by JD Hawkins
“So in a word, it’s a mess.”
“Precisely.”
“What about producing a segment that just talks about all those rumors then? Go through all the rumors and make a funny little bit on it. ‘Schrodinger’s Steve’ or something.”
Jenny stops on the landing and turns backward, pointing her pen at me.
“That’s good,” she says, smiling. “But a little too high brow. And a little too tasteless. What if he is dead, and our primary segment on it is a jokey one?”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I admit.
She spins through the doors and into the hallway.
“What about this,” I say, my mind still going a mile a minute. “We film all the segments. All possibilities. He’s dead, he’s not, it’s a publicity stunt, he’s hanging by a thread—all of it. Then, the second we do find out what’s going on, we push the button and we’re live. We might not be the very first, but we’ll be one of. And we’ll be accurate.”
Jenny turns to me as we reach the studio doors. She nods, but she’s not smiling.
“That’s a good idea. We’d have to cut them together really fast and loose, but it could work. Except we also have another problem.”
“What?” I frown.
Jenny answers by pushing open the door and gesturing for me to enter.
Inside, the studio is all set up. The cameras pointed and manned, the lighting on the set, and Carlos in his spot, ready for show time. Sandra, the director, is standing by one of the cameras, but she’s got a hand over her face like she’s experiencing a pounding headache. It looks like they’re ready to film. Except Carlos isn’t wearing the ‘happy to see you’ smile he usually wears when he’s working—instead, he’s flailing his arms and ranting at anybody who might be listening.
“…bonafide asshole! One of the biggest you’ll ever meet! The world’s a better place without him—”
“What’s the problem here?” I shout at Carlos, marching into the light between the cameras.
Carlos shifts his attention from a cowering runner toward me instead.
“Problem? If Stephen Peace is dead that’s a blessing, not a problem. The only ‘problem’ here is that you expect me to do a whole segment on some nobody asshole like him. We’re scrapping this.”
I sturdy myself for a drama queen tantrum and focus on keeping my tone all business.
“We are scrapping nothing. Stephen Peace has won two Oscars and a Golden Globe and been nominated for a ton of other awards, and on top of that he was in one of the highest-grossing movies worldwide last year,” I say, as calmly as possible. “He’s also a UN ambassador and a spokesperson for Autism Speaks. So no, this isn’t ‘some nobody.’ He’s our top story, and all the other networks’ as well.”
“Pfft!” Carlos flinches backward and makes a face as if someone just tried to force-feed him rotten meat. “Let me tell you about Stephen ‘Peace of Shit’ as I like to call him. He’s a hack who doesn’t deserve a single dollar he’s made in Hollywood. I know the guy better than anyone—we went through the same acting program, and I spent three years carrying him on a sitcom called Scoop. The guy needed more takes to get his lines right than any actor I’ve ever seen. Always trying to steal scenes from me, always getting in my light—that wannabe knew I was ten times more talented. You know the role that made him big, playing the rookie detective in that serial killer movie?” Carlos jabs a finger at the fine silk of his purple shirt. “That was mine—it was written for me. I knew the writer and everything. Then, at the last minute, they toss me out for Stephen Peace of Shit. Said I didn’t come across ‘hungry’ enough, that I was too ‘polished’ for the part—can you believe it?”
“No, actually.”
“Yeah!” Carlos says, feeling vindicated and angry at the same time. “See, I know what really happened. Shit! The things I could tell you about that prick! If you wanna roll that camera I could tell you stories about him that would—”
“Let’s just try to keep it calm and detached, shall we?” I interrupt, firmly. “Professional. Right, Carlos? You don’t wanna look bitter or anything, do you?”
Carlos straightens his shoulders a bit and adjusts his shirt.
“I’m not bitter.”
“Of course you’re not. But people talk. So let’s just get this short little bit done and we can all take a break until tonight.”
Carlos nods. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”
“Great. You good to go, Sandra?” I ask the director.
She sighs and nods. “We just need a take,” she says.
