Time seemed to stand still at that moment for Ethan Jones. It seemed for that instant, he could both hold time forever and make it the truth that had always been.
While all this was going on in his head, he continued to move toward the stage.
As he climbed the carpeted steps to the podium, he turned and looked out at the audience. He had been there, envisioned it already a thousand times. It was as if he was where he was supposed to be and, in an odd way, had returned home from a long journey. He wanted to savor every second, like a Davidoff cigar and hundred-year-old cognac.
Dolly Parton and Sylvester Stallone awaited Ethan’s arrival on the stage. Stallone was holding the Oscar in his left hand. Dolly was beside Stallone holding the envelope, with Ethan’s name, in front of her low-cut black dress. Ethan had never met them, but he loved Stallone’s work in Rocky and Dolly’s beautiful voice. As Ethan approached, Stallone extended the Oscar statue toward him. Stallone’s face was alight with his famous pout and coifed hair. Dolly’s larger-than-life-ness dazzled him. Stallone handed the Oscar to Ethan and shook his hand. Dolly’s bright face looked up into Ethan’s as he leaned forward to kiss her cheek. Ethan then stepped back and with the prized gold statue in hand thrust it into the air above his head as he turned toward the audience and screamed “Unbelievable! This is unbelievable!” to a massive ovation. The roar of the audience drowned out his words. Ethan beamed from ear to ear, not knowing what to do except wait. He turned back to Stallone, who patted him on the back and leaned toward him.
“Congratulations, Mr. Jones,” he said into Ethan’s ear. “I love your work.”
“Thank you!” Ethan shouted, humbled by the compliment. “Thank you very much. I’m very pleased.”
Stallone then pointed to the podium and stepped back to give Ethan the stage.
He was doing fine and in control, despite the overwhelming and intimidating circumstances, until he saw his father in the audience. His emotions flipped, and he turned away to get a grip on the things he wanted to say.
As he moved to the podium, the sense of honor and privilege of his place among these stars suddenly struck him. It didn’t seem possible. Something buckled in his stomach. Again, he glimpsed his father in the distance, still on his feet, his hands coming together in slow motion, like part of a movie that emphasized the moment. His hands came together over and over again, with his eyes glued to his son. For a moment, they locked eyes. Ethan watched as his father’s lips parted as if to say something but instead smiled larger. For an instant, Ethan pictured his father as a young man, standing on the Toronto Maple Leaf blue line as a defenseman, upright and proud. As quickly as the weight came upon Ethan, it vanished, just as his lines sometimes would disappear during a shoot. And then he was back. It was such a grand, ostentatious affair. He loved it.
Ethan’s focus returned to the curved column that extended into the microphone he stood behind. He pulled a folded page of notes from the breast pocket of his tuxedo jacket. He made a slight and nervous adjustment to the position of the mike as the hall went silent, and people sat down in their seats. The floor was his. He was terrified and exhilarated simultaneously.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he started, hearing his voice amplified into the large auditorium. And then he spoke in character, reciting his most recognizable line from Browning Station: “You better believe I’m here.” The words were out of his mouth before he had time to check them. The audience erupted. The line had made him famous and was imitated regularly. The words set him at ease.
The audience quieted, and he started in again. “This is the most fantastic moment of my life,” he said, looking out at the famous faces. “It’s been an incredible journey since coming to California—to Hollywood—to pursue a dream.” He extended his arms as if to hug the entire hall. The audience responded with another round of applause. As the hall quieted, he saw Katharine staring up at him. Their seats were five rows from the front. He watched as she stopped clapping—one of the last to do so. She sat very straight in her seat, as she had during their first dinner together, and began to rock back and forth with excitement. Her smile would weaken the knees of any man. As he continued, he spoke to her, about belief and a dream and what could happen—and what was happening—and what an incredible feeling it was.
He glanced at his notes. The words he was looking for were not quite right. All eyes were on him. He could feel the weight of the television cameras and was aware of the need to say the right thing.
