Deja vu All Over Again

by Larry Brill

  Julie watched the traffic light change and the cars pull away from a stop at the intersection. Everyone was headed home to families and husbands. When she climbed back into her car and switched on the headlights, they put a spot on a sign in the window of the convenience store. CALIFORNIA SUPER LOTTO JACKPOT—SEVEN MILLION! A mere seven million, she thought with a familiar twinge of disappointment.

  “Somebody got lucky.” Seven million meant somebody had won the jackpot in the drawing the night before. It wasn’t Julie. Again. No, the closest she would ever get was the ticket she bought with Nate’s birthday numbers. Close was nice. It was fun. It was exciting. But it was not a winner. Just like Nate.

  She decided to drive by Russell’s house and look for signs of life in case he simply turned off his cell phone. His car was in the driveway and there were lights on inside. He’d be happy to see her, she hoped, and that would make this easier. When the door opened, Julie found herself staring at a tall, gorgeous if disheveled woman in a bright red cowboy hat turned backwards on her head and cash in her hand. She wore a thick black collar, a rumpled robe that did little to hide the leather bustier underneath and tall stiletto heels so sharp they could spike a vampire’s heart.

  “You’re not the pizza boy.”

  “No, I’m Julie.”

  “Oh. Well, it’s nice to finally meet you. I’m Nicolette. Come in. Come in.” The woman opened the door wider and turned.

  “Hey, babe,” she shouted. “It’s not the pizza boy. It’s the fiancée.”

  Julie stood there and glared at the woman.

  “Oh, silly me,” Nicolette the tramp laughed as she raised a hand to her perfect smile. “Really. Come in. I’ll go untie Russell so you two can talk.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Julie was racing like a bat out of hell back home, keeping one eye on the rearview mirror, praying she wouldn’t find flashing lights and a cop there. The aluminum baseball bat she had taken from the back of Russell’s SUV in the driveway, the one that now leaned against the passenger-side seat of her car, rolled right and clanged against the door when she made a turn too quickly.

  When she got home, she stripped naked and stepped into the shower. The water was as hot as she could stand, and she scrubbed her body as if that would wash away the filth of her relationship. She hated him more than anyone she had ever encountered, and her anger grew with the steam behind the curtain and swirled around her. She loathed herself even more.

  How could she be so stupid? So gullible and blind? All it took was the right look, the right smile, the right touch in the right place at the right time and she was in love. She slumped into a sitting position against the back of the tub, dropping her head so that the hot water from the shower pounded the back of her neck. Worse, she had refused to see that their relationship had always been on his terms. That stung more than the jet of water against her cheeks when she raised her face. She had been lonely and he was the antidote. What she felt was love must have been desperation that turned her from a clear-eyed, intelligent woman into a dependent romantic pinning her future on a fraud. Good God, she was stupid.

  She drew her knees in close and sat under the stream for a very long time. She had survived childbirth, and she had survived widowhood. She had survived the death of her father, the illness of her mother and the absence of her children. She assumed she would survive this, too. But as the water went from nearly scalding her to warm, then tepid to cold, she sat in silence and simply wanted to die and get it over with.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The Big Break

  The rock, or lack thereof, was the first thing that he noticed about Julie Monday morning. The first thing, that was, after her smile, after her eyes that greeted him with numb sadness, after the swish of her skirt and the way the sunlight, which had finally broken through, kissed her hair. And that all came after the blue aluminum Louisville Slugger she had resting on her shoulder as she crossed the north quad near his English classroom. He thought she would be more intimidating if she could tap the head of the baseball bat in her hand like a prison guard with a billy club.

  “Nice stick,” Nate said when he snuck up beside her. Then he ducked to avoid being bopped as she spun at the sound of his voice. Her left hand, with fingers wrapped around the handle of the bat, was naked. It brought optimistic terror to his heart. Somebody got dumped over the weekend; anger stifled the air around her. It didn’t take much to put two and two together and come up with five. Two people, two smashed headlights and one Foxy Banker added up to trouble. Nicolette must have forgiven FesterDick after the night she dumped him in the drink off the dock by the bay. Mary had even predicted it would happen on their drive home that night.

