by Dave Daren
“Shut up, Shannon,” the young man said. “Stop pretending you are a Twitter celebrity. You bought almost all of those followers.”
“Whatever, Gareth,” Shannon said. “Better than your two hundred,”
“At least all those people know me,” Gareth said. “And by the way, we are heirs to a mid-level copper fortune. We are not Trumps or Vanderbilts.”
“But that’s just the start,” Shannon said. “We are taking what dad did and building something so much bigger than copper. We are building an image. It’s like the Kardashians. No one really knows what those people did before that show. And now, they are like the most recognizable family in America. I’m sorry if that’s something I take seriously, and you don’t, Gareth.”
“No,” her brother said. “What you take seriously is hard partying in Manhattan.”
“I only go to the A-list events, because it’s part of my job as a socialite,” she said with an upturned nose.
Gareth emitted a loud groan and cupped his hand over his ears. “Stop calling being a socialite a job. You sound so ridiculous right now!”
I was amused, so to find an excuse to keep listening, I grabbed a plate and filled it with chips. Then I pretended to browse my phone as I snacked and listened.
“It is a job,” she said “It’s so time consuming, when would I have time to do anything else? And like you have room to talk, Gareth. It’s not like you’ve ever held a job.”
“I do have a job,” he said. “I’m a scriptwriter.”
“And yet you’ve never actually sold a script,” she said. “I don’t even think you’ve finished one.”
“That’s not true,” he shot back.
“Oh, right,” she said. “There’s that one movie you spent five years writing about working in an office. Which you’ve never even worked in one, by the way.”
“I did a lot of research for that piece,” he said defensively. “I did extensive interviews with expert sources that had firsthand experience with the material.”
“Um, yeah,” she said. “Your girlfriend was a secretary, so you stole all her stories and tried to write a movie about it.”
“It would have been a great movie, if B.J. Novak hadn’t gotten to it first,” he muttered.
“Once again, Gareth,” Shannon said. “You did not come up with the idea for The Office.”
“I did,” he said. “B.J. Novak was in my year at Harvard, and he stole my idea when I got drunk one night and talked too much.”
“First of all,” she said. “You didn’t even go to Harvard.”
“I did too!”
“No,” she said. “You couldn’t get in, so you lived illegally in the dorms for a semester so that you could be a pretentious douchebag hanging out with all the other pretentious douchebags, while you told everyone you went to Harvard. And then you got caught and almost went to jail.”
“Okay, that was a way more complicated situation than you are making it out to be right now,” he said.
“Actually, no it wasn’t,” she said.
“I was auditing classes to get ahead of the game while I reapplied,” he said. “It wasn’t my fault that campus security didn’t know that.”
“Ummm... yes it was,” Shannon said.
“Guys, can we please not fight right now?” the cupcake girl asked. “You are giving me a migraine, and I just had my face redone.”
I did my best to hide my smirk as I grabbed my drink and slipped away from them. The conversation had now moved to discussing the various private airports of the world, and I doubted there would be much more to chuckle at.
I left the pavilion and tried to mingle in the crowd. It was then I noticed one of Alister’s girlfriends watching me. I smiled politely, and she shot me a smolderingly sensuous look. Then I took a sip of wine and toasted her casually from across the field.
She had platinum blond hair and wore a skin tight silk evening dress that accentuated her curves with every move she made. She strode toward me with long confident strides, as if she was floating an inch above the ground.
“You’re the new lawyer,” she said, as she sidled up close to me. Based on her current eau de parfum, I somewhat wondered if the shower heads in the O’Brien mansion ran eighty proof.
“Henry Irving,” I said. I glanced around to see if there was anyone within visual distance that could misinterpret the encounter.
“Mila Trulos,” she said.
She held my gaze hard. Then she pulled the cherry out of her drink. She circled the cherry in her lips and then held it in her teeth. Then she bit down and popped the cherry all while still holding my eyes. I cleared my throat.
