“Yeah.” That didn’t help. They were both Mr. Townes.
“Mr. Les Townes?” And they say Aaron Sorkin writes snappy dialogue.
“Dad!” Well, now I knew which Mr. Townes it was. “For you!”
At least twenty seconds went by, and I remembered how slowly Townes seemed to be moving when I was at his home. Finally, his voice came through my receiver. “Who’s this?” he asked.
“Mr. Townes, it’s . . . Elliot Freed.” I waited for the explosion and got none.
Instead, Townes sighed a little. “What is it now, Mr. Freed?”
“I felt bad about the way we left things the last time we spoke,” I said. Diplomatic, no?
“I’m not surprised,” Townes answered. “I’ve had the police here twice since then. It seems unlikely we’re going to be pals.” Okay, so maybe diplomatic, no.
“I’m not going to press charges,” I offered. “The police won’t be back.”
“That’s great,” said Townes with a flat affect. “I’ll sleep so much better tonight. What is it you want, Mr. Freed?”
“I just don’t understand, Mr. Townes. Why did you have your son shoot at me when all I did was ask a question? Why send me a ticking package?”
“Yeah, the cops asked about that the second time they came by,” Townes said. “How do you know it was me who sent you a ticking package? You strike me as the kind of guy who could annoy whole armies of people without trying very hard.”
“I’m really not like that,” I responded. Rarely has a man sounded weaker.
“No, I’m sure you’re a real swell guy and your mother loves you,” Townes responded. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Do you remember Marion Borello?” I asked him.
It seemed to take him by surprise. “Marion . . .”
Of course. “You knew her as Marion Hunter. She married Harold Borello years later.”
“Marion Hunter. Yeah. Couldn’t act, so they put her in the script department. She was at the showing of Cracked Ice. What about her?”
This man was, as much as Harry Lillis, a giant of my youth, and a hero. Maybe he didn’t have Lillis’s biting wit, but he was funny, and he actually had given Harry some of the “ad-libs” Lillis had used on-screen. I was afraid to ask the next question, because I wanted my idol to like me. Even if he was a killer and an arsonist.
“Um . . . did you know her well in those days?”
“Know her well? What do you mean?” My idol wasn’t making it easy.
“I mean, did you guys date, or anything?”
Townes’s voice sounded tired and aggravated. “Date? What are you, Hollywood Confidential? It was fifty years ago, and I was married, for crissakes. What’s your point, Freed?”
“I don’t know,” was all I could think of.
“Then maybe you should let me get back to American Idol,” he said. “It’s Motown night.”
“Just one thing . . . Is there a reason you’ve been in touch with the sixteen-year-old who works in my theatre?”
Townes hung up.
He was right about one thing: it was unlikely we’d end up as pals.
22
SUNDAY
WE were cleaning up after the Sunday night showing of Box Office Bozo, an unfortunately named comedy about a clown whose accidental stunt almost kills him—and makes him a star. It was actually better than average, which is saying something for a contemporary comedy. Sophie had made sense of the snack bar and was cleaning the glass on the poster frames in the lobby. Anthony could be heard rewinding the film upstairs. Jonathan was “helping” Sophie, which seemed to consist of watching her and asking her questions that made her scowl.
I felt bad about not telling Anthony where his film was hiding. The kid might not be spending every moment of every day agonizing over his lost baby, but I was willing to believe the majority of his time was spent in that pursuit. I could ease his mind if I wanted to . . . Well, that wasn’t entirely true. I did want to; I just needed permission from Chief Dutton. After that, maybe the chief would let me go to bed without being tucked in and everything.
Standing in the lobby of Comedy Tonight, I considered simply going upstairs to the projection booth and lifting the plywood panel to show Anthony his film. I could go from being the chief suspect to being his hero in seconds. It would take what had so far been a pretty miserable month and put a positive spin on it.
