South by Southeast

by Blair Underwood

  Neon. South Beach. The salty-sweet ocean air. Perfecto.

  Beyond the neon’s glare, my beachfront perch was close enough for me to make out the moonlit Atlantic, as still as a sheet of black glass. Pinpricks of lights from distant cruise ships or cargo vessels twinkled in the distance, but the water was undisturbed.

  Even on the hottest summer days, Southern California’s ocean seems immune from the sun. Now it was fall, and I went swimming practically every day in Miami, often after dark, when the beaches emptied. Heaven. I didn’t need a wild ride; a calm, warm bath felt just fine.

  Watching the ocean made me think of my ex, April. I almost reached for my cell phone, until I remembered that April was still at work for another hour on the West Coast. I felt itchy if I didn’t talk to her every night. How had I let myself end up in a long-distance relationship? Only you’re not in a relationship anymore—remember?

  One day, April and I would have to put a name to what we had. Friends with Fringe? Lovers Lite? We’d collected enough pain over four years to make us both wary of labels, but we couldn’t keep hiding from each other forever. You’re the one who’s hiding, I corrected myself. We both knew the next move was up to me. If April nudged me and I pulled back, we would never have another chance to salvage whatever we were trying to build.

  “Isn’t true love beautiful?” Chela said, startling me from behind. I thought she’d taken up mind reading, until I saw her gazing toward Dad and Marcela. They both stood close to the martyred pig, swaying gently to the band’s bolero. Dad wobbled, but he didn’t fall.

  Chela had just turned eighteen, nearly as tall as I was, with a swimsuit model’s lithe curves, a scalp full of wild corkscrew ringlets, and a sun-browned complexion that kept observers guessing about her ethnicity. In Miami, most people assumed she was Cuban. Modeling scouts had approached Chela as she strolled South Beach’s streets with me, but so far, I’d managed to talk her out of taking any meetings. I’d argued that the scouts weren’t from Elite or Ford, so why settle for anything less than the best? In truth, as a college dropout who’d left school to pursue acting, I knew that if she put school off to do modeling shoots, she would never bother to go to class.

  But I felt guilty discouraging her. She wasn’t avoiding the scouts because of any advice from me; she just didn’t see the same beautiful face in the mirror that the scouts did. Chela was slowly emerging from the cocoon of drab, bulky clothes where she’d been hiding. Ocean Drive Chela wore bikinis and sheer fabrics, but not the girl I knew at home.

  “So, what’s true love?” I said. “Drop some wisdom on me.”

  “You’re asking me?” Chela said. “Please.”

  “You’re the one who said it.”

  Chela shrugged. Instead of looking at me, she stared toward the ocean. “Loving someone no matter how scary it is,” she said. “No matter what anybody says.”

  After Chela’s adolescent liaisons with johns twice her age, her definition of true love could excuse almost any toxic behavior. I used to live by the same credo, and my old life had nothing to do with love. She saw the skepticism in my face.

  Chela gave me a cutting look. “Hey, you asked. Not my fault if you can’t deal with the answer.”

  She started to walk away but stopped in her tracks when Dad rang his martini glass with a knife. The patio slowly hushed except for the slow-moving traffic on Ocean Drive below us, laughter, bicycle bells, and revving motors.

  Chela grabbed my arm, excited. “It’s time,” she whispered, grinning.

  Once again, I was the last to hear almost everything under my roof. I’d been invisible to Dad when I was Chela’s age, and she was his new BFF. Call me childish, but I felt a sting of annoyance.

  Then I was captivated by the sound of Dad’s voice; he spoke slowly, careful to enunciate, all evidence of his stroke gone as he rediscovered the basso voice that had made him a coveted public speaker. “Marcela’s the birthday girl today, but I’m hoping she’ll be good enough to give me the gift of a lifetime,” he said.

  Dad sounded like himself again for the first time in years. He suddenly clasped Marcela’s hands and stared into her eyes. I suspected what was coming, and I doubted the night’s fairy tale would have a happy ending.

