“Everything has been recorded, Lenora,” said Micah, as he showed Lenora his phone. “All it takes is the push of a button and the world will see it.”
God bless Micah and his nerdy phone, thought Cass.
Lenora moved in close enough to make an easy shot and slowly raised the gun.
“You know I will do it, Lenora,” said Micah, with his finger on the button.
“And you know I will kill you,” said Lenora.
“Yes, I do. But will you destroy your legacy? Will you destroy Lenora Danmore, the movie queen who is supposed to live forever?”
The outstretched gun shook in Lenora’s hand. Her breathing sputtered. A tear rolled down her cheek, and she said, “She’s already dead. All that’s left now is revenge.” She cocked the gun and aimed. “Goodbye, Micah. We never really bonded anyway. I think you might have a personality defect.” Lenora pulled the trigger. And nothing happened except for a harmless click. She fired again with the same result, and then again.
Micah reached through the bars, pulled Cass close, and said, “Are you OK?”
“I’m OK,” said Cass.
“This is not over!” bellowed Lenora. “You are nothing but a backlot Barbie! Do you hear me? I’ve taken down giants ten times bigger than you!” She reared back and hurled the gun at them. It clanked off an iron bar and dropped to the floor. “I will destroy you, Cassandra Moreaux, just like I destroyed you mother!” She charged the Wendy Rainy look-alike, knocked it over, and stomped and kicked it.
Micah reached up to the top of the cell and flipped a lever. The cell door popped open. Cass looked at it and said, “Shit.”
“It’s a prop,” said Micah. “Let’s get out of here.” He wrapped an arm around Cass and guided her to a backstage emergency exit.
The world looked completely different when Cass walked through that door. It looked fresh and new. A cool evening breeze gently swirled in the trees. The stars shimmered in the embrace of a velvety black sky. A long line of footpath lights laid down a ribbon of golden gauze, like a fairy-tale path for hobbits or leprechauns. Cass wondered at a world where beauty and danger marched in such close quarters. She had seen them that very night, death and life, patrolling the same side of the street, thinly separated by good and bad intentions. Truth might be just around the corner. Or it might be deceit. Or was it even possible to know the difference? Just now she had been rescued by a man who was supposed to have been her enemy. She turned a corner, saw his face, and enemy turned into friend as danger inexplicably turned into beauty.
Cass stopped in her tracks. She didn’t have an answer for the kind of unmarked randomness that had just exploded in her face, but she had the next best thing. She needed to surround herself with as much goodness as possible. Everyone needed it because we might not be able to control what waits around the corner, but we sure as hell control who we’re with when we get there. She turned to Micah and said, “Micah Bailey, I have something to tell you.” Then she told him…with a kiss…about a thousand words’ worth.
“I like the way you talk,” said Micah.
“You should see me when I get really chatty.”
“I’d like that.”
“But I think we’ll start with the small talk…which reminds me, you’re supposed to be in Florida. How did you know?”
“It’s what I do,” said Micah. “I get paid to stay one step ahead.”
“Well, Micah Bailey, you’re good at what you do. But to tell the truth, your job sucks.”
Chapter seventeen
Early the next morning Micah clutched the doorknob on the back entrance to one of the exhibits. He’d decided that leaving without a word didn’t feel right. But now he had second thoughts. He wondered why he didn’t turn around and make a clean exit. What flaw drove him forward, like a car that keeps driving on a flat tire? Then he heard the familiar, angry voice, and he pushed through the doorway and walked toward it, just as he had every day for the last twenty-five years. He found a seat in the shadows and watched.
Lenora stood in the middle of the set next to a dusty covered wagon that had a broken wheel and torn canopy. Big boulders that looked like they hadn’t been touched by a drop of rain in ten years littered the landscape. The sun-bleached skeletal remains of a dead animal splayed out in the dirt off to the side. Lenora wore a blue prairie dress, a bonnet, and lace-up boots—an identical costume to the one she’d worn sixty years earlier while in her twenties. It hurt to even look at her now.
