|
|
My, how things change.
I looked into his eyes and saw, for the first time, my dreams mirrored in another’s own.
“Lonely?”
He smiled faintly and shook his head. “Nah, just desperate for love.”
I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. I was too busy worrying if I should be here with him Alone. In the dark. Self-consciously, I leaned over the iron railing, staring into the darkness surrounding us. The stars gleamed in the sky like little pinpoints of light, and somwhere in the distance, an owl hooted, the call bouncing eerily off the mountains before fading into the night.
“Yeah, I know the feeling,” I mumbled.
He turned and braced his arms on the railing in front of him next to me. Silently, we listened to the calls of the wild below, standing on the deck of the mountain lodge, two people alone except for the night and her followers. He massaged the back of his hand with his other palm, lost in thought.
“Do you really?” he asked, almost to himself.
I let out my breath in a rush. “Yes.” And again, the memories of my past returned to haunt me. I closed my eyes, my mind, to the pain.
“It’s a lonely feeling.”
“The loneliest in the world,” I agreed.
He chuckled, a deep rumble that grew into a full-fledged laugh. “Look at me,” he shook his head ruefully, “philosophizing with a kid.”
I grimaced to the reference to my tender age. “Kid?”
“Kid. Maybe when you hit forty, I’ll do you a favor and stop calling you kid.”
Casually, I smacked his arm. Hard. He didn’t even flinch. “I warn you, I’m a dangerous aspiring actress with volatile moods. Don’t cross me. And I’m not a kid.”
He merely chuckled. “But I’m the one that determines your future. Kid,” he added with a roguish impudence.
I shrugged. “So when do we start?” I asked, emphasizing the “we” and keeping the hope out of my voice.
“Now.” He grinned, holding out his hand. “You got yourself an acting agent, Jennifer.”
Solemnly, I shook his hand while inside I wanted to jump into the air and whoop for joy. “Think I can really make it in Hollywood?”
“You’ll blow them out of ther minds.”
~*~
Fame didn’t agree with me. I hated all the publicity, the interviews, the hand cramps from signing 8 x 10 glossies of myself. I was seventeen, living in a grown-up world I still didn’t quite belong in. All I wanted to do was dive under the covers at home and never come out.
Frank understood when no one else did, and even though the contracts were pouring in, he never let me sign one unless I was sure I wanted to do the movie. I made him rich, I made his company rich, I made myself rich… but he and I – we just stayed the same, the only ones who did, and watched the other hyporcrites change.
Sometimes, I’d catch him looking at me with a sad look in his eyes, and I’d think that he regretted becoming my agent and forcing me into the adult world too early. I didn’t know how to tell him, that I had long ago lost my childhood, I knew he would hit the roof if he ever did find out about my past. He was that protective kind of guy.
The summer after I graduated from UCLA, I made my decision
“I don’t want to act anymore,” I blurted out to Frank one day, over a plate of BBQ ribs at the Hard Rock Café in Beverly Hills.
He lifted a fork with chicken salad piled on it and calmly continued eating
while I listed all the reasons why I wanted to quit. Surrounded by
memorabilia from a time before I was born, I could feel the youth coursing
through me. Hollywood wasn’t for me. I wanted to be free, even
if only for a little while.
“You
just signed on with TriStar to do Yours Always,” he pointed out after I
finished.
“I’m going to tell them I can’t do it.”
“Hey hey hey,” he grumbled around a mouthful of lettuce dripping with oriental sauce, “who’s the agent here,, me or you?”
“Me.” I called the waiter over and asked for the check. “I’m going on by myself, Frank,” I said quietly, meeting his questioning gaze with a direct, unwavering one of my own. I slapped a couple bills on the table to pay for my part of the check and stood to leave. “I signed a lease on life a while ago and right now, I want to make the most of it while I can.”
“Wait.” He reached out and covered my hand with his. “What are you going to do?” His voice had lost its businesslike edge to it, and it was to Frank that I responded to.
“I don’t know.” Dejectedly, I slumped back into my seat and sighed.
He laughed. “She’s trying to beat the expiration date on her lease and she hasn’t even taken IRS evasion classes yet,” he told the ketchup bottle.
I tilted my chin with an air of wounded indignation. “I was thinking of writing.”
“Writing,” he repeated slowly, “why writing?