“I’m standing in front of you tonight,” he continued, using only the first line of his written notes, “as someone who wanted to go somewhere with his life other than where he was headed.” He paused a moment to find his father. “I’m a long way from Ottawa tonight, where I left a good job to pursue a passion.”
Again, he paused to catch his breath and collect his thoughts. Though calm, his emotions were close at hand. “Seems to have worked out okay though,” he said and chuckled. The audience erupted with another ovation. “I didn’t do it alone,” he added and then hesitated for a moment before continuing. “Tonight is an important evening for a very special person who is no longer with me. Her name was Mil—” He broke off suddenly, confused by his own words, his mind seeming to collide with an invisible wall. He began again. “Her name was Christa White, whose constant encouragement and belief allowed me to get through …”
Ethan’s voice cracked. Trembling, he took a breath as his eyes welled up. He would make himself get through this. “Through the hardships of getting here. Mil—” Again, something shifted in his head, like a switchgear that changes the direction of a train. He looked to the ceiling. “Christa, this is for you. Thank you.”
Tears rolled down his cheeks. He stepped back from the podium. The audience responded with a quiet round of applause, allowing him to continue. Shaking his head like a boxer who’d just received an unexpected left hook, he fought for control. He pointed at his father. “And last but certainly not least, my father, whose words of wisdom helped me realize what’s important.” The audience responded with another ovation but quieted quickly as Ethan’s eyes fell on his father. It was his father’s secret that inspired him to come back to Hollywood. “You’re the best, Dad.”
His father waved from his seat. Ethan raised his Oscar. Another round of applause filled the hall, as many turned to search for Ethan’s father.
“There are many more I need to thank, but that might take the better part of this evening. Instead”—he paused and folded up the list of names he had written out the night before. This was not the time—“I would like to end with a short poem I discovered a long time ago. ‘Sometimes in one’s life …’”
The sound of an electronic crackle filled the hall, interrupting him. Ethan stopped, as if he’d received an electric shock, and looked behind him.
“Excuse me, Mr. Jones!” interrupted a loud voice that reverberated throughout the pavilion. Ethan froze in horror, recognizing the voice instantly. A loud murmur passed through the audience. “Haven’t you forgotten someone?”
Ethan was shocked. He couldn’t move. His hazel eyes scanned the hall, searching for the source of the voice. He glared at the stage escort, standing erect and motionless at the side of the stage. The escort shrugged her shoulders as if to say, What’s up? which reflected Ethan’s own thoughts. Ethan didn’t know what to do; he hoped it was some sort of sick joke. He leaned forward with one hand on the microphone.
“Excuse me?” he asked tentatively, unsure of his part in this crazy attempt at some kind of humor. The voice haunted him—it just couldn’t be. He must have misheard it. Robbie was dead. Ethan’s face grew pale. How could anyone be so unfeeling as to think such a thing could be funny? Like a nightmare, it seemed so real yet too crazy to believe. But it wasn’t a nightmare. Whoever perpetrated this stunt was sick and needed serious help.
The audience’s unsettled chatter grew louder.
It was then Ethan noticed LAPD officers coming through the entrances. They were moving slowly, surrounding the audience.
Something was wrong.
“Ethan!” screamed a woman from the balcony. “The poem!”
The show must go on, buddy, echoed Mila’s voice in the back of his head.
Ethan leaned forward to the microphone, visibly shaken but forcing himself to continue. His hands were trembling, making it difficult to hold the paper still enough to read, but he started again. “Sometimes in one’s life, he comes to a—”
“Mister Joneeessss!” sang the all-too-familiar voice through the hall. It wasn’t a joke. Ethan was certain who was speaking but didn’t know how it could be possible. The voice continued in a gruesome parody of song, “Aren’t you forgetting someone very special to you?”
All television station feeds had cut to commercial. No one knew quite what was going on. Something was jamming circuits in the building, and the only audible signals were the hall’s PA and the stage microphone.
