Dead Last

by James W. Hall

  “Who’s the star of this show, sweetie? Me or Slattery?”

  “You got major minutes, Dee Dee. Your face was the payoff.”

  “But he got the kickass speech. That scene was about him.”

  “All right. I’ll bring it up with Gus.”

  “All those horny males in our demographic, who do they want to see? Me in a catsuit with my perky tits, or a sad old guy in a hospital bed?”

  “You’re right, Dee Dee.”

  She leaned close.

  “What’s your gut saying?”

  She nodded toward the hallway where Danson and Gus were talking.

  “Danson is not a happy cowboy.”

  She smoothed a blue hand over her ripped abs. Dee, the fitness freak.

  “Maybe his chaps are chafing.”

  “Yeah, maybe they are.”

  “I could take him back to his hotel, loosen them a notch.”

  “The hell you will.”

  She gave him her don’t-get-possessive glare. Half serious, half not.

  Flynn Moss drifted over, still in his street clothes, no scenes for him till the afternoon shoot. Khaki shorts, white T-shirt, flip-flops. Dee Dee’s costar, Flynn played Janus, the ruthless rogue cop, master of disguise.

  Flynn was Sawyer’s twin. Maybe a smidge shorter but otherwise they were duplicates. In every nonphysical way, however, they were galaxies apart. Sawyer, the brainy one, calm and measured, a loner by instinct. Flynn, the action figure, ballsy, down and dirty, the last one to leave the party. The guy with a hundred hangover remedies.

  And Flynn Moss was most definitely not a fan of Dee Dee Dollimore’s. Zero respect for her acting skills, and totally unmoved by her sexual allure. Feelings that were bitterly mutual.

  Dee Dee gave Flynn a mock smile, then turned and flounced away.

  “Nice creep factor, Sawyer.” Then he slipped into a perfect impression of Dee Dee’s voice. “‘It’s all right, I’ll be gentle.’”

  “Glad you liked it.”

  “Then boom, she strangles the geezer. Good work, bro. Finally embracing your dark side.”

  “Dee Dee thought Slattery’s part was padded. She wanted more lines.”

  “Fuck her, she always wants more lines. If she had her way the show would be one long soliloquy by Princess Dee Dee. The rest of us standing around worshiping her twitchy butt.”

  “You’re too hard on her, man. She wants what’s good for the show. Like the rest of us.”

  “And you’re majorly pussy whipped. Sure, she’s yummy and all that, but the girl is killing our box office all by her lonesome. Less she talks, the better. Keep her in that suit, hood on, flaunt that bod, give her six words per episode max—or better yet, gag her with a jockstrap—and watch our ratings climb.”

  “Cool it, Flynn.”

  “Kidding, man. Just kidding.”

  “Sure you are.”

  Gus walked back into the room alone and everyone lowered the volume. The verdict was in. The crew sneaking looks to get a clue.

  He stood there a minute, organizing his thoughts.

  Gus Dollimore had the emaciated hardness of a man grimly determined to purge every ounce of flab. Around his eyes the skin was pinched, and his cheeks were as taut as boiled meat. He wore his jet black hair in a military crew cut. In a forgiving light, Gus might be mistaken for a hard-living forty-five instead of a man at war with sixty. He wore a black jersey and white silky trousers that swished around his long legs like luminous smoke as he walked over to Sawyer.

  “Give us a minute,” he told Flynn as he took Sawyer’s arm and steered him to the far corner of the room.

  Flynn made a sloppy salute, did an about-face, and marched off. A little pissed, though Flynn damn well knew the chain of command. Until he was a bigger star, he was below the line, down with the rest of the hired help.

  Gus’s grip on Sawyer’s biceps was rigid.

  Not good, Sawyer was thinking. Definitely not good.

  “So here’s the deal.” Gus shot a look at a set dresser talking on her cell nearby. He jerked his chin at her and she backed away out of earshot. Gus released Sawyer’s arm just as his hand was going numb.

  “We’re cancelled,” Sawyer said.

  “No,” Gus said. “Danson gave me a number. A target.”

