The Rough Cut

by Douglas Corleone

  ‘What is it that you hate being called?’ she says. ‘What’s – as you put it – “the worst effing word to ever disease the American lexicon”?’

  Shit. ‘Did I just call Brody a slacker?’

  She lifts a shoulder. ‘More or less.’

  Traveling too far down Slacker Road leads back home, and I want to move forward.

  ‘I need to make a decision,’ I tell her. ‘Can we not leave this room until a decision is made?’

  Straight-faced, she says, ‘That depends on the options and how decisive you are.’

  I allow a half-smile. ‘That was rhetorical.’

  ‘It makes what I said no less true. You still haven’t decided whether to accept his proposal, am I right?’

  ‘I don’t know, it’s odd. When I’m outdoors, I know I want to marry him, then once I get in the editing room and my mind starts going …’ A tear surfaces in the corner of my left eye; they always come on so unexpectedly here. ‘I don’t know why I can’t make a decision.’

  ‘I can offer some reasons,’ she says. ‘First, you’re still grieving over your mentor – you had a very powerful relationship with him, the kind of closeness you were deprived of as a child. You want to move on from that grief but it’s particularly difficult with Brody around, because Brody is a link back to that world.’

  I shake my head vigorously, as vigorously as a head can be shaken so that she receives my signal. ‘Everything reminds me of Professor Leary,’ I say. ‘Chinese food, my tattoos, the books on my shelves – hell, my entire profession. Brody, if anything, takes my mind off Professor Leary, because Brody always felt he and the professor were in competition for my time, and he hated being left alone in our shitty Bleeker Street apartment, and who can blame him?’

  ‘If it’s not your grief, maybe it’s that you love someone else?’

  Since I hurt my neck shaking my head, this time I simply say, ‘No,’ sternly. Because I never told her. Why would I tell her? What good can come of the whole truth in here?

  ‘Then it must be Brody himself, right? What are his faults? Is he still running out day and night?’

  ‘No, no – that ended months ago. Once we started filming the movie he became all business and, off-hours, went right back to being a couch potato.’

  ‘Has he been depressed?’

  ‘No more than usual.’

  ‘Is he still – how did you put it? – “a hot mess”?’

  ‘I’ve literally never uttered those two words consecutively in my life. Those words make me want to vom—’

  ‘Must be another patient,’ she says over me. ‘I apologize.’

  I wave her off. ‘You don’t need to apologize.’

  ‘You looked angry.’

  ‘Just a knee-jerk reaction, because those words—’

  ‘Those words what? How did you feel when I attributed them to you?’

  ‘Angry, I guess?’ When she doesn’t say anything, I know she’s going to make me delve deeper, when all I want to do in this minute is stand up and walk out that door. ‘Offended, I guess, that you’d think I spoke like that.’

  ‘What else did you feel?’

  Fear.

  ‘I was afraid?’

  ‘Of what?’

  I scrunch up my face in a way I once thought was flirty. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You do know.’

  ‘My father’s dead,’ I say, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘Gone. He’s ashes in an urn collecting dust on a shelf at one of the bars he owned, thousands of miles from here.’

  ‘Death doesn’t mean you stop fearing him.’

  Tears well, yet I’m chuckling. ‘I don’t think he’s going to come back and haunt me, if that’s what you mean.’

  She smiles. I constantly wonder whether she smiles because I genuinely amuse her or out of sheer politeness, maybe out of some unwritten obligation shrinks have to boost your self-confidence.

  She says, ‘The fear you feel is a defense mechanism, Riley. It may be one you haven’t needed for a long time, not since you moved out of your parents’ home and certainly not since your parents’ accident. But the part of your brain that controls this defense mechanism doesn’t know that it can lay down its arms. You can’t simply turn it on and off with a switch. Your childhood experiences shape the way your brain functions – those experiences largely determine how you will later view the world.’

  ‘Wait, what? How is it that every time we spin the wheel, we land on my father? We were talking about Brody.’

  ‘We still are.’

