by John Moralee
“No,” I answered, honestly. In a strange way, her story had persuaded me that I’d done the right thing in not taking a beer. I didn’t want to end up like her father. “No, I want to stay dry.”
“I believe you,” she said. We talked more. She unloaded her feelings about her father and I told her about the miseries of being an alcoholic. We understood each other. Talking was cathartic for both of us. It was like confessing a deep, dark secret to a priest, finally exposing it to the air. I had not talked to anyone like that – certainly none of the women in my life. Sarah spoke of the pain of growing up in a household with an alcoholic, living with the effects of a drunk from day to day. As the oldest child, she had to look after her sisters, helping her mother out because her father would not. Her father had been a lonely and distant man. She did not cry, but there was a weird look in her eyes as though she was recalling every grim detail. She chewed her bottom lip, thinking. “My mom lives on the farm with my youngest sisters. She’s happier now. She runs it by herself and makes a profit. One of the first things she bought with the extra money she had coming in was a television for my sisters to watch.”
“You have a big family.”
“Not for Iowa,” she said. “Four sisters is a normal family where I come from. Some of our neighbours have ten kids or more, enough for a baseball team.”
“I’d like to have had a big family. My parents wanted a couple of boys and a couple of girls, but my mother died after having two.” And then Billy died later, I thought. “What was it like having so many sisters?”
“Noisy,” she said. “Very, very noisy.”
“Two ex-wives?” she said, when we started talking about our relationships. “Isn’t that a bit excessive?”
“Not for Hollywood. They don’t let you in some restaurants unless you’ve had ten divorces.”
“Why’d you break up with them?”
“We were afraid of typecasting,” I said, the same answer I’d given Abby, but this time the glib answer wasn’t good enough. “No – that’s not true. I loved them both, but things went wrong because of me.” I sighed, knowing I would have to tell her the story. “I first married a woman in my acting classes. Maybe you’ve heard of her? Her name is Mimi Eve Blakely.”
“The Mimi Eve Blakely? The actress?”
“Yes.”
“She’s won an Oscar.”
“Two,” I said. “One for best actress, another for best supporting actress. I knew her long before she was famous. We were both struggling actors working in two-bit plays, hoping someone would pick us for a part in a TV series or movie. We got married a couple of years before we broke into the business. In the beginning it was amazing. We made house in this little apartment on Melrose and kept each other sane through the auditions and rejections. But then we got famous and bought a big house in Beverly Hills and stopped seeing each other for months at a time. It seemed like we were never in the same country unless we planned six months ahead. There we had everything you can imagine – the Beverly Hills home, the money, the lifestyle of the rich and famous - everything except each other. It was crazy. Sometimes she or I would switch on Letterman to find out what the other was doing that week. We thought having a baby would keep the marriage together, but it didn’t work out. She didn’t get pregnant - and I don’t think we really wanted a baby under those circumstances. We were both as lonely as hell. Then she fell in love with another guy, a director on a movie. She married him as soon as the divorce was finalised. They’re happy now, which is good. Mimi and I send birthday and Christmas cards.”
“And the second marriage?”
“Ah, my second one was a classic rebound thing. I’d just received the final divorce documents when I started filming a movie in Poland. Three months in grim hotels and trailers. My co-star was a young and exciting Australian soap star desperate to make the transition into American movies. Her name was Tanya Sullivan. She was very forthright and funny. Have you met Kathy Lette?”
“The comic novelist? No. Where would I meet her?”
I had forgotten for a moment that most people didn’t know many celebrities. “Well, I met her when she was doing TV work. Kathy Lette, I mean. The point is Tanya was very much like her. Being funny must be in Australian genes or something because every Australian I’ve ever known has made me laugh. I can’t remember laughing so hard with anyone as I did with Tanya. We both spent most of the three months getting drunk and acting stupid while pretending the movie we were doing wasn’t a piece of crap. We had a great time, despite the movie. We married in London between shoots, kept it secret until a reporter found out. When we came back to America, we spent no more than five minutes in our new home before realising what a huge mistake we’d made. We were going to spend the rest of our lives together? I remember we turned to each other and said simultaneously, ‘Want a divorce?” and we both said, ‘’Yes!’ We had the marriage annulled, so technically I’ve been married once, though I count Tanya. Whenever I see Tanya, we joke about our three-month stand. How we managed to make a movie under those circumstances remains a mystery. Tanya went back to Australia after a few months of LA, but I stayed around, like some kind of masochist. I should have got out then, but I turned to the amber nectar, as Tanya used to say.”
“What made you leave Hollywood?”
“My agent, ironically. The very person who wanted me to stay the most. You see someone found me unconscious in a nightclub restroom, dying from a combination of cocaine and tequila slammers. When I woke up in hospital, I couldn’t remember a thing about it. My agent – Martha – she was by my bed with a copy of Variety. She was smiling. For a naïve moment I thought she was pleased to see me alive. She was … but not for the reason I hoped.”
“Why then?” Sarah asked.
“She told me my hospitalisation was great publicity.”
