Role of a Lifetime: Out of Hollywood Romance

by Cora Davies

  Risa was going out with friends that evening to celebrate dual eighteenth birthdays, and would be staying the night at a friend's house. Hailey knew there would probably be boys involved, but she could not keep her daughter from the world unless she wanted her sneaking out of her bedroom window in the middle of the night.

  "Ugh! You treat me like I'm a baby!" Risa stomped all the way back up the stairs, and Hailey bit back a sarcastic comment about Risa walking up the stairs like a toddler, not so much a baby. So much for that improved attitude.

  Hailey's phone rang, and she resisted throwing it across the room after she saw it was Eric calling again. He had called off and on over the last six months since she had last spoken to him on video chat-usually when he was on a break at work, but sometimes when he was drinking. He left messages most of the time, sometimes he did not. Sometimes he told her he loved her, sometimes he told her she was better off without him. Each message caused her heart to break a little more. Occasionally he would leave a message that would make her want to call him back. There was one message that she remembered fondly-he sang the entire song, I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore. He did not have a good singing voice. But, she had to remind herself of her motto. Artists were fucking crazy.

  He was relentless at first, and he called every day to apologize. Then it died down to a gradual trickle, and finally, she had not heard from him in the past month. That was, until a couple hours ago when he sent her a text message about Guy Templeton. Another lifetime. She had hidden from him years ago, then filed that restraining order. She had been shocked when it actually kept him away. But Eric said Guy was looking for her now.

  She planned on calling Eric back as soon as Risa left for her party-she did not want her daughter to hear any overdue conversations. After Risa left, Hailey would be alone in the house, free to raise her voice and yell at Eric all she wanted. Rebecca was gone on a weekend crafting retreat with friends from church, and while Jason lived with them now, he spent most of his time in the workshop outside when Rebecca was not home.

  Risa stomped down the stairs again, the same skirt but with black tights on. "Approved."

  Hailey stood up and put her arms out to give her daughter a hug. Risa rolled her eyes, but allowed Hailey to cradle her for a moment before pushing away. Risa rolled her eyes and said, "I love you, mom."

  "I love you, too."

  Risa grabbed the keys to Hailey's truck off the entryway table and stepped outside. Hailey waited until she heard the engine start before she called Eric back.

  "Hello?" he answered on the first ring. Even though she had heard his voice over the past few months on her voicemail and on TV when she caught one of his movies, the depth in it still made the butterflies in her stomach turn into bloodthirsty combatants as equal parts attraction and anger energized them.

  "Hi." Every word she had carefully plotted in her head for the past hour was gone. All she had was 'hi'. She cleared her throat. Surely she could find more words, she was, after all, a writer. "How are you?"

  Well, at least, those were three more words than 'hi'.

  "Jesus Hailey, it's so good to hear your voice," Eric said and then a silence washed through the phone. She imagined him running his fingers through his unruly hair. "I was trying to fly out there tonight, but we couldn't get clearance to take off in this storm. I have to see you."

  "Why?" Hailey gripped her knee to keep herself from saying 'okay'.

  "So many reasons. But mostly this Guy Templeton thing." Eric's voice turned cold. "He's one sick dude Hails. How do you find these people?"

  "I don't know." She sighed. She did not want this first conversation with Eric to be about a man from her past.

  "You're an asshole magnet," Eric said.

  "Whoa, wow, thanks for calling, Eric." Hailey could not argue with Eric, but she was not going to listen to him if he was just calling to tell her that her life sucked.

  "No, wait I'm sorry," Eric said with an urgency in his voice. Hailey waited for a breath. "It's just, this guy, the whole diamond shit... Templeton is a lunatic."

  "What did he do this time?" The silence stretched on until it became almost comical. Hailey pulled the phone away from her face to make sure she had not lost connection. "Eric?"

  "I'm trying to figure out how much of this I can tell you before you hang up on me. The bottom line is the authorities have been notified, and you're safe."

