by Brian Hodge
Maybe there had been no practical reason for his calling Connolly, yet he had needed it as surely as he needed exercise. And if he couldn’t have explained precisely why, well, sometimes instincts defied explanation.
On some level, it helped him to better understand Duncan MacGregor. Last evening on the deck, while they talked past nightfall, he had been on the verge of asking Duncan the same thing he’d already asked Dawn, for which he hadn’t gotten a straight answer: Why am I here with you? Why did you come hundreds of miles to track me down?
But the later they talked, the more it seemed possible to Jamey that this was the reason right here: Duncan simply needed to be heard. He’d had nearly a year’s buildup of things to say and no one to say them to, no one besides Dawn, but Jamey knew that for all the love you might feel for someone, there are times when you need another pair of ears. Maybe it took a performer to recognize that, to understand it so innately.
So who better to seek out, then, than the one guy who has already tried climbing inside your skin?
There were things about him that Jamey never could have guessed until now—mainly the impression that Duncan wasn’t just running from the law, he was running from the twenty-first century. It was there in the mead and the swords, in the distant dreaming of his eye when he spoke of Rob Roy MacGregor.
Jamey thought he had him down now, what made him tick. Woke up one morning to realize he was born in the right body, just the wrong era. Duncan meeting with his high school guidance counselor after taking an aptitude test: I’m sorry, but according to this, you should’ve been born in 1650…and our tests never lie.
Or roll it back even further, early incarnations of each other crossing paths in Elizabethan London, Duncan watching him onstage with William Shakespeare and company. Duncan has paid his admission with a coin from a purse stolen on a road miles away. On the bill, Titus Andronicus, and he applauds the bloody mayhem louder than anyone. An extra spring in his step as he departs the theater for a vulgar evening with tavern wenches. A newborn patron of the arts, he buys a round for the theater troupe, and an unlikely friendship is forged.
The mocha was down to a sweet slush by the time Jamey found the public green where he would be meeting Samantha in the morning. Twenty-four hours to go before life took a big step toward restoration.
Sam knew Sedona, he didn’t. This central spot had been her suggestion, rather than following directions to the condo, and a better idea anyway. With their plans for the past week in wreckage, setting eyes on each other again was going to feel awkward enough without compounding it by immediately forcing her into the company of strangers. Even though she and Dawn had spoken already, Dawn sweet-talking her way past Sam’s father last evening, Jamey’s Trojan Horse into their home.
Samantha couldn’t have driven down from Flagstaff any too soon, but she’d had greater foresight than he, knowing that even if she had managed to borrow one of her parents’ vehicles last night, under pretense, she would never have wanted to leave Sedona after a few short hours. When she came, she wanted to be able to stay.
So luck was with them in this much, at least. Later this afternoon Sam and her father would be going to Phoenix so she could retrieve her own car, released by the state crime lab. With this in place, the rest of the subterfuge was easy enough to cobble together: tell her parents that she would be leaving for L.A. on Friday morning, then detour instead to Sedona.
Ignorance kept more peace in families than blunt truth ever had.
24
TEN minutes late to the Fabiolus Cafe, Melissa trusted that the Variety reporter would already have arrived. One scan of the room and the guessing game was done. The lone female at a polished wooden table looking at her watch just had to be Jenna Hartigan. She was blonde, but had no choice—the name Jenna radiated blondeness—with a shortish, tousled cut that the word kicky had been coined for. She looked cute as a button and nosier than a five-year-old.
With a deep breath, Melissa put on her game face. Sitting here under orders from Mickey, having to smile and pretend to be Jamey’s adoring sister and public relations shill…if she got through this and could say it had been merely miserable, she would be doing great.
In the plus column, there were worse things than being seen at the Fabiolus. By day, it was always brimming over with Paramount honchos and honchettes. Every few moments a live conversation went on hold at the chirp of a cell phone. But it still hit her as incongruent, given the dollar figures routinely at stake, the simplicity of the places favored by the players for their lunch hours. The mottled ochre walls looked as though they’d been painted with a rag and flown over from Italy.
She and Jenna were barely into small talk before being set upon by the wait staff, good-natured, fresh-faced SoCal immigrants just waiting to be discovered. They seemed like such innocents that Melissa couldn’t resist tampering with their heads—smiling at them a beat too long, with a look implying she was in on some secret they weren’t. She perused the menu and found it apropos to order, for starters, a bottle of Pellegrino water.
“In honor of the latest fallen deputy to have the misfortune of running across my brother,” Melissa explained to Jenna, after the bottle had arrived.
“Ooo, that’s right, that was his name. This could be an omen.”
Melissa steepled her fingers and peered across the table. “Do you believe in omens?” Saying it as though she’d instead asked if Jenna believed in fairies.
“I believe,” Jenna declared, “in career advancement at any cost.”
What a delightful unexpected answer. Melissa lifted her bubbly water in a toast. “And by any, you do mean any, right?”
“Well…within reason.”
“Ah, reason,” said Melissa, disappointed now. “The word that left a thousand ships safely docked in harbor.”
