Five for Forever

by Ames, Alex

  “Who is this bad guy? Mark Petersburgh?”

  “No less. You didn’t know?”

  “Uh,” Rick said, caught completely off guard. “Uh, no!”

  “When you were young, you never Googled your girlfriends before dating?” Britta asked.

  “I am pretty sure that Google had not been invented when I started dating your mom.”

  “That is gross, so you went into dates . . . blind?” Britta inquired.

  “Nice try to change the topic! So is this Mark actor guy someone I . . . we should be concerned about?”

  “According to Buzzfeed, he is currently dating Miley Cyrus,” Charles said.

  “You have mapped out all of Louise’s former boyfriends?” Rick asked, and when Charles took a deep breath to start listing the results, Rick held up his hand firmly and interrupted, “Rhetorical question, answer neither wanted nor required!” He turned to his kids. “All right, it’s a Wednesday, we are free and single again, at least temporarily. What do we do? Going out for Pizza dinner? A quick evening dip into the ocean?”

  The kids were about to give their recommendations when Rick’s mobile phone rang. “Hey, Hal, are you bored on a Wednesday evening?”

  “Au contraire! We have a problem, my man. We are out of money.”

  Rick parked the kids in front of the TV while Hal drove over. They checked the account online. The Vera project had been calculated to be an expensive one, and for that reason, Josh had created a special account with access for Flint and Heller Fine Wooden Boats from which they could draw the necessary funding for materials, tools, and the ongoing labor that went into it. Josh’s business associate Zuzu checked the paperwork and made sure that the upcoming monthly budget plus 20 percent contingency came in on every fifteenth of the month. August 15 had been a Saturday, so money was expected to arrive the next working day. But Monday had come and gone without money replenishment. It was now Wednesday August 19, and over the course of the previous day the account had been cleaned out completely. The first check for the cutting and prep fee of the mast tree from the Canadian vendor had bounced, and the vendor had called Hal.

  “What I don’t get is this,” Hal said, pointing at the webpage of their online account. “You did good planning. At the end of the previous periods, we always had roughly the contingency amount still showing on the balance. Look here, August 9th: almost thirty thousand dollars.” Hal’s finger went down to the next line of the online bank statement “Our shipyard services charge on Monday morning. Then the account gets wiped completely sometime yesterday.”

  “Tried to reach our client yet?”

  “Isn’t picking up the phone.”

  “How convenient! Tried Zuzu?”

  “You have the honor, my friend,” Hal said.

  After a short ring, Zuzu picked up. “Yello!” Young, dynamic, energetic.

  “What happened to the boat account?” Rick asked straight out.

  “What do you mean?” Zuzu replied, cautious. Hal, who listened in with one ear close to Rick’s head, mouthed, “She knows.”

  “Someone stripped the account clean today. An important check bounced.”

  “Not again!” Zuzu groaned. “We might have a situation, boys. Nothing to do with you, I assure you.”

  “Don’t boy us; we need the money to continue the project.” Not to mention that they needed the money for the company to survive, too. “Do you have a number where we can reach him?”

  “Eh, that might be difficult. He is . . . on location, yes.”

  “For someone with an MBA you are a bad liar,” Rick muttered. “Get us the money. Otherwise, you will need to prepare transport to the East Coast, because we will no longer be working on the project.”

  “Don’t do anything hasty. I’ll find out what happened.”

  “And you can’t tell us what’s going on?” Rick pressed.

  “Won’t. I work for Josh, not for you, remember. Attorney-client.”

  “For a business associate, that privilege does not hold,” Rick said.

  “It does in my profession.”

  Rick hung up.

  Hal looked at his friend. “We are in sheep so deep!”

  Rick nodded. “Fortunately I have a stinking-rich, super-famous girlfriend whom I can always send away to make money-shoveling movies. What about you?”

  Hal put on his lost puppy face and looked expectantly at his best friend. “Do you need a houseboy?”

  Rick and Louise spoke on Skype the next day. Rick at home, Louise in Paris.

