Mean Season

by Heather Cochran

  “It still shouldn’t have happened. That was a butthole thing to do.”

  I agreed.

  After I got off the phone, I was still wide awake and figured I might as well poke around the resort, in case a maid had left her cart out, and I could get more shampoos to bring home for Beau Ray. I didn’t find a cart, but I wandered through the various lobbies and waiting rooms until I found myself by the door of the bar. The bartender looked up from wiping the counter and waved me inside.

  “Hey, have a seat,” he said. “You were eating with that movie guy earlier, weren’t you?”

  “Joshua Reed,” I said, nodding. “Yeah. I hope the yelling didn’t disturb you.”

  He just shrugged, as if one man calling another man an asshole across a nice restaurant was something that happened every weekend.

  “What’s he like?” the bartender asked, and then he looked past me and said, “speak of the devil, I guess I’ll find out.”

  I turned on my stool and saw Joshua Reed swagger into the bar. He looked over at me, frowned, and then walked up and took the stool next to mine. I got the impression that he had kept drinking between dinner and just then. He ordered a martini and turned to me.

  “Leanne Gitlin,” he said.

  I turned to him, trying my hardest to look like I didn’t care, or like I’d sat next to lots of movie stars in lots of bars before that particular night.

  “I hope you’re not angry with me.” He smiled. I’d seen that same smile on Colin Ashcroft.

  “Why should I be angry?” I said.

  “Exactly,” he said. “You get it.”

  “Sure, I get it,” I told him, even though I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “You don’t know what it’s like,” he went on. “All these people putting demands on me, expecting me to do this, do that. I just want to live my own life. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Sure,” I said again. I was afraid that I was starting to sound stupid even though I did know a fair bit about demands and expectations.

  He took a sip of his drink and turned and looked straight at me. “Why the fuck do you do it?” he asked, and even though I’d heard him swear at dinner, it still made me flinch. It was hard to get used to him as someone who swore so casually. He never swore in the interviews I’d read.

  “What do you mean? Do what?” I asked.

  “Because you seem smart enough. I figured you for the usual ditzy fan, but you seem smart, so why do it? The fan club bullshit.”

  “Oh. That.” I was glad to figure out what he was talking about. “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s different. It’s something different.” I’m not sure he heard me, because he started in again while I was still talking.

  “You fans sort of freak me out,” he said. “It’s like some weird fantasy. I don’t understand you people.”

  “I guess I do it more for Judy than I do it for you,” I told him.

  Joshua looked over like he wasn’t sure whether or not to believe me.

  “Really? Yeah, I can see that now. She gets a lot of people to do things for her. She’s good at her job.”

  “She’s a good person,” I said. I wanted him to understand the difference. “Other people matter to her.” I hoped that was true. It struck me that I didn’t know Judy as well as Joshua did.

  “You think?” Joshua Reed asked. “Believe me, I’ve seen her act like they do. But I’m not so sure, in the long run. Hell, I know I matter, but I pay her bills.”

  I didn’t want to follow his conversation to somewhere ugly, so I switched subjects and asked him whether he thought that Lars was serious about dropping him as a client.

  “I don’t know,” Joshua said, shrugging. “I guess. We’ll see. I can always get another agent. I’m a prize bull at the county fair.” He stood up, unsteady. “I’ve got to get out of here,” he said. “The drinks are on me,” he said, though he hadn’t ordered me one. He dropped money onto the bar. “See you around, Leanne Gitlin.” And then Joshua Reed wandered off.

  I looked back at the bartender, who I figured had been listening to us the whole time anyway.

  “Does that answer your question?” I asked him.

  I slept until almost seven. After my shower, I pocketed the rest of the shampoo, and then put my clothes back on. I was downstairs at eight, but no one was around so I picked up a Virginia travel magazine and sat in the lobby. I read an article on horses until 8:10. I read an article on Thomas Jefferson until 8:15. And I read up on Richmond restaurants until Judy rushed in at 8:20.

