In front of building G sat her light blue VW Jetta. A light came on inside her first-floor apartment.
Lanny didn’t even make it all the way to a parking space. He threw his gear shift into park and ripped off his seatbelt.
No way! How did she get…?
Lanny leaped out of his Xterra and sprinted toward the door.
Right after I turned down the 8K option offer from Mylan Weems and submitted Larry’s story to three other studios, something unexpected happened, something akin to the final minutes of an Ebay auction. A 12K offer came in. Then a 17.5K offer—which I almost urged Larry to take, just so I could make a few shekels in commission. But my phone kept ringing—independent film people, a startup firm, and Mylan himself. The conversations were sometimes so short that I’d forget who I’d spoken with last.
“Hi, Ned, what about 26K?”
“Um, we’re weighing options. But thank you.”
“Ned, my main man! How’s 35K look?”
“Can I think about it overnight?”
“West Coast greetings, Nedster! Mylan here. Take a swat at 54K?”
I adapted quickly to the lingo. “Nice, Myle-baby. Lemme talk to Larry.”
“Me again, Ned. We can go 72K.”
“That’s very generous of you.”
In the life of a literary agent, there is no sweeter phrase than bidding war
I asked Producer Number Four what had suddenly gotten his interest up. He said that a clean-but-irreverent story might have wider appeal than he’d originally thought.
I said, “hmmm,” and thanked him for his next offer.
Mylan called me a third time and expressed his growing interest in the project, complete with compliments and the fact that he was holding all calls so that he and I could talk.
I told him I had two other producers on hold, and that I would get back to him.
I’ll never forget Mylan’s parting compliment. He said, “Ned-baby, today I’m an Israelite, and Larry’s story is a golden calf.”
My job as Agent Orange was threefold: to shine the calf, to arbitrate the bidding war, and to bring maximum benefit to my client. To my delight, all this shining and arbitrating and benefit-maxing was taking place even before any of us had received the balance of Larry’s ending.
Not that we had to wait much longer. While I sat in my 22nd-floor office, phone to ear, Larry wandered in. He’d come by every day for the past week, asking questions, hoping for good news. Today was a Tuesday, and he stood over my desk, arms spread wide, eyebrows raised. Well?
I covered the receiver with my hand. “Larry, you’ll have to wait outside in the break room. I’m on the phone with L.A. This second producer has me on hold for a minute—we’re in discussions.”
Larry remained planted. “Numbers?”
I nodded. “Yep.” Then I pointed to the door
Larry’s mouth dropped and his eyes nearly burst with excitement. “Then I have to stay, Ned.”
“No, you’ll mess this up.”
“I have to know.”
Again I pointed to the door. “Please.”
“But I have the rest of the ending with me.” He pulled a bunch of folded pages from his rear pocket and dangled them overhead. “Lemme stay or else you don’t get the ending.”
I put my ear to the phone, heard nothing, and covered the receiver again with my hand. “You’re bribing me? While I’m on the phone trying to sell your story?”
He shook the pages, waved them in front of my face, teased me with their contents. Then he pulled a CD from his other pocket. “I saved it on CD for ya too. Please, Ned, I have to know what’s happening. I’m almost out of money, and Miranda is asking all kinds of questions about my vocational future. Plus I only have twelve dollars of credit left on my VISA card.” He dropped the pages and the CD on my desk and took a step back. “Please?”
I ceased pointing at my door and gestured instead across the office to my potted plants. “Sit against the far wall between those two ferns, tie a handkerchief over your mouth, and don’t make a sound.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not. This is too important for interruptions and emotional outbursts. If you want to stay, you have to sit, tie, and remain silent.”
Larry lumbered over between the potted plants and sat. “Ned?”
“What now?”
“Can I borrow a handkerchief?”
I pulled one from my desk drawer, wadded it into a ball, and tossed it over-handed to him.
Larry caught it in mid-air and sniffed hard. “Is it clean?”