  “Marcela Consuela Ruiz . . .” Dad said, “Will you marry me?”

  The gasps that followed were more shock than delight. I think I gasped, too, at least to myself. The night froze. Marcela’s face was slack. When I’d once joked to Marcela that she would be my Evil Stepmother one day, she’d looked me dead in the eye and said, “I’m a romantic, Tennyson, but I’m also a realist.”

  Chela grinned widely and grabbed my elbow, clinging tightly, as if we riding a roller coaster together.

  Marcela blinked, and her eyes pooled with tears. She looked confused. “Captain?”

  That was what she called my father—Captain Hardwick. At first, the formality had seemed like a ruse to hide their relationship, but the pet name had stuck. It was only one of the unconventional aspects of their union.

  Dad reached into his pocket and brought out a felt ring case. After a couple of tries, he flipped it open: my inheritance sparkled inside. The ring was big enough to see from a distance. Marcela gaped at the engagement ring, her face flaring bright red.

  “I know . . . it’s a surprise,” Dad said, more quietly this time. If not for the patio’s hush, I wouldn’t have heard him. But we spectators didn’t want to miss a word. A woman close to me was tossing yucca fries into her mouth like popcorn as she watched.

  This conversation was none of our business.

  “Dios mío,” Marcela said, flustered. She hid half her face with her hand, as if to shield herself from the crowd. Marcela’s voice trembled. “You said—”

  “I know what I said.” Dad cut her off. “What you said. What . . . we said. Let sleeping dogs lie. Face facts. No need to be . . . foolish.” For the first time, he hesitated as if he were struggling for words, because of either emotion or his lingering disability. “But I was still hanging on to . . . the past. When I buried Eva, I swore I’d never take another wife.”

  Marcela blinked, and a single tear made a snail’s slow journey across her cheek.

  “It’s time, Marcy,” Dad said. “If not now, when? I can’t promise you forever. But I can promise to love you every day. And I’ll do whatever it takes to stay by your side as many years as I can.”

  Dad looked exhausted, his last words mere breath. Beside him, Marcela seemed younger and more vibrant than ever, the sun eclipsing a fading star. She shook her head back and forth, almost imperceptibly, maybe a reflex. Damn. My mother had died when I was a baby, and I’d never known Dad to be interested in any woman before Marcela. When had he ever taken a woman out, except to a meeting? Stubborn fool! Why had he waited until it was too—

  “Yes!” Marcela said, wrapping her arms around him. When Dad swayed beneath her weight, she steadied him. “I’ll marry you. It is my honor, Captain Hardwick!”

  More gasps came, louder than before. Chela applauded loudly, and I shook myself from my shock to clap along. A few other people clapped, too, but I think they were the caterers and maybe the scattered children, who loved any excuse to make loud noises.

  Most of Marcela’s family just stared, never waking from their stunned silence.

  “Oh, that’s just wrong,” April said.

  I laughed grimly. “Which part?”

  I’d finally caught April for our nightly phone date at about eleven—eight o’clock Cali time—when she got back to her apartment after shopping at Whole Foods. I knew her routine, could practically see her opening her whitewashed kitchen cabinets and metallic fridge with her long pianist’s fingers while she put her food away. She’d been a reporter for the L.A. Times when I met her, but since her layoff a year ago, she was blogging and working publicity for an entertainment PR firm. Whenever I asked how work was going, she said she didn’t want to talk about it. Her newshound’s soul hadn’t adjusted to babysitting celeb
rities, but the job market was brutal.

  I’d closed my bedroom door to mute the party noise from revelers who hadn’t gotten the hint when Marcela and Dad went to bed at ten. The band had left, and the food was gone, but Marcela’s kin were determined to dance to the mix blaring from her nephew’s speakers. The party had started at five in the afternoon, and some folks were still showing up—on Cuban Time, as Marcela had complained. No one group can claim exclusive rights to tardiness.

  I would have a hell of a mess to clean up in the morning, but morning was a world away, and I was alone with April’s voice. We’d tried keeping out of each other’s way after she dumped me, but somehow we’d gotten tangled up again. Before the shoot, we’d been seeing each other two or three times a week, more than we had when we were officially dating.

