by Owen Thomas
“You know the shit storm this will cause? I mean we’re already…”
“Fix it Blair. You wanted me, you’ve got me. You’ve fixed everything else, so fix whatever is left. Angus is stuck with me, but you tell him he won’t be sorry.”
There was a long pause. I listened to him thinking.
“You read it then?” he finally whispered.
“Yes. Just now.”
“Fuckin’ brilliant, yeah?”
“Brilliant.”
I hung up the phone and sat back down at the kitchen table. I flipped back through the script, spot reading here and there. I thought of Angus; the man who had written the words that lay in my hands and who thought me unworthy to speak them.
Ivanova has a certain moral rectitude about her, Blair had said, more than implying that I did not have a certain moral rectitude. I knew the pressure would be on to do Ivanova justice, on and off the set. I knew also that Blair would not abandon his ulterior motives and that he would feel more emboldened than he had in a very long time. He had something I needed and that I wanted to keep. That would be his leverage. And yet, any step by me in that direction, aside from prostituting myself, would risk so offending Angus Mann that he would almost certainly insist on recasting Ivanova again and forever.
As if Blair’s designs were not enough of a challenge, I knew that the media obsession with the love triangle that was me and Zack West and Maria Beckwith would endure as long as Pryce Point was in production and would likely resurface once the promotion junkets began. The overlap of the two movies would, by itself, cause Angus enough heartburn to second-guess his willingness to give me the job, assuming Blair was even able to talk him back into it.
But as difficult as I knew all of those complications would ultimately prove to be, I was determined to do Ivanova justice. The more disturbed I imagined Angus over the prospect of my involvement, the more determined I became. I knew his fidelity to Ivanova; that when he dreamed, he dreamed of her. I knew because I felt the same and I was willing to hold the stench of myself under his nose to prove it to him.
Of course, at that point, pacing away the early morning, unable to sleep in the excitement, wanting a cigarette but mightily resisting the urge, considering my future in a way I had not in many months, I had not anticipated the sex scandal. And while there was no way I could have known about the video, that fact would prove to be excruciatingly irrelevant. But then, generally speaking, sex scandals – as much in Hollywood as in Columbus – do have a way of making every other light in the universe dim.
CHAPTER 37 – David
I halfway expect Glenda to return and part of me is waiting for the thudding against my front door. It is a silly notion, since it is now nearly two o’clock in the morning and there would be no purpose for her returning except to demand a pound of my flesh to pay down my debt. And yet this is precisely what I am afraid of.
Not precisely.
It is not so much that Glenda will demand sex, which is bad enough, but that I will relent to the demand. That’s what really scares me. I am afraid to hear the knock and to feel a sense of relief at the triumph of cowardice and depravity. I fear that I secretly want this to happen; that I welcome the deepening of my well of shame and the compounding of the bad judgment that has necessitated a lawyer in the first place with the decision to have sex with said lawyer in order to pay the bill. I fear that I am capable of anything that will obviate the need to ask my father for what could easily come to many tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees.
But, for better or worse, there is no knock.
I find the energy to drag myself off the couch and head for the bedroom. The answering machine on the kitchen counter is dark. No messages waiting. I almost continue on my way, but then I remember the pile of mail on the coffee table and I stop. If Detective North felt comfortable rooting through my mail, what would have stopped him from listening to my messages? I push play. Sure enough.
Hey Dave. It’s Till. Long time no talk. You doing okay? Sorry I missed you. Listen, I need your help with something. I got another part. Another good one, I think. Mom probably told you. Blaire Gaines is directing. Not bad huh? It’s based on one of those old Angus Mann stories. Remember The Lion Tree? It’s another independent art house picture. Anyway, sorry, I’m blabbing. Gaines is shooting some of my scenes in Tunisia and Kenya and I need a passport and a physical, and for that I need my birth certificate and my shot records. They’re at mom and dad’s. Mom’s out at that spa thing in Peebles… uh, side note… what the fuck is that all about? Did you see that coming? Not me. Things must be worse at home than I thought. I’ve gotten so I just kind of tune her out, you know? Anyway, I digress... again. I need these records and I really am not interested in dealing with dad. Can you just go over there and get them and send them to me? The production company still needs to expedite the passport application and the insurance guy gave me a bunch of forms. I’ve never been anywhere and suddenly I’m going to Africa. And I’m going to meet Angus Mann. What a hoot. Call me on my cell.
Beeeep.
Hi David. It’s mom. Wanted you to know I’m still out here at Peebles. The spa is just lovely whether or not we actually get anything accomplished. They’ve got some gals from Move-On-Dot-Org showing up in a couple of days so that should be interesting. Anyway, I talked to your father. You can imagine what level of support I got from him on the issue. He sounded to me like he had been drinking. He said he hasn’t seen or heard from you. I know you’re working now but will you just go over there later?
I’m going. I’m going.
Why don’t you ask Mae to join you over there for dinner, just the four of you. I’m sure she could make something simple or you could bring over take-out or something. It would be good for her to see Ben again anyway, so this thing that happened doesn’t – you know – become some big deal. She just needs to be around him more. She’ll get used to him. Come to think of it, I should have her number in my purse. Maybe I’ll just call her and suggest it. I know if she goes, you’ll go.
