by M. M. Mayle
“About last night . . . please, please let me explain.”
“You’ve nothing to explain. Last night was a lovely business occasion. Very enlightening.”
“Laurel . . . Please don’t do this. Not on our last day, not when there’s so much else you need to know.”
“What else could I possibly need to know that your designees haven’t told me?”
“For one, that I’ve split with Nate, and wanted you to hear about it directly from—”
“You did not!”
“I did. And I wanted you to be first to know because you figured into the—”
“How could you?”
“How could I not? He was going behind my back at every turn and—”
“That’s the worst dumbest most stupid ungrateful rotten thing I ever heard of. Don’t you know when you’re well off?”
“Hey! You can’t talk to me that way. You’re not in charge of me. Not yet.”
“Yet? Yet? Don’t make me laugh. As though I would ever want to be in charge of you. David’s entirely welcome to you. You deserve each other. He never knew when he was well off either.”
“Laurel! No! You’ve got it all wrong. David’s got nothing to do with my decision, and he’s not my new manager.”
He feels compelled to go on talking even though she broke the connection right after he said her name in alarm. He eats up another minute of the four remaining by marveling at how fast and furious things can go wrong. Given this turn of events, he’d now be altogether justified in walking away from the video shoot. Quite. But he returns to it with the vigor and determination that eluded him earlier.
At the start of take six, whatever new dynamic he’s brought to the proceedings sparks everyone. It’s not hard imagining it as a sort of St. Elmo’s fire, zapping about, casting coronas, infusing the opening bars of the introduction with an electrical charge that can’t be ignored.
The first time I saw you, I knew I’d never be the same.
The line, however lacking in originality, now fairly crackles with portent.
I . . . loved you before I even knew your name.
Fair enough warning there with more to come in the unexpected syncopations and chordings of two verses dealing with self-denial, deprivation and unrelieved want.
He bends low over the guitar, urging from it a shrieking three-octave riff before the muttering bass signals the final repeat of the chorus.
Can’t you see I’m here to love you?
Can’t you see I’m here to care?
He straightens to respond with a raw drum-riddled demand that falls away to a hushed plea and a presumable fade to black.
Will you ever let me tell you
That my life is yours to share?
“That’s unquestionably a wrap,” the director shouts after the final note has decayed. A quick listen to the playback confirms that the project has, for a fact, been nailed and the only task remaining has to do with distribution.
A crew is already striking the set—what there is of it—in preparation for the next shoot. Rayce and his squad of assistants are trooping in for a first run-through of “Angle of Repose,” and Colin is estimating his chances of getting Laurel to watch a videocassette of his proposal in the time he has left.
SIXTY-SEVEN
Midday, April 10, 1987
The air inside the rented storage unit is already root-cellar stagnant without the door being down. Mixed with the faint smell of formalin coming from Audrey’s container it’s enough to give anybody but him a good case of the heaves. And if that’s not enough, the webbed shadows cast by the low-wattage bulb in its wire cage could bring on a good case of the heebie-jeebies.
Ignoring these bad features Hoop crouches in front of the paint bucket and explains that the watching and waiting hasn’t been all that bad.
“Compared to the long stretch when I had to bide my time between your going away and his coming back, this is nothing,” he says before catching Audrey up with the news. All the news. He tells her everything that happened in California and everything that’s happened since. He doesn’t leave anything out—not even the bad said about her—so she’ll know he’s sober-serious about settling the score this time.
“I’ve been relying on newspapers,” he confesses, “’specially the flashy supermarket ones, and that’s how I found out that the dope I left with the photographer that badmouthed you made it look like the rock star was to blame for what happened there. Everyone knows his kind are dopers and free with handouts, so the cops were gettin’ ready to lock him up when the hifalutin lawyerwoman I told you about showed proof that he couldn’t have been two places at once. But the TV and newspapers gave him a good goin’ over before the story wore out.”
Although his knees are straining something fierce, he holds the crouch like it was another of his duties and continues the talk.
“Don’t mind saying I took a lot of enjoyment from the bad said about him, even though it came about by accident. You gotta understand I didn’t plan for it to happen the way it did, I had something else in mind. But next time there won’t be any accidents, good or bad. Next time I can promise that before I’m done with him, he’ll look like the white man’s Satan strummin’ on an electric pitchfork. I can promise you I’ll bring him down the way he brought you down. And I’ll bring the lawyerwoman down with him,” he pledges without letting on how far down, because he doesn’t yet know himself.
He gets to his feet and takes a quiet moment to ease his knees and think back to the first pledge made—the one when Cliff Grant was counted on to announce the rock star’s foul deeds and the authorities were expected to follow through. Inwardly wincing at how green and untried he was back then, he transfers the bundle of money spurned by the jackassed-fool of a photographer from the tool case to its regular storage place and gets ready to leave.
While he’s restacking bins and file boxes around Audrey’s container, he thinks to tell her about the idea he has for making the headache powder work against the rock star for a second time.
