VANCE: A Movie Star Romance

by Lucy Lambert

  I thought it was cool that the studio preserved the place, and to my knowledge no one had shot any footage for any film here for decades. Aside from home movies, of course.

  “Because I thought you’d look adorable in a ten-gallon hat,” Vance said. He opened the storage bin beneath the driver’s seat and pulled out two cowboy hats, a black one and a tan one.

  He plopped the tan one down on my head, which immediately fell over my eyes.

  I reached up and righted it on my head. Vance wore the black one. He peered out at me from beneath the brim. I thought he did, at least. Mostly I just saw my twin reflections in his glasses.

  “What’s your angle?” I asked.

  “No angle,” he said. “I just thought it might be fun. Come on, let’s go inside.”

  We stepped off the golf cart and went into the saloon. To my surprise, the batwing doors swung smoothly and soundlessly when we passed between them.

  They’d add the squeak of old hinges in post, I thought. Foley—adding sound effects after shooting—was an art unto itself.

  Inside, the reproduction saloon smelled of wood polish. The bar gleamed in front of an old mirror, none of the stools or chairs occupied.

  Again, I got that shiver as I thought of a ghost town.

  Vance went behind the bar. “Take a seat.”

  “All right… pardner,” I said, sitting up on a stool. I leaned my elbows against the polished bar, letting my feet dangle.

  Vance knelt down and a moment later he stood, putting two brown bottles on the bar top. The beers, Pabst this time, sweated.

  I took mine, felt the cold glass already slick with condensation. “Cold?”

  He motioned for me to lean over the bar. I did. I saw the fridge set in beneath the top. “Didn’t know they had those in the 1870s,” I said.

  He still wore the glasses. He reached up and pulled them off, folding the arms one-handed. Then he winked.

  “A bit of movie magic,” he said. “Kind of like us.”

  I traced my fingertip in invisible circles on the spotless bar top. “Are you trying to say what we’re doing isn’t real?”

  Those doubts tickled at the back of my mind.

  “No, just that some things really do seem like more than coincidence.”

  “Really, though, why this place? It’s neat to see it empty like this, but…” I started.

  “But what's so special about it? To most people, just about nothing. To me, a little more. I know there’s Wikipedia and this and that unauthorized biography. What do they all say about me deciding to act?”

  I frowned. I started reaching up to touch my head, but my fingers found the brim of the cowboy hat instead. “I think they all mention your dad showing you Die Hard one Christmas?”

  Here I felt a little bashful, being reminded of how big a fan of his I used to be. I’d read the books. Maybe even put an edit or two into the Wikipedia article. Of course, all that was prior to last summer so all that knowledge became a bit hazy.

  He pinched the brim of his own hat in salute, “Yippee ki yay… but no, that’s a lie. Well, not a lie exactly. A story, and stories aren’t exactly lies.”

  Depends on who you’re asking, I thought, but didn’t say.

  I leaned forward in my seat, a little tingle of excitement in my belly. He wanted to tell me something, and I wanted to hear.

  “So what’s the truth behind the story?” I asked. I still held my cold bottle of beer. Neither of us bothered to open them yet.

  “This place,” Vance said, “the studio’s had it up as a tourist trap since the sixties or so, I think.”

  Vance glanced around the empty space of the saloon. Only, I thought maybe it wasn’t empty for him. Memory could fill a space pretty well. I leaned forward a little more.

  “We came to L.A. on vacation once when I was young, eleven or so. We went to Disney, but I don’t really remember it very well. I remember this place though. We came here and I saw the actors and I saw the sets and I knew I didn’t want to do anything else. I wanted to be part of that magic.”

  “So why the Die Hard story?” I asked.

  “It plays better. So my agent tells me, anyway. People still watch Die Hard, but studios have been struggling to make Westerns popular again for decades.”

  I knew that myself, from school. Westerns used to be the most popular film genre. They were the superhero flicks of the early twentieth century, but their popularity waned and couldn’t seem to wax.

  Vance studied the dew on his unopened bottle of Pabst. He looked wistful.

  “I’m surprised you never used your pull to get one made,” I said.

  “Maybe eventually. I wanted to share that with you. I haven’t shared that story with anyone. Can’t have it leaking to the press.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me,” I said, smiling at him. He smiled back, and those tingles of excitement in the pit of my stomach turned to tingles of another, more pleasant feeling.

  “I know,” he said.

  He leaned over and plucked my hat off my head. He took his off as well, setting them down on the shiny bar.

  Then he grabbed the necks of the beers and put them back in the fridge.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  He leaned across the bar and kissed me, mouth hot on mine. One hand crept around to the back of my head, fingers gripping my hair. He pulled my lips harder against his.

  It was a long, deep kiss. I shivered down to my toes.

  The pressure of his lips lessened, disappeared. He leaned back. I leaned forward. I had to; all the strength went from my spine.

  Vance took his sunglasses and poked one of their arms down the collar of his shirt.

  He came out from behind the bar and offered me his hand. I took it and slid off the stool, unsure if I could trust my knees. They held. I hoped he didn’t notice my wobbliness.