“Yes. Now… shhh.” I put my ear to the phone again but heard nothing. I glanced amused at Larry as he struggled to tie the handkerchief behind his neck. “By the way, Lar, I can’t believe you let DJ Ned get recaptured and sent back to Cuba.”
Larry pulled the handkerchief down, his excited expression fading to a frown. “Ya know, I really had a hard time with that. . . what with you being my friend and all.”
“I’m touched.” I set the phone in my lap and reached over to pull a couple sheets off the printer. “Larry, I have something for you to read while you wait.”
He rose to his feet and came loping back to my desk. “What’s this?”
“Other possible endings,” I explained, and handed him the papers. “Several people whom I’ve let read your story so far—including my barber, my wife, and that flight attendant I met en route to L.A.—have e-mailed me their version of how the story should end.”
“But how did they get—”
“I’ve been e-mailing them the chapter files as you gave them to me. They’ve bugged me to death. Plus, I thought one of them might come up with something that would inspire you.”
Producer Number Two came back on the phone and apologized for the wait.
“Quite all right,” I said to him, motioning for Larry to stay quiet. He returned to the ferns, retied his hankie, sat on the floor, and began reading.
The producer informed me that his script doctor had just had a brainflash. The two of them were reading the theme park scene where the parking clerk gives Lanny the clue about “seventy percent of the earth being covered in water.” The script guy then got hold of a Bible and read the first two verses of the book of Genesis. He set the book aside, thought about it for a while, and came up with what they thought was the perfect ending.
“I’m tellin’ ya, Ned,” said the producer into my phone, “this could work.”
“I’m all ears.”
He then explained that in the second verse of Genesis, it says, “God’s Spirit hovered over the deep.” The producer and his script guy concluded that all spirits—good or evil—must therefore lose their powers beneath the deep. So Miranda could be discovered hiding out in a submarine with a crew from the United States Navy, who did not touch her because they were good and proper sailors under the command of a Christian commander. This ending would satisfy a wide and diverse audience, the producer explained. It would offer a dash of patriotism and a dash of biblical accuracy, together with the reunion of the lovers. He said these three points were what the studio wanted to convey—an ending that has something for everyone.
I put my finger in my mouth and made the gag me face to Larry.
But Larry wasn’t looking at me. He was busy reading the endings e-mailed in from the readers, including the one from Zach, who had returned to Auburn for the start of college football season. This may or may not have swayed his attempt at a proper conclusion.
Oddest to me was the fact that only one of these readers thought Miranda would be in the apartment.
Big Ed turned in the shortest rendition. He thought no way would Miranda be in her apartment. Instead, she had time-traveled to 1944 and was shivering and lost on the beach at Normandy, where a burly sergeant named Big Ed rescued her in the middle of a cold, dark night. After reuniting Miranda with her long lost boyfriend, Big Ed was presented the medal for bravery from President Roosevelt.
Rocco—who, along with his
turbo cologne, stopped by my office at least twice a week—said Miranda could not be in the apartment, simply because a dashing commercial real estate agent named Rocco had just sold the complex for big bucks. He was turning it into high-priced condos, which he would sell to yuppie Atlantans who were willing to take out interest-only mortgages in order to feed their materialism. Miranda would eventually turn up at the marina aboard the Sanitized 2, wearing gold chains and diamonds she’d found while on a deep-sea dive. Lanny would mooch off of her and they would settle into a high-priced condo in West Palm Beach, which would be sold to them by—you guessed it—a dashing realtor named Rocco.
Zach also thought Miranda would not be in the apartment. She would be found working as a roadie for the Dave Mathews Band, who incidentally had come out with a hit song called Zealots Marching. In a surprise twist, Dave himself fell for Miranda, but Lanny rushed behind the stage after a sold-out concert, dropped to one knee, professed his love for Miranda, and won her back. They got married in the chapel at Auburn, the day after Auburn beat Alabama 56 to 3 in the Sugar Bowl. My son, the romantic.
