“Darell, yeah right, Darell is someone that I don’t know anymore. Darell didn’t talk to me like he used to when he got back from England, or even before that. He changed the moment he left to make his first movie,” he shouted; the attendant looked at him, while she was sitting in the back of the jet’s cabin, in a strange way. “You know what I wanted, more than anything in life? I wanted my father to be proud of me, to see me in Hollywood, with the stars, and to see me with the Oscar, and say with proudness, ‘hey, that’s my boy.’ Chuck, I don’t have shit right now!”
“Okay, but you still have me as your agent.” Chuck tried his hardest to make Damen want to go back to California, trying to find any piece of hope that was hiding in the back of Damen’s mind and grabbing onto it before it died. “And I’m proud of you.”
“Chuck, the only thing you got me in was a zit commercial, but I thank you for doing that. Listen, it’s over for me with Hollywood. I’m sorry, but I guess I’m not as strong as you thought,” Damen announced in a medium tone.
“What? Damen, you are strong. You’re the strongest little shit that I’ve ever seen,” he shouted with a small smile. “Damen, if you go back to Ridge Crest, you’re going to allow Hollywood to beat you. Listen, I know you’re a kind and gentle person. But, I know damn well that you’ve changed to being a much stronger individual. Tell me, Damen, what did you do when you found out Vivian was cheating on you with Jose?” asked Chuck.
“I punched Jose’s lights out.” Damen crunched his fists together and imagined he was punching Jose again, wishing he could reenact that moment all over.
“Now, tell me the truth, before you came to Hollywood, or California, would you of ever punched Jose for messing around with your girlfriend?”
“I don’t understand, what do you mean?”
“Well, let’s say you were dating a girl back home, and one day you found out Jose was messing around with her. Would you have ever punched him like you did?”
Damen thought about the question and tried to visualize the situation again, but before they came to Hollywood. “No, I wouldn’t have.”
“You see, Hollywood has helped you realize to stand up for yourself. Listen, how about this, you give me and Hollywood one more chance to prove to you that we want you in our lives, and that we want you to make it famous? Will you give us that chance?” Chuck questioned in a serious voice, picking up his cane and walking over to Damen. He sat down next to him and watched as he started to think about it, seeing his tear-drenched eyes twirling around his sockets.
“I don’t know.”
“Listen, you know that movie that’s being directed by Mike Stenson? You know, the one I was talking to you about before you left for New York?” Chuck asked with interest.
“Yeah.”
“Well, the auditions are today for it. It’s only 2:00 p.m. now, the auditions begin at 6:00 p.m.”
Damen widened his eyes, but then brought them back to regular size, remembering about what the newspaper said. “Yeah, but didn’t the paper say that over 3,000 people are supposed to show up for it today?”
Chuck smiled, and answered, “Well, yeah, but so what.”
He looked at Chuck in confusion, speaking, “So what? Chuck, it’s going to be impossible for me to get the lead role in that film.”
“Listen, if we go to the audition today and you don’t get that role, then I will personally escort you to Ridge Crest tomorrow. Is it a deal?” Chuck held out his hand, waiting for Damen to grab it.
“You know, I’m probably going to kill you for this.” Damen smiled, grabbed onto Chuck’s hand, and shook it. “Alright, Chucky, it’s a deal.”
Chapter Sixty-Five
It was March now. Four months passed by, once again, as instantaneously as time clicks over to the next digit. Every day, passed by so brisk, so quickly, it was like they weren’t days at all, but fragments of visions, thoughts, that form and end faster than a blink of an eye, a shake of a tail, a break of a pencil.
Jose is in the middle of making his first movie with a star role under his belt, learning what it was like to be an actor of stardom, living it up in the life that he always wanted, but got the wrong way: by cheating.
Darell moved out of Mr. Fryer’s home and moved into a condominium across the street from Chuck’s Wood Café, still depressed about betraying Damen, not telling him about the falsification that he assumed Jose created and was the only one in on.
