When morning broke on a new day, a misty winter rain blanketed the city. It was a soft, pretty rain, the kind you like to take a walk in with a colorful umbrella held overhead to keep you dry. Vancouver is a gorgeous city, nestled in the mountains, yet cozied alongside the Pacific Ocean. The rain glistened on the sidewalks, and added a layer of shine to the windows of the office buildings lining the streets. But Jessie noted that she could not see the tops of the mountains on days like today – they were under a thick, soupy fog. It felt weird not being able to see the mountaintops. As if she were in a watery, foggy fishbowl and couldn’t see her way out.
For brunch, Charlie took Jessie to Jethro’s, a popular diner in the Dunbar area where they often ate when both were home, and they had to wait an hour before a table was ready. They went down the road to Bean Around the World and had mochas while they were waiting, but still they kept the conversation safe. Charlie shared stories of filming in Europe – Paris this week, Brussels last week. Jessie just sat and tried to stay focused on his dialogue, but her mind kept wandering and she was easily distracted. Every time the barista noisily steamed milk or ground the espresso, she turned to watch. Charlie finally got annoyed with her, but pushed it aside, and tried to bring her into the conversation. Deirdre was on his case these days, and his mother as well. As a result he was seriously trying to step up his behavior. If Charlie was going to become a married man, perhaps it was time he mended his ways.
“Did you say you found a dress?” he asked with interest.
“Huh? What?” She ran a nervous finger through her hair, trying to bring her mind back around to the topic at hand.
“A dress. For the wedding?” Frustration tinged his voice.
“Oh. Yes.” She forced a laugh. “I thought you meant for tonight.” She looked up at him, met his questioning eyes, and felt a pang of affection for him. She hadn’t been fair. Something was going to have to give. “I did find a wedding dress. Dee has great taste, as always. I think you’ll like it.” She smiled now, more genuinely this time. Forced Josh from her mind. Maybe these last three weeks had just been a joyous dream…
“How is everything else coming, did you get the guest list sorted out…?”
She started to speak but then he interrupted. “I think you should do some research and see if your mother can come.” That threw her. Charlie rarely brought up the topic of her mother. Why today? She shot him a look that said I don’t think so, baby.
“Look,” he said kindly. “I was thinking of doing some investigating on my own to see if she is still living on the East Coast. I thought it would be a nice wedding gift, to bring her here and maybe help the two of you reconcile. But I talked to Jack and Lydia about it and they disagree. Good ole mom and dad think it should be your decision.” He looked closely at her, trying to gauge some sort of reaction.
Jessie lifted her mocha and took a big drink, eyeballing him over the rim. That was Charlie for you, always trying to be helpful but taking a wrong turn somewhere along the tracks. Like a big St. Bernard dog jumping on you after walking rainy Vancouver sidewalks. Affectionate without realizing his muddy feet would leave paw prints. Well, at least Charlie now had her full attention.
“Charlie,” she started, slowly twisting her mug around between her hands. “I left my mother a long time ago. I had my reasons, and I have no regrets. I don’t want her at the wedding.”
“I think you do have regrets.”
“Oh, and you know all of my thoughts, do you? We’re psychic now, are we?”
“I just thought it would be a nice beginning for us - to start fresh, to let some of the bad stuff from our pasts go. Repair relationships.”
Her eyes flashed. Repair relationships, bullshit. It was on the tip of her tongue to say well, let’s just invite your old buddy Josh to the wedding, then, shall we? But she didn’t. Images of her mother – impatient, distant - flashed before her eyes instead.
Firmly, she took a stand. “What if I told you she was dead?”
“Is she? You never told me.” He was issuing a challenge, wanting her to ‘fess up that she’d been keeping contact with her mother all along. Another secret, a barrier between them.
“No. I don’t know. Maybe.” And then, as she glanced at the time on her iPhone and noisily pushed her chair back from the table, she said, “The mother I knew was dead before I left. End of subject, Charlie.”
That pissed him off. Charlie hated when Jessie closed herself off like that. But it was something he’d had to get used to. If there was something she didn’t want to discuss, then there was no getting her to open up. He could try to pursue it, but it would just end in an argument, and he was only home for the weekend trying to repair his own relationship with his intended, so there wasn’t much point in stirring things up anymore than he felt they were already stirred up. Charlie shoved back his chair and it, too, made a scraping sound on the wooden floor that jarred his nerves. Why did it feel like they were still ten thousand miles apart?
Josh. That was it. The reason Charlie flew home that weekend was because his father had called him. Seemed all of a sudden Charlie’s fiancée needed some serious grounding.
***
Jack knew Jonathon, of course, all the big producers knew all the big actors in the city. They’d run into each other at a screening for Jack’s latest film, an Indie drama Jack did for peanuts because he liked the script and trusted the new young director. Jack was always giving second chances, giving people a hand up. But that night he was pulled aside by Jonathon and told in no uncertain terms by the brusque producer that something had changed on the Drifters set, he couldn’t put his finger on it, but he had some concerns over Jessie’s relationships with the cast.
“Which cast?” Jack asked suspiciously, feeling sudden butterflies in his gut.
