Jove Brand is Near Death

by J. A. Crawford

  I didn’t wish him luck.

  The Brand Beauty was on the monitors in a sketch where she brazenly threw herself at Sir Collin, who was more interested in the strapping bartender. He killed it but got few laughs. Sir Collin was simply too understated for the American audience.

  I winced at the screen. Watching other people bomb struck my most tender places. It was an empathy thing. I sought solace in Sir Collin’s dressing room, telling myself it was out of everyone’s way, but that was just me telling myself. The truth was, I wanted to sit in his chair.

  I wasn’t bitter. Sir Collin deserved everything he’d earned. His Brand movies really were better than the early ones, though the lens of nostalgia kept the fans from acknowledging it. His performances helped restore the series to the juggernaut it had been in the sixties and seventies.

  I wanted to be Sir Collin the way I had once wanted to play guitar in Nirvana. The ability was simply beyond me. It was a pipe dream—only it wasn’t. I had been Jove Brand, once.

  But Near Death was indeed a piece of shit.

  “Harsh lights, wouldn’t you say?”

  Sir Collin’s voice was purely chummy, but it launched me out of his chair.

  “Sorry, Sir Collin.” When in doubt, it was best to come clean. “Guess you caught me.”

  Sir Collin waved my apology off as he came over to stand with me at the dressing table. “Of all the moments we spend in the light, these are the ones I dread the most. Having to face myself, every flaw exposed.”

  He was right. His age showed in the bulb-bordered mirror. Jove Brand was not a young man, but he could never be an old one. Four walls and two generations away, the musical guest kicked in as if on cue. If anyone deserved accompaniment, it was Sir Collin.

  “You saved me out there. Thanks, old boy.”

  “I don’t have range, but I know my role,” I replied.

  “I didn’t want to do this, you know,” Sir Collin said. “Every time such an offer is tendered, I tell myself it’s more money for the troupe, to put on the shows we want. Being Jove Brand has given my fellows a life on the stage.”

  I’d read as much but took it for PR until that moment. “Same here. But I did want to be a great Jove Brand. Problem was, I did my best.”

  Sir Collin laughed as he rested his hands on my shoulders. “Without your film, I would not be here, and the fifty men and women I support would have been forced to abandon their dreams. Tonight, you again displayed a true player’s spirit, putting the show before the man.”

  It was the nicest thing anyone had said to me in eighteen years. I lost my voice. I couldn’t even look at Sir Collin.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to sneak a drag or two before my next sketch,” Sir Collin said. I managed a nod as he gave me a last squeeze and left me in reflection.

  Going purely on appearance, I was the spitting image of Jove Brand as described in the books. The passionless killer. The distant lover. Tall and pale, with light blond hair and ice-blue eyes. A face and body reminiscent of renaissance sculpture. But sculpture didn’t come to life, which also accurately described my acting.

  I looked more the part now. Eighteen years ago I was eighteen years too young, but casting had been tight. Near Death’s entire pre-production took place on a flight from Kiev to Hong Kong. Had the internet of today existed then, my tender age would have caused the same uproar it did with Niles Endsworth now. A combination of professional discipline and CGI smoothing had sustained Sir Collin for a spell, but his time had come. Soon he would meet his fate—most likely during a pre-credit sequence—and the alias of Jove Brand, Royal Gamesman, would be passed to Niles.

  The executive producer burst into the dressing room, breaking my self-indulgent reverie.

  “I didn’t do it, I swear,” I said.

  “Where the hell is Sir Collin?”

  The executive producer bent over to rest his hands on his knees. The dash to the dressing room had left him about a burpee away from a heart attack. I checked the monitors. The Beautiful Downtown Burbank regulars were dying on stage as they fumbled through a cut sketch.

  “He left like five minutes ago,” I said to his back.

  I trailed after him, hunting for one of the most recognizable faces in the world. The EP was coordinating the show and the search simultaneously through his headset. “Go to break while we set up the house band. I don’t care. Wait—the national anthem. It makes everyone clap.”

