by C. S. Starr
“Dude, all your movies are shitty,” Bull cracked a grin. “You must know it’s not enough.”
“You two are very good at stating the obvious.” Tal raised his eyebrows, and glanced at Lucy, mouth was parted as she slept. “It’s been enough, but I know. As they start having more kids and want more security, it’s going to be a problem.”
Bull nodded. “Yeah. Kids will take a lot, but it’s different when you have a family to consider.”
Tal thought of Rachel and Leah. “A responsibility beyond yourself.”
“We can’t all be as pious as Saint Campbell here.”
Lucy began snoring gently, her mouth slightly more ajar.
“I need to call Connor.”
“Why would you bother?” Bull scoffed. “That guy’s a dick.”
Tal tensed. “Because he’s my friend.”
“He’s not your friend. If he was your friend, he would have picked you up in Oklahoma,” Bull said, matter of fact. “Like I picked up my friend.”
“I didn’t call him to pick me up,” Tal muttered. “I will.”
Bull looked up thoughtfully and snorted. “Okay.”
“Do you have something to say?” Tal snapped. “Because you should just say it.”
“I can’t sleep for twenty minutes without you two getting into it?” Lucy sat up and rubbed her eyes. “What?”
“Connor Wilde is a useless piece of shit, and if you choose to associate with him, then you’re—”
“Bull!” Lucy admonished, her eyes wide. “Give it up!”
Both boys glared out the windshield. “Butt out, Goose. Me and West were having a nice conversation.”
Tal frowned at her. “I don’t need you sticking up for me. Connor’s a piece of shit. But he’s the only thing keeping any semblance of order on the west coast for now, and that’s that. Everyone knows who he is, and what he does, and it may not get the same respect and admiration that seventy per cent maternity leave coverage gets but he’s what’s there, and until there’s another option, that’s that.”
“Lucy’s a better option,” Bull said, pride thick in his tone.
“I don’t want West or Mexico,” Lucy groaned. “And I don’t want the drugs, and I don’t want a bunch of privileged brats fucking up what I’ve started with their unrealistic wants. Bull, I appreciate the support, but I’ve got my hands full at the moment.”
Tal shut up after that, but he couldn’t stop thinking about what happened when he got home. What he’d learned in the past decade, and what the one to come would bring.
Perhaps most importantly, he wondered how he’d be remembered, when contrasted with the two people he shared the cab of the truck with.
***
Cara and Paul were two of Lucy’s favourite people. They were twenty-two, older than most, and Paul, from Chicago, had been one of the first emissaries she’d received, eight years earlier. Their house and things were modest, and they’d give the clothes off their backs if someone needed them more than they did.
Even at nine at night their house was a hub of activity. Lucy opened the door and came face to face with a tiny girl clutching a cat.
“Are Cara and Paul around?”
“Momma Cara!” the redhead screamed. “There’s some people here.”
Ten minutes later they were all seated around a massive table with soup and sandwiches spread from one end to the other and about fifteen kids, all various ages under ten, running around in organized chaos, sitting where they could to make room for Bull, Tal, and Lucy.
“We did pasta last night, Ce. You should have timed your kidnapping better,” a woman with a small waist, enormous hips with the ass to match, cooed as she swayed into the room. “You look terrible, Love.”
No matter how long had passed, it always felt like minutes since Lucy’d seen her old friend, and she beamed as they embraced. There weren’t a lot of people like Cara and Paul, Lucy thought to herself as they sat down to eat and they began telling the three of them about the new kids they’d taken in recently and others that had passed through their house and out into the world.
After a while, Lucy stopped listening to Cara’s stories and started watching Tal, who was less interested in what was being said and more interested in the little girl seated next to him. She couldn’t have been much older than four.
“My mom died,” she told him, without much coaxing on his part. “I live here now.”
“It’s good here?”
She nodded eyes wide. “Like a real family.”