The young waiter who was studying theatre at Georgia College also e-mailed me. He said no way would Miranda be in the apartment. He thought Lanny and DJ Ned and MC Deluxe would first need to reunite. They would develop their newly acquired acting skills and form an acting troupe comprised solely of posers. These posers would come up with a hit Broadway show that featured amplified sounds of the noises people make while eating. The name of this production would be Chomp. The threesome would tour the world and earn millions from the royalties off Chomp;then they would use these monies to bribe Marvin’s guards into revealing where Miranda was hidden—in an abandoned theatre in Taos, New Mexico.
Angie was the only person who thought Miranda would be inside the apartment. Angie said the perfect ending would be if Lanny discovered Miranda sitting on the carpeted floor and reading Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis. Miranda would give the book to Lanny, who would immediately pronounce C.S. brilliant, convert, and become the maintenance manager of Charles Stanley’s mega-church in Atlanta. Lanny and Miranda would eventually have four kids, two of them identical twins. Girls, Angie insisted.
The flight attendant who twisted her ankle had e-mailed me from the Houston airport. She said Miranda could not be in the apartment when Lanny arrived. He would keep searching for awhile—and his perserverance would pay off. He would discover that Detour Airlines was actually a secret government agency storing all the unfortunate ones in underground caves near the Gaza Strip. Miranda would find an ancient shovel in her cave, tunnel out, then hitch a ride on a camel to the Persian Gulf. There she would sneak aboard a container ship filled with Arabian health food, hide out on the ship for five weeks as it made its way to Jacksonville, then meet Lanny at sunset on Cocoa Beach. They would lay in the surf and kiss as waves lapped over them, just like Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity.
Larry yanked off his hankie and whispered from between the plants that he liked this ending a lot and wished he had thought of it. Then he said, “No, mine is better. But I could see Hollywood going for this kiss-in-the-surf thing.”
I hung up the phone after jotting down the third producer’s generous offer;then I thumbed through my Rolodex for Mylan Weems’s number. I loved a good bidding war, and now I would give Mylan one last shot.
I was about to call him when Larry balled up the handkerchief and tossed it back at me. It fell short of my desk. “Ned, why don’t you read the rest of my ending before you talk to anyone else? My therapist told me that a lot of my history comes out in the end. Plus, it might give you a better sense of my story’s worth.”
So as Larry sat between my ferns, and Hollywood opened its checkbook, I plucked the pages from my desk and prepared to read. But before starting I leaned down and fed his CD into my computer. Then I e-mailed the file to Angie.
Nuts as it may sound, I wanted her opinion.
25
BUT OF COURSE Miranda’s light blue Jetta was sitting in front of her apartment;Lanny himself had driven her to the airport on the day she flew to Orlando. And indeed there was a light on inside the apartment—the rental manager had let herself in after not seeing or hearing from Miranda in a month. She had failed to pay her September rent.
Instead of crossing the doorstep to a blissful reunion, Lanny had stumbled upon a common eviction.
To say that this event sent Lanny spiraling into a deeper level of insanity would be something of an understatement. He had been so sure of blissful reunion—now he literally shook with disappointment.
Lanny stood in the doorway of apartment G3 and looked on as the rental manager—an older woman who seemed to take her job much too seriously—filled out an eviction form. Warm air rushed from the living room, and Lanny wondered why the heat was turned on for such a balmy September night.
“How much does Miranda owe?” he blurted. He would pay the debt himself if necessary.
The rental manager ran a finger down a page of residents. “Is she a fortunate or an unfortunate?”
Lanny motioned for the manager to step outside the apartment, which she did. He then showed her to the rear of his Xterra, parked crooked across two spaces. “See that license plate?”
The manager read the stolen CU N HVN plate. Then, the bumper sticker. Satisfied, she nodded her affirmation. “Very good. This means Miss Timms owes only four-hundred-twenty dollars for September. Will this be cash or check?”
Lanny saw an opportunity. “Check,” he said. “But before I write it I’ll need you to say the two-word code phrase.”