  “Leanne, oh, I’m so sorry!” she said. “This morning has been unbelievable,” she said. “I’ve got to get some coffee, but, my God! I just got off the phone with the studio. Because of some sort of farming statute, they can’t start filming for another two months.”

  “Is that a problem?” I asked her.

  “That’s not even the start of it.”

  Judy said she wasn’t hungry and only drank coffee, but I figured I ought to take advantage of the breakfast buffet, because I’d never been to one so nice. So I was eating an omelette that the chef made special while Judy told me the story.

  Apparently, after Joshua wandered out of the bar the night before, he had found the keys to one of the rented limousines and had taken himself for a ride.

  “But he’d been drinking,” I said.

  Judy sighed. “It’s not the first time,” she said, then pulled back a little and looked at me. “I’m sure it was a mistake,” she said, more slowly. “I’m sure he didn’t realize how much he’d had.” Judy said that Joshua had crossed the Potomac into West Virginia, though she didn’t figure that he had actually meant to go for a late-night visit to Pinecob. “He was probably looking for a bar or a girl or something. God only knows,” Judy said.

  A weaving limousine stands out on West Virginia roads, and the police tried to pull him over. “And if that’s not bad enough,” Judy said, “I guess the lights or siren startled him. The limo ended up through a fence in a field. He hit a cow. He hit a goddamn cow!” Judy said.

  I didn’t know the right reaction to news like that, so I just nodded.

  “Apparently, it’s fine. The cow is fine,” Judy went on. “I’ve already been on the phone, calling around to find a way to mend the fence. A perfect metaphor for my day.”

  “At least the cow’s okay,” I said. “He must not have been going very fast.”

  Judy shook her head. “This is my personal nightmare,” she said. “This is the exact sort of thing I dread. Now I’ve got to either try to keep a lid on this, or put some sort of good spin on it, and at the very least, try to get him out of this mess. Lars has gone over to the station where they kept him overnight. He’ll probably be able to get him out, but Jesus!” Judy laughed. “What a fuck-up,” she muttered. “I’m really sorry you’ve had to see all of this. I can’t tell you…”

  I shrugged. I offered her a bite of omelette but she shook her head.

  “What I want is a cigarette,” she said, “but I quit, and Lars would kill me.”

  “All I’m saying is that there must be something we can do. It’s West Virginia for Chrissakes. It’s not like it’s a serious state.” Joshua was trailing behind Lars as the two walked into the breakfast room.

  He wore the same clothes as the night before, though his shirt was untucked and wrinkled, and a grass stain smeared one knee of his pants. He hadn’t shaved, and he looked as though he hadn’t slept, but even so, Joshua Reed was striking. Actually, I thought he looked just like the character Stormy Bridges, the street-smart runaway he’d played a few years back.

  Lars stopped in front of our table. “Okay,” he said, turning around, “first off, how about you not driving drunk anymore? How’s that for an idea?”

  “Well, duh, but that doesn’t help our particular problem,” Joshua pointed out.

  “Your particular problem,” Lars snapped. “Because, legally, West Virginia is a serious state. Hi, sweetheart,” he said to Judy. He kissed her
on the cheek. “Morning, Leanne. I trust Judy has brought you up to date on our most recent disaster.”

  I nodded.

  “Leanne Gitlin,” Joshua Reed said, looking down at me. “If it isn’t my number one fan.” He spoke with an exaggerated drawl, so that “fan” sounded like “fie-un.”

  “J.P.,” Judy snapped.

  “I’m practicing my Josiah accent,” Joshua said.

  “You’ll be lucky if we can keep you in the picture,” Lars hissed. “There are lots of pretty boys willing to play Josiah, and a call to the director says one of them’s going to get that chance.”

  Joshua’s face froze into an expression I couldn’t read. For the first time, he looked something less than cocky, maybe even a little scared. He glanced back at me and nodded a more polite good morning.

  “Dude, so what do you want me to do?” he asked Lars, almost quietly.

  “Go to your room. Take a shower. Get dressed. Then come back down here, and we’ll discuss this. You reek.”

  Joshua nodded and walked off. Lars shook his head and took a seat at our table.

