KW 09:Shot on Location

by Laurence Shames

  Everyone except Claire Segal pretended to find this rather funny.

  16.

  At yet another fancy marina, this one right there in Key West, mere blocks from downtown, a third speedboat was being berthed, this time under the last mauve glow of dusk. In the soft and shifting light, the boat’s exact color was impossible to discern. Midnight blue? Deep-space purple? Obsidian black? Huge twin engines freighted the stern and lifted the bulbous hull so that the boat had rather the posture of a crouching lion, the hindquarters held low, coiled to spring, the chest and shoulders tensed to strike.

  When the last line had been cleated off, a dockhand laid a gangway across the transom. A woman in large amber sunglasses stepped off the speedboat. She was tall, lean, and blonde, her hair becomingly wild and spiky from the sea breeze and the spray. She wore tight pink pants that buttoned off just below the knee; on her feet were gladiatorial-looking sandals with mid-height heels and straps that climbed and wrapped around her calves like strangler vines. Over a bikini top that was little more than strings and patches, she wore a light black leather jacket that was far too snug to zip; it left a slice of her exposed from below the navel to her taut and suntanned throat.

  Swinging a stylish bag that seemed able to contain not much more than some make-up and a change of clothes, she sashayed down the dock, the heels of her sandals clicking softly as she headed for her hotel, The Nest, where she had a reservation under a name that was not her own.

  ---

  Back in Joey and Sandra’s backyard, dinner was well advanced. Much wine had been drunk and more was on the table; the yellow glow of hurricane lamps reflected off the glasses. The companionable smells of garlic and olive oil were mingling with the salt air and the jasmine. Expertly twirling pasta while also fondling the chihuahua in his lap, Bert said to Jake, “So Joey tells me you’re a writer. Whaddya write?”

  Jake sipped some wine and blithely said, “Whatever I can get a contract for.”

  “Ah, you work on contract. Me and Joey, we know some guys who work on contract, don’t we, Joey?”

  “Don’t even go there, Bert.”

  “Hey, just messin’ around.”

  Hoping to steer the conversation elsewhere, Sandra said, “You know what I think must be great about being a writer? The mental health part.”

  “There’s a mental health part?” said Jake.

  “I mean, people hold so much inside. What they’re afraid of. Who they’re mad at. What they think is all screwed up about the world. Writers have a way to get all that off their chests. Don’t they?”

  Jake considered as he put some salad on his plate. “Sometimes. Sort of. Maybe.”

  Bert said, “What are you, a politician?”

  “It’s just that it’s complicated. You know, people think writers just sit down and let it all hang out, tell the world what they really think, write whatever they feel like writing. But if you’re on a job —”

  “Y’ever write your own stuff?” Bert cut in. He hadn’t meant to interrupt, or not that sharply at least. But that was one of the things about being old: If you wanted to ask a question it paid to ask it quickly, before it slipped your mind. “Ya know,” he went on, “just stuff ya wanna say?”

  Jake seemed caught up short. He drank some wine then said almost apologetically, “I used to.”

  “Used to?” Joey said.

  Jake gave a little laugh. “Hey, no one dreams of being a ghostwriter when he grows up. I wrote my own stuff. Sure I did. Just didn’t quite work out.”

  He briefly looked down. His eyes landed on the chihuahua, which had lifted its nose onto the table and was sniffing at Bert’s plate.

  “How come?” the old man asked.

  “Oh boy,” said Jake. “I haven’t talked about this in a lot of years.”

  He nudged his glass in Joey’s direction. Joey filled it for him.

  “I think the problem was that I cared too much. I wanted every word to be perfect. I tried so hard to make it perfect that it probably wasn’t very good. At least that’s what a few people told me.”

  “Who?” said Sandra. “What people?”

  “A few editors and agents.”

  “Fuck do they know?” Bert said. “’Scuse my language, Sandra.”

  Jake made a sound somewhere between a dry laugh and a snort. “Fair question.”

  Sandra, trying to be helpful, said, “Well, it all seems to have turned out for the best.”

