Incidental Happenstance

by DeSalvo, Kim

  It was just dark and the moon hung full and heavy in the sky. This far from town a million stars seemed to twinkle overhead, and he thought maybe he’d take a walk after he delivered the phone and clear his head a little bit. Lights blazed in Penelope’s trailer, and he could hear one of his songs playing through the open window with her voice singing along to the lyrics. She sounded happy, he thought, not at all like the woman he’d left less than an hour ago, crying over a dead relative. He knocked hard so she’d hear it over the music, and the door swung open from the rap of his knuckles; it had obviously not latched when he ran out of there earlier.

  “Hey Penelope,” he called as the door swung open, “you forgot your…”

  Dylan froze in place, his hand still raised from the knock, stunned as he took in the scene before him. Penelope sat on her couch, surrounded by piles of papers, pictures, books, magazines and albums. She sat like a stone, her eyes wide like those of a frightened child caught in a forbidden act. Dylan’s eyes locked on a picture that had fallen to the floor, a picture of him and Penelope at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Except he’d never been with Penelope to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and there was no way she could have this picture. He shook his head for a moment and blinked his eyes, but the image didn’t change. He immediately recognized the sapphire dress that Tia had bought on the Champs Elysee and worn the night he’d first told her he loved her; only it was now Penelope’s smiling face that swam above it. His eyes darted quickly across the table and the couch and he saw other pictures; London, Munich, Glasgow, Rome—all containing his own smiling image coupled with Penelope’s. It wasn’t possible, and it took a minute for his brain to absorb what he was seeing.

  Penelope suddenly regained her power of movement and immediately began scooping the objects into a box. “Oh, hey Dylan,” she said nervously. “Ummm, I’m really busy, can you come back later?” her voice shook with emotion and her face burned red.

  Dylan leaned over and picked up the photograph that lay at his feet. He could see the cut marks of the scissors and feel the change in thickness where another photo had been laid underneath and glued. Tia’s face had been cut out, replaced by Penelope’s likeness.

  “What the hell!” he growled, “how the hell did you get this, and why the fuck did you cut Tia out and put yourself in?”

  Penelope just stared with glazed eyes, and continued shoving things into the box.

  “Answer me, damn it!”

  She scrambled for an answer, but she was clearly flustered. “Don’t be mad,” she squeaked. “I had some copies of your pictures made—it…it helped me get into my role with you as a couple,” she continued haltingly. “I…”

  “I never gave you these pictures,” he yelled. “How the hell did you get them?” His eyes fell then on a pile of magazines, his picture all over the cover, with Penelope by his side. He sorted through the pile, reading headlines like, “Romance Down Under,” and “Hollywood’s Hot New Couple,” and “Engaged?” Anger boiled up in him like an erupting volcano, colors exploding behind his eyes, and he threw a handful of them across the room, and then grabbed some more.

  “What the fuck are these?” he hissed through gritted teeth, shaking them in her face, barely able to believe what he was seeing. “We never posed for these! How the hell did the tabloids get pictures of us together like this—kissing?” Then it hit him. “Bloody hell!—these are from filming!” he raged. “None of this is real!” In the back of his mind it dawned on him that Tia had seen them too, probably every time she went to the grocery store. He felt sick to his stomach as he checked the dates on the magazines and saw that they went back months.

  Penelope’s mouth opened and her jaw moved up and down, but only a few whimpers escaped from deep in her throat. She was still trying desperately to sweep the contents from the table into a box, but she was so flustered that she sent papers flying to the floor. Dylan reached over and picked up an envelope that was addressed to Tia in his handwriting. Bewildered and fuming he thrust out his hands, demanding she hand him the box. “Give it over,” he said slowly and deliberately. “Now.”

  She clutched the box to her chest and yelled, “Get out! Get out of here right now!”