“Great publicity? God – that’s awful.”
“ Martha’s phone had been ringing off the hook with acting roles and requests for interviews. Someone even wanted me to play River Phoenix in a biopic because of the similarities of the incidents.”
“That’s sick.”
“You’re telling me. That’s Hollywood. Martha’s only concern was that I get back to work soon. She wanted me to do interviews from my hospital bed.”
“You didn’t.”
“No - I knew then I had to get out. Without informing Martha, I checked myself out of hospital and into a rehab clinic where she and nobody else in the business could find me. I cleaned myself up. No drinking. No drugs. It was hard, but I made it. The doctors at the clinic explained that my drinking was mostly situational – and living in Hollywood was provoking it. Then I decided to come home.”
I finished talking, exhausted, but somehow energised.
I thought: I would never need to drink again if I had a woman like Sarah.
Our eyes locked over our soft drinks. I was deeply attracted to her. She was a beautiful woman, with eyes that drew me in. I was leaning towards her, wanting to kiss her lips. I looked away – only to see her legs. No scientist I’d seen had legs like hers. I sat back and focused on my Dr Pepper.
“Hey,” I said. It was all I could think of. Her legs had scrambled my brains. “Damn hot night.”
“Very,” she said, softly.
“I’m hot,” I said.
“Me, too. I need another drink.”
“I’ll get you one.” I came back with another Dr Pepper and a Coca-Cola. This time I didn’t look at the beers. It was like they didn’t exist. All I was thinking about was Sarah. When our eyes had locked, I had sensed her attraction to me. But, being a man, I was full aware of the possibility of misreading the signals. “I’ll have another Dr Pepper. I hope that’s okay?”
“As long as you didn’t give our prisoners any.” She opened the can and drank. Then she pressed the can to her forehead. “Is the couch comfortable?”
“So-so.” It was as hard as nails.
“I’ll go back to bed if you’re tired.”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Me neither,” she said. “We may as well keep talking.”
“I would like that.”
We got to know each other a little better. It was a pleasant change not having to talk about the movie business because she had no interest in it at all. Most of the women I’d been involved with had been obsessed with Hollywood to the point of suffocation. Sarah was different. She had no pretensions about fame and money. She had been born on a farm in Iowa, literally hundreds of miles from civilisation. Her family had had no television, just a radio dating back to 1950. For entertainment, she had spent most of her childhood reading books at the local library, a thirty minute bus ride from her home. There, she had become fascinated by books about the sea, for she had never in her life seen it for real. She decided to become a marine biologist when she was only nine.
“It was a bit like a kitten wanting to grow up to be a dog,” she said, “but I stayed with my dream. Marine biology is everything I hoped for. I know I can seem a little intense, perhaps too intense, but someone has to defend nature because it can’t defend itself.” She yawned and checked the time. We’d been talking all night. It would be dawn soon. But we talked on and on.
Chapter 19
In the morning when we went back into the kitchen, it was obvious the men had not slept at all. The man with a bloody nose now had dark circles around his eyes.
“Which one shall I kill?” Sarah said, casually.
“I thought we were going to torture them?”
“Nah. Why bother?”Sarah tossed a coin. “Heads – you’re it.”
She dragged the man and the chair into the next room.
I removed the gag on the other guy.
He coughed and cleared his throat. We could hear Sarah shouting at the man in the other room.
“What’s she doing?” he said. “Don’t you know she’s crazy, man?”
I shrugged. “She’s the boss.”
A shotgun blast boomed. It was unexpected - even though I was expecting it. Something slumped and crashed. Then: silence.
The man’s eyes bugged out. He struggled against the ropes. “Jesus! She killed him! Jesus! Jesus! Look, man, let me go. I didn’t do nothing.”
“Tell me who sent you here?”
“Okay, okay! Jesus. It was Van Morgan.”
“Why?”
“He wanted her watched, is all.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s the god’s honest truth! He just told us to keep an eye on her.”
“Yeah, right.”
“It’s the truth! He wants her watched because he’s afraid she’d come after him. We were supposed to warn him if she left the house so he could avoid her. And we were supposed to protect her from anyone else. He doesn’t want any employees going vigilante and hurting her and stuff. He’d lose the court case for sure if that happened.”
“Bull.”
“I swear it.”
“What about her evidence? You planning on stealing it?”
“No, sir. He doesn’t care about that. He believes he can win in court.” He lowered his voice. “What he’s scared of is her. Jesus. She’s crazy.”
Just then, Sarah came into the room covered in blood. The prisoner arched his back as if trying to get as far away from her as his limited movement would allow.
“You killed him?” I said to her.
She touched her fingers to the blood on her cheeks. “Oh, yes. His brain is all over the wall. Has this guy talked or does he want to join his friend in hell?”
“He says he and the other guys were supposed to watch you and make sure nothing happened to you. Like bodyguards.”
“Believe it?”
I gave a barely imperceptible nod, but I had to ask my own personal question. “You kill this guy?” I shoved a picture of Scott in the prisoner’s face.
