by Larry Brill
“Uh, that’s one more problem. It seems they don’t exist. Mrs. Hernandez doesn’t recall seeing them. If you turned them in, they’ve disappeared.”
Disappeared? The way the principal sarcastically leaned on the word so hard was a message. He was making it clear they didn’t “disappear” on their own. They both knew he had turned them in.
There was a good deal of bluster after that. Mrs. Butler demanded an apology, which she got from FesterSchmuck.
“Sorry,” Nate said. “Can’t do that.” He was insulted not only for the attack on his judgment and his competence but the pure stupidity of the situation. Then the woman demanded his resignation. That was something Festerhaven seemed all too eager to accommodate before he ushered mother and daughter from his office with promises that it would be resolved satisfactorily.
“Can you believe that woman?” Nate asked.
He sighed. “Yeah, God help her. But what can you do?” Then he took a sheet of paper from his desktop and handed it to Nate. It was a letter of resignation.
“What if I don’t sign it?”
“You would be doing me a favor. I’d fire you and that would give me a ton of pleasure. So don’t think I’m the bad guy; it won’t work.”
In his anger, Nate’s ears were burning, so he might as well go down in flames. “This has nothing to do with Tynslee or the movie. We both know that. You’re pissed off at me. Me and Julie. You fucked up and you’re taking it out on us. Pretty pathetic.”
Festerhaven said he didn’t like the fraternization between staff and teachers he had seen on campus lately. “I can’t fire Julie. But you, you’re still on probation. I don’t need a reason to let you go immediately. Your ass is mine for the first year. Didn’t you read your contract?”
Nate grumbled. He’d always been a big-picture guy. The details of contracts were best left to lawyers and agents.
Festerhaven said, “There’s too much tension around here right now, and your presence on campus makes it worse. This will make my life easier.”
“And what of Julie? This isn’t going to make her life easier.”
“No, I suppose not.”
Then Festerhaven did something so surreal it appeared to Nate the whole thing played out in slow motion. He picked up his cell phone and began punching numbers.
“I’m having dinner with Nikki again tonight. Man, what a pistol she is. Frankly, I’d say I got the better end of this little trade. But you know? We were talking the other night about how lucky we were that we met because of you and that we seemed a better match than the two of you would have ever been.”
“So?”
“We compared notes and realized how, on all the dates you dragged me to, I always got along with those women better than you. Nikki, Sarah the nurse and Wendy with the huge ta-tas. It seemed strange. And all of them from that dating website. When she showed me the profile you used, and the emails you sent her”—he pointed the phone at Nate and shook his head—“I couldn’t have described me better myself. That’s when we got on to you.”
“You were an easy mark.”
“That’s a hell of a lot of trouble to get back at me for whatever. You set me up.” Festerhaven punched one last button. Then the phone in Nate’s pocket pinged with an incoming text message.
“So, Mr. Vintage Rascal, Nikki asked me to make sure you got this.”
Nate fumbled with the phone. It repeated its alert, shaming him like a slap across the face. The text contained a picture of Nicolette, naked and lounging seductively on the bed with a sign between spread thighs barely hiding her charms. It read, “Love you, Nate.”
“She takes a nice picture, don’t you think? You should see some of the others. Maybe I should send a few to you, for old times’ sake, before I send them to Julie.”
Nate tried to stuff the phone back in his pocket, but it slipped out of his hand and clattered at his feet. He kicked it across the floor for good measure.
FesterAss said, “So I have my weaknesses, but this is all your fault. Now what do you suppose Julie will say when she finds out what a selfish prick you are? I’m ashamed of you. You’ve been toying with a woman I love.”
“Love? I’m not the one toying with anyone around here.”
“Julie. Me. Nikki. You’re a real piece of work screwing around with everybody’s lives, but today I’ll cut you some slack. Julie doesn’t need to know everything, right now at least, if you sign the letter. One of the campus cops will help you collect your things and walk you out.”
