Hello Hollywood

by Suzanne Corso

  I leaned toward him and slid my hand between the buttons on his shirt and nibbled at his earlobe. “Three days just for us.”

  “Paradise.”

  “So tell me why you chose Savannah,” John said. “An S city!”

  “Do you remember anything about the time you were in a coma?” I asked.

  He thought about it for a moment, his eyes darting from the road, out to the salt marsh, then back to the road. “The little I remember is weird. After I got shot . . . and was on the ground, I remember seeing you scrambling toward me on your hands and knees. Then I blacked out and came to briefly while I was on a gurney, being rushed, I think, into surgery. And then suddenly I was above my body, watching all the activity. I . . . I saw this team of doctors and nurses trying to shock my heart into starting, and I knew I had died.”

  “Died? No one told me that.”

  “I talked about it with this grief counselor who came around shortly before I was released. She checked with the main surgeon, and he said I was dead for maybe thirty seconds. Except that I wasn’t dead. I was aware of everything, Sam.”

  I had read my share of books on near-death experiences, everything from Raymond Moody’s classic from the 1970s to Kenneth Ring’s works later on. Consciousness survives death: that was what their research proved. But until now, until this very second, I’d never known anyone personally who had died and returned.

  “Did you . . . see a tunnel of light or anything like that?”

  “Not a tunnel, but a doorway filled with this incredibly beautiful light that emanated such warmth and peace that I was drawn to it. But before I reached the doorway, this guy hurried toward me. And this is the strange thing, Sam. He says, ‘It’s not your time yet, John. You can go if you want to, but you’ll be selling yourself short.’ I asked him what he meant, and scenes started flashing through my head, then all around me, these . . . I don’t know, they were like holographic images, except that they pulsated with life.”

  “What kind of images?”

  “Of the future. At least, I think that’s what they were. I don’t remember the details now.”

  I felt strangely unnerved by his story and squeezed his hand, reassuring myself that he was here with me, in the car, and that he was real, tangible. “Did you know this man?”

  “Nope. But afterward, when I was conscious, I thought of that scene in What Dreams May Come when Cuba Gooding Jr. first appears to Robin Williams after he has died. Remember that?”

  I nodded. I’d seen the movie several times, and every time I watched it, I discovered something that I’d missed in earlier viewings, some detail about the afterworld that the Williams character now inhabited. “So you think he was, what, like a guide?”

  “That was my impression.”

  “Did you see anyone else?”

  “If I did, I don’t remember.”

  If I had a near-death experience, would Grandma Ruth appear? Or my mother? Or Alec?

  “You still haven’t told me yet why you chose Savannah.”

  “Dr. Cho suggested it.”

  “Who?”

  So I told him the story, start to finish. Frowning, he asked, “What’d he look like?”

  I described him. “He tended to you and assured me you were on the road to recovery. I thought I had hallucinated him because he vanished so fast.”

  “My God, Sam, that’s who I saw, a little Asian man in a Hawaiian shirt. He’s the one who advised me to go back. This is incredible.”

  I reached for his hand and squeezed it. Whatever it was that had happened in the hospital—a miracle, a visitation by an angelic being—I knew it had been a spiritual turning point for me. And it had definitely been a turning point for John. Within a few hours of that visitation by Cho, John’s fever had dropped.

  We crossed a bridge—another bridge, my life seemed to be filled with bridges that I needed to cross—and saw a construction site under way along the river. Live oaks and cypress trees shaded the site, and I was immediately struck by one of the model homes we passed, a gracious Southern place with tremendous windows, a long front porch, a curving driveway lined with flowers.

  John glanced over at me, his expression as inscrutable as the words written in a fortune cookie. “You and I are coming at life from our gender perspectives, but have arrived at the same place, Sam.”

  “So what’s that mean?”

  “That we should buy one of those homes under construction. How would a river view inspire your muse?”

  “My muse has been out to lunch lately. I’ll have to ask her. But she would probably love it.” Was he saying what I thought he was? That we had a future together? Or was I reading something into it? “And when we were in this house, it would hum along on automatic like your other places.”

  He laughed. “Yeah. I could arrange shoots down here. I mean, honestly, look at this place, Sam. It’s Gone with the Wind for the twenty-first century. I can see Scarlett O’Hara sitting under those trees.” He gestured at a thicket of live oaks on our right, the Spanish moss on their branches swaying gently in the breeze.

  “And Rhett races in—”

  “And the entire places goes up in flames.”

  “Truth time,” I said. “Since I moved to Malibu, I’ve written two paragraphs on my next novel. That’s it. When I have the free time to write, I don’t feel like doing it. I don’t know what the story is, who the characters are, what the plot is. I don’t know what I want to write next. I don’t know whether I want to write another novel or do a screenplay first.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You’ve got all the time in the world.”

  Yeah, it was nice to hear but wasn’t exactly true. If I’d learned nothing else during the past months, it was that at any moment your life could turn on the proverbial dime. Rags to riches, bliss to despair, love lost and found, life and death. “I guess that right now, there’s not room for a whole new story with new characters. I just want to see Brooklyn Story finished. It’s my healing.”