Jenny comes up beside me, carrying large prompt cards.
“I’ve done some basic lines,” she says. “One for if he’s dead, one for if he’s not, one for if he’s hanging by a thread in the hospital.”
“Ok, great,” I say, turning back to give Sandra a thumbs-up.
“Let’s shoot the dead one first. Ready, everyone? Roll sound!” Sandra says.
Carlos takes his spot as the cameras make a final adjustment. He turns on his primetime smile as easily as a flashlight, and beams into the lens. Sandra checks the studio, the PA holding Jenny’s prompts, then calls action.
Carlos’ voice sounds like a completely different person as he begins.
“Stephen Peace, the thirty-five year old actor best known for his role in—” Carlos stops himself and laughs. “Thirty-five? Come on, if the guy’s dead we can at least be honest. Guy’s knocking on mid-forties at best! You ever met him in person? You can smell the Botox from ten feet away. His face looks like it’s been pounded by meteors—”
“Carlos!” I say, trying not to show too much exasperation. Beside me, the director puts her face in her hands again with a deep sigh.
“I can’t,” she says.
“Can we please stick to the script?” I call out to Carlos.
The host holds his palms up innocently.
“My bad, my bad… Let’s go again.”
Sandra takes a deep breath, looks at the camera monitor, and gives the signal. Carlos starts again and Jenny comes close to whisper in my ear.
“Maybe we should get somebody else to do this segment. You want me to call Kelly Greene?”
I lean over to whisper back.
“Kelly Greene’s not doing stuff for us anymore. She got that role in a TV show, remember?”
Jenny frowns, seeming a little more interested than I would have expected.
“So who’s our back-up now?”
I shoot her a stoic expression.
“We don’t have one.”
“Seriously?”
“Nope. We should have found one last month—except Carlos doesn’t want the competition, and Candace has to sign off on it anyway. You do the math… I must have suggested about a dozen names so far, but it goes nowhere.”
Jenny gets a look like she’s holding something back, like she’s prepping herself to suggest something, but before she can speak I’m distracted by the raised tones of Carlos going on another rant.
“Unknown?! Give me a break—it’s drugs! Ask anyone in town they’ll tell you what a cokehead that s.o.b. was! Guy couldn’t hardly remember his name at an after party! Either that killed him, or the money he owed all over town. I ever tell you about the last time I was shooting hoops with that asshole, back in nineteen ninety-six—”
“Ok, Carlos,” I sigh, dismissing Sandra for good and finding it hard to be firm anymore. “Let’s go again.”
About an hour after we call it quits in the studio, I’m still in the editing room with the operator trying to stitch together the usable pieces of Carlos’ bit. I play the trickier edits over stock footage of the actor, and try out various soundbeds so that nobody can see where I’ve edited out the ‘Peace of Shit’s and ‘asshole’s Carlos kept interspersing.
It’s hard work—made harder by the fact that the only news we get just seems to confuse the situation more than clarify it.
I’ve barely had a chance to consider what happened last night between
me and Teo, but it lingers in my mind like a treat I’m saving myself for later. Occasionally, zoning out as I watch Carlos flail his arms on the tape, I’ll remember tracing Teo’s tattoos in bed, but I snap myself out of it quickly to return to this impossible task before me.
The whole thing starts to feel like a gigantic waste of time, an absurd comedy where I’m the punchline. I struggle to stop myself from wondering ‘what’s the point?’ and ‘is this really my job?’ pushing those thoughts to the back of my mind as I try to focus, absently shoveling a carton of Chinese takeout into my mouth. Listening to Carlos’ voice so much now that I can feel myself going mad, and start to imagine being committed to an insane asylum screaming the words ‘Stephen Peace of Shit’ over and over.
Then, just as I’m about to really flip, one of our writers bursts into the editing room carrying his phone.
“He’s dead,” the writer says.
“You sure?” I ask.
“A hundred per cent. Had a heart attack on set in Croatia—I’m half-Croatian, so I spoke directly to the hospital staff. No doubt about it.”
