“Sleep well?” I ask.
“I don’t really ever, no,” he says. “You?”
I average probably four interrupted hours of sleep a night. “As good as I can.” Take a sip of coffee, peek in his cup. “Just black?”
“Yeah.”
I nod.
Luke looks at his watch. “Say we head out around eight thirty this morning.” It’s not a question.
Truthfully, I didn’t sleep that well at all. I tossed and turned and debated on asking Luke this question at one thirty in the morning. Two thirty in the morning and three forty-five in the morning. Finally, my eyelids and brain gave up. But now, he’s here, reading the newspaper, as if we’d somehow stepped back in time. Where people read the morning newspaper. Back to a time when things were simple.
I left for the Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin, when I was twenty-one years old on July 15, 2001. I served thirteen years exactly. I was released back into a world that’s driven by technology. No more Saturday morning cartoons or newspaper readers. Pictures aren’t developed at photo shops anymore; they’re taken with phones where online albums are created. CDs are almost nonexistent. I’m almost certain a VHS player is probably on display in a museum somewhere along with pagers. There’s no more waiting for anything. All the gratification we think we need is at our fingertips.
Everything has changed.
I’m almost certain Luke Googled me just the way I Googled him. I’m also certain a background check on me was done by his publicist before he even took the interview. Googled my freelance stuff. He pretended not to know my name, but he knew it.
So, I ask him the same question that’s been burning me up since last night, “Why’d you take the interview?”
Luke isn’t surprised by this question. He doesn’t ask me the only question I seem to get when my track record is exposed.
Did you do it?
He doesn’t lie to me or make excuses or fumble over his words. He doesn’t give me remorse or pity or any of the bullshit.
Luke simply stares back. “I know your heart can handle it.”
But behind his stare is a flicker of guilt. I see it, and it’s only momentary. It disappears as quickly as it appeared.
He says this like he knows the end of the story, how this will all play out.
As if he knows my heart.
I take my finger and trace a natural groove in the table. Watch as a piece of my vulnerability is seen, exposed, floats across the table and is given to Luke like a gift. Why would these seven little words open up my guts?
My heart can handle a story, Luke, just not my own. My stomach clenches. A quick and faint memory from the morning of January 2nd, reaches inside me.
Luke interrupts my thoughts. “Let’s go.” But his tone is soft and sincere and commanding, all at the same time.
I can’t produce my usual wit, stuck in the moment, so I stand. “I’m going to go grab my stuff.”
“I’ll meet you at the car,” Luke says from his sitting position.
Arizona is quiet and desolate in some places. My eyes are transfixed on the red sand, as I wait for a snake to bid farewell while it maneuvers across the desert floor with speed.
I take my notebook out.
“When did you know you wanted to be an actor?” I ask.
James Taylor’s “Shower the People” comes over the satellite radio.
“I didn’t.” He leans on his left arm as it sits on the windowsill.
The air conditioner blows soundlessly.
“I came out to Los Angeles to play music.”
This makes me think of Mother, who moved to California to study art when she met my father.
“It was 1988. I was eighteen and wanted to play the guitar like Taylor and Cat Stevens and Carole King and Lynyrd Skynyrd. I just didn’t want all the bullshit that came with it.”
“Bullshit?”
“The fame. I just wanted to play music and make a living at it.” Luke shrugs.
“So, you became an actor?” I pause. “And all the bullshit came anyway?”
He continues and doesn’t look my way, “I had this opportunity with Epic Records in LA in 1989. They were ready to sign, and I was ready to sign. When I picked up the pen, Clovis, the vice president of the company, started talking about selling out to millions and international travel. The next so-and-so. I panicked. I walked away. I didn’t want all that.”
“So, you walked away.” From the depths of me, I understand this.
Luke nods. Looks out his window and back to the road. “So, I spent the next year scraping by working construction and doing late-night gigs after work to pay the bills. And I kicked my own ass for not signing the contract. But my ego wouldn’t let me go back into Epic Records and ask for the record deal. Besides, it was a year later, and they’d probably already found someone else. I let it go.”
I jot this down.
“A buddy of mine told me about an audition for a part in some drama series, and I thought, What the hell? I needed a bit more income to meet the music needs and because the construction gig wasn’t covering it all.”
“And you’d never acted before?”
Luke shakes his head. “Nope, and needless to say, I didn’t get the part I’d auditioned for—but I got the part of Dylan Klein.”
I jot this down, too, and wait for him to continue, but he doesn’t.
“So, LA Hills takes off. Blows up. Then what?” I ask, looking out the window, waiting for his answer, doing my best to appreciate the red clay and rock formations and cacti.
“No, actually, it was after the first season. It was a bumpy start. Some of us were just finding our acting legs. Some of us were veterans to it. Some of us couldn’t lay off the coke or the booze. Some of us just didn’t want to be sober. And some of us thought we could rule the world so as long as egos could withstand criticism.”
I don’t ask who, but I write down the quote, knowing full well I won’t use it. Somehow, I know this story isn’t meant to be a piece on sex or drugs or sobriety. This story is about Luke, and I feel as though I’m missing the angle.