  “Makes sense. I thought my healing was prison, but it was really my almost dying. I think it helped me let go of the past.”

  He said it so matter-of-factly that I glanced over at him, drank in the sight of him—his beautiful profile, his jaw stubbled with a new growth of beard, his hair still sort of wild. I loved him already, but I was afraid of loving him too much, too deeply, because it would leave me way too vulnerable. At the moment, though, I was just happy to see him alive and healing and happy.

  “Let’s stop and look at the model, Sam.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. We don’t have to be anywhere at a particular time.”

  “Okay, let’s do it.”

  He made a U-turn and drove back to the site. We parked in a lot next to the office and got out. The scent of the river was powerful, intoxicating, and drifted like a promise through the hot air. Gulls careened above the river, diving now and then to scoop up fish. The trees on the property rose like majestic beings. Birds sang in the shadows, from the branches. I imagined myself and John here, the place where we would come to dive into our various creative projects. A new novel, a new script, a whole new life.

  He slipped his arm around my shoulders, kissed me, and we went into the office. We looked at an artist’s rendition of what the neighborhood would look like when it was completed—not a gated community, but a place where every home sat on at least an acre of riverfront property. Bikes paths would meander through the trees, jogging trails would follow the river.

  “We’d like to see the model,” he told the Realtor.

  “Y’all are just going to love it,” she replied in her rolling Southern accent. She was a short, petite woman with carefully coiffed auburn hair, probably in her mid-thirties. “Where y’all from?”

  “Brooklyn,” John said.

  “Are y’all vacationing here?”

&nbs
p; “For a long weekend.”

  “Well, let’s see if we can get y’all to extend that long weekend, shall we?”

  She unlocked the door, and John and I, holding hands, walked inside.

  It was five thousand square feet, with four bedrooms and three and a half baths, and a family room that was all windows and overlooked the river. There was a long swimming pool out back, an outside shower, a room for Isabella, and a guesthouse for other visitors. It sat on more than two acres, so our closest neighbors wouldn’t be able to hear our dog bark. Never mind that we didn’t have a dog right now. We would. A dog, a cat, maybe even a bird—a conure, a cockatoo, an African gray.

  The floors were tile, the kitchen was divine, there was enough space to accommodate anything we could imagine. But . . . where did marriage fit into that equation? Did it figure in at all? And why did that word, marriage, suddenly pop into my inner dialogue?

  I was forty-five years old. Next year, my daughter would graduate from high school and then would head off to college. And that October, I would be forty-six, closer to fifty than forty. And year after year, that number would increase. John was the man I loved, no question about that anymore. But for me, that kind of love meant full commitment, a life partner with whom to share it all.

  I wasn’t interested in some cohabitation deal where we were sort of married, enjoying the perks but not bound by the legalities. I wasn’t the least bit interested in a roommate with benefits. I could have that anywhere in Malibu, at any time. I wanted a romantic partner who was also my creative partner. I wanted what might very well be impossible.

  But John, like me, had been married before. We both carried baggage from our marriages—a son and a daughter, respectively, and a host of psychological issues with which a shrink would have a field day. I realized that none of our issues were easy fixes. My father had been a deadbeat; John had never known his real father, and his adopted father had been a mafia don who had used him for his own agenda, his own gain. In this sense, we were both orphans who had made our way—somehow—through the world to where we were now. And how strange that we had come to this odd slice of paradise to find ourselves—and each other.

  That hadn’t been my intent when I had booked this trip. I had only wanted time away for the two of us, a place for us to heal. Now I understood that nearly everything in our relationship until now had involved other people and their issues. But Vito and Paul were out of the picture—if not forever, then at least during our time here.

  Here, it was just John and me and our issues. That was what travel did. It took you outside your normal routines, away from what was familiar, and forced you to confront who you were. Here you are together, people, free to be whoever you want. And right then, I understood this trip would be either our nemesis—or our salvation.

  “What do you think about this place, Sam?”

  “It’s fantastic.” But . . .

  He touched my arm and led me through an arched doorway, into a cozy room with a riverfront view, sliding-glass doors, a fireplace, a mahogany computer table, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. “Here’s where you’re going to write your next novel. Or screenplay. Isn’t it fantastic?”

  “It’s . . . perfect.”

  The Realtor strode across the room and opened the sliding-glass doors. “Y’all just have to see this deck.”

  John and I walked out onto the deck with her. In addition to the swimming pool, there was a Jacuzzi, an outdoor shower, and a shaded area for a table and chairs. The deck extended the width of the house and was lined with plants in large, ceramic pots. It had a pass-through window to the kitchen.

  “Let’s walk down to the river, Sam.” He looked at the Realtor. “We’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “Y’all take your time.”

  “This place, Sam. It’s awesome. It’s a location. This place, Savannah, Tybee Island is ten miles away . . .”

  “But what’s the story?” He and I had talked about stories before, during the weeks since his discharge from the hospital. But it was always in vague terms. Love story or time-travel story? Or a combination of both?

