by Rick Copp
“How does Charlie feel about all this?” Laurette said. She knew Charlie had issues with long separations and had been uncharacteristically mum on the subject of me flying the coop for four months.
I shrugged. “I think he’s resigned to it, as usual. But he did promise to take a week off from work and fly over for the opening.”
“Oh, good. Then I’ll have a travel buddy.”
“Larry’s not going to come?”
Laurette shook her head. “He’s close to signing a deal for a Disney movie. And preproduction starts the day after we get home from Maui.”
My ears perked up. Creeps was a complete and utter disaster. How could this be? Laurette was reading my mind.
“I know, I know, but the studio’s desperate. They’ve got a small window for one of their teenage girl stars, and it’s an easy shoot, and they loved Larry’s first independent film. I think they’re all turning a blind eye to his latest opus because they need to get this movie out quick to coincide with the girl’s new pop album.”
Welcome to Hollywood. The only place in the world where people fail and then get promoted. I was happy for Larry. He was a decent guy, a vast improvement over Laurette’s last disastrous relationship. I’d call him later to congratulate him and inquire about any characters in the new movie that might be right for me. That’s what actors call multitasking.
I was suddenly distracted by the television over the bar. Dalt’s was a wide space packed with oversized booths and tables. Laurette and I were seated at the window next to the neon green reversed letters that spelled out “Dalt’s” for the passing cars on Olive Avenue. The restaurant’s bar was clear across the room, but thanks to the laser eye surgery I had performed on me three years ago, I had a crystal-clear view of the TV screen. And what I saw was like a kick in the stomach. There was a news bulletin regarding a violent police shoot-out in Westwood Village, a once-illustrious neighborhood just south of the University of California, Los Angeles campus that lost its upscale luster after a gangbanger shot a bystander standing in line for a movie some years back. Charlie had left the house this morning and told me he was tracking a homicide suspect who worked at a mystery book shop in the Westwood area. The man was suspected of murdering his live-in lover, but the police were having trouble pinning the crime on him. Charlie had been assigned to the case just over a week ago and was working overtime to accumulate enough physical evidence to warrant an arrest.
Laurette noticed me staring and shifted around in her seat to see what I was watching so intently. After a few moments, she spun back around.
“Where’s Charlie?” she said.
I pointed to the television screen. Laurette nodded as her mind raced.
“I think you should call him.”
I fumbled around for my cell phone before realizing I had left it in Laurette’s car. Without waiting for me to explain, Laurette fished hers out of her purse and handed it to me.
I kept staring at the TV screen in a mild state of shock as I began punching numbers into the phone. Two cops down. A suspect holed up in the bookshop armed with a rifle and three hostages. Charlie was going to be okay. Charlie was going to be okay.
Charlie’s deep, gentle voice answered. “This is Charlie . . .” A wave of relief washed over me until I realized I had gotten his voice mail. “Leave a message after the beep.”
I waited and then, in a measured tone, I spoke, trying desperately to conceal my panic. “Hi, sweetheart, it’s me. Been thinking about you. Call me when you get this. Hope you’re having a good day.” I wanted to kick myself. Hope you’re having a good day? What kind of lame way was that to end the call? Whenever my mind was clouded, I always managed to blurt out something stupid.
Lunch was over. There was no way Laurette and I would even be able to pretend everything was fine. She signaled the waitress to bring us our check, then slid out of the booth, dropped a few bills onto the table, and headed for the door. I followed her in a numb state. She didn’t have to tell me where we were going. I knew. Westwood Village.
We climbed into Laurette’s Cadillac SUV and barreled out of the parking structure below Dalt’s and ten floors of office buildings. Laurette decided it would be faster to head over the hill by way of Coldwater Canyon, a stretch of road over a mountain dividing Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. But there was construction near the top of the hill just south of Mulholland Drive, the famous scenic road along the top of the mountain and namesake of David Lynch’s weird cult movie that incredibly garnered a few Oscar nods. Traffic was backed up, and it took the better part of an hour to finally break past it.
