by Ames, Alex
Rick nodded again, staring into the house where Britta and Dana were playing cards. Josh was right. They were what mattered.
Josh looked at Rick. “Before I leave, there is one more thing. Louise.”
“What about her?”
“Go and forgive her.”
“Will not happen. That one is behind me.” Rick shook his head. “It is terrible that she needs to go through this sickness, but she really, really broke my heart. I am not sure that I want to risk that from happening again.”
Josh held up his hands. “Listen, if there is one thing that I found during my ups and downs over the last twenty years is that there are no absolutes. The only reason why I dug out of my holes was because there were people who forgave me all the shit I had put them through during my bad spells. My former wives, my kids, a few friends, and very few business partners. And this is my parting advice for you, Rick Flint. Forgive Louise. Forgive her unconditionally.”
“Louise and I are light-years apart.”
“Love or no love, I can’t look into your hearts. I have no clue whether Louise still feels for you or whether you still feel for her. And I am too self-absorbed and messed up to really care. But don’t have this absolute irrevocable ‘no’ in front of you. Look into your heart and forgive her. And take your relationship from there.”
Rick shook his head.
Josh stood up. “Advice is all I can give. Rick Flint, have a good rest of your life. Give my regards to your kids; they will go places.” He walked toward the garden gate.
“Where are you going? Can I take you somewhere?” Rick asked.
“Don’t worry about me. I got here, and I’ll get away from here.” Josh gave a short wave and vanished around the house.
Agnes came out and looked around “Did Josh already leave? He’s not staying for the party?”
“Yeah, he rode off into the sunset.” Rick looked into the sky, looking for help from Bella, who was looking down at them. “He strongly suggested that I make up with Louise. To forgive her. And maybe give her a second chance.”
“That is not the worst advice, Dad.”
“Now don’t you start, too!”
“Honey, Louise is a very special person. She is not the girl next door you simply fall in and out of love with. All the time with her, I felt so excited that this extraordinary woman had fallen in love with me. And at the same time I always felt so scared, like never before in my life. She was larger than life. Our relationship was larger than life. And getting your heart broken by her like that, showed me how vulnerable I was towards our relationship.”
“And don’t you think you should put this behind you? She has a terrible disease that might kill her. Then she will be gone, and you will never know whether there would have been a second chance in the stars for you guys,” Agnes argued.
“But if I invested in us again, and this time she would leave me for good? I fear, a second time would simply kill me, too,” Rick shook his head. “Please respect that I would like to keep my distance. It worked so far. Not perfectly so, but it worked.”
“Just saying, Dad. Your kids have a different opinion on this topic than you—accept it,” Agnes said, looking him straight in the eye. Both knew that they were also talking about her military career choice.
My God, she really is fully grown up now. One thing is sure: my part of her upbringing is over, Rick thought and felt again this sweep of loneliness racing through his stomach, crashing like a wave over his insides. How will I survive Dana leaving in fifteen years?
Agnes
The first idea of “the harebrained scheme,” as Britta had initially christened it—Charles had clarified that hares were actually quite intelligent, but admittedly not in the range of complex scheming—had come on New Year’s Eve. Agnes took care of the Flint kids while their father left with Hal and the other shipyard guys around eight to continue the good-bye party at the Whale’s Tail.
The gang had congregated in Dana’s room, where she was getting ready for bed.
“Can I be up for new year?” Dana asked while she put on her pink Barbie PJs.
“If you want to,” Agnes replied and helped Dana’s arms find their way. “But I think the sand in your eyes won’t let it happen.”
Dana blinked several times, rubbed her eyes, and yawned. “Stupid sand.” The powers of suggestion.
“Charles made his first New Year’s midnight when he was seven, so you still have some years to go,” Britta forecasted.
“Louise will have a party?” Dana asked out of the blue. She was aware that her best grown-up friend was very sick and far away—a good party might be a good activity to cheer her up. Their attempts to contact Louise over the last days had led to nowhere. Her cell phone went directly to voice mail, and Izzy’s agency had only taken messages, without any other return call.
Britta gave Google a spin but received no indication of what Louise was up to. Izzy had been spotted at a big extravaganza in Beverly Hills. Josh had officially checked into the Oregon clinic. But no word about Louise.
“We should visit her,” Dana determined and looked sullen.
“She’s in a hospital in Baltimore. That’s almost three thousand miles away.”
“Aga can drive,” Dana pointed out. She was very proud of her sister being able to drive her around.
“Dad would kill me if we took the car for a cross-country spin through deserts, mountains, Midwest plains, red-neck territory, and truck stops,” Agnes said.
“We could fly.” Dana didn’t give up.
“We do not need a grown-up to fly, yes. But we need someone to accompany us to the gate. And pick us up at our destination,” Charles explained.
“So that is a no-go, too,” Britta said.
“We can fake it,” Charles said, matter of fact.
“Mr. Know-It-All!” Britta groaned.
But Charles raised an eyebrow at her, a skill none of his siblings had mastered. “Agnes could take Mom’s driving license, gel back her hair, and put on her glasses. And then we are the three Flint kids traveling with their mom. If you can’t make it, fake it.”