“Because I can do it anytime, anywhere.”
“You know,” he mused, “you have several million in the bank. You don’t have to do anything to live comfortably for the rest of your life, especially if you invest.”
I was shaking my head even before he had finished. “No, I don’t want to sit on my butt doing nothing. I need to do something.”
“Travel. Party. Have fun.”
“Something productive. With a purpose.”
“Why this sudden urge for productivity?”
“Let’s call it an urge and leave it at that.” I winked as he paused briefly, thinking over the wording.
“You’re too young for that sort of stuff, kid.”
I gave him an innocent look. “What kind of stuff?”
He grinned. “The stuff that makes movies rated PG-13.” He leaned over and started to polish off the rest of my french fries. “You really want to do this?” he asked, the way he asked me so many times before when I wanted to take on a big movie deal.
I drew in a deep breath and expelled it slowly. “Yes. I do, Frank.”
The tension left his shoulders and he flashed another grin. “Then let’s do it, kid. If I can sell your fakeness, I can sell your books.”
“My fakeness?!”
“Oh sorry,” he amended, unrepentant, “Acting skills.”
“But I haven’t even asked you yet.”
"Then ask me," Franks replied amiably, reminding me of the other time he’d said that, the night I crashed his grand opening party of his agent company to ask him to become my acting agent. He leaned back in his chair, his arms crossed.
“Frank,” I said nervously, "I’m not that great a writer. You’ll probably lose money on me, in fact."
“Ask me,” he repeated, undeterred.
“Will you have the patience to put up with me and my moods? Con publishers into publishing books that won’t be worth jack cheese? What if I decide to move to Zimbabwe, would you drive through the lions and tigers just to tell me my book was accepted by some small peanut publisher?”
They were rhetorical question aimed at throwing him off-guard, never intended to be answer, but he answered them anyway.
“You know I will, Jenny,” he said softly.
~*~
It was two years before he sold my first book, but I didn’t blame him. I hadn’t been joking when I said I couldn’t write very well. He was still determined to make me as famous a writer as I was an actress though, and through sheer force of will, he got reluctant publishers to look over my first novel.
He never seemed disappointed or discouraged at my lack of writing skills. “you’ll make it, kid,” he kept on telling me, “you just have to find something you know enough about to write on.” And with every pink rejection slip, he’d hug me and say that at least he was there, and always will be. I’d start praying for help right about then.
Those things never really depressed me for long though. I was fresh out of college, finally free from Hollywood, and ready to take on the world. My past career wouldn’t let me go as people still walked up to me out of nowhere asking for an autograph, so I moved to Washington state, where Frank was establishing a new branch of his agent company. He moved soon after I did, ostensensibly to direct the new branch – and to keep a promise, especially one made in Hard Rock Café.
Through the years that I had known him, women came and went in his life. I still remembered the first night I met him when for some reason or another he told me, a perfect stranger, of his heart’s yearnings. I watched each woman set her trap, but I knew beforehand that they were using the wrong bait. Because I knew Fran kand more than that, I understood him.
I had seen myself in him that first time, and I was there to see him become more and more jaded as each woman passed from his life.
“Frank, I’m sorry,” I said as I walked out into the backyard of his modest two-story home. He was flat on his back in the hammock he had rigged up the day before, barechested with one arm thrown across his eyes. I shoved the newspaper aside and carefully sat down in the hammock, trying not to tip us both over.
He didn’t say anything for a moment, then in a low voice he growled, “Jen, if we fall out of this damned thing, I’m going to kill you.”
“You already fell out of it six times yesterday,” I reminded him. He made no comment. Gingerly, I stretched out on my stomach next to him and rested my chin on his free arm. “Frank…”
“I know.”
I sighed. “You okay?” I knew he’d say yes even if a great white shark was literally chewing his head off.
“Yes.” Privately, I rolled my eyes at his grouchy tone. “I’m –“ He paused, then heaved a sigh. “No, I’m not.”
I caught myself in time from grabbing his shoulders, shaking the living daylights out of him and yelling, “You’re NOT??!!” Instead, I silently counted to ten, then asked calmly, “Want to talk about it?”
He stacked his hands behind his head. “Nah, I’m okay.”
I knew he didn’t want me to break through his defenses again, but I wanted him to really talk to me with no guards up. Problem was, I didn’t know how to break that dam. I plucked listlessly at the pillow beneath his arm, wondering what I should do.
