Forgetting Jack Cooper: The Soulmate Edition

by Elizabeth Bemis

  “How do you know he has wronged people?”

  Good question, Ralph.

  The woman sighed audibly as if it should be obvious. “Ralph. He’s in his late twenties. And he’s a Hollywood star. No way could he have made it this far in this business, without wronging someone. Probably a lot of someones, especially when he was younger and didn’t know how to go about it all that well.”

  I wanted to argue with her use of the phrase “a lot of someones”. But now that she mentioned it, I could think of a few different times where I’d taken the easy way out of a situation when a simple solution presented itself.

  “Fair.” Ralph stroked his chin for a moment. “So, he goes out and redeems himself. How does this give the film publicity?”

  “We record the whole thing. Make it a press event.”

  Huh. I wasn’t sure how much I wanted my past foibles broadcasted for the entertainment of the masses.

  “An apology tour…” Ralph nodded from behind the desk, then leaned back. He glanced up and saw me, but his expression didn’t change. Much. “That could work.”

  “Exactly. Think he’ll go for it?” she asked somewhat timidly. Up until this point, she hadn’t seemed like timid was even in her vocabulary. Even her voice was less raspy and relaxed. Interesting.

  “Only if you are the one coordinating it,” I said, stepping into the room. I’ll admit, it was an unnecessarily dramatic entrance. But I was an actor. Dramatic entrances were my specialty.

  The woman whipped around and I finally got to see the face that matched the voice. Except…

  Except her face didn’t match her voice.

  Given her voice, I’d been conjuring up some real-life Jessica Rabbit fantasies. Instead, I found a woman who was somewhere between twenty-five and forty, hiding behind dark framed glasses and a cloud of curly hair. She was hashtag-I-Woke-Up-Like-This. Only for real. Not, I-primped-for-an-hour-and-a-half-then-carefully-slipped-back-under-the-covers-Woke-Up-Like-This.

  Further inspection revealed that she was cute, in a girl-next-door sort of way. She had milk-maid clear skin with a few freckles over the top of her nose, intelligent brown eyes, and the thin, straight-as-an-arrow nose of a supermodel. All without a single hint of makeup, which was impressive.

  She looked at me with a deer-in-the-headlights stare before taking a deep breath and straightening. Then she approached with her right hand outstretched. “Mr. Cooper,” she said, all vocal overtones of Kathleen Turner completely gone—to my great disappointment. I’m Ruth Miller, the studio’s Public Relations Director. It’s really delightful to meet you.”

  She stared into my eyes like she was daring me to look away first.

  I took her hand, surprised at how delicate and soft it was. It was also trembling the slightest bit. There was a dichotomy of bravado and nerves that touched something deep inside me.

  She chewed on her lower lip, and I wanted to tell her how much that telegraphed her vulnerability—but I didn’t. I liked that she let me see it.

  “Shall we make our way to the conference room? I believe Mo—er, our studio head, Heather Miller is looking forward to meeting you.”

  So many things fell into place at that moment. This was the daughter of Heather Miller, the eighties evening soap-opera-star-turned-uber-successful-studio-exec I was here to meet. Heather Miller had a reputation for turning pictures with potential into pure gold. And I was fully hoping that she could sprinkle her Midas touch on me in the process. An Academy award nomination at this point in my career would pretty much let me pick my parts from here on out.

  And starring in a picture produced by Heather Miller could make that happen.

  I nodded, and stepped aside to allow Ruth to lead me to the conference room, Ralph following behind.

  “So you want me to go on a redemption tour,” I said after we were seated and everyone had introduced themselves.

  “That will be up to you. I feel—” she looked around at the others gathered around the table, gathering nods from each of them. “We feel like it would be a good opportunity to give your audience something they crave—an entrée into your real world—while giving you a means of researching a difficult character that might be a little outside your norm.”

  My brows went up, and the very last whisper of my Jessica Rabbit fantasies hopped right out of the room. “A little outside my norm?” I asked, trying and failing to keep the edge out of my voice. “Should I assume someone here doesn’t think I’m capable of this role?”