Oh fuck me. No, mom. Please. For the love of God…
Okay dear. Got to run. Love you.
Beeeep.
Hey DJ. It’s me. I’m in town. Just wanted to see if you were in. Thought I might drop by and see how things are going. Thought maybe you would be so kind as to share your corn chips if you know what I mean. Guess I missed you. Catch you next time. Give me a call. Go Green Waves!
Beeeep.
I stare at the stupid black box of disembodied voices and unbidden anxieties, waiting for something I cannot fathom. My brain hurts from a toxic over-abundance of pre-occupation. My career. My freedom and the included concern of showering in prison. The newspaper articles not yet written. My good name. Okay, my father’s good name. My solvency or lack thereof. My indentured sexual servitude. The blooming of … of … of something despicable between my erstwhile friend and my make-believe prospective fiancée. The impending – or recent – conversation in which my well-intentioned mother invites my make-believe prospective fiancé to prepare dinner for my father and his two sons – the one whom she has secretly betrayed and the one who has not so secretly beaten our furniture with her skull. The painful juxtaposition of my younger sister, who is collecting nominations and jet-setting to Africa with famous writers and directors, and me, who has neither the money nor the transportation necessary to bail my Civic out of the Columbus City Impound. The fact that I am now on a first-name basis with Columbus law enforcement personnel and a jailbird named Stevie, chairman of the Genial Genitalia Parks and Recreation Society. My father’s looming confirmation that I am still the living antithesis of his ambition and achievement; that I am still the greatest failure of his life. I have cemented Tilly’s dual distinction in my family as the “the smart one” and “the achiever.”
End of messages.
* * *
I wake to the sound of the garbage truck making its way up the street. So it is already late morning. I have memories of a
fitful sleep. I dreamed bears were chasing me through the hallways of Wilson High. They were trying to stuff me in a locker with Brittany Kline. But first they wanted my money and my underpants.
I get up and shower. Make some coffee and toast. I skim the paper for my own name and likeness. Finding nothing, I am relieved but I fear that the shock of reading about myself is surely coming one of these days. I work the crossword until I feel sufficiently stupid and ready to call it a day. As I am headed back to bed the phone rings.
“Hey,” says Sissy Lewis.
“Hey yourself.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit, nothing.”
“I need a ride.”
“When?”
“Now. Whenever.”
“Where?”
“Columbus Impound lot for narcotic-loving pothead stupid-ass fucks.”
“Oooo, baby! You and that car.”
“You don’t even know.”
“Talk to me.”
“Remember that certain herbal remedy I …acquired … from you…”
“Oh no.”
“… because you were headed out to Wright-Patterson …”
“Oh no.”
“…and you did not think the US Air Force German Shepherds would really appreciate herbal remedies? You know, because of their sensitive noses?”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes.”
“Hell’s bells. I’ll be there in one hour.”
She is at my door in just over forty-five minutes, which I take to mean she has taken a few liberties with the traffic laws. Not that I am in any position to judge.
“David,” she says in perfunctory greeting.
“Caitlin.”
She pushes past me through the door and heads down the hall towards the living room, the heels of her shit-kickers knocking against the floor. She is in her black baseball cap and her hair is behind her ears in that way of hers. Ripped khaki cargos and a white t-shirt. I close the door and follow her down the hall in a current of fresh air. She is sitting on the edge of the couch, arms on her knees.
“You were busted.”
“Yep.”
“They got the shit.”
“Yep.”
“All of it.”
“Yep.”
“And you had all of it in your car because…”
“I had a little in my car. Hardly any really, because I spent some time up at Lake Moreland watching the ducks. That took care of most of that.”
“A little.”
“Yeah. A little. I’m not an idiot.”
“So…”
“Search warrant.”
“For the house?”
“Yep.”
“Get the fuck….”
“No shit, Cee Cee. They turned the place upside down. They took it. I’m really sorry. God, am I sorry; I could seriously use a hit right now. I spent four hours in a cell. They booked me for felony possession.”
She stares at me open-jawed and my own words almost knock me off my feet. Booked… for… felony… possession. Caitlin looks at the over-turned box in front of her and I can see on her face that she knows I am not shitting her.
“No, David,” she says finally, standing up. She approaches me and wraps her hands up around my shoulders. “No, David. I’m sorry. I should never have left it with you. Oh my God. I can’t believe it. Oh Dave.”
She pulls me into her rubbing the back of my neck. I reciprocate the hug, pulling her up as much as she had pulled me down. She is warm against me. I feel a welling of pent up emotion. My eyes are filling up. I want to cry. Not weep. Cry. Wail. Sob. Really let it all out. But I cannot. I am not programmed for such displays, and certainly not in front of women. I prolong the hug until I can pull it together. When I am back in control, I stand and because I still cannot look at her, I busy myself stuffing the strewn fish supplies back in their box. I cram the box back up on the shelf in the hall closet.
“They really got a search warrant?” She is still by the table, hands on her hips.
“Yeah. And for the car.”