“Well, I haven’t figured it out yet, but there’s some shit going down between Josh and Stephen, and Jessie seems to be in the middle. I don’t know what’s going on, there’s nothing readily apparent, but there’s an undercurrent of something.”
“Get to the point, Jon,” Jack said, sipping on a martini and narrowing his eyes in that Deacon way.
With his usual flair for the dramatic, before he responded Jonathon drained his whiskey without losing eye contact with Jack. Then he plunked his empty glass down on a passing tray without acknowledging the server, an Asian boy of about twenty who made a mental note to stop going to auditions because most producers sucked.
“Do you want to keep Jessie Wheeler in your family?”
Jack, uneasy, shifted his weight.
Jonathon had more to say. “I want peace on my set. I want my actors to get along. I need my girl to be happy when she’s there. And all I can say is, whatever’s changed between her and Josh, it’s pissed off Stephen, and it’s made my two lead actors the happiest I’ve ever seen them. They don’t talk much, they’ve never talked much, but when their eyes meet, it’s magic. And I’m not talking about when the camera’s rolling.” He grabbed another glass, from a female server this time, and gave her a ravishing smile before looking back to Jack, whose annoyance was palpable.
Jack paused. In some ways he felt he held some kind of ownership over Jessie, a sacred kinship, at least. He was the first to recognize her special aura, her talents. He found her. As far as he was concerned, Jessie was already family.
“You’re full of shit, McCloud. If things are so great on your set now, why would you rock the boat by telling me this?”
Jonathon thought about it for a second, and then responded definitively. “Because it scares the shit out of me when we are rolling towards a climax as big as the Deacon – Wheeler nuptials and Jessie is spending every lunch with Josh Sawyer. Josh, whom I cast not long after his third try at rehab, who’s walking a tightrope every day of his life.”
Jack paused, rubbing a thumb absently over his glass, his eyes narrowing. “Why the hell’d you cast him anyway, Jonathon, if you were so worried about whether he could keep his shit together?”<
br />
“Seriously Jack, you of all people need to ask me that?”
“So. The same reason we introduced Jessie to Charles and Dee, I take it. Faith.”
“Yes. Partly but not entirely, though,” Jonathon said, backing up to hail the Asian server. “Besides the obvious, which is that he’s a fucking good actor and a hell of a rider, I actually had another reason.”
He swifted a drink off the tray, and this time smiled kindly at the young waiter, who rescinded his earlier dark thoughts about producers and decided not to paint them all with the same brush. Jonathon glanced back at Jack and raised his glass. “Here’s to secrets, and love, and all that bullshit.”
He turned to exchange a few words with a passing CBC exec, but gave Jack’s arm a squeeze as he did so. Without looking at him he ended their conversation with “Get your boy home, Jack, and charge up their romance and this wedding before my co-stars ramp up their own tryst to the point of no return and implode.”
Jack felt sick after that. Was there any truth to this? Lots of co-stars who are romantically entangled on-screen fall into some sort of false affection off-screen. How many more months was Drifters shooting before the end of season one? Ah, he remembered. About a few weeks before the wedding, that’s how long. Damn.
He set down his glass on the ledge of the coat check, smiled distractedly, and left the post-screening reception. He had a phone call to make.
***
By the time Jack actually reached Charlie in Paris he had even more reason to be concerned. He’d been down to his acting workshops on the Eastside. His group had extended them to run two evenings a week in the winter months, maybe in the hopes he would discover another Jessie (although in his heart he knew there wasn’t, nor would there ever be, another Jessie), and he’d been asked about the wedding. Was it going to happen? Because Jessie was down here a few weeks ago with Josh Sawyer, working with the homeless and hanging out with him at a local club. They seemed pretty attached to each other. Here, see some video –
And there it was, thanks to the beauty of technology – Jessie and Josh on video, captured by one of the actors in Jack’s workshop, someone who, Jack was relieved to discover, subscribed to the Downtown Eastside code that determined Jessie shall be protected at all costs, and thus the video had not ended up on YouTube. There was nothing really incriminating in the cell phone video apart from a shared dance, but on the way home Jack left a message with Charlie that had him calling back within the hour.
Two days later Jack Deacon’s playboy son was on the flight to Vancouver.
***
Chapter Eleven
In light of Jonathon’s revelation as well as the Eastside cell videos, Jack was not surprised at how things ended up at Annika the Saturday night Charlie was home. Named for the woman who opened the upscale eatery, Annika was a favorite haunt for the rich and successful, and generally was always first choice for smaller fundraisers where dinners were a mere $1000 a plate. Jessie was scheduled to sing amongst other performers who never minded sharing their success for a good cause. This fundraiser was for the children’s ward of the hospital in nearby New Westminster; the hospital’s foundation had no problem selling the pricey tickets.
