quickly leave the store.
Amanda: Gerald.
Gerald: Amanda.
Amanda: I'm at the beach house. Currently I'm in the Woods Foods eating dinner when I see something absolutely astounding in the newspaper.
Gerald: Amanda, it's Sunday. All around the world this is a day of rest.
Amanda: Only in the religious circles, Gerald. There's no rest for the wicked.
Gerald: Okay, are there any witnesses? Do I need to speak the police officer on the scene? Have you been drinking? Don't say anything until I get there. The beach house you say?
Amanda: Very funny Gerald. I'm no longer a rebellious teenager. But I do need you here as quickly as you can get here. Do you want to take the bird?
Gerald: I'm not getting in that helicopter! By car service, I'll be there in two hours.
Amanda: Chop, chop Gerald. Don't make me wait too long. Oh and be a dear and pick up a copy of The Witch's Hammer for me on your way.
How a White Haired Gypsy Prompted the “Artist Search”
Amanda placed her cell phone back into her jeans pocket and tore the article out of the newspaper. She scanned it once more before grabbing her belongings leaving the trendy organic grocery store and her refuse on the table where she ate.
On the drive back to her beach house, Amanda recalled how five years ago she embarked on this crazy journey before she collided with Nailah.
-----
Pamela Townsend was an old frienemy of Amanda's estranged mother. When she seduced a younger Amanda, her friendship with Amanda bloomed and with her mother ended.
Five years ago, Pamela Townsend threw a party to celebrate the lucrative end of her third marriage. It seemed husband number three had the good taste to die of a heart attack just before the divorce was granted. According to the pre-nuptial agreement, the former Pamela Riley-West-Silver-Townsend was entitled to only one million dollars should her marriage to Oren Townsend, Sr end in divorce.
When Oren caught her in bed with his female secretary, he immediately filed for divorce and took up with another young woman thirty years his junior. What he didn't realize was his heart wasn't made for black market Viagra™. His subsequent premature accidental death made Pamela the sole heir to his estate, his twenty-eight million dollar estate.
So Pamela celebrated in style and immediately after his burial. She purchased enough food to feed a small nation. Which in hindsight was probably very wasteful considering a large number of women at the party were either anorexic, bulimic or both.
She hired two bands, one to play out by the pool and another to perform in the dining hall. She hired beautiful young half naked woman to serve drinks, dance, recreations drugs and otherwise entertain her guests. She hired masseurs. And for tickles and giggles, she hired a fortune teller.
Most of the guests went to the fortune teller when they were too stoned to understand the predictions for their future, everyone except Amanda whose interest that evening was of a carnal nature. She loved sex and didn't apologize for it. Which was the main reason why she was trying to isolate one of the young serving wenches into the room where the fortune teller was set up.
Fortune Teller: She's not interested in women.
Amanda: Are you talking to me?
Fortune Teller: The young girl isn't interested in women sexually.
Amanda: She just tried to suck my face off. She knows her way around women.
Fortune Teller: She has the knowledge but not the desire. She's, how do they say, “Gay for pay.” She would be an empty conquest for you. Aren't you ready for something completely different?
Amanda stared at the fortune teller. She was an older heavyset, Latina woman with long white hair wrapped in a ponytail.
Amanda dismissed her with a smirk.
The fortune teller shuffled her deck of cards. They looked like ordinary playing cards not Tarot cards. Amanda turned away and looked for the serving girl she she was pursuing, but she was gone.
Amanda (muttered under her breathe) Way to go clit blocker.
Fortune Teller: That was going no where, trust me. Come sit, let me tell you what will happen for you in the future.
Amanda: I'm preoccupied with my present. Besides I don't believe in that garbage.
Fortune Teller: But this garbage believes in you. This garbage wants to arm you with knowledge to prepare for what to comes. You have two outcomes one good, one not so good. The choice is yours.
Amanda: What knowledge?
Fortune Teller: Knowledge of self.
Amanda: I know myself very well. The goal was not to have to fall back on knowing myself tonight, if you get my drift.
Fortune teller: Come sit with me, have some tea and try rubbing on a higher chakra, shall we?
With her conquest for the evening gone, to amuse herself, Amanda sat down and accepted the tea, the fortune teller poured out for them both. Once the fortune teller took a sip, Amanda cautiously took a sip from her cup as well.
