Unwritten

by Charles Martin

  She rifled through the bag, smiling and nodding. When she came to one tube of lipstick, she shook her head and handed it back to me. “It’s color sixty-four. Not sixty-six. In the red family, but not quite—”

  I opened the door and said, “You are starting to get on my nerves.”

  She sat back, sipped one of her coffees, and crossed her legs. She then thumbed over her shoulder, smiling slyly. “Get in line.”

  I exchanged number sixty-six for number sixty-four and drove us to the Biltmore. In the ten minutes it took us to get there, she transformed herself into a blonde with big curly hair to her shoulders, wearing heavy makeup, an expensive-looking deep-red dress that revealed a fake tattoo, six-inch stiletto heels, and a Dolly Parton chest. Seemed like a lot of effort to walk through the lobby of the hotel. Steady laughed as I pulled up in front of the entrance to the Biltmore. I looked at her, eyeing her obvious enhancement. “Really?”

  She shrugged. “If I don’t want men to look at my face, then I give them something else to look at.”

  “Well, I’d say you’ve succeeded at that.”

  Steady handed us two keys. I said, “You’re not staying?”

  “I need to get back. Some rather talented reporters have put together a few of the pieces and it’s believed that I was the last person to see or talk to Katie Quinn before she died. That means there are a lot of people wanting to ask me questions that I am obliged not to answer.”

  “Good luck with that.” I handed him the keys to the truck.

  He turned, beads draped over his other hand. “Luck has got nothing to do with it.”

  Katie and I rode the elevator to the fifth floor. Two rooms at the far end, doors facing each other. She unlocked her door and said, “You want a good dinner or”—her lip turned up—“room service?”

  “You know a good place?”

  She smiled. “See you in thirty?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I donned my flip-flops, faded jeans, and a white button-down. Tied my hair back. I knocked on her door and the blonde I’d dropped off had been replaced by a brunette with a bouncy ponytail and titanium glasses. Gone were the big boobs, replaced by a relatively flat chest. Long trailing eyebrows. Dark eyeliner, eye shadow, high cheekbones, fishnet stockings. Short skirt. Long legs. She looked almost Asian and nothing like herself.

  I checked the number to make sure I had the correct room. The lingerie model shut her door and began walking in front of me toward the elevator, sort of flipping her hips as she walked. “What, you like Tiffany the bosomed trophy wife better?”

  “No, I just wasn’t expecting her—I mean, you.”

  We took a cab to the Mile and walked to a little restaurant called Ortanique. Unbeknownst to me, she’d made a reservation and requested a specific table. We waited while the servers prepped the table. People milled around us. Busy conversations on all sides. Katie sunk her arm inside mine, completing the act.

  They put us in a corner, her side to the room. This allowed her to look left if she wanted and view the room, or look right and discreetly view the reflection of the room in the mirrors. She’d done this before.

  Before I had a chance to open my mouth, Ashley the Asian lingerie model had ordered for us. “Two mojitos.”

  The server noted this and said, “You ready to order?”

  Katie pointed at me. “He’ll have the mango salad. I’ll have the Caesar. We’ll split the brie. Then he’ll have the double pork chop and I’ll take the crab cakes.”

  The server nodded. “Good choices, all.”

  She continued, “For dessert, he’ll have that chocolate decadence thing that makes you want to slap your mama, and I’ll have the rum-soaked banana fritters.” She smiled at me and brushed my hand. “Make you want to kiss your boyfriend.”

  The server looked impressed. “Sit tight. I’ll get this in. Two world-class mojitos coming up.”

  He disappeared. “Boyfriend?”

  “Acting is all about making others think something that may or may not be true. The truth of it lies with you.” She glanced at the server typing in our order. “That guy’s not thinking about”—she lowered her voice—“Miss Quinn. He’s thinking about a couple having fun, about me being happy with you, and how a happy couple at his table means a better tip for him.”