  NINETEEN

  Fifteen days after the weathergirl died, Marissa Linden arrived in Hawaii. As promised, I traveled to the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport first thing in the morning. Appeared precisely on time and pulled the Jeep to the curb near Hawaiian Air’s arrivals terminal. According to the airline’s app, Marissa’s plane had arrived on time, but she was nowhere in sight. I put the transmission in park a few feet in front of a no stopping, no standing sign.

  While I idled and listened to Iz take me somewhere over the rainbow, a teenage airport security guard (one of those unfortunate adolescents more pimple than person) repeatedly ogled me from his position at the terminal entrance. For once in my life, I thought I might finally enjoy some of the privileges of girls with perfectly symmetrical faces and large breasts. When he finally approached my Jeep, I blushed some, flashed my sweetest smile, and waited for the sad yet flattering come-on. But as he neared my vehicle I realized he was one of those rare individuals who looked better up close, and was somewhat older than I’d first thought, early to mid-twenties at least. That tingle that accompanies instant attraction traveled up my spine, and I was actually (but not really) considering giving this guy my number. So when he rapped several times hard on my passenger side door and ordered me in a flinty voice to ‘move on, lady, you can’t stay parked here’, I panicked, stepped on the accelerator, and nearly mowed down a family of four on the crosswalk.

  Despite my screeching brakes, mercifully, no one seemed to notice (except for the family of four, of course, who would undoubtedly recount the incident for years in countless nightmares and therapy sessions back home).

  In the wrong lane and unable to get over (thanks, assholes), I passed the entrance to every last lot and had to circle the airport – a discombobulating ten-minute ride with more stoplights and taxis than midtown Manhattan. I then missed the exit for Hawaiian Air’s arrivals terminal and had to circle around yet again.

  This time, when I finally pulled to the curb, the security guy (who looked better with every pass) wasted no time in approaching. I raised my windows until they were sealed shut then pulled my iPhone from my rear pocket. Marissa was supposed to ring me as soon as she landed. But now my calls to her cell were going straight to voicemail. As the security guy tapped incessantly on my passenger side glass, I tried Church, but got nothing.

  I lowered the window just enough to hear: ‘You’re going to have to move, ma’am. I can’t have you parked here.’

  ‘I’m just picking someone up,’ I tried. ‘Can’t I please just have five minutes?’

  ‘You might as well ask if you can have my job, lady. And my answer would be no, not in this economy.’ He smacked my hardtop hard enough to startle me. ‘Let’s go.’

  Of course, I interpreted his antagonism as a referendum on my looks and charm, and his repeated use of the word lady as a jab at my age. I’m not even thirty, I wanted to shout, but instead flipped him off and peeled away, this time only after checking the crosswalk.

  After another fifteen minutes, I finally found the entrance to short-term parking. I pulled up to the machine, reached out my window, stretched for a ticket, and with only several minor muscle tears, the gate at long last rose for me.

  I sat baking (and not in a good way) in the parking lot for another hour, trying Marissa’s phone every five minutes, Church’s every ten. Maybe Marissa had missed her flight, I kept thinking. Maybe she’d gotten another and would be arriving any
moment. Without word from her or Church, how the hell could I leave?

  I was glad I hadn’t brought Brody. He didn’t do well with car rides in general, but something like this would have killed him. Hell, it was killing me. Me, the living fucking embodiment of patience.

  I stepped up my calls to Marissa and Church to no avail.

  Finally, twenty-five minutes later, as I hung my head out the window for air, I received a text message from Church:

  NO NEED TO PICK UP MARISSA. SHE TOOK A LIMO. MY BAD.

  Flying into a rage even I didn’t recognize, I poked and jabbed in my reply, the first draft of which was pure gibberish, the second not much better. Third time was the charm, but before I could hit SEND, I received a second text message from Church:

  BE HERE ASAP. WE HAVE A RISING DEVELOPMENT.

  They at least had caffeinated beverages when I finally arrived at Church’s penthouse suite with Brody, who I’d picked up in Waikiki. I popped a can of Red Bull, Brody poured himself some coffee, then swiftly set up the cameras around the conference table for the fifth or sixth time this week.