Bull and Lucy did their best to stay out of the way while Cara put the girls to bed and Paul the boys, which took a great deal of negotiation. Tal vanished after dinner and Lucy found him outside, sitting on the back step thoughtfully looking up at the stars.
“She looks a little like my cousin,” he said when she sat down beside him. “The cousin that died.”
“Ah,” Lucy said thoughtfully, not sure what to say. “Cute little girl.”
“What if they weren’t here? What would happen to her?”
“I guess someone else would have taken her in?” Lucy shrugged. “I don’t know. You know what happens sometimes. It’s good they’re here.”
They’d both seen kids too young to make it on their own, unable to take care of themselves, and the terrible realization that it was impossible to save everyone had dawned on each of them more than once.
“We’re too old for that to happen anymore,” Tal muttered. “I mean, I always knew that, but it’s hard.”
“I know,” she nodded. “I’m guilty of it too.”
Tal stared up at the stars. “Will they take money, or things, if I sent them some?”
“For the little girl?”
He shook his head. “For all the kids,” he replied. “I’m…I’m doing all right, you know.”
Lucy raised her eyebrows and wondered how much all right was. “I’m sure you are.”
“And I do give where I can, but it’s not easy to know it’s going somewhere good. This feels like somewhere good.”
“Cara raised Bull’s sister for quite a few years when he couldn’t. She’s…this is her thing. She’s a natural. Since she was twelve. Paul’s the same.” Lucy rested her head in her hands and looked over at Tal in the porch light. “It is somewhere good. The kids they turn out are the kind you want around.”
“Not the Soldier of Fortune kids,” Tal recalled.
“Not the Soldier of Fortune kids.” Lucy nodded at the door and patted his shoulder. “We should get some sleep. You’re on the couch and the little ones get up early.”
“Night,” he said, as he awkwardly put his hand up to pat her on the back, or hug her, she wasn’t sure.
“Sleep tight,” she replied, swallowing a request for him to spend the night with her. “I guess I’ll…see you tomorrow.”
He gave her a nod and a grin. “I guess so.”
Chapter 16
July 2002
Los Angeles, West
“So we’ll pay you this much,” Tal pointed to a figure with very few zeros. “And one per cent of the net income from the film.”
Ella Cunningham batted her heavily mascaraed eyelashes at Tal. “Can you get me a little more? I used to make more with Disney.”
“Disney’s gone. This is what we can offer. There’s an opportunity for more in the future—”
“Fine,” she muttered, signing on the dotted line. “But I’m not blowing Connor Wilde.”
“That’s certainly not in the contract,” Tal assured, pissed that she had to demand that. “And you can let me know if you have any problems working with him. I’ll handle it.”
It had taken him a while to convince the kids with Disney contracts that were still alive to sign with them, and as part of Tal agreeing to work with Connor again, he was given the newly launched legal department, as well as the finances to run. Connor was given an allowance for spending, but if he wanted access to bigger funds, they had to discuss it.
Two months in, and
Connor had turned to other sources outside their business for his entertainment and things were thriving. They had cut and edited four films, the first of which was scheduled for release the next week.
After nearly a year without new movies, the buzz for Hard Sell, which they were billing as Tom Cruise’s last masterpiece, was rampant. Tickets in fifteen theatres were sold out, and they had requests coming in from kids outside LA that wanted to learn how to screen it at their local theatres to make a quick buck, so he’d put Leah on negotiating that end of things. Tal had played around with the reel at the Kodak Theatre for the better part of a week until he was confident that it would work.
Hard Sell was an experiment. So far, it had already made them a million dollars with no investment on their part, since it had already been shot and mostly edited.
“Someone’s here to see you,” Leah said, popping her head into his office after Ella left. “He’s big.”
Tal put his hand under his desk to verify that his gun was there.
The kid wasn’t one Tal had seen before, and had to be over six feet tall, with an impressive dirt moustache. He sat down heavily in the chair across from Tal and frowned at him.