I tried calling Charlie’s cell a few more times with no luck. I just kept getting his voice mail. We rode in silence. Laurette tried to break the nervous tension by turning on the radio, but neither of us was in the mood for Ryan Seacrest’s relentlessly chipper, metrosexual, thinly veiled fey personality, so she quickly shut it off.
I had left four messages. Usually by now Charlie would call back. He was never without his cell phone. And even if he was swamped, he would take the ten seconds to ring me back and tell me he would talk to me later. The nerves in my gut continued to grow and expand.
We reached Sunset Boulevard, where Laurette turned right, pressing her foot on the accelerator and weaving around the slower drivers as we raced toward UCLA, took a fast left on Hilgard, a street running parallel to the campus, and shot south toward Westwood Village. Only a few blocks away, my cell phone finally rang. Laurette and I exchanged hopeful looks. I took a breath and answered the phone.
“Charlie?” I said.
“No. Ned Winters.”
Ned was Charlie’s partner. He was about ten years younger than I was, in his mid-twenties, fresh-faced, eager, and unabashedly homophobic. Or at least he was until he was partnered with Charlie. Two weeks in, Ned asked Charlie if the picture of me on his desk was of his brother, and Charlie, almost absentmindedly, replied, “Nope. Boyfriend.” Within minutes, Ned had put in for a transfer. The thought of a gay dude watching his back was unsettling to say the least for the Kansas City native until Charlie saved his life in the line of duty. Ned froze up on a rooftop downtown as they closed in on a sniper. Ned ordered the sniper to drop his rifle. The suspect complied, but simultaneously reached for something tucked away in his belt. Ned waited too long. Charlie didn’t. Charlie took the guy out with one shot. One more second and he would have had the opportunity to fire at Ned and probably kill him. Ned cancelled his transfer request. His then girlfriend Rita, a gorgeous young Latina social worker who is a huge fan of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, also contributed enormously to Ned’s newfound enlightenment over the last few years. Now we double date.
“What’s up, Ned?” I asked warily.
Silence. At first I thought I had lost the call. My cell phone always cut out at the most crucial point in a conversation. I was forever cursing Verizon Wireless.
“Ned?”
“Jarrod . . .” Ned’s voice trailed off. He was still with me. And my heart stopped.
“What, Ned? What? Where’s Charlie?”
“He’s been shot,” Ned said, choking up.
“Where is he?” I was fighting back tears now. This was like a bad dream. One I had been having ever since Charlie and I started dating.
“We’re at UCLA Medical Center,” Ned said. “They just wheeled him into surgery.”
I didn’t need any more details. Those could come later. I just had to get to his side.
I turned to Laurette, who didn’t need an explanation to know what was happening. I told her to get us to the hospital.
“We’ll be there in a few minutes,” I said to Ned before ending the call. I bit down on my lip, determined not to lose it. Charlie was going to need me, so I wasn’t about to unravel.
Laurette, on the other hand, was a complete mess by the time we parked in the covered parking structure adjacent to the hospital. She was sobbing uncontrollably, and I squeezed her hand as we raced up the walkway to the m
ain entrance. I knew she hated herself for not being a pillar of support, but Laurette was an emotional powder keg ready to burst into tears at any given moment, even during a very special episode of Everwood. We charged up to the information desk, found out on which floor they were operating on Charlie, and hurried toward the elevators.
It was the longest three-floor ride I ever endured. Laurette grabbed a tissue out of her purse and wiped away her tears, sniffling and apologizing for not being stronger. I gripped her hand and raised it to my lips and kissed it softly. When the elevator doors opened on our floor, we both took a sharp inhale of breath to steel ourselves for what was to come before stepping out.
The overhead fluorescent lighting was blinding, and the steady procession of nurses and attendants bustling back and forth was confusing and disorienting. I had no idea where to go or what to do.
“Jarrod,” said a familiar voice from behind me.
