by May Burnett
“Right.” The psychiatrist passed a handkerchief over his temples. “This is confidential – but necessary, from my point of view.”
“Go on.”
“The case of Miss Lennox is quite extraordinary. I’ve conducted a whole battery of tests, and the results are very clear: she is compelled to tell the truth, as she understands it, even when she strongly tries to prevent it. I’ve never seen anything like it, and given this new condition the provisional name of “Veraciphilia.” I am writing an article on the case, to be presented at next year’s Psychiatric Convention in Philadelphia.” His eyes gleamed with scientific enthusiasm.
“I wonder how Christabel feels about making medical history.”
“Of course in my paper I’ll use a different name. You have known my patient for several years, I believe?”
“Yes, during the whole time I went to the Rockview Academy. About four years in all.”
“Has she been like this in the past?”
“You mean, unable to lie?”
“It’s more than that. She cannot even remain silent, no matter how hard she tries.”
“I remember several occasions when Christabel told fibs most convincingly. The last time was around the beginning of this school year. That would have been only a few weeks before her attack on Myra, my girlfriend.
The doctor took out a notebook and felt pen and wrote a couple of lines.
“So this behaviour is definitely new? That would fit in with what her friends and family say. According to them, this compulsion came upon Miss Lennox quite suddenly. Or rather, her former friends, since this truth-telling has alienated every single one of them. Even her family is shunning her.”
“I’m not surprised. How does she herself explain it?”
“Miss Lennox blames Myra and Hellmuth, Myra’s brother, for her mysterious condition.”
How very strange. “Why would she do that? It makes no sense.”
“Indeed. She’s afraid of these two students’ “powers”.”
“Doesn’t she believe Myra is dead, then?”
“She does not. She believes Myra to be a witch, who saved herself after her fall.”
“A witch!” The very idea was ridiculous. “If anyone was a witch in that confrontation, it would have been Christabel herself.”
“I suppose it is a case of projection,” the psychiatrist agreed, nodding. “Not that witches exist, of course, but they are a metaphor for the overpowering negative feelings which led to this tragedy.”
“So what did you need to see me for, doctor?”
“Christabel absolutely believes that there was something uncanny, or supernatural, about Myra. Although I realize it is unlikely in the extreme, I had to check if you could support her claim in any way.”
“I’m sorry, Myra was – is – a wonderful girl, but not in the least uncanny or supernatural. Her brother, who’s still at the school, would know better than I. Anyway, in those weeks as her boyfriend I did not see Myra do anything out of the ordinary. Unless you count the way I fell in love with her very suddenly, from one moment to the next.”
“I’m afraid love is a perfectly normal phenomenon, based on hormones,” the psychiatrist said, disappointed. “I’m sorry, but I had to know, in order to determine the right course of treatment.”
“Good luck with that.” I offered him a drink, but he declined and left right away.
I took a soda myself, and looked out the window, pondering Christabel’s delusions. Was there the slightest chance that she had noticed something about Myra that I hadn’t? I’d been blinded by love and lust, in retrospect that had become appallingly clear. I cringed when I remembered some of the things I’d said and done – in front of witnesses and cameras, too! Apparently all my cool and experience simply evaporated when I was close to Myra.
Uncanny? Supernatural? Surely not. But was I as sure as I’d declared just now, that Myra was an ordinary human girl? Didn’t that dream I had after she’d gone, and my conviction that we would meet again if I remained loyal to her, point in a similar direction?
Was I as delusional as Christabel?
No time now to indulge in wishful thinking. I needed to get my act together and push ahead with my artistic agenda. Out came my trusty cell phone. After a moment of contemplating Myra’s picture, for luck, I called a musician I’d worked with the previous year, who had impressed me with his versatility and verve.
“Hey, Spike, I need the band and a place to record. When are you free in the coming weeks?”
We quickly agreed to work on the new songs I’d written and composed, with P.A.’s help in most cases. I was getting better, though – two of the tunes and arrangements were all my own, with no help, and they’d turned out pretty good as well; at least I thought so. I wondered how Spike and his band would like them.
Jerry Murdock was still strongly opposed to the idea of my going independent. He’d never even seriously discussed the merits of my plan. Did the record label have him in their pocket somehow? I hated feeling these doubts about the man, he’d been such an important part of the last few years, hanging around me and calling much more often them my own parents.
Last year, I’d have let him take all these decisions, and torpedo my own wishes in his constant quest of higher paying gigs. Now I was getting stronger, better able to know my own mind. Could our working relationship survive this change? Should it?
My gut told me that it was time to take a risk – considering my wealth it was a small risk anyway – and invest in myself, as a creator and not just performer. There was something incredibly satisfying about performing a song I’d written and set to music myself.
Would my fans share in my enthusiasm? I hoped so, but at the end of the day, I did this for Myra, and myself. I had to, once I’d started the process. She told me to write my own music, and here I was, following her advice.
Where was she now? I wanted to see her again, play my songs for her, hold her in my arms, and kiss her breathless.
Not the End. I had to believe there still was hope.