My stomach tightens. “Has anyone else reported it yet?”
The writer shakes his head.
“Not yet. But I doubt it’ll be long. Apparently the hospital’s full of the actors and crew he was working with.”
“Ok,” I say, turning to the editing desk with a newfound burst of determination.
After a few more last-minute alterations, the piece goes live, views rack up almost as soon as it’s up, and the three of us share some belated, relieved high-fives. The editor and writer leave me in front of the monitors in the editing room, where I slump into my chair, only just realizing how tired I am, how many hours have passed, and how little I’ve thought about anything else but this segment all day.
Other than that, the one thing that could lift my mood right now is seeing Teo, and when I check my phone to find a message from him, it’s almost as good.
It’s a photo, kind of dark, but I can make out the goofy dragon I won him at the fair last night, sitting on a cabinet behind the tattoo chairs. Something else catches my eye though, next to it, and I zoom in, peering at my phone as I try to make out the shape.
It’s another fluffy toy, battered and torn, as if it’s been dragged across deserts and roads. A small gorilla—the same one I won for him all those years ago. My lips start to tremble a little, the image goes blurry with the wetness in my eyes, and I look at what he wrote beneath it.
ONLY MEANS SOMETHING WHEN YOU HAVE TO EARN IT.
I feel some immense shift in my body, as if all my muscles are relaxing at once. Through the open door I hear the shouts of celebration from the corridor outside, but I’ve almost forgotten the trials of the night. I brush a few stray tears from my eye, and read the text again. My heart soars.
Teo always had a knack for saying exactly the right thing, just when I needed to hear it. I guess some things never change.
12
Teo
I see Ash a few more times before the week is out. Each meeting feels like slipping further and further into the past, an old, comfortable rhythm, a rediscovery of why we fell in love in the first place, and at the same time, something new and fresh. As if the fact that we’ve been through so much in between, built careers and lives for ourselves, yet still feel like this about each other, makes it mean so much more. No longer naïve kids with their whole lives ahead of them, for whom it was a self-contained fantasy, but adults who know too much now to be taken in by hazy summers and hormones.
This is for real. Each minute we spend together makes the seven year gap between us feel even shorter, even more like nothing but a bad dream. Affirming that we were meant to be, that this is normal, and all those difficult years apart was just some irregularity. Picking up where we left off.
But as much as we talk and laugh and fuck, that unanswered question still hangs in the background of everything like a troublemaker biding his time. We talk around it, heading off any talk of that night as early as we can. When one of us accidentally stumbles on the words ‘when you left’ or ‘prom’ they drop like stones in the smooth flow of conversation.
I know she wants to ask me still. I can see the question twisting inside of her when we get close to it. Holding her against me a morning after, I see it almost come to the surface, dark eyes getting darker, holding something back.
So I change the subject, talk about something that makes her smile, or pull her in to kiss her lips and make the question go away. It never really goes away though, I know that. But I’ll keep that secret as long as I can—knowing that if I tell her the truth, everything we have right now will come crashing down.
I’m sitting in the back of Mandala, finally getting that skull and crow changed into something else by Esther—my mentor from Germany who’s in L.A. for a few days doing a guest spot at my shop—the conversation with Ash putting a sense of urgency in me about it. Kayla’s out front, while Ginger and Hideo are working on a couple of customers in the tattoo chairs.
“Hey Teo,” Kayla says, poking her head through the door. I look up at her and notice a sly twinkling in her eye. “Your lady’s here.”
Kayla seems to relish saying it, but I don’t mind the teasing, because a second later Ash steps into the back room and it’s hard to mind anything when she looks that good.
“Teo? Oh,” she says, stepping tentatively back, looking shyly away from the needle that’s rapidly buzzing against my skin. “I didn’t know you were busy—should I come back later?”
“No—I was just finishing up anyway.” I nod at the short but fierce, tattooed, purple-ponytailed woman working on my bicep. “This is Esther. Esther—Ash.”