The fortune teller shuffled the deck of cards once more than she rapidly dealt them out. So fast her hands were a blur which unnerved Amanda a bit.
The fortune teller turn over one card studied it then two others. It was the Queen of Diamonds.
Fortune Teller: You are very wealthy.
Amanda: No shit, Ms. Townsend only knows rich people.
She turned over another card. It was the Jack of Spades.
Fortune Teller: You are very poor.
Amanda: Make up your mind am I rich or am I poor?
Fortune Teller: You are rich in materials but poor in spirit. You will need to make a change to enrich your soul.
Amanda (sarcastically): And, how would I go about that?
The fortune teller turn over three more cards. The Ace of Spades, the King of Hearts and the Queen of Hearts.
Fortune Teller: Your destiny awaits but you may be too blind to see it, too deaf to hear it. It will be front of you but you will dismiss it. You may never find it because it will be exactly where you would never look.
Amanda: Let say I buy this mumbo-jumbo. What does my destiny entail, riches? That would be great but as you already know I'm already rich. Power? Perhaps I'll get super powers like the ability to fly or can I put in a request? I'd like superhuman strength but the flying thing would attract more women.
Fortune Teller: Love. You don't have that and it is in your destiny. You don't realize just how very rare you really are do you? You have the one thing most people will never have in their entire lives.
Amanda: What's that?
The fortune teller turns over another card it is another Queen of Hearts. Clearly this deck is rigged , Amanda thought.
Fortune Teller: A soul mate.
Amanda: Soul mates are overrated.
Fortune Teller: She's as lost as you are. Which is one of many reasons why you are well matched.
Amanda: She??
The fortune teller turns over more cards explaining each one: The Jack of spades, an Ace of clubs, a seven of clubs, and eight of spades.
Fortune Teller: She smarter than you but not as rich materially speaking.
Amanda (sarcastically): Horrors! You mean I'm to marry beneath my station in life??? My father would turn over in his grave!
Fortune Teller: She's more creative than you. An artist but she doesn't know that yet.
Amanda: Be still my heart, I get an idiot savant whose homeless for a soul mate. I want to trade up! You don't see any drop dead gorgeous blondes in there anywhere? Don't have to be natural blondes. Someone financially stable? I'll even take a red head or two.
Fortune Teller: She'll look at you with distrust and will not respect you. You will not impress her with anything that you have.
Amanda: Sounds like some of my ex-lovers. Not all of them just a small misguided few.
Fortune Teller: But if you don't find her soon, you lose everything that matters to you. Everything.
Amanda: Is that some kind of threat? I don't respond well to threats.
Fortune teller: Death is a promise for us all. Your failure will bring that promise to you much quicker. You have to first want the gift of love being created for you, then seek out your soul mate.
Amanda: Let's say I'm stupid enough to go on this fool's errand. What's in it for me?
Fortune Teller: Love, a long prosperous life, and children.
Amanda (winks): Whoa that's a deal breaker. I'm the woman parents warn their daughters about.
Fortune Teller (laughs): Imaging the irony when one day you will have to protect your daughters from someone... like you.
Amanda: No sons in the mix? I could train them to be the next golf phenoms. And whose having these crumbsnatchers, anyway? I vote the homeless chick.
Fortune teller: Two women would only make daughters together and you'll bear your daughters. But I fear you'll never find your mate, she's where you'd never look for her.
Amanda gets up from the table laughing she turns around.
Amanda (yells): Okay Pam you finally got me back! She had me going there for a minute… you can come out now! Great joke! Not as good as mine of course. You do realize... this means war!
Pamela saunters into the room with a cocktail in hand.
Pamela: What are you bellowing about?
Amanda: Your fortune teller is good. She had me going there for a minute. But the joke died when she revealed her lack of knowledge about how biology works on this planet. What is she a product of the American public school system?
Pamela: Have you been hitting my recreational pharmacopeia trays? Really Darling, that's so not you!
Amanda: Nice touch a fortune teller.
Pamela: Fortune teller??? I told that bore to go leave hours ago. No one was interested in having their fortunes read.
Amanda: Don't bullshit me Pam. This fortune teller right here-
When Amanda turned to face the table where the fortune teller was sitting and saw--
No table.