Music started to play in the background, the loud, driving beat of a familiar tune by Tranquility Release.
“Yes, I’m sure I am,” Ethan answered, surprised by his response. The words came from somewhere inside him.
The pounding music continued to play. The LAPD directed people in the back rows out the rear exit doors. Lines of people were filing out. It wouldn’t be long before mass hysteria swarmed the audience, with people panicking and rushing the doors. The police were subtly trying to keep control in place.
“Well, who is it then?” said the voice.
Ethan paused, trying to stay rational while his brain was transmitting a five-alarm emergency to the rest of his body. Panic was hammering on his chest, wanting out. He knew who was talking to him but didn’t know how it was possible.
Then, for a split second, everything became clear, and he knew what to do.
“Why, of course,” he said, his own voice all but alien to him. “How could I have forgotten my dear friend Robbie Johnson?” Ethan screamed Robbie’s name out.
He sensed Robbie’s eyes on him from somewhere. He imagined a loaded gun pointed at his head. As Ethan screamed out Robbie’s name, something shifted inside his head. It was like watching TV when electrical interference distorts the screen and picks up images of another station’s signal. He saw Christa’s murder scene before his eyes, only it wasn’t Christa in the bed. It was Mila. It wasn’t the first time he’d been there. Robbie was standing at the bedside, covered in blood. The image caused Ethan to lose his balance and fall forward, breaking the microphone stand on his way to the floor of the stage.
The M43 projectile whizzed past the top of his head, blasting a hole the size of a small pumpkin into the stage, twelve feet behind where he had been standing.
The microphone stand had snapped backward before breaking and catching Ethan across the face with force enough to fracture his nose. He landed on his elbows on the hard surface of the stage. He was close enough to the stairs that the momentum of his fall carried him over the edge. He rolled down the carpeted steps to the bottom. His right arm caught awkwardly under his body, cracking his wrist and breaking both his index and middle fingers. Noticing none of this, he lifted himself up and ran for cover at the side of the stage.
Tranquility Release continued to blare through the PA in a gruesome soundtrack of adrenaline-pumping music. Mass panic overtook the audience in a scene of absolute insanity.
“That’s right, folks,” echoed Robbie’s insane voice throughout the hall. “Mr. Best Actor can’t remember who got him here! Oh well, what the fuck. You know now!” Robbie screamed the last words as loudly as he could.
Ethan’s brain was on fire. Robbie was dead. Robbie killed Christa. But Mila—why was she in the gruesome scene in the bedroom? And what was this? Robbie rising from the dead? Was this a fucking joke?
No joke, bud. It doesn’t get any more real, Mila’s quiet voice reminded him.
Replaying what he heard in his head, Ethan thought the person using Robbie’s voice sounded out of breath, as if he was running or doing something physical. Was he even in the building?
Unexpectedly, Katharine appeared at his side.
“Ethan! Ethan!” Katharine shouted, panic all over her face. “Are you okay?”
“I think I’m supposed to be dead!” he shouted at her.
“My God!” Katharine cried. “Your face!” She grabbed him in her arms and pulled his head to her chest. The pressure of her hug brought a spike of pain to his head. Her strength was incredible.
“Katharine!” he screamed. “Let go.” It took everything he had to pull himself free. “I think my nose is broken,” he exclaimed, seeing his blood smeared across the front of her once-beautiful gown.
They rose together as Officer Barnes appeared before them. “You okay?” Barnes yelled. The entire hall looked like a frenzied party as Tranquility Release’s single “Unbalanced” continued to reverberate throughout the auditorium. People were running and screaming all around them.
“Yeah!” Ethan shouted back, his eyes passing a questioning glance at Barnes.
“He’s not in the building, Ethan. We’re tracking somebody who ran from the back exit a few minutes ago.”
“Who’s not in the building?”
“The shooter!” Barnes shot back. Barnes helped Katharine to her feet. “We’re clearing the building.”