A packed house awaited the patrons that evening. The space was elegantly decorated with strings of twinkling fairy lights and creamy vases of expensive, rare white orchids. The way the restaurant’s seating was structured, in essence, led to the outcome of the evening for Jessie. She and Charlie were seated at an intimate table for two near a window on a raised second floor level, where they could watch the slow moving pleasure boat lights of vessels cruising English Bay, as they did all winter in the moderate climate. Three steps below and twenty feet away were a number of larger booths that seated four to eight people. A number of companies booked these booths so their top executives could sit together. Drifters had booked two. The one where Carter and his girl of the week, plus Sue-Lyn, Maggie, Stephen, Sophie and Josh were situated was the second booth in the center aisle. Moments after being seated, Jessie found her eye-line went straight for Josh, who was seated on the far bench next to Sue-Lyn.
She straightened immediately and glanced at Charlie. He hadn’t noticed the Drifters bunch but she thought well, whatever, I work with them, it’s perfectly okay to acknowledge their presence if the time comes. Josh had indeed noticed Jessie. Everyone in the room did. She was formally gowned in Zuhair Murad, in a breathtaking snow-white silk flowing backless dress appliqued with delicate pastel pink and green flowers. Her hair was styled in a vintage up-do, with a delicate wave in the front and side, balanced with feminine curls and ringlets in the back. She was exquisite. For the Drifters folk in the room, accustomed to seeing her in mud-splattered skirts with her hair generally falling loosely around her face, she was nothing short of a vision sent from the heavens above. Sophie poked Stephen more than once when she caught him watching Jessie; every man in the room noticed her that evening.
The early part of the fundraiser went as well as could be expected, considering that which is highly esteemed and treasured – love, sacred and true - was in the midst of going awry. Little conversation punctuated Charlie and Jessie’s meal of bucatini pasta with duck ragout. A silky smooth Chateau Lafite Rothschild Pauillac 1996 provided the liquid courage Jessie sought as a tonic to her exposed nerves. She consumed three glasses before being discreetly asked to remove herself to an assigned ‘green room’ in preparation for her performance. Briefly peeking over her heavily mascaraed eyelashes for a quick glimpse at Josh, she placed the linen napkin by her plate and maneuvered first one tipsy heel and then the other from underneath the floor length tablecloth until she was upright. Josh watched as Charlie grasped her hand, kissed it, and wished her well. He was a cavalier; Charlie was always acting for an audience. Jessie acknowledged his kiss with a Mona Lisa glint and then turned to leave the room, stopping for a second at the elaborate table where Charles and Dee lingered with Jonathon and his wife, Giselle.
Dee too, took Jessie’s hand and wrapped it in her own long fingers. “You are enchanting,” she whispered. Jessie knew all she had today in terms of fame and success were thanks to Charles and Dee, and Charlie’s father Jack, too. She felt a rush of gratitude and wished she could confide her personal troubles to this genuine, affectionate woman. Dee knew her well enough to ascertain a certain tumult beneath Jessie’s outward appearance that day, but time was not on their side. Curious, Dee watched Jessie’s graceful withdrawal from the main dining room as she slipped away to prepare.
The elegantly appointed stage, daintily lit by strings of floor to ceiling twinkling fairy lights and highlighted by stately white pillars, was a tiny sanctuary where cream silk draperies, accented by dripping bouquets of white roses and baby’s breath, gave Jessie the sense of stepping into her own cocoon. In the Zuhair Murad, itself a living flower garden, she stood back from the microphone and contemplated the dreamlike chamber as patrons adjusted their seating for better viewing pleasure. It was as if she were being born again after years of hiding in a comfortable but bitter, dark cave. In these last few weeks with Josh she had discovered a part of herself she thought was dead; the wine and this illusory, fantastic environment seemed a message from the universe itself – it’s not too late to start again. To love again. To live again.
Jessie took a deep breath and stepped forward. Accompanied only by a baby grand piano, in its own shade of white to complete the mise en scene, she held her hands clasped in front of her waist and started to sing. The pianist was her regular fellow, Christian, a clean cut salt and pepper-haired forty-five-year-old who’d agreed to wear a white tux for the occasion, although his artist’s instincts had him include, at the last minute, a soft pink bowtie he’d saved from his brother’s wedding last summer. Although Jessie had changed her tune at the last minute prior to the afternoon sound check, he was nevertheless always humbled to be her chosen accompanist. Christian played with refinement and a careful restraint as he let Jessie’s music take over an
d envelop him, and then in turn surround the spellbound patrons in Annika with starry-eyed glory.
The song was, of course, a message to Josh. It was his; it belonged to him as surely as he belonged to her now and forever. As long as there was breath in their lungs and light in their souls, regardless of where this journey called life chose to take Jessie and Josh - perhaps even enduring in the great mystery of the hereafter - the song was a heartbeat, a sure and certain rhythm of promise. Jessie’s voice and music, a melody Christian was privileged to play, joined the fragmented lovers together across a crowded, mesmerized roomful of wealthy people privy to their own lonely sufferings and losses.
It was the one she had written for Josh – and for others like him, including any lost souls at Annika this night – after finding him in the garbage and in all certainty told him he could defeat his demons. It was the song she sang for him in the Downtown Eastside the night they first made love. It was a message of hope but tonight, for Josh and Jessie, it was cloaked in a painful uncertainty.
A Song For Josh, Drifters Book One Page 19