  April’s laugh was music. “What kind of son are you?”

  “You know I love Dad, but this isn’t like May-December. It’s like June-December 31st. At eleven fifty-six.”

  “It’s not like they’ll want to have kids.”

  I tried not to feel the prick. During a fateful dinner in Cape Town, April had given me a last chance to win her back, a Get Out of Jail Free card, and I’d blown it with my shock when she mentioned the idea of raising a family together. I’d practically raised a kid already, so why had I nearly choked on my food when April brought up wanting to have children?

  Instinct made me change the subject fast. “What about a honeymoon?”

  “What about it?” April said. “Don’t you think you’re confusing sex with intimacy? Besides, you don’t know what they do behind closed doors.”

  A sour mixture of garlic and something tangy played at the base of my throat, and I had to work to flush away the image of Dad and Marcela in bed together. Besides, what had possessed me to bring up Dad’s proposal? April never made it a secret when she had a date, and the sole reason we weren’t officially together anymore was that April believed she was too old to have a “boyfriend” at nearly thirty. She wanted a family. If I didn’t ask her to marry me, I would lose her. It wasn’t a threat; it was prophecy.

  “Well, I think it’s beautiful,” April said primly.

  “No, you’re right—it was,” I said. “I was just scared for him, thinking she would back off . . . but she didn’t. She’ll be with him at the end. What’s more beautiful than that?”

  Our silence stretched the length of Ocean Drive.

  “Let me fly you down this weekend,” I said. She’d been promising to visit the set.

  “Can’t,” she said. “Award season. How do women walk in ten-foot shoes? I’m too much of a tomboy to wear dresses every night. I feel like a transvestite.”

  Good. Between the Golden Globes, the People’s Choice Awards, the NAACP Image Awards, and every honor until the Oscars, April wouldn’t have much time to meet new men. Except the rich and famous ones, my Evil Voice reminded me.

  “Cutest tomboy on stilettos I ever saw,” I said. “Anyway, I’ll make a visit worth your while. I can get you a sit-down with Gustavo.”

  April could always be lured closer with the right carrot, and my film’s director, Gustavo Escobar, was the whole ensalada. Escobar was a near-recluse who was impossible to reach when he was working on a project. April supplemented her publicity work with freelance journalism, and an interview with him might be the coup she was looking for to help her land a job on the staff of Entertainment Weekly. Even if not, she might impress her bosses by convincing him to sign with her agency. April was looking for any break she could get.

  Gustavo Escobar’s enlistment to helm a horror movie was the fanboy coup of the year, evidence that horror and prestige weren’t mutually exclusive. He’d won Sundance and been nominated for an Oscar for Nuestro Tío Fidel, which he’d shot guerrilla-style in his homeland of Cuba. Our current project, Freaknik, was more blood and guts than heart and soul, but he was a meticulous craftsman.

  As always, I wished my part were bigger, but my agent thought it was the right move for me on the heels of art-house juggernaut Lenox Avenue, which had just been released to slobbering reviews. My slim part in Lenox Avenue had barely survived the editing booth, but it was still listed on my IMDb page for the film world to see.

  “Play your cards right, Ten, and this could be a new beginning for you,” my agent had lectured me at our last lunch before I left for Miami. He knew I chased trouble like a junkie. A year before, I’d been a household name for all the wrong reasons. Unless you live in a cave, you know about my brush with actress Sofia Maitlin. Even that wasn’t enough for me. In the past six months, I’d allowed a bad influence in my life to get me into new trouble I hadn’t told my agent about—or April. Just as April had once told me, maybe on some sick level, I needed to ride the tiger.

  I hoped I was ready for a new beginning, free of trouble. But I couldn’t lie to myself about the biggest secret I still harbored: I would never propose to April Forrest. It would be cruel to inflict someone like me on a nice girl like her.

  “I want to see you,” my mouth said, ignoring my conviction. “I miss you.”