  “I’m not going anywhere. Give me the fucking box!” He reached over and grabbed it from her hands, spilling its contents again over her lap, the floor, the table, the couch. She rose up to gather them again, desperately, but he put his hand on her shoulder and pushed her back onto the couch. All her resistance seemed to drain from her then, and her entire body slumped as silent tears began to spill down her cheeks. Dylan picked up a letter from the table, and his heart sank as anger once again threatened to erupt in his blood. He read the greeting, Dearest Penelope, her name written over a little white strip that covered the original recipient, and thought he’d explode. It was a letter he’d written to Tia almost a month ago, the original letter, and as he read the words he realized Tia’d never seen and looked around at the extensive collection that lay spread around him and at his feet, he knew. Penelope curled into fetal position and sobbed as Dylan picked up letter after letter, picture after picture. His senses overloaded and more colors exploded behind his eyes as he tried to keep from shaking her.

  “What did you do!?” he bellowed. “What the fuck did you do?”

  “Please, let me explain,” she pleaded.

  “How can you explain this?” he asked incredulously, his voice full of rage. “You stole my letters, Tia’s letters, my pictures—my life!” He howled like an animal in pain, and shook his head to gain some control of his temper and try to make sense of what he was seeing. Something else caught his eye and he picked it up off the floor, turning it over in his hand. It was a first class ticket from Chicago to Melbourne, and he sucked in a breath with a hiss and held it for a moment before speaking. “You cold hearted bitch,” he said, ice in his voice. “She never even got this! She thinks I dumped her!” He put his hands on his head, pushed hard against his temples and tried to think, but at that moment the whole world seemed to be swirling around in his brain as the enormity and implications of the situation took shape in his mind.

  “Dylan,” she pleaded desperately, sliding to the floor onto her knees between the couch and the coffee table. “Just listen, please! I did it for us! It never would have worked out with her, and you know it! She doesn’t deserve you! You and I are so good together—we’re a perfect match—but we just needed some time to get to know each other, and we couldn’t as long as she was in the way…You would have hurt her eventually—she can’t understand you the way I can! She can’t love you the way that I do!” She reached out for him and he stepped away, repulsed.

  “You don’t know the first thing about love, Penelope, and you sure as hell don’t know the first thing about me. You honestly thought that you could just get Tia out of the way and I would love you? I can’t even bear to look at you right now—you disgust me,” he spat, turning his back on her and pulling more letters out of the box. There were dozens of them, and he felt absolutely sickened.

  “Dylan, no—please! I really do love you!”

  He turned back toward her. “You stole my fucking life! You pretended to be my friend, pretended to help me out, but all along you were sabotaging my relationship, stealing my letters, and trying to ruin my life! You don’t even know what reality is, lady, but you’re sure as fuck about to find out!”

  He pulled her phone from his pants pocket and she reached for it, but he turned his back on her again, punched some buttons and put it to his ear. “Stan?” he said into the mouthpiece. “It’s Dylan. I need you to come to Penelope’s trailer immediately. It’s an absolute emergency.” He pushed the ‘end’ button and stared at the sobbing woman on the floor.

  “Please don’t,” she said begging. “Please don’t give up on us yet.”

  Dylan exploded. “What are you not understanding here? There is no ‘us’!! There never has been an ‘us’!! There never will be an ‘us’!” He began gathering up his
life—feeling a stabbing pain in his heart each time he added another of Tia’s letters to the pile—all the words she’d never seen. He imagined the pain she felt thinking he’d abandoned her; he knew it all too well.

  They heard the sound of the golf cart approaching and the director appeared at the door, a panicked look on his face. “What’s going on?” he asked from the doorway. “Is Penelope alright?” Then he stepped inside and saw the mountain of papers and photos strewn across the floor and Penelope gasping for breath between huge, racking sobs. “What the hell?” he asked, looking at Dylan.

  He addressed Stan loudly, so Penelope could hear every word. “I need you to call the police, Stan. Right now.” he told the director. “I want her arrested.”