“You know,” he said suddenly, out of the blue, “Pocket Books finally accepted Death of Eternity.”
At any other time, I would’ve jumped up and screamed in delight at the news, but right then, Frank was in the dumps about Cathy leaving him and I wanted so bad for him to feel better. I refused to think why his feelings were so important to me.
“Two years,” I mumbled, “you make a fine literary agent, Frank. You should’ve stuck to acting.”
“One,” he corrected absently, “it took you a whole year to write the damn thing.”
The warm afternoon sun had started to work its magic and I felt the makings of a nap stealing over me. I fought off a wave of drowsiness and rolled onto my back, my cheek pressed against the warm skin of his chest, then yawned.
“Tired, kid?”
“Yeah, I mumbled”
“Me too.”
“Cathy wasn’t worth it Frank.”
“I know.”
“You’ll find someone who is. Someday.”
“Probably not.”
Ignoring the pessimism in his voice, I smacked his breastbone with the palm of my hand before settling back into the crook of his arm.
“Frank,” I asked on another yawn, “what do you want most in life?”
I heard the rumble of his voice from above, but I was too far gone by then to pick up what he said. Dimly, I felt his skin ripple as he chuckled, then swing himself out of the hammock with a minimum of rocking. His fingers brushed the hair lightly off my face, and then I felt no more.
It was only later that I found out he wanted the same thing he had wanted seven years ago – a skinny kid with guts enough to crash a celebrity party but scared enough being alone at night with a man to bring a steak knife hidden in her jacket.
~*~
He never dated anyone else after Cathy, and for a long while I figured he had sworn off women or something. As for me, I broke off a seventh-month relationship with a successful lawyer from New York – one week before the wedding.
I felt bad about it, especially since Larry seemed like such a nice guy and everything, but I knew I couldn’t go through with it. Of course, everyone asked why, and I lied to all except for Frank, saying it was because I had an astrological compatibility analysis done on both of us, and the likelihood of a successful marriage turned out to be less than 0.02%.
To Frank, I told him part of the truth – and more. I couldn’t tell him the rest. Not yet.
“Why the hell did you decide to marry him if you thought he kissed like a cold fish?” Frank roared.
“That wasn’t the only reason why I broke it off,” I yelled back. I plunked my hands on my hips and faced him in the kitchen defiantly. “I said he and I weren’t meant for each other.”
I could tell he was making a supreme effort not to throttle the life out of me as he gritted through his clenched teeth, “Jen, you had seven months to figure that out and you just had to decide one week before the goddamned wedding that you weren’t meant for each other.”
“I don’t see why you’re so mad about it if he isn’t,” I muttered, surprised and hurt by his violent reaction. “You’re madder than a hellcat in hot water, and you’re not even the one being jilted, for chrissake.”
“Larry is a poor bastard who should drag you kicking and screaming to the altar if he knew what’s good for him,” Frank snapped, evading a response.
“He’d never abuse me,” I retorted.
“Good. You’d be a widow before the reception was over if he did.” He grabbed a glass with some ice in it and angrily jerked open the door to the refrigerator, then changed his mind and popped the top to a can of beer, taking a long swig.
“You’d have him murdered?” An appalled look crossed my face.
“No,” he said tightly, “I’d kill him myself.”
A long silence followed. He finished off his beer and tossed the empty can into the trash. I had my back to him, but I could feel his eyes burning into me with hurt at my betrayal in refusing to tell him the truth about the engagement. His anger hung in the air between us, a silent monster preying on the tension.
I tilted my head back and rubbed my neck wearily with a hand. “Larry,” I said without turning around, “reminded me a lot of my older brother.”
He shifted on his feet. “I guess I can see where that might be a problem.”
I knew he didn’t understand, and somehow, an overwhelming need to make him understand started to burn in me.
“My brother… Jake… he was almost fifteen years older than me. When I was very small, he used to play with me a lot.” I closed my eyes as the memories came flooding back, part of me screaming in protest that I was at long last revealing my depest secret, the other part reveling in the freedom it was giving me.
Even though I knew that what Frank had heard so far didn’t sound like anything out of the ordinary, I could tell he knew he was hearing something I had told no one else. He came up behind me, slipping his arm around my waist, and I leaned back agianst him, needing his strength.