  Jake didn’t quite know what to say to that. He tossed her a smile that was meant as thanks but felt uncomfortable at the edges of his mouth.

  Sandra, not quite comfortable herself, went on. “I mean, you seem to have a nice career. You get interesting work —”

  “Which way felt better?” Bert put in, once again a little off the beat, unintentionally abrupt, blurting out a fleeting thought before it vanished.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Which was more fun? I mean, getting paid is good, money’s good, I’m not knockin’ money, plus it’s none of my business and all of that, but I’m sittin’ here, I’m listenin’, and I can’t help wondering, just wondering ya know, if maybe you were better off before. Happier, I mean. But hey, sorry, none of my business. I’ll shut up now. Sorry.”

  Jake picked up his wineglass, put it down again. Crickets rasped. Tree toads made their miniature bleating sounds.

  After a long moment, Sandra said. “Well. Anybody ready for dessert?

  17.

  “You like Negronis?” Claire asked.

  “Don’t know. Never had one.”

  “But you like martinis.”

  “That would be a yes.”

  “Then have a Negroni. Gin, Campari, a little vermouth. It’s like a killer martini in a pink tutu.”

  “Sounds a little strong for lunch.”

  “Oh, it is, believe me. And I almost never drink at lunch.”

  “Then why —”

  “Because I’m furious.”

  They were sitting on the oceanfront deck at Louie’s Backyard. It seemed a hard day to stay mad. A cool breeze was perfectly balancing the heat of the sun. Ripples that now and then spilled over into tiny whitecaps were chasing each other across the surface of the sea. Green-tinged clouds hung near the horizon, never coming any closer.

  Jake asked what she was furious about.

  “We’ll get to that. How are you?”

  It was seemingly the simplest of questions, generally calling for a scripted one-word reply, but in that moment Jake found it a stupefying riddle that he didn’t want to try to answer all at once. He said, “We’ll get to that too. After the Negronis.”

  Waiting for the drinks, they looked out at the twinkling water and, somewhat shyly, at each other. Claire was wearing a blue sundress that tied behind her neck. Her bare arms were toned but slender; there was a pretty arc where her neck flowed down to her collarbones.

  Jake said, “You look different today.”

  She flushed just slightly at the comment. “Get to wear my play clothes. And I’m not carrying the goddamn clipboard.”

  “Your hair looks different too,” he ventured. It was softer today, freer. Wisps of it were lifted by the breeze and waved against her cheek.

  She flushed a tiny bit more but said, “We aren’t on a date. Agreed?”

  To Jake this didn’t exactly sound like scolding and it didn’t exactly sound like teasing, though it did sound just a little bit like both. He said, “Agreed. Just making an observation.”

  The drinks arrived. They looked benign enough. Healthy even, with a coiling twist of orange peel. They clinked glasses and after the first sip Jake said, “So, you want to tell me why you’re furious?”

  Claire looked at the ocean, took another sip and said, “It’s just the stupid show. This big successful cash cow of a program. I just don’t like what it does to people.”

  She told him about the meeting with the publicist and the suits.

  “Not a shred of real concern for Donna,” she said. “Not
even a shred of curiosity about what really happened. All they care about is buzz. Spinning a tidy little story for the media. And the sick part? It’ll work. It’ll work brilliantly.”

  She paused just long enough to nip at her drink, then went on. “The publicist has been talking it up all night, all morning. She’s already got segments lined up on ET and Inside Hollywood. People and Us have committed to stories. Candace is in her glory, of course. The diva in danger. The star as target. Like real life has become one big outtake from the show. The whole thing’s disgusting. Aren’t you glad you asked?”

  Before Jake could answer, a waiter appeared to take their order. Claire said she was too mad to eat much, maybe just some oysters. Jake asked for the same. Then he said, “Actually, I am glad I asked. I’m ticked off about some of this same stuff.”

  Claire heard herself say, “Even though Donna is not your girlfriend?” She hoped it would come out as a little joke, but it didn’t really sound that way because today she truly wanted to settle the question.