  We checked the coatroom, then the coke room, but found no sign of Sir Collin. The EP leaned against the wall to stay on his feet. “A-listers,” he wheezed.

  He was worried about the show, but I was worried about Sir Collin. Stage royalty didn’t miss their mark. Sir Collin did not require an understudy. Sir Collin was his own stand-in. Then I remembered.

  “He went to smoke.”

  The EP almost bowled me over reversing course, but when we hit the stairs up to the roof I overtook him, ascending the flights in bounds, ignoring the handrail as I regulated my breath. While I came off as having Asperger’s in reflective close-up, I owned interval cardio. I hip-checked the door, expecting resistance, but it blasted open. Instinct forged by thirty years on the mat sent my forearm up to block the backswing.

  The bare bulb above the doorway cut into the night sky. Sir Collin was on his knees at the edge of the light, clutching at his collar. The asthmatic EP had me thinking heart attack.

  Then I saw the bloody pits where Sir Collin’s eyes should have been.

  “I got you,” I said, reaching for where he was groping.

  It wasn’t his collar he was looking to open. It was his airway. Sir Collin’s Adam’s apple was crushed, his throat swollen past his jawline. I tore his shirt open, spraying buttons everywhere. He was turning blue. His state triggered uncomfortable flashbacks. It was happening all over again, and all over again I was helpless to stop it. I forced him onto his back and rifled through his pockets, praying he was a cigar smoker.

  The EP finally caught up. When he saw Sir Collin, he coughed up a string of curses.

  My heart plunged when I found a case of custom gold-banded cigarettes. “You got a knife?”

  Sir Collin was gulping air like a fish out of water. The EP wasn’t doing much better. I jumped to my feet and patted him down.

  “Call 911. Do you carry a knife?”

  “Why . . . why . . .”

  Near Death and everything it cost flashed before my eyes.

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve run into this. We need to cut his airway open.”

  The rooftop was an island fifteen stories high. I scanned the area, hoping for a tool box, but didn’t spot so much as a door stop. The neighboring building had a broken window, but the glass shards were out of reach. I dodged knocking heads with the EP and yelled down the stairs for medical.

  All the while Sir Collin was drowning on dry land, kicking and clawing at the gravel. I tilted his head in an attempt to open his airway to no avail. There was nothing else left but to talk to him. I took my lines straight from cliché.

  “Hold on. Stay with me, Sir Collin.”

  His lips were moving, mouthing the same windless word over and over, but I couldn’t make out what word. I wish I could say Sir Collin went peacefully, but he fought until the end, groping and scratching, gasping and pleading.

  Sir Collin Prestor died in my arms on that rooftop, his eyes gouged out and his throat crushed.

  Just like the villain at the end of Near Death.

  2

  The cops showed no mercy to craft service. Anything edible bore a partial set of prints, minimum. I’d idled in a state of low-level hunger my entire adult life, but right then my stomach was howling out for fatty protein. Loud enough for my interviewer to hear.

  “That you, Allen?”

  State Special Crimes Investigator Ava Stern was a top-cop casting dream, built like a fitness model and overflowing with New York attitude. Methodically disheveled in no-makeup makeup, she balanced competence with ap
athy. Everyone in This Town was playing a part. Such was the nature of the place. Play a part long enough and eventually you became it.

  “Yeah,” I apologized.

  “It goes one of two ways. You either lose your appetite or find it—” Stern paused to make eye contact “—when it comes to murder.”

  Sir Collin Prestor, celebrated star of the stage and screen, had been murdered. No matter how many times I repeated the thought, I couldn’t absorb it.

  “Let’s run through it again,” Special Investigator Stern said. “And remember, you aren’t under arrest.”

  “I know,” I said, then retold the events beginning from my encounter with Sir Collin in the dressing room. The next time through Stern backed me up to start from my performance onstage. Then she put the interview on shuffle, skipping ahead, doubling back, repeating herself. I was theorizing Stern had ADHD when it dawned on me: She was trying to trip me up. It didn’t bother me because I didn’t do it. I had nothing to hide. I liked Sir Collin. I wanted to help catch his killer.