  This time, the silence was barely noticeable. “I know,” she said. “I miss you, too.”

  I WAS LESS impressed by Freaknik after I read the script. Even if you haven’t seen it, you’ve seen it: Teenagers in bathing suits on spring break on an island paradise contract a venereal virus that turns them into pustuled, sex-crazed killer zombies. Despite Escobar’s reputation, any aspirations toward art were only in his press releases. Len Shemin, my agent, told me that Freaknik was a script Escobar had been shopping for quite a while, based on a series of novels by a bestselling husband-wife team I’d once encountered at the NAACP Image Awards. His new name recognition had finally won him $25 million to bring his vision to life.

  Picture a standard zombie movie with a bit of political philosophy sandwiched between bloody orgies. The disease had originated in Project Coast, the real-world South African attempt to create a race-specific disease back in the seventies. Look it up.

  Escobar hadn’t cast me as one of the leads, since they’re both twenty-somethings meant to lure in Hollywood’s Golden Demographic: white boys between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one. The female lead, Brittany Summers, had leveraged her implants into a role on a struggling cable series, and the unknown male lead had been hired because of ripped abs and his ability to command a Jet Ski. I was the only real actor on the payroll.

  Escobar had offered me the part of the brilliant black marine biologist who happens to be staying at the resort when the infection breaks out. Since my character makes the mistake of hooking up with one of the white girls, I’m one of the first to get infected, and I’m the face of Evil who, at the climax, must die so that the nice white couple can survive.

  There won’t be a dry seat in the house.

  Even after shooting began, I still wasn’t sure why Escobar had handpicked me for his movie, but I wrote it off as micro-management. My past as a male escort to Hollywood’s desperate housewives had leaked out—although I still denied the rumors to my father—and I figured Escobar thought my name would add salacious sazón to his project.

  Whatever. Work is work. As my contact in the spy business—let’s call her Marsha—liked to remind me, I was still a whore. Longer story.

  I finally had a mid-morning set call late enough to accommodate Chela’s schedule, so she agreed to come to work with me at the Star Island mansion that doubled as a resort on the fictitious Isla del Sueño, the outbreak’s Ground Zero.

  It was Chela’s second or third visit to a set since she’d been living with me, but this was the first time she’d dressed as if she had an actor’s chair waiting with her name on it. Her faux-designer sunglasses covered half her face. She wore white short-shorts, a white tank top with spaghetti straps, and a bare midriff barely covered by a sheer beach wrap. Chela had mastered stilettos in a way April never might. She’d lathered herself in glistening baby oil.

  Now I understood why fathers are
afraid to let their daughters out of the house.

  “What?” she said, pretending she didn’t understand my scowl. “Maybe he’ll offer me a part.”

  A part of his what? Escobar’s eyes were feasting on the young women on his set, and I’d heard rumors that he and Brittany had late-night rehearsals. Call me a hypocrite, but Chela’s past made me want to keep her far away from show business. I knew how easy it would be for her to slip into her old habits. “It’s cold in that house,” I said. “Put on some jeans.”

  “You said everybody’s wearing bikinis.”

  “I hear them complaining. The AC’s too high.” I was lying, and poorly.

  Chela ignored me, climbing into my rented red Grand Prix. She’d barely listened to me before she was eighteen, but now she’d dropped the charade entirely. It was hard for me to get indignant over a story I’d spun out of thin air.

  “Okay,” I said. “Just don’t run shivering to me.”

  I was already sorry I’d brought Chela to Miami.

  But not as sorry as I would be.

  I would never let anyone shoot a movie in my house, period. Every day on the set, I wondered what the owners had been thinking when they said, “Sure, come trash my mansion.”

  A cracked floor tile here. A crushed flower bed there. No one went out of their way to be destructive, but it just takes too many people and cameras and generators and miles of cable to make a movie. The wide circular cobbled driveway glistened with at least fifty cars parked around the fountain. A crushed Coke can carelessly kicked into the rock garden was only the day’s first offense. I picked up the can to dispose of properly. Some people have no respect.