Belmundus (The Farn Trilogy Book 1)

by Edward C. Patterson

  He mused on his last prance on the red carpet. Unlike tonight, a public preview at a festival, two weeks ago the event was an invitation-only première. He was tuxedoed and spotlighted — the press in full attendance — interviewers great and small, each with frivolous questions like did you find the battle scenes hard? Did you perform your own stunts? We hear talk about you and Romey (Romaine Rowan — the heroine). Any truth to it?

  Drone. Drone. Drone.

  Harris danced around these questions. He hugged Romaine and Tony and the director, McCann Phillips. He stood with them and posed and preened and bathed in a shower of flashbulbs and strobes behind the usual studio spoiler backdrop. It was a whirl until he saw . . . saw her.

  She, a fan, cocked her head and grinned. She, dressed in black denim and a leather cap, was unlike other fans, who stretched arms forward, pens in one hand, books in the other — this girl in black denim stood patiently, smiling confidently, and then . . . winked.

  “Do you see her?” Harris whispered to Tony.

  “What ya talkin’ about, mate,” Tony replied. “All I see is a sea of screamin’ Mimis, and you know not one of ‘em’s me type.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” Harris said. “I mean, focus your ass and look at that one over there — the one that’s casing me.”

  “They’re all casing you. I mean, who wouldn’t, you damn cutie?”

  “Stop it.”

  But Tony wasn’t in the mood for sightseeing. The whirl distracted him. They were the attraction. The stars. The fans, white noise.

  White noise.

  Except that one, there. That one in black stillness. Then Harris, compelled to speak with her, broke ranks, despite the push to enter the theater.

  “Where ya goin’, mate?”

  “Nowhere,” Harris muttered, his eyes drifting to that wink in the crowd.

  He went to the sidelines, suddenly accosted by hundreds of arms and pens and books and screaming women. They broke his reverie. He grasped one book, and then another, and yet another, signing and scribbling on demand. When he looked up, she was gone.

  “Gone,” he said, now into the mirror, and then pouted.

  But he had seen her again; last week near his mother’s house in Santa Monica. While heading to the Yatzy Club with his little sister, Harris wore his usual public disguise (thick glasses and a false nose). He encountered a gaggle of fans. Sarah, his sister, always a good shepherdess, tugged him across Santa Monica Boulevard to avoid detection. There were times for adulation, and times for anonymity. Harris liked the Yatzy Club because the DJ, although recognizing him, would never blow his cover.

  Normality.

  Crossing the boulevard, he spotted a lone wolf coming in the opposite direction.

  “It’s her,” he muttered.

  “Her who?” Sarah asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said, loosing himself from his sister’s arm.

  The lady wore black denim — the same outfit she had at the première. She strolled with swagger, her head down, but she looked up when she passed him. She winked, her chalk-white skin amplifying her crimson lips. She had a green beauty mark on her right cheek. Harris gasped — his chest hitching. But even as he turned to follow her, she hastened to the curb.

  “Wait,” he called.

  She didn’t. She raised a departing hand — an alluring fist wrapped in a black fingerless glove — on her finger, a captivating jade ring. Then, as if the night had swallowed her, she disappeared. Harris reached the curb.

  “Do you know her?” Sarah asked. “You look . . .”

  “No.” he replied. “She’s . . . How do I look?”

  “Smitten, Humph. Let me fix your nose.”

  They had neared the gaggle of club girls. One latex slip and Harris would be a rooster fending for his life in the henhouse. He let his sister repair his nose and straighten his thick glasses. Still, he meant to pursue the phantom lady, only . . . where did she go?

  “She’s a dream now,” he said into the mirror, the hairdryer aimed at emptiness.

  The lady in black denim — the evasive girl of the night, no longer remained in reality. She stalked Harris’ dreams this last week. He spent the afternoon trying to escape her clutches. But she lingered — on the red carpet and at the curb, winking and waving, and then coming close to his ear, her crimson lips and chalky cheeks an arabesque to his quaking soul. These were good dreams, but fell short of The Magic Planet. Harris had spent so much time on bizarre sets, this shade had to be a remnant hallucination from a cut scene — a scripted snippet chastised by better reason, never to be seen in the projector’s flicker.

  “You’re spoiling me,” he muttered, shutting the dryer and nodding his head before his image.

  A knock at the door interrupted this reverie.

  “It’s open,” he shouted.

  “What d’ya mean, it’s open, mate?” came a voice from the hall. “‘ow can it be open?”

  Harris set the dryer down and let the towel fall. He let his co-star in.

  “Well, don’t cover your nuts for me,” Tony said, bouncing in as if it were his room. “And what d’ya mean, it’s open?”

  “I was testing you,” Harris replied. “And you didn’t mind me butt naked last week.”

  “Well, we’ve no time for that sort of thing now. We’re late, and King McCann’ll have those balls if there’s a repeat of . . .”

  “Hush up,” Harris said, without malice.