“I haven’t figured out how, but I will,” he says and finishes up by telling her about the sign he’s ordered that will make his regular visits to 13 Old Quarry Court look legit.
“The sign’ll read ‘Superior Home Maintenance’—superior, get it?—and be stuck to the El Camino door by magnetism so I can get rid of it in a hurry if I have to. The sign people said it would be ready by noon on Friday, and that’s now, so I’d better get going.”
After securing the mostly empty unit with both locks, he reminds himself to get a package of Polks Extra Strength Headache Powders while he’s out.
SIXTY-EIGHT
Midday, April 10, 1987
Laurel sends Amanda home at noon and begins assembling the personal items she’ll take with her when she leaves. There aren’t enough to fill the bankers box brought from the supply room, so she crowds them into her carryall.
She uses a standard form for the letter she’ll leave behind, composing and executing by hand on the engraved stationery she’ll also leave behind.
The final task is deciding what to do with the material evidence of a lost cause. The few pages cranked out during this morning’s last-gasp show of duty and discipline read like an esoteric form of boilerplate, as though mechanically produced and deliberately devoid of humanizing detail. All of it writing destined for the shredder along with the other fifty or so completed pages of Intermezzo, once all the players are unmasked. She nevertheless gathers up these pages and stuffs them into her now bulging carryall.
At the doorway, a final look around confirms that she’s leaving the private office space as it was when inherited. She leaves the building by the main entrance, loitering paparazzi be damned, and hails a cab even though she’s not going that far.
At the hotel she goes first to the checkout desk, where an officious clerk sniffingly informs that she’s missed the checkout deadline by two hours.
“Whatever,” Laurel grumbles, authorizing the extr
a charge and enduring further patronizing when the prick requests that she clear her troublesome glut of phone messages, as though he’d had to field each and every one.
In her room, she’s faced with a bigger challenge than deleting a glut of phone messages; the problem here is how to transport the extra clothing acquired during her stay. She didn’t think to retain the shopping bags, and the new things won’t begin to fit in luggage that was inadequate to begin with. She systematically empties closet and drawers, flings all of the clothes—old and new, lingerie and outerwear—onto one of the beds, and flings herself down on the other, where transient frustration is a welcome diversion from an encroaching sense of defeat.
“No,” Laurel murmurs when she awakens to a darkened room and a bedside clock displaying the time in glowing red numerals that blur and bleed before her disbelieving eyes. “No, that cannot be,” she says when she turns on a lamp and sees that her watch is within a minute of agreeing with the clock.
She calls the front desk for verification, then looks out a window at a nighttime view of Fifth Avenue before acknowledging how long she’s been asleep—before acknowledging that it’s well past the hour of Rayce Vaughn’s victorious return to the spotlight at Madison Square Garden.
“Oh my lord . . . shit,” she moans, earlier frustration lost in realization of what she’s done. She moves away from the window, struck by another realization—that this may have been a subconscious effort to resist David and anyone else who would seduce her into the world of rock and roll.
Oddly enough, despite his reputation as the master seducer, she doesn’t place Rayce Vaughn in that category and regrets that she won’t be seeing him in action—at least not tonight. Another time, perhaps. A time when she can attend one of his concerts with no strings attached.
But there’s now to deal with. What the hell can she do about any of this now? She confronts the phone and its steadily burning message light. It’s safe to assume at least one of the messages is from David, demanding to know why she hasn’t shown up yet. And Amanda, acting as Colin Elliot’s most ardent cheerleader, will have called more than once with the same demand. Colin—how many times has he called since she barricaded herself behind a do-not-disturb order last night? Does it matter? Does any of this matter? The only thing that does matter at the moment is escaping before one of the three—or all three—arrives here insisting on an explanation.
Toward making good her escape, she half empties the carryall in the search for a business card bearing a number she never expected to call. As though it might leak reproachful messages, she cautiously picks up the handset and dials the number scribbled on the back of that card. She feels fortunate to get an answer, much less on the second ring, and even more so when he listens to her request without question and agrees to it without hesitation. He insists on coming for her within the next half hour.
She strips off her slept-in business suit and scavenges the jeans and sweater she wore to the shore from the disorderly pile of clothing on the spare bed. The legs of the jeans are a little stiff and scratchy from salt spray, the sweater could be fresher. Too bad, not much she can do about it now. She thinks to stuff a change of underwear and a sleep shirt into the carryall before visiting the bathroom, where she sleeks her lank hair into a ponytail and scrubs off a layer of smeared makeup.
The dark-blue BMW sedan she was told to watch for is waiting at the curb when she exits the lobby twenty minutes later.
SIXTY-NINE
Evening, April 10, 1987
“Kitchen?” Nate says as they step out of the elevator into the stately foyer of his triplex.
“Yes, please,” Laurel says, relieved to forego the formalities of her first visit here and glad to notice that Nate’s jeans, split at both knees, are in worse shape than hers, and that his sweatshirt is as shapeless as her sweater is rumpled.