Before he left the office, FesterGloater hit him with one last thought. “Nate, you went out of your way to break Julie’s heart. That is really sick, my friend. Really sick.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Tsunami
The Tina Farnham tsunami hit campus two hours later. Julie was doodling thoughts of Nate on a notepad when she should have had her nose buried in paperwork. She was worried. The word was Nate had quit that morning. He didn’t give notice and walked away from the campus without so much as a good-bye. Nobody saw him leave; he was here one minute and gone the next, and nobody knew why. She tossed her pencil on the pad in frustration, bouncing it on its eraser head, and turned back to stare at the spreadsheet on her computer screen. He hadn’t returned her phone calls or text messages. Nothing. Someone started a ruckus outside her office. She tried to ignore it but Carla leaned in.
“Whoa. You have got to see this. Whoa.”
A half dozen visitors stood in a semicircle at the reception counter across from Mrs. Hernandez, the office manager. Julie recognized the woman in the middle of it all. Who wouldn’t? The double doors to campus behind her opened with a rush and a new commotion. Students squeezed into the space, giggling, elbowing each other and snapping pictures with their cell phones. Nobody was taking charge.
“Tina Farnham. My goodness,” Julie said. “What a pleasure. What a surprise. What can we do for you?”
The actress spun her sunglasses by one earpiece above her shoulder without saying anything. She motioned with a forefinger to a slender young man with dark hair parted in the middle and receding at the forehead at far too early an age. He wore a black T-shirt under a black linen sports coat, held his phone just above eye level, and did a slow pan of the office. "We stopped by to get a feel for the location," he said as he panned back.
“Location?”
“We had some extra time this afternoon, and we thought we’d drop by and catch up with Nate Evans here at the school,” a woman behind Tina Farnham said. “We thought he could give us a brief tour.” She stood on tiptoes to be seen over the actress’s shoulder. She was also wearing black. In fact, they all dressed alike. Julie hadn’t seen any collection of bodies like this since she sat in on a meeting of the high school Goth Club. Except for the missing nose rings and severe makeup, these people would fit right in. Only the woman herself added a splash of color with a red scarf draped across her shoulders.
Julie looked at her watch. “I’m not sure Nate is still here. Was he expecting you?”
No. They had expected to surprise him and “do a business lunch” after their tour.
She didn’t want to explain he had resigned until she had her facts straight. Julie planned on making an early exit that afternoon; she had some serious primping to do before the gala, and she wanted to look her best when Nate picked her up. She turned to the office manager standing slack-jaw across the counter from the actress and working her mouth to gulp air like a goldfish. “Rosilla, would you get Mr. Festerhaven please.”
A third assistant pushed a pair of large, black-frame glasses up from the tip of her nose and tapped the face of the iPad in her hand. “Rosilla. Got it. Secretary number one,” she said. She shouldered closer to the actress to share her screen with Tina Farnham. She asked the others, “Sardonic aging single, or snarky mother figure? We could give her a few lines for comic relief?”
Someone else said, “Hefty and Hispanic.”
“With an attitude.”
“Could work.”
Everybody had an opinion, but no one had an explanation for the commotion they had created. Julie watched Tina Farnham as the actress’s eyes darted around the office while her entourage prattled. She smiled and waved at the students standing five rows deep at the door. Julie said, “Miss Farnham, I’m Mrs. Finch, one of the assistant principals.”
“Finch? Assistant principal?” another of the actress’s entourage asked. He was a skinny African-American with a face full of freckles. He scrolled the screen of his tablet with three quick swipes of the finger and said, “Okay. Cooper-Finch. Got it. Leading Lady Love Interest. Smart. Drab with undercurrent of sensuality, but serious to a fault.”
“Suppressed.”
“By life. Not her fault.”
“I’m sorry?” Julie swiveled her head, trying to keep up with the voices in the circle.
Carla shouldered her way past Julie with a phone in her hand to stand next to the star. She stretched one arm out and slid the other around Tina Farnham’s slender waist. “Really. If you don’t mind. My husband will be absolutely tickled.”
