Instead of answering, Garrett had begun to gently rub the small of her back.
“That’s not fair,” she said, but she didn’t tell him to stop.
Garrett thought back to when Brittany had been pregnant with Brody.
“You need anything? Water? A soda? Are you comfortable?”
She smiled. “Who are you and what have you done with Garrett Lindsay?”
“I could check and see if there’s a mini bar.”
Reagan stretched and groaned, responding to his hands on her back.
“You really think a mini bar in this place would be stocked with anything good?”
“Probably full of forties.”
Reagan laughed. “Are you hungry? I already ate.”
“No. Well, maybe a little.”
“I saw some vending machines by the stairs.”
Garrett fought the urge to cringe at the idea of putting anything preserved, processed or hydrogenated into his body. He drank protein shakes whenever he wasn’t too lazy to make them, and as a rule he never touched anything that came in a plastic wrapper.
“I don’t have any change.”
He slipped off his tuxedo jacket and discarded his bow tie. Taking his cue, Reagan kicked off her pumps and scooted back along the bed. She wiggled her toes, wincing at the effect. A red indention outlined the shape of the too-tight Louboutins she’d had on since that morning.
Garrett caught himself admiring her legs. “You’re four and a half months pregnant,” he said. “You should quit wearing pumps.”
She looked at him, surprised he remembered how far along she was. He took one of her feet with both hands and began to massage the arch.
She moaned.
“Too much?”
She shook her head. While Garrett massaged, she stole a glance and found him staring at the solitary painting that hung on the wall. It was a depiction of a Cuban street scene with a giant old car, a Plymouth or Ford or some such in the foreground. Garrett was utterly lost in it. All of the affected pretense he usually wore was absent. His guard was down. He wasn’t trying to impress her or anyone else, he was just caught up in the honest act of being.
He realized she was looking at him and smiled. For the first time in forever she saw the awkward, unsure boy who had been her friend in high school peeking out from the man he had become.
“Don’t stop,” she said, but the words were unnecessary. Garrett switched to the other foot and she closed her eyes and sank into the pillow. Nick didn’t rub her feet, he bought her pedicures. They hadn’t been intimate in months. He hadn’t made any of the usual excuses she would have expected, about her being pregnant, about how he didn’t want to hurt her or the baby. He’d simply switched to treating her with business-like indifference. Now that sex was missing from their relationship, she started to wonder if they had anything else. It had been exciting and glamorous at first, playing house with Nick ‘Mr. Taxi’ Polito. He paid for everything, keeping her in designer clothes and accessories with a flash of his black AmEx card. In return she had hung off his arm at parties and gone down on her knees enough times that she’d taken to keeping a cushion beside by the bed. But they didn’t exactly talk.
Thoughts of Nick burst the warm bubble of her and Garrett’s momentary intimacy. She sighed and pulled away. “Want to watch TV?”
“I like to watch,” said Garrett, waggling his eyebrows.
Reagan threw a pillow at him. It glanced off his head, mussing up his perfect hair, and he grinned. She rolled from the bed and padded on bare feet to the bathroom.
He grabbed the remote and started scrolling through the myriad of channels. For a shit motel it had great cable. He suspected that Pickle or somebody else who worked there had gotten creative with the wiring.
Reagan’s phone chimed against the mattress. He thought about calling to her but decided not to. He needed to stop behaving so needy. She wasn’t impressed with needy, not if her fiancé was any indication. He reached over and grabbed the phone, thumbing the screen. It was a text from guess-who.
Where are you?????
Garrett scrolled through the messages. Nick had been texting her, apparently to no avail, for nearly an hour. He realized she must not have been able to hear her phone on the road. Jesus, maybe Nick was more needy than he thought.
“Was that my phone?” Reagan called through the door.
“Nick’s demanding to know where we are.”
“So tell him.”
“Me?” He heard the water running. “You okay in there?”
“I’m going to soak my feet.”
“Need anything?”
She opened the door and popped her head through. He could see one naked shoulder and knew that she had taken her blouse off. “No,” she said. “Quit fussing.”
“I’m not fussing, I’m being nice.”
“Quit being nice.”
The door closed again.
Garrett found their address on a pad of paper in the nightstand and dutifully texted it to Nick. He turned Reagan’s phone over and over in his hands listening to talk show voices blare from the television. He made a sudden decision, hit the mute button on the TV, and dialed the number he still had memorized despite how little he used it. He had been hoping to make it over to Sacramento to see Brody this weekend. It wasn’t the first time plans had fallen through. He generally didn’t even bother to plan ahead of time when he was going to visit anymore, but for whatever reason he’d thought this time was going to be different.
The line rang. He ran through the conversation he knew would take place. Brittany would cut him down like a corn stalk before the scythe, call him a dead-beat, remind him of the child support he couldn’t pay (Marin wouldn’t hear of floating it for him) and how Brody liked his new dad better anyway.