  “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

  “This woman has been stealing my mail,” he said, handing a stack of letters and photos to Stan, who looked at them wide-eyed. “She’s written her name on the letters I wrote to my girlfriend, cut herself into my photos, sent pictures from our shoots to the tabloids to make it look like we were a couple, and God knows what else.” His mind began moving at hyper speed as more pieces of the puzzle fell into place within his mind. The cell phone incident, the computer crash, the change of assistants…and suddenly he knew that she couldn’t have done it alone.

  Stan looked at Penelope, bewildered. “Did you really do this?” Penelope just looked up at him, her face wet with tears and wracked with pain. “What in the hell were you thinking?”

  Dylan continued as Penelope choked and wiped her tear and snot streaked face on the sleeve of her shirt. “I am telling you right here and now that I refuse to do another scene with this woman. I will not act with her, and have every intention of getting a restraining order so that she can’t even come within sight of me. And, I intend to prosecute her to the fullest extent of the law.”

  “But we only have another month of filming,” he said, “we leave for break in a week---can’t you…” but the look in Dylan’s eyes was solid and steadfast.

  “Not one more scene,” he said, “and not one more word to her until I see her in court.” He looked at Penelope. “Don’t let her leave or have a phone, don’t let her touch anything, and call the police immediately. She didn’t do this alone, and I have some serious questions for her assistant.” He turned and stalked out the door, slamming it on Penelope’s wailing.

  It was just a few steps to Angela’s trailer, but she had her music cranked up and didn’t hear the commotion he’d just left. His music, he noticed again; could it be more ironic? He rapped sharply on her door, and she cranked down the volume before swinging it open. “Hey Dylan,” she said lightly. “Was your music too loud for you?” she smiled at her own joke until she saw the look in his eyes. Her smile vanished, and a concerned look crossed her face. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  Dylan pushed past her and entered her trailer. He’d been in it a dozen times or more, but now he looked around with suspicion. “I just came from Penelope’s little freak show,” he said, shaking a fistful of letters and pictures under her nose. “I know you were part of it.”

  Angela backed herself against the wall, put her hand to her heart, and whispered, “Oh shit.”

  “Oh shit? Oh shit!” Dylan yelled. “You have no idea what kind of shit you’re in, missy, but I’m sure the cops’ll explain it all to you when they get here.”

  “The cops?”

  “Mail fraud is a crime, last time I checked,” he said. He counted off on his fingers as he ran through his list of charges. “Could I add computer tampering? Changing numbers in my cell phone?” her eyes flashed wide, and he knew his answer. “What about libel? How many other things, Angela? I trusted you—I was never anything but nice to you, and you helped that little bitch ruin my life?” He shook his head, and took a deep breath. “You’d better start talking right now, and tell me all of it, because you and your boss are going down. Hard.”

  She started to cry, but held herself together a bit better than Penelope had. “She promised me a role in her next movie if I helped her,” she said. “She told me that you and the other girl weren’t right for each other. I tried to get out of it, I really did, but when I told her that I felt bad about what I was doing, she threatened me…”

  “But you kept up the act, didn’t you Angela? You should get a fucking Oscar. You played the part perfectly.”

  “Dylan, I’m sorry!” she exclaimed. “I never wanted to hurt you!”

  “What did you think would happen? You knew I loved Tia, you saw how hurt I was, how many letters I was sending to try and get her back, and you delivered her letters to that bitch?” Then a thought exploded in his mind, and he gasped. “Wait a minute—oh my God,” he said as the thought gained clarity. “Did she write me? Did you give her letters to Penelope too?”

  Angela’s gaze dropped to the floor, and she ground the palms of her hands into her eyes in a feeble attempt to block out the reality of her situation.

  “Angela,” he demanded, taking her wrists and forcing her to meet his hard stare. “Did Tia write to me?”

  “Yes,” she said in barely a whisper.

  “Holy shit,” he said, pressing his hands to his temples and shaking his head violently. “Holy shit! What did you do with her letters, Angela?”