  “Is your minibar stocked?” Tony announced, aiming directly for it. “Or should I ask? You sip only fizzy drinks and water, unless there’s a bloody ‘eifer up ‘ere filling jugs with chocky milk.”

  “You know we have to pay for that shit.”

  “You’re payin’, thank ye. Me cooler’s gone empty some’ow.” He shrugged and grinned. “Get dressed and . . .” Tony raised his hand toward the bed. “What a toss we ‘ave ‘ere? Did you ‘ave some birds in? I’m green with envy.”

  “No. Nothing like that,” Harris said, pulling on his briefs and heading for the closet. “I slept, mostly.”

  “Looks like you wrestled the queen ‘ere.”

  “No, you weren’t anywhere around,” Harris replied, chuckling. “Get your drink. I’ll be ready in a shake.”

  Anthony Bentley-Jones, the draw of the East end and many a rear end, bowed first to the bed, and then the minibar. He was a good egg, as they said across the pond. He was four years older than Harris, but in the biz longer, having made his first cereal commercial at age two, his Mummy hell-bent on keeping herself in gin and marijuana. The Bentley-Jones franchise (which began as the Koslowsky enterprise) was not as smooth and carefree as the Cartwright-Kopfstutter dynasty. Little Antonin’s Mummy drove him from stage door to audition to rock video to TV commercial to rascal roles until, by age ten (just over a decade earlier) he was a bundle of talented nerves and molested by a string of equally talented directors. He still landed plum roles, but his decadence factor overshadowed many jaded actors three times his age. However, he had his good looks and came out of the closet three years ago, with much aplomb. The rumors that he had slept with every one of his co-stars (male and female) were true, or so he told the press.

  They don’t call me Bentley-Jones for nothin’, dearies.

  Tony pulled the minibar door ajar and perused the choice of little bottles.

  “I see the munchies ‘ave gone missin’.” He glanced at the floor. “Your aim is bleedin’ off. I ‘ope you made it to the loo better’an you did the dustbin.” He rattled through the shot bottles, putting a few in his jacket pocket. “And what’ll grace your glorious body tonight?”

  “Something simple.”

  Harris alluded snidely to Tony’s over-the-top outfit — very Dorsetshire — a flowery shirt beneath a blue blazer, a pink hankie mushrooming from where the yacht insignia should have been — a fedora (duck feathered – green) and, of course, an Ascot.

  “Simple? Jeans and shitekickers?” Tony drawled like a Dallas native just short of Yorkshi
re. He turned, and then glanced over his tinted glasses at the young American. “Now that’s bloody fetchin’. Turn ‘bout and let your Auntie Antonia assess.”

  Harris had donned a green silk shirt and a white jacket with matching pants. He was stunning. He knew it, but dummied down this wardrobe choice. He was more comfortable in, as Tony had stated, jeans and shitekickers. He refused to do a runway twirl for Auntie Antonia, although he had seen the runway on many a fashion week.

  “Listen,” he said sternly. “I told you the judge is still out on me and the coming-out ball.”

  “I ‘ate when a man can’t make up ‘is own mind,” Tony said, pouting. He held a gin sample in one hand and a Post-it in the other. “You just want the best of both worlds — and I guarantee that you’ll never get anything better’an me.”

  “Stop it.” Harris squinted. “What’s that?”

  Tony lifted the bottle.

  “Gin.”

  “No . . . that?”

  “Oh. This was stuck inside ya minibar. Maybe a note from the mice that you ate their munchies. Stole their splif too, I bet.” He looked at the Post-it, and then frowned. “Not the mice. It’s from a secret admirer. It says,” he adjusted his glasses. “It says — I C U and C U l8r, CMJ.”

  Harris shuddered. He rushed to Tony’s side, swiping the note, and then stared hard.

  “You did ‘ave a bird up ‘ere in this cage today,” Tony said, fretfully. “You needn’t ‘ave lied. I mean, we’re not a couple or anything like that.”

  “Nothing like that, and I didn’t have . . . a bird in this cage today.”

  Tony shook his head knowingly.

  “Ah, you said the door was open. So that’s ‘ow it’s done. You know in some cat ‘ouses an open door is a signal for . . .”

  “Stop it. I had no one here. At least, no one that . . . Anyone could have stuck this in the fridge.”

  Tony pocketed the gin and shut the minibar door with his foot.

  “Keep your little secrets. Let’s just get a move on, mate. The limos’ll be lining the curb and we mustn’t keep a Rolls-Royce waitin’.”

  Harris Cartwright, star of stage and screen, sighed. He glanced about his home away from home and wondered about the journey. This was the only life he knew, and now he must move along a professional course.

  “You’re right,” he said. “We’re stars — giant balls of gas. Let’s go fill the galaxy with our stink.”

  “Why, what’s crawled up your arse, mate?”

  Harris grinned. He was the master of the moment in his green shirt and white duds. He had a Q&A to give and flashbulbs to embrace. It was illusion, but he knew no other life.

