by Carey Lewis
Cesar sat back down, both he and Hector leaned forward with their elbows on their knees, watching the Millers.
“We can’t afford this,” Mrs. Miller said. It sounded like she was going to cry.
“What about my farm? How long’s this going to take?” Ben asked.
“We’ll bring someone in to take care of the farm.”
“Why can’t I do it?”
“It’s against our insurance. Everyone on site has to be cleared by us.”
“Just throw it in as an extra cost to me I assume?”
“Mr. Miller,” Cesar said, “you expect someone to work for free?”
DRIVING IN THE ACURA, CESAR could see the smile on Hector’s face. The smile so bright it could almost light the dark road in front of them. Cesar was proud of himself, of his plan. He said, “The part I thought was going to trip us up was when they ask what the name of our company was. You tell them GCB from California.”
“Said California so they don’t try looking it up. Figure it works, it’s where they make the TV shows.”
“You saying GCB because you’re thinking that’s the part makes you high.”
“Isn’t it?”
Cesar chuckled, told Hector it was THC. “Stands for tetrahydrocannabinol.”
“Say that five times fast.”
“It’s Delta eight-THC and Delta nine give you the high, Delta nine’s the abundant one.”
“All that shit’s in your wheelhouse,” Hector said. “I just smoke. When you come up with the plan of them paying us?”
“You said we need money to bring in the heat lamps and stuff. Before that I was just thinking I wanted the house.”
Hector turned to look at him, Cesar still smiling ear to ear. “Now they’re paying us to have the house. What happens down the line, they thinking the house should be done?”
Cesar turned from the wheel to look at him. “The house never going to be done. They keep paying us until they run out of money. Then we say that’s too bad, got to give the house to the bank now. Then we tell them bank says it’s our house because the work we put into it.”
Hector turned back to face the road, said, “It’s not for a ways anyway. Time enough to come up with something better.”
Cesar was offended. “You come up with something better let me know.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE ONLY FLIGHT THAT WAS available for Deacon was Delta Airlines Flight 5306 which departed at 6:10pm, had a three hour layover in Atlanta, and would eventually land in Philadelphia at 12:19am. He missed this flight.
Brooke had told him it went on long enough, she needed to get her things out of their loft. She told him movers come and take her stuff out. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to see the loft like that, void of his life with her, nothing but barren brick and exposed pipes. He wondered if maybe instead of going home, he should go straight to the cottage in the Poconos. Fly for six hours then a two hour car ride when he already felt dead on his feet. He’d have to face the cabin, the memories they shared there. The unspoken promise of building more, a family.
He wondered the real reason he didn’t want to catch his flight.
He had packed his bag but decided to rest before heading off. He wondered how much he could sweat, seemed all he was doing today, his body getting rid of the toxins. He knew he had to get home, go on with this new life he didn’t ask for. Maybe laying down was a way of delaying it. He wondered if he stayed because she was still here.
Those were the last thoughts he had before he passed out. Now the sun was up and his phone was ringing.
“Yeah,” he said into it.
“Mr. TV. Man knows how to party.” Cesar.
“You meet the man who knows how to recover send him my way.”
“Shit, that’s why I give you the day. Figuring you might be a little worse for wear.”
“The way I feel I’m thinking a week wouldn’t make a difference.”
“I’m feeling great,” Cesar said. “Maybe you come on by, some of it’ll rub off on you.”
Then it came back to him again, shooting those people, how real it looked. “I’m not there anymore. Got a plane last night.”
“For real? Where’d you go?”
“Philly.”
“That’s why you’re still in pain. Feeling like that and then flying? Shit, you’re just asking for trouble.”
“Your movie looked real.” Deacon didn’t know how to bring it up so he just blurted it out.
“That’s something I want to talk to you about. What flight you catch?”
It threw Deacon off. “The six o’clock out. Had a layover in Atlanta.”
“How long was that?”
“The layover? About three hours, why?”
“Layover’s the worst. Figuring you got some sleep though, sitting in one of them plastic chairs.”
Deacon could hear the faint taps of a keyboard on the other end of the line. He wondered if Cesar was checking his story. “When you think you can make it back?”
“Wasn’t coming back. We’re doing a house here then going someplace else.”
“That right? I see here you can catch… let’s see…” Cesar was quiet. Deacon could picture him checking flights on the Internet.
“Why do you need me to come back?”
“There’s a Spirit Airlines Flight goes out at three-twenty, gets to Myrtle at five. That enough time for you?”
“Why do you need me back there Cesar?”
“Just things we need to talk about.”
“We’re talking now.”
“Man, you ain’t never seen a movie? We don’t talk about things on the phone. This flight comes straight here, no layover. We have our chat, get you on a plane the next morning if it even takes that long.”
“I can’t get away. I told you, I’m working.”
