Deja vu All Over Again

by Larry Brill

  When the first light of Saturday morning wrestled with the sky thick with fog, Nate got up and peered in at her. He heard her snoring, her exhales coming out in quiet puffs of breath. How perfect life would be if he could spend every night listening to her snore. Happy endings were a Hollywood myth, not impossible, but certainly rare in real life. Still, Nate couldn’t see any reason why he and Julie couldn’t write one of their own. Then he went over to an antique rolltop desk against the pine-paneled walls in the opposite corner of the living room. A row of family portraits dating back to the wedding picture of a couple four generations earlier sat across the top of the desk. All those anonymous faces smiled down at Nate. He fired up his laptop and typed an email to Jack.

  Thanks for the beach house weekend. Working hard on the story and it’s perfect. Love triumphs. It’s blockbuster.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  And the Waves Said…

  Hush.

  Julie leaned on a rail of the beach house deck with a mug of coffee warming her hands and the collar of her jacket turned up to protect her neck against the morning chill. The air was thick with the smell of saltwater and seaweed. She had gotten up to find Nate sleeping on the couch with his laptop still open on his stomach. He didn’t budge when she draped a blanket over his knees and feet or when she fixed her coffee as silently as she could in the kitchen. She listened to the waves, and they were talking to her.

  Hush.

  Poor Nate. She had dumped what felt like a lifetime of insecurities, missteps and fears—real and imagined—in the hours between the campfire and sleep. Did she really make him carry her to bed?

  She reached out her left hand as if to touch the incoming waves. She held it before her eyes. Steady, it didn’t tremble anymore. She had trembled a lot in the days after discovering the truth about Russell. Anger, first, then uncertainty and nervousness kept her shivering through the week whenever she thought of him, when someone mentioned his name, and it came on strong every time she had to deal with him at work. Did she have a right to feel this calm now? It had only been seven days. Their exchanges at work had been cordially frigid in public, biting and bitter as a lemon when no one was looking.

  Hush.

  Nate was right. The ocean, the view, the comfort of a warm house and a weekend with a friend were working their spell. Maybe it was Nate. It wasn’t as if she had shaken all the demons and weight that had seemed so heavy in just one week, but the tide was going out, pulling her troubles with it.

  Oh, he would love that metaphor. It needed a sandcastle, though, and maybe a few seagulls skittering along the edge of the surf. She would suggest he use it in the story he was working on.

  He was up and about as Julie made her way back through the living room on her way to the kitchen. The shower was running in the bathroom. She took inventory of food supplies in the refrigerator and cupboards. The pickings were slim. No fresh eggs, but frozen waffles and a toaster might be okay. She found a new box of Cap’n Crunch and some Pop-Tarts.

  “I bet Nate would love those,” she said. That seemed right up his alley.

  She was feeding the coffeemaker with a fresh scoop when he came up behind her and slipped one arm around her waist. She stiffened. He didn’t seem to notice, instead kissed her on the back of the head in a way that was insignificantly sensual before he turned away as natural as could be.

  “Morning.”

  He stood in front of the food cupboard for a moment before taking one of the Pop-Tarts packages. “You didn’t see this,” he said. “My mom would kill me, unless, maybe, if they had an organic kale flavor. Would you like one?”

  “God, no. I’ve gone this long without. I’m on a mission to get through my entire life without ever having one of those cross my lips.”

  “Uh-huh. Now tell the truth. I’ll bet you used to feed them to your kids, and I’ll bet you snuck a bite or two, Mom. Don’t lie.”

  “Well, okay. One or two nibbles, but only the chocolate ones.”

  “See?”

  “But I ate them with my eyes closed, so that doesn’t count.”

  Pastries toasted and coffee poured, she followed him to the living room, where he set his laptop aside and curled up on an edge of the couch. She sat on the opposite end facing him and pointed at the computer.

