by E M Kaplan
When she saw Josie, she gave her a hug. Josie had set her basket of cookies by the front door when she’d first arrived, thanks to the commotion that Patrick—Rod, she corrected herself—had caused, but now she scooped up the basket and presented it to her aunt.
“What’s this? Oh, wonderful,” her aunt said, and immediately took one. Josie grinned, remembering her aunt’s earlier disgust at the idea of Josie bringing a gift. Aha, she’d guessed correctly. “Look at what my niece brought me,” Aunt Ruth proclaimed to her friends. And Josie flushed from her forehead to her collar. “Libby came running in here telling us that you brought some kind of celebrity to my house. Is that true?”
“I guess so,” Josie said, feeling a little sheepish and duped. “Want to meet him?”
Her aunt thought about it for a few seconds, then said, “Nah. I don’t so much care for those types.” Which caused Josie to grin.
“Where’s Uncle Jack?” Josie asked.
Her aunt waved vaguely. “He’s out in the garage.” For some reason, this sent her aunt and her friends into peals of laughter.
#
Josie went out the back door and walked across the gravel driveway to the garage. The doors were all open for people to come in and look at the cars and the interior lights were on. Uncle Jack sat on a bench in the one empty bay with some other men.
The cars were all lined up, just as she remembered them. Exactly as she remembered. There wasn't even a speck of dust or a new scratch anywhere. She stopped to take a look at her old favorite, the 1938 Rolls otherwise known as The Wraith. Black, of course, and absolutely huge to a small child. Huge to someone who'd been driving a Honda, for that matter. What a shine it still had on it. He'd even kept up the interior—the seats had a shine to them, too. She went by the 1933 Aston Martin, Le Mans, if she remembered correctly. He had a later C-Type model, too. She grinned to herself as the names of the cars came back to her slowly. During her summer visits as a kid, Libby had often chastised her for not being able to remember which was which.
In Uncle Jack's domain, here in the garage, there was a cooler on the table and an open keg—Bud Lite, if his tastes hadn't changed—and a small crowd of men and women of all ages milling around with plastics cups, listening to the chatter, and creating their own.
“I'll never forget the day I met her,” her uncle was saying. “I could say that once I laid eyes on her, there was never another in her class. I could tell that just by looking. She was like a pearl among the oysters of the other girls. What a beauty.” He took a long swig from his cup. “And when I bought her and drove her home, Ruth nearly took my head off. Had to sleep on the couch for about a month after that.”
Josie rounded the corner just in time to see him staring fondly at a car. The one that Libby had picked her up from the airport in was back in its bay farther down the row.
“Ruth always preferred the quirkier ones, like the Things. The little beach mobiles and such. Ah, there's no accounting for a wife's taste though, is there? You just kind of smile and nod.” He looked up and saw Josie just then.
“Hey, there you are. I was wondering when you were going to come out and see me.” He held out his arms and waited for a hug from her. He and her aunt were the huggiest people Josie knew. It helped when a person was either very small or very large. Uncle Jack was the latter. Not fat, really, but tall and lengthy in the arms and legs. He sat on his bench with a pronounced stoop in his shoulders. His cheeks and nose were pink from rosacea, which he preferred to pass off as a sign of perpetually having had too much to drink—instead of the reverse, like a normal person. He was proud of the way his liver had held up over the course of a fairly alcohol-enhanced lifestyle. And he was given to boasting about it now and then, especially stories that featured the exploits of his earlier days.
“How are you doing?” he asked her quietly, gesturing to her gut with his eyes as he sipped from his cup.
“Not bad,” she said, then changed it to, “So-so.”
“You watch yourself or you'll end up with a bag like Ruth.” He nodded sagely referring to his wife’s colostomy. “Though, it's really the best thing that ever happened to her, that bag. It's given her a new lease on life. More hours in the day now for her.”
“Glad to hear it,” Josie said.