  “My favorite time-travel/love story is Romancing the Raven,” John said. “It involves Edgar Allan Poe.”

  I put the book on my mental list of must-reads. John had been such a reader. I didn’t understand how he read so many books.

  “Sam, I felt like I saw the afterlife. It wasn’t as colorful as what Williams saw in the movie, but it was that same sort of magical feeling. When I thought about it later, I figured my unconscious had been coughing up images from the movie. Now I’m not so sure.”

  “Describe what you saw.”

  As he continued to talk, we walked along the river, and my muse, dormant for so long, came shrieking out of hiding and dropped what amounted to an information download in my head. I stopped and sat down on the riverbank and kicked off my sandals. My toes ran through the grass.

  “John. I . . . I’ve got pieces of the story.”

  “Tell me. Fast. Before it gets away from you.”

  As we sat there, two people completely out of their elements, out of time, I described what I was seeing. A woman, heartbroken and despairing over the death of her husband from some awful disease. A man, recently released from prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Both of them are struggling to come terms with their lives. They meet at the resort, spend an idyllic two days together . . . and then discover they are separated by fifty years in time.

  John thought about it, but not for long. “It’s too similar to Somewhere in Time.”

  No, it wasn’t. He was wrong. “Only in the sense of love and moving through time. In Matheson’s story, a penny is the portal between the past and the present, a stupid penny. But in this story, love is the portal.”

  “Maybe that’s it, Sam,” he finally said. “Maybe you’re right, and it doesn’t matter whether the portal is something physical, like a penny, or whether it’s an emotion. Either one can create a particular state of consciousness . . .”

  Yes, yes. I was in the flow, in the groove, and I already knew my protagonist was a blonde. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be blond and tall and skinny, like some California surfer girl blessed with good looks, smarts, and money. Now I would know. Now I would crawl into that surfer girl’s skin. I would feel what she felt, experience her travails, live as she lived.

  Overcome with emotions I hadn’t felt since I’d written Brooklyn Story, I lay back against the grass and peered up at the gorgeous blue sky, letting the scenes unfold in my head. John stretched out alongside me, his head supported in one hand. “I’ll produce it with you. This could be the new production for your company, Sam.”

  I laughed. “I just have to write it.”

  He plucked a piece of grass and drew it along the side of my cheek. “I love you, Sam. I’m completely in love with you. I have been for a long time. I need for nothing, I have my Stunner.”

  I drew his face toward mine. “When I thought I’d lost you”—I felt tears burning the backs of my eyes—“I didn’t know how I could survive it. That’s how much . . . I love you.”

  He kissed me. Words between kisses never felt so good. Then he sat up. “Do you still have my iPad in your purse?”

  “Uh, yeah.” I sat up and dug out his iPad, puzzled by this rapid transition from I love you to Do you still have my iPad? I handed it to him.

  “I have to show you something.” He pressed the home button to bring it to life. “When I was in prison, there were a lot of days when I thought I was going to explode if one more guard told me what to do or not do. When you’re incarcerated, the only control you have is over your own thoughts. So I got to the point where I created this private little space in my head. I trained myself to go into that space whenever I felt I was going to explode. I decorated it. I gave myself a TV, bookcases filled with good books, comfortable furniture. Then
the one room expanded to include a kitchen, a bedroom, a balcony that overlooked the Mediterranean. And in that space, I started writing stories and scripts, and shooting movies.”

  As he spoke, I slowly began to appreciate the scope and breadth of his imagination. I could almost see this fictional John Steeling in his imaginary rooms. It reminded me of scenes from some Stephen King movie, maybe it was Dreamcatcher, where an alien controlled the body of a young man, and his consciousness, his soul, had sealed itself off in an imaginary room that the alien couldn’t penetrate.

  “I met my muse in that room, Sam. A guy. He loves music. He reads graphic novels. He’s a movie fiend. He enjoys good stories. And, quite a few times, he’s shown me the future.”

  “What do you mean?” I was so taken in by his story that I just wanted him to keep talking. “How can an imaginary guy in an imaginary room show you the future?”

  “I don’t know. After the first few times it happened,” John went on, “I started keeping meticulous notes. Over the years after I was released, I converted all those notes I made in prison into electronic files. Here’s an example.”

  He turned the iPad so I could see the screen. The entry was dated September 12, 1992, at 2:11 p.m.:

  So Mr. Muse who lives in the basement of my head supposedly decided to show me scenes from my future. I figure he’s a great bullshit artist. But if he’s for real and not just some part of me, then he does it to keep me sane until I get the fuck outta this hole.

  As we’re sitting in the imaginary room, he picks up the remote control and turns on the TV. “I’m gonna show you your creative partner, amigo. You’re gonna have to go through some shit before you two connect, but trust me on this.”

  The screen flickers, clears. I see this dark-haired beauty and recognize her immediately. Samantha Bonti. I knew her years ago in Brooklyn, kissed her under a mistletoe one night. I have no idea where she is, what she’s doing.

  I suddenly realize Mr. Muse has been digging around in my subconscious like some dog digging for bones he buried long ago. I laugh at him, at my muse. “Yeah, right.”