And finally, we come to Damen, who was still waiting for a callback from the audition he did in November. Yes, Damen is still in California, with another twist of fate and showings of an angel’s wing, it allowed him to regain his hope once again. Yet, as the months passed by from November, Damen’s hope slowly diminished, seeing that the casting directors weren’t calling him back, and feeling that his life was still the same, with him working for Chuck, in a lowdown café. He would still dream about Hollywood, and seeing himself in it, yet when he opened his eyes, he was either standing in front of an old woman, being a customer, yelling at him because her coffee was too cold, or else, standing in the middle of the night, in the darkened café, mopping the floor, and looking through the windows up at the stars in the night. This habit, or ritual, that occurred every day for four months, slowly, but surely, started to get to him, and his hope, that he lost before, but regained again, was slowly lingering its way from his thoughts, and leaking through every exhale he gave.
It wasn’t till one day his hope was regained when a simple call was made to the café. It was an average day, people of all colors, sorts, races, and societies, drinking their coffee, conversing amongst themselves, with Chuck serving them alone. Suddenly, Damen ran through the doors of the café, like he did every day, hoping that the director called him for that movie. Every day, he ran through these doors, for the past months, going up to Chuck, and asking him about the audition, and if they got back to him. Yet, every day, Chuck would tell him “no,” and turn away from him, not wanting to see Damen’s depressed reactions. Chuck comprehended, and understood that Damen needed this callback, for his own sake, for his own hope, but Chuck also knew that reality sometimes shows us its bad side a lot, and sometimes you just can’t get what you want at the time you need it.
So, today, Damen ran through these same doors of the café, running up to Chuck, and questioning, “Chuck, did anyone call for me while I was gone?”
Chuck didn’t want to answer him. Trying to avoid him as best as he could, he started to serve a customer coffee, and pretend he didn’t hear Damen’s words. But then, Damen made himself known to him, by going up to Chuck’s face, and waiting for the answer, the reply. Chuck saw his eyes, sincere as could be, waiting patiently, without raising his voice, and asking again. Once Chuck saw the sincerity in his eyes, he shook his head two times and answered quickly, “No, no one called for you, Damen.”
Mr. Schultz put on his apron, still showing depression to his eyes. He wanted to make sure of Chuck’s answer, so he asked with suspicion, “Are you sure?”
“Listen, every day when you’re not here, you ask me that and I always say no.” Chuck was stressed, he felt exhausted by Damen asking him again. “Listen, Damen, they told you and me, that we should hear from them within four months or less. It’s been four months already, and I think they’re not going to call you,” Chuck added.
Damen spilt coffee grounds all over a customer, due to the shock that was caused when Chuck’s words came out. It was like Chuck was a hypocrite, always preaching to him to never give up hope, and in the long run, Chuck was doing just that to him. Chuck’s words caused Damen’s self-esteem, his hope, to crumble in an instant. Damen then noticed the coffee grounds on the customer, seeing her angry face, gawking at Damen like she wanted to kill him. But, he didn’t care, instead, for the time being, he went up to Chuck, grabbed onto his shoulder, whipped him around to face him, and asked in seriousness, straight to the point, cutting out all other diversions, “Well, what am I supposed to do now?”
Before Chuck could answer, the customer, with the coffee grounds on her, yelled, “Excuse me, would you please get me a napkin, you stupid youngster?” The customer’s sinister eyes saw that Damen still didn’t move, still staring at Chuck, not even acknowledging the mistake that he’d made. “I said, get me a napkin.”
Damen threw eight napkins on the woman’s lap, saying with panic, “Here you go, now shut up, please.”
Chuck saw the napkins, flying on the customer’s lap, so he went over to her and helped the woman, cleaning off the grounds from her lap. Chuck spoke, “Damen, would you try to be more careful next time.”
“Don’t try to change the subject, please, Chuck. Now, I--”
Ring, Ring, Ring.
The phone allowed Chuck to cut him off, asking, “Would you get that, Damen?”
“First I want you to say that I will get a callback, and I will get the star role in this movie,” he announced before Chuck looked at him like he was crazy.
Chuck finished brushing the coffee grounds off of the woman, and then turned toward Damen’s eyes, shouting, “Alright, Damen, you’ll get a callback from the casting agents, and yes, you’ll get the star role. Now, answer the frickin’ phone.”