  That’s how stupid I was.

  I only left out one detail. The one that made me look guilty: Sir Collin was killed exactly how the Big Bad went out in Near Death. As crazy as it sounded, it couldn’t be a coincidence. A coincidence was two guys with the same name getting hit by the same type of car. It was not getting your eyes carved out and throat crushed before dying in the arms of the guy who did it in a movie eighteen years earlier.

  “Okay,” Stern said. She rubbed her forehead to show she was thinking, but not hard enough to actually stretch her skin. You didn’t spend all that time moisturizing to go around pulling on your face. “You going anywhere?”

  For an airheaded instant I thought Stern was asking me out. Then I realized as the last person to see Sir Collin alive, I was the prime suspect. There had been plenty of time for me to do the deed while the EP was crawling up the stairs.

  Stay calm, Ken, I thought. While you do have blood on your hands, you do not have eyeball juice, or whatever it was called. “I’m in Fresno next weekend for a con.”

  “Fresno is fine,” Stern replied. “But stay in the state. You’re a witness.”

  Stern played it well, leaning close and employing a confidential tone to let me know we were on the same side. I wondered if she always wanted to be a cop or had fallen short in a quest for the big screen. She could have passed for thirty, but in This Town a woman had to look twenty-two.

  I faced the rising sun with an empty stomach and blood on my clothes. At least until forensics showed up to seize everything I was wearing. Props sent over some replacements. The EP knew better than to talk to me. Instead he threw me half-suspicious, half-apologetic glances while no doubt calculating the ratings bump Beautiful Downtown Burbank would get off airing Sir Collin Prestor’s final performance.

  I made it to my car without being detained and dug the hand sanitizer out of my gear bag. It was terrible for your skin but I didn’t skimp. There’s no evidence, I told myself, because you didn’t do it. I tried not to think about all the based-on-true stories where innocent people died in prison. If they came after me, I didn’t have the fame, influence, or wealth to defend myself. No one stopped me when I started the engine. No one jumped on my hood as I drove off.

  I was home in fifteen minutes and in the shower for an hour, scrubbing every trace of Sir Collin away. Everything in me wanted to go hide under the covers, but that tactic never got me anywhere. So I made my smoothie a double, running the net carbs twice to be sure, and drank it in the car on the way to my scheduled session. My clients often kept me waiting, but the other way around was professional suicide. Trainers were a dime a dozen in This Town, though my schtick rated two bits: Fight with Jove Brand himself.

  For the first time in three years the gate guard called up to confirm access. Word had gotten out. The first cancellation would get the ball rolling. If they didn’t catch Sir Collin’s killer and fast, I was headed from the D-list to the blacklist. I parked in the sub-level garage between the rest of the help’s vehicles and the riding mowers. My guest code still worked, so that was something.

  Of all the things they possessed worth envy, REDACTED’s private gym was at the top of my list. There was enough mat to sponsor a gymnastics team, a bag for every practical purpose, and a buffet of functional resistance equipment. The space had good air flow without a hint of chlorine from the pool next door. Opposite of said pool were float and cryo tanks. It was my dream gym, down to the choice of towels. This was no coincidence. I had designed it at REDACTED’s request.

  I moved through a stretch sequence also of my creation, getting loose without breaking a sweat. If you wanted to keep this gig, you could never appear to be working harder than a client. These were people who lived in a state of constant, brutal comparison. Framing yourself as competition was filling out your own pink slip.

  The dark cloud that had occupied the airspace above my head for eighteen years thundered to life. Would Sir Collin’s death spark renewed interest in the darkest chapter of Jove Brand lore? There was no digging into Near Death, I told myself. Its skeletons were buried a continent away, eighteen years deep. And, if I had any say, it was going to stay that way.

  I unfocused, slipping into meditative space as techniques flowed on autopilot, chaining in combinations internalized by a lifetime of study. It didn’t keep me from replaying Sir Collin’s last breaths over and over.

  What had he been trying to say?

  REDACTED broke my trance. “Wow, show me that one.”