“After the first season ended, that’s when everything exploded.”
Luke stalls. “Yeah.”
I take in his profile as he drives. The crow’s-feet that stream from his eyes are more pronounced and better seen when his sunglasses are on—the black frame attracting attention, I suppose. His lips are firm and sensual, and I wonder what it would be like to kiss them. How many women have his lips touched?
But more importantly, I see the worry once again.
“You’re staring at me, Catherine.” His lips curve. And he says this not in a weird way, but in a way of concern. “What are you thinking about?” His narrow eyes meet mine.
“I wonder if your shoulders ever tire from the burden you carry.” It isn’t a question.
Taylor’s next song comes over the airwaves—“Something in the Way She Moves.”
Luke’s eyes meet mine. He leans down, turns up the radio, and James transports me to 1968 where miniskirts and go-go boots and printed tights are things of importance, of beauty. The lyrics attach themselves to my insides, and I can’t help but wonder if fate decided to show its first round of cards.
We allow James to carry us through Arizona for the next several hours, and the exchange we last had hours ago has left us wordless. Cat Stevens’s “Landslide” comes on. This reminds me of my first real boyfriend in high school my senior year. The first man I’d ever let touch me, slip inside me. Sex was just something I did to pass the time. I think it meant more to Peter than to me. I allowed it to happen because that was what kids our age were doing. In hindsight, I wish I had waited. I wish I would had known a man like Luke. Instead, I watched him on television, romancing with beautiful blondes who were thin and had breasts like grapefruits.
College at Brown University came, and Peter and I didn’t last. My relationship with Peter was the starter relationship. It was as if I’d used the relationship to
figure out how to navigate love and touching and what everything felt like. The relationship that had broken through all the firsts.
First kiss.
First base.
Sex for the first time.
Then, Michael came along. It felt more like love. More intimate. More connectedness. I could have spent the rest of my life with Michael, I suppose. He liked sports and movies and poetry. I liked sports enough to know they usually involved some sort of ball and poetry enough to appreciate a beautiful line when I read it. It was the movie choices we couldn’t agree on. While I enjoyed drama and comedy, Michael enjoyed suspense and good guys versus bad guys.
But it wasn’t the time together that pushed us apart; it was the time apart that eventually ended our relationship. Really, it was everything that happened on January 2, 2001. It was all such a blur, and according to my therapist in prison, post-traumatic stress disorder can change the way we see things, feel things, associate things.
Before we reach Arizona and New Mexico state line, Luke asks if I’m hungry. “I lost track of time,” he says.
There’s a long pause between us because I don’t notice that I’m hungry, starving, until now. “I could eat.”
It’s late afternoon, and the sky over Arizona fades from a deep blue to a light blue, like the varying depths of the ocean. We pull off at a Dairy Queen.
“I cannot believe you grew up in Southern California and have never had a bacon double cheeseburger from Dairy Queen,” Luke says.
I shove another French fry in my mouth and take a drink of Coke. “I think it’s an injustice to add bacon to anything. And to ruin a burger like that?” I shake my head. “Cruel.”
Luke tries not to smile, but I see it peek out from the corners of his mouth.
Try not to smile. I shove another French fry in my mouth.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman who didn’t like bacon.” Luke takes another bite of his burger.
I shrug. “It’s not that I don’t like bacon. I just think bacon should be enjoyed and savored as one food entity. I think it’s a disservice to bacon lovers alike to mix it with something else. That’s all.”
“But wouldn’t you agree that bacon adds flavor to everything?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t tried it with anything else.”
Luke looks at me. Sets his burger down. Takes a napkin and wipes his hands. “You mean to tell me that your whole life has been spent eating bacon by itself, and you’ve never once felt tempted to slip it into a burger or wrap it around a hunk of meat?”
“I don’t like change,” I counter.
“That’s it.” Luke shakes his head, rubs his hands together, and then picks up his burger. “Open up.”
I lean back, cross my arms, shake my head. “No way.”
Luke holds the burger with two hands across the table. “Come on. Open up. If you don’t like it, I’ll gladly refund you the experience.”
Curiosity piques my interest. “How would you refund the experience?”
“What’s your favorite dessert?” he asks, still holding out the burger.
“Starbursts.”
Luke nods. “Starbursts then. If you don’t like the bacon on the burger and it doesn’t change your view, I’ll buy you Starbursts for a lifetime.”
I laugh out loud, and it feels so good. Cover my mouth and realize how loud it must have been.
Luke’s mouth changes, and his look does, too. The worry I see in his eyes has somehow shifted just slightly.
“Starbursts for life?” I lean forward, look into his eyes. “The orange ones.”
“Orange Starbursts for life,” he whispers.
I open my mouth and take a bite of his burger. I think about the way his mouth touched the same spot when the tomato explodes in my mouth. The onion gives off the crunch, the cheese and meat patty run my taste buds on overdrive, but it’s the bacon that pulls everything together.
He’s right.
I chew.
Nod my head.
Stare at the ceiling.
My mouth is full of heaven.
Chew again.
Nod.
Finally, I find his eyes as I swallow the last bit of the bacon double cheeseburger, the slice of heaven that Dairy Queen offers.