  “Tell me more about the story you’re working on. Are you really going to make a bazillion dollars on it like you said last night?” As she sipped from her mug, the coffee hit the sweet spot in her taste buds, the aroma intoxicated her, and she couldn’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else that morning.

  “Did I say bazillions? I meant hundreds. Well, maybe bazillions if we’re getting paid in Zimbabwean dollars or pesos, considering the exchange rate and all that, but I don’t think we’re going to shoot this in Tijuana, so it’ll have to be in plain old boring U.S. currency. Seriously, though, it’s not huge by industry standards, but the potential is there to be as much as I’ve made on all my other scripts combined.”

  “Are you excited?” Silly question. He was already pumping his fist. Yessss.

  “Do I look excited?”

  “For you, a little reserved, I’d say,” she joked. “But what about the story? Tell me more.”

  It was a story of redemption, he told her, of second chances and making good on them. And the hero was someone obsessed with the past.

  “That sounds a lot like you.”

  “It is. And about moving back home at my age to do whatever the hell it is I’m doing. And I can thank the Air Force for it. If that hadn’t happened, I would never have done something like this. Hitting rock bottom made me want to write about something that really matters. This is the most personal thing I’ve ever written. The parents, the school, even my crappy little Gremlin. It just feels right.”

  Julie played with her hair, curling the locks near her shoulder around a finger, and studied them. “Am I in your story?”

  “Are you kidding? Without you, my dear Jules, I would have no story. It would have no life without you. You are the heroine, the queen bee. The very heart of the story. And I will thank you sincerely with all the other little people when I accept my Academy Award for best screenplay.”

  His eyes twinkled. It was such bullshit she couldn’t help but laugh, but she was flattered that he would bother to even tease her that way, even in jest. It was the kind of joke that told her Nate wasn’t putting her in the story. Good, she was uncomfortable with the thought of that kind of attention, fictional or not, though it was intriguing.

  “Can I read it?”

  “Not yet. I still need to write the ending.”

  They drove to Santa Cruz for crab cakes and smoked salmon at a gorgeous restaurant with huge windows facing a narrow harbor and a picturesque lighthouse on the point. When they got back from lunch, Julie was sorely in need of a nap. He took her hands in his and lingered at the door to the bedroom with a sweet, dreamy expression on his face. She was prepared with half a dozen ways to explain why she wasn’t yet ready to add sex to the relationship even if she had agreed to spend the weekend with him. She needed time.

  He winked, and then nodded silently before shooing her into the bedroom. Without a word, he knew what she needed and gave her space to heal on her own terms.

  She changed into baggy sweats, unconcerned that Nate—single, attractive, goofy but sensual Nate—was on the other side of that door. She had just ended a relationship with a different man that cratered badly. She lay down and waited for sleep, but it apparently wanted to play tag instead. She drifted between wakefulness and drowsiness. It wasn’t right to move so easily in love from one person to the next, if that’s what she felt for Nate. You didn’t just switch teams like that.

  Who was she kidding? She had been moving in this direction since the first day after summer break, with Nate in Russell’s office, and the way he brought up feelings buried long ago with just a look after they walked out. She knew all along those old feelings were rising to the surface. What would dating coach Dr
. Rachel say?

  “Get your ass in gear, girl,” most likely. Or, more to the point, repeating the advice her mother had given her on that night in the hospital.

  “Take care of yourself.” Mother as a dating coach. Who knew?

  She kicked off the blankets and padded into the living room. Nate was dozing on the sofa. She stood over the armrest and looked, upside down, into his face until he opened his eyes.

  “Can I buy you dinner tonight?” she asked. “I owe you a dinner.”

  “What? For this? Don’t be silly. You don’t owe me anything.”

  “Oh, yes, I do. I won a small jackpot on the lottery, and Carla thinks I should buy you dinner because I couldn’t have done it without you. It’s the least I can do.”