“I like fake,” Dana stated.
Britta and Agnes stared at Charles for the scale and audacity of his plan
“This is getting out of hand,” Agnes held her hands over her eyes.
“This is a harebrained scheme,” Britta said.
“You want to visit Louise; I showed you a way to do it. The rest is up to you.” Charles shrugged.
“Worst part: it could work,” Agnes admitted. She looked at her little brother. “You are aware that your superbrain produced the first really forbidden idea ever.”
“We won’t count all those times I hacked the Oxnard PD’s computer to erase Agnes’s speeding tickets,” Charles said, rubbing the bridge of his nose, pushing up his glasses. He saw Agnes’s and Britta’s slack jaws and quickly added: “Just kidding! You girls are so easily played, it’s not even fun anymore.”
“Dr. Evil reincarnated,” Agnes said.
“With Dana as Mini-Me.” Britta giggled.
“There is a critical hole in the plan: we need money for the plane tickets,” Agnes pointed out.
Dana had fallen asleep during the hard planning, and the rest of the gang relocated to Agnes’s room. Britta searched online for four round-trip tickets to Baltimore for one of the next days and came out at $1,200.
Charles waved it off. “I’ll sponsor it from my science fair competition win; that’s a thousand right there.”
Britta lifted her hand. “I’ll sponsor the rest with my babysitter job leftovers.”
The three Flint kids looked at one another, a silent pact forming at that very moment, no formal decision made, only the realization that something exciting, forbidden, and potentially dangerous was going to take place. They all felt the weight of the plan, to see their friend Louise against the wishes of their father. Loyalty lay with their father, but in this particular case his view was clouded. Very clouded.
&n
bsp; Louise
Madge Hardy enjoyed the spotlight and gave out autographs ceaselessly and took selfies at Johns Hopkins with the people on the evening shift, one or two paparazzi breaking the protocol, storming the ER landing bay, shooting their cameras. A nurse brought Madge and her entourage to the wing where Louise had her room. The security guard held back Madge’s bodyguard, hangers-on, and personal assistants and waved her through.
The nurse knocked and announced Madge. Louise sat in a comfortable chair in lime-green yoga pants and a warm black cashmere pullover. Outside was the white sprinkled hospital campus, life happening.
“Don’t get up, Louise,” Madge said.
“I am neither dead nor an invalid, Madge, just tired and a bit dizzy.” Her daily dosage roller-coaster effect was in the process of ebbing, and she felt hunger coming on. The drug had developed an additional side effect; her head was buzzing and she had trouble standing straight because the world was spinning around her. If the effects went towards worse, Dr. Singh would interrupt the trial medication.
“The cancer?”
“No, the new experimental drug they’re trying on me. I puke and shit and feel dizzy most of the day. After a few hours, it is fine again.
Madge made a face. “Sounds like a typical LA party night to me. Is it working?”
“Too early to tell, my teenage doctor says.”
“Teen doctor? Is he hot?”
“If you are into twenty-year-old brainy Indians, yes. But he is promised to someone his mom found for him.”
“I was amazed when Izzy called and asked me to see you,” Madge said. “And he wouldn’t say why. But of course I was curious.”
Louise looked at Madge. Was that me, seven or eight years ago? This drive and determination? This careless poise that came with success and money? That idea the world belonged to you? Even the parts that you didn’t own yet?
“Earth to Louise?” Madge asked. She saw her biggest competitor as a sickly woman, deep in thoughts. It had taken Louise a lot of guts to ask her to come here and present herself in this painful and humiliating situation.
“No, you reminded me . . .” Louise didn’t complete her sentence. She realized that in reversed roles, ten years ago, she wouldn’t have understood. So Louise moved to the topic at hand. “Thanks for coming by.”
“On my way back from a New Year party in Paris. New York tomorrow, so Baltimore had been almost on the way,” Madge said.
“Are you still in that ugly remake of Gone with the Wind?”
Madge shrugged. “Studio is still scraping together the two hundred million. The Chinese investors make it a bit cumbersome. So it drags along without a green light. Last I heard they wanted to cast Xi-Ho Lun as Mamie to give the movie a better Asian profile.”
Louise laughed out loud and then keeled over, grabbed her bucket, and retched into it. Then she looked at Madge. “I want you to play Sarah Lewis in Five Ways.”
“Get out of here!” Madge stared at Louise. “You are out of your mind!”
Louise held her stare. “You are my worthy successor, if not even a better actress.”
“You are aware that you are giving away your third Oscar,” Madge said, not believing her luck.
“I might receive it for Best Picture as a producer. And you’ll get the best actress. We’ll pay you one million plus five points domestic, three foreign, and three points for digital rights. That is way below your market value, but adequate for an indie production. Nonnegotiable to keep us within the thirty-million-dollar budget.”
Madge stared out the window. It was starting to snow again. “I don’t know what to say”—she smiled at Louise—“except thank you.”
“Madge, I know you feel as if you have won the lottery. In ten years from now, I will send you a letter. It will contain only one question.”
“Question?” Madge still couldn’t understand her fortune. Nor the why behind it.
“The question will be: Do you still think you won the lottery?”