  Hailey's eyes widened. Why would the authorities need to be notified? With Guy's sketchy track record, a dozen possibilities flashed through her mind. "Eric, tell me what's going on."

  "Just let me tell you the whole story before you interrupt, promise?" Eric's voice sounded faint through the static.

  "I think we have a bad connection," she said.

  "It's the storm." Eric took a deep breath and filled Hailey in on the events of the day.

  ***

  He started with the wrap party, what Bette had told him, and how she had handed him the dog-eared manuscript. The studio provided a limo and drove Eric home while he stared at the manuscript in his lap. Should he read it? Was it worth the anger it was going to create in him? Should he pass it straight onto Hailey, or the police, or should he just take care of things his own way? He decided he would flip through, look for Hailey's name, and read those pages only.

  The problem was, Hailey's name was on almost every fucking page. Bette had not lied-the entire book was about Guy and Hailey in some twisted sick fantasy that ended with Hailey bleeding to death. Guy was a strong writer, and the imagery he painted was enough to make Eric queasy. He did not read every page, but skimmed, and it was enough to make him fear for Hailey's life- and that was before he got a hold of his PI.

  "What?" the man answered the phone.

  "That file you sent me back in March?"

  "Who the fuck is this?" The man demanded.

  "It's Eric James," Eric evenly said. He would get what he wanted from the PI this time for sure. Money talks to everyone.

  "Mr. James, what can I do for you this fine evening?" the man's voice was calmer now, quieter.

  "The file you sent me on Hailey Rogers, I need you to email it to me." Eric could hear the sound of fingers hitting a keyboard.

  "Shit James, I don't even know if I still have that on the computer," he said.

  "You find it, you send it to me, or I'll start taking my business and all the referrals I send your way, elsewhere." Eric paused for a moment. "Of course, I don't mind paying the fee again."

  "Alright." The man coughed-a thick noise. The phlegm filled sound made Eric glad yet again he had quit smoking. He remembered those coughs. "Let me look for it, if I got it you'll have it within the half hour."

  He hung up and Eric called Hannah again to ask if the flight situation had changed; the storm did not seem that bad to Eric. It had not changed. He sat on the edge of his bed, flipping through the manuscript until he got an email from the PI. He opened it and found a file labeled 'Templeton'.

  It was the police report and restraining order. An interview stated the couple had been serious for four months, until Templeton became overly jealous and easily angered. He threatened suicide if Hailey left him, and there had even been two attempts. Finally, Hailey left him for good after he pulled a gun on her when she was late for date night.

  Eric sat back and rubbed his forehead. He saw Guy so many times at the studio lot, if he had only known then what he had done to Hailey...

  Eric forced his mind off the anger. If he went down that road right now, he would not be able to protect Hailey. He had a hard time imagining her with someone like this. She would not put up with that kind of bullshit. She seemed so adamant about not getting into any kind of serious relationship when he had been with her. He could not imagine her hanging around long enough for something like that to happen.

  There were two more reports filed after this one; both times Guy violated the rules of the restraining order. Once he showed up at Hailey's apartment with a dozen flowers and a book of poe
try. The second time he showed up at Chrissy's school during pickup time to talk to Hailey. They had moved almost immediately after that to the small sleepy town where she bought her ranch nearly a year later.

  This would explain the artists are crazy comment she always made. It also might explain why she kept men at an arm's distance and only dated boring types.

  Eric called Hailey, not surprised when she did not answer. He ran his fingers through his hair and looked around the room. He had to do something. He could not let Guy get away with this, and he could not sit in his house waiting until the fucking storm passed.

  Eric called Scott. "Hey man, I have a favor to ask."

  "Is this one going to require me to forge documents and fly halfway across the country to the middle of nowhere?"

  "I honestly don't know." Eric explained the restraining order, the violations, and finally, the novel that Bette had passed on to him that evening. Scott whistled.

  "That's pretty fucking shitty," Scott said.