  “Viewers?”

  “A million more.”

  “No way.”

  “A million new customers,” Gus said, “or we’re on the street.”

  “By when?”

  “Episode ten, five weeks from today.”

  “Bastards want that many eyeballs, they need to run some freaking ads.”

  “We know that isn’t going to happen,” Gus said. “This economy.”

  “So we’re dead.”

  Gus looked at the bed where Dee Dee had strangled Slattery. Eyes taking on a hard glitter. Sawyer could feel the radiation coming off the guy.

  “You got an idea?”

  “Fuckers want a million,” Gus said. “We give ’em a million.”

  “Like it’s that simple.”

  “Everything good is simple.”

  “So talk to me.”

  “Look, kid, I been kissing ass so long, I put myself to sleep every night counting butt cracks. This show tanks, no way I’ll claw my way back.”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  Dollimore watched two prop guys roll the deathbed from the room. The nursing home where they were shooting would have it back in service in time for afternoon naps.

  When Gus spoke again, his voice was barely a whisper.

  “Question is, what’re you willing to do to survive?”

  “I’ll write my ass off.”

  “Cut the Boy Scout shit.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I’m not talking about scribbling, hotshot. I’m asking, are you willing to get your hands dirty to keep us working? Me, your brother, this crew. That shit you had Slattery say, is that just garbage, or do you believe it?”

  “Huh?”

  “Making a splash, all that.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  Gus grimaced and waved a dismissive hand.

  “Tell me what you want, Gus, I’m there.”

  Dollimore leaned close, breath to breath, appraising him, Gus’s harsh brown eyes roaming Sawyer’s face. Whatever he saw made him grit his jaw and huff out a disgusted breath. Without a backward glance, Gus stalked offstage.

  ACT ONE

  SLIPPING INTO SECOND PERSON

  ONE

  IT WAS SATURDAY, MID-JULY, AND Thorn and Rusty Stabler were drifting through Trout Creek, a half hour west of Key Largo by boat. On the fringes of the Everglades, this northern corner of the Florida Bay was dotted with tiny islands and flats that rose into view at low tide to become vast sandbars where egrets and herons feasted on mollusks and stranded pinfish and shrimp.

  Narrow unmarked channels snaked across the grassy bottom and cut close to the mangrove islands, making it a tricky place to navigate even in a shallow draft skiff like theirs. All across this region the turtle grass was scarred with prop trails from novice boaters who’d strayed into the shallows and plowed deep grooves at high speed, leaving their idiotic signatures in the sea floor for decades to come.

  The Bogies, Stump Pass, Nest Key, Alligator Bay, Trout Cove, Little Madeira, Long Sound, Joe Bay, Tern, and Eagle keys. The islands and sandbars, bays and coves of this remote area were as familiar to the two of them as the slopes, curves, and soft undulations of a lover’s body.

  Unanchored, they rode the tide, their live shrimp jigging past the mangrove roots where the groupers and big snappers lurked. For this mindless sport, none of Rusty’s casting skills or dexterity was required. It was the kind of half-assed fishing that day-tripping tourists indulged in.

  Though it was beneath her abilities, Rusty was beyond caring about such things. Today it was the air they were after, the pure, hard summer light, the wayward scent of wilderness. One by one, they were going t
o hit all her favorite fishing holes, a stations-of-the-cross pilgrimage around the bays and flats and creeks of the upper Keys. Spots both of them had fished since they were kids.

  Rusty Stabler, his lover for the last two years. The longest connection Thorn had ever managed with a woman. Longest and most solid, and now it had become by far the most painful.

  He watched Rusty twitch her line, putting action in her bait. Hip cocked against the center console, eyes fixed on the water’s surface, waiting for any riffle, holding the rod with a loose readiness, reflexes alert. Like Rusty of old.

  Twenty yards up the creek a trio of dolphins appeared and took their sweet, silky time rolling past. With a quiet smile, Rusty monitored their journey.