Sure enough, he didn’t get further than hello before she started in on the I Hate Garrett Lindsay show.
“At least let me talk to him.”
“You’re such an asshole, Garrett,” said Brittany.
“Here we go.”
“I’m done trying to wring support payments out of you. I want full custody.”
There it was. Garrett cursed. “I’m not giving up my son.”
“For Chrissake Garrett, you’re not his father. You’ve never been his father, not in any way that mattered. You were a sperm donor, nothing more, and I’m not going to get sucked into this. Full custody, end of discussion.”
Before he could reply, the line went silent. A moment later Brody’s perpetually unimpressed voice said, “Hi, Garrett.” Christ, his own kid was calling him by his first name now.
He explained how he had to work (an easy, familiar lie), that they wouldn’t be going to the Rivercats game after all. Brody said something noncommittal. He didn’t even sound disappointed. The lack of expectation was worse than all the tears in the world. Garrett said goodbye and Brody did the same, cheerfully, like he was ending some obligatory conversation with an extended relative, one he had to talk to whether he enjoyed it or not.
Garrett put the phone down.
“Fuck.”
Not thinking to check that they’d actually disconnected, he picked the phone back up. The call was still active. Brody hadn’t hung up. He stabbed his thumb down to end the call and tossed the phone to the foot of the bed.
“Fuck!” he all but shouted.
Reagan appeared, a towel hastily wrapped around her midsection.
“What is it?”
“Sorry,” said Garrett.
“Were you talking to somebody?”
Garrett swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat facing her. He nodded, but didn’t elaborate.
“You’re gonna call somebody on my phone and not tell me who it was? Really? Fine, I’ll just hit redial and see who picks up,” she said, going to the foot of the bed. Ten to one it was That Slut, she thought.
“Please don’t.”
“Tell me who you were talking to.”
Garrett was silent.
> “Redial it is,” she said, scooping up the phone and holding her thumb poised over it.
“My son, okay? It was my son.”
“What?”
Garrett shrugged.
Reagan cleared her throat. She readjusted her towel. “How—” she began, then stopped. “Okay. Right. How—” she tried again, with no greater success. She sat on the far corner of the bed and took a breath. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a son?”
“You never asked.”
Unconsciously she brought her hands to her perfectly round belly.
“Damn it, Garrett. How long have we known each other? How could you keep something like this from me?”
Garrett has a son. Garrett has a son. The refrain kept looping inside her head over and over. The baby growing inside of her had a sibling. This changes everything, she thought.
It was the first time she had admitted, even to herself, what deep down she had known all along: that her baby was Garrett’s and not Nick’s. Maybe it was the hormones, maybe it was all the craziness of the day, but she felt her walls coming down. It was time to face reality. Reagan had gone off the pill and fucked Nick six ways from next Tuesday trying to get pregnant and nothing. Then the one night with Garrett and bam, boom, baby bump.
“I don’t like to talk about it because I’m a shit father,” said Garrett. The swagger Reagan expected never materialized. “He doesn’t even really know me. His mother took off with him when he was only two.” Garrett got up, went to the sink and ran some water into a cup. “He’s better off. It sucks, but it’s true. Brittany remarried and he’s got stability now. Wasn’t even put out when I told him I couldn’t make it this weekend. If I knew what was best for him I would stay out of his life for good, but I just can’t bring myself to give up on...not him, you know? It’s too late for that. But the idea of him, of having a son.”
Reagan didn’t know what to say. Garrett, her Garrett, the Garrett she had known forever, had a life she didn’t know about.
But of course he did. You didn’t know somebody off-more-than-on and expect the off parts to never amount to anything. Except that you did expect exactly that, Reagan realized. You expected a friendship, the kind she and Garrett had, to pause between episodes, picking right back up like a sitcom. It was reassuring. She had taken it for granted, and suddenly, just like that, despite all of his flaws and all of her own, despite the fact that they had been growing steadily apart, she was desperately afraid of losing him.
Hoping to hide her feelings, she said the first thing that came to mind. “Brittany Holt? Little Miss Perfect? You and her?”
“Her and I.”
“That bitch. She was too good for you anyway.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m kidding, moron.”
“We got married. Long enough to have Brody, anyway. Look, can we drop this? I’m sorry I used your phone.”
“You owe me minutes. That was a joke,” she said, when Garrett didn’t smile. “You and Brittany. Wow. Sorry, I’m dropping it.” She was silent for a minute. Then she half-laughed. “Remember how you used to joke about The Garrett Lindsay Big Experience? Isn’t that what you called it?”
Garrett tried to smile. The silence was awkward, so Reagan reached for the remote and thumbed up the volume on the TV.
