by Kim Izzo
“A waitress? You’re leaving me for a waitress?” I realized how snobby that sounded, but I didn’t care. If he told me he left me for a successful producer or a movie star it wouldn’t have lessened the pain, but I could say he left me because I was only a tabloid reporter.
“She may not be a movie star,” he said as though reading my mind. “But she cares about me.”
“Do you love her?” I asked, my lip quivering.
“I don’t want to hurt you more than I’m doing. Do you think it’s easy leaving you? I know how much you love me.”
That stung—the one-sidedness of it all. “How much I love you? You never loved me, did you?”
“I did love you, Clara. But what we had is gone. I always felt that our marriage was a mistake. I’ll go to London, and it will give you time to get your head around a divorce. It’s better this way.”
I heard him speak but I wasn’t listening. I wanted one answer. “Do you love her?” I repeated.
He exhaled deeply. “Yes.”
Then the tears returned. This time more slowly, perhaps there was only one stream, but I doubted it made me beautiful.
“What’s her name?” I asked him.
“Not that it makes any difference, but her name is Amber. Amber Ward.”
Amber? A reality show name if ever there was one. The irony! If my life wasn’t so pathetic it would be amusing. Dean stepped towards the door. It was my last chance.
“I love you! Don’t go, Dean. Stay,” I pleaded. “We can work through this. Let’s go to counselling or take a vacation. We’ve haven’t been away in ages.” I paused, not wanting to reveal that I’d bought a ticket to London.
“It’s too late,” answered Dean flatly without looking me in the eye. I gazed at him longingly, taking him in for the last time. He was wearing a khaki linen shirt and faded black jeans. We bought that shirt together on a trip to San Francisco last winter.
But I wouldn’t be buying shirts with him anymore. He cleared his throat, pulling me back to earth or hell, I wasn’t sure which. “Our marriage is over,” he touched my cheek with his hand, and I closed my eyes longingly. “I’m not coming back.”
Then he left. I listened to the door click shut. It was hell.
Police Station—Cirencester
There was only one window in the room, and I was looking out of it. It had begun to rain, and on the street below people were scattering for shelter in shops and office towers or running for a bus that was idling at a traffic light. I heard Sergeant Hooper shuffle the loose pieces of yellow paper ripped from the pad. He had filled them with my words.
“So you see, I know Amber Ward. But she’s no friend.”
“Indeed,” he said. “If you don’t mind my saying so, your husband sounds like a complete bastard.”
This made me smile.
“How on earth did you end up with a bloke like that? I know you said you were pregnant, but surely shotgun weddings are a thing of the past? Especially in America, I think?”
I stopped smiling and walked slowly along the length of the room, running my hand gently across the cinder-block wall. I stopped when I reached the next corner, turned and faced Hooper.
“I always wanted a family of my own. I was almost thirty and wanted to have a child sooner than later. I wanted several children in fact. I’m an only child myself, you see. And my own family history is, well, complicated. I was hoping to avoid repeating the mistakes of my mother and grandmother. I thought Dean was the answer. And, as I explained, I was in love with him. Crazy about him, really. You don’t know Dean, the effect he has on women. He’s dashing in that dark, brooding, artistic way; he has a rock-star quality to him. Remember what I said about my life being a screwball comedy? He found me funny. Men don’t often like funny girls.”
I waited for a reaction; Hooper shrugged. “Besides, I didn’t exactly have a lineup of men outside my door. Dean paid attention to me.”
“Hard to believe you didn’t have a lineup of men, seeing you in that gold slip dress.” He smiled kindly.
“I’ve changed a little.” I leaned against the wall; my neck was sore so I rubbed it with my hand. “Why does anyone love anyone?” I continued. “Who can explain every attraction? Women fall in love with the wrong men all the time. And men fall in love with the wrong women just as often.”
He nodded as though it was the wisest thing he’d ever heard. “I’ve been known to fall head over heels for girls who think I make good money or who like the uniform. They never stick around once they learn the truth or they get tired of the outfit. Been cheated on a fair bit myself.”