“So, I hear you're staying up at that place, the ritzy one.”
Josie grinned. “Yeah. I'm trying to live it up.”
He squinted at her suddenly, “If I had a gun and I were that girl's father, those boys would be dead by now.” After all she’d heard and seen over the last week, Josie wasn’t surprised her uncle knew about it.
“I'm starting to think that's the easiest solution to this whole mess,” she said, and then felt funny for having said it out loud. She'd been thinking it the whole afternoon.
“But if you see either one of them, you run. Hear me?” He'd crossed his arms over his chest. He was looking at her so intently that he was nearly knocked off his bench when Libby came up behind him and threw her arms around his neck.
“Josie brought a movie star into our house,” she said.
“Is that right?” her uncle said drily, looking at her.
“Sorry about that. I didn’t know he was one.”
“And he’s a big one,” Libby said.
“Do you want to meet him?” Josie asked her uncle.
He shrugged, and in true Tucson fashion said, “Nah. Not really.” He’d met his fair share in his dealings with them and his cars. One time, a car had been returned with several used condoms left in the backseat. He’d been furious about that. “You leave him alone somewheres around here?”
She nodded. “In the courtyard. Guess I’d better get back there. Before he gets impatient and calls a cab or something.” They grinned together at her joke—cabs were for city people. Out here, they were probably twenty miles from the actual city limits. She dug a can of soda out of the cooler on the table near the keg. Her uncle gave her a small salute and a smile, and sipped his beer.
#
She got back to the courtyard after maybe ten minutes, and Patrick was looking restless. The young female guests at the party had gotten over their initial excitement about seeing them. Now, they were more interested in finding mobile phones so they could text their school friends all about it. Josie didn’t want to take Patrick back into the house again—especially after the lukewarm responses from her aunt and uncle. She handed him his soda and couldn’t help but notice the face he made to himself as he checked the brand on the can.
“Don’t tell me,” she said. “You have an endorsement deal with the other brand.”
He shrugged. “Just don’t let anyone see me carrying this.” After a few sips, he set the can down on a chair under the twinkling lights.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she suggested, not sure what else to do with him. She sighed, acknowledging to herself that she had at first been intrigued by his celebrity stature. She was human after all, and maybe even a little more mercenary than the average girl. And now, toward the end of a very long day, his allure was dimming. He’d make a good sidekick in her adventure, but he was no leading man—he was no Drew. And for another thing, Patrick was entirely too easy to bully. She indulged herself in thought for a few minutes as they walked along the drive kicking at the loose stones like a couple of kids. If Drew were here right now, she would have pushed him up against the courtyard wall and wrapped herself around him like they were in the garden of Eden. Alone. Primal. She knew what he would smell like, what he would taste like. Her pulse raced just thinking about it.
She and Patrick shuffled along the road in the dark. There weren’t any streetlights or sidewalks. The sides of the road were lined with creosote and mesquite trees and the paper bag luminaries that Libby had set up. People from the party were walking around the street in the near-dark, drink cups in their hands, telling stories and laughing, festive and nocturnal in the desert.
Patrick sighed contentedly. “God, it’s been a really l
ong time since I’ve felt as normal as this.” He asked her, “So you really had no idea who I am?”
“No,” she admitted. “You’re using a different name and all.” A few people on the street ahead of them turned at the sounds of their voices. Josie saw Benita Ruiz and Libby with them and gave them a little wave of her hand.
“Patrick is my middle name.”
“I guess I’ve seen you in a magazine or two,” she admitted. “It’s hard not to. But I figured that you’d be a little taller. Bigger and glossier. You know, more moviestar-ish.”
“Oh nice,” he said. “I’m like a lesser attractive impersonator of myself.”
“Like a wax figure.”
“I have one of those, you know.”
She grinned. “Well, it might have been different if I’d first seen you on the red carpet at Academy Awards night.”
