by Tim Downs
The nurse put a hand on her shoulder. “No, Ms. Pelton—now.”
34
Welcome back on this fine Thursday,” Oprah said as the applause died down and the camera moved in for a tight shot of the host and her guest. “This is our fourth conversation with writer and movie star Liv Hayden, author of the new book It’s All About You. Liv, thanks for joining us again.”
“It’s a privilege, really,” Hayden said. Then she turned to the audience and asked, “Is this a wonderful woman or what?”
The audience poured out their appreciation.
Kemp aimed the remote at the TV and turned up the volume a little. He took a quick glance at his watch—what time was that MRI again? Three, three thirty, something like that . . . He had time to catch part of the show. Shoot, they’d probably have to spend at least an hour filling out paperwork and insurance forms anyway—no sense rushing over there just to sit like a lump in some waiting room. Sure, he could TiVo the show and watch it later, but when? Not when Natalie was around—that would just lead to another fight, and he didn’t need the grief right now. Besides, the show was live; his brilliant plan was coming to fruition right before his eyes, and he deserved the chance to watch it happen in real time.
He settled back on the sofa.
Oprah looked out at the audience. “Folks, Liv Hayden’s colossal new book It’s All About You was just released today—it’s officially in bookstores right now. Liv, do you think you’re ready?”
“I think so. We’re doing a big book signing over at the—”
“I mean are you ready for the new platform? Are you ready for the influence?”
“I’m not really sure,” Hayden admitted humbly. “It feels like such an awesome responsibility. I didn’t ask to be a messenger—I didn’t want this role—it was just given to me.”
“And I’m the one who gave it to you,” Kemp said to the TV. “So why don’t you just stick to the message the way I wrote it?”
“Tell us what else we can expect from the book,” Oprah said. “What else did the angel say to you? Come on, Liv—whet our appetites.”
Hayden wiggled her eyebrows. “Well—we talked about love.”
Someone shouted “Woo!” from the back of the audience and a wave of eager laughter rippled across the studio.
Kemp sat up a little straighter.
“You’re kidding,” Oprah said. “An angel talked with you about your love life?”
“About my lack of a love life,” Hayden corrected.
“Excuse me? You’re Liv Hayden—you’ve had more men than any three women I know.”
“Quantity isn’t quality,” Hayden said. “I think the angel knew that. He told me I was lonely.”
“Are you?”
“At the risk of sounding pathetic—yes, I’ll admit it. I’ve been busy—my film career has demanded my complete attention for years. A career can be hard on relationships.”
“I know something about that,” Oprah said.
So did the audience—they applauded in agreement.
“The angel told me that I’ve been searching for a special man all my life, but I haven’t found him yet. He told me he would help me find him.”
Encouraging applause from the crowd.
Kemp grinned. “Don’t thank me, ladies—it’s the least I can do.”
“Did the angel tell you how you’ll recognize this man when you meet him?”
“As a matter of fact, he did. The angel told me exactly what he looks like—he even told me what he’ll say.”
Oprah leaned closer.
Hayden shook her head. “And that’s all I’m going to tell you.”
The audience let out a disappointed groan.
Hayden turned to the audience. “C’mon now—if I describe this man on national television I’ll have every look-alike in America knocking on my door. I don’t need that kind of distraction; I have to find this guy.”
“Do you want to find him? Are you ready for a new relationship?”
“I think it’s time,” Hayden said. “There’s only so much a career can give you. Besides, the angel said this will be the perfect man for me—my one true love. How often does a girl get a tip like that?”
Kemp was grinning from ear to ear. It was perfect—everything he had told her was locked into her memory, right down to the description and password. You beautiful genius, he said to himself. He was a true visionary—that’s what set him apart from the other partners. The other three couldn’t see past Hayden’s money; Kemp was the only one clever enough to realize that he could have Hayden herself.
“I understand,” Oprah said, “so I won’t press you for any more details. Good luck finding this perfect man, Liv—you deserve him. Okay, let’s change the subject. What else did the angel tell you—when you weren’t discussing your love life, that is?”
“Well—he told me that it’s very important to love yourself.”
“Good girl,” Kemp said. “That was in the script—keep going.”
“The angel said that by loving yourself, you demonstrate to other people that you’re a lovable person. In some mysterious way, by loving yourself you give other people permission to love you.”
The audience responded with a solemn “Hmmm.”
Kemp nodded with satisfaction. “Almost verbatim—now that’s more like it.”
Then Hayden looked thoughtfully into the air above Oprah’s head. “But now that I think about it, there was something else.”
Kemp stiffened.
“The angel said that it actually works the other way around. He said that when someone loves you, it proves to you that you’re lovable—and that frees you to love someone else. He said that the more you feel loved, the more loving you become.”
Kemp jumped to his feet. He hurled a sofa pillow at the TV and knocked a potted philodendron to the floor with a crash. “There you go again! Stop ad-libbing, woman! Just tell it the way I told you!”
Oprah paused. “That sounds like another one of those paradoxes.”