XVIII: A NOT-SO-BIG EXPERIENCE
A newscaster with perfect hair, perfect teeth, and a perfectly horrible tie was doing a late night recap of the day up on the screen. Maybe that was what he should have done, Garrett reflected. He could read a teleprompter better than that dumbass with the tie was doing. When he was on Day by Day he hadn’t even needed cue cards. He took acting seriously, memorized his lines and delivered them like he’d made them up off the top of his head. When it came to technique, he was peerless. But something had been lacking ever since he’d been written off Day by Day. He still couldn’t fathom how he’d managed to pick the one soap opera in the history of television to kill off a character and actually leave him dead.
He got up from the bed. It was getting late. Tired as he was, he didn’t much feel like sleeping. He looked at the coffee packs on the counter, decided they were probably more trustworthy than the condoms. He plugged in the tiny single-cup maker, filled it with water and coffee grounds, and turned it on. It gurgled like an animal with its throat slit. Then it began to spit out a dark brew that actually smelled just shy of heavenly.
“Bring me some, would you?” said Reagan without looking away from the television. On the screen, orderlies were loading a body bag into an ambulance while the reporter in the foreground tried to find something interesting to say about it. Like a scene from a bad episode of Forensic Files, thought Garrett, recalling the time he read for the part of an ex-boyfriend on an episode two years back.
“You want cream and sugar? Because we have neither.”
Reagan shushed him and pointed at the screen. He poured half of the cupful into a second paper cup and joined her at the bed.
New developments in the top story of the day, up-and-coming screenwriter William “Bill” Silverman found dead earlier this evening. Silverman was discovered outside the dwelling of OriCAL Entertainment executive Michelle Lyons.
(A shot of the elevator in Garrett’s building with its doors open and yellow caution tape stretched across the entrance)
Reports are now coming in that former actor Garrett Lindsay is a person of interest in what authorities are now calling a wrongful death scenario. Lindsay, who lived in the building—
(A headshot, years out of date, of a windblown Garrett Lindsay, smiling)
—Has been unavailable for comment. Reclusive OriCAL Entertainment executive Michelle Lyons, who Silverman was meeting with only hours before, made the following statement just a couple of moments ago: “Hollywood is shocked and saddened by this tragic turn of events. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Silverman’s friends and loved ones. He was one of our own.”
“‘One of our own,’” echoed Garrett in disgust. “He was trying to blackmail her and she knew it. And ‘former actor,’ really? They couldn’t bother to check if my SAG dues were current?”
“Garrett, they think you killed Bill Silverman!”
A pounding sounded against the wall, along with a faint, “Shaddup.”
“Why would they think I killed Bill Silverman? They just want to ask me some questions since I was there. They don’t think I killed him.”
“You didn’t.”
“I know that. He was alive when I left.”
“Well he isn’t now.” She looked at the cup Garrett had handed her. “What is this? Why would you bring me coffee? You know I’m pregnant.”
“You asked me to.”
“Goddammit, Garrett!”
Suddenly she was crying. Garrett sat for a moment, unsure of what to do. Then he reached out to put his arm around her naked shoulders, but as he did so she sniffled and said, “Nick needs to know what’s going on,” and suddenly it felt awkward to touch her. He took the coffee cup from her hands and retreated to the table by the window. He poured her coffee back in with his own and then crumpled the spare cup and tossed it in the general direction of the trash.
Reagan wiped her eyes on the back of her hands. Her thumbs flew over the screen of her phone and she hit send on the message, then almost immediately her phone beeped with a response.
She held up the phone for Garrett to see.
Stay there! I’m on my way.
Nick-the-Douchebag, coming to save the day! Garrett rolled his eyes. He found himself looking at the painted print on the wall again. He wished he had an old muscle car like the one in the painting, wished that he and Reagan could just climb into it and run, starting life over somewhere else together, without Nick, without any of it. He and Reagan had obviously stumbled into the middle of...something. He hesitated to think of it as a plot, but so many interconnected strands—Michelle Lyon, Silverman, whoever was after Silverman’s phone (it was still a possibility they were working for Michell
e Lyon)—implied the existence of a web, and he tried not to think of what usually sat waiting at a web’s center.
Reagan had curled herself up on top of the bed. She was still in her towel, her back toward him. Her breathing was slow and steady. Suspecting she had drifted off, Garrett stretched his legs out, feeling his knees crack.
He raised the coffee to his lips and took a sip. It was already getting cold.
“I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”
“Stop.” He reached out and stroked her cheek. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“How can you be so calm? You’re never calm.”
“C’mere.” He pulled her to him and she willingly tucked herself into his arms. “Flipping out isn’t going to help. Nick says to wait, so we wait.” He stroked his fingers down her back and she let him. She wanted to fool herself into believing in this, in them.
“Besides,” he smiled. “I got screen time today on a major network. I looked dangerous and mysterious. When this is all said and done I’ll be redeemed. Bill Silverman will write the screenplay and I’ll star in it as myself.”
“Bill Silverman is dead.”
He held her tightly.
“I’m scared,” she sniffed.
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