  "I know."

  "No, I mean... Man, if you turn that over to the cops, it's really not going to do anything. I don't know if they'd add it to the file, or even contact Hailey. Him being a writer... They would just say it's artistic expression."

  "Yeah, I was afraid you'd say that." Eric tapped his fingers on his knee. He imagined a cigarette resting between his index and middle fingers, cough or not.

  "I guess that's where this favor comes in?" Scott asked. Eric could hear the trepidation in his voice. "How far do you need me to take this favor?"

  "I'm not saying his body is found floating in a river somewhere, but intimidation would be good. Just enough to get him to back off."

  Silence through the phone.

  "Scott?"

  "Yeah?"

  "I just had a thought about something. Something that was in that shoebox Hailey was holding onto." Eric felt the start of a headache behind his temples.

  Then Scott said the exact thing on Eric's mind. "There was a script in there. It was some heavy erotic stuff, and some pretty fucked up stuff. Sounds like what you just read me out of the one you have. And that script was free of any fingerprints except for Hailey's. It had to have been sorted and sealed while the writer wore gloves. I never liked it for the Michaels brothers, it was so unlike anything else they had sent her. And of course, they didn't bother hiding their fingerprints on any of the letters."

  "You think Guy sent her that script, too?"

  "You'd have to get some kind of literary expert to analyze the two...unless they're the same script. I don't have a copy, but I'd say yeah." Scott cleared his throat. "If I were you, I'd talk to Bette. See what she can do to get a restraining order-tell her to exaggerate if she has to. I don't like the sound of him. I'm gonna do a little research here, and then send a few men out to talk to him."

  They hung up and Eric tried Hailey again. No answer. Then he called Hannah.

  "Eric, as soon as you can board, I will come get you myself," Hannah said when she answered the phone.

  ***

  Hailey did not say a word while Eric spoke. Instead, she had been nervously rubbing her hands against the tops of her thighs and blinking abnormally fast. She felt like if she could strangle Guy, she would. But, at the moment, she also felt as if she could strangle Eric.

  "Hailey?" Eric broke her train of thought. "It's going to be okay. I'm not going to let anything happen to you and your family."

  "What?" she asked as she shook her head. Why did he think he had any responsibility to them? "Do you have it? Do you have the book? You need to mail it to me."

  "I'm bringing it to you tomorrow. As soon as this storm clears." Eric sighed. "I just want you to know, this is really fucked up shit in here. But, Scott has taken care of the Guy situation."

  "How?"

  "Everyone has skeletons in their closets, and Guy has more than a restraining order in his."

  "Blackmail?"

  "Hail-"

  "I don't care. That sounds better than sleeping with the fishes or whatever... Read me some of this book."

  "I don't think you want me-"

  "Eric!" Hailey felt the command in her voice. "I need to know. I'll know if it's in the same voice."

  "Do you just want me to read the highlights or..." Hailey could hear the nervousness in Eric's voice.

  "Start at page one, skip around... I don't know. Just don't do actor voices." Hailey read the book that arrived in her mailbox several times, and thought she would recognize if any of the passages were familiar or the same. She was right, and she recognized them within seconds. Terror filled her body as she realized the past six months she had led herself to believe that the brothers had written the manuscript to intimidate her, all the while, Guy was out there with these terrible visions about her. Hailey listened to Eric for almost five minutes.

  "You can stop. It's the same one. It's the one I got in the mail last year. But, Scott took care of it?" Hailey's terror threatened to take over her thoughts. She forced the terror to channel into anger. "You had me investigated again? You called me a dozen times to apologize, but you just did it again. What? A couple hours ago?"

  "Hailey, baby-" Eric started but Hailey stood up and used the momentum of her body's movement in her voice when she spoke again.

  "Oh no no no no no," she said shaking her head with each no. "You do not call me baby. I am not your fucking baby. I have never been your baby. Instead of just asking me what happened with Guy, you violated my privacy again. Am I a fucking joke to you?"

