I chomped on an onion ring. I toyed with telling her what Peter and I had been doing lately, but I realized that might not be the best idea. My sanity was in a delicate balance as it was. Trina needed vent time. She currently worked on undoing the damage that leaving Sophie with her mother-in-law had caused. I was a horrible listener, too wrapped up in my own shit. I “uh hummed” and nodded but my brain was on Peter.
I was fully convinced that I had a phantom lover, and just maybe he was really real. I didn’t want to go back to thinking he was imaginary, because if he was, then my love life really truly sucked, and I preferred to be with something I made up than go out and find a living partner.
“It’s been a few weeks. I gave David one week of my time where I cried and I was mad and I texted him random cuss words. After that, he wasn’t worth my time anymore.”
“Seriously? You aren’t hiding crying jags from me are you?” She raised her eyebrows at me.
I nodded. “Seriously. I’m really good. David was drifting away as it was. He was more involved with that other bitch.” I covered my mouth realizing I had cussed in front of Sophie. A quick glimpse at her let me know she hadn’t heard, completely distracted with her food. “David seemed to think he could juggle us both. He couldn’t make up his mind which of us he wanted. I helped him with his choice, by removing myself from the equation.” I ate another onion ring. “I’ve completely distracted myself with this writing thing with Peter. So it’s good. Oh, you’ll be proud of me.” I started rapidly patting the back of her hand. “I went on a double date with Holly, it was dreadful.”
I cracked her up with the tale of how bad that date had been. I did not tell her how my evening ended in Peter’s arms. I sighed.
“You’re the one who just went to Aruba, you should be doing all the talking. I need to shut up now. Tell me all about the island.”
I listened intently as she waxed poetic about her week at an island resort. It had been one of those all-inclusive places, all she needed was a bathing suit and tanning oil. I thought dreamily how beyond nice it had been to go to the beach with Peter in his realm. No need to worry about sunburn, and no one around so we could screw on the ocean’s edge for hours with no sand creeping into butts and other places. I couldn’t do real beaches very well being the sunburn victim that I am, but I love warm ocean water, and Peter delivered.
I was busy with my food prep chores, and Peter hung out on the bar stools yammering on about nothing in particular.
If he wasn’t a ghost, it would have been a nice domestic scene. Of course, if he weren’t a ghost I would have had him chopping vegetables too.
When we started talking about the book and Johnny Urban’s life it felt like we kept crashing into the same wall, and now we're stuck on how to achieve a happily ever after. We were trapped in family planning land.
I don’t understand why Michelle can’t be pregnant again. Peter grumbled.
Because she just had a baby like three months earlier, and yes, I get that some people pop them out one after another. She’s not going to have a big preggo belly and be breastfeeding a tiny infant at the same time. Biology was my thing, sometimes I forgot other people were just not as well versed in it. If you want her to have a big pregnant belly, the baby has to be older.
I see her as being so beautiful when she’s got a baby in her. He sounded almost wistful.
I know you do. I think he really missed not having a wife who wanted to get pregnant with his child. From the tone in his voice that was something he really would have loved.
I continued to chop and we continued to discuss the merits of not having Michelle become pregnant a second time right away.
Where are we going with this story? I wondered, twisting the crank on the can opener. We still don’t have an acute conflict, and I’m not sure how it's supposed to end. I mean most romance novels end when they either get married or agree to get married. We’ve got these two happily married and making babies. Johnny hasn’t returned to work yet. He’s made the career movie, now he needs to make the epic come back film.
He should win an Oscar. Peter added.
Really? Action movies don’t usually win those kinds of awards. I would think that blockbuster, opening week record-breaking earnings would be what we would want for Johnny. I dumped a second can of garbanzos into the blender.
I’ll think about it. Peter said. I think he really wanted an Oscar, to have been considered a great actor. But the lure of top rated box-office hit was definitely intriguing.
You know if you let me make Johnny a were-tiger this whole acute plot-driving conflict wouldn’t be an issue. A tiger would be the perfect beast for Peter with his blond hair and tanned skin.