“Nice to meet you Mila,” I said. “You know, I uh--“
I gestured to an indistinct area of the field and tried to think of an ending to my sentence. Fortunately, it didn’t matter. She just laughed drunkenly.
“Yeah,” she slurred and almost fell over in her four-inch heels. “We’ll talk later.”
“Yeah,” I said and hightailed it to the other side of the field.
I found Vicki in the crowd, deep in conversation with Prescott Evans, chairman of the parks and wildlife association. He wore a wide brimmed cowboy hat, boots, and spoke with a drawl.
“...And then I looked that possum dead in the eye, and shot it point blank,” he was saying.
Prescott was tall and well built in his early fifties. Today he wore jeans, a black windbreaker with a red collared shirt peeking out, a light brown cowboy hat, and black shades. I snuck up behind Vicki and hugged her. She was startled for half a moment and then looked relieved to see me. I smirked.
“Have you met Henry?” she asked Prescott.
“How do you do?” Prescott offered me his hand, and I shook it.
“Henry Irving,” I stated confidently as I gave him a firm shake.
He looked at us with the most serious of gazes. “Now, are you guys packing?”
“Packing?” Vicki asked with genuine confusion. “Packing what?”
Prescott look at her incredulously, and I turned my back to hide that I was nearly doubled over in stifled laughter. Fortunately, an announcement came from the stage.
“Attention everyone,” Alister was on the microphone. “We will be having trail rides for any interested parties. We have twenty horses, so the first twenty to sign up will get the horses.”
I turned to Vicki. “You want to do it?”
Prescott nodded to her. “Nothing sexier than a pretty lady on a horse.”
I smirked. I didn’t mind a pretty lady on a horse, but I could think of a lot sexier things than that.
She shrugged. “Let’s do it.”
Vicki and I followed the crowd to the stables where the horses were already saddled up for the trail riders. Prescott followed us, babbling on about guns and second amendment rights.
“You see it's all about a well-regulated militia,” he said. “Nobody is talking about driving a tank down the street.”
“Absolutely,” I said, although I didn’t necessarily agree with his point. I could see where the argument was going.
“It’s all about responsible ownership,” he continued. “If you could own a tank and handle it responsibly, why not?”
That’s the thing about being a lawyer. I don’t have a public opinion on anything. I just cross-examine every issue and counter issue until my head explodes and I never resolve anything. Issues like gun control just make me nervous because I could stand in a courtroom for either party and deliver a performance like Richard Gere in that movie Chicago.
“A lotta folks in this town just don’t get it,” Prescott went on, “Do I need this gun or that gun to enjoy the outdoors? Nope, but I would enjoy the outdoors less if I didn’t carry one.”
“No doubt,” I said. “If you want a tank, Prescott, I think you should buy one.” We were nearing the stables now, and I contemplated playing the devil’s advocate with Prescott just to mess with him. But I feared that if I did, we would be standing in this spot for the rest of the p
arty. So I agreed with him.
Prescott’s face lit up and he nodded vehemently. “You get it, man. You get it.”
“I think you can actually buy old Soviet tanks for pretty cheap,” I said. “But it's the shipping cost that’ll get you.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Plus all the instructions are written in Ruski.”
Vicki couldn’t help it and started giggling at that line.
We reached the horses, and I held out my hand to Prescott in a dismissal gesture.
“It was nice to meet you, Prescott,” I said.
He shook it. “Likewise, I’ll see you around, Henry.”
He tipped the brim of his hat, eased himself on a horse with quick grace, and disappeared.
Vicki smiled at me. “So you’re a gun advocate now?”
I laughed. “I advocate for whomever hires us. It’s an occupational hazard. When Prescott gets arrested for driving a Russian battle tank around town, who do you think he is going to call?”
“You’re too much,” she said as she punched me gently on the arm.
A stable hand approached us, a young man with dirty jeans, boots and a uniform shirt. His name tag read “Jeremy.”
“Which one you want?” he smiled.