  He closed his eyes, and with a sleepy sigh, he said, “Fine. I can’t imagine how I did anything to make a difference, but if that’s what you want…twist my arm. What did I do to deserve it?”

  Julie leaned closer, her voice just above a whisper.

  “Do you believe in omens?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Tootsie’s Revenge

  On the night of the great penguin charity gala, the boy in his tuxedo met the girl in her gown at her door with a corsage in hand. He escorted her to the waiting limousine, where they set out for the event. After forty years, prom night had arrived. They kissed. Love triumphed.

  Send.

  Nate stabbed the key on his laptop with all the cocky satisfaction of placing a winning chess move on the board. Checkmate.

  It was Monday morning, and light was creeping through his bedroom window. He had worked through the night to write the ending to his story, dashing home after his weekend at the beach with Julie. He needed to wrap it up and get it to his agent in time for Thursday’s gala and the contract meeting. His life had become a romantic comedy cliché. Wasn’t that great?

  The world stopped spinning, and the universe held its breath waiting for Thursday. He was touched when Julie explained over dinner Carla’s “lottery omen theory” and their birthdays combining to be winning numbers. He invited her to be his date at the Penguin Gala.

  They had survived the weekend at the beach house without having sex, agreeing that, for the time being, something, something, something and a couple of blah-de-dahs. He wasn’t sure what he agreed to, he had trouble focusing on the details, but abstinence made the weekend more perfect. By the time he took her home on Sunday, there was a rising sexual tension between them that made the days that followed the longest week of foreplay he had ever experienced.

  He was actually a little nervous about it. Throughout his sexual encounters before marriage, twenty-odd years of monogamy and a handful of interesting liaisons afterwards, the reviews—if you could trust a woman in the throes of passion and/or its afterglow—had always been good. Two thumbs up. Four stars. Even Rotten Tomatoes would give Nate’s sex life a Certified Fresh, eighty-five percent approval rating, but he thought being with Julie would beat it all because, well, because it was Julie.

  Nate went with flowers for Mrs. Cooper at the nursing home on Monday. On the way out, Julie mentioned she would be moving into her old bedroom at her mother’s house for a few weeks of transition when Ethel returned home the following weekend and teased him with hints of consummating their teenage near-sex experience there.

  Tuesday they lingered long after campus had cleared out for the day, walking hand in hand down the empty hallways. He pressed her against the wall in the space between two long rows of student lockers and “borrowed” a kiss. At the far corner, against the door to the biology lab, she pressed him and demanded that he pay it back.

  Wednesday they sat across from one another at the Dairy Barn after school, ignoring a basket of soggy french fries on the table and laughing about the evil eye Festerhaven gave them when either one passed his office on their way out the door. Life was frosty around the admin building, but they had gotten whispered encouragement from most of the others.

  “He is seriously pissed,” Nate said.

  “Good.”

  By Thursday morning, Nate was flying high. Tina Farnham loved the ending; she and her lawyers would arrive that afternoon from L.A. along with Nate’s agent. Nate would wine and dine Julie at the gala to save the penguins and mingle with Hollywood celebrities and generous millionaires.

  As a bonus, Festerhaven, who had been in a general snit ever since Julie found him with Nicolette and took out her anger on his headlights, became even snittier by the day, if such a thing was possible, as they transitioned from being just friends to a couple going steady while the campus staff watched and approved of the sweethearts.

  So naturally, Nate’s world was spinning in harmony with the universe when it jumped the tracks. An office aide stuck her head in the door to his classroom in the break after first period and summoned him to the principal’s office. Nate rapped his knuckles on the secretary’s desk as he strolled past; she shook her head with pity and sad eyes usually reserved for death row inmates and motioned for Nate to go right in. One of his creative writing students sat against the wall near the door and avoided his eyes. The woman with a June Cleaver hairdo sitting next to the girl, a woman oozing stress and anger, hit him with a glare that put a hitch in his step. She must be the girl’s mother. Uh oh.