  “I…Penelope told me to burn them,” she paused, sucking in deep gulps of air. It was all Dylan could do not to shake her.

  “Did you?”

  “No,” she whimpered. “I couldn’t.”

  “Angela, what did you do with the letters?” he demanded so forcefully she jumped.

  “I kept them,” she breathed.

  “Kept them? Are they here?” He suddenly felt his heart jump when he realized that she hadn’t dumped him after all, that he could see her handwriting again, and read her words.

  Angela nodded and went into her bedroom, coming out with a shoe box. She handed the box to Dylan, sank onto her couch and stared blankly at the wall. Dylan sat in a chair and began pulling out letter after letter addressed to him in Tia’s neat teacher script, some sealed on the back with little stickers. A whiff of her scent wafted out of the box, and he breathed it deep. He tore open one of the letters and felt his heart leap when he read the greeting, Dylan, my love, and the first line, I’m missing you terribly today, and can’t concentrate on anything but how badly I want to hold you. He held the treasure in his hand; more precious than gold; but he knew he had to get the story out of Angela before Penelope had any chance to get to her and before the cops started asking her questions. He brushed the letter against his lips and placed it back in the box, clutching it possessively in his lap, and turned back to Angela. “Tell me everything,” he said simply, and he sat, shocked, for nearly an hour as she told him the whole scheme, her role, and Penelope’s plans for their imagined future. She paused only once to glance wide-eyed at the window when the rolling red lights of the police car came to a stop outside.

  Dylan had to find her right away. After spending hours with the police, he sat awake all night reading her letters, and they broke his heart to pieces. Angela had kept them in order, so the first few were full of happy news, expressions of love, hellos from Lexi and Sean. She’d even written about the night Bo had taken her to dinner when he was passing through town, and he almost smiled when he read that Bo had asked her to run off with him and forget about the “Little Strummer Boy.” As he got further through the stack, however, the tone of her letters changed. He could see by the dates on the letters that they were sent right about the time his own life came tumbling down. They were full of confusion and pain, and she was begging him to call her, just call her and explain, and she said she still loved him and that she didn’t understand why he would dump her with an email, without a reason, and his heart broke. When he read the letter that asked how he could be with Penelope, he thought he would scream. You’ve been all over the tabloids, she wrote, and the hardest part is knowing that because of who I am and who you are, I’ll
never even be able to get close to you again. A tear fell from his eye as he absorbed the pain in the words, then he put it down, feeling sick to his stomach. She thinks I caused her that pain, he thought, and I can’t even explain to her why.

  The next morning, Dylan met with Stan and explained that he was leaving. “To hell with the contract,” he told him. “This is my life we’re talking about.” They worked out a compromise—Dylan would film the rest of the necessary scenes using a double for Penelope that morning, and then he’d release Dylan from the rest of the contract. He had enough footage, he said, to complete the movie if they could use doubles for the other love scenes. They could even cut Bora Bora out completely and film the scene here with a few rewrites, which would save the production company a ton of money anyway. They’d done enough to cover the basic storyline and he thought they could fill in the rest. Dylan shook Stan’s hand, thanked him profusely, and flew back to the trailer to start packing his bags.

  Chapter 36

  He had a lot of things he needed to fix because of that woman—she’d done a hell of a lot of damage to his life. The first thing he did when he left Stan’s office in the morning was to pull Jessa’s phone out of the drawer in the kitchen—he hadn’t touched it since the day he took it from her and the battery was dead, so he plugged it in and powered it up, standing over the counter and scrolling through her contacts. He tried “Mom,” and got an answer on the second ring.

  “Hello?” the familiar voice chirped, and Dylan sighed with relief that he’d found her.

  “Jessa,” he said, overwhelmed with the emotion of hearing her voice. He’d been so unfair to her; hadn’t even given her a chance to explain, and he didn’t know if he deserved her forgiveness.