A Stranger Like You

by Elizabeth Brundage

  He dressed quietly, then left the room and drove to the beach. He parked and took off his shoes and socks and walked barefoot down to the shore. The sand was damp, cool. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the ocean. As a boy, he’d gone to the Jersey shore in summertime, but this was the Pacific. There was something about this ocean. In the distance, the air looked brown, like an old-fashioned sepia print, the water copper in the sunlight. The sea was calm, the air smelled of fish. Savage birds dove and fought. He watched them for a while, then walked back up the beach to his car.

  At half past eleven Hedda Chase emerged from her house in work clothes, holding a cup of coffee, her hair swept up in a white turban. Morbidly, he thought of Norma Desmond. Apparently late, Chase rushed toward her car, coffee splashing over the rim of her cup, onto her hand, the hunk of keys. Hugh emerged from the darkness of her detached garage. “Good morning, Ms. Chase,” he said.

  She looked perplexed. “What?”

  “I wondered if I could have a moment.”

  “I’m late,” she said. “Whatever you’re selling—”

  “I’m not selling anything, Ms. Chase. I just want to talk.”

  “What about?”

  “I’m Hugh Waters.”

  She shook her head vacantly like someone coming up out of the water in a swimming pool. She coughed.

  “You don’t remember me?”

  “We weren’t,” she hesitated, squinting at him with distaste, “intimate, were we?” She looked at him. “Because if we were you were entirely forgettable.”

  For a moment he couldn’t seem to speak. “I’m Hugh Waters.” His voice sounded weak. “The Adjuster?”

  “The what?”

  “I wrote it.”

  “Oh, that,” she said softly. She shook her head as if the memory was giving her a headache. “You’re a writer? You’re a fucking writer?” Her voice nearly shouted the revelation.

  “I don’t need a lot of your time,” he said. “I just thought you might be able to explain some things.”

  “I don’t conduct meetings with writers in my driveway, Mr. Waters. You’ll have to make an appointment like everyone else.”

  “You didn’t return any of my calls,” he said.

  “Look, call my office. I’ll make sure to fit you in.”

  “I read that letter you wrote. You said some horrible things about me.”

  She looked confused.

  “I just want to talk.”

  “It’s not possible,” she said, opening the door of her car, but he grabbed her arm.

  “Look, I’ve come all this way.”

  She began to struggle, trying to free herself, but was quickly subdued under his grip, ascertaining, perhaps, that the knot of pressure in the small of her back was the tip of his .45. “We’ll go inside and have our meeting. And then I’ll go.” It was a lie, of course; he had no intention of going.

  She nodded, her face glossy, her lips wet. It occurred to him how exhilarated he felt by the unanticipated shift in his plan. He had not imagined that he would have to touch her—not yet anyway. He had not fully anticipated what might occur between them that morning and was only beginning to realize how his fantasy of their encounter had been far more innocent than the reality of what was unfolding between them now.

  Ushering her across the driveway, up the stairs to her porch, it occurred to him that she was smaller than his wife, almost frail. Her shoulders were knobby like the small stones he had fondled earlier that morning on the beach. Under his fingertips he discerned that she was shaking and he confirmed in his mind that nothing quite made an impression on a person like physical contact. He had once read an article about it, suggesting that if you wanted to leave someone with a lasting impression on a job interview you might gently touch their arm while looking at them with a sense of intensity. Your eyes should say, I want this job, while your gentle touch implied, I’m your friend, you can trust me.

  “Give me your keys,” he said.

  “This is ridiculous,” she said. “This isn’t happening.”

  It’s happening all right, he thought. It’s happening to you.

  He unlocked her door and they went inside and he dropped the keys into his pocket. The house was disappointing, not what he would expect from a movie executive. The furnishings were ordinary; uninspired, as if the room were part of a hotel suite and not a person’s private home. Hedda Chase was not a housekeeper. There were heaping piles of dirty clothes, dirty plates scattered around the room, ashtrays full of cigarettes, lipstick-stained glasses with day-old booze. Stacks and stacks of screenplays. Screenplays strewn across the floor or left half-read on the coffee table like fallen birds at a skeet shoot. He pressed the gun into her back and shuffled behind her into the kitchen. “Pour us some coffee,” he said, noticing the leftover pot on the counter.

  He stood behind her, like a puppeteer, and watched as she took down two cups from the shelf and set them on the counter and poured the coffee.

  Outside, two men were arguing in Spanish, and shortly afterward they heard the neighbor’s car pulling down the driveway. Hedda glimpsed through the window, longingly, he thought, squinting in the bright sun. For a moment he imagined they were a couple, that he lived here with her, instead of back in Montclair with his wife. He indulged in the fantasy, briefly. Pictures and colors flared up in his head.

  “Bring the coffee,” he said, motioning to the table with the pistol.

  She took the two cups in her shaking hands, the coffee spilling on her fingers. Then she set them down and looked at him as if for instruction.

  “Sit.” He pointed to the chair with his gun. He thought of Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless. Early in the film the actor had aimed his gun in jest—later it was the very thing that caused his demise. But in Hugh’s case, the gun was only a prop; he had no intention of using it and, for that matter, had not even loaded it. He found it pathetic, of course, and very sad, that it was the only way he could get this woman to meet with him.

