CAMELOT & VINE
Petrea Burchard
Boz Books
CAMELOT & VINE
Petrea Burchard
Published by
Boz Books
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2013 Petrea Burchard
Cover Art Copyright 2013 Kate Wong
All rights reserved.
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SO FAR, FORTY SUCKS
Lying is second nature to Casey Clemens, whether she’s selling cleaning products on national television or talking to her mother on the phone. But on her 40th birthday, Casey loses her job, her boyfriend and maybe even her sanity when she falls through a gap in time and accidentally saves King Arthur's life. War threatens, Arthur's rule is tenuous, and a liar from Hollywood has no place in his camp—not if she wants to return to the 21st century alive. Not that she wants to return.
What others are saying about Camelot & Vine:
“This tale of an LA poser in King Arthur’s court combines character-driven writing with great pacing and action. The fact that it also includes fascinating period details, a tweaking of ancient legend, and a sexy King Arthur for grown ups makes it the perfect indulgence for those days when you just need to live in another millennium.”
Margaret Finnegan, author of The Goddess Lounge:
“...a clever intersection of a delightful contemporary heroine and well-researched historical fiction. Burchard has used the beloved Arthurian legend as the background for a great time-traveling tale. The setting is lush and rich and the characters are familiar but fresh at the same time. It's filled with humor, myth, warmth, wisdom and a loyal steed! What more could you ask for in a book?”
Lian Dolan, LA Times best-selling author of Helen of Pasadena, Oprah.com blogger and Chaos Chronicles podcaster:
“This captivating tale takes readers on a journey from a Hollywood set to King Arthur's castle, and it has it all: adventure, humor, love, and peril. A fresh take on the legend of Camelot.”
Colleen Dunn Bates, Founder/Publisher, Prospect Park Books:
“Fanciful, fun, and touching.”
Dianne Emley, LA Times bestselling author of the Detective Nan Vining series
for
John,
Boz
and our Camelot
“It is all true, or it ought to be;
and more and better besides.”
—Winston Churchill
“If you tell the truth,
you don't have to remember anything.”
—Mark Twain
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Copyright Page
Description
Dedication
Quotations
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
Acknowledgements
About the Author
ONE
The day before my fortieth birthday was my last day as Mrs. Gone. For nine years, every American who turned on a television knew me as the wacky neighbor with the solution to their household cleaning problems. They’re Gone! That’s right! Gone! cleans everything! Which it didn’t. I bought it once (not that the Gone! company would give me a free bottle) and never bought it again. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t endorse it on national television for a cut above union scale.
Being a product spokesperson was good work. I owned a sunny condo in the fashionable Los Angeles suburb of Toluca Lake. I drove a relatively new BMW coupe. The cleaning lady came on Tuesdays. I ate take-out and never cooked. I went to yoga occasionally, and occasionally showed up at acting class. I auditioned for and sometimes got parts in low-budget films.
I thought of it as an acting career until the day before my fortieth birthday when, on the set of my latest Gone! commercial, the director shouted, “That’s a wrap!”
As usual, I handed over the empty product bottle to the props guy, returned my earrings to the costume girl and, avoiding the candy bowl at the craft services table, strode directly out the studio doors.
The director followed me to my trailer. “Casey,” he said.
“Bill. What?”
He dug his Nike toe into the asphalt of the studio lot. I waited. He cleared his throat and stared at his feet, like a kid who’s afraid to tell his mom he got a bad report card. Finally he looked me in the eye and squinted, moving his scalp and making his lonely forehead hairs sprout like weeds. “This is our last spot. They fired us.”
“Wow. What’d you do?”
“All of us. The client’s ‘re-thinking’ the campaign.”
My empty stomach flinched. “Can we talk to them?”
“They left already. Whaddaya gonna do, call 'em?”
Actors don’t call clients. Actors call their agents, agents call casting directors, casting directors call producers and producers call clients. Or nobody calls anybody.
“I’ll work for scale.”
“It’s not about money, Casey. They want to appeal to a new demographic.” He looked away and rubbed his temples. “You gonna be all right?”
“Sure,” I lied, the acid level building in my stomach inch by inch. “I’ve got irons in the fire.”
“Yeah, irons,” he grumbled. “I feed my family on irons.” He slumped away.
I gripped the handrail alongside the trailer’s metal steps. I knew what it meant to re-think a campaign. I knew what a “new demographic” was. It was younger. I lied about my age but it didn’t matter. Hollywood had discovered the truth and lost interest in me. Actually, no. Hollywood had never been interested in the first place.