  Marissa Linden, somehow just out of the shower yet disheveled, stepped out of Church’s bedroom, asking whether the suite had a cappuccino machine. (It did.)

  ‘Riles and BQ,’ Church said, once we were all standing in one room, ‘Marissa Linden. Marissa, Riles and BQ.’

  As I’d suspected, Marissa was even better-looking in person than she was on television. She had long black hair, curled in just the right places, and a face that hadn’t aged since she shot The Prosecutor. The rather sheer black dress she’d slipped into left little to the imagination, not that the imagination, in this case, could do much better than the genuine article.

  Brody, I could tell, was immediately infatuated.

  ‘Shall we get started?’ Church said, moving toward the conference table.

  ‘Ethan and Nate aren’t here,’ I reminded him.

  ‘What time are they supposed to arrive?’

  ‘What? I don’t know. What time did you call them this morning?’

  ‘I didn’t call them.’

  ‘Sorry, texted them?’

  Church frowned. ‘Are you saying this isn’t a meeting we scheduled last night?’

  ‘No,’ I said, trying not to lose my shit. ‘We’re here because you texted me.’

  ‘I texted you that you didn’t need to pick up Marissa at the airport because she’d taken a limo.’

  Marissa leaned her head to the side in apology. ‘A text Nick was supposed to send you last night, right after I told him I made other arrangements.’

  I shot Church a look.

  ‘In my defense,’ he said, raising his palms, ‘I was blackout drunk on Old Grand-Dad last night; woke up on the beach with a dozen sand crabs playing King of the Hill on my face.’

  ‘Not that text,’ I said, ‘the second one.’

  ‘What second one?’

  I took my iPhone out of my back pocket and read from the screen. ‘The one that said, “Be here ASAP. We have a rising development.”’

  A light finally blinked on in Church’s head. ‘Oh, I see what happened. I’m sorry, Riles, my bad again. That text wasn’t meant for you, it was meant for Marissa.’

  ‘Why would you …’ As I read the text again, scarlet rose like lava from the bottom of my neck to the top of my ears. ‘Ew, ew, ew,’ I said.

  That night I told Brody I was heading to Breakers up North Shore. I asked if he’d like to come with, knowing he fully intended on ripping a few bong hits and watching Pineapple Express on DVD for the 109th time since we arrived in Hawaii.

  The drive to Haleiwa took me clear across the island, southeast to northwest, and ate up fifty-eight of your Earth minutes. When I pulled into the lot I nearly ran over a rooster and had to stop for a breath. He’d told me to look for ‘a piece of shit pickup’, but the parking lot could have passed for a sales floor of them. Up North Shore, country meant country.

  I parked and went inside, where the noise rivaled Autzen Stadium (take my word for it). I zigzagged my way through a tangle of young bodies then stood on my tiptoes to search the booths in the back. Last table, all the way in the rear, I spotted the dirty blue Dodger baseball cap.

  As I made my way back to him, I gazed at the hundreds of one-dollar bills papering the walls and ceiling, each with a pithy message from some blitzed guest who thought a buck a good price for immortality – or at least for impressing a hot bartender.

  I slid into the booth next to him. His head remained down so that I couldn’t see his face. A pitcher of beer and two pint glasses stood on the table before us. I poured myself a glass, then asked Ethan if he was all right.

  ‘I’m getting nervous,’ he said. ‘I really don’t know whether Church is right for this case. I mean, he’s a bit of an asshole, don’t you think?’

  ‘To us, yes. But in the courtroom, he turns into something else entirely.’

  ‘He’s not an asshole?’

  ‘Oh, no. He’s still an asshole. But he’s your asshole, and everything he has in him will be directed at Prosecuting Attorney Lau and Detective Fukumoto.’ I paused, wished like hell I could take that analogy back. ‘Juries are putty in his hands. His record speaks for itself.’

  ‘Nate’s not so sure.’

  ‘Is this over Tahoma again?’

  ‘Not just Tahoma.’ Ethan took a long pull off his pint. ‘Nate thinks Church may be a great choice for a jury trial in New York, Chicago or LA. But people are different here. Nate and I grew up here. That personality, the flashiness, it doesn’t impress people here the way it does on the mainland.’