He gave a vigorous shake. He didn’t seem to recognise Scott.
My hunch was he was telling the truth.
Sarah pointed the shotgun at him. “I don’t believe him. You have ten seconds to tell the whole truth or you die.”
“Please!”
“Ten, nine, eight –”
“It’s true!”
“- seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.”
“WE WERE SUPPOSED TO PUT A BUG ON YOUR PHONE! That’s it. That’s it, I swear. We never did it until today, though. That’s why we were hanging around waiting for you to go out. Jesus. I was just obeying Van Morgan’s orders. He just wanted to know who you talked to. We weren’t supposed to hurt you. I swear! I swear! We’re his security team, not hit men.”
“Time to die,” Sarah said.
“Noooo!” he cried.
She pulled the trigger.
The man urinated down his legs.
The shotgun clicked on an empty chamber.
“Guess he is telling the truth,” Sarah said to me, after finding the bug inside her phone. It was a tiny thing that would send out a radio signal to anyone with the right equipment to listen to it. “Van Morgan must have a screw loose or something sending these fools out here. I guess they learned their lesson, though. Right?”
The man nodded.
She said, “Listen up. If you come around here again, you won’t leave. Understand?”
“I do. I do.”
“Good.” She untied him. “First, you can clean up the floor. Second, you can untie your friend. He seems to have fainted.”
“But the blood …”
“You never seen ketchup before?” I said. “First thing you learn in the movie business: how to fake blood.”
Sarah and I walked the men out to their vehicle. It had been hidden a quarter mile away among some trees and bushes. I found a recording device in the glove compartment. I decided to keep it. It would be good evidence if they did try anything later. I didn’t find any weapons, so that part of their story was probably true, too. They were not there to kill her. The two men were terrified of Sarah. They just wanted to escape with their lives. I couldn’t blame them. Her performance had scared me. As a final act of humiliation, we had them strip to their underwear before letting them go.
“Get out of here,” she said.
The semi-naked men drove off like they were trying to escape a nuclear explosion.
We ate breakfast and talked about what we were going to do next. We needed good legal advice, we concluded. But we couldn’t afford that, so Sarah called David Freeman. They arranged a meeting for noon. Then she made some long distance calls. Afterwards, she looked mischievous.
“What have you done?”
“Something I should have thought up aeons back – invited two of my sisters to stay at my place during the summer recess. Joely and Betsy. They can look after the place when I’m not here. The only down side is Joely thinks like a student and make a mess like a student, but I can put up with that.”
“I imagine you can put up with a lot.”
“Damn right. My mom taught me the value of standing up for what’s right. Van Morgan won’t beat me. He’s picked on the wrong lady.”
“About last night …”
“Hmmm?” Sarah said.
“I liked talking to you.”
“You’re not so boring yourself, Mr Hollywood.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Sarah?”
She looked at me.
“You’re beautiful when you’re angry,” I said. “And you’re beautiful when you’re not.” There. It was said. She sucked in a breath, eyes widening. “You’re not going to hit me for saying that, are you?”
“No,” she said, softly.
“I just had to tell you.”
“Um. Thanks.” She made a lopsided grin. “I shouldn’t be saying this because it’ll go straight to your ego – but I find you sort of good-looking for a big Hollywood film star.”
“Is that so?” I smiled.
“Michael?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for staying th
e night.” She kissed my cheek, then drew away as if embarrassed by her show of affection. “You’re not bad company – for an actor.”
I rubbed my cheek. It held the memory of her lips.
We could not look away from each other.
“I would like to kiss you back, Doctor Beck.”
“Then kiss me,” she said.
This is a dream, I thought. She hadn’t just said what I thought she’d said. “Are you sure?” I said.
“Kiss me.”
“Kiss you?”
“Uh-huh. Kiss me.”
She edged forward. I moved forward to meet her, our faces coming closer. My hands brushed the hair from her brow and then went around her neck – being careful to avoid the Band-Aid. Sarah looked directly into my eyes until the moment we kissed, when her eyes closed and she responded to my kiss with hers. She tasted sweet and cool. Her lips, cooled by two glasses of chilled Coca-Cola, felt amazing.
When we parted, my head was reeling with pleasure. We both laughed, unable to say a word.
“That,” I said, “was some kiss.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
We laughed again. I said, “Maybe we should do it again, just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke?”
“I would like that,” Sarah said.
We kissed again.
It started getting passionate.
But then she put her hand on my chest and stopped it. “No. I can’t.” She stepped back, touching her lips. She looked shocked by what she had done. She was breathing heavily, swallowing hard. “That meant nothing, you understand? It was just a kiss.”
“Absolutely nothing ...”
“Nothing at all. A moment of madness.”
“Less than nothing,” I said.
“Less than that even.”
“It made insignificance look significant ...”
“Good,” she said. “Glad we cleared that up. Can’t let kissing get in the way of the things we have to do.”
She turned away and dashed into the house and I wondered what had just happened.
We had both enjoyed kissing. But now she was all business again.