  “She’s not. Never was. This isn’t even about Donna. Not really.”

  “So it’s about--?”

  Jake struggled to explain. He was surprised how difficult it was. He described things, explained things, for a living. It was harder when the thing he was explaining was gnawing at his guts. “Yesterday,” he began, “when Quentin called —”

  “And you hung up on him,” Claire put in.

  “Right. You know, for such a smart guy, his timing was incredibly dumb. I’m upset about what happened, it’s horribly fresh in my mind, and he picks that moment to pitch me on this preposterous fake story about the earth cracking open. And the two things side by side made my job seem so ridiculous, so trivial, so embarrassing that writing this cynical hack bullshit is what I’m doing with my life —”

  He broke off because Claire had put her hand on his. This was so unexpected that it sent a spasm all up his arm. Her hand was cool from cradling her glass. She let it rest on his for just a moment then pulled it back. He kept feeling it after it was gone. She said, “You’re being awfully tough on yourself.”

  He shook his head. “No, not tough enough. I take the easy road. I have for years and years. Last night, I was having dinner with this old Mafia guy —”

  That’s when the waiter appeared with the oysters. His eyes widened just slightly and he set the plates down very carefully. Before he could slip away Claire asked him for another round of drinks.

  “Mafia guy?” she said to Jake.

  “Long story.”

  “I’ve got time.”

  So he told her about his evening at Joey’s.

  “This old guy Bert,” he said, “who’s either like a Mob Zen master or totally out of it or probably both, starts asking me all this stuff I haven’t thought about in years. Why’d I stop writing what I wanted to? Which way was I happier? And I swear, by the end of the dinner I felt like I’d been turned completely inside out.”

  The fresh drinks arrived. For a moment Jake just stared at his.

  Claire said, “Tough day all around. But I like talking with you. I sometimes forget what it sounds like when people actually say what they mean.”

  He looked up and met her eyes. They were the same color as the sea behind her.

  They started in on the oysters, salty with brine and sizzling with the tang of Key lime. They sucked them straight from the shells. The shells left an astringent, stony dryness on their tongues and lips; the dryness in turn was bathed away by the clean burn of gin.

  At some point Jake said, “And another thing about these people I had dinner with. They don’t for a second believe what happened to Donna was an accident.”

  The abrupt segue caught Claire by surprise. She paused with an oyster partway to her lips.

  “They’ve seen too many bad things done with speedboats. They don’t know who and they don’t why but they’re sure someone did this on purpose.”

  Claire put the oyster back on her plate.

  “And here’s the part that’s making me nuts,” Jake went on. “There’s this real story right in front of us. Real people. Real blood. Real justice to be done. Or not. And everybody’s too wrapped up in their own bullshit to pay any attention to it. The cops don’t seem to care. Your people from the show don’t want any nasty truth to get in the way of their fairy tale. And me, I’m no better. I was there, I saw it happen, and now I’m supposed to step calmly away, forget all about it, and write an idiotic piece of trash about nothing whatsoever.”

  He broke off and reached for his drink. Claire used her tiny fork to push at the melting ice beneath her oysters. Then she said, “But you don’t want to step away.”

  “I really don’t know what I want.”

  Claire blinked off toward the ocean. Weighing her words, she said, “I think maybe you do.”

  He looked at her, not exactly asking for help but opening himself to accept it.

  “I think you want your own book.”

  He licked his lips. He found nothing to say.

  “A real book,” she went on, “with a real story. A story that won’t just come to you, that you’ll have to go out and find.”

  He looked away a moment and drummed his fingertips lightly on the table. When he brought his eyes back to Claire, his gaze had narrowed and firmed and she couldn’t quite tell if this was from staring at the glinting water or from something like resolve.

  Softly, carefully, she said, “I have an idea. How about we finish our drinks, hop a cab, and see if we can visit Donna?”

  18.

  At Florida Keys General if not on national TV, Donna Alvarez was already an established star.

