Screen Play

by Chris Coppernoll

  “Come in here.” She held open the door for the both of us, and I stepped inside like a woman on fire. “Now, tell me what happened.”

  I started to tell her all the details I knew, but tears stole my words. Avril filled her in with everything I’d told her just minutes before. Sydney moved forward to hug me.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what to do in this situation, Harper. Honestly, I’m filled with more questions than answers at this hour. I don’t mean to be insensitive, but let me just go to another page of the problem. How are you going to work tomorrow with all this on your mind?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know how I’m going to get through the next five minutes.” I paced the floor like a caged cat. “I can’t get Luke out of my mind.”

  “Oh, Harper. Don’t torture yourself.”

  “I know it’s irrational, but I feel like he needs help and there’s no one there to help him,” I said, returning to tears. I collapsed onto the arm of a chair.

  Sydney drew in a deep breath.

  “Harper, Sydney’s right,” Avril said. “We don’t know at this point what the story is, and you’re doing yourself no good imagining the worst. We’ll stay with you until you hear the next piece of news, good or bad.”

  Sydney agreed. “It must be impossible, but you have to go on doing what you’re doing. That’s all you can do.”

  “Luke’s always been there for everybody else, Sydney. Who’s going to be there for him?”

  Avril and Sydney exchanged looks, and for a moment I felt like an outsider in my own unfolding story. I dropped my face into my hands, shaking my head, trying to wake myself from the nightmare. Praying for strength, hope, rescue, peace—none of which were in supply.

  “Something has to be done, Sydney. What’s happening now just isn’t good enough.”

  “You just have to wait. Pray they’ll find him.”

  I couldn’t take sitting still another minute. I walked to the open door, about to show myself out. And then I paused to ask Sydney a question. “How do you think Joseph will react if I ask for a day off? I don’t know how I’m going to work tomorrow.”

  Sydney grimaced. “Oh, I don’t know. Joseph’s got a tight production schedule. I’ve seen it. Most movie actors wouldn’t even ask for time off unless someone …”

  Sydney stopped short of saying it, averting her eyes to Avril again.

  “I’m sorry, Harper,” Sydney said. “I just don’t know Joseph well enough to call and beg a favor of a few hours off, let alone an entire day.”

  Sydney shook her head at the situation, shoring herself up for my benefit. “I know this is tough, Harper, but you’re going to have to go into work tomorrow as if nothing is wrong and perform like the professional you are.”

  ~ Thirty-one ~

  Avril and I walked across the stiff crab grass in Sydney’s front yard. It had been thirty hours since anyone had heard from Luke McCafferty. I climbed into the passenger side of the car, not sure where to go next, when the cell phone rang. It was Don. I stared at the phone lighting up in my hand, afraid to answer, numbed by the knowledge this call would be either the best or worst news I’d ever hear.

  “Answer it, Harper,” Avril instructed me.

  “Yes?”

  “Harper, we just got word. Luke’s plane went down somewhere in the South Pacific. One of the nearby islands reported receiving a breaking message from Luke just before the accident. It’s definitely a crash now. The coast guard will send out a plane in the morning to do a thorough search for his plane.”

  “What did he say in his message?”

  “It was engine trouble, Harper. He just couldn’t keep the plane in the air.”

  “Could he have made a water landing? Did he have pontoons on the plane?”

  “Wheels. It would have been a violent landing.”

  We were both silent. I refused to believe what I was hearing.

  “What are you saying, Don?”

  “I’m not saying anything yet. We’ll await news from the coast guard tomorrow. Luke’s plane had what’s called an ELT, or an emergency locator transmitter. They’ll triangulate and find the source. I’m going home now. I’ll pass on any more information to you tomorrow, as soon as we get it.”

  “Don, are you going to go down there?” I asked. “What if the coast guard’s unable to find him? What if they can’t pick up the locator signal? What if …”

  “Harper, going down there isn’t going to make any difference. Now listen, this is going to be tough to hear, but you need to prepare yourself for the worst.”

  Don clicked off his phone. I sat in a state of disbelief.

  “Where would you like to go now?” Avril said, sticking the key in the ignition and shifting the stick into reverse.

  “Just drive,” I said.

  Avril peeled away from Sydney’s place, turning on the headlights and flooding two beams of light onto the streets. They looked like searchlights.

  Had the last three months only been a dream? Was I still in Chicago languishing in some altered state, no phone call from Ben Hughes inviting me to serve as understudy, no Apartment 19, no click-and-meet membership plan on LoveSetMatch.com, no Joseph Hagen, no movie, and most importantly, no Luke McCafferty?

  Don’t say things have a way of working out until you’ve talked to James in Sandy Eggo. Dreams can come true, but so can nightmares. Reality is just the spinning flip of a coin and waiting with bated breath to see which side lands up.

  Avril rocketed down the highway; the silvery moon loomed great over the ocean, controlling the tides. If beyond the curling tide of Santa Monica Bay, a thousand miles southwest, lay broken, burned wreckage scattered across a rising and falling sea, then what was the point? What else was there anyway?