  The mojitos arrived. We sipped. The concoction hit my lips, then my throat. Smooth would have been an understatement. She smiled, licked her lips, pulled out a mint leaf, and smelled it. “Good, isn’t it?”

  “No… ‘good’ is a gas station cup of coffee at two a.m. This…” I brushed the condensation with my thumb down the tall glass. “… Is the nectar of God.”

  She laughed. “Careful, it’ll sneak up on you.”

  A pregnant silence. One, I guessed, she’d prepared. She held her glass to her lips. Pausing. Staring at me over the glass. “Tell me something.”

  “What?”

  “Something nobody else knows.”

  I laughed. “I’ve never been here.”

  She sipped. “You said you were in ‘manufacturing.’ ”

  Another question posed as a statement. I pretended my attention was spread across the room. “Yep.”

  “What did you manufacture?”

  “Our target market was seventeen and under though we experienced considerable crossover into several categories above.”

  “That told me absolutely nothing.”

  Another smile. “I realize that.”

  “You play your cards close to your chest.”

  “Maybe, but not as close as”—I whispered—“Isabella.”

  Our food arrived and she changed the subject. We talked of likes, odd habits, what people were wearing, and why a second mojito was a good idea. My salad was good, but my double pork chop may have been the best piece of pork I’d ever put in my mouth followed closely by some colossal chocolate thing. We sampled from each other’s plates as if they were our own and while her crab cakes were good, the rum-soaked banana fritters may have taken the cake. By the time I paid the bill, I was too stuffed to move. She pointed at the street. “Let’s walk.”

  We reached the sidewalk, turned left, and she hung her arm inside mine, furthering the act. She surveyed the street, the shops, the people, and spoke just loud enough for me to hear. “Ever notice there are two Miamis? The one you see before sundown and the one you see after.” Next door, a line of people stretched from the ticket counter of a small theater down the sidewalk and around the corner. The marquee read THE QUEEN LIVES. KATIE QUINN MARATHON. TONIGHT. 9 P.M. She stared up where the red and white lights reflected off her face. She whispered, less to me and more the memory of the place, “ ‘That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows, whereon the stars in secret influence comment…’ ”

  A good line. “Shakespeare,” I said, surprised. “A sonnet, I think.”

  She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “So you do come off that boat.”

  A slight nod. “Sometimes.”

  Her eyes reflected the white lights. Sparkling. “This is the theater where I got my start.” A laugh. “At least, my start around here. They did stage plays before they converted it to a movie theater.”

  “What was it?”

  “Little Women. Steady helped me get an audition. I played Jo.” She laughed at herself. “That’s back when I could get away with it.”

  “With what?”

  She laughed and shook her head.

  I pointed at the counter. “You mind?”

  She stared at the line. Then down at the sidewalk to avoid any possibility of eye contact. Then at me. Weighing me. “No.”

  I bought two tickets and they opened the doors. I couldn’t eat popcorn because I couldn’t fit another thing in my mouth so we bypassed the candy counter and climbed the steps, getting two seats up in the back. We sat and within moments, the theater dimmed and the movie started. The title read The Mountain Between Us. She whispered in my ear. “Came out a couple of years ago. My third Acade
my Award.”

  I straightened. “You’ve won three—”

  She put her finger to my lips. “Shhhh.”

  Maybe it was the mojito talking. I slowly uncurled three fingers and whispered, “You’ve won three Academy Awards?”

  She tucked her knees into her chest, wrapped her arms around her knees, studied the crowd, and nodded.

  She was mesmerizing. Tantalizing. In control of herself and everyone around her. When the credits rolled, half the audience was bawling. Oddly, while I watched the movie, she watched the crowd and chewed on a fingernail.