  We went back out those silent swinging batwing doors and walked along the wooden promenade in front of the false downtown.

  “What about the hats?” I asked, turning back partially.

  He stopped me. “Forget about them. They’re just hats.”

  The sign for the apothecary’s shop, a picture of a mortar and pestle, swung on its chains while we passed by.

  “Thanks for sharing that story,” I said.

  “I wanted to,” he replied.

  I took a deep breath and let it out. He shared with you, you share with him.

  “I want to make movies so that I can escape,” I said.

  “Escape what?”

  I shrugged, “Life, I guess. I love films. I love how you can put them together to make any sort of world you want, with any sort of people you want. I knew this was what I wanted to do. This and nothing else.”

  He nodded, “So you bet it all on black, and came down to Hollywood. Why do you want to escape real life so much?”

  I bit my lip. I usually tried not to examine myself so closely. It took time away from achieving what I wanted.

  “You talked about movie magic in the saloon. That’s it, I think. Movies and stories have this magic to them that real life just… doesn’t. Movies are the only place where the magic is real. Life on the other hand is so ordinary.

  “I’m sorry I don’t have some tragic backstory about how it was a family member’s dying wish or something. But that’s real life for you.”

  I could feel myself becoming more and more defensive. I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t stop it.

  “You’re wrong,” he said.

  “I don’t think I am,” I said.

  He stopped us in front of the sheriff’s office. Through the window, I could see the bars of the holding cell at the back of the room.

  He turned me to face him, and then took my other hand so that he held both of them in both of his.

  “Movies may have some magic,” he said. “But they come from real life, from real people who think of them and create them. And can’t you feel this?” He gave me hands a squeeze.

  “Of
course,” I said. He locked eyes with me.

  “There’s something special there, too. Maybe not magic, but something.”

  There’s something wrong. There’s something up. There’s something weird. Something, I kept thinking. Thinking of Mitch warning me, thinking of Danny warning me. Thinking of the warning I ignored in the back of my own mind.

  I gave my head a shake. I hoped it looked to him like I wanted to shake some hair off my forehead. Really, I wanted to shake those voices out of my thoughts.

  Because there was something.

  “What something is that? Because I still don’t understand this. Us, I mean,” I said.

  He let go of one of my hands so that he could reach up and cup my cheek. He still held my eyes with his.

  “That’s one of the beauties of real life. Stories have to make sense. B can’t happen until A does. Life doesn’t have to. The real world is strange and doesn’t make sense, and that’s where the real magic is.”

  We stood so close. And his touch electrified me, even while his eyes captured and captivated me.

  “Are you going to kiss me again?” I asked. I didn’t want to talk about this anymore. I just wanted to shake those voices and those misgivings.

  “I was thinking about it.”

  “Then do it,” I said.

  He did. Our bodies pressed together, trapping the hand he still clasped between us. My eyes slipped closed so that I could better concentrate on the touch and feeling and pressure of him.

  When I opened them, I caught a glimpse of another person.

  A man stood on the other side of the street in an alley. He held a camera.

  “I thought we were alone,” I said. My voice sounded distant to me. It was a good kiss.

  “We’re supposed to be,” Vance said.

  He moved so that he stood between me and the cameraman. The guy raised his camera for another shot.

  Vance stepped down off the promenade, some dust puffing up around his shoe.

  The guy turned and ran. I wondered how many shots he took. I wondered where they might show up the next day.

  Vance shook his head. “They pop up everywhere somehow.”

  “Somehow,” I said. “Hey, can we get out of here?” I said.

  Whatever magic Vance had woven broke when I noticed that guy with the camera. I looked around the empty main drag of this false town.

  Except it didn’t feel empty anymore. I kept checking the alleys, the windows, the doors. Checking for more people with cameras.

  Vance and I climbed back into the golf cart. More dust puffed up around its small rubber wheels when we pulled away.

  “How do you deal with it all?” I asked, waiting to speak until we left the set behind us. We went from driving on dirt to asphalt, as though we’d driven out of the nineteenth century into the twenty-first without even a sign to tell us.

  “All what?” he asked.

  “I keep getting emails and letters. They’re from reporters and talk show producers and journalists. Even a few blogs. I’ve gotten a few calls, too.”

  Shortly after this whole thing started I paid AT&T for a private, unlisted number. Somehow, some people still found out.

  My roommates looked at me differently, too. Mandi hardly said a word to me. Sam spoke even more, somehow. And I caught them all glancing at me when they thought I couldn’t see.

  I didn’t like it.

  It was sort of like winning the lottery. Friends I’d forgotten ever having started trying to chat me up, text me, call. A couple even tried getting in touch through my mom and dad back in Lincoln.

  Things weren’t in the best shape between my parents and me, either. I was still upset over what they’d said to the media already. They didn’t know what to make of all this, and they certainly didn’t know how to hand It properly.

  Not that I did, but at least Vance helped me a bit in that department.

  “Just ignore it. Unless you want to do any of that for some reason,” he said.

  “I don’t,” I replied. “How do those guys with the cameras keep finding us?”

  He glanced at me, then back at the street while we passed between two enormous warehouses. “You’d be surprised who some of these people know. I want to take you out.”