  Chapter Two: Ruth

  “What? No!” I said so abruptly that I won the Guinness Book record for fastest maneuver to rip my own foot out of my mouth.

  “I think you’ll do a brilliant job with it,” I followed up. “You’ve done everything your studios have asked you to do, and you’ve done it well. I mean that sincerely.”

  I did, too. In researching our promotion strategy, I’d watched every single movie listed on Jack Cooper’s IMDB page. He was a great actor, even in—especially in—some of the more ridiculous pictures he’d chosen. I was thinking in particular of one of his early movies, T-Rex on Deck, when Jack played a high school dropout and former little league star, who worked as a costumed T-Rex at his town’s minor league baseball stadium, where he was discovered and then gets a shot at the big leagues.

  It was… not a great movie. And it involved running T-Rex’s. Nevertheless, Jack displayed elements of real talent, despite the mediocre script and the generally cheesy premise. In fact, the entire film had been a great big ball of cheese. But like a good Hallmark Christmas movie, which, to my mother’s great consternation, were a weakness of mine, the feel-good ending made it totally worthwhile.

  “We here at the studio are really excited about this film,” my mother weighed in. “We’ve got the right cast, the right director, the right script, and I think the viewing audience is in the right frame of mind for it. We want to give you and the film every opportunity to succeed.”

  Jack nodded, but he never stopped looking directly at me. “How do you see this working?” His single minded focus brought pink to my cheeks.

  “Come up with a list of people to apologize to. I’ll take the background and set up locations and engage local media to cover it.” I picked up a pen and poised it over an old-fashioned steno-pad. Colleagues regularly laughed at my steno-pads, but they made me feel in control. I never had to worry about battery depletion with a steno pad.

  “Now?” he asked.

  I set the pen down.

  “I can give you a minute to think it over.” I could easily itemize every lousy thing I’d ever done at any given moment. For example, when I was a kid I had cousins who’d had a big wooded property. We never wanted the youngest cousin to go with us when we were heading out into the woods to play, so we’d either pretend he was invisible, or make him think that snakes would get him in the woods.

  I winced. Maybe I should give him a call to apologize for that, now that I thought about it.

  Fortunately, as an adult, I’d made it a point not to be lousy, so at least my list wasn’t particularly long.

  “Are we good here?” Ralph said.

  Jack nodded slowly, but his gaze had gone to the blank wall, his mind clearly working overtime. “We’re good,” he said.

  “Then I don’t think you need us for this.” Ralph pushed his chair back from the conference room table and stood. “Everyone?”

  The entire room stood. To my surprise, Mom stood as well. And she was genuinely smiling, too. “Good presentation, darling.”

  I let go of a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. She patted me on the shoulder as she stepped by, and I let myself bask in her approval for a full three seconds before picking up my pen again.

  Then I turned to see that Jack Cooper was looking at me again.

  Jack Cooper, for the record, had extraordinarily stunning eyes. On first view, they seemed almost turquoise, but it turned out when you looked carefully, they were more electric blue around the outside
with amber and bright green flecks near his pupil.

  “This feels kind of weird,” he muttered now. “Like how I always imagined confession.”

  “Then just think of me as a priest.” I tapped my pad with my pen, going for severe but ruining it with a grin. This was more fun than I’d had in a long time. Which was sad on a variety of levels.

  He snorted. “That’ll never happen.”

  I blinked. There was… something in his voice. I was probably imagining it, but it almost seemed like… interest? That was ridiculous. Hollywood Heartthrob and one of People Magazine’s Sexiest Men of the Year wouldn’t find interest in me, Santa Monica Preparatory High School’s Most Awkward Girl of the Year (four years running).

  “Your bartender?” I said.

  He shook his head. “I don’t really drink.”

  “Hair stylist?”

  “I think I can work with that. Want to come run your fingers through my hair while I confess?” He winked.