  ‘Ethan, he adapts. He’s tried cases everywhere from South Beach to Boise, and he’s like a goddamn chameleon he blends in so well.’

  He hesitated, then said, ‘Don’t be offended, but are you saying that because you think Nick Church is best for me, or because he’s best for your movie?’

  I didn’t hesitate. ‘I can’t believe you’d ask me that,’ I said, and loved the look in his eyes when I said it.

  So, of course, I immediately stepped on those words with: ‘Ethan, I don’t even have a movie unless you’re acquitted.’

  For the next hour and a half, the beer went down fast. With the excitement of a seven-year-old elucidating on the limitless particulars of Minecraft, Ethan educated me on the rich and varying history of Hawaiian music and its numberless influences on American culture. I could hear none of it, of course, because the place was too damn loud, but I smiled and nodded and drank and got away with it for over an hour. Eventually, however, talk returned to the case.

  ‘I can’t do prison, Riley. I’d rather die.’

  ‘Don’t say that, please.’

  ‘I’m serious. I’ve already talked to someone. I’m going to have a cyanide pill in my mouth when the verdict is read.’

  I placed my hand atop his and felt an instant heat come off him. ‘Ethan, there are appeals. That’s part of the reason you agreed to do this movie, remember?’

  ‘Nate said appeals can take years, sometimes five or ten. I can’t do years inside, especially without knowing whether I’ll ever get out.’

  ‘Is this what you brought me here to tell me?’ I said, suddenly irritated, though not quite sure why. ‘Maybe in the hopes what you say to me gets back to Church, so that he knows the true stakes in this case? He already knows the stakes, Ethan. I’m pretty sure I have him on camera saying that for someone like you, a life sentence means death.’

  ‘Someone like me?’

  ‘Not in a bad way. Because you’re … sensitive.’

  Like Brody. What the hell am I doing here right now?

  ‘How can you say that? Except for Nate, none of you even know me.’

  ‘Your songs give us an insight into your soul,’ I actually said, slurring every other word. ‘They’re all gentle and peaceful and about weighty subjects like saving the earth, avoiding war, love and loss, legalizing marijuana.’

  The left side of his li
ps lifted in a half-grin, an image similar to those the bars and nightclubs used to promote him in what now surely seemed like another lifetime. Tonight, though, Ethan Jakes looked nothing like his mugshot, especially the one news outlets doctored to make him appear more menacing. Tonight, he looked like a musician.

  ‘You’ve listened to some of my music, then?’

  I hated that the bar had such great lighting; I was sure he could see me blush. ‘I’ve heard some … well, most … OK, all of it, yeah. At least everything available on Amazon and iTunes.’

  The opposite side of his lips turned up, and I flashed on his conversation with Fukumoto in Piper’s backyard.

  ‘People don’t seem to like my original stuff at live gigs,’ he said. ‘They just want to hear covers.’

  ‘Is that so surprising?’ I said. ‘They’re not looking for the next Jack Johnson; they’re a bunch of drunks who want to sing the lyrics along with you without looking too stupid.’

  ‘Nah,’ he said, with a smile, ‘they make up my entire fan base. They’ve kept bread on my table and booze in my stomach since high school.’

  ‘No help from your parents, huh?’

  ‘Zero. The week I turned eighteen, they moved to some bumbleshit town in Montana because it was cheaper. They never had much. My mom’s a schoolteacher, my father’s a gambler and con man.’

  ‘Do they know about …’

  ‘Nate’s been keeping our mom up to date. God knows where our father is.’

  That little voice inside me told me to get out of Parent Territory before it was too late.

  ‘So you played music through college?’

  ‘All the way through UH. Wouldn’t have been able to go to college otherwise. Me and Nate, we were a team back then.’

  ‘You broke up after UH?’

  I took comfort in the fact that he seemed slightly drunker than I did.

  ‘Nah,’ he said, ‘that’s the thing. Nate and I made a pact after college. We were going to keep after our dreams no matter what it took, no matter how long.’

  ‘What happened?’ The music was so loud, I practically had to yell it in his ear.