“More recognizable, huh. In an Armani suit or something? I’ll work on keeping my appearance up. Maybe you’ll see me there next year. Just so I don’t fade away, like some of the other might-have-beens.”
She shrugged. “You might want to keep working on that. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Look, I really don’t think I need to be any more insecure, do you?”
“You? Insecure?”
“Why do you think I went into acting? I just want people to like me.” He gave her a lop-sided smile which she could barely see in the dark.
“Your driving ambition, perhaps?”
“My ruling anxiety.”
“Just like Sally Field, huh. ‘You like me. You really, really like me,’” she suggested.
“I’m just amazed by the fact that you treat me no different from any other person.”
That got a laugh from her. “You think I am equally rude to all people?”
“If you are, I’m enjoying it. Keep it up.” He turned serious. “I just don’t get much honesty sometimes.”
“That’s all this shop has in stock,” she said, lying.
They walked to the end of the drive where it met the main road. It had a narrow shoulder, so he gestured her ahead, and they started walking along the highway. There wasn’t a car in sight on the moonlit road.
“So come on, tell me which magazine you saw me in?” he teased. “Was it Movietime? Entertainment This Week? That one had some pretty good photos in it. I was in the buff for one of them with a big leaf covering down there.” He jogged ahead of her and walked backwards to face her. “No, no. Let me guess…was it a news magazine, covering my mysterious absence now that I’ve gone into supposed rehab?”
“I saw you on the cover of Teen Tiger in the airport,” she said. “All the little kids really like you. The teeny boppers.”
“I’m embarrassed at how many websites I have devoted to me.”
“Faked nudie pictures where they paste your head on someone else’s body? You’ve hit the big time,” she said.
“It’s not the faked ones that are bad. It’s the real ones. Stills from my movies.”
She pinched his arm. “Need to beef up a little, huh?” She reached out and snatched the baseball cap off his head. While he watched, she gathered up her long hair in a ponytail, rolled it into a bun, and crammed it all under his cap, which she put on backwards.
He grinned. “Definitely looks better on you than on me.”
“I’m a regular clothes horse,” she said jamming her hands in her front pockets.
“You should consider coming to L.A. with me…” he started to say, but his words trailed off. He froze suddenly, and a bright light flashed on his face from behind her.
The whole area around them lit up. A car was coming too fast along the road. Patrick held up his arm to shield his eyes as the lights grew brighter. She stared behind her as the car barreled down on them. It wasn’t actually on the road but racing down the dusty shoulder, sweeping toward them. In almost slow motion, she tightened her grip on Patrick’s arm and fled into the brush, where they stumbled in thorns. Prickly pear cactus tore at their legs, but they held their balance and didn’t fall.
The car sped by and swerved back onto the blacktop. Josie realized with shock that it was a dark-colored BMW. A two-door convertible with the top up—the same one that she’d seen Peter Williams driving earlier that day.
She and Patrick crouched in the brush long after the car was gone, and the cloud of dust from it had swept over them. She eased up on her grip of his arm when she realized that her fingers were digging into him. He was shaking, his eyes wide, his mouth open slightly.
“Did you see what kind of car that was?” she asked urgently, needing confirmation.
He shook his head no, but she wasn’t sure if she believed him. Would he say anything if he had recognized Peter? But he’d been staring directly into the headlights after all, so his eyes were probably blind temporarily. She stepped back onto the shoulder, wincing from the cactus scratches. She didn’t see any needles in her skin, but she was bleeding in several places.
“Come here.” She pulled him out with her and squatted down to check his legs. He’d fared much better than she had because he was wearing thick denim jeans. He had a couple of rips and some scratches in his skin, but no thorns had broken off in his skin. In any case, he seemed oblivious to any pain.
“My God,” he said finally. He had his hand on his head. “We almost…”
“Yep,” she said, cognizant of how little emotion she felt after the first rush of fear had passed.
“We almost fucking died,” he said, louder.