  Nate took the Louisville Slugger and admired it. “You know, this is just like Festerhaven’s Suzie Blue, his favorite bat.”

  “Really? Maybe that’s how I wound up with it.”

  “Speaking of,” Nate drew out the words. “Did you hear? Someone took a hammer or something to Festerhaven’s car. Whacked the snot out of the headlights. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  “Me? Why would you even think that? Hmm. I guess I should give Russell his bat back.” She turned and walked away.

  “So are you going to tell me about it?” Nate asked hopefully when he caught up to her again.

  “No.” Nothing more.

  “Oh, come on. It might be helpful. If I can help.”

  “Not on your life. You’re scum.”

  “Scum? What did I do?”

  “You were born.”

  “Born.”

  “Male.”

  Julie pulled up quickly and lowered the head of the bat. Nate suspected the move was intentional because he walked right into it and yelped as the bat banged off his shin. “You can’t help it. All men are scum.”

  Nate hopped on one foot and rubbed his battered leg. “Well, yeah. I guess it’s in our DNA. If we weren’t vital for the survival of the species, I’m sure someone would have figured out a way by now to wipe us from the face of the earth. And frankly, Jules, there are plenty of times I’d have a hard time making a case against it.” Setting up the woman who could have been, might still become, his love and best friend for this heartbreak was one. That would surely be up there on the list of asinine male crimes and misdemeanors.

  “Don’t be so nice and agreeable.”

  “So you’ll be less pissed off at me if I act like I couldn’t care less.”

  “Just don’t care so much. Okay? I’m not in the mood.”

  That was a stopper. He fought the urge to ask Julie what she meant. Had he crossed some unspoken line? Had Festerhaven mentioned him when whatever went down went down? He watched Julie walk away, hoping he was nothing more than scum by association in the fight between her and Festerhaven.

  He could live with that.

  He could recover from that.

  He would spend the rest of his life doing right by her for it if she let him.

  That afternoon, he stood up from his desk in the corner of his classroom.

  “Okay, scribes, you can stop scribing. Time’s up.” He told the students to send their work to the assignment folder networked to the computer on his desk. “Make sure you have your name formatted properly on the unlikely chance I have to give you a byline. Homework for the weekend is two hundred words on one of your parents, grandparents, siblings or dogs.”

  “Mr. Evans.” Gabrielle raised her hand. Of course it would be Gabrielle. “What about cats? Can I write about my hamster? I don’t have a dog.”

  “Miss Flores, you can write about anyone or anything that is living, breathing, eats, sleeps and poops. The goal is to write something about them that interests me. Remember, it’s character development.”

  When the students filed out, Nate pulled out notes for the next class while he ran a hand over all the junk in the top drawer of the desk. He found his phone and checked his messages. All three were from his agent. Nate couldn’t fathom what Jack would find
so urgent that he’d spend half his day trying to reach him.

  “Where have you been all day?”

  “Jack, some of us work for a living. Wait, no. You wouldn’t know anything about that, but that’s okay. Really.” Nate braced for another browbeating over his lack of production. He felt bad about wasting another week not adding to his story, but Julie’s smile and a couple of busted headlights changed everything that morning. He could write that.

  “You’re going to thank me, Nate. Thank me big-time. I mean, big-time.”

  “Sure, Jack, sure.” Nate laughed now. “The last time you said that, we got an advance that paid what? Enough for two hot dogs and a Big Gulp from 7-11. And even then, I had to give you your fifteen percent of one of those dogs.”

  “You’re going to eat those words when you hear what I have to say, my friend, so don’t piss me off. I sold the story for you.”

  “You sold what?” Nate knew damned well what. Jack seemed to think there was actual confusion there.