He takes her coat, leaves it on a bench in the foyer and leads the way to the kitchen, where she’s shown to a place at the breakfast table and asked if she’d like something to eat. Although no reference is made to the trencherman appetite she brought to their last meeting, she’s embarrassed to admit she’s hungry when asked. In truth, famished after having eaten nothing all day. But she doesn’t tell him that. Nor does she explain why mere thought of the drink he’s just offered is so repugnant.
“Tea is fine. Toast will be just fine. Please don’t go to any trouble. Enough that you’re letting me stay here until things . . . stabilize.”
“Stabilize . . . Interesting word for it.” Nate takes eggs, cheese, and butter from the refrigerator and lays out a selection of bagels next to the toaster. “I’m not placing any qualifiers on my hospitality, but. . . .”
He fills the electric kettle, assembles the tea things and turns to face her.
“Okay, let’s see what we have so far . . . Some kind of misunderstanding led to your leaving the party alone last night. And tonight, you slept through your commitment to attend Rayce’s concert, possibly incurring David’s displeasure and hardly enough reason to—”
“Yes, that’s it. I’ve let David down, and I’m not ready to face him yet,” she says in a rush.
“Bullshit, my dear. Whatever happened just before you left the party could have been cleared up last night and certainly could have been cleared up by now if you’d given the offending party a chance to explain himself. And if you’d given yourself a chance to reason things out before calling me, you would have realized it wasn’t at all too late to put in an appearance at the Garden . . . Unless, of course, you didn’t want to. That being the case, may I ask why?”
“Shit, I’m still working on why.”
“Then I am right.”
“Yes. I didn’t give the offending party—Colin—a chance last night and when I relented late this morning, matters went from bad to worse.”
“Again . . . May I ask why?”
“Because of you. Because he terminated you.”
Nate loses his grip on the copper omelet pan he’s removing from an overhead rack and gasps, “Jesus, I did not see that coming.” For a second it’s unclear if he means the pan that almost hit him on the head or the truth she just revealed. Either way, he appears stunned.
“At the party for Rayce, I started getting bad vibes when I heard David triumphantly declare that he could guarantee the so-called shelter Colin was looking for and Colin jumped through his hoop without a backward glance. And later, Amanda told me Colin had in effect banished you from our table, so I should have—”
“Banished is too strong a word, and if I hadn’t already considered moving to another table, believe me, I wouldn’t have cooperated.”
“Very well, that aside . . . When Amanda prevailed upon me to speak to Colin earlier today and he said that he’d broken with you, I spared nothing in stating my extremely low opinion of his idiotic decision. The conversation went downhill from there and ended with my hanging up on him. I remain appalled by his remarkably thankless behavior toward you and want nothing more to do with him until I’ve had time to—”
“Stop . . . right . . . there. Do not say another word.”
The implied threat in his delivery is enough to shut her up, and if it wasn’t, she’d have to shout to make herself heard over the extraordinary amount of noise he’s making with the cooking utensils.
In relative quiet, he serves her a perfect cheese omelet, a selection of lightly toasted bagels, and a pot of tea. She’s given no opportunity to say thank you, much less pick up where she left off, before he excuses himself to get something from another room.
With no good reason to wait for his return, she goes to work on the food and puts away most of the omelet and an entire pumpernickel bagel before he reappears with a collection of items that include a video cassette, several audio CDs, some loose papers, and what looks like a lengthy fax folded under his arm. He sets everything but the fax at the far end of the table and takes a chair opposite hers, where he encourages her to finish eating before listening to what he has t
o say.
“Take your time,” he says. “We have all night if necessary, and I’m guessing it may take that long to convince you how badly mistaken you are—how horribly mistaken you are about a number of things.”
If he had said wrong instead of mistaken, she would be sputtering her way out of this temporary refuge. As it is, she’s hard put not to argue—blindly—without even hearing his contentions. What’s more, the remainder of the omelet doesn’t taste nearly as good when consumed under protest.
“Very well,” she says, pushing the plate aside. “Let the convincing begin. Let’s hear how horribly flawed I am in my interpretations.”
Oblivious to her disdainful undertone, Nate gnaws on a bagel before handing over the accordion-folded fax. “Colin happened on this by accident when he was here yesterday to use the gym. It’s the results of a background check I ordered when my overriding ambition was unmasking you as David Sebastian’s chief recruiter.”
As she scans through the long document, he keeps up a running commentary, alternating between explaining and confessing. By this means, she learns that Mrs. Floss was not hallucinating when shooing away a rooftop intruder and that Amanda was not exaggerating when reporting a damaging rumor afloat.
From the fax alone, she discovers that the worrisome presence on her street was only the overambitious agent of a private investigator—an agent since reprimanded and relieved of duty—and feels a measure of relief to know she’ll have just Mrs. Floss to deal with when she returns home tomorrow.
From Nate’s sustained outpouring, she determines that he influenced the opinions of the publicists overheard in the ladies’ room and supplied slanted innuendo to certain tabloids. It’s not a stretch to picture him advising some vacuous reporter to deliberately misspell mouthpiece—a laughable affront now—if he thought it would help discourage her, and by association, David.