  She’d amazed the doctors with her resilience, her vigor and her will. Mere hours after sustaining her gruesome injuries, she’d been moved out of the ICU, unhooked from the now unneeded monitors that tracked her rock-solid vital signs. By the next morning, she’d been half-propped up in bed and was sipping lukewarm broth through a straw. By afternoon, weaned down to a modest regimen of Vicodin, she was more or less alert and chatting with the nurses. Not that she didn’t bear evidence of what she’d been through. On her right side, a bulge in her pale green hospital gown traced out the place where a wound was heavily bandaged over a zigzag pattern of stitches. Her right arm was lifted at an awkward angle, the dislocated shoulder immobilized by a kind of heavy-duty bubble wrap, the hand taped to a trapeze on a frame.

  When Claire and Jake, bearing flowers and chocolates, were shown into her room, her eyes, just slightly veiled with the merciful haze of painkillers, were riveted to a gossip show on television.

  Candace McBride was on the screen, talking earnestly about “the near-tragedy on the set of Adrift.” Asked if she thought the guilty speedboat might in fact have been stalking her, the diva put a tremble in her lower lip and looked away. Asked if she had enemies, she was all bewilderment and hurt feelings. “I get along with people. I love people. But fans of the show are so passionate, so involved. Maybe they don’t realize where the character ends and the real me begins.”

  With her good hand Donna switched off the set. Before she even said hello to her visitors, she said in a voice slightly thickened by her meds, “Can you believe it? I’m lying here with my arm stuck out like I’m saluting Hitler, my side feels like a half-chewed burger, and that cunt still thinks it’s all about her.”

  Claire said, “Donna, Donna, so glad to see they haven’t broken your spirit.”

  “They’ve broken every other fucking thing.” Then, to Jake, she said, “Hello, handsome. Thanks for the lift.” Her slightly blurry eyes flicking back to Claire, she went on. “How’s the shooting going? Hope I haven’t messed up the schedule.”

  “Actually, you have. Big time. No one’s working today. Everybody’s too upset.”

  “Upset. Why? Because maybe it was supposed to be Candace lying here?”

  “No. Upset about you. Everyone was really worried.”

  At this expression of some basic kindness, Donna
’s bravado finally let go. Her face softened, she squirmed in bed and couldn’t quite suppress a wince of pain from her wound. Quietly she said, “It’s really nice you came to see me.” Her gaze drifted toward the fancily wrapped box that Jake was holding in his hand. “Looks like chocolates. What kind?”

  Jake had no idea. He’d rushed into a shop and grabbed some. “Um, assorted.”

  “Expensive?”

  “Very.”

  “Good. I like expensive chocolates. It’s really nice you came to see me. Did I say that already?”

  Claire and Jake shared a quick glance. Claire said, “You must be tired. We’ll come back another time soon.”

  “No!” said Donna. There was a hint of pleading in it. “Stay. I’m fine. Just a little groggy. My energy sort of comes and goes. It’s so nice that you came. Sit down. Sit down.”

  They pulled over squeaky metal chairs and sat down at the bedside. The smells of the hospital wafted over them — plasma, disinfectant, overcooked vegetables on lunch trays.

  Donna gestured weakly toward the blank TV. “This bullshit with Candace. Is that what people really think?”

  Claire said, “People, like, the public? Who knows what they think? It’s just something Quentin and the publicist cooked up for the media.”

  Donna gave as much of a one-sided shrug as she could manage. “Figured it was something like that. Makes sense. Better story.”

  “Are you sure of that?” Jake asked.

  Donna’s fragile focus seemed to wander. “Sure of what?”

  “That the made-up version is a better story. Maybe what really happened is a better story.”

  Donna said nothing.

  Jake went on. “What do you think really happened?”

  Donna came close to a small, hoarse laugh. “I think I got run over by a fucking boat.”

  “Just like that? By accident?”

  The stuntwoman let her eyes fall closed. She kept them shut for long enough that her visitors had time to wonder if she had drifted off to sleep. Then she opened them again and said, “I hope so. I hope it was an accident.”