I walked back to the desk and sat down again. “Then you understand.” I ran my fingers through my hair; the soft waves tumbled down my back and shoulders. I reached into the pocket of the trench coat and pulled out another cigarette to play with. Hooper picked up his pen once more, then flipped through the pages.
“One more thing. You do realize this is an official statement. You said at the beginning you are a screenwriter. You just said you are a celebrity journalist. Which is it?”
I examined the cigarette in my hand and without looking away said, “I’m a screenwriter. Like I told you, I was a screenwriter in the beginning, then I became a celebrity reporter. I’m a screenwriter again. That clarify things?”
“Not entirely. But continue, Miss Bishop. Tell me what happened next …”
CHAPTER THREE
I spent the morning with my heart hanging by a thread and tried to recall how I’d dealt with being dumped in the past. The last man to kick me to the curb was a guy named Ralph. It was my sophomore year at college, and he was a visual art major who felt that my screenwriting program was a joke and that filmmaking was a commodity, unlike his performance art videos, and that made us incompatible. Ralph seemed a lifetime ago and he was ridiculous. I remember crying once, mostly because I thought I had to, and only once. This was different. This felt like drowning in icy water, trapped beneath the surface as Dean walked away leaving me to die.
In novels and films a broken heart always seems glamorous: the woman takes to her bed for days as friends and family gather around and bring her food, which she ignores. Unable to sleep at night, she walks along hallways or dimly lit streets or damp fields bathed in fog and weeps softly in a trance. I tried to live up to the image that first morning, treading the plank wood floors, stepping out onto the balcony like a forsaken Juliet. But in Los Angeles, there was no dim street lighting or fog to disappear into. Here the sun was inescapable, beaming shards of brightness into every shadow and crevice, including the ones on a forlorn face, illuminating eyes red and swollen. Los Angeles may be a city built on creating scenes of great romantic tragedy, but it was all make-believe. Dreams came here to die, discarded like used wrapping from a fast-food joint. Surrounded by so many broken dreams, sympathy could be as tough to find as a snowdrift. My only hope was that the desert heat would bake my heart until it was so hard it could never break again.
I collapsed on the sofa and thought about the half-empty bottle of vodka in the freezer. It was only nine thirty, but wasn’t getting drunk in the morning one of life’s great remedies? Before the vodka could touch my lips my cell phone rang, and I answered because it was Sylvia, she of the high-heel mantra, my closest friend in LA and a staff photographer with Hollywood Hush.
“How are you on this fine morning?” she asked breezily.
“Dean left me,” I said and burst into tears.
“Oh my God,” she said. “Are you okay? Of course you’re not.”
By the time Sylvia arrived, I had managed to get dressed. I left the vodka out on the counter for effect.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“Sorry. But you’re wearing two different socks, and your T-shirt is ten times too big and has a giant stain on it.”
I looked down at my feet, a red one and a grey one, and shrugged. The T-shirt was Dean’s, one of the few he left. It still smelled like him.<
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“You smell like stale beer,” she added. I sniffed the T-shirt: Dean and beer. I grabbed the vodka and flopped on the sofa.
“Are you drunk?”
“Not yet.”
She flopped down beside me. “What happened exactly?”
I told her exactly, and when I was done, I took a swig of the vodka straight out of the bottle and began to cough.
“Easy there, Clara. You’re not a big drinker at the best of times.”
“This is the worst of times,” I said and waited for her to agree.
Sylvia was silent, which annoyed me.
“What does Marjorie say?” Sylvia asked. Marjorie is my mother, and she was a minor celebrity among my friends. Marjorie insisted everyone, including her only child, use her Christian name. Marjorie was excellent at giving advice, and many times over the years my friends would drive to her house on Camrose Drive in the Hollywood Hills for one of her famous chicken-pot-pie chats. Sort of like Roosevelt’s fireside chats during the Depression, only hers included wine and dessert along with the wisdom. When it came to me, however, my mother’s advice burned like scalding-hot water.