  “So what does it look like?” Judy asked.

  Lars shook his head again. “Oh, it looks great. Just great,” Lars said, and Judy winced. “He took a breathalyzer like he shouldn’t have—he should have waited, of course—and it came through as intoxicated, and with state reciprocity in effect, we obviously can’t plead first offense.”

  Judy nodded. This was the first I’d heard of any legal trouble Joshua’d gotten into. I looked at the two of them and wondered how much else they had kept quiet.

  “So now it’s pretty much a matter of mandatory sentences and precedents. Thank God he didn’t hurt that cow. I know people all through Virginia, but not here. Why couldn’t he have stayed in Virginia? Fuck, we’d be better off if he’d driven into the Potomac.”

  “Lars!” Judy said.

  “I know. I don’t mean it. Leanne, you know I don’t mean it.”

  “How far did he get?” I asked. “I mean, in West Virginia. What county?”

  “Jefferson, apparently,” Lars said. “I don’t even know where that is. The driver took me.”

  “That’s Charles Town,” I said. “That’s my county.”

  Lars looked at me. Judy looked at me.

  “You know, I work at the county clerk’s office. Same building as the courthouse,” I told them.

  “She works at the courthouse!” Judy said, suddenly excited.

  “Not exactly. But in the same building. All the same, I probably know the judge on the case,” I continued. “There aren’t too many.”

  “Oh my God, she knows…I mean, you know the judge?” Judy asked.

  “I might. I probably do. At least I could find out who it is. You want me to call and find out?”

  Lars handed me his cell phone without another word. I took it and stared at it. No one I knew had a cell phone, and I wasn’t sure how they worked. Judy took the phone from my hand and asked me for the number, plugging it in as I told her. She pressed a button and handed back the phone. I heard the ringing tone.

  Mr. Bellevue, my boss, answered.

  “Hey, Mr. Bellevue, it’s Leanne,” I said.

  “We want to keep this out of the papers,” Lars whispered to me.

  I nodded. “Something’s come up,” I said to Mr. Bellevue, and told him the story.

  I knew that Mr. Bellevue would help if he could, on account of being such a big movie fan. Also I was pretty certain that he was gay, although I’d never asked, and Joshua Reed had a substantial following in that community. Mr. Bellevue listened and sighed a little, and seemed happy to hear that the cow was okay, and then he put me on hold to go find out which judge had been assigned to Joshua’s arraignment.

  “Your fella’s a lucky boy,” Mr. Bellevue said when he got back on the phone. “It’s Weintraub.”

  “He was Charlie’s, right? That is good news,” I said. I asked Mr. Bellevue to please keep all this to himself, but I wasn’t too worried. I knew that he respected privacy, at least the serious kind. And I promised to give him details when I got there in the afternoon. I handed the phone back to Judy to hang up.

  “So?” Lars and Judy were looking at me.

  “Yeah, when you paid and asked for the first available court date, that’s good—you got Judge Weintraub. People say he’s pretty progressive and also a nice guy. But what’s cool is that, Sandy, my best friend since third grade? Her brother Charlie got pulled over about a year ago, second offense, drunk driving. Is it Joshua’s second offense?”

  Lars and Judy exchanged glances. Lars nodded.

  “Because second is usually jail but third always is,” I told them, although I got the impression that they already knew something about drunk driving sentences. “Anyway, Charlie lost his license of course, for a long time, but instead of jail he got house arrest, at home, for I think it was ninety days. Weintraub’s really into families helping each other through hard times. It drove Sandy crazy to have him there. Charlie, not the judge. I mean, they let him go to work, but then he had to come right home. So you might be able to argue some sort of precedent. You know, if you were willing to plead guilty. That’s the thing, Charlie pled guilty. Pled? Pleaded? You get what I mean.”

  “But what are we going to do about the movie? I know you’re pissed, sweetheart, but I really want him to be in this movie,” Judy said to Lars. “It’ll be good for all of us. We can’t have him sitting at home in California.”

  “He couldn’t do that,” I told her. “Whatever punishment he gets will have to be in West Virginia. Probably Jefferson County. I remember that from my class on jurisdiction,” I said.

