And The Winner Is...

Chapter 19

The next two weeks involved Jim developing an encyclopedic knowledge of Lana and her films. He even took to Wikipedia and started editing out anything that wasn't correct. So much for me asking him what was the film that got Lana an Oscar nomination. Now he knows it was called 'Tell Me More'. He knows the name of the director, the writer, the cinematographer, probably right down to who was the best boy (oh yes, that's a job)... no guesses for who my 'best boy' would be.

What he also did was find out a lot more about Lana now and how she lives. She seems to have become a bit of a reclusive 'Howard Hughes' type figure and only really seen out on Oscar night. In a way, the Bubalev necklace has engulfed her fame and in a strange way controls how she acts. It reminds me a bit of Frodo in Lord Of The Rings. He knows he has to throw this one ring into the fires of Mordor to save Middle Earth, but it still has a powerful hold over him. Poor Lana, her identity has been taken over by something close to her that she once loved. Hmmm, now why does that sound familiar?

Lana now lives in this crumbling old Spanish style villa, that would have looked great when it was built in the 20's, but is now covered in Ivy and has a pool is full of leaves. She's now in her eighties and is looked after by a scary-looking Lithuanian lady called Irena. I say scary, because the only pictures of her online are of her chasing Lana fans away from the house. We're not sure why she has stayed there as long as she has, maybe she's as much a super fan of Lana as Jim now is. If so, getting past her will be the real challenge. I honestly think when Lana sees Jim and then hears how obsessed and knowledgeable he is about her, she'll be putty in his hands. So the real task is getting past the firewall, or should I say fire breathing dragon wall that is Irena.

Luckily Jim was on the case. He's learning all about Lithuania, its history and customs. He's even learning some basic Lithuanian and learning to cook some classic Lithuanian dishes. I know it's important as part of winning over Irena, but we've become his guinea pigs. Gone are his beautiful Italian and Chinese cooking They've now been replaced by beetroot soup with fried cheese curd balls on the side one night and then, cepelinai the next. What are cepelinai, you ask? And well you may. Cepelinai are Lithuania's national dish. They are large dumplings made of a mixture of raw and cooked potato dough that is filled with pork and doused in a ladle of a sour cream and bacon sauce. Though originally called didzkukuliai, the name was changed to cepelinai in the 20th century because of their resemblance to zeppelin airships. And that's what I resembled after eating them!

So that was what Jim was doing. And you know what Vince was doing? Making a perfect replica of Hollywood's most famous necklace and a perfect copy of an Oscar. Simple. Well, not so simple as it turned out.

In the meantime, what was I doing? Schmoozing my sister. As much as I hated to do it, I had a steady chain of emails, talking about how much I liked her film and how much she was looking forward to seeing me. I even managed a few phone calls. Sometimes it even felt like old times, when it was just the two of us against the world. But as soon as I started to feel all warm and fuzzy, she'd say something that would shatter the spell. She'd drop the name of a famous actor she was meeting for lunch, or some big-name Hollywood director she was going to have a chat with about a project. She wasn't even doing auditions, she'd moved on to chats!

But however many names she dropped, I didn't let it get to me. However much I had to pretend to be happy for her, didn't matter. What mattered, was THE PLAN!

And the necklace part of the plan was going well. Probably because Vince wasn't directly involved in it. But Vince got daily emails from his friend and after every dinner of some Lithuanian delicacy (usually involving frying of some sort), Vince would show us print outs of how the necklace was developing. The stones really did look amazing, especially the fake Bubalev Red.