  “The one you’re working on now. Old guy gets crapped on by life and runs home to get mommy and daddy to kiss his emotional boo-boo. I pitched that Cyrano thing meets The Sting meets Back to the Future without the Delorean. She loved the concept. Have you found your ending for the story yet? Never mind, she doesn’t need an ending yet. She says she’s got history and trusts you.”

  Jack was talking a mile a minute now, and Nate suspected he might have some pharmaceuticals working for him. Nate had experienced Jack on coke once, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. He could almost feel Jack’s heart pounding through the phone.

  He asked who “she” was, and why “she” didn’t need an ending.

  “I sold Julie’s Mulligan to Tina Farnham’s production company.”

  “Diva Does Dallas, Peacock Blues Tina Farnham? Emmy winner Tina Farnham?”

  “She took a personal interest in the story once I got inside the gate.”

  “Tina wants the movie option?”

  “She ran the story idea to Netflix. What’s more, they want not only a movie but to follow it up with a pilot for a possible sitcom deal.” He kept repeating “ka-ching!” And then threw out a figure, the money Netflix and Tina Farnham were putting on the table. Nate got up and drew a dollar sign on the white board at the front of the classroom, a big, bold, in-your-face statement of a dollar sign. It was the kind of money he always dreamed of. More importantly, it was the big break that dodged him all his life.

  He knew Tina. He had worked with Tina before she hit it big. He hadn’t talked to her in years. She’s back. “How soon can we get the contract?”

  Jack said Tina’s people’s people were working on it. “I showed them what you sent me, and they want to see more, but Tina wants that part. So we can finalize the details and celebrate when we get there at the end of the month.”

  “Here? What’s going on?” Nate asked.

  “Oh, yeah. Tina’s going to be there, a bunch of celebrities will be, for a Silicon Valley charity fundraiser to fight global warming. Something about raising money to save penguins in the arctic by building giant ice-making machines or something like that. I have a ticket for you. In fact, Tina said she was looking forward to seeing you again. I didn’t know you guys have a past.”

  “It’s not much of one, trust me.” Nate just left it at that; he didn’t need to provide details suggesting there was more to that story.

  “It’s a week from Thursday. We’ll go save some penguins, drink champagne and ink the deal Friday over coffee while we nurse our well-deserved hangovers. I’m setting up a breakfast meeting with Tina and her folks. We can get it done then. After we save the penguins. Do you have a tux?”

  “I’ll find one.” Nate waited. He didn’t know what to say. The irony of landing what finally could be the project to make his career at this particular moment stunned him. He had churned out so many words, fictional characters with their perfectly pithy dialogues, and all the plots Nate shopped while chasing his dream now felt so distant. Maybe Woody was right. When he started writing his story about finding Julie, he expected it would land on slush piles in producers’ offices all over L.A. as usual. That expectation allowed him freedom to make it more personal than he would have written it otherwise and it put him in demand for the first time in his life.

  Jack said, “Turn that crap you’ve been sending me into a formal treatment, and, for God’s sake, when you write for Tina, put a lot more emphasis on the leading lady. Let’s face it, that’s all she cares about. It’s what she’s paying for. Total chick-flick.”

  “It’s not a chick-flick. I don’t do chick-flick.”

  “Well I sold it that way, do you want this or not? The way you wrote that Julie character. Cooper, right? This definitely turned into her story. Made it a lot better, too.”

  When did that happen? And either way, he should have changed her name before sending anything to Jack.

  “Maybe we could rewrite and make her the one with the high school obsession. Well, we can fix that later. We’re calling it Julie’s Mulligan. Did I tell you that? The other characters are weird and funny, too. Keep it funny, okay? Keep Nat, the loser character. He’s funny and that’s the kind of shit you do so well.”