Jenna and her attention span zeroed in as if scenting meat. “Can I quote you on that? I’d have to rework the context, but we can go on the record now?”
“Think of me as your fountain of sound bites,” Melissa told her, and out came the micro-size recorder, standing at center-table.
“Just for background,” Jenna said, “how did you start working for Mickey Coffman? And had you and Jamey always planned on working in the industry?”
“No, these were accidents. Los Angeles was Jamey’s Mecca before I ever got here. We grew up in Portland. Oregon, not Maine. I was still there after getting married, and then three years ago Neal—my husband at the time—took a transfer down here with the software company he was working for. Two years ago we split, and by then I was working for a law office. And wrote my own divorce papers, I’m proud to say. You have no idea of the liberating power of that.
“Anyway, last fall, that’s when Mickey got busy on his third divorce. We handled it. Handled his first two, too, I found out. At the same time, he was looking for a new assistant, and he ended up headhunting me away from the place. The last thing Mickey wants in an assistant is a film school degree. He says they’re untrainable at that point.”
“Wasn’t it intimidating? I mean, he does have a reputation for being…”
“A demigod, with extra wrath?” Melissa finished for her. “No, I had the advantage of going into it completely ignorant. He was just this rich, powerful guy who came into the office and never wore a tie, and when I mentioned his offer to the partner I mainly worked for at the firm, he said if I didn’t jump at the chance, he’d fire me himself. ‘Take it, take it,’ he told me. ‘In four or five years, assuming you live through the next one, we’ll be making a fortune handling your next divorces.’ It meant a huge cut in pay at first—I’m sure you know that being an assistant is a glorified apprenticeship—but the time was right, since I’d gotten our condo in the breakup and my ex is, to this day, still covering the payments as part of the settlement.”
“You go, girl. I had no idea you were such a role model,” Jenna said. “Now Jamey, what about him?”
“What’s to tell? Starry-eyed boy dreams of
seeing his name in lights, comes to Hollywood, and embarks upon the most debasing career path known to western civilization.”
“He’s for sure gotten his big break now, hasn’t he?”
“Yes.” Melissa tried out her sweetest smile. “He’s the salmon who made it all the way upstream to spawn.”
“Have you been in very frequent contact with him since this all started?”
“I hope you don’t mind if I take the Fifth on that,” a conspirator’s whisper. Better this, or a fork in the eye, than admitting she had no more idea where Jamey had been these last few days than their waiter did. “I’d rather never see my name and ‘aiding and abetting’ on the same document.”
“Do you worry that he might not make it back safely?”
“Oh, gosh, Jenna.” Melissa clutched her hands together and Xeroxed the look on Bambi’s face the instant before she’d blubbered. “Let’s not go there, okay?”
“I’m sorry,” Jenna reaching across the table to pat the back of her hand. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You’re…very kind.”
Melissa let Jenna comfort her awhile, and really, after the kind of morning she’d had, didn’t mind accepting it. Consider it a reallocation of resources. And then it was time for their food, the eggplant and roasted mozzarella for her, the mista salad for Jenna. Two bites in, Jenna went back to work:
“What do you think it is about Jamey’s story that’s captivated people so?”
Melissa pondered for a moment, then hit upon the perfect vacuous analogy. Mickey would cherish her for it. “I’d have to say it’s the same thing that made Forrest Gump so popular: the idea that good things can just happen to you, and all you have to do is stand back and let the winds of fate blow you around like a feather.”
“Good things?” Jenna looked appalled. “There’ve been two attempts on his life, he’s been kidnapped once, maybe twice—”
“Making it all the more inspirational how it keeps turning to his advantage.”
“—and now there are rumors of an ultra-right-wing death squad that’s been dispatched to assassinate him in revenge for those deputies.”
“What!” Melissa cried. “Oh, that’s just ridiculous! Where did you hear that?”
“It’s on one of the Jamey Sheppard web sites I was looking at this morning.”
“There are web sites now?” Melissa said flatly.
Jenna nodded. “The last time I googled I found four of them.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“The most comprehensive one is Go-Jamey-Go-dot-com. That one seems to be the work of a fan who got obsessed with him from his Mountain Dew commercial.” Jenna rested her fork and checked notes. “The death squad rumor, that’s on a site put up by what appears to be an anti-authoritarian anarchist. But for sheer kitsch value, I recommend Natasha Noir’s Renegade Temple of Jamey Sheppard. That one even extends a marriage proposal.”
“And I’m sure she’s a real catch,” Melissa said.
“For someone who ten days ago had been working but was still an unknown, your brother’s now got this high name recognition value with, like, casting directors and agents. Not to mention the bidding on his story rights, with your own boss slugging it out with three or four other serious contenders. Plus the general public’s starting to catch on to who he is—Leno’s picked back up on it the past couple nights, there’s CNN, and I hear Entertainment Tonight is running a segment on its weekend edition. So my question to you, not only as his sister, but as Mickey Coffman’s right arm and a future player in your own right: Is all of this something Jamey can build on, do you think…or is it going to be just a flash-in-the-pan?”
Melissa pretended to look insulted as another of Mickey’s lessons came to mind: When you lie, you might as well lie big.