But I had sort of promised Dutton that I wouldn’t give up his secret, and you really don’t want to double-cross the chief of police in the municipality where you do business. Bad form, you know. Especially when said chief is bigger than two of you, and probably works out more often than the twice a year that you do. Practicality must prevail once in a while.
I made a mental note, though, to call Dutton the next morning and ask when we could let our hostage go.
My staff, ragtag bunch that they were, didn’t really need any assistance from the boss (that’s me) at the moment. I marveled at their dedication to their work. Okay, so one of them thought I had stolen his film, one thought I was oppressing her just by being male, and I suspected the third of conspiring with a homicidal comedian to send me a threatening package, but they were nice kids. I liked them.
“Will you just go away?” Sophie yelled, and pulled me out of my reverie. I turned to see her aiming her wrath at Jonathan, who stood rooted to the spot, as unable to move as I had been the first time I met Harry Lillis. “You’re just annoying!”
I started to walk toward them, but instead, Sophie threw down the paper towels she was using on the frames and stomped in my direction. She caught me midway, shouted, “Why don’t you hire more women?” and kept walking. She got her jacket and left.
Jonathan didn’t move a muscle the whole time, until Sophie was out the front doors and gone. Then he picked up the paper towels and the Windex, and slowly started back toward me. “What was that about?” I asked him.
“What?” he asked.
I let him walk by. He also got his jacket and left.
Waiting for Anthony to come downstairs, hopefully not glower at me, and go home, I decided to head into the office and clean up some paperwork. But once I reached my office, it seemed I’d get a little less done than I’d planned.
Wilson Townes, all nine-foot-whatever of him, was standing next to my desk, leaving little room in the office for anyone else. In fact, he wasn’t leaving a lot of room for the desk.
I scanned the room for the shotgun, and was glad not to find it. “Something I can do for you, other than stop breathing? ” I asked.
“You’re going to leave my father alone,” he said.
I tried to squeeze by him, but there was no “by him,” so I retreated and stood in the doorway. “That works for me,” I said.
“You’re a smartass, but I mean it.” Wilson loomed over me, which didn’t take much effort on his part. “You’re not going to call him, you’re not going to come by; I don’t want you writing him a letter. You got that?”
“Absolutely,” I told him. “I won’t be in contact with Les Townes. Is there anything else?”
Clearly, Wilson had rehearsed this scene with another reply from me in mind, because he just kept going. “Because if you do try to contact him, I’m going to come back. And I’m going to kill you. Understand?”
“Let me see if I’ve got it straight.” I made a show of thinking hard. “I don’t get in touch with your father again, and I get to live. Is that about right?” Now he was just starting to irritate me.
Wilson picked up a snow globe I had on my desk. Now, I’m not much for snow globes, generally speaking, but this one had some sentimental value. I’d made it all the way to the top of Pikes Peak in Colorado (granted, there’s a train—I mean, I didn’t climb Pikes Peak; I’m not Pike), and bought myself that globe to celebrate my not dying from the lack of oxygen at the summit.
In Wilson’s hand, the snow globe looked like a Corn Pop would look in my own. He closed his hand, then made a f
ace that, if you’ve ever watched ESPN during an off day when they have Strong Man competitions, you’d recognize as the face of someone with enormous muscles really exerting himself.
The globe exploded.
Water splashed over my desk, which was bad enough, but it splashed on my pants, as well. Now people who saw me riding my bike home would think it had just been too long since I’d been near a bathroom. But the glass from the globe also shattered, and a large shard was sticking out of Wilson’s palm, which bled impressively.
“Do you want a Band-Aid brand bandage?” I asked him, making sure to adhere to trademark laws.
Wilson growled, and picked the glass out of his hand. “Now do you get it?” he asked me.
“I always got it. You didn’t have to do that little demonstration, although next time, I’d recommend the tear-the-phone-book-in-half trick. The worst you’ll get there is a paper cut. But here’s the thing: now you’ve got to go to Pikes Peak and get me a new snow globe.” He growled, and I added, “What size shoes do you wear?”