  To the east, the ruddy flush of dawn crept above the horizon, and its glow seeped upward into the pearl-gray sky. A breeze passing through Joe Bay sent ripples fanning across the creek, keeping the mosquitoes off. Somewhere inside the dense web of mangroves an osprey hit its high strong notes, twelve in a row, a pause, then twelve more haunting cries as if it were making its morning devotions.

  He watched as the dolphins moved into the bay, taking their magic elsewhere.

  Rusty motioned at the water off the stern. “Heads up.”

  Thorn turned as a fish nudged his bait. He popped the line, set the hook, and knew in half a second it was another runt. His third in five minutes.

  “You’re on a tear, Thorn.”

  He brought it alongside, released the small gray snapper, then fixed another shrimp to the hook. He glanced at Rusty, returned her smile, and pitched the bait close to the mangroves.

  “Tide’s picking up; we should do a little better now.”

  “When was fishing ever about catching fish?” she said.

  Thorn was silent, watching their trailing baits.

  “Oh, shit. Listen to me getting all Zen.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” he said.

  As he watched, something hard and ugly shifted inside Rusty’s gut. She winced, closed her eyes, and slumped forward.

  He peeled the rod from her hands and set it in a holder.

  “All right, that’s enough. We’re going in.”

  “And do what? Lie on my back, stare at the ceiling, and wait?”

  “Rusty, you’re hurting.”

  “I’m okay.” Her face was pale and she swayed as if the boat were wallowing. “I’ll sit down, take a breather. But I’m not ready to go in.”

  She turned from him, edged around the console, and settled onto the casting platform. There was a dry rasp in her breathing.

  He slid his rod into the holder alongside hers and came over. It was a minute before she had her breath back and looked up. Her hazel eyes were muddied by the drugs and pain but they remained unflinching.

  “This was a mistake.”

  “Stop it, Thorn. This is exactly right. I can’t imagine a better ending.”

  She drew a breath and wiped away the shine of sweat on her neck.

  “Ending?”

  “You know what I mean. Right here, right now. This is perfect, exactly where I should be today, at this stage.”

  She looked away, taking a moment to regain the rhythm of her breath. When she turned to him again, her eyes had cleared.

  “Ease off, would you. Even if you have to fake it. Okay? It makes things tougher with you tensed up, fighting so hard.”

  Thorn was silent. In the last few weeks he’d tried every upbeat phrase he knew, anything to encourage her, brighten the gloom. Then yesterday, with a fierceness she’d never directed at him before, she ordered him to stop. They were past all that bullshit. Three rounds of chemo had done nothing; the morphine wasn’t touching her pain. It was no longer a matter of if.

  After her outburst, her voice had steadied and her face had assumed the calm bemusement of one who no longer dreads anything.

  Now Rusty reset her Heat cap on her hairless scalp and turned her eyes toward the empty bay.

  “Trout Creek,” she said. “I caught my first fish over there. I ever tell you about that?”

  He nodded.

  “I did?”

  “A big-ass grouper. You were nine, came out alone in a plastic boat with a ten-horse Merc. The damn fish towed you for about half an hour before you wore it out. Like Santiago and his marlin. That grouper got you addicted.”

  “When did I tell you that?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Rusty.”

  “When, damn it?”

  “I don’t know, ten minutes ago. Maybe fifteen.”

  “Shit.” She shook her head, frowning.

  “It’s nothing. It’s okay. Everything’s fine. It’s the drugs.”

  Gradually her frustration passed, and she sighed and her lips softened again, coming as close to a smile as Thorn had seen from her in weeks.

  She rose and opened her arms and Thorn stepped into the embrace. She held him firmly, then eased her head back. The fit of her lips was as flawless as ever, though he could taste the acrid bite of the chemicals lacing her blood.

  He pressed deeper and lost himself in the kiss, until finally Rusty drew away. She touched a finger to the stubble on his cheek, drew a slow line down his jaw, and gave him another peck before stepping back and retrieving her rod.

  They returned to fishing, watched their baits, and were quiet. The air was radiant and thick with the sweet labors of summer, the swollen moon-driven tide, the scent of hidden orchids and reptiles sunning themselves on the high limbs of the mangroves. On the water’s surface, the lacy shadows of branches and leaves trembled with every breath of breeze.