  “Yeah, I can do loser without even trying,” Nate said, though the way this day turned out, with Julie dumping FesterCrud and getting a movie deal that exceeded even his wildest hopes, he smiled and started believing that was going to be a stretch from now on.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Hiccup

  Anger was a funny thing. With people you cared about, it could be a moving target. It had cooled to a simmer in the week since Julie took the baseball bat to Russell’s car, turning into disgust and a pain she assumed would eventually fade as well. She couldn’t think of a single time in her life when she resorted to violence for any situation. She never even spanked her children no matter how much they deserved it.

  “If I had known how good it feels, I would have hit something like that a long time ago.”

  Nate said, “Funny, I had that same experience not all that long ago. It’s part of the reason I left So-Cal. You’re a dangerous woman, Jules.”

  “And to think, Russell had the audacity to ask me to pay for the repairs. He didn’t make excuses for being with that woman and he didn’t ask me to forgive him and sounded pretty matter-of-fact about breaking up.”

  They were walking to the Dairy Barn. He had offered to buy her a milkshake after school every day that week. On Friday, the weather cooperated with one of those February days that practically begged people to move to California, clear and mild and two days past the last rain. The weather had warmed, and Julie had cooled down enough to take him up on the offer. Nate reached for the paper notebook and iPad Julie carried as they left the campus.

  “Humor me,” he said. Carrying her books like that was sweet and a bit unnerving. More than once, his hand brushed her hip as they walked. Julie didn’t think it was entirely accidental. She elbowed him in the lingering way eskimos rub noses. That was intentional. Having him around had never seemed more comforting than right now. No matter that she had gone to Russell’s house to serve up an ultimatum that could have led to her breaking up with him, what he did was inexcusable and it hurt. It hurt a lot.

  She stopped, like slamming on the brakes the way Nate frequently did with her, and hugged him from the side with one arm. “Thanks for not being a jerk.” Then she moved on.

  They walked another block in silence, but it didn’t feel awkward. By now, most of the adults on campus had heard some version of the breakup. She grew tired of dodging embarrassing whispers of support and pity. Nate was the only friend who didn’t pester her every hour about how she was feeling, asking if she was okay, in that way people tried to comfort someone with a fatal disease or a dead spouse. He let Julie just be. She appreciated that and rewarded him by letting him back into the fringe of her life.

  “I’m glad he didn’t sic the cops on you,” he said. “Although I�
��d guess that would only have called attention to something he’d rather not have to explain.”

  “That may be the only thing standing between me and jail. But then, it’s still early. Check back with me in another week,” she added with a weak laugh.

  Nate held the door and she walked in ahead of him. Something about crossing that threshold made her open up, and she started talking about how angry she had gotten. It wasn’t until she was describing the leather bustier- wearing bimbo in the cockeyed cowboy hat that she became aware of the blushing teenage girl taking their order. Nate didn’t notice the cashier at all.

  “Did you find out if she handcuffed him to the bed, or used a cord of some sort?”

  She raised her voice slightly, for the benefit of the girl taking their order. That was fun. “She said she had to untie him.” Thanks, but she didn’t want a Chocolate Oreo and Peppermint milkshake.

  “Milkshakes make everything better,” he said.

  She said he couldn’t imagine how slutty the woman looked, and yes, a medium Pepsi was all Julie wanted. The cashier’s manager moved closer, pretending to ignore them as she speculated on how uncomfortable that outfit must be in all the wrong places. Well, all right, make it a large Pepsi. Diet, please.

  Nate nodded. “Especially the cowboy hat. Very painful if it’s on too tight.”

  Julie got two looks from the opposite side of the counter and detected a layer of disappointment settling over the cashier and her boss as Nate led her to a table in the farthest corner of the diner.

  “It’s all so unbelievably cliché,” he said. “To be met at the door like that. It’s been used in more movies than that kid behind the counter has freckles. Bazillions. And I think I wrote half of them. Usually right around the seventy-minute mark in the movie. I didn’t think it happened in real life, but no matter how much a producer called it lame and cliché, they always left it in because it sells popcorn. Wow. Who knew?”

  She lamented she should have known about Russell. It must not have been the first time. She was so blind.