“But haven’t you taken out any suspense by telling me now?”
“It’s the answer that’s important, not the question. I won’t try to explain, because you’re not yet in a position to understand. But it is important that you are aware that you are now Number One in our profession. Either way you decide, after your Gone with the Wind payday or after the next Oscar for Five Ways, you will be the highest-paid actress of all time. There is no one above you, only three billion girls and a million transgender boys at your heels, who want to be you, be better than you, overtake you, and will do anything to reach your height.”
Madge’s head was reeling. “This is a strange night. I expected everything else, but this is a different level of crazy.”
“I have blood cancer, not a brain tumor.”
“Maybe that is what makes it so baffling for me.” Madge looked at Louise. “I was so mad when you snapped away Five Ways earlier this year. In fact, I hated you!”
“You know why I did it?”
“So that I wouldn’t get it offered?” Madge guessed and gave a sad smile when Louise nodded. “That’s crazy, right? But I would have done the same thing in your position. Can I ask why you changed your mind?”
“My doctor told me to get my affairs in order, as tacky as it sounds.”
Madge laughed. “We got a good bang out of our buffet fight, right?”
Louise gave a sad tiny smile. “Yes, we did, Madge. In another lifetime.”
Rick
Early January. Britta had called about some missing dinner ingredients, and Rick took a detour from a job interview he had had in Ventura to the first supermarket that came up on his side of the road. The interview had gone well; the new building boom in L.A. had companies scrambling to increase capacity again, and housing design was becoming a differentiator for many of the small independent outfits. The company owner’s was a guy about Rick’s age, on the blonder and beefier side—how Styler would look in about twenty years. Rick couldn’t bring himself to say yes on the spot. The owner felt Rick’s hesitation, asked some “what-can-I-do-to-make-you-say-yes” questions, but then didn’t press further. Rick asked for a few days to decide and left, torn between the need to feed his family and a humdrum job that did not really motivate him. Shipbuilding was the opposite of housebuilding. The wood for a boat had to be made to fit the lines, whereas the material for a house was all high-tech, preprocessed, and cut in rectangular shapes. When he looked at a boat, his heart beat faster. When he looked at a house, he thought about mortgages.
The supermarket was of the same chain as their regular one in Oxnard, so it took Rick no time to find and grab the five items on Britta’s list. He lined up to check out and saw a man he thought he recognized ahead of him. Long, sun-bleached hair, athletic frame, middle-aged, well maintained. There was a small click in Rick’s brain—the aged surfer guy walking beside Agnes after school. But then Rick was taken aback for a second. The guy in front of him wore khaki shorts, and his right leg was an artificial limb from the thigh on downward. But then Rick remembered the slight limping gait when he had walked with Agnes, and his brain clicked again.
“Excuse me, sir,” Rick said, tapping on the man’s shoulder.
Aged Surfer turned around. He held himself ramrod straight and had deep blue eyes that were calming but hard at the same time. “Yes, can I help you?”
“Is it possible that you are the career counselor of my daughter Agnes?”
“Agnes Flint? Yes and no,” the man said with a little smile.
“Are you or aren’t you?” Rick asked, feeling anger rising in him. Was this the guy who had convinced Agnes to pursue a military career?
“I am not associated with the high school, therefore the no. I am a Blue and Gold Officer, a coach for US Navy recruits,” the Aged Surfer said, his face friendly. “My name is Brian Compston, colonel, retired. Excuse me.” He took care of his checkout and waited until Rick was done, too.
“Did you convince my daughter to get killed?” Ric
k pointed to Compston’s leg. “Or crippled?”
Compston visibly cringed but remained friendly and looked Rick straight in the eyes. “You want to talk about this over a beer? I’ve spoken to many concerned parents over the years.”
Rick’s anger evaporated; he had made an ass out of himself, and he glanced at his watch. “Yeah, but no beer, though. I still have to drive to Oxnard.”
They ended up in a Starbucks a block down the street.
“Apologies for earlier. My nerves are a bit frayed, ex-girlfriend business and daughter business at the same time,” Rick said, meaning it.
“Yeah, Agnes told me about her movie-star stepmom and the fallout you had. Don’t sweat it. The decision Agnes made can be a very emotional one for many. But to answer your question: I did not convince your daughter to join the navy. She had already made up her mind when I first spoke with her. She came to me very informed and was favoring some options for her major.”
“And then where did you come in?”
“The process to be accepted as an enlisted officer with a college seat in the Naval Academy is complex. My role is to help the newbies find their way through it. That’s all.”
“You served, obviously.”
“Yes, I was part of Operation Desert Storm, naval air support.” Compston wagged his artificial leg. “I got out fine. In 1998 I had an accident on duty where I lost my leg and eventually had to leave the service. Became a financial manager for a health insurance company.”
“So what can you tell a concerned father?” Rick asked, crossing his arms.
Compston looked at him, his eyes changing from friendly to cold. “Agnes is the best recruit I have ever supported. She comes with superior grades, an almost perfect SAT score, and she excelled in all the application tests and interviews.”
“Tell me something new.” Rick couldn’t help but be proud of his daughter. “She’s the overachiever.”