  Oh, heck yeah!

  I balled my hands into fists before my fingers could betray me. “I don’t think that’s going to be necessary. You’re an actor. You can pretend.”

  “Spoil sport.” He gave me a long look before he sighed. “Okay, how about this? In high school, I along with some friends broke into the shed of Old Man Hassel. He was a rich old guy who had a bunch of expensive cars, and we were interested in taking a look-see and possibly a joy ride. Someone yelled, ‘The cops are coming’ and we all scrambled. It was only several days later that I realized that Chantal Green had been in lockup that whole time and had taken the blame for it. The police finally let her go, but as a result, she kind of started down a rough path.”

  “Did you confess?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have her contact info?”

  He shook his head. “No. I heard she opened a custom motorcycle shop.” He squinted and thought for a moment. “I want to say the name was something slightly suggestive… but related to Greek theatre?”

  I gave him what I’m sure was a blank look, and his gaze drifted to the wall.

  “Sex Machina,” He snapped his fingers. “That was it.”

  I scribbled down the name. “Cute.”

  “From what I hear, she’s doing incredibly well with it.”

  Dropping my pen, I grabbed my laptop from the table beside me, opened the lid and keyed a search into my browser. The Sex Machina website’s landing page featured a video of a woman against a black backdrop with a spotlight on her and her chromed-out bike. She wore sleek motorcycle leathers, her head covered with a helmet. As the video progressed, smoke began to swirl around her, and the woman casually reached up, pulled off her custom painted helmet and shook out her hair as she straightened. It was glitzy, had high-production value, and somehow managed to shout Super Hot and Wild Sex Sold Here without showing any skin. A motorcycle engine rumbled from my speakers complete with Doppler effect.

  The model looked directly into the camera and said, “At Sex Machina, it’s all about the ride.”

  I flipped the computer around. “Is this her?”

  He gave a startled chuckle. “Yeah, it is.” He shook his head, obviously impressed. “What do you know?”

  A stab of something that felt a lot like raw jealousy shot through me.

  Which was bonkers on multiple levels. First, I had no claim on Jack Cooper and never would. Second, I liked being known for my intellect and talents, not for my appearance. And finally, if super-sexy-sexiness was what attracted Jack Cooper, well, I should give up now. That’s just not who I was.

  “OK. I’ll contact her and set it up.” I took a deep breath. “Who’s next?”

  “This one is probably the worst,” Jack said.

  Worse than letting someone go to jail for you?

  Apparently, Jack thought so. “In high school, I bailed on graduation so I could come to Hollywood for a part. But the worst part of that was, I also bailed on my girlfriend who was giving the Valedictorian speech."

  Ouch.

  He winced. “I can see from your look, you agree that she deserves an apology.”

  I nodded. “Do you think she’ll speak to you?”

  He paused for a long moment as if he couldn’t fathom a world where someone would be angry enough not to speak to him. I wanted to live in that world for a few minutes… where all my imperfections would be immediately forgiven.

  When he didn’t answer, I picked up my pen again. “What was her name?”

  “Peyton Locke.” He leaned forward and pulled his phone out of his back pocket. “You know…” He scrolled through something with a few repeated flicks of his index finger against the screen.

  “My high school reunion is scheduled in two weeks. I hear she moved back to town. I can’t imagine that she’d skip it.” He blew out a long breath. “There are probably multiple apologies I could make there.”

  “I guess that will be our first stop,” I said.

  “Ah…no.” He shook his head. “I think I need a warm up first.”

  “Who do you have in mind?”

  “Toni Salvatore.” Bypassing my pen and paper, he reached over and tapped an address into my browser. YouTube came up and he typed in her name.

  The first video began playing. “Oh. I’ve seen her. She’s got a kissing bandit schtick,” I said.

  “Yeah. And it started because of a dare I issued. The stunt got her kicked out of Berkley.”

  Wow. He really knew how to need forgiveness. “And you’re still in contact?”

