METHOD

by Kate Stewart

She makes a quick turn and our balls shrink as we verbally squeak with protest, due to the loaded cannon in her hand. Her dark gray eyes widen with her attempt to play dumb, and she’s anything but. I’ve told her time and time again she could be an amazing actress, and she replies that it’s my job, not hers. We’d just spent the better part of two hours firing off a small list of guns Wes specified for the movie. It’s important for me to look like holding a gun is second nature. I’d done a war movie, but those guns were much different, had a different feel, weight, shape. These are the things I’d learned over the years that can take a character to the next level. Jake had brought a few others that he thought I would enjoy including a .38 Special, which my wife was currently aiming at the target.

  After another shot and scream, she shakes her head. “Nope. Too much gun for me.”

  Jake laughs, and I catch him eyeing her appreciatively. If he weren’t in his mid-fifties, I would take offense, but he is more amused than anything. My wife is a handful.

  “I think we’re good,” Jake says, turning to me. “Keep them here, they’ll lock them up for me. I’m coming back tomorrow. Roth is coming in.”

  “Matt Roth?” my wife asks, looking over at me expectantly. I may have intentionally left that part out.

  “Thanks a lot,” I tell Jake, who reads the situation. “Now she’ll be on set every day.”

  “Seriously?” she asks, placing small fists on her curvy hips. “Matt Roth is in it?”

  “Yep,” I deadpan. She thinks it’s hysterical.

  “Mila, nice to meet you. Keep him in line.”

  “Will do. Nice to meet you too,” she says, packing up his guns.

  Once we’re alone, she turns to me. “Who plays your wife?”

  “Adriana Long.”

  I only see a slight reaction in the subtle twitch of her lips, which confirms she’s a born actress. But Mila never acts, and it’s her tone that gives her away. “She’s attractive,” she says dryly, picking the Colt we’d been using and firing twice at the target. “If you like that dark-haired, long-legged, bombshell kind of thing.” She shakes her head in aggravation and looks back at me with a cloudy glare. “Dammit Lucas, really? Adriana Long? She was a fucking supermodel. Whatever.” She clicks a new magazine into place and fires off several rounds nailing the target just below the navel. When she’s done, she looks back at me and cocks a brow.

  “We should go,” I say with a chuckle.

  “Why? Because I’m getting good?”

  “Yes,” I say, carefully taking her gun and discarding it before pulling her to me. “And I’ll be sending my representative to the set.”

  I feel her smile against my cheek. “Good thing.”

  We grab dinner at a local place we both love and take it to go. I want her alone in my favorite place—home. We dine out on the patio, and the conversation is easy. I tell her of my plans, and we both take notes of the ideas we have for research.

  I’ve told her a majority of the plot and how Rayo deteriorates slowly in brain and body from the heroin, fucking up a lifetime of work that ultimately leads to his demise.

  She sees the glint in my eyes as I pour her more wine and sip my beer. “You can do this. You were born to do this. I have so much faith in you.”

  “Thanks, Dame,” I say, sitting back in my seat.

  “I’m so proud of you. I know I tell you from time to time but to witness all you’ve done, it’s such an incredible gift.”

  “Oh, now you’re trying for that anniversary gift?”

  She gives me a wink. “Yes. I wonder what it is this year.” She pulls her phone off the table and starts to Google.

  “Last year was easy and readily available.” I bite my lip around the word, “wood.”

  She rolls her eyes and studies her phone. “It’s iron or candy for six years. But honey, next year is copper, all you’ll have to do is pull one of those pennies you’ve been pinching out of your ass.” She bats her eyes at me as I burst into laughter.

  “I’m not that cheap.”

  “We did a timeshare honeymoon!”

  “It was not! I got the place on loan from a friend,” I defend.

  “And it was his timeshare.”

  “It was beautiful.”

  “It was,” she says with a grin. “It was perfect. I would not change a damn thing.”

  “Me neither.” The ocean crashes beneath us as I try to come up with the right words, but she watches me closely while I shift in my seat.