SPRING
1
I don’t remember too much of the rest of that winter. It went by in hectic activities, studying, acting, singing – I had hoped that living closer to my professional duties would make things easier, but it did not work out like that. Alice scheduled lots of activities, and I had to argue with her more than once so that she let me off the hook now and then.
Studying at home turned out to be easier in some respects – I could concentrate on one subject at a time, my tutors focused on me alone, and I could study whenever I found some free time. But it was a lonely business. School, for all its drawbacks, had placed me in the company of young people my own age. I only appreciated now, after I’d cut loose, how much that had helped to keep me sane and normal. Well, until Myra’s arrival, at any rate. Without the rivalry of the class, my motivation to study was not easy to keep up.
P.A. dropped in twice, and we talked about music, poetry, and songs. I showed him what I’d done since his last visit, and he gave me some tips how to improve it further. That man had an absolutely sure instinct for music and lyrics. I couldn’t understand why he himself was not a mega-star – he had the looks, the voice, the presence and above all the talent.
“Been there, done that,” he merely said, when I asked him point-blank. But as his face was not plastered over the Internet and he wasn’t even featured on Wikipedia, I doubted that he meant the same thing I had in mind. Maybe he was right to keep a low profile, though; it got tired to have to sign dozens of autographs and trail one or two bodyguards whenever I left my house.
In March I flew to Cyprus for the shooting of Hurricane Riders 2. In the first movie, still doing very well in box offices all over the world, I’d co-starred with two older, established actors. In the sequel my own role was much bigger and had to carry the whole film. Again they had hired several stuntmen, who performed a series of improbably heroic moves pretending to be me. As far as acting went,
the performance was not difficult – all the feelings I was allowed to show on screen were already part of my acting repertoire. The whole movie was just light entertainment with many action scenes, but as always I gave it my best.
I was thrown into the constant company of Amy Thurlow, the female lead and budding femme fatale who enticed and betrayed me, the main character. To my regret, the producers had decided not to re-use Jennifer Crawley, and to hire someone with a higher profile. Amy was great, too, it turned out: despite an almost scarily convincing performance as a treacherous bitch, in real life she was a fun-loving and uncomplicated colleague. In our spare time we went out to small restaurants and talked a lot – about acting, future ambitions, joint acquaintances. She was four years older than I, but never let me feel it.
Alice was off my back at the moment, I hoped, and the album of my own songs was in production and being offered around to selected critics and media people. I wondered how it was doing; even if it flopped, as Jerry Murdock had angrily predicted, I was determined to go on writing my own music. It just felt right.
My parents sent some messages. They were spending a couple of months in China, where dad had to settle labour issues at one of the plants his company co-owned there. Workers had gone so far as to take their manager hostage, though he’d been released by now. I felt little sympathy with Father and his partners. If you outsourced production to a country with a completely different mind-set and culture, to save on costs and wages, problems were only to be expected. But I kept that opinion to myself. He had enough problems to deal with and if I knew him at all, would come out of the experience richer than ever.
“Let’s go out to a tavern tonight,” Amy suggested one evening, after long hours of filming the same couple of scenes over and over. “I need some distraction. Here in Cyprus you can have a beer at your age, it’s practically legal.”
“I’ll come but I’ll pass on the beer,” I said. “Who else is coming?”
George and Tony, two of the stuntmen, decided to join us. I was still trailed everywhere by a bodyguard – Murdock had negotiated him as part of my contract – so that made a party of five, with Amy as the only woman. We quickly found a nice little place with a seaside view. Sunset was just over, and there still was a little dim light, though the first stars were already visible on the darkening sky. The air was dry and warm.
“I’ll have a watered wine and some stuffed grape leaves,” I decided, when the waitress came to ask for our orders. The table had a red-and white checked cloth on it, and was simple but clean. Amy opted for Moussaka, and the guys had lamb chops with polenta, a more substantial meal. I supposed the stunts they had been performing used up more calories than my own acting. We’d taken a table for four; the bodyguard hovered nearby at a separate table, as they tend to prefer.
A fiddler started to play in the background. The drinks arrived quickly, and I sipped my wine. It was not the first time I drank alcohol, though in the USA with their strict laws I would not have done it. Here, with the chalk-white buildings all around us, still reflecting the heat of the sunny day, I felt relaxed enough to do whatever came naturally.
“Is it true you are producing your own album?” Terry asked me. “Why would you do that? Is it very expensive?”
“I don’t yet know the full extent of the cost,” I said, “but I wanted complete artistic control over this album, as I wrote the songs myself.”
“What, music and lyrics?” Amy looked at me with respect. “That’s pretty neat at your age.”
“Well, I’ll be seventeen in just a few weeks,” I said. The other three guffawed.
“I suppose if it’s a success, this way you’ll keep a lot more of the earnings,” Terry concluded. “Does it work like self-publishing a book? I’m thinking of writing a book on how to be a stuntman and self-publish it.”
“That sounds like an interesting subject,” I agreed. “Do send me the link when you do, and I’ll be your first customer.”