  “I’ve heard of Josh’s cash-flow problems. Rumors only. I mean, it’s hard to believe, right? He has been the most successful actor box-office-wise over the last five years; his contracts are probably 30 percent higher than my own.”

  “That doesn’t bug you?” Rick asked.

  “Well, it does. On the other hand, I can have multiple orga—”

  “Stop talking dirty while you are so far away, otherwise I’ll get too many fantasies,” Rick said. “But seriously, is Josh a gambler? Does he speculate in the financial markets? Does he run a bad business on the side?”

  “No idea, but I’ll find out, believe me. Before it was professional, now it is personal.”

  “That sounds like a tagline of one of your early revenge movies,” Rick said.

  “Come to think of it, it was. It was a line in A Desire Called Violence. Caught again!” Louise laughed. “Do you guys need some cash to hold you above water until Josh finds some money?”

  “It doesn’t feel right taking it from you.”

  “But I don’t mind bailing you guys out.”

  “It’s more complicated than that, Lou,” Rick said. “If I were confident that this was only a hitch, I would accept a bridge loan from you, no problem. But the company has been struggling for a while now. Had Josh and his crazy obsession not come along, we would have already closed shop this summer. A lot is riding on Josh’s order. But the fact is, it probably only prolongs the inevitable.”

  “Will you tell the team?”

  “Sure, tomorrow first thing,” Rick said. “I’ll explain to them that we’re taking some days off. Unpaid. How is Paris?”

  “Hot and not a breeze anywhere. All the Parisians are on vacations, so it is mercifully empty. But so beautiful. I took a stroll last night, Floris ten feet behind me. Just drifting, listening to people talking in cafés and restaurants. Would you ever like to live with me in Paris or Rome? Not to travel but really to live in an old city. Get to know the people, dive into the culture . . .” Louise sounded dreamy, imagining an alternate reality.

  “If my company filed Chapter Eleven, I would, actually. Dana wouldn’t mind, Charles would be delighted to test his French or learn Italian, and Britta would maybe get better ideas how to dress.” Rick smiled into the webcam. “See, you cheered me up.”

  “That’s good to hear. I’ll try to reach Josh from here and remind him of the project. And you keep the troops mobilized.” Louise blew a kiss into the camera, and, as usual, Rick’s heart fluttered and butterflies grew and flew in his stomach. Man, did he miss her. He would never get enough of this woman. But he was pretty sure that they would never live in Paris or Rome.

  Louise

  Louise called up Izzy right after she hung up with Rick. “Can you do me a favor?”

  “Yes, beloved ex-client who cost me a new home in Pacific Palisades.”

  “Little Izzy holds a grudge?” Louise asked.

  “Only ten million dollars’ worth of grudge, don’t mind me. Now, what can I do for you, Lou?”

  “Josh has dropped off the radar. And has wiped accounts.”

  “Namely your boyfriend’s? Josh is not my client of course, but I could try to ask around what’s going down. Shouldn’t he be on the set of Raise the Titanic?”

  “You tell me. If it is a money thing, tell him I can help him out if he doesn’t kill himself.”

  “Money thing, Josh Hancock?”

  “Something is wrong here,” Louise asserted
.

  “Keep you posted.”

  Rick

  The drought lasted for little less than a week. Then, as if nothing had happened, the money reappeared in the Vera account. Flint and Heller were back in business.

  Rick first rang up Josh, without success, then Zuzu. “Thanks. We have appeased the mast vendor, and he is in the process of cutting our eighty-four-year-old tree as we speak. It will be with us in a month.”

  “Don’t mention it. I’m sorry for the disruption. Josh remains committed to the project; he told me personally this morning,” Zuzu said.

  Is there any honesty left on earth? Rick thought and said, “Give him our regards. I updated the cost projections. And we’ll charge you the week of payroll that we lost.”

  “Sure, sure, no problem.”

  Rick placed the receiver back on the cradle and thought, Someone has a bad conscience!

  Hal looked up from his paperwork. “Can I stop writing job applications?”