  “Shit,” she says softly. “Shit, this is it? Isn’t it?”

  I nod.

  “Okay,” she sighs, turning to face the darkening sky. She’s so incredibly beautiful that I just stare at her features in wait. “I knew today was too good to be true.”

  “I have to focus, baby.”

  A different silence, one filled with tension passes before she speaks. “This is so weird,” she says before taking a sip of her wine. “Saying goodbye to a man you’re still living with.”

  “I don’t get to clock out.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s too hard for me,” I plead with her. “I can’t be a cold-blooded killer one minute and a doting husband the next. I have to start isolating a little. We’re going to shoot some in El Paso, I think, so you’ll get a break, but Wes guaranteed a lot will be shot locally. So, I’ll be home for at least half of it.

  “Okay.”

  “Dame—”

  She cuts me off and her venom burns. “You know, you’ve spent a lot of time telling me how it’s okay for you to feel how you want to. Let me fucking feel the way I want about this. I don’t want my husband to have to sit behind closed doors digging into his brain for things that bother him. I don’t want to miss you when you’re sleeping right next to me. I don’t want to spend three months as a fucking outsider looking into your life, unaware of what’s going on in your head. I agreed to it, and I’ll keep my end of the bargain, but I don’t have to like going through it. So just give me a second.” She turns her head away from me, one arm crossed protectively over her body while the other holds her wine glass.

  “Okay,” I say, rising from my seat and walking into the house, sliding the patio door closed behind me. I want to beg for her forgiveness but now isn’t the time. I need her on board, I need her to stick to our plan, but I need her more than anything to make peace with it. After changing into my gym clothes, I peek out on the balcony to see her reading the script. The salty breeze catches her hair pulling it away from her face, and I can see she’s focused, so I take the stairs down to wait for her.

  “I’m sorry, I keep going back on my promises,” I hear her say as she pads into the gym where I’m pounding at the bag. I’ll have to drop at least twenty to look like a younger Nikki, and up my workouts.

  “I broke my promise too,” I say, slowing my pace. “We’re supposed to be in Spain in the La Rioja region tasting wine.”

  She smiles. “I love that you remember my wine ramblings.”

  “We’re a team,” I say, stilling the bag to focus on her.

  “It’s fantastic, Lucas. Bold, captivating, and a bit horrific. This is your part.”

  “Fuck, I love you,” I say, hanging my head. “Thank you, baby.”

  She keeps her tone upbeat. “We’ll get to Spain. Besides, Rayo is a Spanish surname. Looks like you’re bringing a little Spanish to me.”

  I scoop her into my arms. “Yeah, well, variety is the spice of life.”

  “Lucky me,” she says as she looks down at our position. “This is familiar,” she says, wrapping her hands around my neck and pressing her forehead to mine. “Do you remember scooping me up like this on my porch?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, you forget a lot,” she scorns.

  “I haven’t forgotten that,” I assure her, stealing a kiss before I carry her up the stairs. “Now, who wants some more of last year’s anniversary present?”

  “Lucas,” Mila whispers as she trails the pads of her fingers down m
y back. “You awake?”

  “Yes. What’s up, baby?”

  In response, she slowly traces the first line of an X and draws out the word, “Criiiissss.”

  “No, you don’t.” I jerk against the mattress to dodge her fingers. “You know that creeps me out.”

  She giggles, pulling me closer before again, drawing a finger diagonally across my back, “cross,” and then punctuates her next three words with dots down the middle, “ap-ple sauce.”

  “Cut it out, woman,” I say as she traps me with her leg. “Behave.”

  “Fine.”

  When she bumps her closed fist against my head to recite the rest of the absurd nursery rhyme/medieval massage, I charge. She yelps when I pin her easily beneath me and grin down at her. “You are such a weirdo. Where did you learn that anyway?”

  “From a friend, I think, a sleepover,” she says, smiling up at me, breathless. “I don’t understand why that drives you nuts.”

  “But you do it to continually torture me anyway.”

  She lifts a shoulder while still in my hold. “Of course.”