Wilson licked the blood from his hand, sneered at me in the way that all the incredibly large men do when encountering average people, and headed for the office door. I got out of his way, and he stomped his way to the front doors and left.
I watched after him, and stood stunned for a moment. Then, just loud enough that I could hear myself, I said, “Of course you realize this means war.”
23
TUESDAY
“WAR?” Sharon asked.
For our second “date,” we had decided Sharon would come to my town house, and I’d make her dinner. This was a significant commitment for each of us: as I mentioned, Sharon doesn’t like to enter the town house, and I don’t like cooking, because I’m as skilled a chef as I am a shrewd businessman.
But since she was separated from Gregory, yet still living in the same house with him, going to her place for dinner would have been, at best, unbearably awkward. At worst, it would have ended up on the police blotter the next morning. We had decided to avoid that scenario.
So here she was, the woman of my dreams (anxiety, dirty, and otherwise), the woman of my past, possibly the woman of my future, sitting in my furniture-impaired home, at the dinner table (which I’d bought three days ago and assembled today), eating fettuccine alfredo, assuming that the label on the jar was accurate.
Sharon was lovely as ever, her huge eyes looking fondly at me and making me feel like I was sitting in a hot spring. Cold in many spots, warm where it counts. She ignored the spartan surroundings, and my obvious inadequacies as a chef, and smiled.
“War?” she repeated.
“Okay, maybe not war,” I countered. “But the coming-to-my-theatre-and-threatening-me thing was a step too far. I can’t just sit by and take that.” I offered her another glass of the very good red wine (Sharon had brought it), and she accepted. I poured.
“Even though you said you would? Even though it’s the most logical way to avoid bodily injury beyond what I had to pick out of your butt?” My ex-wife is the only woman I know—the only human I know—who can say the word “butt” elegantly. I’m not quite sure how she does it.
“He came to my place of business and wouldn’t take ‘yes’ for an answer,” I said. “There have to be limits.”
“I can hear a ‘besides’ on its way,” Sharon said.
I nodded. “Besides. He broke my snow globe.”
She pouted with her lower lip. “Aw. The one from Pikes Peak?”
“Yeah, and you know how hard I worked to get that one.”
Sharon nodded sympathetically. “Yes. That train was a terrible chore for you.”
“Mock me if you will.”
“I will,” she said. “But you were telling me about the war.” She actually slurped fettuccine into her mouth without getting sauce on her lip. I sat in awe for a moment.
“Perhaps ‘war’ was too inflammatory a word,” I admitted. “But I am going to look deeper into the Vivian Reynolds thing.”
We declared dinner to be over, and I took our plates to the dishwasher, which, as usual, was completely empty. I wasn’t even entirely sure I had dishwasher soap in the cabinet. But appearances are important, so I put the dishes in the appliance and closed it before Sharon could see how lonely they were in there.
“Shall we repair to the theatre?” I gestured toward the living room.
“Why, is it broken?” Sharon asked. She tries. It’s sad sometimes.
The only real furniture in my home—aside from the newly purchased dining table and chairs—were the floor-to-ceiling video shelves I’d had installed two months ago. They’d been expensive, but there was no other way to house the thousands of movies that had dropped into my lap.
We’d agreed that Sharon would choose the evening’s entertainment. I didn’t want to go to the movies, since I spend virtually all my nights at a cinema, and besides, I was petty enough not to give the competition my business. She stood in the center of the room, staring with some amazement at the vast array of titles.
“It looks like a very specialized Blockbuster,” she said.
“And the scary part is, there are still titles I want that I don’t have,” I said.
“That is scary.” Sharon frowned, thoughtfully trying to narrow her choices down to a few hundred. I have spent a good number of afternoons scanning these titles, and I know how intimidating it can be.