Micah knew the movie well. The first time, as a ten-year-old, he’d stumbled upon it while flipping TV channels. He then had closed the door and turned down the volume. He didn’t want his dad to know that he cared. Back then, on that afternoon rerun, he had seen beauty and strength. His yearning imagination added compassion and tenderness and other motherly standbys. Now every bit of it, real and imagined, had vanished, and only rancid ambition and the feebleness of old age remained.
Lenora had a lanyard around her neck and had been yelling at the android director, who stood next to her. She continued, “Listen to me! Listen to what I am saying! He cannot pause on that line because it kills my motivation for the entire scene! Do you understand what I am saying?”
The kindly director smiled and said, “Good job, Miss Danmore. Keep up the good work. And do not forget to pick up a copy of your scene from the gift store. I think you will like it.”
Lenora slapped him across the face and screamed, “You will not use that cut!”
The android tried to sputter out a few words but then gave up and powered down. His head slumped forward.
“You stupid, stupid man!” shrieked Lenora.
Micah closed his eyes, not just because he found it difficult to look at but also because he found it difficult to look at himself. It had finally ended. Cass had crushed Lenora. And yet here he sat the next morning, hovering in the darkness, hoping for a goodbye. He’d never gotten a hello, but maybe if he behaved like a good boy, he’d get a goodbye. He had become a forty-three-year-old urchin begging for crumbs.
He pulled the big ring of ranch keys from his pocket and set them on the bench. But when he stood up, something disturbed the keys, and they fell loudly to the floor. Lenora’s head shot up, and her eyes met Micah’s. She stared at him, and he stared at her. And then she turned her back.
She didn’t say a single word, and that tiny fact spoke volumes—even if they had never had anything else, they had always had words. They had a towering mountain of them. But truthfully, all those words over all those years had never rightfully belonged to either one of them. They had never been about them or for them or against them. The words had always been about the glorious project. Those words had built an empire of projects and nothing else. But now the last project had ended, and all the words had run out. Lenora didn’t even have enough to fire him one last time, and Micah didn’t have enough to fashion one last barb.
He left the exhibit, made the short walk to the workshop, and opened the doors one last time. As he passed by his desk, the picture of his ex-wife stared up at him. He picked it up, looked at it for a few seconds, and then put it back on the desk, facedown. He had failed her, and some failures can never be undone. He could only do his best to make sure it never happened again.
He looked around the workshop at his life’s accumulation and didn’t have the least inclination to scoop things up and carry them away. This life had been a slow-dripping poison, and he was done with it. He had the suitcase he’d packed the previous day for Florida, and that’s all he needed…except…for a certain car. It happened to be an unusual babe magnet for an unusual babe.
He opened the doors to the car museum, flipped on the lights, and smiled at the sorry-looking, roofless, burned-out wreck from Planes, Trains & Automobiles. Any woman who could love this car had to be something very special. He threw his suitcase into the backseat, fired it up, and drove out the museum’s giant roll-up door and down the hill to Cass’s trailer. He pushed on t
he horn. It didn’t work, so he whistled. Cass emerged with a suitcase in each hand. She approached with a sly smirk and, in a deep voice, said, “Excuse me, mister. Do you really believe that this vehicle is safe to drive?”
“Yes, ma’am, I do. I really do,” said Micah.
“Well, that’s good enough for me. Let’s go!” She put her suitcases next to Micah’s and hopped into the car. After a few seconds, she said, “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” said Micah. “I thought maybe I’d give Hollywood a try. Do you think they have room for a smart-ass game-show host?”
“You know, I heard there’s a shortage of those right now. You might just be in luck.”
Micah welcomed his passenger with a long kiss. He then shoved down on the gear shifter. The gears grinded out a loud protest, and the unsightly hulk wobbled down the driveway, off the ranch, and into the golden California sunshine.
The End
Thank you for reading my book. Would you consider leaving a review? Even just a few words can be more helpful than you may know, and anything you write will be greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Tim Patrick
Acknowledgements
This book would not have been possible without the support of my wife, Martina. I’m proud and thankful to be her partner.
The Author
Tim Patrick is a graduate of UCLA. He and his wife live in Southern California and are the parents of two grown children. In his spare time, Patrick enjoys aviation, mountain biking, and experimenting in the kitchen, where he is an undisputed connoisseur of the tater tot.
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