I shrugged. “One that rides.”
He laughed. Somehow growing up in Sedona, I had only ridden a horse a couple of times. I had vague recollections of how to do this. Vicki knew less.
“So I’m a first timer,” she admitted.
The stable hand laughed. “A horse virgin, huh?”
“That would be me,” she laughed back nervously.
He paused for a moment, and I raised an eyebrow as I noticed the glint in his eye. He was contemplating taking the joke a bit further, so I put my arm around Vicki and he instantly turned professional.
“So, these two should do,” he patted two horses. “You just put your foot in here like this.”
She tried putting her foot in the stirrup and fell off and laughed. Jeremy smiled and helped her into the horse. He didn’t seem to mind at all.
“See you just do like this,” he said, and he guided her legs over the animal.
The horse shifted and Vicki squealed. Jeremy laughed.
“You don’t want to scare the horse,” he told her gently, as if he were her personal riding instructor. “Easy does it.”
Jeremy stroked the horse’s mane to calm it down.
“Easy does it,” she repeated, fear in her voice.
I cleared my throat at the entire exchange, and Jeremy turned to look at me.
“You need help mounting a horse?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
I quickly mounted mine while Jeremy showed Vicki how to handle the reins. I caught up to her and together we joined the handful of others mounted and gathered for the trail ride.
“Well, that Jeremy sure liked you,” I muttered to her.
She laughed. “Please! Are you jealous, Henry Irving?”
“No,” I said. “I’m just saying he was a little bit… helpful.”
She laughed harder. “Yes, Henry. Also, everywhere I go men hold the door open for me, open jars, and kill spiders. I don’t even know what drinks cost since I’ve never had to pay for one at a bar.”
“Okay,” I laughed, “that’s enough teasing me for now.”
We both laughed and rode on into the crowd. At that point, Alister’s girls rode up on their steeds, now dressed to the nines in riding boots and blond ponytails. I surmised their lives were a bit like southern belles who spent half their lives in the back rooms of fancy parties changing from outfit to outfit.
I was surprised that they were both perfectly upright, considering the amount of alcohol at least Mila had consumed. They were followed by Earnie Green on another horse. Finally, there was Alister in his kilt, mounted on nothing other than a zebra.
Yes, a fucking zebra.
“Are you kidding me?” Vicki whispered.
Prescott joined us. “No,” he said. “That’s his thing, that zebra. Named her Neptune. Zebras are almost impossible to tame, but he spent years working on that one. Brought in animal experts from Africa for months at a time.”
The three of us exchanged glances, none of us wanting to say a word. The crowd of twenty horse-mounted riders gathered around the zebra, and Alister spoke.
“We’re going to go up through the bluffs this way, and then come back around,” he said. He petted the zebra. “Neptune will lead the way.”
Alister and Neptune turned to ride off, and the trail party followed.
Sedona really is beautiful. That was one thing I did miss during my years in Los Angeles. We are known for our Red Rocks, a precursor to the Grand Canyon just a couple of hours away. We were climbing a butte, a massive red rock structure that looks like a mountain from a distance. Up close, it’s like an iceberg made of rock. It’s this jagged piece of earth that rises randomly above the surrounding surface, not like in a mountain range or anything, it’s just an isolated piece of high rising rock.
Sedona is full of them. These red and orange rocks are part of who we are. We name them. We tame them. We ride them. We hike them. And, from time to time, we hide in them with travel trailers and cook meth. For better or for worse, these buttes were ours. I like big buttes and I cannot lie.
As the horses, and the zebra, picked their way up the trails, the party quieted with a somber reverence. This was our home, but it didn’t mean it was any less majestic.
“It’s so quiet up here,” Vicki said.
“I know,” I told her. “When I was a kid, I was a big theatre buff, right?”
“Yeah,” she said.
She knew all about that. My family originally disapproved of me going into law, because I turned down Julliard to do it. I had been an award winning theatre student in high school, and everyone was certain I was the next Tom Cruise.