  Louise

  Louise asked Izzy what he had found out about Josh’s strange behavior.

  “Whatever it was, it was cosmic,” Izzy said.

  “That bad?”

  “Josh was gone from the Titanic shoot for eight scheduled days. There were neither rumors nor repercussions.”

  “You are right, every channel was dead quiet about this. Usually the production team and costars start talking to themselves, others, and Facebook. Hard to keep something like that quiet.”

  “That’s what I said: cosmic. Someone with power held a hand over it. A very persuasive hand. My guess would be Farber Sellman—he has a 26 percent stake in this project. Shall I dig further?”

  Louise thought for a moment. She planned to talk to Josh personally. Searching for the truth through Izzy could actually hurt the cause more, as people would get suspicious from the questions alone. “No, call off the search. Let’s be happy that he’s back and working. And that Rick’s project continues.”

  “As you say, dear ex-favorite client,” Izzy said.

  twenty-one

  Summer Ends

  Rick

  The wood-bending machine gave up on the four-inch plank and came to a grinding halt after four passes to fit one of the tail segments of the boat. Martin started collecting the tools to dismantle it after the hot steam had cooled off, and Hal and Rick helped Styler to remove the plank from its claws.

  “Don’t tell me we have to hunt for a new bender machine,” Hal said to Martin after a first diagnosis.

  “Don’t want to scare you, Boss,” Martin pointed at the big guiding wheels in the middle that were used to bend the wooden beams into the right angle or curve while the hot steam softened the wood. He finished unscrewing the top screw and took it off. It broke in two. “Was held by hope and steam condensation. Either you find exactly these parts here, or we need a new machine.”

  Tools to build wooden boats were special, and each builder had a set of machines collected over time to cut, plane, and bend wood into the shape that was needed to follow the designer’s hull lines. Rick and Hall had thrown together their collection of machinery when they started the shop, most of it coming from former boatbuilders who had sold their equipment after retirement. The youngest piece of machinery in Flint and Heller was 60 years old, the oldest 104. Indestructible. Well, most of the time.

  Rick cleaned the manufacturer’s sign with a piece of cloth. “Seventy-five years old this year. Good luck finding spares for a Potterham Bender.”

  Hal got the specifications from Martin and went upstairs to go hunting for spares in the boating community. Many wood boatbuilders and church roofers had stores of old machinery in the backyard, in case that their own equipment or something in the community broke.

  “What can we do without the bender?” Styler asked, looking sadly at the crippled machine.

  “We’ll give you spinach, Styler.”

  “Don’t like it.”

  “That’s a pop-culture reference from before your time,” Rick said. “But you could find me a metal manufacturer who can reengineer and manufacture the spare on demand.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Sure. You take the measurements, estimate the fitting tolerances and material mix, and then have someone design it, write manufacturing instructions, and hand them down to your metal shop; takes a few weeks and, voilà, you have a new perfect part.”

  “Cool. My cousin has one of those new 3-D printers. You can clone Lego parts with that one.”

  Rick knocked a knuckle on the broken wheel. “Steel?”

  “No, Lego is made of plastic. Ah, that’s what you mean. Shoot. Would have been nice.”

  Rick went up to the office, leaving Styler contemplating.

  Styler came into the room. “Boss, I have an idea I’d like to follow up on.”

  Rick finished talking to a metal shop that had quoted him a two-month schedule and a ridiculous price to produce the spare part. “Sure.”

  “I think my idea is crazy, but I’d like to try. Can I have one of the three working wheels? I promise, I’ll bring it back.”

  “Styler, don’t lose it. They might be our only clue to rebuilding the machine.” As an afterthought, he added, “Take Martin with you. We’re done here anyway for today.”

  “Boss, count on me.” Styler dashed out. If the assignment of a babysitter for his plan had been sort of offending, he hadn’t let it show.

  Hal looked up from his work. “That was scary: Styler taking the initiative. We raised a monster.”

  “War maketh men out of boys.”

  “Churchill? ”

  “No idea. Made that up.”

  “Charles would know.”