He chuckled, “You always give me my way, Chuck, always.”
Damen talked on the phone for about two minutes, when suddenly he dropped it. He picked it back up and talked for a minute more, and then he dropped it again. Once hanging it up, he gave out a loud shout, yell, keeping the same pitch for about ten seconds. It was a yell of happiness to Damen’s mind, but to the customers, it was a yell of craziness.
Chuck ran toward his echoing yell, but as soon he got up to Damen’s face, it stopped, and he asked, “Who was it?”
Damen paused and looked outside the window at the street that belonged to Hollywood. “That was Mike Stenson, the director for this movie. He personally called me to say that another audition isn’t necessary. He said I got the part.” Damen sat down in a seat, yelling, “I got the part!”
Chuck wrapped his arms around Damen, shouting with glory, “Oh my God, you see, didn’t I tell you? Now, if you would have went back to Ridge Crest, you would have never felt this moment.”
“He wants me to come in tomorrow and sign a few papers. He’s also going to explain, and give me the script. Oh my God, I got the part. Wait a second, I got the part?” The shock, from the news, came over his mind, beginning to feel dizzy and nauseous toward the reality of this moment.
Chuck saw Damen’s eyes, how they were getting low, looking as if he was about to pass out. Chuck ran over to the customer whom Damen spilt coffee grounds on and grabbed her coffee. He ran back to Damen, handed him the cup, saying, “Here, just calm down and drink this.”
“My God, this is too weird.” Damen then passed out, dropping the coffee on the ground, as well as falling to the floor himself.
Chuck started, quickly, to guide the customers out of the café, announcing in panic, “Alright everyone, the Café’s closed for today.”
“But I’m not done with my coffee yet,” a customer said with Chuck pushing her body out the door.
“I’ll give you a doggy bag later, now leave,” he demanded with a smile. The last customer left, so he closed and locked the doors, while Damen just lay on the floor, with a permanent smile engraved on his face. He grabbed Damen’s body with all of his old might, and brought him up to a chair, with his head tilted back.
Mr. Schultz slowly, in a sluggish motion, started to wake up, questioning in a slur, “What happened?”
“You passed out.”
“I had the weirdest dream, Chuck. It was about me getting the star role.” Damen got up from the seat and lit up a cigarette at the same time, showing sadness that it was only a dream, as he thought.
Chuck smiled vividly toward Damen and his smoke. “Really?”
“Yeah, it was weird.”
Chuck suddenly yelled in vivacity, “Well, it wasn’t a dream, it really happened.”
“What?” That’s when Damen passed out again, not believing that this was real, shocked at the way God showed his hand on his soul without warning.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Mr. Fryer busted out of Darell’s trailer, displaying fear in his eyes, and fright to his mouth, panting in a dog’s tone, running toward a trailer in the stretch of a distance. Something had happened, befallen him, his fright was too unbearable, as if he saw a ghost, an entity from his past, that he didn’t want to be seen to his eyes ever again. He ran, as fast as his legs could carry him, toward a trailer, wanting to reach it swiftly, craving in panic to speak his mind of something that was terrifying to him. He reached the trailer finally, with a star on the door, reading ‘JULIENNE WELLS’ and without knocking, busted into it. He raced his body into the front of the trailer, closed the door, and saw Julienne standing in it, holding her script, and rehearsing her lines in front of a vanity. She turned around, faced him with confusion, and that’s when he explained with anger, “Julienne, we’ve got a problem.”
She blew a gasp of air out of her lungs, and then saw him sitting down on her couch, like he lived there. She became angered toward his rudeness, of bursting into her private home, the trailer for the movie she’s acting in, so she demanded with major attitude, “Would you mind knocking first, instead of rudely bursting in here? Do you live in a barn?”
Tom was still trying to catch his breath, showing to her, that he was nervous, something had happened that wasn’t of positive origin. He caught his breath, and tried to squeeze out as much of an explanation as possible. Turning to her face, he spoke with fright and a bit of massive rage conjoined with it, “Listen, we’ve got a major crisis on our hands at this moment.”