No cups of half drunk tea.
No deck of cards.
Not one chair.
No fortune teller. Amanda was pointing to empty space.
-----
Amanda screeched to an angry stop, putting the Jeep into park in the driveway in front of her vast beach house. She jumped out of the Jeep after she turned off the engine. She quickly walked up the stone path leading to her front door, which was open.
When she began to punch in the security code in the alarm panel, she noticed the front door to her house was slightly ajar. She stopped, remembering that she didn't leave the beach house from the front door and that was locked.
She pulled out her cell phone and called the police as she returned to her parked Jeep. She sat in the driver's seat and turned on the radio was she waited for the police.
The music Right As Rain by Adele played on her stereo of her Jeep as Amanda recalled her bizarre search for her so-called soul mate.
-----
After the weird fortune teller incident at Pamela's party, Amanda forgot all about it content to come and go around the more civilized parts of the planet in search of ways to enrich her family empire and add more pleasurable experiences to her vast war chest of carnal knowledge.
Months after her potential future was revealed, the prediction of Amanda's premature death almost came true in a series of “accidental” attempts on her life.
The first happened a month after she seduced a young woman a week before the woman was to marry a young Arab heir. The young woman was so confused over her divided feelings for her fiance and Amanda that she ran away from the ceremony in her wedding dress, chartering a one way flight to the Portugal to her family villa. To say that her fiance was upset was an understatement. Her flight from matrimony would have been chalked up to pre-wedding jitters. However the young man was distraught when he discovered his wife-to-be's indiscretion when a mysterious package of scandalous photos of Amanda and his fiancee were sent to him the day after his cancelled wedding ceremony.
Furious at the loss of his future wife, he was suspected of trying to have Amanda killed when she was presenting at a business conference in Singapore a month later, at the Grand Plaza Hotel.
Rising Naughty Moons: The Nine Lives of Amanda
While riding in a limousine, Amanda noticed that she was being tailed by a dark sedan on the ride from Changi Airport . Amanda assumed it was just industrial spying and dismissed it.
The meeting at the Grand Plaza was uneventful yet profitable for De Klerk-Zwart Publishing. When she went to Victoria Concert Hall Theater to see a No play performance, she excused herself from her hosts to go to the ladies room.
When she finished using the facilities and stepped in front of the sink to wash her hands, she noticed a strange looking woman in the ladies room in the mirror over the sink. A homely, masculine looking woman whom Amanda initially thought was a pre-op transsexual tried to strangle her while cursing at her in Arabic.
In the struggle the strange woman's wig flew off to reveal she was a he! The Arabic cursing man in drag and Amanda were a furious jumble of manicured hands and high heels kicking.
Amanda got her hands on his man business and twisted the bulbous external organs as though her life depended on it, which incidentally it did.
Angered the man attacking her kept choking Amanda until the pain between his legs became too intense, to ignore. So intense that he was beginning to lose consciousness and loosened his grip on Amanda's neck. That was the break she needed as she slammed him head first into the sink without letting go of his family jewels.
When the Singapore Police arrived they took the unconscious but still breathing assailant into custody. Amanda was taken to the Thomson Medical Centre Limited on Thomson Road for treatment she was surprised to see Gerald there. She was exclusively treated by Dr. Helen Li, impressed by her professionalism and released into Gerald custody. After she returned to the hotel she was intercepted by SAC Wei Lee who interviewed her about the attack.
When Amanda and Gerald return to her hotel room they found a naked woman waiting in the bed for her. Amanda, although bandaged and bruised, was more than ready to make the extremely friendly woman's acquaintance. Gerald however was very suspicious and he had the woman removed by the Detective Police Constable Han and PC Ali who were still in the hotel.
Lucky for Amanda, the SFC discovered the woman was paid to slip a potent narcotic into any beverage Amanda drank. When Amanda succumbed to the sleeping draught the young woman was then supposed to leave the front door open when she left the room. The mystery the SFC couldn't solve was that the woman didn't know the Arab assailant and he didn't know her. So who paid her?
The third attempt on Amanda's life happened when she came back to the States. She flew into Kennedy Airport to meet with the board of directors of De Klerk-Zwart Publishing in Manhattan New York . Since she was only in New York City for a day she didn't have any bags and breezed through the arrival gate. She checked her phone messages and planned to have a drink with a former lover at a bar after the meeting.