  Just now he had the producer’s full attention.

  “Look,” she said. “I’m sorry about what happened, all right? It’s not like it’s a big deal, it happens all the time. Rogers and I had different ideas,” she tried to explain. “We had different ideas about things. Anyway, he’s dead.”

  “And you’re in charge.”

  “That’s right.”

  “We had a deal,” he said. “We had a green light.”

  “We’re not doing those sorts of pictures anymore, Mr. Waters. We have a different philosophy now. I’m sure you understand.”

  “I don’t think I do.”

  “Violence, for one thing. I think the American people have had enough of it.”

  “You sound like a politician.”

  “I read all these scripts—the stuff that goes on, the things people write . . .” She looked at him. “All the incredibly sick things people come up with—people like you, Mr. Waters.” She gave him a cold look. “It’s very disturbing.”

  “It’s what people want,” he said. “It’s what people want to see.”

  “I’m not so sure.” She pulled herself up dramatically like a woman about to break into song. “To be brutally honest, Mr. Waters, your script—it just wasn’t any good. I didn’t buy it for a minute. The ending in particular. That business about the kidnapping, parking the car at the airport. I had a hard time believing that nobody heard her.”

  “She was in the trunk,” he stated in his underwriter’s voice.

  “Screaming!”

  “Your point?”

  She shook her head as if he were too stupid to understand her. “The device of the trunk—it’s been done. It’s a gangster cliché.”

  “It works, that’s why people use it. It’s convenient.”

  “Convenient?”

  “Everyone has one. It’s a good place to put someone.” He looked at her carefully. “There’s a certain irony in that.”

  She squinted at him as if the sight of him wa
s hurting her eyes. “Irony is such a cheap writer’s trick. I didn’t buy it. I didn’t buy it for a fucking minute. And they weren’t going to buy it in Toledo, either!”

  He could feel the sweat on his back, dampening his shirt. He swallowed. His throat felt a little sore. He could feel his feet inside his shoes, heavy as door-stops. He could feel his legs, their weight, and his large hands on his thighs.

  The phone rang.

  They sat there listening to it. It rang and rang.

  “That’s my boss,” she said. “I have to go. I have to get to work.”

  At last her machine picked up. Hugh recognized the voice of Chase’s assistant, a man with a British accent. “Harold’s been waiting over an hour, Hedda. He’s leaving for the airport in fifteen minutes. He’s really getting pissed.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve kept Harold waiting.”

  “He’s going to fire me.”

  “And then what will you do?”

  She looked up at him almost hopefully then seemed to catch herself. “He’s not going to fucking fire me,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  “It doesn’t matter now. It’s better not to think about it.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want you to get your hopes up.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He got up and took the phone off the hook. There was something intensely menacing about the sound it made and he could see it registering in her mind.

  “You don’t understand my boss. He gets insulted if I’m even a second late. He takes it personally.” Her cell phone began to vibrate inside her pocketbook. “Look, I really need to get to work.”

  “You’re not going to work today.”

  “What?” she said. “What?”

  “By law you’re entitled to a sick day.”

  “But I’m not sick.”

  “You’re looking very agitated.”

  “Well, I am agitated.”

  “I have some medication for that.”

  “You what—I don’t understand.”

  He took the pills out of his pocket and showed them to her. “You seem very anxious.”

  “Look,” she said. “You need to go. We’ve had our meeting. There’s nothing more to say. You said you would go.”

  “I know what I said. But I’ve changed my mind.”

  “What? Are you crazy?”

  He didn’t like the question. “I thought we’d try an experiment. I thought it might be fun.”

  “Fun? Did you say fun?”

  “I thought it might be fun to do a little test. To see who’s right.”

  “You’re crazy. You’re fucking insane.”

  “You have a very nasty mouth,” he said. “Why can’t you be nice?”

  “What? Nice?”

  He picked up the gun. Again, he showed her the pills. “It’s just some Valium,” he lied, “to calm you down.”

  “I don’t want to be calm,” she shouted and stood up and started for the door. He was quick—he grabbed her. He wrestled her to the ground, her little chest heaving. It was odd being on top of her. Her breath smelled of coffee. She looked at him; she refused to look.

  “You’re going to have to calm down.” He pulled her up and pushed her back into the chair. “Take the pills.”

  She shook her head.

  “Look,” he spoke as if to a toddler. “Either you take the pills, or I shoot you. You decide.”

  “You’re going to shoot me over this?”

  “I’m not myself,” he admitted. “I’m feeling very,” he hesitated, “unbalanced.”

  “You’re not going to kill me,” she said in a patronizing tone. “Even I know that.”

  Just like the scene he’d written in his script, he pressed the gun into her temple and cocked it. “Are you sure?”

  “I don’t know what you want,” she said, her voice quavering. “I don’t understand what you want from me.”

  “Make me happy.” He smiled like a banker.

  She looked at him.

  “Take these.” He opened his hand. The pills sat in his palm like snowflakes. He handed her a glass of water. She just sat there. “Don’t make me shoot you,” he said, “because I will.”

