Delilah didn’t answer me, but her posture relaxed some, and I thought she might be genuinely interested to listen in.
“I should have been mature enough to let you know my decision, but in that moment I was so weak, and desperately trying to remain loyal to my wife, and above all else, embarrassed.”
Delilah remained quiet, staring blank-faced at the basket and then through the egg-shaped window towards a stunning display of cumulus.
“Could you please relay that message?”
“Not that I care, but did your wife come around?”
“She did not.”
Delilah sighed. “My sister has a message for you….” Another passenger entered the lavatory. She waited until he closed the plastic door, listened for the latch to lock in place, and then lowered her voice to an angry whisper. “You missed out on the greatest acrobatic night of your life.”
“Delilah, I don’t doubt it for a second.”
4
EVER SINCE LEAH BISHOP called me up on that beach in San Francisco I couldn’t scrub her lovely image from my head. Not that I wanted to. I even memorized the fantasy. I'd walk through the doors of JFK International holding a couple of roses (a yellow and a red one) and there she'd be in the crowd waiting to deliver me from romantic obscurity, the pivotal transitory scene in the movie of my life.
Exiting the plane, and once more acknowledging Delilah’s presence as I passed the pilots cockpit (she shifted her eyes away from me and frowned miserably), my breath was weak and my legs wobbled. The anticipation was otherworldly, almost like that enigmatic journey through the spiritual death curtain to the light at the end of the tunnel. Except the rest of my actual arrival was nothing like fanciful reverie. My heart sank as I scanned baggage claim and Leah was nowhere to be seen. Maybe my saving grace was late. You know the saying, traffic's a nightmare. Then again, perhaps she'd completely forgotten about me. And worse, maybe I’d passed over Delilah for the wrong religion.
A tall man about my own age but already baldheaded (he wasn’t trying to fool anyone with a Donald Trump comb-over and succumbed to giving each side a good shave and shine) stood in the crowd, where excited families welcomed loved ones, and held up a single slice of wide-rule paper. Tattered ridges revealed that it had been ripped from a spiral notebook. It spelled out the letters CHAMBERLAIN in blue ink. He'd started writing my name in too bold of strokes and had to smash the last four letters together, seeing as how his pen was about to sail off the edge of its paper earth.
I stared at him for a while, making note of his muffin waistline and the threat of an impending gut that loomed underneath his charcoal t-shirt. And then he caught sight of me staring at him. He twitched his eyes first at the red and yellow roses and then at a couple of other likely candidates that possibly fit my description, only they didn’t have roses, and then set them back on my roses. It was a match and a lock. I finally decided to make a move for it and approach him.
I said: “I’m CHAMBERLAIN.”
“Richie.” He lowered the paper to extend his hand, paying special attention to the roses. “Are those for me?”
“Call me Joshua.” I adjusted the bag on my shoulder and accepted his greeting. “And no, they're not.” But I gave them to him anyways.
“You must be a special one, then.” Richie smiled, smelling the pedals. I immediately detected a lisp on his lips, the stereotypical manner of speech associated with gay men.
“Well, I didn’t want to say anything, but…”
“Cocky too.”
“The cockiness fits so easily in my pocket, and it’s not considered a carry-on, so….”
“She’s never had a guy fly in before, not that I’m aware of, anyways. I pleaded with her to give up the mystery man’s identity, but she wouldn’t tell me anything, or why. On my trip over here you’ve become a sort of doctrine. Is this all your luggage or do you have more?”
“I’ve got a bag coming in at Carousel 7.” We immediately turned in that direction. “Wait, you are with Leah Bishop, right?”
“First Lady Isla Elliot? The one and only.”
The unwelcome image of Isla Elliot kissing Mr. Secretary of State on the subway after that viewing of REPUBLICAN BLUE some two weeks earlier once more illuminated my field of vision. I'd shoved that memory out of my mind, despite the fact that it had been pulling at the hinges in every door of my skull, and my heart sunk further into ambiguity as the recollection reentered.