As she walked towards the exit, she noticed a tall bald man holding up a sign with her last name on it standing beside a late model Black E-Class Mercedes-Benz. She hailed him and slipped into the car as he opened the door. The driver got in, started the sedan, driving off toward the highway leading away from the airport.
They cruised along for a mile until the driver hit heavy traffic along the Grand Central Parkway (GCP). He lowered the protective divider between them.
Driver: Ms. De Klerk-Zwart, we've hit midday traffic. I can take an alternative route.
Since Amanda was preoccupied with her cell phone being between retrieving and leaving messages, she waved him off to do as he pleased.
The Driver got off the GCP in some part of the borough of Queens and it wasn't until Amanda realized they hadn't reach any bridge or tunnel that would take one into the borough of Manhattan that she realized the driver was going in the wrong direction - through Long Island!
No amount of threats, cursing or pleading across the partition between them could get the driver to alter his course as they sped down a curiously empty Long Island highway.
Amanda called everyone she could think of reaching only one of the company board members and Gerald's spouse Richard. She informed them of where she was and what was happening but all she could do was wait for them to send someone to rescue her. Furious at the impotence, Amanda hated waiting.
Amanda didn't understand the gravity of the situation until she noticed road signs indicating the land that was Long Island was quickly turning into ocean. She frantically struggled to open the back doors then focused her ire on the partition behind the driver as she saw the beach and ocean quickly coming closer.
As the sedan hit the sand, the driver jerked the wheel intending for it to flip over but the car skid instead into the ocean sideways, and the bald driver's head hit the roof of the car, rendering him unconscious. The luxury sedan stopped moving when it was submerged in four feet of water.
Fisherman on the beach who witnessed the car entering the ocean ran to Amanda's aid and were able to smash open the front passenger's side window to get her and the unconscious driver out of the car.
Once out of the car, Amanda (yelled pointing at the unconscious driver): He tried to kill me!
Once again surrounded by medical personnel and New York City's Finest, Amanda looked up to see the concern stretch across Gerald's face as he rushed to her side stomping through the sand. When he hugged her she felt six years old again and safe in his arms.
Gerald: Richard was frantic when he relayed your messages to me. He was going to come himself but I told him to rest at home until we get back. You're staying with us tonight so cancel all other plans.
Amanda (laughs): It's going to be okay Mom, I'm very difficult to kill.
Gerald: This is not a laughing matter. We need to get you a security detail. Bodyguards! The days of you coming and going as you feel are over. You have to be responsible about this Amanda!
Amanda: After liberating myself from that nut house my parents called a home, I refuse to live my life in a prison.
Gerald: Once is an aberration but this… this is the third time someone has gone to great lengths to harm you!
Amanda: As crazy as it sounds, maybe I should reconsider what she said.
Gerald: This has gone far beyond listening to advice from ex-girlfriends!
Amanda: She wasn't a girlfriend. She was… some kind of… this is to ridiculous for even me to consider.
Gerald: Was she a security specialist?
Amanda(wincing): No. A fortune teller.
Gerald: What could a fortune teller advise?
Amanda: That I need… to get a wife.
Gerald: A what????
Amanda: You know someone who nags you about eating better, going to the doctor and to help her around the house. One of those... a wife.
Gerald: I know what wives are I just don't understand how one is going to stop people trying to kill you. And won't her husband be a tad irked you're stealing her away? Haven't you learned anything after Singapore???
Amanda: She supposed to be MY wife.
Gerald: You carry a book around which describes marriage as a state in the absence of reason and you refer to it often.
Amanda: Gerald you know I'd rather meet a big muscular guy in an alley, naked carrying a fist full of money in one hand and a six pack in the other then get married but it seems that maybe that's exactly what I have to do.
Amanda gave her accounts of her wild car ride to the NYPD Officers on site but she was frustrated by the fact that the bald man who caused all this somehow was able to slip away unseen.
Later at Gerald and Richard's duplex condo, nestled in the guest room, Amanda wrote down as much of the details she could remember that the fortune teller told her: Artist, homeless, despises me. Shouldn't be to difficult to find , Amanda thought before falling asleep.