Inside the trailer my hands shook while I changed from Mrs. Gone’s flowered, cotton blouse and pressed khakis into my long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans. I zipped on my gorgeous, high-heeled boots (a Rodeo Drive splurge), slung my giant, lime green purse/bag thing over my shoulder and stepped out into the Hollywood sun, hoping to get off the lot without talking to anyone.
The props guy wheeled a cart across the tarmac. “Ha
ve a good Fourth!” he called after me. Obviously, he hadn’t gotten the word. Another voice, I think it was the makeup woman, said, “Happy birthday, Casey!”
It would have been nice of me to respond. But I was in a hurry to get lost.
-----
I turned the BMW north on Cahuenga Boulevard, blasting the air conditioner. Traffic was heavy so I cut east on Fountain to take Vine Street to the freeway. A bad idea. That route took me past the Motion Picture Academy’s Pickford Center, a nicely-timed reminder that I would never win an Oscar.
Vine wasn’t much better than Cahuenga. Forced to wait at light after light, I gazed out of my tinted windows at billboards advertising Hollywood blockbusters to the trapped traffic. A hapless beggar pirouetted amidst the cars, singing and shaking his 7-11 cup of coins. For a backdrop he had an old pawn shop, an empty book store and a brand new Schwab’s Pharmacy, two miles east of where the famous original had been demolished long before I moved to Los Angeles.
I inched the car uphill past Sunset toward Hollywood Boulevard. Out-of-towners cruised the streets, hoping to spot a movie star. It amused my cynical side that among the tourists a girl (always a girl) teetered in high heels and tight pants, glancing from side to side to see who was seeing her. Girls like her paraded through Hollywood every day, hoping to be discovered.
I had not been prey on the streets of Hollywood. I’d been smart. Being born on Independence Day was significant to me only in that I depended on no one. But Hollywood was a business, and my only current credit was Mrs. Gone. It wasn’t exactly awards show material but it was what I had, and even that would soon be as valid as last year’s box office flop. If nothing else came up I’d eventually have to get a real job. I didn’t know how to do anything except act, and I’d proven to be less than stellar at that. Could I make mortgage payments waiting tables? People would recognize me, and the thought of Mrs. Gone saying, “Would you like fresh ground pepper on that?” was too horrible to contemplate.
My nose tingled as the BMW finally burst onto the freeway. Would a normal person cry? I wouldn’t. In less than two hours, Mike was returning from the set of his reality show in Mexico City. He might stop by on his way home from the airport. A forty-year-old woman whose boyfriend thinks she’s thirty-seven doesn’t need puffy eyes.
I grabbed a tissue from the box on the console and blew my nose. Then I had a great idea: surprise Mike at the airport! Even if he couldn’t get away that evening, we’d have a few minutes together. I hadn’t seen him in a week. I’d just lost my job. I deserved a dose of comfort before he went home to his wife.
-----
“Aren’t you on TV?”
“Nope.”
Inside the international terminal at LAX I scowled into the restroom mirror and tried to run my fingers through my bottle-blonde hair. Nothing doing. Too much hairspray from the day’s shoot. The makeup itched, too, but I resisted the impulse to plunge my head under the tap and wash it off. Mike liked me in makeup.
“I reconnize you. You’re Mrs. Gone. From the commercial.” The woman splashed water but no soap on her French manicure. A tiny thing, she teetered on precariously high heels. Her bleached grin sparkled from between shiny, pink lips. “If you wanna be incognito, I won’t tell.” She winked.
I’d bought an iPod just for the earphones so I could avoid such conversations, but the skinny, white cord was buried somewhere in my huge, green purse. I nodded to the woman and slung the purse over my shoulder. I almost hit her with it but it would have been an accident.
Back in the terminal I found Mike’s Aeromexico flight number on the screen. His flight had already landed. Security didn’t allow me in the terminal or anywhere near the baggage claim, so I positioned myself where I’d be able to see him when he came through the Arrivals gate. He'd have to go through customs, so I figured I had time to wait.
There was a café, but I wasn’t hungry. I could have grabbed a newspaper, but I've never cared about current events. So I found a seat (high-heeled Rodeo Drive boots are beautiful, but not practical for standing around) and daydreamed. By the time Mike sauntered out of the terminal, I was hoping he’d have time for an afternoon wrangle in my bed.