Drop it, Gil. I’m not going to be some stupid shapeshifter.
“But…” I whined out loud.
Can’t you just let this be my story? Keep it simple. No vampires, werewolves, were-tigers, fairies, wizards, or demons. Just the struggles of life, work, and building a relationship within those parameters.
I glared into the space where his shade sat in my brain. Fine, give up the shape-shifting and focus on Michelle loving him.
I checked the recipe I followed on my phone. I measured in some lemon juice, then two scoops of minced garlic, and a scoop of tahini.
That’s new. Peter pointed his chin at what I made.
Yeah, I thought I’d make some hummus. Last week you missed my attempt at homemade salsa. It did not suck. I hit high on the blender. It whirled to life with a loud buzz-saw noise.
The combined goo looked too lumpy, not like the texture in the picture. I checked the instructions again and realized I had forgotten olive oil. After drizzling in the oil, I blended it again. This time the contents chopped and swirled together into a smooth paste. I stopped myself from offering some to Peter, which would have been rude. I do try to be politically correct around my corporeal challenged acquaintances.
I scooped a sample with a carrot. I smiled. It did not suck. I was getting pretty good at this adult cooking thing. Next week, I might even make both salsa and hummus.
By the time I finished cooking and prepping things for the week, we had made headway. I stopped pestering him about Johnny being a shifter, and we decided Johnny would continue with recovery and getting back into shape. Michelle would find out she’s pregnant again when kiddo number one was not quite one year old. Johnny would stay home another year but would start doing voice-over work for video games. His new agent continued to search for the best return to the big screen movie for Johnny.
We hadn’t really decided what kind of movie—a big action adventure, an Oscar-worthy drama, or something completely unexpected, like a musical. I sort of liked the idea of a musical, after all, Johnny Urban had been a teen pop sensation, why not bring that back?
I sat in front of my computer. I wasn’t quite ready to begin transcribing all of the handwritten notebooks, but I had begun typing directly into a word processing program. I knew, in the long run, it would save me time. I also hoped that as my typing skills improved it would make the job of transcribing, what was now five spiral notebooks, all pages, front and back of handwritten story, a whole lot easier.
My fingers pounded away at the keyboard. My eyes flicked between monitor and keyboard. I typed faster, but I still could not touch type. I’d love to say my fingers flew as I wrote about the happy day Michelle tells Johnny he has to recover; they are going to have a baby. But my typing skills were stilted and choppy at best. It was still a happy moment to write about. Johnny had slipped into a depression, hiding his pain, physical and mental, in bottles of pills. That part had hurt to write. I know it was Peter’s actual experience he described to me. It made me want to travel back in time and smack him and smack his wife. Instead, I got to smack Johnny Urban, the fictional construct of my imaginary ghost friend.
As much as I believed Peter, as much as I had evidence to suggest that he was real. There was still a part of me that wasn’t fully certain he wasn’t just i
n my head. Imaginary or not, I thought this story he helped me to create was pretty good. Maybe Peter was really my muse? He was one hell of a sexy muse.
That thought stalled my fingers. I had never looked anything up about the life and times of Peter Keith. The internet was just a few clicks away. I could look. I saved the document I had been working on and opened a web browser.
I really struggled with putting his name into the search window. I started by searching for Johnny Urban. I mean it would be a shame if there really was an actor with that name. I’d have to change my character, and I didn’t want to. I liked his name. The search came back with nothing. I typed in Michelle Cole. Whoa! That’s a popular name. There were so many Michelle Cole’s of every ethnicity—I did an image search as well—that I wasn’t going to worry about her.
After building my confidence with those two, I typed in Peter’s name. The image search came first; his smiling face and big brown eyes repeated in different poses, picture after picture. Most of the images were from Trouble Trouble. He really had been popular. There were pages and pages of images. There were pictures of him older mixed in. I could still see his good bone structure under skin ravaged by sun and drugs. His eyes were the most telling, they had lost that gleam he had before the injury that started his decline. I switched to a search for websites. There were thousands of search returns. I started with the first entry, a basic bio from a popular movie database search engine. I continued to click and read. I found an online group that had been set up in honor of his life. I created an account and joined the group.