  Ten minutes before, I would have said yes.

  “I have to do up a progress report for one of my professors,” I said.

  “Even if I told you that going out meant staying in?” he turned to me and grinned.

  That did send little, exploratory shivers down the base of my spine. But it didn’t feel right.

  “Especially if that’s what it means,” I said.

  “There’s something else I want to talk to you about. Something big.”

  “What?” I said.

  “If you want to find out, you have to come out.”

  “Then I guess we’ll both be kept in suspense.”

  A week passed by, the way a week does when your emotions are in a complete jumble.

  I continued seeing Vance every day at the studio. I even let him catch me up in his arms a couple of times.

  What can I say? He looked really good in those 1940s period clothes. I started wishing men might start wearing hats again. They looked so sharp.

  Also he was a good kisser. My lips always throbbed after. In a good way.

  He often left other parts of me throbbing, too, but I never let it get past kissing. Even though I wanted it to.

  Part of me thought that night at his hideaway apartment had been a mistake. Happened too fast, too soon.

  The rest of me ached to go back there. Spend another night. Maybe even a whole weekend.

  I could tell he wanted it, too. Wanted me. And I have to say that a certain devilish part of me enjoyed keeping the tension up like this. How many times in my life would I have a man like Vance Tracker pursuing me?

  And he still hadn’t told me the big news he wanted to share.

  I guess we kept each other in suspense.

  It broke one early evening at the checkout aisle, at the Safeway closest to my apartment building.

  Sam and I stood in line, our cart about half full with the essentials. Potato chips, mac and cheese, that sort of thing.

  We’d borrowed Mandi’s little Tercel as we usually did every week or so to make a trip down and get some stuff.

  I felt a bit self-conscious in that place, but so far none of the other customers seemed to recognize me. Except for Sam, of course.

  “So, any plans for the weekend?” Sam said, her freckles standing out beneath the overpowering fluorescent lights of the store, “Plans with the initials VT?”

  “…Vermont?” I said.

  She nudged me with her elbow, “You know who I mean.”

  Sam was still okay. She asked questions, but didn’t push too much, and she’d begun treating me the same as she used to when I was just another film student roommate rather than a movie star’s fling.

  I glanced around. There was an old woman leaning over the handle of her cart behind us, slowly counting quarters into her palm from a small white coin purse. And the mother putting her items on the belt in front of us was too harried by two small babies to notice or care.

  “Maybe,” I said. “He invited me out of the city. He said it would just be me, him, and the stars.”

  Sam barely kept her jaw from hitting the ground, “You said yes, right?”

  I shrugged. “I haven’t said anything yet.”

  “You can’t keep a guy like that waiting! What if he finds someone else?” Sam said.

  “Then he finds someone else,” I said, keeping my tone even. Her suggestion sent my stomach roiling, however.

  Though I almost wished he might. It would make things easier. A lot easier. A lot less complicated.

  I bought some time by looking around. I saw the tabloid rack, then. The one that every grocery store everywhere set up at the end of each checkout for bored customers to scan while the sorted their milk and bread on the belt.


  “Oh my God,” I said. To me, it sounded like I said it under my breath. Apparently I didn’t.

  The mother in front of us glanced back at me, frowning. The steady chink of quarter against quarter behind us stopped when the old woman also looked.

  Sam frowned at me.

  “What?” she asked.

  “It’s me,” I replied.

  It was me. On all of them. Every tabloid. A couple used the same shot for the cover, and a few others used slight variations.

  A couple even had smaller shots of me sitting at the bar, Vance standing behind it.

  How long had that guy been taking pictures?

  Vance and I standing on the promenade, Vance and I kissing in front of the saloon. My eyes scanned the headlines.

  SEDUCED BY THE ASSISTANT

  VANCE TRACKER LOVE AFFAIR – DETAILS AND PICTURES INSIDE

  ERIN PAIGE – WHO IS SHE AND WHAT IS SHE DOING WITH HIM? PLUS, EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH HER EX BOYFRIEND

  They went on like that. My eyes started stinging because I couldn’t blink. Suddenly I felt naked, violated. My spine tingled and my stomach knotted.

  The mother in front of us glanced at the papers, then back at me.

  “It’s you,” she said.

  Even the cashier, a tall skinny guy with Justin Bieber hair, stopped midway through swiping a package of Pampers and looked at me.

  I don’t know what it was, seeing myself like that. It was different from the website pictures and articles somehow. More real, maybe.

  Maybe I just hadn’t realized how far this had gotten. Hadn’t realized or chosen to ignore? Both, I thought.

  “Erin…?” Sam said.

  She put her hand on my shoulder. I jerked away from her. Her eyes widened and she held the hand up in surrender.

  “Don’t touch me,” I said.

  Is this a panic attack? Am I having a panic attack?

  I’d never had one before. I was having a lot of firsts, lately.

  My heart palpitated like it wanted to burst out of me. My mouth went dry. I felt trapped. I couldn’t be there any longer.

  “Move,” I rasped, pushing past Sam.

  I tried squeezing between the old lady’s cart and the belt. My body got stuck between them.

  Not my body, I realized.