“We were very close,” I whispered, “and then Jake was drafted into the army during the war. He didn’t come back until years later. We threw him a huge party when he came home.” I sucked in a deep breath before plunging on.
“That night, when I was sleeping, he came into my room and woke me up. He said that he had learned this new game in the army, and he couldn’t wait to show my. It was almost three in the morning, and the whole house was already asleep.”
“Jen,” Frank broke in, “he didn’t…” He left the sentence hanging, but I knew what he meant.
“He did.”
“Oh, God.” Frank swallowed audibly.
“Jake covered my face with a pillow. I panicked and started to struggle, but he said it was okay, it was all part of the game, so I quieted down. And then he raped me.”
I felt Frank tense against me and covered his hand with one of my own. “The whole summer he was there, he’d come into my room almost every night and we’d play his ‘game.’ It wasn’t until junior high, in health, that I realized what had been happening. I hadn’t told anyone because I adored him and he asked me not to tell. Later, I never said anything because I was afraid to.”
“All these years… why didn’t you tell me? Or were you afraid of me too?”
“Except for the night we met, I’ve never been afraid of you, Frank,” I said quietly, “I trust you.”
“Then why –“
“He blackmailed me.”
“Sonuvabitch,” Frank swore.
“Jake was gone for long periods of time, but every time he came back, he’d rape me again, then threaten to kill anyone I told about everything. He was violent enough to carry out the threat, and he knew that I knew it. I couldn’t do anything for years, until I finally ran away.”
Frank’s chin dropped to rest on top of my head, and I didn’t realize I had been crying until he instinctively reached up and wiped away the tears, even though he couldn’t see my face.
“I’m going to kill the motherfucking sonuvabitch,” Frank whispered fiercely.
I gulped back a fresh onslaught of tears. “Too late.”
“Who’s the lucky bastard that got him?”
“The electric chair. A few years ago. Death sentence for seventeen counts of rape, four third-degree homicides, and two murder ones.”
“Busy man,” he commented sarcastically.
“Larry…” I shivered. “ I couldn’t trust him. He always seemed so much like Jake sometimes… I couldn’t get over it.” The tears started to roll down my cheeks again, and I started to berate myself for my loss of control.
“Shh.” Frank tightened his arms around me. “Don’t think about it, kid, don’t think about it. And God I’m so sorry I was pissed.”
~*~
Frank threw me a huge surprise party for my twenty-fifth birthday. I shouldn’t’ve expected anything less, since it was the big “quarter century bash,” as Frank called it, but it was the first surprise party I went to where the guest of honor really was surprised. Me. He had promised before to take me out to dinner later that night, and I kept throwing him dejected looks in his direction throughout the party just to prick his conscience.
He said his present wasn’t the wrapping kind when I was opening my presents after the party. I had expected him to say that one, or something like it. After walking into a room full of people screaming, “Surprise!” I would’ve been stunned if all he had given me was a neatly wrapped box with a teddy bear inside, which was exactly what he did last year.
3T was on the radio, singing “Anything” as Frank took my hand and I waited for him to lead me outside to a gleaming new Mustang convertible, or a yacht, or the Empire State Building. Knowing Frank, I could expect nothing short of the White House. Instead, he gazed into my eyes and floored me with two words.
“Marry me.”
I blinked. “Wha--?”
“Marry me,” he repeated, his eyes solemn.
“Omigod…”
He chuckled quietly. “Is it really that appaling an idea?”
I closed my eyes against the nightmare, prayed that I had heard wrong, that this wasn’t happening. But I knew it was hopeless the minute I opened my eyes and saw him standing there with the most heart-wrenchingly tender expression on his face. “Frank…”
He pressed two fingers against my lips, silencing me. “I love you,” he said tenderly, “I fell in love with a skinny seventeen year old kid who didn’t know diddly squat about hiring an agent for an acting career she thought she wanted.”
“Frank…”
“I watched her grow up… grow up into a beautiful woman trying to become the next Shakespeare, but didn’t seem to know what a story plot was. And I fell in love with her too.”
“Frank…”
“Say yes sweetheart.” He grinned. “I think you can manage that. Or say you’ll be mine, forever and always.”
“…I’m dying.”