I must have read posts for hours. Post after post about how much they had loved Peter. Posts with only pictures of him, posts of fan art, posts of videos. I clicked and started watching: interviews from when he was young, fan montages, outtakes. He had been a handsome goofball. I read and watched everything on that page, it took hours.
I needed to show him this. I needed him to see that his fans certainly didn’t think he had given them anything less than he could have. They loved and adored him. Somehow, he couldn’t see that at all.
I tried to return to writing. I may have made Michelle a little over sappy, but I needed to give Peter the love he so dearly missed. Michelle’s outpouring of love for Johnny was the best way I knew how to fix things for Peter. There are no do-overs in life, Peter could not go back and change his past. Hopefully, this fictitious fantasy of love and success would work the way he wanted it to. I didn’t want it to backlash on him and make him sadder. I felt that somehow the success of this story, the completion of this story was connected to what he needed to be able to move on.
13
As the anniversary of Peter’s death approached I noticed he became pretty cranky. I would like to think I understand why. I mean, it's not exactly an anniversary one would look forward to. I tried to show Peter the online group that was a commemoration of his life. He brushed it off in his short-tempered mood.
The story stagnated, making no forward progress. I felt obstructed by his lack of action. I couldn’t very well move the plot along because Peter was the driving force behind the story. Anytime I took off with the plot and made headway it was always in the wrong direction. I didn’t dare turn Johnny into a were-tiger no matter how much better I thought it would be.
Peter would show up and be pleasant enough. I could sense toothy grins and a teasing air about him, but something would happen and his mood would darken. I don’t know what happened, I didn’t know what I could do.
I started watching more videos of Peter, trying to get some insight into his personality. Trying to get some confirmation of a few things so I could continue to move forward with the story while he was being a crankmeister.
The online group was the best source for these videos. I have no idea how these fans found recordings of behind the scenes interviews from Trouble Trouble, or from the sets of the various movies he made. There were quite a few. And I watched them all.
I found one video where Peter was showing off an ankle brace disguised to look like a shoe and the scrape on his arm. I couldn’t stop leaking. He sat there, wincing slightly every time he shifted—I could tell his back hurt but he wouldn’t admit it—describing how he hurt himself. My jaw had to have been in my lap. It was exactly what he told me. Exactly.
I didn’t know if I needed to be freaking out or not. I was completely capable of accepting that I had this ghost hanging around talking to me all the time, making love to me in my dreams, so why should I freak out now because I had confirmation? I have cats. I have a Thing. I have a dead celebrity ghost. Breathe, focus, it’s okay, I can handle this. I went searching for more. Maybe if I had more evidence I’d relax about it.
There I was trolling YouTube for old afternoon shock jock talk show episodes. And I felt a bit guilty over it. Peter told me things regarding his life. And here I was fact-checking him. Why couldn’t I accept what he told me? Why did I need to really find out the name of his wife? I mean I knew, he told me. At least I thought he had, I assumed Michelle was actually his wife’s name and not just the name for Johnny Urban’s love interest. But still, I needed proof.
I needed to prove that the ghost in my head was real and that I wasn’t living in some sort of delusion. Part of me really believed that Peter Keith actually visited me and told me about his life. Part of me was convinced I was losing it.
I followed up on a group post that mentioned Peter had been on one of those “where are they now” child actor episodes. Doing a search on those videos made me want to stab my eye out with a fork. In true “oh-look-squirrel!” fashion I got distracted and sucked into many of the clips of the show. Most were along the lines of ‘cheating boyfriend is really a woman,’ and ‘the secret sex life of BDSM little people.’