“Does she see a lot of guys?”
If Richie attempted to hold the incoming smile in, he did a horrible job of it. “Can you believe it, she sees more men than me. If only I had her rack.”
I opened my lips to say something but my mouth was dry and a lump hung in my throat. This was nothing like my fantasy. Was I just one of several other random no-strings attached love interests in her life? She was probably off kissing another guy on the 1, 2, 3 train right then and there. The intolerable thought lumbered in the back of my vision. Maybe all of this, including the phone call foreplay and my shallow attempt to convince everyone (including myself) that it was a platonic relationship I was after was nothing more than a fool’s hope and worse, a horrible mistake.
“Is she…. seeing anyone?”
“It’s hard to say really. I can never keep up with that girl’s activities.”
We stood silently at Carousel 7 for a time. It had already started its circular run, with an unusually early delivery of luggage. People I recognized from my flight were grabbing their bags and leaving. The couple with the screaming baby was the first to retrieve theirs. Fate was cruel like that. As usual, mine was nowhere to be seen, and would probably be last in line. Not that I believed in reincarnation, but if there had been other lives then I must have been a total bastard in all of them.
“So I’m curious, where is Leah?”
“Oh, didn’t she tell you? Leah’s got production tonight. Curtains go up at seven. REPUBLICAN BLUE is only dark on Wednesday.”
I retrieved the iPhone from my pocket and studied the time. Five pm. In my peripheral vision I caught sight of Delilah walking by, rolling a single carry-on into the light of the city, smiling and laughing at another female flight attendant as she did so. Probably perfectly aware of my presence too; she chose to ignore me. I imagined for a second that I’d never forsaken her outside of her hotel room, all in pursuit of misguided chivalry (it was almost pathetic and laughable, now that I thought about it), let alone my own Christian faith, which did absolutely nothing to advance me in this world, and was walking through those double-sliding doors into the warm light of sexual ecstasy.
“Are you her agent or something?” I looked to Richie.
“Oh, sweet Zeus, no,” he chuckled. “I’m just a starving actor, like most of her friends, except you’d never know with my muffin top.” He leaned in, cupping a hand to a corner of his mouth, and whispered: “It's the food she feeds me. How the queen bee avoids love handles herself, well..... the universe is cruel, isn't it?”
“Or it’s being particularly kind to her.”
“Absolutely, I’m her roommate. Her very gay roommate, in case you were worried about my positioning in her bed.”
“Actors, you had me fooled.”
“And since we’re on the subject of identity and who’s on top of whom, how exactly do you know the First Lady?”
“We’re old friends. Leah and I go back to high school together.”
“That I did not know.”
“We were never an item though.”
“Mm-hmm, and you’re here to rectify that.”
“We were in sixth period drama class.”
“Oh nice, a fellow actor; any plays I might know?”
“Typical high school productions. Twelve Angry Jurors.”
“Of course.”
“Our Town.”
“Typical.”
“Fiddler on the Roof.”
“I’d frown if they didn’t.”
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
> “Let me guess, Leah played the Fairy Queen.”
“And I was the wild ass.”
“Ironic and yet so very cruel.”
“Our senior year grand finale was RENT.”
“Wow. Progressive. Did you ever land the kissing role?”
“I wish.”
“Let me guess. Leah was the pick of the litter in every one of them.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So is that what you do now?”
“I haven’t acted since college; high school, really.”
“Isn’t that a shame?”
“Not really. I was only in it for the girl.”
“Impressive. I had no idea that I came to the airport to pick up her very first fan ever. And never one kissing role.” He sighed.
“I can express no kinder sign of love, than this kind kiss,” I said.
“Shakespeare.” Richie perked up.
“King Henry the Sixth,” I said.
“Act 1, scene 1.”
“Impressive. You know your Queen Elizabeth.”
“I should say the same about you, Mister I Don't Act Anymore.”
“I take it you enjoy life as an actor then.”