Mike strode at the head of the crowd, as usual, his bag slung carelessly over his shoulder, his dark jacket swinging open, his tie loose. A quiver tickled my chest at how his faded jeans molded to his shape and his Mexican tan set off his blond curls. He wore his hair long, in what I imagined was a gesture of defiance to all things corporate, even though he was destined to be a network executive. He was handsome enough to be a movie star but smart enough to know from where the money flowed. The show he produced (shot in Mexico because production costs were cheaper there) was a competition between sexy couples to see who could get pregnant first, with adultery thrown in for spice. I hadn’t told him I wasn’t crazy about it.
I stood and stepped forward when I saw Mike, then stopped when his eyes lit on something. I followed their beams to his wife. Damn. I recognized her because the two had been photographed together for the tabloids. She wasn’t what I expected. The photos had made her out to be a pudgy woman with no fashion sense. In person she was cute, if mousy, with a shy smile. She was also very young and very pregnant.
I ducked behind a sign for Budget Rent-A-Car.
At the sight of his wife, Mike’s cheeks went pink and his eyes brightened. When the two met beside the baggage carousel he held her—tenderly, so as not to squish her baby bulge. She threw her arms around him, and her cubic zirconium ring flashed in the fluorescent light. For a moment I wondered if he’d lied to me about the ring and it was really a diamond.
Mike kissed his wife in a way he’d never kissed me, his whole body relieved to be in her arms. His lips moved. I think he said, “I missed you.” He had told me the marriage wasn’t working and he was thinking of divorcing her. He hadn’t bothered to mention the pregnancy, or the exquisite tenderness he obviously felt for her.
When he opened his eyes and saw me, his expression soured. I wasn’t happy about the situation either. He turned away and picked up his suitcase. The lovebirds walked past me with their arms around each other. I buried my nose in a rental car brochure.
-----
I’d bought the purse because it was fashionable and roomy. The phone had to be in there because the purse was ringing. I finally found the phone at the bottom under a couple of headshots, amid loose change and old lipsticks. It was stuck inside my passport, which was still there from my last trip to Mexico to the set of Mike’s show. I’d had to pretend I was his assistant. The head of Wardrobe had hated me.
“Hello.”
“She’s in the john. She’s always in the john.” He sighed.
“I guess she would be.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t tell you she was pregnant because—”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He purred. “Hey girl.”
I’d once thought he reserved the “Hey girl” purr for me. It meant things were going to be all right. I’d fooled myself into believing he was going to divorce his wife, and that made it okay for us to be together. But in that moment, “Hey girl” sounded like what it most likely was, an empty phrase he purred to all the women he slept with. I figured he used it on whoever he was sleeping with in Mexico. Probably the head of Wardrobe.
I didn’t answer.
“It was sweet of you to come, but you should have called.”
Smug bastard. “I didn’t come to see you, silly. I’m going to—” (a travel poster glowed on the wall and I went with it) “—London. I’ve got a job.”
“Really?”
I took the surprise in his voice as an insult. “Yeah. Indie film. The lead.” I was a professional. I made my living at stretching the truth.
“That’s great. When will you be back?”
“I don’t know. A few weeks.”
We waited for one of us to say “I’ll call you,” but neither of us did. At least that part of the conversation was honest.
/> I returned the phone to the depths of my purse.
Lies had never bothered me before. I had dated other men while seeing Mike and without telling him about them. But I hadn’t married those men or told them I loved them. And judging from the protuberance his wife sported, Mike had started telling me the love lie at about the time his wife became pregnant. I wondered how it could be worth it for what must have been, to him, plain old extramarital sex.
But I had lied, too, and not just about my age. While I stood behind the rental car sign and dug in my purse for my headphones, I came up with the truth: my whole life was a lie. My job, which wasn’t my job anymore, consisted of pretending to be someone I wasn’t in order to sell a product I didn’t use to people who didn’t need it so I could pay for my fake blonde, fake smile, fake everything. I had dabbled in acting classes but never worked hard enough to become the artist I didn’t really care to be. I wasn’t a real actor. I wasn’t even a real person.
So what was I without my spokesperson job and my married, TV producer boyfriend? Casey Clemens was a name printed on a headshot. My real name was Cassandra, but there was no Cassandra in that picture.
The woman from the bathroom tottered by my rent-a-car sign on her way out the door. She winked, and flashed her shiny grin. “Bye-bye, Mrs. Gone,” she said.
TWO
In the departure area I stopped at a drinking fountain to give the acid in my stomach something to churn. Crowd chatter and intercom drone echoed up and down between glistening floors and high ceilings, creating a hollow buzz. I stepped into a line that turned out to be the British Airways ticket counter.
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