I finally found the episode with Peter. There were a few other aged kid celebrities on the panel as well. It was clear these were all has-been actors who could never quite get past the glory of their youth. Peter was no exception, even though he was, at the time they filmed that episode, a working actor. Of course, maybe, he didn’t see himself as one. Going from A-list teen heartthrob to burned out, D-list if you’re lucky, straight to DVD, made for television, and aired on obscure cable stations movies was probably not his idea of acting.
I know he had told me that he was embarrassed by a lot of the films he made, they were crap. If he could go back and re-do it, he would have fought for better roles, tried to stay in the soaps and not switch to B-movies.
Watching that talk show episode was tough. Peter was still good looking, but starting to slip.
He looked puffy and wasn’t moving well. It was clearly shot after he hurt his back, and he had started his path to drugs.
The four panelists sat poised in their chairs: Peter, some chick from that all girls-school show, an actor whose show I didn’t watch, and someone from even earlier in the late seventies. The older actor had made the transition from child-actor to producer.
I remembered him as a kid from some black and white show, never realized he was a redhead like me.
“You can’t expect to be an actor forever. Look at me, I know I was hired because I have a baby face. I started to lose my hair in my late twenties. I was still playing teenagers on TV, with male pattern baldness.” He chuckled then ran his hand over his mostly bald head. “You can still make it in the industry you have to reinvent yourself, change your role, change your contribution.”
Peter countered. “Acting is better than any drug I may or may not have ever done. It’s a hard habit to kick.”
“Exactly,” another panelist said in support of Peter’s statement. “Look at that girl from Family Game. She did anything to continue acting. She’s a porn star now.”
The discussion continued, Peter was smart, he articulated his ideas and thoughts well. Why hadn’t I stayed in crush with him? I could see why I thought he was intriguing when I was five. Why not when he was older? I know the truth. I was shallow. I was young—not to say I’m not still on the shallow
side—this had been filmed when I would have been 15 maybe 16, and he was no longer pretty. He looked rough.
The first clip ended with no mention of his wife.
I clicked on Part Two. The first part of the discussion was skipped, I have no idea what they were talking about when Peter said “my wife Michelle.” I couldn’t hear anything after that. Their mouths kept moving, there was sound, but I registered nothing. My eyes streamed and my nose turned into Niagara Falls. I have no idea why but the truth of that simple sentence had me leaking like a rusty boat. I didn’t cry, I leaked.
“Son of a bitch.” I wiped at my face and tried to refocus on my laptop. I looked around to ‘see’ if Peter was nearby to… to what? Talk to him again? He had told me the truth, and it scared the crap out of me. I had to tell someone. I kind of wanted to tell him, ‘Hey look there is this ghost of you, and you keep telling me all this stuff, little things. So, I decided to start checking you out online to see how crazy I was, and yet, I’ve found out that you aren’t in my head. Well, you are but you’re not something I made up.’ What good would that do? He’d probably laugh at me.
Large black crows strutted around the quad, cockier than seniors. I hadn’t seen this flock around here before, they really were strutting their stuff. Tall, pretty, iridescent and black, I always wondered if big crows like these weren’t really ravens.
I walked across campus to the ice cream place. It was a nice warm day, and I needed some time alone. I needed to think, needed to get clear headed.
I had fallen in love with Peter completely, yet part of me knew I shouldn’t. Part of me was terrified. Terrified to realize I was lying to my best friend about what was going on with me. Terrified to think what if Peter really was using me? After all, we had yet to work on my idea. Every time I tried to bring it up, he either dismissed me completely or most recently, he would try to distract me by dragging me to sleep so we could fool around. I was terrified to think that maybe my feelings for him were rebound emotions, after all, I had been so emotionally invested in David. And, I was terrified of what would happen to me if Peter ever got whatever it was to help his spirit move on to where it needed to go. It would be like he died, twice. I would be crushed, destroyed. This couldn’t be the after-life, no, there was something else out there. Hanging out with the living as a ghost was not the end-game to life. It couldn’t be.
Dead Sexy: Second Endings 1 Page 11