“Not today you’re not, feeling like you are. Can’t get that pretty face on camera it’s not up to snuff.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
The line was quiet. Deacon waited, wondered if he should say something. Tell Cesar he wanted the whole thing behind him. But he knew Cesar wasn’t done.
“That movie looked real right?” Cesar asked.
Deacon didn’t say anything.
“You know my favorite part?” Cesar continued. “The part you smiling at me. Got it all on tape. Nice, pretty smile of yours. Smiling, showing you was there, enjoying yourself.”
Deacon was quiet, Cesar letting him think. Let him realize he was in a trap, blackmailed.
“I’m guessing you don’t have funds to finish the movie, why you’re calling me,” Deacon said.
He swore he heard Cesar smile over the phone. He said, “That’s a good way to put it.”
“So I can just wire it to you. You don’t need me there.”
“That’s a problem though. Banks got limits to how much you can wire. Going to cost me more than they allow to finish what we started. Then we got the problem of them holding it like they do. Let’s say you change your mind, no longer believing in what we showed you. Let’s say you pull out your financial backing.”
“I don’t suppose I could make a promise.”
“Deacon Gray, get your pasty ass back here so we can wrap this up.”
The line went dead.
IT BOUGHT HIM SOME TIME at least. Cesar wouldn’t be expecting him until five. So Deacon had what, eight hours to find a way out of this? Maybe tell Cesar he missed the flight, would have to come on a later one. It would buy him time to figure out what to do.
Or just pay and get it behind him. He was sitting on the same bed at Ma Bell’s Bed and Breakfast, watched the gray cat nudge open the door and walk in. He looked up where he saw the stuffed cat yesterday. It was gone. He looked down and saw it on another shelf, between different stuffed animals. Fucking things were hunting him.
He didn’t even say how much he wanted.
How much could you transfer on a wire before you had to get the bank to make an
exception, five grand? Did Cesar know that? Deacon could only assume Cesar wanted more. Where the hell was he supposed to get that much money?
He turned on his phone, went through the contacts, and hit a button.
“Oh, I’ve been wanting to have a word with you,” Harvey said when he answered.
“Everything okay?”
“Sure. I love dealing with racists.”
“I warned you.”
“You know what they’re doing down here?”
“You’re there?”
“They tell me come on down, look at the house they might be wanting to sell. They asked me over the phone how much they could get for it. I said I had to come down there and look, see what shape it’s in before I could make an offer.”
“Okay.”
“They got signs up here Deke. You told me the history of the house, they got signs up telling people what happened.”
Deacon put his head in his hand, rubbing his forehead. “Start at the beginning.”
“You told me your show told the Campbells the house was haunted,” Harvey said, talking slow, being sarcastic. He wasn’t impressed. “You said there was a lot of killing here. You told me they wanted to sell.”
“You getting to it?”
“You’re the one not understanding,” Harvey said. “I called them because you told me they wanted to sell. I told them that, they said come and look at the house. I come down here and I see they got signs up on the lawn.”
“For sale signs? They’re not going through you?”
“You want to hear what the signs say?”
“Sounds important.”
“They say ‘Come see the dead gooks.’ Got one says ‘Hang out with the hanging darky’s,’ with nooses around the trees. Those were some of the signs when I first got here but the cops made them take them down.”
“I don’t understand,” Deacon said.
“I go knock on the door, they say the tour isn’t ready yet. I say, What tour? They tell me the tour of the haunted house as seen on Gray’s Ghosts.”
“But they wanted to sell. The wife did anyway,” Deacon said. He saw the gray cat between his feet, looking up at him. He tried to shoo it away with his foot.
“That’s the one with the fake front teeth?” Harvey asked. “I know they’re fake because she’s smiling so much. I tell her who I am, tell her we spoke on the phone. She says I can come in if I want but she doesn’t think they’re going to be selling anymore.”
“You talk her out of it?”
“I tried. The husband, he’s a piece of shit gives pieces of shit a bad name. He tells me the zipper heads going to finally do something good for him for once. His words, not mine. Says because of them dying he’s going to get rich. Hoping to get some people taking those tours over in Salem, hopes they come down this way.”
“Jesus,” Deacon said, falling back onto the bed. He heard a shriek as the cat jumped out from under him.
“What was that?” Harvey asked. “Sounded like a cat.”
Deacon saw the cat glare at him over its shoulder, showing it’s ass to him as it walked to the foot of the bed. “You tell them they’ll get more selling the house than they will doing those tours?”
The line was silent.
“Harvey?”
“I put an offer on the house,” he said finally.
“So they’re selling?”
“I put an offer before I got here because of what you said. You remember telling me the house was in good shape? Location and all that?”
“What’re you trying to say? You did something stupid but don’t want to take blame for it?”
Harvey was quiet again. “The wife put the house up after I talked to her the first time. Guess Brooke gave an estimate she liked, said she agreed on the price. I heard her husband yelling at her over the phone but you were right, she wanted to sell.”
