In other words: He was still having an effect on me. I just didn’t know what it meant.
We made it to the airport in plenty of time for our flight back. When we landed at LAX, Francesca offered to take me home. I wasn’t really in the mood to talk to anyone. We’d all been silent on the flight back, our noses buried in books or Us Weekly. But it sounded better than a cab. Keith was supposed to have picked me up, but he had texted on Sunday afternoon to say he couldn’t make it—the one message I got from him the whole weekend. I didn’t take that as a good sign.
Once Francesca and I found her Prius in short-term parking, we started the slow crawl through LA traffic. The drive was as depressing as the weekend.
I was staring out the window at the Hummers on Sepulveda when I finally turned to Francesca and said, “Dallas is trying to get fired, isn’t he?”
“It would seem so.”
“What are we going to do about it?”
“Fire him.”
“What? Are you serious? We can’t fire Dallas. You yourself said he was our star. We can’t let him go. We have too much invested,” I argued.
“Mal, he’s been acting like a spoiled brat for the past week and it’s getting worse. I have no idea whether his hotel-room antics with Alexis were part of that or whether he genuinely wanted to make out with her. But that’s almost beside the point. He’s actively sabotaging the show now, not just his own career. I won’t go down for that self-obsessed artiste, no matter how talented he is. Neither should you. It’s definitely not your fault that he signed his next few years away before Shakespeare came calling. I thought Dallas could work through it, but clearly he can’t.”
I was shocked to hear Francesca talk this way about Dallas. I had expected her to suggest mediation, not a full-blown attack. Was it her jealousy of Alexis talking, or did she really mean it?
I thought back to that magical day at the Getty when we first met. It had seemed like a match made in heaven. Could things have really soured so fast?
Or did he want me to put up a fight to keep him? Wouldn’t that show him that he really mattered?
I didn’t ask Francesca.
This was one decision I was going to have to make on my own.
Francesca dropped me off at home. My mother was out. I was relieved. That way I didn’t have to explain the ruined dress right off the bat.
I climbed into my bed and clicked on E! Just as I was dozing off, about to dream of a world without decisions, the doorbell rang. I went to the intercom and pressed speak.
“Hello?”
“Mallory? It’s Keith,” said the voice.
Keith? What was he doing here? I wasn’t ready to deal with him yet. But I guess when there’s an avalanche, you can’t be surprised that the rocks keep falling.
He was already on the porch when I opened the door.
“Hi,” I said. “This is unexpected. I figured you didn’t want to see me when you said you couldn’t pick me up from the airport.”
“Sorry if driving in circles around LAX waiting for you to land didn’t fit into my work schedule,” Keith said bleakly. As usual, he looked spectacular. A rare February heat wave had hit the Southland and the temperature, even at this late hour, was hovering somewhere around eighty degrees. Keith was dressed in his black zippered bondage shorts that hung below the knee with various straps hooking every which way. He wore a Cheap Trick shirt that was ripped ever so elegantly just above his left shoulder, revealing the subtle contours of his collarbone. His mussed hair fell over his eyes, which were looking at his sandals. He flexed his toes.
“Come in,” I said. “My mom’s not home.”
“No?” Keith said, perking up. “Where is she?”
“Who knows? I got back and she wasn’t here.”
He followed me into the living room and I tried for small talk, asking how his weekend was. He was not terribly responsive. I didn’t know what to do.
“Want to take a dip in the Jacuzzi?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t think this is a Jacuzzi moment.”
Instead we headed over to the couch in the living room. He sat next to me, but not too close.
“I’ve been thinking …,” he said slowly.
“About?”
“About us.”
“Are you here to break up with me?” I said evenly.
Keith sighed. “I don’t want to. But I’m thinking that I can’t see a solution for us. I’m not sure if I’m ready to become a stay-at-home boyfriend who just waits for you to tell me how your day was.”
He was right. I couldn’t deny that. But I wasn’t about to give up this easily. Keith was the one thing I wanted before any of this Likely Story stuff started happening.
“Does this have anything to do with the lies Amelia was spinning about Dallas?” I had to ask.
“I do believe you, Mallory. I really do. But …”
“But what? You either believe me or you don’t.”
“It isn’t that easy. Dallas represents, rightly or wrongly, all the problems with our relationship. Even if you don’t like him, it’s going to kill me to think about the two of you spending every day together when I’m lucky to get half an hour with you at eleven o’clock at night.”
I moved toward him and stroked his face. “What can I do to fix this?”
“I don’t think there is anything. I hate to say this, Mallory, but I think this is over. We tried. You can’t say we didn’t….”
He took my hand and kissed it. It felt like the promise of a life not lived.
Keith lifted himself from the couch. He just stood there looking at me.
“Goodbye, Mallory,” he said with a gulp. “I’ll see you around.”
He started to walk away.
“Wait!”
He turned around and faced me as I chased after him.
“I’ll fire Dallas!” I found myself saying.
“What?” he said, confused.
“You heard me. I’ll fire Dallas. Will that prove how much I value this—how much I value us? I’m not going to stand here and promise to be better or promise to change. I’ve already done that and it’s still led us here. I’ll fire Dallas tomorrow to prove to you how much you mean to me. He’s gone. Do you hear me? He’s gone.”