The words echoed in the terrible silence that seemed to stretch forever. His hand dropped to his side slowly, his face absolutely stunned.
“Come again?”
His voice was disbelieving, and I ached for him, for what I knew he must be going through. I flopped into the nearest chair and I buried my face in my hands. “The last time I saw Jake, he was almost insane with anger.” I drew in a deep breath. “He told me he had just found out… that he had HIV.”
I heard his sharply indrawn breath and went on doggedly. “It was the night I ran away from home, a couple years before I decided I wanted to be an actress and met you . A week after I signed on with TriStar, the hospital called me about the blood I had donated. They wanted to run some more testes, to be sure. They were testing for HIV.” My hands dropped from my face and I looked up at Frank’s anguished expression. “The test was positive,” I said softly, my heart breaking at his pain.
“Oh God, Jen,” he groaned.
“I’m sorry.”
He came over and gathered me into his arms. “Don’t,” he whispered against my hair as I cried into his shirt. “Don’t, Jen, you’re going to tear me apart.”
“I’m sorry,” I hiccuped between tears, “I’m so sorry. I just couldn’t tell you before.” It was all I could do not to break down again, hearing the raw pain in his voice.
“I love you Jen.”
I closed my eyes and finally admitted to him… and to myself… what I had been denying for so long out of fear for him. For me. For both of us. “I love you too, Frank.”
“Then marry me.”
I clutched a fistful of his wet shirt and tried to shake some sense into him. “Don’t you understsand?!” I yelled into his face, “I’m dying, dammit.” Slowly, I let him go. “I’m living on borrowed time, Frank,” I whispered with aching regret.
Even through my tears, I could see my words had made no impact on him. “Do you know the meaning of forever,” I persisted in a voice muffled with tears, “When you know that’s the one thing you just don’t have?”
He set his jaw determinedly. “All I know is, two people who love each other shouldn’t suffer like this.”
“But –“
He took my face between his hands and stared deep into my eyes. “For as long as you have… I want you with me. I want to see my last name at the end of yours, and my towel next to yours on the rack, and your bottles of make-up in the bathroom. And know this…I will be with you every step of the way… even past the very end. I’ll love you forever, Jen.”
I didn’t say anything for a long while as he waited. I knew he would wait for an eternity if I asked – but I didn’t have an eternity.
All I had was now.
I looked up at him. “You really want to do this?” I asked softly, using the words he had used on me for so many years.
“More than anything in the word,” he answered in a husky voice vibrant with emotion. And then he leaned down to seal he fervent vow with a long, sweet kiss.
~*~
She stayed in bed during her last days, too weak from medical treatment to even laugh sometimes. She insisted on staying home, even though at the hospital she had a better chance of living just a little bit longer. I held her, and we’d talk of the time we had…
She cried because she knew she was going to leave me alone, even though I ordered her not to cry. Stubborn imp didn’t listen… never did. But she was mine, always had been, and I loved her.
The night she died, I climbed into bed next to her and held her close. She was quiet, more quiet than usual, as she rested her head on my chest and closed her eyes.
“Frank?” she murmured into the darkness.
“Mm?”
“I’m not afraid to die.”
I smoothed back her hair and swallowed the lump in my throat. “I know, love.”
“Remember what you said you always yearned for?”
“Jen, how could I forget?”
I could almost see her smile as she said, “I’m going to be the one to fall asleep first, though, not you. I’m sorry.”
“Imp. You’re not the least bit sorry at all.”
“Frank?”
“Hm?”
“I love you.” Her voice was faint, and suddenly I knew this would be the last time I’d hear it.
“I know, kid.” I kissed the top of her head, glad for the darkness that hid my tears from her. “I love you too.”
And she fell asleep for the last time.
I was talking to a man in his 20's on IRC who lived in Seattle, I think. His real name was Frank. We were talking about what we wanted from life, when he typed out, "What I want most is to fall asleep with the head of the woman I love on my chest."
The imagery that his wish conveyed was so wistful and poignant that it opened up this short story as the first line. I named the main character Frank, after the man who's words I borrowed for the opening line. I wrote the short story within a couple days, a few weeks ahead of the deadline for our English class, and sent the story to him.
He read it and liked it, then said, "You're going to think this is weird... but the woman I'm in love with right now who just dumped me is named Cathy."
It's
funny how some things in life work out.