  Lars smiled at me. “You’ll make a good lawyer,” he said. He turned to Judy. “Leanne’s right. Whatever happens, it’s bound to happen in Jefferson County.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Judy said. “That we stick him in a hotel for three months?”

  “I doubt that would count as house arrest,” Lars said. “It’s not a house. And I don’t think there’s such thing as bed-and-breakfast arrest.” Lars was almost laughing, but Judy looked serious.

  “So who do we know in Jefferson County?” Judy asked. “We must know someone. Can we rent an apartment?”

  Lars was looking across the table at me.

  “You know me,” I said. “And of course, I know a lot of people.”

  Judy turned to me, smiling and exasperated. “I don’t suppose there are any house arrest bungalows available in Pinecob, are there?” Now she was laughing. “Or guesthouses?”

  I shook my head. I had a thought, bit my lip, then opened my mouth. I figured it was likely a stupid idea, that it wouldn’t work so there was no harm in saying it. Knowing what I know now, maybe I wouldn’t have said it. Knowing what I know now, maybe I would have kept quiet and looked at my shoes instead. But I did say it. And everything that would have otherwise stayed the same started changing. Like experiments with food coloring we did in home economics, making icing in green and blue and red shades. Put a drop of red into water, and the water will never again run clear. You can keep adding more and make it deeper red, or add blue and make purple. You still have choices like that. But to get back to clear water, you have to pour out what you’ve done and start over. And that doesn’t work in life, with its days and geography. You can’t just start over. You can never just start over.

  “The thing is, Judge Weintraub is really into families. That’s why he likes house arrest,” I explained. I remember hearing Sandy complaining about this. “I know he’s not related, but Joshua might be able to stay in Vince’s room,” I said. “There’s probably a legal guardianship thing to work out, and you’d have to convince my mother.”

  Judy turned to Lars and raised her eyebrows. Lars turned to me and raised his.

  “We could argue a long-term relationship, given the fan club,” Lars said.

  “Can you imagine?” Judy asked. “Let’s think this through a minute. For starters, J.P. would h
ate that.” Judy didn’t add to her list. She stopped talking and looked over at me, too.

  Joshua Reed appeared then, hair still wet from the shower but clean shaven and clean clothed. Even damp, he really was beautiful. Judy and Lars looked at him, then turned to me.

  “You are really fucking lucky,” Lars said.

  “Yeah?” Joshua smiled. He seemed surprised. “Hey, that’s great.”

  “Leanne here knows your judge,” Lars said.

  Chapter 4

  Start Slow

  What’s crazy is how it all worked out. The court system in the United States—or at least in West Virginia—really does work on precedent. I’d heard that, but this was the first time I’d seen it in action. I’d always liked that about law. The logic of it. Knowing, at least in some small part, what you might expect.

  A lot went on, I’ll bet much more than I ever saw, and things fell into place. Lars and Judy hunkered down and sweet-talked the hell out of people. Lars spent a lot of time on his cell phone, and at least as much time cursing about how it hardly worked in Charles Town and Harper’s Ferry. Judy spent a lot of time on the phone, too. She called it “putting out fires” and I guess she did a good job of it. The fence got fixed, and the farmer paid for his inconvenience, and People didn’t get wind of Joshua Reed being arrested—though there was a notice in the Charles Town Register about a J. Polichuk. There was no mention of the cow.

  Lars got Joshua’s arraignment pushed up to just a week after his arrest, and in the meantime, found a lawyer from Charleston who had previously clerked for Judge Weintraub. Judy kept me in the loop with phone calls, but Lars was over at the courthouse nearly every day, so on my lunch hour, I’d cross over from the other wing and catch up with how things were going. Joshua mostly stayed back in Harper’s Ferry—Judy had told me that Lars agreed to keep him as a client so long as all Joshua did that week was read and think, and that he showed up whenever and wherever Lars asked, acting polite and looking sober and sorry. Judy said she’d convinced Lars that Joshua was a good long-term investment.