  Rick arrived at the shop the next morning early and found Martin and Styler sleeping on the two benches on the long side of the building that overlooked the yacht harbor. A note was pinned to the workshop door. “Check the boat!” Rick went around the boat and inspected it but couldn’t find anything remarkable. Then he noticed what he had not noticed in passing. He went back to the Vera and inspected the tail section, whose missing puzzle piece was the reason for yesterday’s machine breakdown. The planned piece was fitted in the place where it should be. Not nailed yet, fastened with little wedges. Rick decided it was the real deal, so he left the two men sleeping and went into the wood shop to check the bending machine. The machine was still warm to the touch, so they had indeed used it. He looked at the area where the broken guide wheel had been located. It was assembled perfectly. The only difference was that the former steel guide wheel was now made of screaming pink plastic.

  “What do you think, dude?” Styler came up behind him, stretching and yawning.

  Rick was genuinely happy. “It’s amazing. Especially the color.”

  “We shouldn’t advertise that in Wooden Boats Monthly, I agree, dude. But red and white granulate was all that we could gather during the night. We have already ordered about a hundred pounds of printer granulate on Amazon. Will be here tomorrow. Black.”

  “Your cousin’s 3-D printer?”

  “Yup. We scanned it with this rotating 3-D scanner; Ray corrected some small stuff in his CAD program—like you said, determining the tolerances. Took four hours to print and another hour to harden. Martin has some ideas for modification so that we can make it more durable. Right now it is massive, but we think with the right internal matrix it should be able to handle the changing forces and heat much better. This one will probably hold four to five operations. With improvements, it should hold for five to ten bending operations. We need to find 3-D printing stores in LA that have the capacity for us. We print one set a day and should be good until the real metal guide-wheels come along.”

  Rick slapped Styler on the back. “Well done, dude! War does maketh men out of boys!”

  “Goebbels?”

  “Probably.”

  Louise

  “How is the upper deck and interior coming along?” Louise asked as she drove Rick to work in her Lexus, Floris’s Tahoe
right behind them. The family van was at the garage for the yearly checkup. The school year was about to start in a few days, and everyone was slowly getting ready again.

  “Not good. I’ve made various proposals, but Josh is dragging his feet. He is not the Josh I got to know earlier this year.”

  “If you say so—you see him more often than I do,” Louise said. “He has withdrawn himself a bit from the spotlight. Something is cooking.”

  “It would be so easy if I had the plans or at least some photos of the original boat deck. But Josh won’t have it; we have asked him repeatedly.”

  “Why don’t you fly to . . . where was it? Nantucket?”

  “He wouldn’t pay for it. And I respect that.”

  “But you yourself admit that he is not his usual self. Take the initiative, make the journey.”

  “And pay for it out of my own pocket?”

  “Would you accept the plane tickets if I paid for them?”

  “We have discussed this, right?” Rick was defensive. “No mix of riches until we are sure about our relationship.”

  Louise tapped the wheel. “Your steadfastness is on the verge of being stubborn.” After a mile, she said, “Would you accept it as your birthday gift?”

  Rick had to laugh at Louise’s insistence. “If I said no now, would it put a serious dent in our relationship?”

  “It would.” Louise gave him her brightest smile, which she knew caused a flock of butterflies to stir in Rick’s belly.

  “So it is settled. Tonight we book the flight, and I will whip out my platinum Amex card.”

  No arguing against that.

  Rick

  Back-to-school day. It was up to Rick to pick up the gang from the various sites. Dana came first, a quick day-care dash, then it over to the other schools. Rick got a good parking space, right beside the high school main gate, and waited the few minutes, entertaining Dana by putting her on his lap and having her pretend to drive the car. Agnes came out first, accompanied by a man in his forties, longish blond hair, like an aged surfer, but he was dressed in chinos, a polo, and a college jacket. They talked a minute more, and then they shook hands. Agnes came toward the car, giving a wave to Dana, who pressed the horn, fortunately without result. Aged Surfer walked over to the parking lot, a slight limp in his gait.