A pause extended for what felt like two minutes. Finally, Keith said quietly, “Can you do that?”
I smiled and embraced him. “For you, anything.”
And then we kissed, and kissed, and kissed until my mother came home.
I could keep what I wanted, and give Dallas what he wanted, too.
Keith left shortly after my mother returned. She halfheartedly asked me how the shoot went, and I told her it was fine. I didn’t bother to ask where she’d been.
I spent the rest of the night writing the death of Dallas’s character. I took the easy way out and killed him with a knife to the back. It was a pretty standard-issue soap death. (You didn’t want to go decapitating or burning them because you never knew when they’d get written back in.)
In the wee small hours of the morning I managed to draft a pretty respectable sequence. Sarah and Ryan would have a horrendous fight. Then Ryan would storm out into the cold, dark night. The wind blows and the rain patters the fern groves. Ryan hears a sound. Is he being watched? Back in the house, Sarah realizes she was too hasty and decides to go after him. But it’s dark—where did he go?
It’s then that she sees something. Or someone? It’s hard to tell, but her gut tells her something’s wrong. She calls out for Ryan. He calls back just as lightning illuminates the scene and we see a hooded figure about to put a knife into Ryan’s back. “Look out!” she screams … but it’s too late. Ryan starts to walk back to his beloved Sarah, but a dagger plunges into his perfectly chiseled frame and he gurgles blood as thunderclaps resound in the night.
Terrified, Sarah runs to him. The killer is gone. But Ryan lies bleeding. It is there, in Sarah’s arms, that the ravaged and rain-drenched Ryan breathes his last b
reath. It’s tragic. It’s heart-wrenching. It’s character-defining. (Well, for Sarah, at least. For Ryan, it’s character-ending.)
It wasn’t hard to figure out who was doing the knife-plunging. Since we had an anonymous murderer residing in Deception Pass, it seemed like I might as well put him to work. Before, he’d just killed a character that didn’t even exist. If a major character was killed, it would mean something. Nobody would be expecting it. The press coverage would be amazing. Killing off the lead in the first month! The audience would care.
Or so I told myself.
Unsurprisingly, I was dreading my arrival at the studio the next morning. For once, though, it wasn’t Richard I was hoping to avoid. I knew he’d be pissy about axing Dallas, pretending it was a huge inconvenience, but I hoped that secretly he’d be thrilled. He’d think it would be easy to replace him—just call central casting and get the latest hunk of the month. I doubted we’d ever strike black gold again like we did with Dallas … but it was a risk I had to take.
The person I really didn’t want to confront was Dallas. It wasn’t that I thought he’d be upset. I just wished I could have seen this coming. I might have been able to do something more than pull the plug. We were supposed to have taken the world by storm together. We were supposed to have been friends. But everything had gone wrong.
I found him in his dressing room. The door was open, and I looked for a moment at the posters of the Juilliard shows he’d starred in—Godspell, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Steel Magnolias. Books and scripts were piled up in the corners, and I wondered if any of them were Romeo and Juliet.
I poked in my head and asked, “Can we talk for a second?”
“Sure,” Dallas said, hopping up from his seat and clearing a place at the table. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”
I sat down and presented a serious look while I folded my hands on his table much the way my mother acts “listening” when she’s playing the guidance counselor.
“What do you want to talk about?” I asked.
“You first.”
“Alrighty, me first. I don’t think I have to be a genius to know that you’re unhappy.”
“You could say that,” he said, blowing a lock of hair out of his face with a sharp burst of air.
“I’m sorry for that. I didn’t expect it to turn out this way. The network promised me so much more power than I’ve ended up with. I’m fighting—you know that—but it’s not easy and it’s certainly not easy with my actors undermining me, too.”
Dallas looked surprised. “I’m not undermining you,” he said.
“What do you call that Magic Marker stunt?”
“Artistic expression?”
I shook my head. “Look, I get it. You don’t like what we’re doing, so you’re hoping to get fired. Well, congratulations. You’re dead.”
I tossed the script onto the table between us.
“What’s this?” Dallas asked, not touching it.
“Your funeral. Ryan is going to get murdered by the Deception Pass Serial Killer. You’ll only have one more week on the set, tops.”
“Wow,” he said weakly. Like me, once he got what he wanted, he seemed to wonder why he’d wanted it in the first place.
“So, that’s my news. What did you want to talk about?”
Dallas picked up the script, but didn’t open it. Then he looked up at the clock that ticked away incessantly in the background.
“I’m due on set,” he finally said. “Can we talk later?”
“Sure. But I’m only here until lunch today ’cause I’ve scheduled school for the afternoon.”
And with that, I left his dressing room. I wasn’t happy, but I was relieved. The dirty deed was done, and he’d seemed to take it well. Had he put up a fight—had he told me he wanted to stay—I probably would have thrown the script in the garbage. But he hadn’t put up a fight, and he hadn’t told me he wanted to stay. So there was no going back.
“You’re my goddess!” Richard said when I broke the news. “This calls for a celebration. I’m having a full-flavor Coca-Cola Classic—none of that diet NutraSweet swill today.”