“How’d they know?”
“What?”
“How’d they know to look for drugs here?”
“They didn’t. They weren’t looking for drugs.” I realize too late that I am committing to tell her the whole miserable story. “I mean maybe they weren’t. I don’t know. Let’s just go get my stupid car.”
“Then what were they looking for?”
“…”
“Dave?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Probably the drugs.”
“Dave.” The way she says it, with a light breath of the Deep South filling the vowel, my name sounds soft, like water or fur, and I cannot keep from looking at her. Her expression is one of compassion and invitation and patience. The room fills with water and my nose starts to run.
“Fuck.” I wipe my nose on my sleeve.
“Dave.”
* * *
Every now and then there is a cluster of small clouds that billow by like a regatta I am watching from space. Mostly I stare up at a perfect blue sky framed in a rubber-lined rectangle sunroof with rounded corners. Caitlin Carson Lewis drives with the windows of the vanbulance down and there is a steady movement of warm air around my face. The sound of traffic is whizzing past on all sides. When I pull my eyes from the sky above I can see the world out the back window, spinning away from me. Cars jockey for position, advancing and fading away. Earth is a planetary treadmill. I feel that I am in danger of not keeping pace; of just running out of steam and dropping flat onto the face of the spinning ball and being ejected, spit out like a seed, punching a hole through the blue sky and spinning out into the starry blackness beyond, never to be heard from again.
The white delivery van is unhappy with our leisurely pace and jerks away into the other lane. A green worse-for-wear Subaru takes its place and then follows. I hear him buzz up and away past my shoulder. The road behind is now open and I have a clear view of the landscape of the past, the places I have just been, second-by-second, so seamlessly connected to the place I inhabit now… and now… and now, each fraction of each millisecond of my life instantly an immutable, eternal, historical fact finding its place in the big picture. The broken yellow line is marking time. History in the making unfurls out from beneath me and hardens in the distance before my eyes.
Having insisted that I strap myself into the gurney and then setting off for the city, Cee Cee says almost nothing, letting me talk; letting the story come in whatever way it wants to come. And come it does, in all of its relentlessly horrifying and humiliating detail. At each turn in the tale, I revise the list of details that she does not need to hear. She does not need to know everything that transpired at Billy Rocks. She does not need to hear about Mae and Shepp. She does not need to hear me whine about Glenda Laveau. She does not need to hear about my father and The Vanguard. None of that really pertains to the basic facts. She has asked about my current troubles; a basic accounting of what I am feeling today and of what happened yesterday. She does not need all of it. So I resolve to leave these details out. I push them aside in my mind and talk around them. But I cannot selectively extract the details any more than I can keep one yellow dash from following another out into the widening landscape behind me. It takes all of my resolve to tell the story without losing my composure. I have no resolve left over to filter the details. So she gets it all. It comes as it comes, in a projectile stream of consciousness that follows no principle of organization or coherence. It is a kind of retching, plain and simple, with all of the internal violence and the stench of bile.
When I am done, we ride in silence. She gives no clue what she is thinking; probably that there was more than just mindless vandalism behind the epithet sprayed across my car. How could she be sure of anything? She doesn’t know me. Not really. What would I think? Someone I barely know asks me for a ride to the police impound-lot after a felony booking and tells me the
cops and the school district have it all wrong?
We are stopping and starting and turning frequently, and I can see the streets of Columbus proper passing behind me. I have no idea how to get to the impound lot. I think I know where she is going, but then she turns and then turns again and I have no idea so I stop trying to figure it out. I close my eyes and let her drive. When I open them again I recognize the buildings of South High Street out the back windows. She turns onto Whittier and crosses the railroad tracks. I see the Scioto flowing in a muddy-gray serpentine off to the right. I un-strap myself and sit up. I am slightly nauseous which I blame in equal parts on a narrative that has forced me to assess just how fucked-up my life really is, and riding backward. Caitlin parks the rig and saunters back, sitting on the gurney next to me. She explores the rip in the leg of her pants with a finger.
“So?” I ask. God she smells good. What is that smell?
“So thanks for sharing.”
“That’s all?”
“What exactly were you expecting?”
“I…I don’t know. I kind of bared my soul there. Sympathy maybe.”
“Sympathy you’ve got, Dave.” She squeezes my knee and looks at me with a restrained smile. She pulls her hat off and runs her fingers through her hair. “I’m dyin’ of sympathy over here. But sympathy is the last thing you need.”
“Fine.” My tone is bitchy and this makes her smile a little less restrained. “It was your weed, you know. You gave it to me.”
“I know I did. So I’ve got a whole lot of remorse to go along with the sympathy. But that’s not going to do much for you either.”
“Okay, so what good are you?”
“Not much, I’m afraid.” She puts the hat back on her head and stands up.
“I’m going to drop Glenda Laveau. I’ve got to. Don’t you think? I mean, I just don’t have what she needs. Any of it. I’ll get a public defender. Tomorrow. Maybe today. No way do I keep Glenda on this. She’ll be up to a hundred grand in no time if this thing goes the distance. I’m not putting my parents through that. How could I? Hell, it’s better if they don’t even know.”