  Every so often, I’d catch her mouthing the words before she said them on the screen. And the fingers on her left hand were like the puppeteer above controlling the stringed thing below. Every movement she made with her hand, she made on the screen. And with her right hand, she controlled her leading man. In the second movie, she played a homeless woman—Sam—on the run with her daughter—Hope—who writes letters to God. Both are rescued by a retired Texas Ranger who takes them back to his ranch in west Texas. At one point, the movie showed a scene in the river. Skinny-dipping. Brief nudity of the top of her buttocks. Just before the screen showed her wading into the water in her birthday suit, she slid her hand up and over my eyes.

  Two movies later, the last credits rolled at five a.m. I sat there, spellbound. The audience around me stood and applauded, whistling, yelling, “Encore! Encore!” She tugged on me.

  We walked the street to the rhythm of my flip-flops. She was quiet. Two streets off the Mile, we passed a bookstore. It was closed but the window displays were not. The front three windows, each eight feet wide, were covered with a single book: The Ice Queen: What the Media and Katie Never Told You about Katie Quinn. In the lower righthand corner of the cover it read “The Unauthorized Biography.” A poster of Queequeg sat to the left advertising a signing the following night. Undoubtedly, he would tell everyone about the new material he was working on. The bookstore must have had a hundred copies in the window display alone. It even got my attention. Someone had taped a printout of the New York Times best-seller list. The Ice Queen sat at number seven. Up three from last week. She shook her head. “Writers. Can’t live with them. Can’t trust them.”

  I stared at the book. “This guy really got to you, didn’t he?”

  “He took what I told him and turned it into what he wanted.”

  “So sue him.”

  She shrugged. “We didn’t have enough of a case to stop the publication. So even if I were alive, where would that get me? It’d make him look credible and me petty.” She turned, placing her back to the book. “Lies. All lies.”

  The smug look on his inked face mixed with the mysterious pose did not make him look like the mysterious writer. It made him look artificial. “He doesn’t know it yet but he’s a flash in a pan. A coattail rider. Here today, forgotten tomorrow. And his two seconds of fame are winding down, not up.”

  “It still hurts. I’m tempted to tell all to Steady and then let him pay someone to set the record straight.”

  As she finished speaking, two obscenity-laced, skateboarding, hoodie kids popping kick flips and grinding on the rail of the bus bench rolled past. One saw the book in the display along with a poster-size picture of Katie. With exaggerated hand motions and colorful epithets, he gave her picture the bird. “ ’Bout time she died. Now maybe they’ll shut up about how life was so tough for that rich bi—”

  I tried to drown him out. “Don’t pay them any mind.”

  She didn’t even wince. Years in the spotlight shone through. “It’s tough to pity someone who has everything you wish you had.”

  My head was spinning and I needed sleep. “You want me to hail a cab?”

  “No. It’s not far.”

  We strolled the streets, arriving at the Biltmore forty-five minutes later. She talked of movies, roles played, lines spoken, loves lost. I listened, letting her talk. Once at the hotel, I walked her to her room. My curiosity surfaced. “Was that difficult for you?”

  A shrug. Then a single shake of her head. “I finished filming that movie and then spent three months in a”—she made quotation marks with her fingers—“ ‘health spa’ getting unhooked from Xanax and hydrocodone.” She began walking into her room. “The amazing thing about movies is what’s left on the editing room floor.” She turned. “If they had seen those pieces, I wonder if they’d have clapped. Whistled. Handed me that statue.”

  France is six hours ahead of East Coast time so Steady had scheduled our plane to leave at six p.m., allowing us to arrive early in the morning. We had almost twelve hours before our plane took off. “See you tomorrow?”

  “You mean today?”

  “Yep.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I walked to my room, where the sight of myself in the mirror stopped me. I had a problem and needed help. I grabbed my passport, returned across the hall, and knocked on her door. She had peeled off Ashley and quickly become the frame upon which she hung these various personas. She stared without saying anything. I said, “I need a favor?”

  She nodded. “Sure.”

  I opened my passport to the picture page and held it up. “I need you to make me look like him.”

  She ran her fingers through my hair. For one brief second she stepped out of character. “Vous êtes fou.”