“You’re the kid that runs the money.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Who are you?” Tal asked, angling his gun to a position where he was fairly certain he’d shoot him in the knee from under his desk.
“I’m from East Los. And I want to show your movie there.”
Tal nodded out the door. “My cousin, the girl out there. She’s organizing where things are shown. You want to talk to her.”
He was Mexican. There were some Mexican kids out there that were tougher than any adults Tal had known before. “I don’t know how to run it, and I don’t want to pay you for it,” he said, a broad smile on his face.
Tal took a deep breath and thought about what his father would do. “I can’t do that. We worked hard to get it together. You have to work for what you have. You can’t just have our stuff.”
Connor stood in the doorway, the colour drained from his face at the kid in his friend’s office.
“Come on, Tal. Let’s figure something out,” he said, shaking his head, his brow furrowed.
The big kid turned around. “You’re that actor guy’s kid. The one that was gay.”
Connor swallowed and moved to stand beside Tal. “Connor,” he said carefully, extending his hand.
“Theo,” the kid replied, hooking his arms around the back of the chair. He had tattoos. Crude ones.
The room went silent. Tal could feel his heart beating in his chest.
“Give us a day—”
“I don’t have a day. I want it when you have it, so it’s new.”
“Okay,” Connor nodded, his hand firmly planted on Tal’s shoulder. “Meet us here in four hours.”
Theo rose. “We all got mouths to feed. I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”
When Tal heard the main door shut, he and Connor both exhaled and Connor smacked his arm, hard.
“You almost got us killed,” Connor hissed. “You can’t run everything straight. Those kids aren’t me.”
“So we’re just supposed to give it to him because he’s bigger than us?” Tal laid his gun across his desk and raised his voice. “Because fuck that.”
“Maybe we don’t do that, but we work out a deal with them. Maybe we get something lesser in return, but we’re still alive. Don’t you want to be alive, Tal?”
He nodded, rolling his eyes, angry that it had come to that. He looked down and saw that his hands were still shaking.
Connor nodded and sat down across from him. “Okay then. Let’s work out a couple of options.”
“To give him our movies?” Tal scoffed. “Because if we do this once, we have to do it forever. Connor, this wasn’t part of the plan.”
“Sometimes, you have to make a new plan,” Connor grumbled. “Now, what do we need from them?”
September 2012
Montana
Lucy found the tobacco in a high cupboard, far out of reach of tiny hands and within minutes she’d rolled a cigarette with the machine that lived in the junk drawer. She gasped when the kitchen light switched on and Cara stood there in a frumpy housecoat, looking very much like the disappointed mother that Lucy hadn’t had the opportunity to know.
“You’re still doing that?” she said in a tone that, while irritating to Lucy, warmed her heart in a way.
“Sorry, Mom. Sometimes.” She nodded at the back door and Cara followed her out. “It’s been a hell of a week.”
“We were all so worried. Bull called us, and then Zoey did, and even Andrew. They thought maybe you’d end up here.”
“I tried, but we ran out of gas and money before we made it out of Missouri.” Lucy handed her the cigarette and Cara took a long drag, a look of ecstasy crossing her face. “I don’t think martyrdom is for me.”
Cara chuckled. “Good. You look like shit though, you know.”
Lucy’s hand instinctively went to the bruise below her left eye. “I’ve been avoiding mirrors.”
“You’re still beautiful. Don’t worry.” Cara shot her a wink. “I like your new friend. He did most of the dishes.”
Lucy’s mouth twitched into a smile. “He did?”
She nodded. “When we were putting the kids to bed. Did a good job too. He said he does them at his place.”
Leaning in, Lucy whispered. “He’s deliciously ordinary.”
“I think a lot of people used to be ordinary. Not much room for it now.”
“Maybe ordinary isn’t the right word.”
Cara looked up thoughtfully. “Old school?”
“Ha,” Lucy giggled. “That’s probably better.”
“He’s not what I expected from West. There hasn’t been one pyrotechnics show since he arrived, and his lines aren’t predictable and stunted.”