Ethan winced as Katharine grabbed his broken hand. She gasped when she saw the odd way his fingers were bent.
“The rifle was triggered remotely and hidden in an unused maintenance closet that shared a wall with the inside of the auditorium,” Barnes told him.
Ethan winced again as Katharine bumped into him after their abrupt stop.
“He wants me,” Ethan said. The whole thing now was clear in his head. Robbie was alive and wanted Ethan. He could see Mila as pristine and clear as life could present her. Like an angel from the heavens, she smiled and nodded her head.
The heavy bass rhythm of the music was alive and loud in his ears.
“He wants me,” Ethan repeated.
At almost the same instant that Ethan spoke, Robbie was back on the PA system. “If I can’t have him,” he screamed, “you can’t either!”
The music changed to Dolly Parton singing “Here You Come Again.”
“Oh, my God!” Katharine screamed as she squeezed Ethan’s arm, “This can’t be real!”
As they ran together toward the rear exit of the building, Ethan’s past flashed through his thoughts. His and Robbie’s days as college roommates seemed impossible to believe now. All the parties and jokes, even the studying and exams—Ethan struggled to put it all together. Robbie’s hidden secret was matched only by Ethan’s own naive blindness. There was nothing left to connect. Ethan wanted to go farther in his memory but couldn’t. At least not now. He pushed the thoughts away.
The radio in Barnes’s hand crackled into transmission. “We’ve found it!” shouted an officer from somewhere in the building.
Barnes raised the radio to his mouth. “Larson, where are you?”
“Maintenance, directly below the stage,” came the answer. “Holy fuck—there’s enough shit down here to blow the block out.”
“Get the bomb squad down there now!” Barnes looked at Ethan.
Ethan ignored him and kept moving toward the rear entrance. He had to find Robbie.
They were just through the back entrance of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion when an LAPD car squealed to a stop, inches from their legs.
“Get in!” Barnes shouted. There were fewer people out here but the air was alive with screaming sirens and panicked shouting.
Ethan didn’t say a word as he opened the rear door and let Katharine climb in. He closed the door after her and thumped the roof to signal the driver. Then he was gone, running before the cruis
er even moved. He knew once he was in the cruiser, his personal chase for Robbie would be over. He couldn’t let that happen, but he could keep Katharine safe.
The sound of several shots rang out in the wet darkness. The shooting stopped. A cold quiet followed, a silence that seemed louder than the actual gunfire. Ethan crouched beside an idling cruiser. Drizzling rain kept everything slick and shiny. He could hear the hard leather soles of the police officers’ boots slapping the damp pavement or splashing in puddles as they moved into position. Robbie would not come out of this alive. Shoot to kill was the order of the night.
Ethan couldn’t bear to watch yet couldn’t turn away.
A dozen LAPD cruisers surrounded the amusement ride inside Paradise Park, a mile from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The lights were back up. Bright fluorescent-green letters identified the Mind Bender ride that lit up the area. To Ethan, the whole scene was like a movie set. He almost expected to see movie cameras placed in strategic locations around the action. It was all disconnected from any sense of reality. Only the pulsating pain in his hand kept him in the now. Shifting his weight sideways, his back against the wet fender of the cruiser, he turned to face the ride, searching in the wet dimness for some sign of Robbie.
He thought of Katharine, safe in a cruiser somewhere in the distance. Without thought or reasoning, he began to run. Numb to his broken bones, blind to any thought of danger, Ethan’s mission was to find Robbie.
He looked back at the haphazard line of police cruisers, an intimidating line of firepower with rifles and handguns at the ready. Legs that hardly seemed his own carried him through the nightmare, beyond anything that could be real.
A scream of terrified horror stopped him in his tracks as he approached the Mind Bender, the neon sign on the ride crackling with an electric frizzle. Ethan ran toward the scream, his mind ahead of his feet. He pictured the monster that had replaced his friend. Angry shouts came from behind him as he compromised the LAPD’s position. His legs didn’t stop.
The Actor Page 33