“You’re right,” Hayden said, “it does.”
“She’s the paradox!” Kemp shouted. “She’s supposed to be an actress, but she’s got a memory like a third grader at a spelling bee!”
“You know,” Oprah said, “those thoughts seem so different that they almost sound like two voices.”
“It’s funny you should mention that,” Hayden said. “There was a second voice.”
Kemp’s jaw dropped.
“I just remembered something this morning, and I wasn’t sure I should tell anyone.”
“Remembered what?” Oprah asked.
Kemp sank back down on the sofa. “Yeah—remembered what?”
“It just came back to me—there was a second angel.”
Oprah blinked at her. “Two angels?”
“Oh, no,” Kemp moaned. “What now?”
“There were two of them,” Hayden said. “It was all jumbled together at first, but now it’s becoming clear to me. It was just one voice at first; then there were two voices; then two faces.”
Kemp shook his head in disbelief. “Where’s she going with this?”
“Did the voices sound different?” Oprah asked.
“One of them sounded deeper, I think.”
“Older, maybe?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure.”
“Are angels different ages?” Oprah looked at the audience for an answer, but no one seemed to have one.
“I don’t know,” Hayden said. “I never thought about it before.”
“What about their faces?”
“I couldn’t see them clearly. They were mostly silhouettes—it was like staring into the sun. But I did notice one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“One of them was white—the other one was black.”
35
Emmet returned the mop to the wall hook and draped his pair of yellow rubber gloves over the edge of the pail. All of a sudden the custodian’s closet grew dark and he heard
the door click shut behind him. He turned in the darkness and looked down at the floor; he could see the silhouette of two shoes dividing the sliver of light below the door into a dash-dot-dash. A moment later there was the click of a light switch and a single overhead bulb illuminated the face of a very angry man.
“You,” the man growled in a guttural tone.
“Mr. Kemp,” Emmet said. “We got to stop meeting like this, you and me. Folks will start to talk.”
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Beg pardon?”
“The second angel—the black one—it was you. It had to be.”
Emmet slowly smiled.
“How dare you,” Kemp sputtered. “You had no right to go poking your nose where it didn’t belong.”
“Talk about the pot calling the kettle black,” Emmet said.
“I had a plan. You weren’t part of it.”
“Seems to me that movie star could say the same to you.”
“You knew what I was doing, didn’t you? You figured it out that night when you walked in on me. When I upped her medication again—when I went on my break to let it take effect—you came in after I left. You put on the white gown—you stood in front of the light—you put your own two cents’ worth in before she had time to go back into her coma. I’ll bet you did it every night.”
“I thought the woman could use a second opinion. It’s a hospital, after all.”
“You idiot! Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“I believe I do. Do you?”
“My plan was perfect and you almost ruined it.”
“You call that ‘perfect’? Feeding the woman a lot of nonsense and makin’ her believe a messenger of the Lord told it to her?”
“Nobody asked you.”
“Nobody asked you either, but you jumped right in feet-first—so I did too.”
“You sly old fox,” Kemp said. “Wandering around the ICU night after night, pushing your little mop and bucket like a doddering old fool, pretending to be just some half-wit trying to make enough money for bus fare back to East L.A.”
“Pushing a mop and bucket is what I do,” Emmet said. “It’s honest work, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of—you should try it sometime. And as for ‘pretending to be a half-wit,’ I did no such thing. You thought me a half-wit because of my age and my job—maybe even the color of my skin. That makes you the half-wit in my book.”
Kemp shook his head in disgust. “A janitor. Who would have thought?”
“You’re confusing what a man is with what a man does—big mistake, Mr. Kemp. You don’t know me; you don’t know who I am or where I’m from or what I can do.”
“I guess I underestimated you.”
“You looked right through me, that’s what you did. Happens to folks like me all the time—the invisible man.”
“Believe me, it won’t happen again.”
“We’ll see.”
Kemp looked him over carefully. “What is it you want, old man?”
“No more than I’m entitled to.”
“You’re not entitled to anything.”
“I don’t see it that way. We both gave that woman a message; you just figured out a way to get that message published.
The way I see it, part of that message belongs to me.”
“But the whole thing was my idea.”
“Take your idea to the bank and see if they’ll cash it for you. Folks will be payin’ for the message, not for your bright idea. Half that message is mine.”
“Half? Are you kidding? Hayden barely even remembers you. She’s been on Oprah for four days, and she just mentioned you for the first time.”
“Give the woman time. It’ll come back to her.”
“Besides, your message didn’t even make it into the book, and the book is where the money comes from. Why should we pay you?”
Emmet arched one eyebrow. “‘We’?”
Kemp hesitated. “The partners.”
“I wondered about that. I didn’t think you could manage to pull off something like this all by yourself. Tell me, who are these partners of yours—or should I say, ‘partners of ours’?”
“They’re my partners, and it’s none of your business.”
“I say it is.”
“How much do you want, Emmet? I figure five percent tops, maybe less when you consider—”
“I was thinkin’ half.”