“Read my lips. Forty or fifty years from now,” she said, with the appearance of total conviction, “I can see him onstage at the Oscars being presented with the Irving Thalberg Award for Lifetime Achievement.”
She shoots, she scores! Jenna appeared genuinely touched by such a show of sibling faith. “Maybe by then you’ll be in a position to present it to him.”
“And wouldn’t that be the capstone on our careers, too,” Melissa said. “Okay, your turn. Call it market research. Being in the trade media, what’s your take on this whole thing with Jamey?”
Good move. Jenna appeared as flattered as a wallflower asked to dance. She cocked her head and got the most adorable little crease between her eyebrows in a bid to look authoritative.
“There are multiple levels at work here,” she began. “It’s at least twenty-five percent pure freakshow. But then there’s the whole strike-it-rich fantasy it feeds into. Plus the cult of celebrity thing where we have someone who, right now at least, is famous just for being famous.”
Melissa nodded. Not having a bad time at all, actually. “I think you lowballed the freakshow percentage, but I’m with you so far.”
“But there’s something deeper going on here, too. Something to do with, no pun intended, arrested development in men. Am I the only one at this table who finds something, dare I say, regal about actresses, when most actors seem afflicted by this Peter Pan Syndrome of not being able to grow up?”
“My god,” Melissa said, in all seriousness, “you’ve made the distinction too!”
“So here’s this actor, your brother, this terminal adolescent, no offense—”
“I’ll let you slide this once.”
“—and here’s this criminal he portrayed, who’s probably just another Peter Pan who should’ve had his hand slapped more often at the cookie jar. So the both of them are like these museum exhibits of a pathological inability to grow up. And ever since they were seen together last weekend, it’s not impossible that now they might be off on some little macho fantasy together. And, well, you know what we have then?”
Melissa was hanging on every word. “What?”
“They’re the Lost Boys. Carrying guns.”
“You, ummm…” Melissa struggled for footing. “You just may be the smartest woman I’ve met in this entire city.” She scratched the tines of her fork at her plate. “And sitting here I just now realize you don’t really like men any more than I do, do you?”
“Probably not. If maybe for other reasons. But the difference is, I’m out about it. If you get my drift.”
Again, her hand slid across the tabletop, finding the back of Melissa’s. Something new about the touch this time. Some distinction of presence in Jenna’s fingertips.
“You’re hitting on me, aren’t you?” Melissa said.
“Don’t tell me it’s never happened before.”
“Well. It has. It’s just the first time I’ve ever stopped to entertain the thought.”
“Entertain it?” Jenna gave a little laugh, tip of her tongue touching the corner of her mouth. “At least you’re in the right part of town.”
****
Once Jamey had fixed in mind the path down to the little park where he and Samantha would be meeting tomorrow morning, he hiked back to the condo. Already time had begun to elongate, and the minutes stretched like taffy.
“I don’t know how I’m going to wait this out,” he told Duncan and Dawn. “If you’d kept the lead glove off that deputy, I think I’d be asking for one more tap.”
“Funny you should bring that up. There’s something we’ve been talking about, and we’ve got just the thing to keep you occupied.”
Duncan tossed him a large square of fabric that had been waiting on the bar. Jamey caught it, unfolded it, found it to be a pair of blue-gray coveralls.
“Your legs?” Dawn said. “They go in the long parts.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Don’t you think it’s time you start earning your keep around here?” Duncan flashed him the same smile you had to imagine on Rob Roy MacGregor whenever he looked at a rich man down the length of his sword. “Don’t you think it’s time you pulled your first bank job?”
****
As soon as Melissa got back to the office, Mickey Coffman’s head turtled out the door of his inner sanctum, asking how lunch had gone.
“Great,” she said. “We talked about Jamey half the time and you the other half. She really admires your paradigm when it comes to character archetypes and the somatic fields of the actors you bring in.”
Two beats as Mickey tried to digest, then he nodded, oblivious but pleased—he had heard the word “admires”—and his head disappeared.
Melissa sank behind her desk, stared for a moment at the back of her hand as if she could see Jenna’s fingerprints, could feel the touch that had left them. Kind of like the way, earlier this morning, she had felt the lingering press of Bambi’s head against her shoulder, holding the girl while she’d cried.
This was so the wrong time in her life to start wondering if she hadn’t been grazing the wrong side of the fence all these years. Weren’t you supposed to know a thing like that before you blew out twenty-five candles on your birthday cake?
She dove in to reconnect with reality, and voice mail was as good a place to start as any. The day’s big turnaround came with message number six.
“It’s Samantha.” The voice she’d been plying all week, in hopes. “Call me, why don’t you. I’m still at my family’s, but only for this one last day. I don’t want to say too much, not knowing who might hear this. But trust me, it’s good news. Love you, bye.”
Good news? Oh, the limber bitch had no idea. Melissa couldn’t speed-dial the number in Flagstaff quick enough. Two minutes of sisterly gab, and rainbows once more filled the sky. Next item on the day-planner, relieving Kristophe and Blayne of the holding pattern she’d had them locked in.