“Don’t we all?” Richie complemented his stereotypical lisp by flailing his fingers. “I mean, isn’t the world one great big stage?”
“I’m not exactly thrilled with the script as of late.” My bag finally arrived. I scooped it up off the belt and immediately turned towards the city, where only moments before Delilah had passed into the light of what might have been sexual ecstasy. Richie followed. “She didn’t tell you anything about me, did she?”
“Hey, I didn’t exactly pay the rent last month, and I don’t expect to have it this month either, so when Leah says be at JFK at a certain time to pick up so-and-so or else, it doesn’t take a dummy to figure out you salute the queen bee and do what she says to the letter without asking any further questions.”
I paused at the double-sliding doors before taking my first step into the city that I’d for so long dreamt of calling home. “She’s a difficult one, isn’t she?”
Richie made no attempt to mask a smile.
“CHAMBERLAIN,” he said, “if only you knew.”
5
AFTER PICKING UP MY RENTAL CAR at JFK's Federal Circle, it was a Toyota Matrix courtesy of National; we drove towards Leah Bishop's Greenwich Village residence with Richie as my GPS man. Only problem was he'd grown up his entire life on Manhattan. Normally perfect qualifications for a tour guide except that he'd never gotten his driver’s license. Apparently there was never a need. He said he took the train or walked everywhere, rarely riding along in anyone's car, and how different the metropolis looked from the front seat of a Toyota Matrix was his excuse to me. As ridiculous as it sounded, the slight change in perspective made sense, which also meant we took one wrong turn after another getting there.
Our first mistake was crossing the Queensboro Bridge instead of the Midtown Tunnel. It dropped us off in the Upper East Side. In turn we managed a detour through Central Park to the Upper Westside and eventually a too close for comfort view of the Hudson River before Richie reprogrammed his inner compass and we managed the neighborhoods of Chelsea and the Meat Packing District to Greenwich Village. Our globe-trotting took roughly an hour and half, with light to medium traffic along the way, but it ended well. We actually found a parking spot on Bleecker Street. That's where the apartment was located. They called it Brownstone, probably based on its physical appearance. And then there was the most exquisite parallel parking job too. They really should consider making an Olympic sport out of it.
It's a spoonful of irony, I suppose, that I don't generally like having my picture taken, being a photographer and all, let alone ending up on video. Certainly not the medicine I was expecting upon my arrival. Once inside the entry, where roughly two-dozen mail slots lined the wall, a staircase eloquently divided the building in half, two apartment units filling either side (Leah's apartment number was 402), which meant you could lean over the banister from any of its several levels and watch someone maneuver up or down its steps. Therein arose that feeling again, the one where I was being followed. I looked behind me but nobody had come in after us, so craned my neck into a ninety degree angle as we rounded the second floor and caught sight of a tall lanky person in creased slacks, checkered sports coat and a head-full of wiry hair. He was filming us from two stories up, Leah's floor, some sort of professional camcorder with a Canon logo on it.
Richie made no mention of the mystery filmmaker as we reached the fourth level, but chose to rephrase yet another variation of the exact same question he'd asked on the first and third floor. “You sure I don't know you from somewhere, Chamberlain?”
I said: “You ever been to California?”
“Yeah, I went to Disneyland when I was five.”
“Then probably not.”
The cameras bulging Cyclops eye followed me as we trudged around the banister towards the door with 402 numbered on it, luggage straps digging into our collar bones. It's operator erected a thumb at me, as if to let me know my performance was solid. Shrugging at him confusingly was my response. Humphrey Bogart probably would have done the same thing. Errol Flynn might have even challenged him to a duel.
The oddly positioned cameraman addressed my concern without ever lowering his camera. He said: “Oh, don't mind me. I'm just filming a movie.”
“Uh-huh. I can see that.” I turned towards Richie. “Why is there a man with a camcorder standing out here in the hall filming me?”
“He's just filming a movie.” Richie repeated his words, my camera bag slung over his shoulder, and fumbled through pants pockets for keys. “It's a documentary.”