  “So am I in trouble?” he asked Festerhaven after making sure the door had shut behind him.

  “Of course. Why else would I want to waste my time with you?”

  Nate waited.

  “It seems Tynslee Butler has made some serious accusations against you.”

  Nate thought hard, starting with the most obvious and working his way to outlandish. Tynslee was a quiet girl, the kind easily ignored. She didn’t say much, but when she did, it was worth listening to. Aside from a couple of instances when she stayed after class and pestered him with questions about how to become an actress in Hollywood, he had no extracurricular contact with her. So any accusation of inappropriate behavior would be pure fiction, and that wasn’t part of Tynslee’s DNA, he believed.

  “She says you’ve been showing adult films in class under the guise of teaching them who knows what. What have you been smoking? Are you crazy?”

  Nate nearly choked on his own spit and had a coughing fit. When he recovered, he asked Festerhaven who was crazier. “Did she really say that?”

  “One of your movies and the class assignment has Mrs. Butler upset. And now she’s come down on my ass. And you know how I hate that.” He left Nate standing and sat on the corner of his desk, dangling a leg so that his body angled away from Nate. “Would you tell me what this is all about?”

  “You got me, chief.”

  He explained that he had held only four of his Thursday movie afternoons, and none involved what would be rated as “adult” films. “PG-13 at worst. And even then, Julie—Mrs. Finch—told me to cover my ass, so I had all the students get permission slips from their parents.” Mentioning Julie’s name was a mistake. Nate watched Festerhaven scowl. “I haven’t used any movie that would be considered the least bit objectionable. So what is it that has her panties in a knot?”

  “Did you have one of your sessions with a movie”—and there, FesterProsecutor checked a notepad on his desk—“a movie that promoted promiscuity and homosexuality?”

  Nate was stunned. Casablanca? The Wizard of Oz? Star Wars? Hardly.

  The principal brought Tynslee and her mother into the office and motioned for them to sit at the round table near the window that looked out over the front of the school grounds sloping down to the street. Nate’s attention was drawn to the trophy shelf behind them, where, sandwiched between a couple of small medals and a handful of gold keepsakes, there stood a picture. FesterJock smiled at him wearing his softball jersey and pointing his bat, the same one Julie used on his SUV, at the camera. He thought it was appropriate for what he assumed was about to go down.

  “Last month, Mr. Evans showed Tynslee this horrible movie,” Mrs. Butler began.


  He had to think. What was the movie?

  “Tootsie? You’re upset about Tootsie? That’s a classic. Dustin Hoffman was nominated for an Oscar. Jessica Lange won one. It was the best movie of the whole of the eighties if you believe Roger Ebert, and I happen to think he walked on water.”

  “I am sick and tired of you movie people throwing your gay lifestyle in our faces. You have no business promoting that to my daughter, or anyone else, for that matter.”

  Nate protested. The movie not only didn’t promote anything remotely gay, there wasn’t a single gay character or issue in the story.

  “Ha. The entire movie is about a man who likes to dress up in women’s clothing. If I hadn’t come across Tynslee’s homework assignment, I’d have never known.”

  “Have you actually seen the movie, Mrs. Butler?”

  Of course not. No surprise there.

  “If you saw the movie, you’d know right away there is nothing gay going on. Heck, he even has sex with Terri Garr.”

  Okay, Nate thought, not a good argument to make in this situation. Damn. He plowed on, “Even so, you signed Tynslee’s permission slip to participate in the movie class. So I can’t see what the fuss is about on either level.”

  “I did no such thing. I would never approve.”

  All eyes swung to Tynslee, who stared out the window. She looked embarrassed, frustrated and guilty. Nate pitied her. He had half-heartedly checked all of the students’ permission slips; everyone was signed and accounted for. He might have been a little more on guard for forgeries if he had any doubts about the movie. But Tootsie?

  Nate asked Festerhaven for the slips he had turned in. They had to be in a file in the office.