“But you said—”
“So I made the offer and she accepted.”
“So it’s our house. Get to the problem.”
“I told them they’d make more selling the house than they would on the tours. They tell me they’ll see how it is in thirty days.”
“The escrow period.”
“So we’ll either get the house or the money back. We just got to wait a bit.”
“So back out now and get the money back if they don’t want to sell.”
Harvey was quiet again.
“Just get to the parts you’re not telling me,” Deacon said.
“I was in a hurry getting down here,” Harvey said. “They faxed over the contract while I was packing and I told an associate to sign it. It’s a fucked up contract Deke. It says when you guys shot the show, that was the inspection because you’re the one that made contact so that’s one contingency gone.”
“Jesus Harvey.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault. You’re the one that tells me to pressure them with it before they change their mind.”
“You’re not blaming me for this.”
“I’m heading over to talk to their Realtor now to see what we can do. I’ll take care of it.”
“I can’t help but feel there’s a lot you’re not telling me,” Deacon said.
“I’ll take care of it Deke.”
“What if I need that money now?”
“Even if all this didn’t happen it would still be tied up, you know that. Maybe next time you don’t go thinking being racist means being stupid. They knew you used to be a home inspector, how they’re getting away with the place already having an inspection.”
“How long ago was I an inspector?”
“Deke, I’ll take care of it. Just be frugal for awhile.”
“Right,” Deacon said and hung up the phone. He looked over at the cat, watched it jump off the bed. The one that liked to hangout on the shelves was gone too.
BROOKE GAVE MARTINA A HUG and sent her off to catch her flight. She was finally alone, standing in the hotel lobby, watching her friend drive off to the airport. Brooke would stay a few more days, maybe longer, until Martina phoned and told her where to go next.
She thought about it last night at the club. All these guys around her, offering to buy her drinks. She was older than most of them and wouldn’t have been interested had she been in the right frame of mind to begin with. The real problem wasn’t that she wasn’t interested. It was that she wasn’t interested in being interested. She wondered how much sense that made.
She would leave the show.
When she watched Martina drive off she finally felt alone. In a good way. She made up her mind about Gray’s Ghosts. About Deacon. About everything. She felt like she was closing a chapter in her life, hell, the whole damn book. A book that felt a little too long. Now she was ready to start on the new one, see what new adventures someone had written for her.
And then her phone rang. It was Deacon. It was always Deacon.
She didn’t accept the call.
He’d be home in Philly now, looking at all that empty space in the loft, wondering what to do with himself. He’d have that panic in his chest, feeling his heart wanting to beat out. That feeling he’d get that he should be doing something but there was nothing for him to do. When he didn’t have anything to do he always turned to her. It was part of the reason she’d stayed so long.
Her phone rang again.
She knew she had to go. She was drowning in the uncertainty of who she was. She was being pulled under by the whispers of people wanting her to be someone she wasn’t sure she was anymore. A wife. A TV host. A future mother. Brooke Gray.
The phone rang again. Deacon pulling her under. He’d keep pulling until she made him swim on his own.
She declined the call.
It was a movie they were shooting. Deacon was high, wanted people to think he was cool and now he was freaking out over nothing. She couldn’t keep taking care of him.
But he’d keep calling. And she still had the rest of her contract. When that was over she’d make her break.
Her phone rang.
She answered it.
“Hey,” she said, not wanting to hear his heartbreak about the empty loft. “How was the flight?”
“I didn’t make it. We need to talk. Can we meet?”
“Deke—”
“It’s important.”
She agreed to meet him at a taco place on the boardwalk. She’d tell him it was all in his head and break it to him that she was leaving the show. She couldn’t keep it from him, he had a right to know, to plan what he was going to do - bring in a new host or let the show die or continue without her.
She sat on a stool on the boardwalk at the counter rather than inside. The first thing she noticed when he approached was all the cat hair on his clothes. The second thing she noticed was the strain on his face.
They didn’t talk when they ordered food. Didn’t talk until the waiter handed them their drinks over the counter.
“They’re blackmailing me,” he said finally.
“What? Saying they’re going to go to the union?” she asked, taking the strawberry off the rim of her glass, putting it in her mouth. Trying to downplay his inevitable panic. “Pay the fine.”
“He didn’t come out and say it, but I think it was real.”
“I told you Deke—”
She didn’t finish her sentence, thinking he would interrupt her. He didn’t, so they were quiet.
“Let’s see what we’re looking at, okay?”
He didn’t look up from the counter as he nodded.
“It’s a movie. They say they have you on tape but you didn’t see any cameras.”
“They were wearing body cams. Said they were in the walls too.”
“That you didn’t see. Would you shoot a movie like that?”
He shook his head.
“So maybe it was a movie. They say they’re going to go to the union.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” he said. He looked up when the waiter brought over their plates and put them down. Brooke told the waiter they were fine and he went off to the back.