“And me the second,” Amy added.
“Has there been any news about that girl who vanished in the Rockies?” Tony asked me. Amy glared at him – she’d avoided the subject, no doubt from tact.
I shook my head. “No, and after all this time they don’t expect to find anything. She simply vanished.”
“That must be tough on you. You loved her?”
“Yeah. Still do.”
There was a moment of silence, interrupted by the waitress bringing our food. She balanced three large plates at the same time, without spilling or dropping a thing.
“”Well, here’s to finding out the truth,” Tony said, irrepressibly, as he raised his glass of beer.
“I can drink to that,” I agreed, and then changed the subject to politics. Amy was passionately Democrat, Tony libertarian, while George and I were cynical about all politicians. George said he considered all of them crooks, and I agreed with him.
“It’s easy to scoff,” Amy challenged me. “Why don’t you go into politics yourself, and show everyone how to do better?”
I looked at her incredulously. “But I can’t even vote yet!”
“Well, not right away, but in a few years’ time, then. You’re male, tall, rich, white, and world-famous already.” She smirked. “Who would have an easier time of it in politics than you?”
“None of that should matter,” I objected.
“Maybe not, but we all know it does. Especially the money.”
I decided not to go there – she certainly had a point. “It might be fun to play the part in a movie, but not for real, keeping it up for years and years. That life is even more artificial than our acting. Well, maybe I’ll feel differently about it in thirty years of so.”
Though I doubted it. I couldn’t imagine Myra as a political wife.
2
The next morning started with a call from a journalist who must have bribed the hotel to put him through to my suite. “Congratulations on your new romance,” she said in a sugary voice. “How are you enjoying the Mediterranean?”
“No comment,” I growled, then switched on my laptop and searched.
Alice, that snake, had betrayed me. There it was - an article in Hollywood News.
“Teen idol Jason Mackenzie is consoling himself over his last girlfriend’s disappearance with rising star Amy Thurlow. Their relationship is hot and heavy,” I read. It had Alice’s handwriting all over it, I even recognised one of her favourite turns of phrase.
This was too much.
I checked my email to see if she’d given me any warning of the new romance. Nothing from Alice. I instead I found an email with three attachments from my father’s accountants.
Report on the investigation into the business practices of J. Murdock and Associates, was the ominous title.
I had no printer in my hotel room, so I was glad to find an executive summary ahead of the lengthy report. The contents were less satisfactory. As I read, my hands became numb and my head began to feel a furious pounding. If Murdock had been before me at that moment, I might well have thrown myself on him and tried to pummel him in my anger. Considering he’d been a professional boxer in his youth, this might not have ended well for me. A good thing I was in Cyprus rather than L.A., so I could regain my cool before doing anything I might later regret.
Murdock had been swindling me, skimming off part of the earnings from the music side of my business, with the apparent connivance of the record label. It had started when I was only thirteen. He owed me several million dollars,
So that was why he’d been so opposed to my going independent.
I felt like crying for a moment. It was not the money, of which I had enough anyway, but that they were just using me so cynically ---to be betrayed by Alice and by Jerry, and find out about both the very same morning, was tough.
I imagined Myra sitting next to me, on the rumpled hotel bed. What would she advise me to do?
“Nobody cares about me, it’s all about the money,” I moaned to phantom Myra.
> She smiled and shook her head. “You deserve to be loved, Jason. Just remember to separate your business from your feelings. These people are not worth agonising over.”
Even in my imagination, she always had good sense and advice. Had she really been so calm and serene? I thought so, but could no longer be completely sure. The short time we’d known each other seemed hidden behind a mist of unreality.
I had no time that morning to do anything about my treacherous publicist and agent, as we had to resume the filming just then, but I stewed over the news over the whole day. A few good-natured jokes about my love life did not help. Amy assured me that she’d had nothing to do with the false leak, and I believed her. She had a boyfriend back in Toronto, and had to spend an hour on the phone during our first break to reassure him that the media had just printed nonsense.
Poor Amy. Her boyfriend was the jealous type. He was a baseball player, so in any physical confrontation I might be in danger. Maybe I’d better take up karate or Kung Fu.
No. Maybe I’d better fire my publicist and agent. I knew it had to be done, but despite the clear provocation felt very mixed up about the necessity.
It was like having to break up with a girlfriend when you see she double times you. You cannot immediately erase all feelings from one moment to the other. I’d never been in that position myself, but observed it in some of my Hollywood acquaintances.
As soon as we finished working I sent a message to my father’s lawyers to fire Jerry Murdock and Alice on my behalf, and sue Murdock for every cent he had embezzled. Alice would probably have counselled against it, and I knew that many of my actor colleagues would have preferred to hush up such a story as it would not be good for the image. To hell with that. If somebody took advantage of me, he or she would be persecuted to the end of the earth. That would prevent others from trying it also. If I looked a fool for being swindled, I would actually be a fool to forgive and forget.
“I’m going out,” Amy announced. I shook my head. After the fraudulent articles about our love story, the less we were seen together, the better.
