[2014] Looking for Leon

by Shirley Benton

  I sighed. Maybe he had a point. I hadn’t a shred of proof that she had anything to do with it, and anyway, I always got that Groundhog Day feeling around Lindy – trying to reason with her was so utterly pointless. She just did not care about the repercussions of any of her actions, full stop. And if she was behind the letters, she’d be delighted to know that I was as mad as hell over it.

  “Look, sleep on it before you decide what you’re going to do, okay? In the meantime, I think you could do with another drink.”

  I laughed, despite everything. “Don’t you get sick of looking at me drinking all the time?”

  He smiled, a lovely bashful smile that made him look very young. “No.”

  We both stared awkwardly at each other for a few seconds, then Colm stood up. “Won’t be long.”

  “Don’t be,” I whispered after him as he walked up to the bar. Suddenly, staying here in Colm’s company felt a lot more appealing than having anything to do with Lindy.

  Was it possible that I . . . I swallowed . . . was starting to have feelings for him? Good God, I thought, the stress was really starting to get to me.

  I was starting to backtrack on my resolve to keep what I knew about Colm from him. Every time I spoke to him, I felt like a fraud. And the more time I spent with him, the more I knew I couldn’t be that kind of a person around him. At least if he knew I knew, I could try to support him, try to help him. Whenever I looked back on the last few weeks, the one constant through them had been Colm’s support through my various crises and run-ins with Lindy. I wanted to give him something back. I didn’t know how I was going to tell him, and I didn’t know when. I just knew that I would. As if things weren’t complicated enough with the whole development of possibly having feelings for him . . . I pushed that to the back of my mind. Sometimes, the friends you made on the battlefields of work or any other intense scenario weren’t necessarily the ones you’d choose in real life, and that applied to this situation too. We were two people who’d been thrown together and forced down each other’s throats, that was all. We were just friends.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The next day, Colm and I spent the entire morning in my hotel room working together on the editing of the next show we’d be sending over to Éire TV. Although I would no longer be working with LVTV, there was still one show outstanding of the contracted four shows for Éire TV. My immediate thoughts after my altercation with Lindy and Dave involved walking away from everything, getting a plane home and accepting that my job at the Vicious Voice was dust. Sooner or later, I was going to have to accept that Leon wasn’t going to come forward if he hadn’t done so by now, and I really didn’t know how much more passive rejection I could take. But as I walked back to the MGM with Colm and he listened patiently to my ranting, I thought about his role in all of this. I was sure he wanted to put an experience like this documentary on his CV, but it wouldn’t be much use if the whole series wasn’t delivered. Once I got used to the idea of potentially continuing with the search instead of running for the hills from it, I thought about my own career prospects. Isolde wasn’t going to be impressed when she heard that I had cut ties with LVTV, but if I delivered on the Éire TV work, she wouldn’t have as much justification to fire me – and there had been no talk so far of extending the contract. After talking it over with Colm the previous night after dinner, I’d decided to hang in there a little while longer and use my head instead of my erratic emotions for once.

  As we worked our way through the show’s contents, it soon became apparent that Colm didn’t want me providing too much input and preferred to direct how things went himself, but we both laughed our way through the morning as we argued good-naturedly about what to put in and leave out of our half-hour slot. I hadn’t seen Colm’s bossy side in a while and, now that it was tempered with the knowledge that he was a good sort behind it, I quite enjoyed seeing it.

  A few hours later, I felt much better about things. We’d contacted some newspapers and magazines directly and had secured two interviews. One was for a weekend paper’s supplement, and the other was for a teenage fortnightly magazine called Glamgirl. Of course I was doing these interviews entirely for the purpose of giving us footage for the show – any hope that they would lead to Leon was now non-existent. He hadn’t seemed like the type that’d read Glamgirl anyway. We’d agreed that we’d make no reference to LVTV and what had happened with them in the show for Éire TV. I’d contacted Rick and told him that I was no longer working with LVTV to see if that changed how he felt about me being the Face of People Search. He hadn’t sounded impressed – LVTV had been very good for plugging People Search in features about me, and of course it had been free advertising for Rick – but he didn’t seem to want to end my contract immediately either, saying he’d have a think about where we could take things from here. That meant that we could include any People Search activities I’d been up to since the last Éire TV show. Between it all, we had plenty of footage – but no satisfactory ending to the story. Eventually, I told Colm that the only way I felt we could end the last episode of the show was with the truth – I’d pulled out all of the stops to find Leon, but to date I hadn’t heard from him and I didn’t know at this point if I was going to continue with my search or not. Our final scene was to be of me putting a scrapbook together of all of the press cuttings I’d accumulated since I started the Leon search. As our Éire TV contract was open to being extended, this ending potentially allowed the story to be continued – but in my heart I knew that I was just going through the motions of trying to complete the show in the correct manner. There would be no more of me looking for Leon after this. And if Éire TV wanted more shows, I’d just have to try my best to make Isolde understand that it wasn’t a runner. Of course, Colm had asked his boss Bea if it was looking likely that Éire TV would want to extend the run of shows, but she hadn’t given him a straight answer. I was hoping that was a good indication that the answer would be ‘No’.