I turned to see Ned, his eyes red and puffy, walking toward us. He instinctively grabbed me and hugged me. We stood there embracing for what seemed like an eternity. Ned didn’t want to let go. He was almost as upset as I was. When he finally stepped back, tears welling up in his eyes again, he knew what he had to do.
“We’ve been closing in on this suspect for a week. Charlie got a warrant, wanted to search the bookstore where he worked. The guy seemed almost happy to oblige, but when we started looking around the back storage room, we heard him cocking a gun, and before I knew what was happening, he was firing at us. I ducked behind a box of books. Charlie was out in the open. There was nowhere for him to go. By the time I got my gun out and started firing back, Charlie was down.” Ned broke down. “It was my job to keep an eye on the guy. But I didn’t. I blew it.”
Laurette collapsed in a chair and buried her head in her hands.
“How bad is it?” I said, still fiercely determined to keep my cool.
“One bullet in the right arm. Another in the left leg.”
No vital organs. This was a good sign.
Ned brushed away the streaming tears on his face with a forearm. “And one in the chest.”
Everything was dizzy. I had to grab Ned’s shoulder to keep myself steady. It didn’t seem real to me that Charlie might die. That after three years of a sometimes euphoric, sometimes maddening, always loving relationship, he might leave me.
Ned felt compelled to continue even though I had stopped listening. “Somebody heard the shots and called the police. A unit was already in the area, so they arrived within seconds. They managed to distract the shooter long enough for me to drag Charlie out a back door. There were a couple of people still in the store, so he kept them as hostages. He fired a warning shot and hit a patrolman out front. They’ve been trying to reason with him since then, but the guy’s a nutcase.”
“Do you have any idea how long he’s going to be in surgery?” I said.
Ned shook his head. “They haven’t told me anything.”
Down the hall the hostage situation was playing out on a TV mounted on the wall. Word was out that the suspect, cornered and desperate, finally turned the gun on himself. The two hostages ran out of the store physically unharmed but emotionally spent. The ordeal was over. Mine was just beginning.
Once the reporters on TV began verifying Detective Charlie Peters as one of the shooting victims, my phone began ringing nonstop. I shut it off and stuffed it in my back pocket.
Hours passed. Ned’s wife, Rita, joined us and brought takeout from a Greek diner across the street from their apartment building in Silver Lake. The four of us sat in the hallway, quietly contemplating the worst-case scenario of this unexpected tragedy.
Laurette stepped away to call her boyfriend, Larry, to update him on the situation. I called my parents in Florida to break the news. Though my mother, Priscilla, always struggled with me being gay, her love for me was unwavering, and her love for Charlie was equally unshakable. She tried to remain calm for my sake as I relayed the details. My father, Clyde, was the more emotional one of the duo and wept so hard on the phone, my mother asked him to hang up the extension because she couldn’t hear what I was saying. Talking to them was a comfort for the simple fact that it took up time and provided me with a few minutes of relief from my anguished thoughts.
Daylight slipped away, and we sat in the off-white, sterile halls of UCLA Medical Center. Finally, a few minutes before midnight, a young Asian doctor, no more than thirty-five, short and compact, burst through a pair of metal swinging doors and marched toward us. Ned sprang to his feet, signaling to me that this was the man trying to save Charlie’s life.
“I’m Dr. Lee,” he said, his face tight, almost unwilling to give me any hint of Charlie’s condition. “Which one of you is Jarrod?”
I stepped forward. My stomach flip-flopped like a trout on the deck of a fishing boat. Sweat beads formed on my brow. I was squeezing Laurette’s hand so hard I half expected it to break.
“I am,” I said, my voice cracking.
“Charlie’s asking for you,” Dr. Lee said with a warm smile.