  “Apparently, I didn’t do a good enough job of wearing you out,” I mutter before bending to suck on her neck.

  “You did fine,” she says, gripping my hair and lifting her chin to allow more access.

  “Fine,” I repeat in a monotone voice, lifting my head and narrowing my eyes. “What the hell, wife? If I had recorded your insults today, it would be grounds for divorce.”

  “You would miss me,” she sasses.

  “But at least I wouldn’t have to deal with the verbal abuse.”

  “You married this mouth and me.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Lucas!” she scolds just before I kiss her the way she likes it. When I pull away, her face is solemn and her eyes fill with apprehension.

  “You get both of us, forever.”

  I nod. “Can’t live without either.”

  “Where you go, I go…right?”

  I slowly shake my head.

  “You can’t come here, Dame.” I push the hair away from her face as she swallows and nods. “I love you.”

  “Remember the rules,” I remind her, before I lean in and take her lips.

  ACT 2

  “The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful—my personal life suffers.”—Al Pacino

  Lucas

  THREE MONTHS AGO

  The next morning, Gabriela calls out to me from the sidewalk. “Lucas, how are you?”

  I wave at her with a forced smile as she enters the restaurant where I sit at a table on the other side of an open partition. I had no choice but to meet her at the place of her choosing because she’d told Nova she had a hectic schedule. It’s bullshit, and we both know it. She doesn’t want a private meeting due to fear of getting ambushed in hostile territory. She’s testing the waters. It’s a smart move on her part because she knows I can’t publicly react to whatever she’s willing to reveal. I have to play it just right to get answers. She walks up, and I stand to greet her. “Gabriela, it’s been a long time.”

  She kisses me on the cheek, her perfume filling my nostrils and I force myself not to cringe at the pungent smell. It’s always been hard for me to gauge Gabriela as a person. She’s guarded, but direct, and that’s what worries me. You don’t want to have any skeletal stories with her as your narrator. She’s worn a blatant chip on her shoulder due to the way her career nose-dived after we filmed our second movie, Dissident, the follow-up to Misfits. Blake and I got more offers, she didn’t. Her audience has substantially faded, and ears no longer perk up at the mention of her name unless she drags other names in, like Blake’s. I can’t help but think her vague interviews are a ploy for short-lived attention. This type of shit is the reason I keep my circle tight.

  “How have you been, Lucas?” she asks, taking the seat across from me.

  “Good, getting back to work.”

  “Anything I’d know about?”

  “Doing a flick with Wes.”

  She lifts a tattooed eyebrow. “Silver Ghost?”

  I nod.

  “Wow, congrats.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You deserve it.” She grabs the water I ordered before she arrived and sips it. It’s then I see the cracks beneath the makeup. Half of her is injected collagen and scalpel at this point. Mere years ago, she looked fantastic, but she’s refusing to age gracefully. From my side of things women really don’t win that battle by spending thousands in procedures. I can’t deny aging actresses have it rough, I feel for them, but it seems as if it’s a trend now to look like a blow-up doll. She speaks up under my scrutiny. “I have a meeting in an hour, so I can’t stay long.”

  “I won’t keep you.”

  “When do you start filming?”

  “Soon.”

  “You’ll be great,” she assures me.

  “Hope so,” I say.

  “Any idea what angle you’re going to take?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “Ah,” she says with a grin, “look at us, all grown up.” Her eyes shine with sincerity. “It seems like yesterday we were getting stoned between takes and trailer hopping.” She gives me a wink, and I hide my shudder. In those days sexual favors were a regular occurrence, but I brush off the ill feeling because I know I’ve never fucked her. My dick was a liability back then, but I’m thankful I had more sense than to sleep with her.

  “We’ve both come a long way,” I say, avoiding the implication in her voice and scanning the menu knowing I’m not going to eat.

  “How is Mila?”

  “Perfect,” I answer without hesitation.

  “Lucas,” she laughs, “you don’t have to worry. Our secrets are safe.”

  I raise a skeptical brow. “Are they?”