  For the last week the Keys had been under the spell of a confluence of celestial events that caused the bays and ocean currents to swell several feet higher than normal. Around the island, seawater was washing over the rocky beaches and heaving high against seawalls. Thorn’s own dock was three inches below the waterline. Because the moon was in perfect alignment with the earth, at perigee, its closest approach to the southern hemisphere in decades, the increased gravitational pull was tugging at anything with even the slightest water content. A reminder of the bewitching forces calling from deep space, many of them still unnamed, unmeasured, their effects not yet known.

  For Thorn the link between the swollen tides and Rusty’s illness was unmistakable. Of course, the idea that earthbound matters could be controlled by invisible powers beyond our realm fueled the religious faithful, stirring them to spiritual awe and devotion to a higher power.

  But not Thorn. It only jacked up his rage.

  Surrendering was not in his nature, especially to forces that were nameless and intangible. For weeks as Rusty battled her illness, he’d been yearning to take something by the throat and throttle it. To go tooth and claw with Rusty’s tormentor. But there was nothing there.

  He was reeling in his line, about to take a break, when something big crashed his bait. The rod jerked from his fingers, clattered across the deck, and was heading overboard when he stabbed at it and found a grip. Twenty feet of line burned off the reel. Out in the creek the buckle of water was closing on the mangrove roots when Thorn yanked it to a halt.

  “I think we got your grouper,” he said. “Or one of its grandkids.”

  He tightened the drag, won back some line before the fish turned again and bulled back toward its lair. Those roots were coated in barnacles with razory edges, and the slightest brush would slice the lightweight monofilament.

  Thorn leaned back and horsed the fish to the right, dipping the rod tip and cranking the slack until he had the fish alongside. As he grabbed the light line and kneeled to unhook it, he caught a flash to his right and looked out in time to see a shark heading toward the helpless grouper.

  Ten feet away, it would tear into the fish in seconds.

  Thorn jerked the line to his mouth, bit it in two, freeing the fish. Through the clear water he watched the old warrior scoot back to the safety of the mangroves. The shark, a six-foot brown, sailed past, missing it by inches.

>   But then, as if the natural laws of physics didn’t apply to it, the bulky predator veered right and was on the grouper in half a second. Blood blossomed at the edge of the mangrove roots; the water boiled for a moment and was still.

  “Goddamn it.”

  He watched the shark thrash, inhaling the last of the grouper, then it departed. A moment later a school of glassy minnows swarmed in to mop up the final floating chunks. Seconds after that the creek was still, a freshening breeze sweeping in from the east, the incoming tide flushing away the last signs of carnage. When he turned around, she’d vanished.

  “Rusty?”

  He stepped around the center console and found her sprawled facedown. Her head twisted to the side, cheek mashed against the deck. Her eyes were open, milky and unseeing.

  Across the creek the osprey screamed and screamed again.

  THE MIAMI HERALD

  Monday, July 19

  Rachel Anne “Rusty” Stabler, At Peace on the Water

  By April Moss

  Rachel Anne Stabler, who was born in America’s landlocked heartland but came to cherish the watery paradise of her adopted home in the Florida Keys, died at her residence in Key Largo after a short illness. She was 46 years old.

  For decades, Rusty explored the waters of the Florida Bay, the Everglades and the Gulf of Mexico, first as a youngster in her own skiff, and later as a charter fishing guide, taking anglers onto the saltwater flats or into secluded creeks and bays in search of tarpon, bonefish and other elusive prey.

  Born in Starkville, Oklahoma, Rusty Stabler arrived in the Keys at the age of 6 with her single mother, June Ellen Stabler, who had come to those remote islands in search of a fresh start. Rusty completed high school at Coral Shores High in Tavernier, where she struggled with her studies. “As a sophomore she fell in with a tough crew,” said former principal Matthew Shane. “She was flunking most of her classes, then one day she walked into my office and threw down the gauntlet. She said if the high school didn’t start teaching something useful, we were going to lose her and a lot of others like her. She was lit up.”