She took her time. Sharon always takes her time making any decision, because she wants it to be right. It’s what makes her a really good doctor. It also makes her an excruciating movie-chooser. But one learns to overlook these things, particularly when one hasn’t had sex in a very long time.
It wasn’t just that. Yes, I still found my ex-wife incredibly attractive. Yes, I was a man who had the same urges as the vast majority of men. Yes, it had been a really long time. And yes, Sharon still looked very, very good, standing there in a pair of jeans that were just tight enough and a thin sweater that, for my money, could have been tighter.
I’m sorry: What was the question, again?
We had a long and complicated history, Sharon and me. But no matter what had happened, each of us was certain we’d be involved in each other’s lives until one of us, at least, had no life left. The issue tonight, the question hanging from the ceiling and not being discussed, was whether this was the beginning of a new phase, in which we moved forward into a new relationship (or was that backward?). We could stay as we were, of course, since it was working just fine for the time being, but maybe we were correcting a mistake we’d made that took us away from the path we were destined to walk together.
Sharon and I had made a very strong—and deliberate— effort to have a civil divorce. That was the idea of the weekly lunches together. It was the goal, when we had both gone through the anger phase of our separation, to avoid the sniping, pettiness, and greed that characterize most divorces. A lawyer friend of mine once told me she’d worked for a family attorney for one summer during law school, and “the things people do to each other when they’re getting a divorce are unbelievable. Everyone starts out thinking they’ll be reasonable, and by the time it’s over, they’re physically threatening each other over a fork.”
Well, we’d managed. It had taken some effort to get past the anger (especially on my part), but we’d done it. And now, we were tentatively, cautiously, okay, nervously edging back toward a more romantic relationship. And that could be the most dangerous step we could take right now. Maybe it would be best to leave things as they were.
On the other hand, those jeans looked really good.
“Come on,” I said after a couple of eternities. “Hamlet took less time to make a decision.”
“Don’t rush me.” Sharon was lingering in the romantic comedy section.
“I’m not. It’s just that I’d like to put on a movie before I start getting mail from AARP.”
She stuck out her tongue at me. But with great dignity.
I sat down on the foam rub
ber futon that was pretending to be a sofa. I should have considered that move more carefully, because if Sharon ever did manage to choose a movie for us to watch, I’d need a spotter to get me back to my feet. The futon is a little low to the floor. Ants have been known to look down on it.
“Here,” she said, and handed me Adam’s Rib. A good choice, and appropriate to the company. Now if I could just get to a standing position . . .
Sharon regarded my efforts to slither across the floor and asked, “Do you need some help?”
“That’s a rather existential question,” I attempted.
She held out a hand, and feeling idiotic, I took it. She helped me up.
“This is just a thought, but maybe you should have invested in furniture that could hold you up before the furniture that holds up the DVDs,” Sharon said as I approached the video system.
“I had a responsibility to safeguard the collection,” I said.
Sharon sat down heavily on the “sofa.” “Ouch,” she said. “You have a responsibility to safeguard my behind.”
I put the disc into the player and pushed Close, then walked back to the futon. “I’ll try to keep your behind at the top of my priority list.” I sat down, sank, and mentally vowed never to move again.
Naturally, with a video collection that vast and important, I’d had to replace the twenty-two-inch television I’d been using with a flat-screen, high-definition beauty that had an audio system far superior to the one in my theatre, which I charged people money to hear. So Adam’s Rib had never looked nor sounded better.
I wasn’t paying much attention, though. Just to my right, a warm, loving, sensitive, intelligent woman in jeans that were just tight enough was close enough to touch.
So I did.
To be specific, I put my left hand on her right forearm, and left it there. Sharon looked at me and smiled, and everything inside my body melted into a gelatinous, lava-related substance. I was, in a word, lost.
She leaned over and put her head on my shoulder. “Watch the movie,” she said.
“I can’t help it. You look better than Katharine Hep-burn. ”
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