She stood up and scanned the road up and down. She started walking. “We’d better get back to the house in case that person decides that he should try again.”
Patrick shivered and fell into step with her, matching her fast pace. “Right away,” he agreed.
Then, a light sweat broke on her and she realized how afraid she’d been. Not really for her life. No entire spool of life images or flashbacks had passed in front of her eyes. Her fear was more the result of a flash of understanding. She had realized—if it hadn’t quite struck home before—what kind of animals she was dealing with.
“You know,” Patrick was saying, “nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I mean, I’ve been in some pretty active roles before. I put on twenty-five pounds of muscle when I played a Navy SEAL in a movie. I got chased around a lot by the stunt guys. They made me do a lot of push-ups and run obstacles course. They hired me a personal trainer. And I even got to do a car chase. But nothing like this. I mean, this is real life, you know.”
“I’m aware of that,” she said shortly.
He said again, “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.” He seemed to think about it for a second or two. “Oh my God, I feel so alive. I haven’t felt like this in months. Hell, maybe years. My skin is tingling.” He grabbed her arm to make her slow down. “Feel this. I have goose bumps.”
He dropped her arm and jogged along beside her. She was busily trying to figure out if whichever brother who had been driving had known where she was going to be, and approximately at what time. But how was that possible? What were the chances that she and Patrick would be walking along the road at precisely that time? Unless Patrick were involved somehow with his old schoolmates. She cast him a sideways glance. He was running along beside her with a sparkle in his eye. His stupid near-death enthusiasm seemed ghoulishly sincere, but perhaps he was a better actor than she thought.
He was still talking. “I could have hung out at a spa for weeks and never felt this good. I mean, nice food. Relaxation. Beautiful women in bikinis. Whatever. Never would I have felt this good this fast. I’m alive.” He shouted that last part, mostly in her ear.
“That’s great,” she said flatly, walking a little faster.
“I almost didn’t come with you tonight. I mean, God, someone’s aunt’s party at her house.” He shrugged and laughed. “No offense, but that’s not really a happening event, if you know what I mean. I mean, no one even had a high def camera or anything.”
<
br /> She could see the house in sight now, with its drive lined with crazy, flickering luminarias. Like a homemade runway to takeoff. But there was more commotion than before. People had probably seen the car swerve off the road and had run back to tell the house about it.
“You know what I think it is?” Patrick suddenly stopped in his tracks. She kept walking a few steps farther but realized that he was just going to stand there and shout in her direction if she didn’t.
She sighed. “We should get going. I think you need to get back to Castle Ranch.”
“You know what I think?” he repeated. He paused until he was sure he had her attention, oblivious of her irritation. “I think it’s you.”
“You think what’s me?” She gestured impatiently, trying to get him to start walking again.
“If I hadn’t met you, none of this would have happened. I’m having, like, an epiphany here. It’s it all started with you. You’re like some kind of bodhisattva or something. You’re helping me obtain my nirvana. My Zen state with the world.”
“Okaaaay,” she said slowly. Her sarcasm finally penetrated his self-absorbed ruminations. Instead of taking offense or snapping out of it, as she would have preferred, he laughed.
“It is you, Josie,” he said again. “I’m serious about this.” Then, “Do you know what a career you could make for yourself out in L.A.? You should really think about it.”
Suddenly, she couldn’t even stand the sight of him. She dug the keys to the Honda out of her pocket. “You remember how to drive, right?” she asked him. Because hey, who knew with these star types. He probably had his own driver. He nodded, still smiling like a moron. “You know where you are and how to get back to the Castle Ranch?”
He did a funny leap in the air. “God, I feel great.”
“Take yourself to the Castle Ranch. And drive safely. I’ll hitch a ride back.” She suddenly hoped that her aunt’s auto insurance policy was hefty.
He headed to the car almost immediately, then stopped and asked her, “Am I going to see you later?”