“Well, make it fast, I have to be on the set in ten minutes with Jose.” Julienne didn’t show any fear, or even anxiety toward Tom’s nervousness, feeling that all of her problems were out of the way. She put down her script and began combing her hair, thinking that Tom’s circumstances, or problem, couldn’t affect her that much.
“Okay, Damen got the star role in a Mike Stenson film. He got it yesterday,” Mr. Fryer said in a nervous way.
She stopped combing her hair and looked into her vanity, toward his reflection. Then, she turned to face his reality, and said, “That’s impossible. How do you know?”
Before he could answer, explain his reason for knowing, Jose stepped into her trailer, asking, “How do you know what? What are we talking about?” Jose picked up the comb and began combing his short, black hair, waiting for an answer, treating the moment in a nonchalant way.
Julienne didn’t believe Tom’s words. Looking at him in a heinous, abhorrent and nefarious form, she was trying to read his eyes to see if he really was lying to her or not. Yet, she couldn’t decipher the truth in his eyes or the fraudulence in his eyes, so she responded to Jose while still gazing at Tom, “Tom says that Damen got the star role in a Mike Stenson movie.”
Jose became frantic, scrutinizing, observing and watching Tom lighting up a cigar, and then staring over at Julienne’s face to see if he could translate her facial reactions, the way her features were formed at this instant. He couldn’t read her face, so he turned back to Tom, and questioned through his cigar smoke, “What? How do you know?”
“Listen, Darell said that Damen called him today. He told me that Damen got the call yesterday from Mike Stenson, and he said to Damen that he got the part,” Tom replied, smoke exhaling with his words.
Julienne became calm, for some reason, and stole the comb away from Jose. She started combing her hair again, explaining, “Well, all we do is prevent it. It’s simple, Tom, we just go up to Mike and tell him that Damen is a drug addict, and for that, he’ll be too incompetent to work on his film.”
Tom grabbed the comb from Julienne’s grip with force, pressure, and pronounced with attitude, “Well, that’s not going to work out, because Damen already signed the contract today. I don’t know what to do now.”
“Who cares if he
got a star role, that doesn’t hurt me any, I mean Jose, anymore,” Julienne said, screwing up her words, then catching her mistake with mild panic to her tone. Julienne knew that she needed Jose for only a little bit more, and then her fame would be rekindled again. But, since Tom Fryer came in the picture, he was beginning to be a pain for her too, just like Jose. At first she had to put up with Jose; now she had to put up with the both of them. Understanding that Tom Fryer wanted Damen out of the picture for good, or else, she knew, Tom would blackmail her, because he knew of her and Jose’s lies about Damen’s addiction. In a nutshell, Julienne was caught either way, and had to continue the game that she started.
“Listen, I can’t let Damen get successful, famous; I can’t take that chance,” Tom announced; the thought of Damen telling the whole world about his incident with Vivian ran through his mind. He realized once again, if Damen gets the power of fame, then he would also have the power to prove to the police and media that Tom’s guilty of rape. He knows that once a person becomes famous, the public will believe anything they say, especially if a young, handsome guy like Damen reaches that power.
“Why don’t you want him to succeed in this business? I mean, I hate him for the lie he told about me, and the fact that he hit on Julienne, but he’s still a human being. So, why don’t you?” Jose asked.
“Yeah, why don’t you want him to succeed?” Julienne questioned also, in a very interested voice.
Tom’s nerves were soaring through his spine, vertebrae, shooting toward his vocal cords, and making itself known as he explained with fear, “Well, let’s just say that Damen saw me doing something I wasn’t supposed to do.”
“Listen, I’m sure Damen won’t snitch on you; he probably forgot all about you and the situation you weren’t supposed to do,” said Julienne, grabbing her comb back from Tom’s nervous grasp.
“Listen, I kept in that one secret, deep inside, that I wasn’t supposed to tell Jose. You owe me, Julienne. The plan was to keep Damen from getting that power in the first place. Now, you have to help with the Damen problem, like I helped you with it before,” shouted Tom. Jose became confused at his words. Julienne looked at Jose out of the corner of her eye and then looked directly at Tom; she couldn’t believe he mentioned that in front of Jose.
Sugar Valley (Hollywood's Darkest Secret) Page 61