“He’s the numbers guy.”
Cara looked at her, deadpan. “They made the Jew the numbers guy. How cliché can you get?”
“I kissed him. Two nights ago when we were on shrooms. Or he kissed me, I guess,” she replied, recalling the circumstances.”
“Experimentation is perfectly healthy,” Cara joked, clasping her hands together. “Give little Zoey a run for her money. A taste of her own medicine, for all the—”
“It’s not a competition. I…I’m not with people like she is. I can’t be.” Lucy pushed the girl from a few nights earlier out of her head.
Seeing something she didn’t like in her friend’s eyes, Cara reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Say it.”
“I’m more than my experiences.” Lucy rolled her eyes, remembering their many counseling sessions. “I’m okay with not sleeping around. Look at all the kids you’ve had to take in as a consequence of that. And with a guy?” She scrunched her face up. “I…sorry. I don’t know. I can’t even think about it seriously.”
“It’s all a little absurd if you over think it, with a man or a woman.” Cara smiled. “Remember when there were all those kids that didn’t understand how it worked?”
Lucy snorted, thinking back on her friend giving what amounted to a basic anatomy lesson in the town hall when she was thirteen that had probably prevented a population boom in Campbell. “Yes. You straightened them all out.”
“Damn right, I did.” Cara nodded. “You know, you’re all right without Cole. I wasn’t sure how you’d be.”
“I’m not all right at all, and don’t talk about him like he’s—”
“You’re still walking and talking,” Cara explained, squeezing her hand. “That’s all I meant.”
“The nights are the hardest. I used to lay in bed sometimes and just knowing he was down the hall? It was everything. We worked so hard to stay together.” Lucy heard her voice crack. “I’ve woken up wrapped around Tal for the last few nights, except last night Bull was there, so—”
“So you wrapped yourself around him?” Cara raised her ey
ebrows and shook her head. “Ce—”
“No, I didn’t. I stayed away from both of them, because I knew I’d never hear the end of it. Even in my sleep I knew that.”
“See, look how self-aware you are.” Her old friend leaned in and whispered in her ear. “You should sleep with him. Not Bull. Tal. Just to have the experience. Sometimes you meet someone that’s worth making an exception for in a big way.” Her eyes gleamed knowingly.
“Don’t make this about you. Us.” Lucy flashed back to the time they’d shared. “You know this is nothing like that.” It amazed her sometimes that they’d been able to remain friends. Cara had chewed her up and spit her out romantically. More than once.
Cara squeezed her shoulders. “I’m glad it happened, so I knew. You made me wonder. Look at you. You’re amazing. Why wouldn’t I wonder? It’s okay to wonder.”
“Why do you think I want to sleep with him?”
“Because you’d have to be blind not to see that something’s happened with you two. There’s something there.” She ran her hands through her hair and winked at Lucy. I know you, Ce. I know you better than anyone. Don’t forget that.”
“I think I trust him,” Lucy acknowledged. “I’m not sure I want that to mean I sleep with him. Maybe I need more people I can trust.”
“You always need more people you can trust. Fine. Maybe you shouldn’t sleep with him.”
“It’s unlikely that I’d just up and sleep with him. It would be very unlike me.”
“It’s great being with the right person, and I’m not just talking about sex. I just want you to have that.” A wistful expression fell across Lucy’s friend’s face. “I want you to be happy.”
“You don’t think Zoey’s the right person?” Lucy asked, although she already knew Cara’s answer.
“I think Zoey is undeserving of that title for a whole mess of reasons, but we’ve had this conversation.” Cara said dryly, as she stood. “On that note, I’m going to bed. You should too.”
“With Tal, I suppose.”
“I didn’t mean that. You look exhausted.” Lucy stood, and Cara’s lips brushed her cheek. “Night, Ce. Sleep late. My army of children will make you breakfast. You’re almost home, and then you have to go back to being you.”