  "No." Eric's voice sounded surprised. He actually thought Hailey would be happy he did all this? "I was worried about you. I was scared after reading this shit." Suddenly, Eric's voice rose and he was almost yelling into the receiver. "And you never answer your phone."

  Hailey felt as if she shrunk slightly into herself as Eric yelled. He had never spoken to her like that before. He did all of this. Hailey was fine before Eric came into her life. Who was he to up-end her world again, and then yell at her about it?

  She felt a fire surface-irritation for all the times she had to explain herself to everyone around her. "You don't need to worry about me. I worry about me. It gets old... everyone else saying they're worried about me."

  "Would you listen to yourself? This is not like your mother and Jason saying they are concerned about your poor life decisions. I'd never doubt your decisions-except the one that caused you to turn your back on us." Eric sounded sad, and Hailey felt sorry she had blown up at him. "I was worried about this fucking lunatic ripping your skin off in ribbons; like he said he was going to do in this fucking book he wrote."

  Hailey paced the length of the house as she listened to Eric. He had a slight point. But she was not going to let him know that.

  "I'm flying out there as soon as the storm lets up-"

  "No, you don't need to do that."

  "Don't tell me what I need to do," Eric growled into the phone and Hailey stopped dead in her tracks. She leaned against the wall, that growl still hit her after all this time. She imagined his rugged face when he spoke like that, his piercing brown eyes. If she had to say anything else to him, she was going to melt. "I can't get you out of my head, and I need to see you. Face to face. Where you can't hit ignore. Where you can't hang up the phone."

  Hailey did the only logical thing she could think of. She hung up the phone.

  She stood still for a moment, not sure if she had really done that. Why had she hung up the phone? Just to prove she could. And so I didn't say anything I'd regret later.

  She felt brave and defiant as she marched up the stairs to her bedroom. She ripped open her dresser drawer where she had hidden the final letter from the Michaels brothers, all those months ago. She tore the envelope open, and forced herself to face the words after all this time.

  Hailey

  I've been patient. I won't be patient much longer.

  I know you have the account numbers. Despite continually ignoring me,

  I know you have what I wan
t. What is owed to me. You have three days.

  You cannot hide behind your fake hero.

  "I had the last laugh didn't I, Bill and Ted?" Hailey's words were brave, but her hands were shaking. They were dead and they still scared her. Maybe she should have dealt with this letter when she first found it. Maybe she would have gotten over the fear then.

  "Who are you talking to?" Jason asked from her doorway and Hailey shrieked dropping the letter to the floor. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. I called your name when I walked in the front door."

  "It's okay, I was just..." she looked at the letter on the floor as Jason picked it up. He pulled his reading glasses out of his pocket as he looked at the letter.

  "Hailey, when did you get this?" he asked, glaring at the paper.

  "A long time ago," she said, looking at the floor. Maybe she should have just thrown the letter away when she found it. She gave it too much power by keeping it hidden in her room. The tell-tale heart calling out to her every night while she slept fitfully.

  "Why are you looking at it now?" he asked turning it over in his hands. Hailey thought, maybe she should have opened it with gloves on and sent it to Scott. Just in case, there was any kind of new evidence on them. But then, it didn't matter did it? Scott had been able to find the Michaels brothers fingerprints on the letters even after Hailey, her mother, and Jason had all handled the letters.

  Jason handed her the letter back as she remembered the phone conversation with Scott. It was them. The only other prints were yours Hailey, your mom's, and a set belonging to a Christian Davis.

  "Thanks, Jason," she said as her fingers gripped the letter, balling it up. Jason's hand patted her on the shoulder, and Hailey froze.

  Christian Davis had died five years ago. The official story was he had fallen asleep smoking a cigarette in an old trailer and the home went down in flames. Christian had been identified by dental records because he had been burned to an absolute crisp.

  Hailey had read before about criminals switching out dental records.

  He's retired now-would be in his early sixties.