  He chuckled. “Yeah. We’re still friends. We see each other regularly. I’ll set that one up.”

  “Just let me know when and where so that we can get a film crew on site.”

  “Got it.”

  “Anyone else?” I asked.

  He grimaced. “Do you know who Genevieve Jones is?”

  I thought for a moment. “Didn’t she have a minor part in Dax Scott with you?”

  He nodded, seeming to wait for the next shoe to drop. A second later it did.

  “Oh, wait!” I exclaimed. “She’s the one who got caught on a hot mic dissing Dame Agatha Kelly.”

  “You got it.”

  “Weren’t you dating her at the time?”

  He shrugged. “Sort of. It started more for publicity than anything else. But after the wrap, we went our separate ways.”

  “Which is to say you dropped her like a hot potato?”

  His shoulders drooped a little. “That could be one interpretation,” he admitted. “Technically, I immediately started working on another movie. She didn’t call, and I didn’t either.”

  “I haven’t heard much about her lately.”

  “I don’t think anyone has.”

  I looked down at my notepad filled with names and notes. “I’m sure I can track her down.”

  “So, do you think I’m a sufficiently terrible person now?” he asked. He said it with an air of comedy, but there was something vulnerable in the set of his eyes.

  I shook my head.

  “Really?” I hadn’t imagined that thread of vulnerability, and I gave him a reassuring smile.

  “Not at all. But I do think it will be easier to spin your redemption tour than I initially thought, if that makes you feel better.”

  “That was very diplomatically put.” He grinned and stood. “I won’t take any more of your time. Ruth, thank you for all your help on this.”

  He came around the table and held out a hand. I took his, feeling like my fingers could get lost in the sheer breadth of his palm. Jack Cooper was not a small man. In my heels, I was easily five-ten, but Jack towered over me. His shoulders were broad, his muscles well-developed. Probably from time in a gym, and certainly not because of hard labor, but that didn’t change the fact of them.

  “I look forward to working with you,” I said. And it was absolutely the truth. There was something incredibly compelling about Jack Cooper. Something that could leave me heartbroken if I wasn’t careful.

  I pulled my
hand back and cleared my throat. “I’ll send you an itinerary by the end of the week,” I said.

  Chapter Three: Jack

  “You’re a jerk, Jack Cooper,” Toni Salvatore said.

  Her tone said, “jerk” her eyes said, “Still love ya”—in a purely platonic sort of way.

  But it was her mouth that kept moving. “Everyone knows that.”

  She wore artfully ripped jeans, an off-the-shoulder Metallica T-shirt, and bright pink Chucks on her feet. She had a head of unruly dark curls, not unlike Ruth’s, now that I thought about it. Unlike Ruth Miller, studio PR Director and star of my PG-13-flirting-with-R-rated dreams the last four nights running, however, Toni would do anything to get a laugh and to call attention to herself.

  Toni’s career was going well, but I knew publicity from this event could only increase her profile.

  I put my hand on my chest and gave her my best “wounded” look. “You’re killing me. What can I say? I’m trying to change, and put the past behind me. You’re the first stop on my twelve-step make amends tour.”

  Fortunately, it wasn’t actually going to be twelve separate apologies. More like five. Thank God.

  “What in the actual hell does that mean?” Toni took a sucking sip of her coffee. She hadn’t changed much since our days at Berkley, it seemed. She was still driven by sass with a comedic bent.

  “So apparently,” I said. “Some people think that perhaps I have not always conducted myself selflessly or with dignity.”

  She cocked her eyebrows at me, but made no argument.

  Couldn’t she have made at least an attempt? “No, now don’t protest, it’s true,” I said.

  That made her grin. “I wasn’t going to. But go on.”

  “Since I am going to be starring in a role where the character goes out finding people he’s wronged in the past and making amends, the powers that be think I should do the same. One, method acting. Two, good P.R.”

  “And I’m stop one?”

  I shrugged. “You’re in town. It’s convenient. My P.R. person will be here in a minute with a cameraman and we can film my apology.”