  Colm called to my hotel room that evening as I was putting the scrapbook together. He handed me a CD as soon as I answered the door.

  I read the label: The Wall. “Pink Floyd?”

  “I promised you that I’d get you into them, remember?”

  “No, you threatened to get me into them.”

  “Give them a shot. You’ll love them, I promise.”

  I shrugged. “Stick the CD into the laptop so, but I’m not promising anything myself.”

  The opening bars of a song that Colm informed me was called ‘In The Flesh’ filled the room. I was suitably underwhelmed. My thoughts turned to what they always do when I’m less than fully entertained – food.

  “Have you eaten?” I picked up the room-service menu and waved at Colm. He shook his head.

  An hour later, we’d finished eating and The Wall was still playing away goodo. “How long is this thing?”

  “Not long enough. I could listen to it forever.”

  “You currently are.”

  I cleared the table, then moved all of my scrapbook stuff back onto it. Colm picked up one of the cuttings.

  “Why do you do it, Andie?”

  “Come again?”

  He held up the article. “The attention seeking. Why are you never happy unless everyone is talking about you?”

  I fiddled with a corner of the scrapbook. “I just fell into this, Colm. But when you think about it, it’s the way of the world. Quiet people get nowhere. You have to make a fuss about yourself, or nobody else will.”

  “Is all attention good, though? I mean, I remember seeing pictures of you wearing tights on your head shortly before we came over here. Weren’t you embarrassed when they were published?”

  My cheeks blushed red. “People like me keep people like you in a job, so I don’t know what you’re complaining about!”

  “I’m not complaining. I’m asking a question. I’m a cameraman by the way, not a paparazzi photographer.”

  Now he had me riled. “Same difference. You both m
ake a living capturing other people’s misfortunes. Not always, but it’s a part of it, and you can’t deny it! The juicier the pictures or the footage, the wider the audience.”

  “I don’t take any pleasure from other people’s misfortunes –”

  “You seemed pretty happy to show me at my worst during that first Éire TV interview. The whole country knows how many hairs I have up each nostril now, thanks to you.”

  “Oh, come on. As if anyone was interested in looking up your nostrils!”

  “Well, you evidently were.”

  “Zooming is part of my job. You’re just splitting hairs now – so to speak. And that’s more embarrassing than flashing your knickers, I take it? God, Andie, are you just looking for a reason to get pissed off with me?”

  “I don’t have to look. You just land them right in my lap time and time again.”

  There was silence for about twenty seconds.

  “Okay. As a dumb guy who can’t interpret the code of women who are pissed off with him, you’ll have to tell me exactly what you mean by what you’ve just said. I don’t know if I’m supposed to know or something, but I don’t have a clue.”

  This was my chance to tell him what I knew. Here he was, giving out to me about being attention-seeking, when his own way of dealing with the bad things in life wasn’t much better. He said I sought attention, but he ran away from it – who was he to say that one side of the coin was better than the other?

  In the space of about three seconds, I ran through all the scenarios in my head for how to tell him. Straight out? He’d go spare. He’d obviously worked his entire life around trying to keep what happened a secret. There was only one other option, so no wonder it had only taken three seconds to brainstorm . . . but it wasn’t an option I wanted to take. Colm wasn’t the only one who’d put a lot of time into burying something.

  “Andie, I know you think I’m a bit of a shit.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but closed it again. In fairness, I had thought that about him more than once. But at least I was starting to see where the shit was coming from.

  “Fair enough. I can be a shithead, but so can most people. But when I have good time for someone, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep my relationship with them on track. We got off to a rocky start, but I’d like to think we’re friends now – so if I’m doing something to annoy you, tell me. Well, maybe spare me the details of how you don’t like how I eat chicken wings and stuff like that. I’d prefer to just hear the big stuff. Spare my feelings on the little things.”

  “I have good time for you too. Never thought I would – it’s the whole shithead issue you mentioned – but there you go.”

  I paused, trying to get the right angle on what I knew I had to say.

  “Which is why . . . if you had anything you’d like to share with me . . . anything that’s on your mind that’s bothering you . . . I’m always here to listen.”

  “Anything that’s bothering me like what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. The cost of wide-angle lens, tripods with one leg shorter than the other two, things like that. Maybe even the past.”

  His face instantly hardened. Either he was used to reacting like this whenever the P word was mentioned, or he was on to me. He said nothing. He looked up at me to see if I was going to say anything else, and when I didn’t, he looked away again. I knew this trick – it was the get-information-by-saying-nothing method of finding out what was going on, which forced the other person to speak to fill the silence. After a few excruciating minutes of this malarkey, I realised that there was only one way to broach the topic.

  “Colm.” I moved over beside him and took his hand. He looked confused, but didn’t pull it away, which I took as a good sign. “I know about the car accident.”