Julie saw frowns all around the Goth posse and it embarrassed her. They had failed to protect the star from this kind of intrusion. But the actress simply grinned, bent her knees and crouched enough to level her shoulders with Carla and posed for a selfie.
When the Kodak moment ended, Tina Farnham straightened and turned her attention to Julie. She took Julie’s outstretched hand in both of hers. “Mrs. Finch. That would be Julie? Julie Cooper-Finch?”
“I haven’t used ‘Cooper’ for a very long time, but yes. How did you know?”
“Love Interest,” the entire group chorused.
“Whoa,” Carla said. “Did you all practice that?”
“Play nice, Carla,” Julie said through clamped teeth.
The three young people armed with iPads tapped and swooshed in a race to find their response. “Carla. Last name TBD. Sarcastic Sidekick. Petite but feisty.”
“She’ll get all the zingers,” the young black man who had been pushed aside by Carla’s rush to get her picture said. “I can write that one in my sleep.”
Carla snatched his tablet before he could stop her. “Does it really say that here?” She deftly turned her back to prevent the man from recovering it. He made two halfhearted attempts to reach around Carla and then shrugged to his boss.
Tina Farnham said to Julie, “The way Nate wrote you, I was expecting someone much more drab. Oh.”
“What does Nate have to do with this?” Julie figured it was all about the story he had sold, but watching this group and hearing their confusing references to each of them and debating various characteristics was like watching a foreign film. A lot of drama, too much posturing, and the dialogue she heard didn’t make sense.
“Miss Farnham. Welcome to Mt. Hamilton High.” Russell blew in and cleared a path up to the actress. The man at Julie’s left leaned behind her and whispered to the iPad woman.
“Principal, right?”
“Must be,” she replied. She checked her tablet. “Obstructionist bureaucrat, arrogant, antagonist. Villain.”
“Boy, he looks the part.”
Julie raised a hand to her lips to hide a smirk. “He is the part,” she whispered. She felt like a conspirator, even if her role was still vague.
It was at that point that a man with a tired face and a bald head stepped up from where he had been hanging behind the crowd. “If someone could track down Nate for us, please. Tina, I told you we shouldn’t drop in unannounced like this.”
Russell glared at her in a way that made Julie feel like she was to blame. “Nate has already left for the day. He’s gone.” Russell looked at the faces of his staff members before settling on her. “He won’t be back today, I’m afraid. He resigned this morning.”
Julie’s heart sank. The pieces were starting to fit together.
The bald man shook Russell’s hand. “I’m Jack Hewitt, Nate’s agent. You all know Miss Farnham, of course. And these are, well, they’re her staff. Miss Farnham is producing the story Nate has written about this.” He circled his finger to indicate the Mt. Hamilton High universe.
“Nate’s been writing a story? About us?”
“He didn’t say anything about it,” Julie lied. Her heart felt like dead weight and she couldn’t swallow. He had talked with such joy and enthusiasm about the story over their beach weekend. He mentioned that it was Tina Farnham’s company buying it, and hoped to introduce them at the charity ball that night, but he never told her he planned to quit the school and leave them all behind when the deal was done. Why else would he have left without a word?
The agent looked past them all, distant and distracted, and he started a grin. “See, Tina? Nate captured this place perfectly. Am I right? Baby boomers will eat it up.”
“Inspired,” Tina Farnham agreed. “It could have been so mundane, but this is funny and pathetic at the same time. You’re all so…”
“Funny and pathetic?” Carla asked from a chair near the wall, where she sat scrolling through the black assistant’s tablet.
“Adorable. I love you, each and every one of you people.”
“Wait. I hear the Mouse squeaking. Beef up a version with a couple of hip-but-wholesome teenagers, and we could sell it to Disney.”
“Ka-ching!”
“Excuse me.” Julie backed away. She went to her office, leaving the door ajar just enough to keep an eye on the scene outside. Once again, Nate didn’t answer his phone. She left a voice mail, short and terse, demanding a callback ASAP. She threw her cell phone at the mouth of her handbag and missed. She stood, arms crossed, tapping her foot. Nate wouldn’t have done all this just for the story. She couldn’t believe that. Research? Inspiration? If that’s all it was, then what did that make last weekend with the snuggles and the kisses? Was that research, too?
