Left for Alive

by Tom Hogan

  “So how did it all play out?”

  “After lights out I went and got Willie and the three of us went down to the library. I sat across from him and Willie took his place behind him. He crooked his arm and laid his forearm across Ray’s throat, securing his neck in his elbow’s crook. He snaked the other arm under his grip arm and ran it up alongside Ray’s cheek, his hand resting on the top of Ray’s head. He tightened both hands for a moment so that Ray could see that he was now locked into a vise. Then Willie relaxed his grips and said just let him know when and he’d twist both arms and that would be that. No pain, just dark.”

  Josh let some air out. His eyes seemed to recess for a moment. “Ray put his hand on Willie’s. When I tap your wrist, he said. We talked for a few more minutes—I don’t remember about what—then he said, “It’ll be good to see my wife again,” and he tapped Willie. There was a sound like a branch breaking and he relaxed into Willie’s arms. His face was quiet, peaceful.”

  “What’d you do then?”

  Josh chuckled. “For all of our planning, we’d never discussed what to do with Ray’s body. Him being found in the library would raise too many questions. And we couldn’t get him back to his cell until shift change, which was another hour away. So Willie and I just sat there getting better acquainted. I admired the hold he’d just done and asked him could it be done for restraint or just for death. He showed me a few variations while we waited, let me rehearse a few times on him. When there was a shift change, Willie put Ray over his shoulder, took him back to the cell, laid him on his bunk, and shook hands with me. And that was that.”

  The story hung in the air between the two brothers, neither saying a word. Josh’s eyes roamed the cabin, looking everywhere except at his brother. Finally, Paul broke the silence. “I’m sorry if I worried you. And I can’t tell you that this whole catalogue thing isn’t getting to me, because it is. But I’m not a suicide. I just don’t like my life right now. That’s all.”

  CHAPTER 42

  By August, Moetown began to emerge from its slump. Paul took on a two-week magazine shoot in Palm Springs. Donna and Carol found their old rhythm and began making progress on the book. And Lucky won a cottage in Ireland.

  The Palm Springs assignment seemed to put Paul’s career back on track. As it wrapped, his agent called, telling him that he had a shot at a television commercial, that the scheduled actor had gotten a movie role. It was non-speaking but had enough range that it could lead to bigger things. After the Palm Springs shoot Paul signed on with an acting program and a voice coach and was excited about what his agent was calling his ‘second stage.’ He told William that the new schedule meant he’d miss this year’s Willathon—that he hoped he understood.

  The summer also saw Donna arguing her first motion in five years—second chair in a murder case. The client was a woman who had lived with an increasingly abusive husband for over a decade. The defense strategy, built around a new term: “battered wife”, required both imagination and research—both perfect, as William said, for pulling Donna out of her hole. The first two nights on the case she came back to the camp visibly tired and questioning both her legal skills and stamina. But by the end of the week she was staying up until two or three in the morning, sketching arguments and making notes on precedents to research the following day.

  Friday afternoon of Labor Day weekend, Donna was working up in the L, her law books open and her legal pads filled with notes. Overhead a ceiling fan moved slightly, stirring the summer heat. The fans were Josh and Clark’s nod to the summer’s insufferable heat, with each cabin getting its own fan. Today was Donna’s turn, forcing her temporary evacuation.

  As she scribbled another note, she heard a step on the L, then a tentative knock. She shaded her eyes against the afternoon light that silhouetted her visitor. “Yes? Who is it?”

  “Scott Baldwin. I’m…is Alexis here?”

  Donna got to her feet and crossed to the door. “I’m Donna,” she extended her hand. “You’re Alexis’s husband, right?”

  He hesitated, then nodded. “Ex, but yes. Is she here?”

  “She’s working, but I can reach her. Have a seat, I’ll be right back.” She headed towards the kitchen, then stopped. “Is she expecting you?”

  “It’s a surprise. But now that I’m here…” he looked around the L, “I’m not sure how welcome a surprise it’ll be. If you can just tell her I’m here, that I’d like to talk to her, I’d appreciate it.”

  “No problem.” She came back a few minutes later. “She’ll be right up. Should take her about fifteen minutes. Let me get us a couple of beers while we wait.”

  She came back with the beers and they took a seat at the table, Donna clearing her notes and books to the side. He gestured at them. “I didn’t know you were still practicing.”

  “Just getting back on the horse.” She looked at him. “I forgot that you’re an attorney. Mind if I run my opening argument by you?”

  The Cadillac pulled up in front of the L twenty minutes later. She and Scott exchanged a stilted hug. Donna gathered her books and notepads, shook hands with Scott, thanked him for his suggestions, and headed down to her cabin, where Clark was just finishing up.

  An hour later, Alexis walked in without knocking. “I’m going up to San Francisco for the weekend.”

  “Alone?” Donna smiled.

  “Not quite,” Alexis didn’t return the smile. “There are some…complications, and this isn’t the place to work them out.” She headed for the door. “Tell William I’ll try to be back Monday in time for the party.”