  For about ten seconds, it was as if I had said nothing. Colm stared expressionlessly at the ground, still holding my hand, looking like he was picking Lotto numbers in his head during a bored moment at work. In the eleventh second, it was as if a starting pistol had gone off in his head that finally allowed him to react. He ripped his hand from mine before jumping up off the bed and pacing to the other side of the room. A pink flush started to spread up his neck and onto his face.

  “How?”

  I had to admit, I was surprised – I had expected to have to go through the rigmarole of ‘What are you talking about?’ for about ten minutes before we got to this point. He was taking it well. Good.

  “I read about it on the Internet.”

  “You read about it on the Internet.” He nodded his head. “Of course. So, you just stumbled upon this information, did you? You were reading today’s news, and a story from ten years ago – ten shagging years ago – just happened to pop up on your screen, did it?”

  “Well, not exactly . . .”

  “So how? How did you come across this story unless you were looking for it? Who told you about it?”

  His face was now distinctly purple. Not a typical indication of taking something well.

  “Nobody told me about it. I just happened to be doing some – research – about you and your awards, and I stumbled upon this link . . .”

  “What’s it to you about my awards?”

  “Look, it doesn’t matter! What I wanted to say to you was that you could talk to me about – what happened – if you wanted to. I can tell you’re not happy, Colm. Something’s bothering you.”

  “Oh, and you know me so well that you can tell that, is that it?” He shook his head. “Get real, Andie.”

  “I’m only trying to help . . . I thought we’d become friends recently . . .”

  “Just because I’ve lent you an ear while you’ve been moaning about Leon doesn’t mean you know me. You have absolutely no idea what’s going on in my head.”

  “Maybe I understand more than you think.”

  “How?”

  I shrugged. “The how doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re pushing people away because you’re living in the past. No wonder you’re unhappy. You’ve never moved on.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “Is it? Everything you love is from decades ago. The music, the clothes, even the biscuits! They’re all from a happier time in your life, aren’t they? Childhood . . . early teenage years . . . a time before you had to live with killing someone?”

  He flinched as I said it. Maybe it was that he recognised some truth in what I said, or the bluntness of me saying that he’d killed someone, but he looked as if I had hit him.

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” It looked like rigmarole time had come after all.

  “It’ll be okay, Colm –”

  “It’ll be okay? Have you ever killed someone?”

  It was my turn to look at the carpet.

  “Like I said, you have no idea what you’re on about. I have to go.” He was over at the door before he’d even finished the sentence.

  “Colm!” I ran after him. “Wait!”

  It was no use. He bombed it out the door, and by the time I reached the corridor, he had disappeared.

  I should have been angry at him for running away, but I wasn’t. I just felt sorry for him.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  In the days after I told Colm what I knew about his past, he avoided me. I didn’t take it personally at first when he refused to answer the hotel-room door to me, even though I’d seen him going in a few seconds earlier. My throat was raw from roaring in at him and my knuckles were turning skinless, not to mention the dirty looks I was getting from anyone who passed, but it was okay – it was hard for him to cope with the fact that I knew his private business, and I had to cut him some slack.

  But when I saw him across the lobby of the MGM, rang his phone to test the waters, and saw him put the phone back in his pocket when he saw it was me calling, something clicked into place. Suddenly, things were very personal, and my pity for his plight turned to the rage of the ignored.

  “Hey!” I yelled across the lobby at Colm.

&
nbsp; He hesitated for a few seconds before turning around. I crossed to where he was standing, right in front of a clothes shop that opened onto the lobby. His face had the look of a Rottweiler about it.

  “What’s the deal?” I said.

  “No deal. I’m just ignoring you. Or at least, I’m trying to. You’re a bit slow about taking the hint.”

  “Why?”

  “Probably genetic.”

  I chose to ignore that. “Why are you ignoring me? I’m not judging you on what happened. I only told you what I know so that I could support you.”

  He snorted. “If you’ve learned anything at all about me since we first met, you should know that I’m a very private person. Do you think private people want other people reading their private business?”

  “It’s on the Internet! Nothing that’s on the Internet is private!”

  “But you didn’t just stumble upon the information – you were nosing into my business.”

  “Oh for God’s sake, Colm! Get off the cross!”

  “I’m not listening to this.” He turned around and started to walk away.

  “No! Come back here!” I walloped his back with my handbag. The wallop had the desired effect of making him turn around – although he looked even grouchier when he did, which I hadn’t thought was possible.

  “You have to face up to this! Are you going to spend the rest of your life hiding away from the world?”

  “Mind your own business, Andie. Go off and have a dream about Leon or something.” He turned to walk away.

  I swung the handbag again. “Don’t. You. Patronise. Me!”

  The final swing must have hit a kidney, as he squealed with pain and held his hands to that general direction.

  “Who are you – Miss Piggy? Give me that!” He grabbed the strap of my handbag and pulled the bag out of my hands. “You needn’t think you’re getting this back!”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a huge handbag dangling from the arm of a display model near the entrance of the nearby shop. In one fluid movement, I lunged forward, ripped the bag off the model’s shoulder and launched it at Colm’s arm. It was all puffed out with paper, and swung well, as if it was complicit in helping Colm to see sense.