Kemp’s mouth dropped open. “Are you out of your mind? There’s no way on earth you’re getting half!”
“Seems fair to me. Maybe I was too late to make it into the first book, but everything I told Ms. Hayden’ll make it into the next one—the ‘sequel’ I think they call it. Think it over, Mr. Kemp: I did you and your partners a big favor. You gave her enough for one book, but I gave her enough for another—and that one’s bound to make even more money than the first. I think that’s worth half, don’t you?”
“Look—you can’t—there’s no way—”
“There’s no point in arguing with you. I want to talk to the partners—all of them.”
“The partners? Why?”
“Because you don’t negotiate with a middleman—that’s a waste of time.”
“I’m not a ‘middleman.’”
“Are you the one who writes the checks?”
Kemp didn’t reply.
Emmet nodded. “I want to talk to the partners.”
“Well, they don’t want to talk to you,” Kemp said.
“Yes, they do—they just don’t know it yet. When they find out who I am—that I know what you did and I know how you did it—they’ll talk to me. They’ll talk to me because they want to keep me happy—’cause if I’m not happy, I just might tell somebody what I know.”
“Is that a threat?”
“I’m just negotiating—that’s what you wanted, isn’t it? ‘Negotiating’ just means making sure everybody’s happy. You want me to be happy, don’t you, Mr. Kemp? Then let me talk to your partners—we’ll work out something that’ll make all of us happy. I promise.”
“What if I refuse?”
“Then I won’t be happy. You don’t want that.”
“What if they refuse to meet with you?”
“Why take that chance? Let’s surprise ’em. They might not like the idea at first, but once we all have a chance to sit down and talk I’m sure we’ll get along just fine.”
Kemp paused. “When?”
“The sooner the better. Tonight works for me.”
“Tonight? Impossible.”
“The sooner the better, Mr. Kemp—once your boys hear what I have to say, I think they’ll agree. Why not give ’em a call? Tell ’em you got some emergency. Just make somethin’ up—you’re good at that. The sooner we get this thing worked out, the sooner we can all rest easy.”
Kemp stared at the wall above Emmet’s head . . .
“Well?”
“Take your lunch break at one,” Kemp said. “Meet me in the lobby.”
“I’ll be there,” Emmet said. “You know, I believe I feel happier already.”
36
It was just after one a.m. when Kemp and Emmet stepped into O’Hara’s bar on Gayley Avenue in the heart of Westwood Village, just three blocks south of UCLA Medical Center. The bouncer at the door let them pass without a second look; he was busy explaining the legal drinking age to a belligerent young man with a phony ID. When the door opened, blinding neon light from the Fox Theatre across the street poured into the room ahead of them. The bar was impossibly crowded despite the late hour, with UCLA students jammed around every table and packing every corner. The ceiling seemed low and the room looked dingy and worn. The walls were covered with black-framed photographs of famous patrons and celebrities and UCLA luminaries from years past, and a dozen plasma-screen TVs presented obscure sporting events from all over the globe. The noise was almost overwhelming—a deafening din of laughter and catcalls accompanied by a sound track of classic rock anthems and forgettable ’80s tunes. No one in
the bar seemed to mind the noise. No one noticed anything beyond their immediate circle of friends—so no one noticed as Kemp and Emmet worked their way toward a table where three other older men were already seated.
Emmet leaned over to Kemp. “It smells like feet in here.”
“College bar,” Kemp shouted back. “They always do.”
Biederman, Wes, and Tino Gambatti sat at a table in the corner of the room. They seemed to hunch over the table slightly, as if they were huddling around a campfire for warmth. They all looked at Kemp as he approached the table—then all eyes immediately shifted to Emmet.
No one said a word.
“Guys, this is Emmet,” Kemp said simply.
Emmet nodded a polite greeting but offered no explanation for his presence; he simply pulled out a chair and sat down. Kemp did the same.
All three men turned to Kemp for an explanation, but Kemp was busy trying to get the attention of a waitress.
Biederman tried to ignore the old man. “Is this your idea of a meeting place, McAvoy?”
“I don’t have much time,” Kemp said. “This place is walking distance from the Med Center. It’s one of the only places in Westwood open this late.”
“My shoes are sticking to the floor.”
“O’Hara’s is a Bruin hangout. All the kids come here.”
“I can see that.” Biederman turned and looked behind him; a young woman was dancing enthusiastically, though no one seemed to be dancing with her.
“We can talk here,” Kemp said. “There’s less chance of being overheard than there is on the street.”
“I believe you,” Biederman said. “I can’t even hear myself.”
An attractive young waitress sidled up to their table and set a check down in front of Kemp. “Hey, fellas, how you doing tonight? What can I bring you?”
“What’s good?” Kemp asked for the group.
“We’ve got Miller Lite on the cheap tonight—eight bucks for two liters. The Irish nachos are good too—great combination.”
“It was a great combination forty years ago,” Biederman replied. “Today it would eat through my stomach like battery acid. Can I get a glass of white wine, sweetheart?”