“I haven’t told her yet.” My confession was met with widened eyes and a slack jaw.
“Why not? She lives for this type of drama!” Sylvia pointed out. “She was awesome when I ended that threesome last Fourth of July. She never judges.”
“She doesn’t judge you,” I explained. “You’re not her daughter. Wait until she hears that Dean left me for a waitress!”
“Are you sure she’s just a waitress?” Sylvia asked. “She could be a med student.”
I shot her a death-ray glare and she swallowed.
“He said she was a waitress, and that probably means she’s an actress,” I said, and then a horrible yet inevitable realization sank in. “In which case Marjorie wouldn’t blame him.”
“That’s not true!”
“You know how she feels about my career,” I argued. To Marjorie it would make sense that a producer/director like Dean would want to be with a starlet and not some hack reporter. I could hear her now: “If your screenwriting had taken off, then that would be different. You’d be in show business like he is, not merely writing about it …”
“She’d never say such a thing,” Sylvia said as though reading my mind. “She loves you.”
I shrugged. Sure my mother loved me, in her way. I supposed Dean had too, in his way. When was I going to be loved in my way?
“We were happy. I don’t get it,” I said.
Sylvia reverted back to silence. I knew she was hesitating.
“Say it, Sylvia,” I coaxed warily.
She sniffed as if what she had to say reeked like rotting fish. Then with a toss of her hair she announced, “You and Dean should never have married. You were his favourite booty call because he knew you’d always say yes. But he was never husband material. You loved him far more than he ever loved you. Sorry, but I must be honest.”
“He’s just not that into me?” I quoted the title of that inane self-help book. “He did love me. We were great together, all the movie marathons we watched, shared jokes, shared dreams.” As I listed the things that made Dean and me a perfect match she shook her head.
“You should have kept it at friends with benefits.”
“Why are you being so blunt?” I snapped. “We had a lot of great times together once we were married. After I lost the baby he was wonderful to me, and tender and caring.”
“He did take care of you, I’ll give him that. Least he could do. But before you got pregnant and married him, he strung you along for years. From what you’ve told me, he was doing it ever since you met him in film school.”
I thought back to film school. I was going to be an Oscar-winning screenwriter and he was going to be an Oscar-worthy auteur. I’d harboured my crush in silence during the first two years of university, until fate—and a student film production—threw us together.
“I’m Clara Bishop.” I remembered trying to sound like a seasoned pro, which was ridiculous since we were barely out of our teens and had never worked on a real film. I knew my hand was shaking when he shook it, and worse, my palms were sweaty and he noticed.
“You must get your computer keyboard wet with hands like that,” he said, then beamed his trademark smile on me. I remember feeling faint, part swooning, part humiliation.
“I’m hot,” I explained stupidly and felt my face flush at what the words implied.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” he said and winked at me.
I wasn’t “hot.” If anything, I was what can best be described as “handsome.” I looked like my father, complete with mousy brown hair and strong jaw. My best features are my legs, apparently, and my green eyes. I also had the good fortune to inherit the maternal side of the family’s bee stung pout.
Sylvia kept talking. “You can talk a good game and write an even better one when you’re working on a story. There’s a reason Hollywood Hush loves you so much. You’re a smart and funny girl, Clara. But around Dean, you become this worshipping, treacly mess. You’re his biggest fan, but you aren’t his partner.”
I slugged the vodka again. The stinging in my throat kept me from crying. “I am his biggest fan,” I said flatly. “But you’re wrong. I am also his partner. We will get back together. This Amber girl is a fling.”
She nodded. From her expression, it appeared she knew she’d said enough.
“I just want him back,” I said miserably.
“Do you want me to go alone?” she asked. I tilted my head like a dog trying to decipher a command.
“Go where?”
“It’s Saturday. We have the kids.”