She wasn’t going to cry. She was not going to cry. Just in case, Julie reached for the large box of tissues on her desk. She kept it filled for the tear sessions with girls who needed comfort and advice from someone older than their peers but not their parents. Usually it was about boys or the isolation of not being a part of the crowd. Sometimes they needed tips on how to explain to Mom and Dad that community college might be a more realistic goal than a Harvard scholarship. Her box of tissues didn’t discriminate between tears that were justified and those brought on by exaggerated angst.
Julie collected herself and went to the door. She bumped into Tina, who was reaching for the knob just as Julie yanked the door open.
“Mrs. Cooper-Finch, thank you for giving us your time this afternoon. I know this created quite a stir. But Hollywood does that. It is craziness incarnate, right? But, believe me, it would have been worse if word leaked ahead of us that we’d be here today.”
“Life has been crazy enough around here lately. But you took it to a whole new level.” Julie meant it as a jab, but the actress only smiled.
“We better move along. It seems we have half the school swarming around now.” Then the actress closed her eyes and inhaled, exhaled and repeated the process.
“Are you all right?” Julie asked.
“Oh, yes, Julie. No, Tina. Tina Cooper? Well, we can settle on the name later. Tina Cooper-Finch? No, that’s not working.” When she reopened her eyes, she said, “I was feeling the part. And you know what? I like you, Tina.”
“You don’t even know me. And my name’s Julie.”
“We’ll have to fix that, of course. Yes. I believe I do know you. Nate captured your character very well. I can do that character, and I can see why the hero would move heaven and earth for her. It’s a cliché line, I know. But if we get Ryan Gosling to play the part of the hero and say Nate’s line the way he wrote it? Women in the audience will cream their panties. Pardon my French. It just works.”
“It sure does.” It sure did last weekend. Did he write about that? Moving heaven and earth for this Julie-Tina-character? God, she was so stupid. Nate ha
d scripted the weekend, and she played right into his hands.
“Have you ever considered acting? Either that or you must really enjoy what you do. You have a gift. It’s real. It’s in your eyes. There is fire in your eyes.”
If she only knew. Nate had used them. Suddenly Julie was in no rush to get home, and as much as she had been looking forward to their evening among the stars at that celebrity fundraiser, she had no appetite for caviar, champagne and making nice. An hour later, she was still trembling with anger as she walked to Carla’s classroom. Surely she hadn’t let Nate do this to her again, getting her to fall for him when he was only having fun.
Carla sat at her desk reading from an iPad.
“Still here? I thought you’d be home by now. What did Nate say?”
Julie shook her head. “He’s not answering his phone. I haven’t heard back from him.”
“When you do, all I can say is ‘oh boy.’”
Julie asked what that meant and then shifted her eyes to the slender tablet propped up against two large science textbooks in front of Carla. “Say, isn’t that the iPad one of Tina Farnham’s assistants had?”
“Yeah. In the confusion, this, um, got misplaced.”
“Misplaced? The last place I saw it was in your hands. You were looking at whatever it was they had there about us.”
“It’s not as if I stole it. Exactly. It sort of never found its way back to that nice man. You can give it to Nate and he can return it, but I’ve been reading this story he wrote for them. I think you should, too. There is a lot of good stuff here.”
The way Carla said that, with irony thicker than molasses, touched some dread-inducing nerve in Julie. “Good stuff in a good way? I hope.”
“Kind of intimate if you ask me. You’re not going to like it.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
A Thorny Situation
A rose thorn cut across high on Nate’s cheek, just below his left eye, leaving a sliver of a wound deep enough to draw blood. He raised an arm to fend off a swipe from the opposite direction and then, with both arms, protected himself from being bashed on his head. Julie was using the bouquet he brought as a spiked, though admittedly sweet-smelling, cudgel.