  I flipped open my cell phone and searched for Katie’s number. It had to be 2 a.m. in New York by now, but I needed to talk to the people who knew God best. I needed hope.

  After several rings, I heard the sleepy sound of Katie’s voice.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Katie, it’s Harper. I need some really serious prayer. I know it’s late, and I’m sorry, but something has happened.”

  “What? What’s happened, Harper?” Katie said. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “It’s Luke. He’s been on a mission trip to a small, primitive island hundreds of miles south of Hawaii. On his way back, his plane went down. No one knows where he is, or if he’s even alive. No one’s heard from him in more than a day.”

  “Oh, dear Lord.”

  “I want to go try and find him, but I have an obligation to the film. I absolutely can’t leave. It would shut down production and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. I’m just calling for prayer, because I need answers. I can’t go on like this.”

  “Okay, Harper. Just hang in there. Are you alone?”

  “No, Avril’s with me.”

  “Let me get David on the phone. He’s closer to God than anyone I know.”

  I heard some shuffling of the phone, and Katie telling David the gist of my struggle. A moment later they were both on the cell’s speakerphone.

  “Hi, Harper, it’s David. We’re going to pray for Luke now. We’re going to ask God to protect him. We don’t know where he is or how he’s doing, but God does.”

  Avril pulled her car into the parking space behind our apartment. The security gate closed mechanically behind us, a methodical, droning hum. Avril held my hands, and I closed my eyes, wanting prayer to bring medicine to my misery.

  “Our heavenly Father, we come to You tonight in the most pressing of matters …”

  I listened to David pouring out his requests on my behalf to the Lord. I opened my eyes. A cloud sailed past the moon on its way to somewhere.

  After
our prayer, Katie spoke. Her voice was sympathetic, a lifelong sister I’d known only a few months.

  “How are you doing, Harper?”

  “I just want to be with Luke,” I said, my voice wilted and sullen.

  “Then I’ll pray for that, too, Harper,” Katie said. “We both love you. We’ll stand with you in this.”

  “Whatever God’s going to do,” David said, “I feel like it’s going to happen quickly. I think you ought to try and get some sleep. You just do what you can do, and let God do what He’s got in mind.”

  There was no sleeping that night. Avril offered to stay awake with me, but I wanted to be alone. I checked my cell phone on the nightstand over and over again throughout the night, picking it up every five minutes, hoping it would ring.

  Loni gasped audibly when I lumbered onto the set and fell into the makeup chair the next morning at six.

  “Harper, what happened to you?”

  I told her I couldn’t say. I just didn’t have the strength to go through it again. I dozed off instead, a numbing slumber that ensnared me while I sat upright in Loni’s makeup chair. When I awoke, Joseph was crouching down in front of me, gazing into my eyes like a boxing referee checking for signs of coherence.

  “What is the matter?” he asked. “Harper, are you all right?”

  When my eyes opened more clearly, I could see a trailer full of crew members worried over my well-being.

  “No,” I said.

  Joseph turned back to the crowd gathered at the door.

  “Okay, everybody. Clear out for a moment. I wish to speak with Harper alone.”

  Joseph shut the trailer door afterward and sat next to me. He looked concerned, but then I caught a look at my own face in the mirror and knew why.

  “Okay, what’s going on? You give me one hundred and ten percent for two weeks, never complain, never ask for anything. You’re always cooperative, always prepared. You do whatever I ask. Today, you come in looking half dead. I know you haven’t been out all night because the only time your picture is in the gossip pages is when our publicist puts it there.” Joseph leaned back in his seat. “So, tell me … what is going on, Harper?”

  I drew in a deep breath, trying to pull myself up in the chair, and opened my mouth to speak.

  “I love someone, Joseph, someone who’s disappeared. His plane crashed in the South Pacific. No one knows if he’s alive or not, and I’m trying, but I can’t … control my emotions.”

  Joseph studied me, slumped in the makeup chair, like he was on the set in his director’s seat. He’d spent a lifetime watching actresses deliver lines that came from the depths of their souls. His heavily wrinkled face showed no emotion.

  “Harper, did you ever know anything about my wife, Helena Modova?”

  “Just the pictures I saw of the two of you in a magazine.”

  “My wife, Helena, died in a automobile accident in Munich, 1981. She was twenty-eight years old. We have two children; both survived the accident, but Helena was killed.”

  The quiet director shared his story, choosing his words deliberately and never showing emotion.

  “I spent a year afterward working, but not working. The house where we lived together, a house of laughter and dinner parties, was like a cold, marble tomb. Eventually, I sold the house because I would have gone insane there, remembering Helena. I have not remarried in almost thirty years. It is my opinion, and my opinion is the only one that counts, that you cannot work today. You cannot be Harper again until you find out what has happened to your friend.

  “I will shoot other scenes with Angel, exterior shots. You will go wherever you need to go and search for answers, okay? But I can’t give you much time. You must return by Monday, or my film is in jeopardy. You must do all this in four days. That is all the time I can give you.”

  Joseph slapped both his thighs with the palms of his hands. The slapping sound was sharp and defining, like a hypnotist waking a half-conscious patient. We stood, and I put my arms around him to thank him for understanding, for letting me go.