  The Willathon came off without a hitch. The clothing was particularly garish this year, with most of the costumes forsaking subtlety for impact. It was, by all estimates, the closest competition yet. Donna stayed on the porch of her cabin for the most part, watching the festivities with an untouched glass of wine in her hand. Mollie wandered back and forth between party and porch, resting her head on Donna’s thigh whenever she returned.

  Josh checked in throughout the afternoon, complimenting her on his first visit for the ivory leather jumpsuit. Donna barely smiled. “Carol picked it out for me. I kept meaning to get down to Goodwill and shop for myself, but I never got around to it.” Her eyes returned to the party.

  “Tough day?”

  “I keep wondering what we would have worn this year. Harry was getting to the stage where I think he would have gotten the joke. He could have picked out his own costume. I keep wondering what it would have been.”

  Josh took a seat next to her and she reclined her head on his shoulder. They sat that way for thirty minutes in silence, until Lucky summoned Josh for bartending relief. Most of the mountain community walked over to say hello, but respecting the day, no one except Josh and Clark stuck around. And by mid-afternoon Clark was out of commission, manning the barbeque pit for the next four hours.

  Around five, Josh came back with a bottle of wine. He tossed the untouched white wine in her glass, now gone warm, and refreshed it.

  “Alexis didn’t make it back?” he asked.

  “She said she’d try, but something must have come up.”

  “Such as?”

  She looked at him. “I don’t know. She just said there were…’complications’, I think was how she put it.”

  Josh looked back at the party. “What’s he like?” he said, his eyes roaming the gathering, staying away from Donna’s.

  “Why are you so interested?” Donna said, a little tease in her voice.

  “Forget it. I’m just trying to make conversation, but I’m getting tired of doing all the work.” And he returned to the party.

  The Cadillac rolled into the camp Wednesday right after lunch. Alexis popped the trunk, took her bag out and headed into her cabin. Carol was down in Kinsella attending Donna’s trial; none of the men, including William, disturbed her for the rest of the afternoon.

&n
bsp; Carol and Donna returned around five, as Alexis was getting ready for her shift. Still in her navy suit, her hair a tight coiled bun, Donna gave Alexis a quick hug, then sat down on the edge of the bed. Carol took the chair.

  “So?” Carol said, rolling her fingers.

  “So what?” Alexis said, looking under the bed for her shoes.

  “So did we get lucky?”

  “I was just thinking about how much I miss the intellectual repartee here. As well as the sisterly concern for my mental well-being.”

  “Answer the question.”

  Alexis looked at Donna for help, but received a shrug in return. “It wouldn’t have been my first question, but definitely in the top five.” She reached behind her neck and loosened her hair. “How was it, really?”

  “It was…productive.”

  “Listen,” Donna said, “We’re not trying to pry. Well, Carol is. You tell us when you’re ready.”

  Alexis put her shoes down. “Hell, Wednesdays are slow anyway.” She rubbed her eyes, suddenly looking tired. “It was awkward at first. It was clear that he had an agenda, and since he’d caught me by surprise, I clearly didn’t. On the drive up to the airport he was a magpie, trying to impress on me how much he’d changed. It was like he had a stack of answers ready, but I wasn’t asking the right questions. So it was pleasant, but, like I said, awkward.

  “Then we get up to San Francisco and he’s booked us a suite at the Stanford Court.”

  Carol let out a low whistle. “Tres chic. And tres expensive.”

  “We’d stayed there a couple of times in the past when he was out for ABA conventions, so I knew he was trying to bring back good memories. We went up to North Beach, again to a restaurant we’d been to before and really liked. At that point I called him out on how shameless he was being, but he just grinned and acknowledged it.”

  “Well, it had to be a nice change of pace from here,” Carol said. “I mean, chivalry up here is a guy opening your beer for you.”

  “Exactly. And when we got back to the hotel there was a bottle of champagne waiting there in an ice bucket. I know, I know. And yes, Carol, then I got lucky.”

  “And it was…?”

  “Great. Gentle at the right times, eager at the right times. It was great to feel attractive, to be wanted.” Her eyes moved away.

  “But…” Donna said gently.

  “But when I woke up the next day it was clear: he wasn’t the guy for me. He’d changed, I have to give him that. But so had I. And we’d gone in different directions, winding up in very different places as very different people.”

  “Did he feel the same way?”

  “Not at first. But the more we talked, the clearer it became. To both of us. But once that was cleared up, we decided to go ahead with the rest of the romantic getaway. And yes, Carol, we screwed like rabbits. And it was great.”

  “So you’re staying?” Carol’s tone was cautious.

  Alexis nodded. “For now.”

  CHAPTER 43

  That year’s fall was brief. The January rains moved their schedule up, starting in earnest right after Thanksgiving, slanting in hard lines that seemed to assault the trees and cabins. Leaves dropped in thick masses, bunching around the cabins, turning into a soft mulch that the dogs tracked into the L and whatever cabin they visited.

  Josh and Clark shifted their workload from the camp to the mountain community, helping repair or weather-proof the cabins and houses of the mountain residents. Lucky continued his winning ways at both contests and cards. William settled into his new office, expanding his office hours slightly. And Donna, fresh off her victory with the ‘battered woman’ defense, wrote an article about it that refreshed the public interest in her. But she let the phone in the L go unanswered, putting all her free time into working with Carol on the book.