I try to gather my thoughts, find a way to explain what this has done to my overall eating experience at thirty-four years old.
Luke sets the burger down.
Attempting to act casual, I lean forward.
“Well?” he asks.
“You’re right. The bacon just does something to the experience.”
Luke smiles, and my heart doubles over itself. I swear, if a heart could move from place to place, it would leap right out of my chest and demonstrate what I feel inside when I see Luke smile. It’s as if the tips of the corners touch his ears. Watching Luke smile is something that every woman needs to experience—not the smile from Dylan Klein, but the genuineness, the quiet confidence, the humility of a man I’ve never had the pleasure of knowing until this moment right here.
His smile lights up the world and all the dark corners where sadness festers.
“What?” he asks.
I try to control the chills that have taken over my skin and put my heart back into my chest. “You have ketchup”—I touch the corner of my mouth—“right here.”
Luke rubs the napkin over his mouth. He doesn’t have ketchup on his face, but I needed to buy just a few moments of clarity to remind myself that this is just a story, and I’m just the staff writer.
The chills finally leave.
“We should go,” I say, “get back on the road.” I’m eager to step away from what I’m feeling because it’s way too close for comfort.
Luke stands, takes both of our trays, walks to the trash, but not before three young women in Dairy Queen uniforms nervously approach Luke.
Two of the workers push their friend forward. “Are you the dad from the show River’s Lounge?”
He did a few cameos on the show. I remember.
Luke looks at the three young women, back to me, and back to the young women.
It’s truly very sad that these women will never understand what Dylan Klein did for women in the 1990s. These girls weren’t even born yet. It’s sad that they will never understand the importance of the coy smile, the surfboard, and the bad-boy image. It’s equally just as sad to see that the heartbreaker of an era will not be known to women born beyond the eighties. It’s a travesty.
He’s resolved to being a dad on a current hit show.
“He’s Dylan Klein. Grab your phones and look that shit up,” I say as I roll my eyes and walk past the three young women and out the door.
As we make our way into New Mexico, the incident with the young women doesn’t seem to bother him. He’s back to his normal, pensive self.
The beginning of New Mexico, coming in at the south end of the state, is barren and flat. The green I see isn’t a true green; it’s a tired green, washed out, faded, not the type of green found, say, in Northern California. Mother and Father used to have a place in Myers Flat, California, where Ingrid and I would spend hours getting lost in the redwood forest. The green in the trees, from what I remember, was bright, vibrant, and full of life.
A mountain range off in the distance is a sharp, jagged line where peaks and valleys sit a short distance away from each other.
No music plays from the radio. It’s just me, Luke, and the warm New Mexico breeze that billows through our windows.
“For the record, Dylan Klein is still the love of many hearts,” I say, not in any effort to help him feel better, but to give him a dose of true reality.
He side-eyes me and then looks back to the road with one hand on the steering wheel. “When I first got the job for LA Hills, the producer asked if I’d be wiling to get a nose job.”
“What?” I ask—not because I didn’t hear what he’d said, but because I don’t believe his nose needs fixing. That it might somehow be defective
. It works fine, which is key, and besides, it isn’t abnormally big or too small. It is narrow, comes to a point, as it should, and sits perfectly on his face.
“Somehow, my nose didn’t fit the bill for the Dylan Klein they had in mind. But after a day or so, after a lot of thought, I realized I wasn’t willing to change who I was for such a small part of life, you know? That if they didn’t like me for me, then I wasn’t the right man for the job.”
“I’m glad you didn’t get the nose job,” I say into the wind, halfway hoping he doesn’t hear me because I don’t want things to get weird between us and I don’t want what I say to be the reason things get weird.
Luke looks down the road we travel. Barren desert on each side of us.
I look back down at my notebook. “You have no social media accounts, according to the internet.”
Luke shakes his head.
“Why?”
“Why have them?” Luke looks over at me.
Social media didn’t exist before I went to Dublin. Neither did smartphones. Bag phones were all the rage.
“From what I’ve seen with social media, it’s just a big, fat lie. All of it. A fake facade that users put out there to compare lives. Who’s prettier. Who’s skinnier. Who’s richer. Nobody tells the truth. It’s all bullshit. And we’re making the rich richer by using it.”
I look straight ahead and feel Luke’s eyes burning a hole on the side of my face.
I turn to face him. “What?”
A small smile touches his lips. “I like you, Catherine Clemens.”
I try not to enjoy the way my name sounds from his mouth.
“I take it, you don’t have any social media accounts?” he asks, adjusting so he’s got one hand on the wheel.
Immediately, I feel guilty. “I’m sorry. The question was for you. My personal opinion seemed to jump in here somehow. I’m supposed to be interviewing you, not the other way around.”
“Why are you sorry? Catherine, I see this as a two-way conversation. Not a fucking press conference. Besides, I asked you the question back.”
Luke gives me a quick smile that makes my pulse race. There’s an inherent strength in his face. One that tells me he’s had to overcome a lot to get where he is now. I guess we’ll have to cross that bridge when we get to it.
The Light We See Page 5