  He was a cold European director, with little gold statues in his award room, and a widower, too, still living perhaps in a house as cold as marble. I loved him for his compassion, something that came from his suffering, but I didn’t want to become like him, someone with a story of painful loss, like James.

  I collected my things from the trailer and walked off the lot without speaking to another soul. The rest of the cast and crew watched, not knowing what was going on.

  Real life isn’t just make-believe, it’s hard. When we feel the ravages of pain is when life seems most real. There really was a Luke McCafferty, an island called Tarajuro, a call with bad news, and a real coast guard plane searching hundreds of square miles for debris from a small aircraft. It was not all just a show.

  ~ Thirty-two ~

  At least I knew the way to McCafferty Logging in Eugene, Oregon. I rented a Jeep Cherokee at the Portland Airport and drove the hundred miles south to Eugene. I wrestled my cell phone out of my carry-on bag and flipped to Don McCafferty’s number. He picked up instantly.

  “Yes.”

  “Don, it’s Harper. I should have given you a heads-up, but I’m on my way to Eugene. I couldn’t stay in Los Angeles.”

  There was nothing, only silence on Don’s end of the line for a moment. Then he spoke in a voice that was anesthetized, frozen, not the strong man who doled out accident reports without flinching, but the voice of someone who’d been awake all night.

  “There’s nothing more you can do here. I told you. There’s nothing more you can do.”

  “I think there is. Is there any new information?”

  “No, nothing new. I don’t know what you think you being here will change. Storms in the area have impeded any rescue efforts. The coast guard won’t go out until the weather clears. We won’t hear anything new until then.”

  “I don’t have any peace about this, Don. I want to go to Tarajuro and find out what happened. See if there were witnesses who might have seen Luke’s plane go down. I have to have answers.”

  I heard an audible groan on the other end of the line.

  “Harper, honey, you’re taking this too far. It’s one thing to come join us here in Eugene, but don’t go all the way to the bottom of the world trying to bring Luke back. Where are you now?”

  “I’m about thirty minutes from your office. Obviously, I don’t have a plan worked out yet, but I have to go. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.”

  When I pulled into the parking lot at McCafferty Logging, Don McCafferty stood waiting for me at the front door. I parked the rental car next to the Jeep Luke and I had taken that night we spent together in Eugene. Just seeing it in the cold with its doors locked and its lights off made me ache. I moved past it up the walkway, keeping myself busy with activity and motion. Don greeted me with an embrace.

  “I’m sorry if I was rude to you earlier, Harper. Please come in.” He held open the glass door for me.

  “I just want to know what happened.”

  “I know.”

  A receptionist sat behind her workstation in the modest lobby, dabbing her nose with a tissue, her eyes bloodshot, looking as shell-shocked as everybody we encountered on our way into the building.

  Don took me into the conference room. There was a framed poster-sized advertisement for McCafferty Logging hanging on the wall showing an aerial photo of a large company Cessna just like Luke’s flying over the Oregon wilderness.

  A conference table long enough to seat a dozen people ran nearly the full length of the simply furnished room. At the far end was the only modern addition, a cart holding a TV and DVD player. I saw on a shelf in the cabinet the ham radio and microphone Don had been using to talk to Luke.

  The conference table was littered with maps of the
Tarajuro area south of the equator, west of Kiribati. Newly sharpened yellow No. 2 pencils rolled across the table when Don rearranged the maps.

  “I’d been trying to chart Luke’s course using his time of departure, air speed, the flight plan he’d given me,” he said. He shuffled through the charts, bringing to the surface the most detailed map of the area. Using a navigational ruler, Don drew a straight line in pencil from Tarajuro through the Phoenix Islands directly to Honolulu. He’d circled a spot on the map where he’d charted Luke’s probable last minutes of flight.

  “I just want to show you how inherently difficult a search mission is in this area of the world. This is where I estimated Luke went down. But here”—Don moved the tip of his pencil inches across the map—“you can see there’s nothing but ocean out there.” He looked at me, reading my expression. “The area is breathtaking in its size. You could look for clues down there, Harper, and be just five miles off, and never find what you’re looking for.”

  “You mentioned one of the islands picking up Luke’s last message. Which island?”

  Don pulled a different map from the pile and marked a star next to the island.

  “Here. Botuvita. If he was near the island, he may have already been past Kiribati and on his way to Hawaii. Luke was most likely following a shipping current, so there’s no telling at what point he entered the sea, and how far the current carried the wreckage before it finally went under.”

  “Did he say anything else in his message?”

  “Look, I know this is hard, but I’m trying to save you the heartache of going all the way down there for nothing.”

  Don got up from the conference table and led me to the communications center. A spiral notepad lay next to the radio’s microphone, a narrow red stripe running along the side of it that I assumed was the Talk button. Don lifted the notepad and flipped through its pages.

  “Looks like there are five or six pages of notes from our conversations. I tried to write down anything that seemed important.”

  He handed me the notepad.

  “Don, I’m going to Tarajuro. I’m going to find Luke, or at least find out what happened to him if I have to search the entire Pacific inch by inch, island by island … but I need your help,” I pleaded.