  Paul’s string of good assignments continued, with print work scheduled for the next six months. His agent held out hope for television or commercial work and enrolled him in acting classes: twice a week he went to the same studio that Jimmy Caan and Sally Kellerman went when they were between movies.

  He still called up to the L every Friday at five, regaling whoever answered with stories about which star he’d met that week, which spots he was hoping to try out for.

  “How are the acting classes going?” Josh asked one night.

  “Okay. I mean, a lot of it’s crap, pretending to be different animals and all. But some of it’s helpful.”

  “Any speaking roles on the horizon?”

  “Yes and no. I’ve got two walk-ons—just one-day jobs—coming up. One’s a movie, the other a TV sitcom. But Jerry says there’s some interest in me from one of the soaps. I test with them next Wednesday.”

  There was a pause on both ends of the line. “Soaps?”

  “Don’t start with me, Josh. It’s work and it’s a step up. Besides, you’ll be stunned when I show you a list of all the stars that started in soaps.”

  With everything shutting down for the holidays, Paul flew up that Friday. When Alexis pulled up in front of the United baggage claim, he was standing next to a neat pile of wrapped boxes, gifts for everyone that he had bought, with some guidance from William.

  Paul dominated the ride down with stories about the Hollywood he was just getting acquainted with. His stories adopted an insider tone, as if he were already part of that scene. Finally, after thirty minutes, Alexis had heard enough.

  “Listen. No offense, but if I wanted my Hollywood news, I’ve got Rona Barrett on KGO every fifty-five minutes. Let’s just get reacquainted, okay?”

  Paul went quiet after that, staring out the window. Alexis made no attempt to restart the conversation, just turned the radio to NPR and settled back and drove.

  “So this acting,” she said finally. “Are you any good? I mean, I just saw you sulk. That wasn’t bad.”

  He looked over. “I can’t tell if you’re teasing or not.”

  “About the sulking, yes. About the acting, no. I’m impressed that you’re trying it at all, especially when you could just stay with your catalogues and commercials and be just fine.”

  “Thanks. I’ll tell you, anyone who thinks acting’s easy hasn’t tried it. The first thing they tell you is that being self-conscious is the kiss of death. Which only makes you more self-conscious.

  “I’ve asked a lot of the better actors—men and women—and they tell me the same thing, that what works for them is going back to a time and place that pulls that emotion out of you. I’ve tried that, but it feels easier for me to just pretend I’m someone else.”

  “What’s wrong with that? Sounds like acting to me.”

  “What I’m gathering—from my coaches and the other actors—is that pretending like that will work, but it will only take you so far. The good ones, guys like De Niro or Hoffman, they’ll use memories that you and I would be afraid to touch.” He paused. “I don’t know if I want to be an actor that bad.”

  “Well, you decide. But don’t let the guys and their kidding get to you. You’re pushing yourself, trying something new—we’re not. And besides, I remember Dustin Hoffman got his start doing Volkswagen commercials. Remember that?”

  He said he didn’t, but he looked over at her gratefully as she drove.

  About halfway down, after a comfortable silence, Paul looked over. “With all that’s been going on with me, I never asked: how did things go with that getaway with your husband?”

  “Ex-husband.”

  “Ex-husband. How did it go?”

  “We talked. A lot. About who we were, who we are now, who we want to be. And we realized we weren’t on the same page. Hell, we weren’t even in the same book.”

  “You miss him?”

  “Not really. I had a life in Chicago with him. I had a life in Chicago without him. Now I’ve got life here without him. But it did give me a
chance to find some things out and repair a few potholes.”

  “Like what?”

  She didn’t answer for over a mile, flexing her hands on the wheel. “Anyone ever left you?” When she saw him hesitate, she continued, “That’s what I thought. It’s a tough feeling to describe. It’s not exactly that you’re violated, but you’re robbed of your self-confidence. You feel…’pathetic’. You hate the person who made you feel that way and you don’t have much respect for the person they left behind.”

  “So what did San Francisco accomplish?”

  “It was important to revisit that time, to see what went wrong and to see if we were still the same people. It was nice to hear him apologize, which he did, too much. The important thing, though, was that we both realized that, once he’d gotten successful and I quit work, we’d both become shallower versions of ourselves.”

  “And now that he’s a changed man…” He gestured around the car, “…and you’re sure as hell a changed woman, where does that leave you two?”

  “As friends. Nothing more. The people we’ve become—if we met today, we wouldn’t have much to say, but we’d still like each other.”

  Five minutes later she let out a small bray. “You’ve really never had anyone leave you? Break up with you?”

  “Okay, I lied. Junior high. Mary Ann Pirelli.”

  “You poor dear. Talk about scars that don’t heal.”

  “You asked. That’s the answer.”

  “So how does it work? You do all the leaving?”

  “It never seems to come to that. The rules in my world are fairly clear and understood. We’re all thrown together in an intense work environment, then we go on our ways. It’s shallow, but then, as most people think, we’re shallow people, getting by on just our looks.”

  “Do you ever wish it went beyond the shallow level?”