The rental manager nodded as if this was standard zealot procedure. “Triumphant soldiers.”
Lanny now knew the phrase—and wondered when he would get to use it—but right now he was most worried about writing a very bad check. Though with a very bad check he could at least buy himself another day or two, enough time to search the apartment for further clues.
Lanny pulled his checkbook from the glovebox and followed the rental manager back inside Miranda’s apartment. His lack of funds classified his check as bad;his lack of status classified it as very bad. Lanny was officially dead, drowned off the coast of Boca Raton, and his bank had cancelled his account.
Undeterred, he ripped check number 0817 from its brethren and filled it out on the kitchen counter.
The rental manager looked over his shoulder and said, “Oh, I forgot one thing. For just an extra five dollars per month, I can hook you up with a twenty-four-hours-a-day subscription to TBS.”
Larry dated the check and muttered, “But TBS is already included with regular cable.”
“Sir, The Blessed Station is now premium content.”
Lanny turned away from her, shut his eyes tight. He was approaching his bursting point.
“Could you please leave now?” he asked between clenched teeth, and handed her his check.
The manager left him alone. When she closed the door, the stillness and the silence and the vacancy all melded together, increasing his loneliness tenfold.
It never stops, Lanny thought as he walked into Miranda’s bedroom. It’s never going to stop.
Atop her nightstand he saw the framed picture of the two of them, sitting on a picnic blanket in Chastain Park. For long minutes he stroked the glass. Then he picked up the picture and tucked it under his arm. He opened Miranda’s closet, reached for one of her dresses, and drew it to his nose. He sniffed the material long and hard. He reached for the next dress, then the next, sniffing each one. The scent of his woman filled this closet, and as he pulled the fifth dress to his face, Lanny Hooch fell to his knees and wept.
He woke in the closet sometime after 2:00 a.m., carpet creases pressed into the left side of his face. Minutes later he found Miranda’s flowery blue journal beneath her bed. Lanny flipped through it and found the last entry. It was dated August 10, just a week before she disappeared.
Yesterday I got a raise at work! And then I called Carla in A
ngusta avid told her all about it. My own sister had the nerve to ask wie if I Wad a Willi I accused her of being greedy. She laughed and told me she was just joking. I told her that at age 29, I had never thought of a will. So, today at lunch I Went and had a will drawn up. I split everything four ways: between Mom, Dad, Carla, and Lanny. I love Lanny, and if anything should ever happen to me, I Want him to have one quarter of all I have.
Lanny found a copy of the will tucked into the back of the journal. He also found four one-hundred dollar bills tucked into the spine. A note stapled to the bottom of the will described in detail her IRA and savings information, and how to reach her parents and sister.
Lanny figured that this financial data could help fund his search. I’ll pose as the beneficiary of all the intended beneficiaries. And after I find her I’ll repay all the money.
One phone call the next morning flushed that idea. A zealot attorney at Predestined Probate LLC explained the bad news—since Lanny Hooch was officially dead, and there was no changing that, all his monies would go to the state of Georgia. The attorney also explained that even if Lanny Hooch was still living, his bequeathment would have been small, since a new zealot tax consumed 66.6 percent of all inherited monies.
Flustered, Lanny consoled himself by remembering he still had the four hundred dollars from Miranda’s journal. He stuffed the cash into his wallet—and solved one minor issue in the process. With his bumper sticker, license plate, and knowledge of the two-word code phrase giving him room to roam, and with his ability to buy gas for only twelve cents per gallon, he now had plenty of dough to resume his search.
I’m going to find her even if she’s become a zealot herself. I have to know… .
Certain that he had missed a clue somewhere along his journey, Lanny lay on the bedroom floor on his back and replayed in his head his searching, his time in captivity, his late-night escape with his friends. He remembered what the guard had said when he’d asked about female captives. He remembered the guard’s glance at the sunrise, the subtle nod to the east. And he remembered the auctioneer’s sign propped against the stone wall.
A Pagan's Nightmare Page 20