  Maybe she saw something in his eyes, something that he didn’t know he had, some menacing affect, because her fingers crawled into his palm and grasped the pills and then she took them and drank all the water and put down the glass and glanced at him with contempt. That was all right; he didn’t care. “I’ll get you back for this,” she said. “Don’t think I won’t.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “You’re dead. You’ll never work in this town.”

  “All right. If you say so.”

  He sat back down in his chair and watched her. Now her face was pale, almost beautiful. If she tried harder she could be beautiful, he thought. He didn’t understand why some women who could be perfectly decent looking didn’t make more of their looks.

  At length he said, “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  Her eyes were glassy, vividly blue. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “I’m glad.” He smiled. “I’m not a very scary person.” He laughed.

  “You realize this is a mistake.”

  “Perhaps.” He tilted his head and smiled, thinking of his therapist back in Montclair, the way they’d sit together on adjacent couches in her office while the tops of the birch trees swayed outside the second-story window. They were such solemn trees, he thought. Looking at them always made him melancholy. His therapist had a tender smile and yet she was the sort of woman who would smile even if you’d told her she’d just swallowed a cockroach. When all was said and done she gave him very little advice. Sometimes, when they sat there in the quiet room he’d try to smell her; he’d try very hard. But she had no scent. No scent at all, he thought it was strange. He’d wonder what she was thinking—whether or not she was actually listening to him, or whether she was reviewing a grocery list in her head or her schedule of errands after work. Once, he’d followed her home after their session, taking care to drive several cars behind. In her backyard, he’d stood in the bushes and spied on her through the window of her white Cape, eating supper out of a bowl in front of her Facebook page.

  “You think you know me,” Chase said bitterly. “You’ve made assumptions about me. You think I’m this horrible person, right? But you don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me.”

  He shrugged. “I know enough.” He looked at her. “I know that you’re very sad.” It was something his therapist had said to him.

  Her eyes flashed, but she said nothing. Then she said, “You writers are all the same. You come into my office, trying to butter me up. And you know what I’ve learned? Ideas? Everybody’s got one—they drop out of the sky like bird shit. The truth is, you can turn any idea—and I mean any idea—into a movie. You can work a screenplay like tailoring a suit. It’s not fucking brain surgery. We could have made your movie. And, yeah, somebody would have liked it. But after a week or two, it would have disappeared—collecting dust in some video store.” She looked at him hard. “To be perfectly honest, Mr. Waters, I’m tired of making films that make women look like idiots or Barbie warriors—I’ve tried some of those moves and they’re impossible, I couldn’t get out of bed for a week. Then one afternoon I’m sitting with my friend’s sons, they’re twins, fourteen, and it occurs to me that they’ve witnessed rape and murder in gruesome detail more times than I like to think about. I’m wondering how they process it. I used to be okay with it, but I’ve changed; I’m not that person anymore. You might say I experienced an epiphany.”

  Hugh remembered the word from an English class back in college, but just now the meaning escaped him. He tried to think of something clever to say, but the look on her face, her eyes glassy as a dictator’s, rendered him speechless.

  “I want to tell meaningful stories,” she said. “I want to make people feel better about things, not worse. . . .
I want to make people feel . . .” Her voice drifted off.

  “Feel what, Ms. Chase?”

  “Feel—” But her eyelids began to flutter and a moment later she went limp and dropped to the floor. When he’d bought the pills on the street, they’d told him this would happen—they’d told him not to panic. Eventually, the drug would wear off and she’d be fine. He stood over her, looking down at her motionless body. It was strange because her eyes were open. It worried him; he felt a little desperate. He got up and gripped her under the arms and shuffled backward as he dragged her into the living room and pulled her up on the couch. “Are you all right?” he said, fixing the pillows, but of course she couldn’t answer. Her eyes seemed to scream what have you done? He sat down gingerly, the way one sits at the bedside of a very ill patient. He held on to the arms of the chair as if something was about to happen—an earthquake—a nuclear bomb. But of course nothing did. He watched her closely, the rise and fall of her chest, grateful to see that she was breathing.

  There is the dream of something and it is a beautiful dream, he thought. And then there’s what’s real.

  He was beginning to feel bad and he didn’t want to feel bad. He stood up, looking down at her. He could leave now, he thought. Just walk away. Go home to his wife. But when Hedda Chase woke up she would call the police. They’d come after him, he’d be arrested. He imagined the look on Marion’s face as they put the cuffs on him. His life would be over.

  No. He couldn’t take that chance.

  He had started this; he had to finish it.

  It occurred to him that he hadn’t eaten for a very long time. His stomach grumbled and he felt dangerously light-headed. He went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. It was empty save for a loaf of white bread and a jar of green olives with beady red eyes. He took out the bread and a tub of margarine and found a knife in one of the drawers. He brought the food back into the living room and laid it out on the coffee table. He ate a butter sandwich and washed it down with the quart of milk only to realize after he’d drunk down half of it that it was sour. He spat some of it out onto the floor, making a puddle. “For fuck’s sake,” he said.