  Chapter Two

  Pursuit

  1

  Harris peered out the limousine window at the passing New York City lights — lights like none other on the planet. The Manhattan skyline fascinated him. He had lived here for a brief spell when he made his crime drama Bad Boys in the City. He had invested time exploring the museums, the clubs (those that let him in as a courtesy and not by proof of age), and the hustle-bustle of Greenwich Village at night. His destination tonight was the Village 7 Theater, a Tribeca Festival venue. The ride was short.

  “There she be,” Tony said, pointing through the traffic. “Small, but at your service.”

  “Are you shit canning your accent tonight?” Harris asked.

  “What accent, mate?”

  Harris laughed. Tony could slather the Yorkshire when he wanted the audience to lean forward and listen attentively. Gets their undivided attention, it does, Tony would say. However, he played Captain Joseph Baneworthy in The Magic Planet, a character as American as American could be — not a hint of the Yorkish tongue. He could have been cornbread Des Moines. Mr. Bentley-Jones was an actor, after all — a star and, as gas giants went, as seamless as the sky.

  “Get ready for the crush,” Harris warned.

  “This is a wee preview, laddie,” Tony replied, tipping his head backwards to empty a minibar special.

  “You’ll need a breath mint,” Harris said, fishing in his pocket.

  “Nothin’ doin’. I’m ‘ard drinkin’ Joe Baneworthy, the Commander of The Galaxy 12. The public should expect ‘ooch on me kisser.” He laughed. “Besides, a preview crowd’s shy of the première crowd with ‘alf the paparazzi.”

  “I know. Still, the world’s watching us.”

  “Not without a ticket, mate.” Tony yawned. “I could use a noddy ‘fore I get too pissed.”

  “You can’t sleep through your own performance.”

  “Why not? I was sleepwalkin’ on the set. I could ‘ardly watch the rushes. I mean, when we do the legitimate gig, we’re not in the audience enjoyin’ us. It’s bloody work, you know. We’ve no right to sit back and look in the looking glass.”

  The looking glass. Harris knew the looking glass. Sometimes he winced at his own performances. In the beginning, it was fun, but he was a kid. Now, whenever he was in the audience, he was a critic. Always something — a misplaced inflection or a facial twitch. Directors were the ultimate critics, and if satisfied, actors could be happy. Still, Harris couldn’t imagine sleeping at either a première or a preview. Fun flickered seeing himself twenty-feet high, luminous in the dark and delivering art to a crowd of adoring strangers chomping popcorn and silencing cell phones.

  “You don’t want to know if they liked your performance?” he asked Tony, who leaned forward preparing to exit onto the red carpet.

  “I can tell without watchin’. I listen to the chairs.”

  “The chairs?”

  “Aye, me laddie. Silent chairs mean I’ve earned it. Creaky chairs means the lions are restless and owed a refund.”

  Harris laughed, not because it was funny (which it was), but true.

  “You’re not that rich,” he replied.

  “But you are, mate.”

  The limo door opened and the flashing commenced.

  2

  The crowd, large for the space — Eleventh Street being narrow, the red carpet had been shortened between a few silver stanchions. A modest festival security detail pressed the fans to the curb.

  Harris popped a grin, radiating his famous tooth gap. Shouts of Harris cut the night air, with here and there an Anthony and a Romaine and an Audra and a Max and a Milton. The entire cast arrived in mixed fashion and different length limousines. There were some calls for McCann, but directors usually weren’t regaled from curbside. However, this was a prestigious festival, and a fan or three were here to admire the McCann Phillips’ screen craft. Generally known for television work and three romantic screen comedies, The Magic Planet was his first foray into epic fantasy. His chops rode on its success.

  Flashes pumped like fireworks and interviewers massed at the theater’s glass doors, microphones at the ready. There, Harris groped for Tony, as the cast coagulated into a lineup — posing for the world. Harris trotted out his latent humility to assure the paying public their icon was human and, like the rest of the species, flushed the toilet.

  Harris waved at the fan blur. If the cordons fell, the crowd would charge him like bulls at Pamplona, skewering him with adoration. But his mother had coached him well:

  Humph, she had told him, never look upon their love as real. They have lives beyond you and when you’re bigger and older, they will embrace the image fixed within your work and not the one hidden from their view — the true you.

  Mother Kopfstetter was right, of course. Harris was wise enough to keep his work life separated from his personal life. But Mama never said to ignore the sweet aroma when the two overlapped naturally.

  Scanning the face blurs and following the interviewers with their lollipop mikes accosting Romaine with questions about a recent tumble she took over her pet poodle, Harris spotted one clear face in the crowd. He shook his head, because he didn’t trust what he saw.

  “Tony,” he whispered. “Is she here again?”

  Tony placed his chin on Harris’ shoulder to capture his s
ight line.

  “That’s ‘er, all right, mate. You got yourself a class-A stalker.”

  “No,” Harris replied. “I don’t think she’s stalking me. I think she wants to talk.”

  “C U l8tr, mate and all that.”