Although Dr. Lee was able to remove all three bullets, Charlie remained in the hospital in recovery for three days. When I was finally able to bring him home, he was still in a lot of pain and was confined to his bed. I instantly became a doting Florence Nightingale, running to the pharmacy to stock up on his prescribed pain-relief medications, fixing his favorite meals (okay, picking up the phone and ordering his favorite Indian food dishes for delivery), and making sure the TV remote was within his reach so he could absentmindedly flip between ESPN and MSNBC.
During his surgery, I had plenty of time to consider life without him, and I was determined never to let that happen. Even the possibility of losing someone you love can shake you at the core and force you to reexamine your priorities. Which was why I was totally caught off guard early Friday morning when Wallace Goodwin called me.
“Hey, Jarrod, just checking in. Katrina and I are on Virgin Air. Which airline are you flying?” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “What are you talking about?”
“Your flight to London on Sunday,” he said, a bit perturbed by my distant tone.
“Wallace, didn’t Laurette call you? I’m pulling out of the show. I can’t leave town right now.”
I was standing in the bedroom a few feet from Charlie, who was watching Lester Holt’s midday news update on MSNBC. We both loved Lester with his broad shoulders, chocolate skin, and commanding voice. But even Lester couldn’t hold Charlie’s attention. He was more interested in my conversation with Wallace.
“I’m sure you’re aware that my boyfriend was shot in the line of duty,” I said, turning my back to the patient and lowering my voice.
“Yes, I saw it on the news. But I heard he’s on the mend,” Wallace said. “So what’s the problem?”
“Someone needs to be here to take care of him,” I said. I was about to ask Wallace if he would still go to London if Katrina had been injured. But after seeing their ferocious bickering at Starbucks, I already knew the answer.
“Jarrod, I think you should still go,” Charlie said.
I spun around and vigorously shook my head at Charlie. He wasn’t thinking clearly, a good sign that the painkillers were doing their magic.
“Wallace, I can’t really talk now,” I said.
“I’m serious,” Charlie pressed on. “I want you to keep your commitment to the play.”
He was delirious. Had I accidentally doubled his dose of medication ?
I stared at him a moment before returning to my conversation with Wallace. “I need to call you back.”
“Jarrod, you have a contract,” Wallace wailed before I hung up on him.
I turned to Charlie. “What’s all this about? You trying to get rid of me?”
“Yes,” Charlie said matter-of-factly.
It was like a sharp slap across the face. “Why? What did I do?”
“You’ve been wonderful. I’ve never seen such a dedicated, hardwor
king nursemaid, who hovers over the patient all day and all night, full of good cheer and kind words, and I have to tell you, babe, it’s driving me nuts!”
Snickers, who was curled up next to Charlie on the bed, lifted her head as if to nod in agreement.
“I just want you to be comfortable,” I said.
“I get that. And I appreciate it. But I miss my boyfriend. The self-absorbed, sarcastic, career-obsessed former child star that I fell in love with,” he said with a sly smile. “And believe me, when you always put my needs first, it’s like I don’t know you anymore.”
I didn’t know whether to hug him or hit him.
“Who will take care of you if I go?” I was already warming to the idea, since it meant so much to Charlie.
“I already called Isis. She’s available. And back in Cairo she worked part-time as a candy striper at an American GI hospital.”
“How long have you been plotting to get rid of me?” I said, still not sure if his burning desire to get me out of the country was a good thing.
“Since the moment you blew off a callback for Crossing Jordan to go buy me a new bedpan,” he said. “That’s just not right.”
I looked him over, trying to determine if he was just saying all of this because he didn’t want me moping over giving up the play in London. But he was dead serious. I had gone overboard trying to take care of him because I was so frightened by the prospect of not having him around anymore. I was suffocating him, and he was just trying to come up for some air. And the best way for him to do that was to make sure I was on that plane to the UK on Sunday.
“So you’re sure Isis will move in and be here at all times?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “She predicts I’ll recover in no time.”
Isis was not only a dear friend but also a dead-on psychic whose accuracy rate was astounding.
“Did she happen to mention if the play is going to be a success ?”
Charlie broke into a wide smile. “He’s back!”