But I went a different way, and it took a really long time for my family to understand the choices I made. Which has never made sense to me because most families want their kids to be doctors and lawyers.
But, my family valued art and creativity, and while we were all certainly law-abiding citizens, they had a certain skepticism and distrust for the legal system, or any system, for that matter. That I had turned down a lifestyle of artistic achievement to join the center of everything that is wrong with the world, didn’t play well in my family.
After I came back for Harmony’s trial, things started getting better with them. But there’s still a lot of hurt and resentment. I knew that most of it was on my end now, and I was working on it, but it’s a lot of baggage to work through.
“I used to climb up through the trails to find a spot to run lines,” I told Vicki. “It’s a great place to do loud scenes like arguments, or practice projection exercises. No one can hear you for miles.”
“It’s actually a bit spooky to think about it that way,” she said.
“It is, isn’t it?”
Our horses climbed through the red dust, and the air got thinner as we changed elevations. From here we could see Alister’s house. It looked small and insignificant. It seemed like some sort of cosmic reality check involving the power and expanse of nature versus humanity and who we are and think we are.
Up ahead of us, the girlfriends chatted away, and their drunken laughter filtered down the mountain. Andrea McClellan and her husband were behind them, and rode with ramrod straight backs, as if they knew they were always on a stage in front of the constituents, never entirely relaxed. Behind them the three O’Brien children were decked out in ridiculous riding gear, and stumbled all over each other trying to control their horses.
“No,” I heard Shannon whining. “I don’t want to fall off this stupid mountain. Just go that way.”
She tried to get her horse to nudge Gareth’s horse away from her.
“I don’t want to fall off this mountain, either, Shannon,” he said “You go that way.”
“No, you go that way,” she said.
“Are they thirteen or thirty?” I muttered to Vicki, who just laughed.
“I couldn’t tell you,” she said.
Up ahead of them Neptune had reached a plateau, and the party stopped. Alister sat with a straight back and tried to effect a majestic pose in his kilt on his zebra. He had a riding stick in his left hand and stood as if he were Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai to deliver the Ten Commandments. Earnie waited faithfully behind him on his modest brown horse.
Alister stretched out his arms in a gesture that was meant to quiet the crowd. Then he burst out into an Irish folk song. We all listened reverently, as if we were internalizing the profundity of the Gaelic words. But for all we knew, he could have been singing, “pass the salad, please.”
When he was done, he and Neptune climbed a few feet to a cliff. Then, Alister pulled the reins and sent Neptune into a full gallop. Alister leaned into the animal and had a somber, concentrated expression on his face. Then he let out a thunderous “Yah!”
At the sound the zebra with his kilt clad rider, jumped about ten feet above the ground and flew through the air. It was a truly magnificent leap as the zebra showed off his full prowess, his black and white belly above us. The zebra landed in a running cloud of dust and hooves. But, as he landed, Alister toppled off and fell to the ground. The zebra took off running and disappeared into the wild.
A crowd gathered around the man, who now lay face down in the dirt.
It quickly became apparent that he’d landed wrong, since he didn’t immediately sit up.
“Someone call an ambulance,” Earnie yelled as he the girlfriends dismounted and rushed to the fallen man.
Andrea snapped to attention and pulled her phone out of her pocket as the rest of us sat helplessly by on our horses.
“Ali, Ali,” the girlfriends shook his arm.
“Omigod,” Mila yelled. “Omigod.”
“Omigod,” Emily yelled. “Omigod.”
The O’Brien children dismounted and joined the girlfriends in an endless medley standing around and saying “Omigod,” while Earnie crouched over him and tried to revive him. A straggler from the back of the trail ride emerged.
“I’m a doctor!” the man shouted as he dismounted.
Earnie and the quintuplet Omigod Choir made room for the doctor. He crouched over the kilted body and turned him over. As soon as he did, it was clear. We could call all the doctors and ambulances in the world, and it would do no good.