  “What’s that?”

  “French.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “ ‘You’re crazy.’ ” She took the passport and studied the picture. She looked at me without moving her face. “Is your name really ‘Cartwright Jones’?”

  I shook my head.

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “A character from one of my favorite movies as a kid—Where Eagles Dare.”

  “Ahhh.” She smiled. “Sir Richard Burton. Now, there was a leading man.” She studied the picture again and held it up alongside my face. “Shouldn’t be too hard.”

  She shut the door behind me and I moved to her chair and sat down. “I don’t really know how I want it cut.”

  She sized me up from across the room. “I do.” She rummaged in her bags for what she thought she’d need. Then she crossed the room and stood behind me. She ran her fingers through my hair, stopping when she reached the end. Evidently, I grew rather tense.

  She stopped. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s just been a long time since anybody’s done what you’re doing.”

  “What, cutting your hair?”

  “No… touching me.”

  She paused, turned away, walked into the bathroom, and said, “Come here.”

  I walked in and she was kneeling next to the tub, water running. “Sit.” I did. “Lean your head back.” I leaned against a towel and hung my head in the tub. Slowly, she began rinsing my hair with the attached sprayer. While most of the water ran into the tub, some ran off my head, down my shoulders, trickled down my stomach and onto the floor. Until that moment, I’d never had anyone wash my hair. And until the next moment, I’d never had anyone scrub it with their fingernails, rinse it, and then massage it with conditioner.

  She handed me a towel and I dabbed myself, following her to the chair. She wrapped me in another towel, pulled a comb from her back pocket, and studied my head. She raised her comb, paused, half smiled, and said, “Hold still.”

  I tried.

  She placed a hand on my shoulder. Control in her voice. “You’re trembling.”

  “Sorry.”

  She spoke softly, eyes finding mine. “It’s the stuff we bury that hurts the most.”

  I nodded slowly. “Yes.”

  She placed the comb in my hair and began pulling it down and outward. She moved her way around my head, combing out the tangles. She noticed my white-knuckled hands on the towel, tapped my fingers, and whispered, “Let go.” I did. Finally, she leaned down. “Close your eyes.”

  I looked at her. She placed her palms across my eyes. “Close them.”

  I did.

  “Now le
t out that breath you’ve been holding since you walked in here.”

  I did that, too.

  For the next twenty minutes, she combed my hair, talking softly, telling me about her dressing rooms at trailers on locations around the world, lots in Hollywood, and locations on Broadway. About the designers who styled her hair, their names, the way they laughed, how they smelled of smoke and what happened when one of them started smoking too much crack. She told me about one of the first movies she’d made, filmed in Spain, her first big role and what it felt like the first time someone combed—or in her case, brushed—her hair. What it did for her. How it made her feel. How it relaxed her. She finished by saying, “I’ve been in several places where they charge you a lot of money to get your act together, but I’m convinced I could open a get-your-act-together center and have a line out the door with only one service.” She worked the comb through my hair, pulling gently. “Two chairs. One with someone standing behind it that washed and conditioned your hair. And a second where they combed your hair until…” Her voice trailed off. “… Your troubles disappeared.”

  I looked out of the corner of my eyes. “And bald people?”

  A nod. Half smile. “Scalp massages. Pedicures.” She waved the comb over the door. “Line would be down the street.”

  I didn’t disagree.

  She worked professionally. Arms extended. Like a dancer. Her shoulders were lean. Muscled. Arms toned. Working out had been part of her past. I stared down. At the floor. The pattern of the carpet around her feet. My hair clung to her skin.

  She lifted my chin with the comb, eyeing my sideburns. Her face two feet from mine. I glanced. Sweat dotted her lip.

  Forty-five minutes later, she stood in front of me, scissors snipping, a pile of hair at her feet. Head tilted to one side. Without explaining, she disappeared to the sink, made some noise, then came back with a cup spilling over with suds and bubbles. She lifted the mug. “You mind?”