“Great.” I sighed. “You live here?”
“Oh yeah,” said the cameraman. “That's me right across the banister, 401 if you need anything; a soda pop, cold beer, someone to talk to, a part in a movie. Anything, just knock.”
“And this is a documentary.” I implied it more of a question than a statement.
“Uh-huh, a reality movie, it's all about life in Brownstone. You know, its residents, the people who come and go. I hope you don't mind. You're not, like, in the witness protection program or anything, by chance, are you?”
“Of course not,” I didn't say it convincingly.
That's when Richie finally put my face with the image on the television. “Son of Odin, it's you. I saw you on CNN.” He creased the hind-side of his body against the door, perfect murder pose.
“Well no, I'm not exactly Anderson Cooper.” I turned to smile at the Cyclops eye. “But it's okay, people get us confused all the time.”
“No. It's you, the missing puzzle piece to this crazy murder story that everyone's been talking about in the news. I can scream like a princess if I want to.”
The tall lanky cameraman seemed to perk up and lean in. “Oh, this is good. Good stuff, guys. Keep it up! I'm not even here.”
“Let's not put that princess scream of yours to the test.” Another lengthy sigh abounded. I twitched uncomfortably between Richie in his murder pose and the tall lanky individual filming us, hoping he'd somehow go away. But according to him, he wasn't even there to begin with, so the chance of him leaving seemed unlikely.
“Oh.....dear...” Richie cupped both hands over his nose and mouth. “....Loki.”
There was another uncomfortable twitch of my eyes from Richie to the glowing Cyclops followed by a thumb up from its operator. I turned back to Richie. “At the risk of sounding rude, please get all the questions out of your system now, because I'm exhausted over the entire episode, and once we go through this door, I'd really rather not talk about it. And besides, I've got nothing to hide.”
Richie managed his key into the lock, paused, opened his mouth, closed it, and then altogether removed the key. “You're like Harrison Ford in The Fugitive, aren't you?”
“I love that movie.”
“No, really, you're on the run from th
e law or something.”
The man with the video camera licked his lips with delight.
“Technically, no, I'm here because I have two weddings to shoot. It's what I do for a living.”
“Yeah, but you don't want anyone to know where you are. Chris Matthews and Matt Lauer and that guy from CNN sure as hell doesn't know where you are.”
“My phone’s on vibrate, if that's what you mean.”
On cue my cell phone let out a bee-like buzz. I dropped my luggage on the floor to retrieve it from my pants pocket, only I didn't recognize the name and number. Seeing as how my contact information was publicly available on my website, it could have been anyone from the press to an angry client or a prank caller.
Richie frowned. “Did you do it?”
“Was I complicit in the murder of a mob bosses daughter? No. I've already spoken with the police detectives heading up the investigation, and I've been cleared.” I said that last part I've been cleared to the bulging Cyclops eye. That may or may not have been true. I wasn't sure. “I wouldn't be here if I wasn't. Is that convincing enough for you?”
Richie slid his key into the lock again, but paused to consider his circumstances. “I don't know. If the media's been hounding you, then why haven't you returned their calls?”
“Lawyers orders, and besides, I'm trying to stay as far away from this as possible, just until the dust settles. Now can I come in?”
“I don't know. How about I go in first and think on it?” He twisted his key, opened the door a crack, and slithered his meaty body through, somehow managing my unglamorously bulky camera bag too. The door closed inches from my nose. A single chain bolted into place.
“You're going to leave me standing out here in the hall?” I called after. “And in a documentary?”
“I am if you're a murderer.” Richie's muffled voice said.
I turned towards the cameraman. “Does your reality movie have a name?”
“Brownstone. Hey, this is good stuff, we're still rolling.” His finger did that little rotation thing, which apparently was some sort of signal to continue what I was doing, but also happened to be the universal sign for coo-coo.
Goodnight Sometimes Means Goodbye (Wrong Flight Home, #2) Page 11