My eyes widened, which hurt because they were swollen. We volunteered at a weekend filmmaking program for underprivileged children. It was fun seeing what the kids came up with, and I loved spending time with them. The students varied in age from seven to twelve, before puberty turned them into cynical teenagers who knew everything.
“Well? The kids will be hurt. Today they screen their finished videos.” She needn’t have bothered with the guilt trip. I would never hurt a child. And being the reliable and predictable Clara Bishop, I wasn’t going to be a no-show.
CHAPTER FOUR
The next three hours were spent surrounded by children’s laughter. It was a tonic. They adored us because we showed them movies their parents hadn’t even heard of. It was like we were part of a secret society. Plus they got to show off by playing parts in one another’s short films. The parents adored us because their children went home exhausted but happy. Sylvia and I had been doing this for three years now and had even begun to raise money to expand the program to other districts in Los Angeles.
This morning we were watching final cuts of their latest assignment, which was to recreate a scene from one of the movies they’d watched in the program, and they ran the gamut from It’s a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to The Wizard of Oz and included loads of pets and startled siblings. Then it was my favourite student’s turn—yes, I had a teacher’s pet—a ten-year-old girl named Pilar who had been raised on the beauty pageant circuit. Sylvia shoved the disc into the DVD player and the video began to play on the large flat-screen television. Not surprisingly, given her skills on the pageant stage, Pilar had chosen to star in as well as direct her own movie. Her co-star was Estefan, a twelve-year-old boy with a raffish quality to him. Unlike the others, the video was in black and white, and not some child-friendly fare either. To my astonishment, it was a scene from The Postman Always Rings Twice where Frank and Cora plot to kill her husband. Pilar wore a platinum-blonde wig and a very pretty white dress, and Estefan was in a beat-up leather jacket. The musical score was eerie and dramatic but it wasn’t from the original. It had a decidedly Latin flair to it.
“I’m not what you think I am, Frank. I want to work and be something, that’s all. But you can’t do it without love. Do you know that, Frank? Anyway, a woman can’t,” Pilar
pleaded, speaking the lines like she was twice her age. “Well, I’ve made one mistake. And I’ve got to be a hell cat, just once, to fix it. But I’m not really a hell cat, Frank.”
“They hang you for a thing like that,” Estefan said in a monotone. He didn’t have Pilar’s gift for melodrama, but since he really wanted to be a cinematographer when he grew up, it didn’t matter much.
“Not if you do it right,” Pilar’s Cora said haughtily.
That’s where it ended. Sylvia tried to contain her laughter. I elbowed her in the ribs, but in truth I was a little horrified and was worried that her parents would be descending on the centre at any moment to have us arrested.
“My God, Pilar! What on earth made you pick that scene?” I asked. She looked puzzled.
“You did,” she answered. “You said it was one of your favourite movies and now it’s one of mine. I love Lana Turner’s hair colour.”
Sylvia didn’t even try not to laugh. “She’s right, Clara.”
“I used my dad’s book and copied the dialogue from there,” she said proudly.
“Pilar, your parents aren’t going to be happy,” I said worriedly.
Pilar shook her head. “My father picked the music.”
“Your parents have seen it?” Sylvia asked.
Pilar nodded proudly. “They said it should get me a scholarship.”
“It’s better than a life of Toddlers and Tiaras,” I said to Sylvia as we drove back to the apartment. I couldn’t stop thinking of the dialogue that Pilar had chosen. It could have come from my lips. I wanted to work and be something. And I agreed with Cora that a woman needed love to do it. Like Cora, I’d made a mistake. I didn’t give Dean what he needed and now I’d lost him. Only I doubted there was a hell cat inside me to fix it, and I hated that about myself.
“I wish I could be a hell cat,” I said to Sylvia. We’d parked the car and were walking to the apartment. She looked at me blankly. “Like Cora in Postman,” I reminded her.
She furrowed her brows. “You want to kill Dean?”