  “Sure. I was warming it up for you,” I lied.

  I ran REDACTED through the motions a step at a time. REDACTED had studied dance alongside acting, so it was easier. In actuality, that’s what screen fighting was—a sequence of movements performed in time with one or more partners. The more steps you could string together without stopping, the better. If Ginger Rogers were alive today, she’d be a huge action star.

  “After the spin, you want the audience to know it’s really you,” I explained. “When you snap your head around, that’s your expression moment.”

  I played camera while REDACTED went through the sequence again.

  “Slower. Perfect. Now instead of intense, try confidently amused.”

  REDACTED nailed it this time, smirking as they stuck the landing.

  “That’s it,” I said, punching my opposite palm. “That’s your hero shot.”

  REDACTED gave me an innocent, big-eyed smile known the world over. They followed it with their signature pout when I said, “Okay, let’s do some work.”

  REDACTED was leaning up for filming, so I put them through intervals, hitting the muscle groups evenly to maintain proportion and symmetry. Then we spent an hour on the mat. REDACTED liked a little contact—on me, not them—but I didn’t mind getting hit. Hope sprung I was going to get away clean, but during the cooldown they started asking questions.

  “So you were you really with him when he died?”

  It was such a This Town way of asking: half-challenge and half-disbelief. I had spent the entire workout formulating my answer, rehearsing a blend of frightened and earnest.

  “I’m not sure what I can say, with the cops and network. I don’t want to get sued.”

  If there was anything a famous person could relate to, it was a lawsuit. My guess how REDACTED would reply was right on the money.

  “Oh, I’m not going to tell anyone, Ken. This is just for me.”

  Baloney. REDACTED would be relaying every word, with their own embellishments, to their nutritionist within the hour. I was walking a tightrope. If I didn’t give them what they wanted, I would be fired. If I did, word would get out I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I was good at my job, but I wasn’t special. This Town was bursting with boutique services. There were a thousand stuntmen who would have gladly thrown me off a roof to take my place. It was time for PR rule number one: Get ahead of the story.

  “I can’t. I might be a suspect.”

  REDACTED ate it up
. “Oh my God, juicy. I’m going to text you my ghostwriter’s number. Like right now. Trust me, there’s stuff you’re going to forget you’ll wish you remembered later.”

  I had no doubt said ghostwriter would be sending their drafts REDACTED’s way. “Oh wow, that’s awesome, thanks! Time for your post-workout.”

  REDACTED ran off to meet with their nutritionist-slash-dealer and I was out the door unscathed, my workday done. Expanding my client base would only cost me money. The more exclusive I was, the more I banked. When I started private sessions, I made the mistake of charging too little. Missy Cazale, who always had been and always would be smarter than me, straightened me out. Her advice earned me a living. Chalk up another addition to the tally of things I could never pay her back for, starting with Near Death.

  Sitting in traffic on the drive home lulled me into a trance. My thoughts drifted on their own accord. What would Sir Collin’s death mean for the Jove Brand franchise? Eighteen years ago, the three of us had saved it: Missy, me, and above all, Kit. Two of us were still paying the price. Kit paid with his life.

  I cranked the AC and slapped myself awake. Always keep it as cold as you could stand it. Maintaining your core temperature burned calories. It also helped me keep alert. Eight hours had passed since Sir Collin died in my arms. By now there were sure to be cameras on my condo.

  To my shock Layne Lackey wasn’t parked on my curb. Instead there were two broadcast vans, engines idling and dishes deployed. I timed the garage door opener to allow me to drift inside without braking. Too fast looked guilty, too slow could be interpreted as an invitation. I didn’t want to appear to be fishing for an interview, because I sure as hell wasn’t.

  I made sure no one slipped under the overhead door before checking the other doors and windows. I needed to straighten up. The vultures were going to break in the first chance they got. Didn’t want people thinking Ken Allen was born in a barn. I intended to sit down for five minutes. A pounding at the door woke me up six hours later. I didn’t even get up to pee. Considering my age and the amount of water I drank, that was saying something.