  She swallows and darts her eyes away as the waitress approaches. We both order egg-whites and fruit and I sip on carrot juice while she sips on black coffee.

  I can sense the nervous energy radiating from her, so I play on it, intensifying the silence with an expectant gaze.

  “I loved Blake,” she says softly, staring through the open space next to us. “I fell in love with him when we filmed.” Her eyes glaze over as she speaks, submerged in a different time. “He was so…tempting? No, that’s not the right word. But whatever it was, it was alluring. I guess bad boys always are.”

  I remain silent, giving her the segue. She wants to talk, that much is obvious. She looks over at me.

  “We were kind of a thing.”

  That I didn’t know. But I didn’t see Blake much during the filming of the second movie. It was when he was using the most, and after bailing him out of jail when we wrapped, I moved out and got my own place. We could both afford it. What I couldn’t afford was his lifestyle, it was wearing on me.

  “You know dating an actor is insanity,” she says. “I can see why you married out. But the payoff with Blake, the fun we had.” She shakes her head in fond memory. “You know he filled my head with plans for us, I had actual stars in my eyes. It was perfect, until it wasn’t. You know how he was.”

  I nod in silent agreement.

  “I can’t believe he’s gone.” She looks up to me with tear-filled eyes. “And he loved you. It was so obvious with the way he talked about you. He was so protective…if anyone said anything negative, he got crazy aggressive,” she says, pulling the flimsy napkin from the wrapped silverware to catch a tear underneath her eye.

  Ache begins to throb in my chest, and I resist the urge to rub it.

  “Okay, so we all loved each other, right?” I ask, playing on her words.

  “I thought so, yes.”

  I clasp my hands together on the table. “Then why are you bringing his name into this?”

  Silence. She takes another sip of coffee, and fearful eyes meet mine over the cup. She’s cracking a lot faster than I’d anticipated, and I need to strike.

  “Gabriela, when is the last time you talke
d to Blake?”

  She hangs her head and more tears fall. It takes every bit of strength I have not to lash out, and I know then my assumptions about her were right. She knows.

  “The night he died?”

  I barely catch the dip of her chin.

  “I’m not angry,” I coax gently, doing my best to keep from jerking her out of her seat. “I just need to know what happened.”

  She glances over her shoulder as more tears streak down her cheeks. “It’s nice out. I’m craving a cigarette, how about you?”

  I grit out my response. “I don’t smoke.”

  She nods her head toward the door slightly widening her eyes, and I take the hint. “Then keep me company?”

  “Fine.” We signal to our waitress that we’re stepping out and then I follow her out the door into the alley.

  Mila

  I drive toward the Bistro noting the subtle changes in the landscape. I’ve spent so much time on location with Lucas often opting not to step out of the sanctuary of our home once he wraps. In a way, I feel like I’m no longer a citizen of my own city. In LA, there are some landmarks that will never change while construction rises and falls in a blur around them. Kind of like a fast-forward reel around a still image. Time marches on, and trends come and go, but the rich history of who is and who was forever remains the theme.

  Though this sea of stars has many shapes, Lucas’s is the one I’m most fond of, though it’s getting more unrecognizable as the days pass. He’s changed his walk and is talking more with his hands, his movements more calculated than relaxed, his jaw set while his eyes dance with obscurity. His eating habits have also shifted, and he’s dropped a good amount of weight, his much slimmer build giving way to a more youthful appearance. He looks fresh out of boot camp but with longer hair. These things don’t alarm me, and I’m positive there are other less subtle things I haven’t caught onto yet.

  With me, he keeps conversations short and only gets irritated at any mention of Blake. Instead of dwelling on it, I help him research and leave sticky notes on his desk of characteristics I’ve unveiled from a respectable source about the mobster. Rayo loved pistachios, and they were sometimes found at a few of his crime scenes, but it was never enough to convict him, especially in the sixties and the seventies when he carried out his own killing. Lucas thanked me for that little tidbit with a quickie and the next day, I was picking up shells all over the house.