“Nice to meet you,” Ash says warmly, coming over and offering her hand with genuine enthusiasm. “Teo’s told me so much about you.”
Esther takes Ash’s hand briefly and laughs, hard and mechanical—she doesn’t have much of an accent, but her laugh is unmistakably German.
“I hope it was as nice as the things he told me about you,” she says, smiling back.
Ash glances at me, a little coyness about her lips as it soaks in.
“Esther’s just in town for a few days,” I say. “She’s doing a guest spot for us and she’s fully booked up already, but she made time to squeeze me in for a little ink on her lunch. Thought you’d want to meet.”
“Done,” Esther says, setting the needle aside. “For now. Maybe a little touch up when it heals.”
I get up and move to a nearby mirror, checking out the conversion of a battered skull into a colorful Day of the Dead figure.
“That looks incredible,” Ash says, leaning in to see.
I turn to look at her as Esther brings some saran wrap to tape over the tatt.
“Do you want to get one done?” I ask Ash. “No one better for your first tattoo than Esther.”
Ash hesitates, and I get a slight sense she still feels overwhelmed at the idea. Esther must sense it, too, because she waves the idea away nonchalantly.
“I’m sure she’d prefer for you to do her first, Teo.”
Ash laughs gently, a little nervous relief.
“In that case, let’s all go get a bite to eat. My treat,” I offer.
“My treat,” Esther insists, winking at Ash as she pulls her jacket on. “I don’t want to eat in the cheapest place in the city.”
A short cab ride later and we’re sitting on a restaurant terrace shaded by overhanging bougainvillea, around a table filled with lime mojitos and Mexican food. I never had any worries that Ash and Esther wouldn’t hit it off, but by the time we’re through our meals, I’m almost worried they’re hitting it off too much.
“So tell me what Teo was like in Germany?” Ash asks Esther, who grins.
“Ah,” I say, leaning back and shrugging. “You don’t want to hear about me.”
“Yes I do!” Ash says, only gaining in enthusiasm. She turns back to Esther. “I just can’t imagine him over there…speaking a f
oreign language…”
“Oh, well it took him long enough to learn—though he had plenty of girls willing to teach him,” Esther says, in a drily humorous tone.
“Did he now?” Ash says, smiling curiously at me.
“Gott, ja! Why do you think we nicknamed him the ‘rogue wolf?’ He was always on the prowl. Girls girls girls—all day long. That was Teo in Berlin. I took him to a lesbian club once, so that he would actually, you know, have fun and dance a little.”
“What happened?”
“In half an hour he left with a couple.”
Ash laughs and shakes her head at me. I shrug and hope somebody changes the subject soon. Those wild days make for good stories, but the stories never go deep enough. They never address how I was just burying the pain, just reeling from losing Ash.
“And I’ve never seen an apprentice do as many ass tattoos as Teo, either. It’s like every girl in the city wanted him to get his hands on them.”
“I was just the ‘foreign guy,’” I explain, shrugging. “It’s not my fault the German girls had a thing for it.”
“You knew exactly what you were doing!” Esther laughs, then pats me on the shoulder affectionately. “I didn’t mind. He was a great tattoo artist, and he learned fast—that’s all I cared about. One of the best I’ve ever known. If he ever wanted to come back, I would take him on in a second,” Esther pauses, directing a knowing look at Ash, “though I doubt he’d want to leave here.”
I look at her warmly.
“Everyone who works with you ends up being one of the best,” I say. “I’m just lucky you gave me a chance.”
Esther sighs a little sadly.
“Ah, Teo. You still underrate yourself. You were destined to be a great artist of some kind or another.”
“I agree,” Ash says, happily.
“See,” Esther says, gesturing at Ash. “Everyone could see it but you. Maybe someday the two of you can come to Berlin for a visit and I can get Teo to guest for me. My shop is always open to visiting artists.”
“Maybe,” I say, noticing the way Ash looks suddenly bashful.