This was not the reaction I’d been expecting.
“You are really coming into your own, Mallory. Coke Classic?”
“Sure,” I said. He cracked his soda open, then handed me one with a straw and lemon.
“I’m serious—this was a really great decision. We had to get rid of him. I just didn’t think you had it in you to pull the lever on the guillotine.”
“But what was all that stuff on the set about renewing his contract just to watch him lie in a coffin?” I asked. “I kind of thought you’d be furious.”
Richard sighed a Mr. Miyagi sigh. It’s like I was the fifth Karate Kid and while I’d learned one maneuver, I was still a long way off from that black belt and I’d probably never be Ralph Macchio.
“I said that to protect you, Mallory.”
“You did?” I asked incredulously.
“I knew Dallas would be trouble the first time I saw his head shot. He’s got the kind of ego that makes him think he has something to give back to the world through his acting. It’s hard to defuse that.”
“Then why did you let me hire him?” I interjected, sipping my Coke through the straw. The lemon really brought out the flavor. I’d have to remember that trick.
“Because you were infatuated and I was willing to take a chance. We all saw his X factor. Yet, unfortunately, he wasn’t a team player. You saw the spark in Dallas and you knew to grab for it even if it might burn. Getting rid of him is even smarter, and killing him off is the most brilliant stroke of all. That will generate headlines, I guarantee you. You knew to cut him loose before he became an even bigger liability. If he’d broken out, it would have been impossible to fire him. By doing it now, we have shock and awe.”
I certainly felt the shock.
This was really happening.
I spent the afternoon reading Anna Karenina for AP English. Miss Julie had a headache, so I was tackling Tolstoy in the comfort of my own home. Exasperated at the book’s length and tiny print, I was just about ready to shove her onto the train tracks myself when my doorbell rang. My mother was still at the set. The video feed from the camera near the gate wasn’t working for some reason, so I had to go downstairs and peer through the front window to see who had buzzed.
I couldn’t quite make out who was standing there. Today had been sacked by a wet fog—especially up here in the hills over Hollywood. I grabbed a hoodie and scuttled down the drive.
I stopped in my tracks when I first saw Dallas’s locks curling out from underneath his Dodgers cap. I continued on, reminding myself that Dallas was not Amelia, and the chances of me being pushed backward into a non-heated pool were therefore greatly reduced.
The evergreens surrounding our gate and driveway dripped with dew.
“Dallas?”
He looked up at me and adjusted his cap anxiously. “Hey, boss. I’m sorry to show up unannounced, but … well, I was hoping we could talk.”
I nodded and opened the gate to let him in.
In the kitchen, I made some coffee with this new mocha mix my mother had been given in yet another gift basket. It was sort of like hot chocolate with an extra kick.
Dallas was sitting at the table, his skin glowing with the warm light reflecting off of the brass pots. I set the mug down in front of him and took a seat.
“So what’s up?” I asked.
Dallas sighed. “I’ve been trying to figure out all day what it is I want to say to you.”
“Any luck?”
He shook his head. “Not really. You know, when you do this much acting all the time, you get really used to delivering crisp little speeches. Things are so concise. But I’m having a hard time keeping track of all the different things I want to communicate.”
“Join the club,” I said, still a bit weary from Anna K.
“So let me start here. I’m super-sorry for my recen
t behavior. I don’t know what got into me. I’ve never acted like that with anyone. Not even my parents. Well, maybe with my parents, but … my point is, I don’t know what got into me. It’s this show, Mallory. It’s so much pressure. There’s so much work and it never ends. There’s always another scene, always another day. I’m not even twenty and I’m getting ulcers.”
“You are?” I said, surprised.
“I don’t know—it feels like it sometimes.”
I knew that feeling. The feeling that my stomach was eating itself from the inside out. It wasn’t hunger; instead, it burned like hot coals. I took Dallas’s hand in a sign of solidarity and empathy.
“I get it,” I told him quietly. “This show has changed everything for the worse. I have no time for friends, for fun. I don’t even have time for schoolwork. No wonder people in this town are so stupid—they don’t have time to learn anything. I can only imagine it’s been worse for you, making the cross-continental move and ending up here with no time for yourself.”
I was still holding his hand. And now he was holding my hand back.
Suddenly the thought of him and Alexis flashed through my head.
I let go of his hand.
“Is the script final?” he asked.
“More or less. Why? You don’t like it? I thought a knife plunge was kind of sexy. It’s very Now,” I said, unsure of what he was asking.
“Stabbings are very Now?” he asked incredulously.
“Well,” I stalled, suddenly realizing how dumb that sounded, “I guess we could say that knifings never go out of style on soap operas. It’s like the little black dress of murders.”
“I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I never really wanted to quit,” Dallas said.
“What?” I was floored. “You’ve been doing everything possible to get fired. Sabotaging shoots, fighting with the execs, sleeping with your castmates …”
“What?” Dallas said this time. He was white as a Miami hotel room. “What are you saying?”
That last comment had slipped out. I wanted to backtrack, but knew that I couldn’t.
Likely Story! Page 26